Dew drop dripping down
Slips from emerald leaf, falls
Heavy to the ground
Hitting slate below
Cold and grey as dewy sky
Yet hard, green with moss
Ker plunk, drip, plop, splat
Each drop with a unique voice
Drums a calming hum
Creation carries
On, a pattern all its own
Outside my window
Unaware that my
Heavy heart receives each drop
Like a healing balm
Good for Me 12.30.06
Thank you all for your kind words and wishes in response to my last post. I did have a very nice holiday despite some challenging things my family is currently working through. But challenges come for a purpose and often times bring with them treasures unexpected. I will be patient and wait to see what it is...in time. Meanwhile the daily routine continues, in a somewhat different context than I'm familiar with as I will be home with my youngest son for a time. Quite a new change for the new year.
I wish you all a Happy New Year with much peace and joy!
Hi friends. I'm in a bit of a difficult place right now and may not be posting for a bit. Thanks to all of you amazing haiku writers that joined in this week. To read haiku entries, click here. Sorry I'm not adding them to a new post right now.
May you all have a blessed holiday.
Peace to you.
GFM
The holidays have always been a time of reuniting with my family -- father, step-mother, step siblings, sister and her family, and grandmother. Until about seven years ago. Slowly the circle of reunion has deminished. My grandmother passed in 1999 at 97 years old. She was an amazing woman. Soon after that my sister's family and my family starting growing -- each of us having two little ones to bring home for the holiday stay. It was a challenge as the homestead wasn't big enough for both our families and the step-siblings (whom I got along with well). Shortly thereafter my marriage started to find itself in a difficult spot and travels home were with the boys and myself only. And then about two years ago, what I've considered my nuclear family for nearly 25 years and my homebase, was broken apart when my dad and step-mom separated.
It's been hard and painful and maybe I'm feeling it poignantly now becuase it's a week before Christmas and I've been alone for two days and just finished three Sam Adams' Heffeweizen beers (yeah, you heard me :) But the ache is real and it's all so different now. The holiday dynamics peaked when my husband and I separated two and a half years ago. For the last three years instead of going home to the comfort and traditions of my childhood residence, my father has come to stay with me and my boys for the holiday. I'm so glad that he wants to be with us and that he's open to our traditions, which are focused more on celebrating the birth of Jesus than Santa Claus bringing presents. But even though the shift in location and family make-up coinsided with the need for me to model the purpose of Christmas to my boys with our own new traditions, there's still an ache for what was. An ache for what will never be again.
I'm thankful that God takes what is broken and mends it into something much more beautiful than you could ever imagine. I'm looking forward to seeing what that "something" is... one day.
I just loaded some recent photos to my pc from our tree decorating afternoon. My 5-year old son was playing with a set of nativity ornaments while I was adding the finishing touches to the tree (in other words...mom's left to put the ornanments on the tree whilst children peter out). Apparently my 9-year old son took a picture of it. A funny scene...
The irony of this nativity set is that there is no baby Jesus. I ordered this from a school fundraiser several years ago and when it arrived there was no baby Jesus. They threw in an extra horse as a bonus though.
No, I haven't been tagged. But I thought I'd take it upon myself to share six weird things about me. I've been reading a lot of weird things about other people on their blogs, and it's had me thinking, "What's weird about me?" Honestly now, would I actually confess the weirdest of weird? Mmmm, probably not. So those that follow will have to do.
Weird Thing One
My pinky toes on both feet have almost no nail on them at all. Not as a result of some strange happening. God just said it, and it was so.
Weird Thing Two
I like to be alone.... a lot. I'm a hard core introvert. Sometimes when I'm alone, I obsess about when that alone time is going to come to an end and I'll have to re-engage people. Weird, I know.
Weird Thing Three
I can't give blood. I was originally diagnosed with a form of anemia as a baby and nearly died since I wasn't producing my own red blood cells. Despite the fact that the Yale hospital doctor who treated me wrote me a letter in college stating that they now think it was a virus, the folks who could use my blood want nothing to do with it.
Weird Thing Four
About two years ago I started developing food allergies. Avocado, swiss cheese, and certain types of apples. The latest? Flax seed. A year before that I discovered that I'm allergic to the active ingredient in the allergy medicines Claritin and Clarinex - loratadine. Now how's that for weird!!!
Weird Thing Five
I always lock the car doors when I'm driving. It's sort of like an OCD thing. After I get in, start the car, and buckle up, I lock the doors. Could you imagine if I had a car with manual locks and I had to climb through to all four doors every time I got in the car? Oi!
Weird Thing Six
I can sleep for an extraordinarily long time. Eleven or twelve hours is a piece of cake. I've wondered how long I could sleep if there wasn't something that I had to get up for. I'd like to try that out someday soon.
For kicks I asked my 9-year old son what he thought was weird about me. His reply was this, "You don't look your age. And you're not very neat." And there ya have it! Thankfully, after further probing, he did explain that he thinks I look younger than I am! Phew!
