In Lieu of Flowers

It's Memorial Day here in the U.S.

We went to the cemetery. It's a family tradition that we've never been able to celebrate because we were always in China at the end of May. We visited the two graves of family members who are buried in Prosser -- my husband's paternal grandfather, John, and maternal grandmother, Marion. We picked flowers from our garden and the kids placed them on the grave markers.

I'm far away from where my grandparents are buried, but I thought of them nonetheless. When we got home, I dug out my baby album and found some pictures. I thought I'd share them here, in lieu of flowers, in honor of these amazing people who have gone before me.

 (Please excuse the quality of the pictures. This is why folks nowadays use acid free paper in their photo albums!)

My mom with her dad, my Grandpa Glowniak. 

At my Aunt Linda and Uncle Mark's wedding. I'm the screaming baby. Also pictured are my mom and dad, my Aunt Sandi. My Grandma and Grandpa Pardini are to the far left and my great grandmother, Nana Beck, with her husband, my step-great grandfather, Papa Beck, to the far right.

This is my mother's mother's mother, my Great Grandma Hennessy. I think this may be one of the only times I got to see her.


I had to include this one because, even though it's so faded, it makes me cry. This is my Grandpa Pardini, and he's showing such a sweet tenderness in this picture, it's just priceless.

My Grandma Pardini, my paternal grandmother, is holding me in this photo. My maternal grandmother, Grandma Martha, is standing beside her. My dad and Aunt Sandi are also pictured. I think we might be at Disneyland.

I'm so thankful for my heritage.

Happy Memorial Day!

The List Revisited

It's still technically today. Phew. I still have time to fulfill my obligation of posting a follow-up about my BIG DREAMS post from yesterday.

Here are are the details of The List, if you're interested:

• Live in China: Check. We lived there for eight years! Longer than either of us were expecting when the dashingly handsome sidekick and I moved there in 2001.
• Travel through Europe (in a jeep preferably): Not check. Still on my list. My parents and siblings and I once travelled through Germany and Holland in a Joker Camper. That's what gave me the idea for this dream, because I would like to do it again in a car with more window options than the Joker provided. I would also like to make it to Italy. (By the way, how many kids can you fit in a jeep?)
• Ride on the Trans Siberian Railroad: Not check. Sigh. Would still love to do this, but at this point it seems like a lofty request.
• Visit Australia: Not check. Double sigh. The dashingly handsome sidekick and I will make it there someday, though, I have no doubt.
• Live on a beach in Southeast Asia for awhile: Not check. Hmm. How long is "awhile?" And would this be comfortable beach living, like in a little beach house with air conditioning and refrigerated beverages? If not, then I think I'm too old for this. I have been to Thailand a few times.... Does that count? Can you tell I have no idea what I was thinking when I wrote this? Ahh, the romance of being young and frivolous.
• Adopt a baby girl from China: Check! It was actually nine months after I wrote this list (two months after we moved to China) that we brought home our sweet Olivia from the Tianjin orphanage. I wasn't exactly expecting to fulfil that dream so quickly. Although technically it took us six and a half years to legally adopt her.... So it was both a quick and a long process.
• Write and publish a novel: Not check. I've written three novels, though, so I'm working toward the goal. Not as easy to accomplish as I'm sure I thought it was when I flippantly wrote this down on The List. Ha! Not to mention that you don't really just sit down, write one novel, and get it published and achieve the goal. One thing I've learned is that writing books has to become a lifestyle if you're going to be successful at it.
• Learn to paint landscapes in water color: Not check. In fact, this is one of those that has fallen off the radar. I have a lot of other things to do. Maybe some day when I'm old in a nursing home I'll go for it, if I live that long.
• Live in a house with a big bathtub and a gas fireplace: Check! I'm checking this one, even though our bathtub is kind of a normal size. It's still a lot bigger than the one we had in China. You can actually lie down in this one. And there's a gas fireplace. Though we haven't used it yet because we're concerned about the baby burning herself. But, still, Check!
• Be a stay-at-home Mom: Definitely checked. That I am.
• Live in a place where I can take long walks through beautiful places: Check. Even though I don't think Prosser, WA was what I was envisioning when I wrote this dream (I used to be a chick who thought the only beautiful places in the world possessed tall evergreens, cascading waterfalls and rugged mountains), I have come to appreciate the beauty here. Maybe my contentment springs from living in China, which is a gorgeously diverse country, but the cities ... uh ... are not so attractive. (The food, though, makes up for it.)
• Teach a college writing seminar: Not check. Off the radar. I have to get published first. Or go back to get my master's. No immediate plans for the school thing.
• Become a gardener: Check. Though I don't know. I feel like I cheated a little bit checking this one off. I worked really hard to weed certain beds in my garden. I planted all the plants I ordered from the catalog. But lately I've been a slacker. We'll see if the gardener in me emerges or not. Half-check. At least I'm working toward the goal because I actually have a garden.
• Paint my bedroom a color other than white: Check! I finally did this for the first time when we moved into this house. My bedroom is a beautiful nearly-turquoise blue. Goes with my attempt at a colonial Caribbean theme.

Now I'd love to hear from you: What's a dream you remember having as a younger person that you definitely DON'T have now?

