LuLu; non-catholic saint of the rose-colored glasses

'Thank goodness love is blind,' my Mom would say while standing over the stove and stirring over some friend's family situation or romantic relationship in her mind. Chuckling, she would refrain from sharing what she meant. I badly wanted to tread the line of gossiping but she would rarely go there. It's taken me a little time to realize how soft to the tongue old proverbs and wives-tales can be. They speak through centuries from women standing over their own stoves, mildly contemplating their own situations.

I want to make a portrait of my family before Anna marries Michael and the family begins to expand. Just the ten of us. Simple. Well, maybe not so simple as I hoped. For starters, I'm not a practiced artist and the project grows before my eyes from a simple piece of canvas to this giant canvas monster with pencil teeth. Scary; not really. Daunting? Yes, it is that. Here's where the 'Love is blind' part comes into play. The harder I try to make the woman that is my mother look like the image that is to me 'Mom' and to herself 'Joyce', the more frustrated I become. I can get the curve of the arm and the eyes, ears, nose down but it just looks like a fairly two dimentional standard person to me. I want to draw my family and have everyone who sees the drawing see it through a sort of rose-colored lense of bias. My translation of reality is skewed by my chosen perception. We'll see how this drawing turns out in the end. I will predict it to be passable, but much cherished because of the same rose-colored glasses my parents wear. Banish the scary pencil-toothed monster, I'm off to puzzle my family onto paper.

A new nest

The paperwork was completed yesterday, buying us ownership of our new family home. My parents have been nervous and giddily excited; both side effects of going into eye-widening debt temporarily. As to the rest of us, we are just happy-eyed with thoughts of swimming in Lake Michigan, sailing as much as we like, inviting friends and family over. I am most ridiculous, thinking of how my children will sit in the secret reading room beneath the stair or climb into the tower while visiting their grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, strangers always welcome. Yeah... right. I don't even have have kids yet.

We will live just up from Old Mission Harbor, on the beautiful Old Mission Peninsula in the schoolhouse they built after holding school on a schooner for years. We will be giving up our barns and forest but the longview of my family growing old in this house is satisfying. There are huge windows and a promise of prevailing breezes in the summer from the harbor. There is space for twenty people. Great big maples surround the house. A patch of lavender stretches along the front. I'm very excited.

Plans for the Future

The snow swirled above and beyond the windshield of Oliver, our Volvo. With my eyes straining to follow the tracks and stay between the right snowdrifts, I drove home from a long night at work. The interior of my head has seemed like a cosmic blizzard blowing around. The plans of hiking the Pacific Crest Trail mix and mess with financial wrangling, our family moving, my sister getting married, and a gazillion seemingly pressing small concerns until just like my driving experience, the road is lost to view.

I am hungry for that day in late April when we slap our feet on that US-Mexican border and start walking north. The raw honesty of the outdoors has always seemed free from the trappings of the thousand false fronts we've made our world out of. Deserts, mountains, privation, exaltation, grizzlies, weariness, satisfaction, deep snow covered passes, days and moons and seasons; for all these things my heart jumps up in me and says 'Winter has been long enough! Give me my shoes and let me walk north with the seasons.'

April 16th Jacob (my 17 year old brother) and I will fly to San Diego and hopefully see the Pacific Ocean before beginning an epic northbound hike along the Pacific Crest Trail. I will hike until early July, when I return to Michigan for the glad preparations of my sister Touk's wedding. Jacob (or 'Jarrow') will continue on alone to complete the 2,800 mile trail.

"May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view." ~Edward Abbey