Where’d You Go, Bernadette, Maria Semple’s novel started off my summer reading list. Remember childhood summer reading programs, when we would read a set number of books to earn a prize and a certificate? Now, for me, reading is the reward. And yes I have been reading much: spiritual books like Seven Thousand Ways to Listen-Mark Nepo, Immortal Diamond-Richard Rohr, How the Light Gets In-Pat Schneider, a few memoirs like Pieces of Someday-Jan Vallone and Life after Death-Damien Echols, one of the West Memphis Three who was wrongly accused of murder and released after years on death row, which can’t be confused with another book I read, Proof of Heaven-Eben Alexander, a neurosurgeon’s near death experience. I rediscovered Jamaica Kincaid, author of “Girl,” which I happen to think is one of the finest examples of a single sentence, about 350 words of poetry and a complete story, at a public library reading from her new See Now Then: A Novel. And I have had the honor to read a dear friend’s complete memoir manuscript and poems, writings, blogs, book chapters and more written by writers in the two weekly and one biweekly writing groups that add much to my life. I can’t wait to read Terry Tempest William’s When Women Were Birds.
The other day, someone kindly asked about me and my blog, “Where did you go?” Hmmm…it’s July 20. There’s morning fog, so much fog that the white cloud is visibly pouring by my condo window. And I can’t see the red tip of Alexander Calder’s Eagle, six tons of marvelous twisted steel in the Olympic Sculpture Park, a place, actually my front yard, that keeps me grounded and uplifted. A good day to pause, reflect on “Where did I go?” and blog. Oh my! My life is so much more than reading and writing-so much more because of reading and writing.
Here’s the mid-summer report.
1. Memorial Day officially kicked off summer with a week-long memorable Gardner gathering in the Mt. Hood, Oregon area where all three of our children, two who happen to live on other continents, and their loved ones, and my husband’s two brother’s families were present. Twenty three of us celebrated family and honored my mother-in-law Chris. We hiked on the Salmon River, sort of did yoga led by our son’s girl friend who really leads real yoga, ate, played games, visited, soaked in the hot tub, but the vivid memories are the Peruvian Pachamanca celebration where our son-in-law and daughter prepared their first earthen meal for us which was followed by sharing poems, songs, stories, memories and even a “Grandma Chris Jeopardy Game.” We took the highlights to Grandma Chris who resides in a memory care facility in Sandy, Oregon on Saturday. With her diminishing memory and body, she seemed to enjoy our shared time. The blessing that we all received from her was that she seems peaceful like she’s in a Zen Buddhist kind of space. Maybe it’s disease, drugs or a state of just being before non-being, but what an everlasting gift the time was to us all.
2. I returned home to begin summer writing groups at Mary’s Place and a sizzling summer WritersGathering, really an amazing group of writers who hold each other and each other’s words beautifully. All June I worked on a memoir about my relationship with my mother-in-law. Our gathering gave me plenty of material.
3. Did I mention the hours I spent trying to get our fiscal house in order after someone was able to make charges from our checking account? Now closed.
4. Celebrated graduations. Bainbridge Graduate Institute’s graduation is the best. Amazing program and people who are changing and will change this world for the better. In full disclosure, my husband works for BGI. His work matters.
5. A June bike ride to the Ballard Locks for one of their every summer Saturday and Sunday afternoon free concerts introduced us to the Eastside Modern Jazz Orchestra.
6. Helped to celebrate by cocreating and acting in a “Curves skit” for a friend’s 70th birthday party. We all met at Curves, a place I still try to get to work out at three or four times a week.
7. Did I mention the toothache that turned into excruciating pain which was relieved with the application of some miraculous product used by my dentist? She said it may be just buying time before a root canal. So far so good.
