Moments

Blogging is a vehicle that I enjoyed utilizing in the last few years.  In the fringes of life and just holding on with a pen in hand,  I can truly say my blog was a godsend.  As the moments of my life converged into a simple exercise on thoughts put to paper,  I worked toward illustrating my ordinary moments as extraordinary with eyes wide open to the vastness of those everyday experiences.  That was intentional on my part. After all, most life is ordinary and only a tiny portion of is extraordinary.

My Ashes

Mom and I had a peculiar conversation.  After my recent hospitalization , we discussed living, dying, and a few things right in the middle .

It was apparent I must have some kind of strange situation inside my flesh. I have had way too many issues with modern medicine to think any different.  More surgery is in my near future.

It leaves me depressed, but not broken. Mom even joked she wanted my ashes on her fireplace so she could talk to me everyday. We laughed.

In all seriousness, the human spirit has been victimized to an extreme by TV and in particular politics with the hurt it brought. I sit back and realize I am not a republican nor a democrat. I am a person. I have needs just like you. We all deserve space to just be.

My health scares seem to grab me by the balls at times. Oh wait I don’t have balls !! Haha.

Yet, I stand up and am not afraid to weather whatever THE PLAN is for my life. Do not be fooled by those that say it is going to be ok . Sometimes it is not.  I devised a few phrases in my mind for you to ponder along with me. They are below.

This every girl does not give up easily and will remain as proactive about my health as I am able. A time comes when we all die. When it does, we should be doing something good for mankind.  How does that look to you ? To me, it means a few things:

1.  Live the little things.
2.  Keep the happy and keep it now.
3.  Look for purpose
4.  Pray
5.  Family
6.  Friends
7.  Touch and feel….

 

Who Do I Bequeath My Blog To?

God knows I get kind of weirded out when I am about to fly somewhere even if it is for vacation. Shit-why did 9/11 have to happen as it has weirded me out with flying ever since?
So this whole vacation thing has me thinking about my will. Who am I going to give my blog to? Who would care for it in my absence? You blogger comrades know exactly what I am talking about. We love our blogs! I think….hum
So I decided to write in my will a little something to all of you. So while in my absence you all must refer to this page as needed. NOW I have not left yet for vacation, but when I do keep these words in safekeeping for me. Remember too I love y’all! God HELP me–I can’t stand being suspended in the air to get to my vacation spot, but there is no choice in the matter so here it goes:

I ALESIA BLOGS of the state of WASHINGTON & county of KING being weak in body but of sound and perfect mind (this may or may not be true), memory, reason, and understanding now calling to mind the mortality of my body and knowing that it’s appointed of God for all flesh once to die do make ordain and declare this my last will and testament and desire it to be received by all as such first my body to the Earth (how will that happen if I die in a plane crash? ) from whence it was taken my soul to God who gave it. Touching my worldly estate wherewith it has pleased God to bless me with in this life I will and positively order that it be dealt with and disposed in the manner following and herein after mentioned by those to whom I shall commit its future management….

OK..I know this is really ridiculous. But I will miss you guys while I am gone….By the way –future management will be SUSPENDED while I am in the plane..Sometimes we just need to go silent and this will be one of those times……..

Wild Walls

Walls are a part of our lives in one way or another. There are the walls of your home and then there are the invisible walls people put up to close off the world. Both have the same distinction to protect a person from intruders.
When I was 14 years old, there was an enclosed tunnel made out of cement that I had to walk through everyday to get to school. The typical teenage writing was on it’s walls with some girl writing her undying love for some guy. It was a mystery to me that someone would want to be writing about love on a cold, damp wild wall. Yet here I was captured each day by its graffiti. There was no way to walk around it. It was the only way to school.
Reminded by my conscience that writing on a wall is destroying someone’s property, I never engaged in this activity. I did not want to wrangle with words that someone else would read anyway. It seemed pointless and leads to someone reading useless crap. Yet I wanted to write something, but not empty chatter as was the case with 90% of what was written on those stone walls.
One particular day I stopped as I was exiting the tunnel and said to the walls, “Give me 14 more years and I will show you something!” I then turned away from that tunnel to never walk through it again. It was my last day of junior high school.
As I have aged my childhood now holds some sacred truths. I learned that writing is good even if it is graffiti. Here I was a lonely girl holding on so long ago to those walls. They became a part of me without even understanding their impact. Every 14 years in fact I have taken stock of what I could show those walls.

Local newspaper clipping from my teenage years playing softball. Childhood memories are so important to who we become later in life.