I love that you are all continuing to join in the haiku challenge even as I've transitioned from a "competition" (if you want to call something where there is no prize at all a competition :) to a display of your interpretive gift. Thank you! I've said it before, but it continues to intrigue and inspire me to see how each person gleans something so different from the same photo. You can learn much about a person from their art.
And here are the entries... enjoy!
Through slatted windows
The wide world watches, waiting
Too see what this brings…
Jake
precarious pose
design by necessity
carelessly dreaming
Cindra
Update 12.18: I accidently typed Katie's poem incorrectly from the comments. It's fixed. Sorry Katie :)
Sweet pea in a pod
sleeps deep suspended in air
snuggles close to dreams
Katie
Basket of slumber
Peacefulness contentedness
Heavenly dream strings
Pauline
resting baby boy
floating in a bamboo bed
warm and peaceful face
Good for Me
And here's the photo, a gift from my friend Chris.
Thank you for joining in! Until next week!
I can hardly wait. Vacation starts in two days and I have been incredibly distracted at work anticipating two weeks off. Two weeks off!!! Woohoo! My boys will be in school most of the first week so I will have some much needed time to myself. Time to get ready for the holiday, catch up with friends, clean the house in preparation for my dad coming to visit, and time to just be. I like that.
The best part about this vacation...I'm not going anywhere!
For round eight of the Haiku Challenge I'm using a photo from a very talented blogger friend. His photo link isn't working right now, but I'll link to it as soon as it's back up.
As always, thank you for visiting and sharing your gift! I will post all haiku in a new post on Thursday.
Using only the picture below for your inspiration, post your haiku in the comments by Wednesday, December 13, at 8:00 pm Eastern.
If you're new to Haiku read on...
Haiku is a poetic form and a type of poetry from the Japanese culture. Haiku combines form, content, and language in a meaningful, yet compact form. Haiku poets, which you will soon be, write about everyday things. Many themes include nature, feelings, or experiences. Usually they use simple words and grammar. The most common form for Haiku is three short lines. The first line usually contains five (5) syllables, the second line seven (7) syllables, and the third line contains five (5) syllables. Haiku doesn't rhyme. A Haiku must "paint" a mental image in the reader's mind. This is the challenge of Haiku - to put the poem's meaning and imagery in the reader's mind in only 17 syllables over just three (3) lines of poetry!
Read more about Haiku on Wikepedia.
Greetings friends. It's that time of year when we cook, and bake, and share, and of course eat. I thought this would be a fun way to share some of our favorite recipes. So if you have one, please add it to the comments!
Here's one of mine!
Goat Cheese Appetizer (quick, easy, delicious, but a little pricey)
1 log of goat cheese
chopped kalmata olives (pitted)
pesto sauce
crackers of choice (my favorite with this app is mini stoned wheat thins)
Place the goat cheese on a plate for serving. Spoon pesto over log to cover cheese and drizzle around plate. Then do the same with the olives. Serve with crackers (people can use the cracker to dip right into the yummy goo, or use a knife to spread it onto the cracker).
I prefer to have this sit out for about 15 minutes before serving so the cheese is soft.
Yum, yum, and more yum!
This is the second week of me posting the haiku challenge entries for all to see rather than selecting a winner. I like this better. Feel free to share your thoughts about it.
I think I also like this method better because I get the chance to share my photo inspired haiku as well. Thanks to everyone who joined in this week!
Beyond conception
buoyed by the warmth of water
an ocean of love.
Katie
both holding their breath
they open their eyes to find
two lines of bright pink
Cindra
Silent growth within
Mystery and miracle
Birth of life begins.
Pauline
Breath of life's not air
The gill-less creature breathes
An amnionic sea
Good for Me
And here's the photo:
Thank you all again for sharing your gift here! Until next week!
GFM
I was in Michael's craft store last night doing some holiday shopping when I came upon a shelf of glass snow globes. There were about eight sitting there, each one eight or so inches tall, the spherical window sitting atop a sturdy metal base. From the size of the base and how it was sitting, with little legs perching off the shelf just so, I knew there was probably a music box inside. My heart lept as I thought of my boys and how they would love a snow globe...and how magical they were to me as a child. Shaking and turning and snow... shaking and turning and snow. Add some music to that and ahhhh....pure childhood joy.
Snow globes are magical no matter what's inside. But inside each one of these globes was the nativity scene. I thought that was pretty special and decided that I would get one for each of my boys for Christmas. With anticipation I picked one up to discover the song that the music box would ring out as snow kissed Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. As I was turning it over the options panned across my mind. Silent Night, O Come All Ye Faithful, O Little Town of Bethlehem...
With a turn of my wrist, I gazed in disbelief at what the sticker on the bottom of the Nativity snow globe read, "Here Comes Santa Claus". "No", I said aloud. "You're joking me!" I figured it was probably just that one and checked the others. But no, it wasn't just that one. Every single one had an oval sticker on the bottom with "Here Comes Santa Claus" typed on it in red ink.
This was perplexing and disheartening and just plain sad.
Just plain sad.