8. Seattle is a great place to visit from mid-July through mid-September. Thanks to friends who feel the same, we get to be tourists in our own town. A friend from Missouri came at the beginning of July. We strolled along the waterfront to Pike Place Market, watched the Salmon joyfully leap in the salty waters of Puget Sound on the west side of Ballard Locks before they struggled up the ladders to get into Lake Union. Our visited culminated by celebrating the Fourth and our freedom with fireworks at Lake Union. A dear friend who lived well and battled cancer for years died early as the day began. Through colorful bombs bursting and tears, I remembered her, our brief friendship and shared writings, her life’s ending and freedom from pain and her new soulful adventure with life after bodily death. Did I mention that John and I have been working on our Last Will & Testaments? We haven’t decide what to do with our bodies after death and haven’t taken the document to be witnessed and notarized.
9. A month after seeing our children in Oregon, Elie and her husband Oscar, both photojournalists in Peru, continue to discuss the possibility of going to Jordan (they are already studying Arabic); John(ny), after some tough beginning days battling Lyme disease, is improving with antibiotics and plans to join his girlfriend’s family in Hawaii at the end of July; and our daughter and son-in-law who live in Lausanne, Switzerland are traveling the continent of Europe. I think Kate’s working on the Mediterranean Island of Ibiza, Spain today. If not, my question is “Where’d you go, Kate?”
10. Another little, really big, thing I love about Seattle is the giant red Popsicle sculpture on the southwest corner of Fourth and Blanchard which I make sure to include on as many of my daily walks as possible. It gives me joy even on cloudy days. Someday I may stop and take more than a photo, maybe a lick. It’s that delicious.
11. On July 6, we headed to Oregon for the first grandniece’s or grandnephew’s (unidentified gender) baby shower. Nephew Zac and Erica are going to be awesome parents. It was held in the lovely garden apartment of Jesse and Tiffany, another loved nephew and wife. We are so lucky to have awesome nieces and nephews on both sides of the family who live close. Three nephews, two wives and a grandniece and grandnephew live in the Seattle area. After the shower we rested at Skamania Lodge on the Columbia River Gorge where we watched kite surfers, windsurfers and took a light hike.
10. Did I mention the perssitent sore throat and lymph glands and that I have spent more time dealing with another fiscal mess someone created for me to clean up, someone who made charges on our credit card? Card closed.
11. I spend too much time, almost daily, playing WORDSwithfriends, Scrabble and getting glimpses of moments in friend’s lives on Facebook thanks to the iPhone. And I’ve managed to squeeze in some walks, talks, coffees, lunches and dinners with friends in Seattle.
12. Friends from North Dakota came for a six day weekend last week. Took them to the quintessential Seattle places I went to with my friend from Missouri but added the Bill & Melinda Gate’s Foundation, Seattle Center, Museum of History and Industry to the itinerary and we attended Seattle Art Museum’s Summer at SAM kick off at the Olympic Sculpture Park. We enjoyed the bands Art of Jazz and Comfort Food and a violinist (or fiddler) and dancer on the roof of the summer installation of art, “Western Oracle: We Will Tear the Roof off the Mother.” Really, it was a tear the roof off kind of evening. Food trucks, a picnic, friends, sunshine and a sailboat regatta. Remember this is my front yard, home of the Eagle’s red tip which I can now see along with Bainbridge Island’s long green line across the waters of Elliot Bay and the Puget Sound. Fog lifting. No sun or Olympic Mountains visible-yet.
13. On Saturday we took the ferry from Anacortes through the San Juan Islands to Sidney, British Columbia and enjoyed a night stay at a fully appointed and not too expensive hotel, The Oswego, in Victoria. We sauntered around the harbor and city. On Sunday abundant and colorful flowers at Butchart Gardens exceeded my expectations. I swear the begonias were on steroids. Sunday evening we took the Coho Black Ball ferry across the wavy Strait of Juan de Fuca which induced mild motion sickness to spend the night in Port Angeles. On our way home Monday we drove to Hurricane Ridge and Sequim spotting some lavender fields. That night, when I wrote with others in my awesome summer WritersGathering group, the black ravens flew into my writings as crows.
14. Did I mention that my energy is low and throat and lymph glands settled into another sinus infection and I had to go on antibiotics and steroids, again? The good news is that I don’t have mono.