The List

I came across this list in one of my old journals. I wrote it almost ten years ago.

The title is: BIG DREAMS.
Date: January 2nd, 2001

• Live in China
• Travel through Europe (in a jeep preferably)
• Ride on the Trans Siberian Railroad
• Visit Australia
• Live on a beach in Southeast Asia for awhile
• Adopt a baby girl from China
• Write and publish a novel
• Learn to paint landscapes in watercolor
• Live in a house with a big bathtub and a gas fireplace
• Be a stay-at-home mom
• Live in a place where I can take long walks through beautiful places
• Teach a college writing seminar
• Become a gardener
• Paint my bedroom a color other than white

So, I've done some of these things. Some of the others I haven't gotten around to yet.

I've accomplished (or sort of accomplished) seven of the items on my list, which is exactly half. Not bad, right?

A lot of the ones I haven't accomplished involve extensive travelling, which, with four little kids, I probably won't be able to afford for awhile. Other things on the list are works-in-progress and I'm working toward those goals.

And there are a few items on the list that I wonder, what was I thinking?  They've kind of become ungoals at this point -- or have fallen completely off the radar, at least for now.

I'll post more on this tomorrow.

In the meantime, what are your BIG DREAMS? Have you already realized some of them?

I Recommend: Swing Otto Swing

Swing Otto Swing is the epitomy of Ready-to-Read books. David Milgrim uses the spirit and simplicity of classic See Spot Run early readers and mixes it with his own brand of humor. I literally fell in love with this book. Otto is adorable, and the concept is marvelous: Two friend monkey try to teach robot Otto to swing from vines with less-than-perfect results.

All my kids love it, too. Even my twenty-month-old cracks up. The words are easy enough for my six-year-old to read it to his younger sisters, so this book is getting a lot of mileage at our house. A lot of mileage.

I need to get my robot claws on some of the other Otto books. I guess there's a series!

Verse Novel Challenge: Far From You

She did it again.

I picked up

This book

And could not

Put it down

Until I was done.

Started at 9p.m.

Ended at 10:30p.m.

That's Far From You,

A novel in verse

By Lisa Schroeder.

Never read novels in verse?

Try them!

They're addicting.

Join Caroline Starr Rose's challenge here.

The Gift

I didn't feel like walking to gymnastics. I felt like staying in the car.

But the rain had stopped, so I didn't have an excuse. I pulled out the baby jogger and strapped the girls in.

The air still smelled like rain, and wet grass, and growing things.

There were flowers in people's gardens: roses clustering over fences, purple rhododendrons, irises, red poppies. A breeze rustled the bright green tree leaves above our heads.

Then Anna said: "Those birds are in the shape of a bunny!" and she pointed up at the sky.

When I looked, I saw two flocks of pelicans in formation. Huge birds with enormous wing spans.

I stood for several moments totally transfixed, until Anna's little voice urged me on. "Let's stop standing here looking at birds!"

But, thank you God, for the gift.

WIP Wednesday: Doubt

Guys, I'll admit something.

I'm in a funk and I'm not even querying!

Yeah, I'm still working hard, hammering out edits to the first fifteen pages of my WiP, getting ready for my self-made deadline of next Tuesday when I'll be sending it down to California (for the SCBWI summer conference). Thank you to everyone who has given me critiques and help. Your feedback has been invaluable.

Still, I'm discouraged.

I keep reminding myself I'll snap out of it. I know it's partly because I've been feeling sick for a couple weeks. It's also partly because the end of the school year is so busy.

I also know I can't let my mood be based on circumstances. My joy comes from a well-spring that's deeper than that. But on dark days sometimes I don't have the motivation to find the joy. I take a morbidic pleasure in letting myself be blue.

Good news is that, like I said, I'm WORKING through it. Because of the deadline, I'm not just sitting around feeling sorry for myself. Even though I don't feel like writing, I'm writing. I have a brand new ending for my WiP.

Plus, I keep wondering if this period of time is really a gift in disguise.

My protagonist's older sister struggles with depression in the first part of the novel I'm working on. Maybe I'm getting a tiny taste of what that's like so I can portray her better. Maybe I'll have a deeper, more powerful book because of this experience.

I'm not sharing all this to make people feel sorry for me. It's just an attempt at being real ... it's easy to keep up a blog and make people think every day is shiny and happy. We can come across as perfect parents, perfect spouses, perfect housekeepers, die-hard writers who never doubt themselves, and it can all be a mirage. Life isn't always that clean cut. Sometimes there are hardship and pain, mood swings and crabbiness -- it's part of our world's condition.

And doubt. Is this what I'm supposed to be doing with my life, with my time? It's definitely a good question to ask occasionally, to make sure all this time I'm spending on writing is a worthwhile investment.

Life, maybe even especially a writer's life, is one of ups and downs, with a healthy dose of rejection thrown in. We also tend to be pretty emotional people -- that's how we birth our characters, after all. All this makes writing an up-hill marathon with absolutely no guarantee of success.

Still, at the end of life, even if we can't measure our success as writers in published books and sales, will it be worth it? Will  we look back and know with certainty we couldn't and wouldn't have done it any differently?

How do you handle the down times?