Karen's Journey

It's been a brutally hot summer -- so not much time being spent inside writing blog postings. I have several started in my head, but can't quite get to them. Odd, since I'm out of triathlon commission with two bad knees, you'd think I would have lots of spare time, but I don't know what I've done with it. So, in the absence of being able to put thought to paper, I'm sharing some photos of some of my favorite flowers. I don't know their official name, but I call them Cape Cod roses. Some are light pink, like the ones in the top photo. Some are fuchsia-leaning, like these. I love that they grow so freely -- sprawling along fence rails and beach paths. They grow in abundance with no pruning, fertilizing, or pesticides. They just grow. And look pretty. And, a boat in the background for authenticity.  Enjoy! I'm probably going to be on hiatus during the Olympics. I'm hoping it will be fun to watch the track and field events with T...

We don't get to the Cape early enough for me to get good beach plum blossom photos. This was one of the last ragged remnants of a flower that remained. What I like about this photo is not the flower, but the bright striped guy on the leaf to its left. What an interesting colored bug! Indeed, by the time we arrive, the fruit is already growing. I'm not sure why I love beach plums so much -- probably their association with being...well...at the beach. It is certainly not a fruit that grows in the clay we have for soil. My grandmother used to put up jars of beach plum jelly. I wouldn't even know when to pick them, let alone make food out of them. I do miss her beach plum jelly. You can buy it in the stores, but it's just not the same. I tried to get some nice closeups of the beach plums, but I was rushed. People were coming down the path and the path to the beach was about two inches wide this year due to long, overhanging, tick-infested grass, so they were havin...

T loves to hear stories of me when I was little. So I tell  him about the time I learned how to ride a bike, or the time I was sick on the first day of first grade -- but went anyway, or the time there was no girl's track team so I started one, or the time we were all on a swing set and the whole thing toppled over with all four of us girls in the glider chair, or the time my sister jumped off the piano onto my wooden doll -- breaking it into a gazillion pieces. Lately he's wanted to then tell me stories from when he was little -- which is a bit of a "whew" since I'm running out of my own "when I was little" stories. What he's telling me is his life's narrative. This is an amazing step in his journey. One attachment technique is to give your child a narrative, with things such as a lifebook, a family candle lighting ceremony, or doing what families do naturally -- reliving, through stories, your time together. The telling of these stories str...

One of the most fun little -- but competitive -- 5km races I know of takes place annually in Harwich, Massachusetts on the last Saturday of June. This year was its third year. We 've run it the past two years -- last year out of "oh, this looks interesting what-the-heckness," and this year because it was such a great experience last time. Last year we debated what to do with T while we all ran the 3.1 mile distance. I was afraid that was too far for his five-year-old legs. We were on the Cape without a babysitter available, so he came with. He ran with my niece, who coaxed him along with bribes of soda and ice cream to a third place finish in his age group, in a time of 37:52. They were ahead of me most of the race, but I caught up with about 400 meters to go. That gave him a bit of an incentive to pick up the pace and he stayed with me until we turned the corner for the final 100 meters to the finish line, when I told him, "NOW! Run as fast as you can NOW!...

Lying in bed with T last night, having just kissed and said our usual "good night, sleep tight, sweet dreams, I love yous," he suddenly gasped and started crying -- sobbing. "What's wrong? What's the matter?" I asked. "I just had a bad dream," he said. Bad dream? He couldn't possibly even have fallen asleep yet. "What was the dream?" I asked, certain I could soothe him. Wrong. "I dreamed I died. I don't want to get old and die. I always want to be with you." The child, at age six, has figured out and understands the concept of death being forever. Which, given his background and the fact that we've lost three companion animals and one grandma since he came home, is maybe not terribly surprising. The bunnies' and the cats' absences are palpable. They left and never came back. He watched Grandma Post's casket being lowered into the ground and then being covered with dirt. And last Tuesday we...