15. My brother is holding is own after the loss of his father-in-law and a medical event; another brother celebrated his 50th with a big margarita, maybe more; another brother is enjoying his family, exploring ancestory.com with his son and anticipating a family mission trip to Guatemala; and one of my sisters is dealing with chronic pain; another has returned home to her small Kansas town after years of working in Washington, D.C. and seems to be in her bliss making pies; and another sister is weathering the wicked summer storms in New Mexico as she wickedly beats me in Scrabble. Where’d you go, Bob and Jackie?
16. On Thursday I had to cancel my day with friends on Vashon Island because the sinus, face and head pain made for a sleepless in Seattle night for me. Too bad it wasn’t the movie.
17. But last night, I rocked on with Sir Paul, as in the Paul McCartney, at Safeco Field’s first held concert. Three hours, 39 songs, complete with two LED screens and more projecting artists, instruments, the crowd and artful images accompanied music, lights, fireworks and smoke. Three Nirvana members joined the show towards the end for what a critic has called Sirvana. Wow! So many highs. “Blackbird” which was written by McCartney as a reaction to the USA’s escalating 1960’s racial tensions moved me to tears as he sang and played guitar solo while artful images of the moon, a blackbird on a wire above a rooftop on a mostly blue background were projected. The contrasting images and music illuminated the personal pain I am fighting and the shared pain we, in this country and throughout the world, are holding as we all struggle to be free or to live freely with the all of life.
18. On the nearly two and a half mile walk home with the moon nearly full and our hearts and souls full, which gave me the ability to ignore my waning body but not my need to pee, my husband and I stopped at a Taco del Mar in historic Pioneer Square. We ordered a bottle of water, a beer and chips and guacamole as we visited reliving the concert, McCartney’s life, the Beattle’s lives and ours.
19. On August 7, 2013, John and I will celebrate 37 years of marriage. Last night we remembered a July 19 Jesse Colin Young, The Beach Boys, and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young concert we attended 39 years ago at Royals Stadium in Kansas City. It was so hot I fainted before the 1974 concert. I was in lust with John and beginning to learn about love. Oh my! After nearly 40 years, we are learning to love. “Something,” another song McCartney sang last moved me to tears last night, and thinking about it now is making for watery eyes, evoking feelings. But more than feelings. As I held hands and shared stories and memories with the man who I have loved, sometimes not so well, since I was 15 years-old, I know the answer to the song’s question, “Will my love grow?” There were hints in the song, “believe” and “stick around.” We’re doing that and our love keeps getting better. He’s scrubbing the toilet now. After going to bed at 1:00 AM and living fully for the first 55 days of this summer, it’s time for a midsummer night’s dream, the life I’m living. Today, that means a day to rest, heal, pause, and write.
So, to answer the question “Where’d you go, Julie?”, I am here fully alive in the Pacific Northwest. I am currently reading John Wood’s Creating Room to Read A Story of Hope in the Battle for Global Literacy a man who did what an earlier book was titled, Leaving Microsoft to Change the World. All of the board members of VoiceFlame are reading and finding inspiration for our work empowering girls and women, right now in Malawi, through writing and creative expression. I envision us creating Room to Write, but why stop there when there is A World to Write? I imagine a world where everyone’s voice and stories matter and are respected and honored by others. I want to live in that world. I must begin by fully inhabiting my life even if it’s in my bathrobe, reading and writing. It’s 5:01 PM. I am living fully and happily with fatigue, pain, stories and healing.
20. The fog, my fog has lifted. The sun is parting the clouds. The world, the Olympic Mountains which I can now see, and the cruise boats departing for Alaska beg me to come out and play. I have not left my condo today. I write. I will rest and I will read which brings me back to me.
Epic summer making for an epic blog post breaking all the rules. It will likely be the only blog post until September. I invite you to send me your writings and I will post them. Today, I begin a mid-summer at home retreat. I must rest. On the first day of August I’m off to California for a Napa anniversary with my husband, time with his cousin(maybe a San Francisco Bay sail), a week long writing class with Pat Schneider founder of the Amherst Writers & Artists method (the method I use in my writing groups after attending training in 2011), a reunion with the people I traveled to Malawi with and a VoiceFlame board meeting. Living, reading, writing, writing, reading and living fully. Gratefully. I am here. I wish a full life and reading and writing for everyone on this planet.