Vulnerabilities

As the old saying goes, birds of a feather flock together. This proverb is as old as time practically and has a connotation of referring that we enjoy safety with others that are like minded.
What about friendship? Do we tend to migrate to those that are similar to us? My husband likes to say I make friends easily. I actually think what he is really saying is I have good communication skills. Part of me says that there is truth in that, but most healthy life long friendships take a very long time to cultivate. They are worth it, but they are risky at times. When you make yourself vulnerable to another, you are saying to that friend that they are worth the investment. Most of these kind of investments will reap you rewards. As a financial friend of mine would say a good friendship will be full of big dividends for a lifetime.
As I have studied the wonder of friendship this past week, I have seen my son lose his best friend. It made me realize how short of time we have on this earth and we better make each moment count. I have of late not been the best of friends and have come to a place that I needed to work on being more honest in my conversations and also reaching out and asking for help.
What I think I have been learning is to accept that the human spirit has flaws , defects, and blemishes. In all reality I was actually identifying these issues in my own person. Now that is heavy.
So today I am relearning a big lesson about myself. I need help and at times this comes straight from the Divine who is our best friend. It is easy to think all we need are good human friendships to share all our problems with. The truth is friendships will suffer if we place too much on our friends to bear. This is for God alone.
In reality healthy friendships will grow and not short circuit when we learn the gift of how friendship shouId really look like. If God forgives us, we should learn to forgive our friends. We should not take our friendships for granted. I love Proverbs 17:9 which reminds us love grows when we choose to forgive, but if we dwell on it the best of friends will become separated.

Normalcy

The state of being normal as defined by cuddling with my furry friend and breathing a bit slower this week. May we look at our animal friends today and thank them for their unconditional love. I don’t know about you, but when I spend time with my Linus- I laugh more!

What Will You Be Remembered For?

Photo of Captain Phil Harris of The Deadliest Catch Courtesy of Google

Do you have a pay it forward gift that you share with others? I found one in photography as a volunteer for a commercial website that gives free access to their online database of cemetery records. It is wonderful to receive a thank you for my small part in this huge undertaking. In fact,yesterday this website used some information I had found on Captain Phil Harris of The Deadliest Catch who passed away in 2010. Part of his ashes are buried with his mother. She is buried in my area where I photograph and I just so happened to be the first to take a photo of her gravesite.
If any of you watched this show, you know Captain Phil Harris lived his life large. But in the end all we have left after we are gone are the memories and family and friends. I ponder the bigger questions when I think of death and as I read on some of my favorite blogs you all do too. Here is an example of that: http://pinklightsabre.com/2013/02/22/can-you-be-interesting-every-day/ .
Here are 5 questions worth thinking about. Let me know what you think:
1. Did your presence make the world a better place?
2. What will you be remembered for?
3. When you are gone will you be thought of as kind or difficult?
4. If you died today, did you tell your special someones how much they mean to you?
5. Have you made peace with God?

When You Think You Have Heard It All…..

1940 CENSUS brings together cousins. Roy (my step-dad) and Melda met for the first time after extensive research was done to find relatives from the past.

Recently I shared a heartwarming story about my WWII VET step-dad Roy and his celebration of his 90th birthday ( http://wp.me/p2rYD1-o8 ). Roy grew up very poor and his parents divorced while he was a boy. Roy never knew when his real dad had passed away. One day he asked me if I could find this information out because of the release of the 1940 census. I was able to give Roy his father’s death date and burial location, but the biggest surprise was that we found out he had a half-brother, and a half-sister he did not know about. When you think you have heard it all life throws you a few new curve balls! We were fortunate to contact them both. In fact a reunion is planned for them to meet. I hope they hurry. No one is getting any younger!
I had recently flown home from Montgomery, Alabama 3000 miles to Seattle after witnessing a tender-hearted visit between my step-dad Roy and his cousin Melda. She was also researching her family tree that included Roy. She decided to drive to Montgomery, Alabama for a delightful visit while I was in town. Melda and I found each other through our mutual research.

Roy and Melda discuss their family roots with photo albums as their respective spouses look on. Genealogy work has confirmed their family lines all the way back to Germany.

Melda reminded me in an email of how special this experience was for her. Upon returning home Melda spoke with her elderly mother about meeting Roy: ” I couldn’t help but stare at Roy’s striking ice blue eyes. When I mentioned it to my mother, she said my grandfather had eyes like that.”
While Melda and Roy are second cousins, Melda’s father who has passed away as well as Roy led interesting work lives in the history of Alabama. Melda’s father was a Superintendent of Education during the changing times in Alabama Public Schools serving the children in Alabama. During that same time period, Roy was working as the Director of Veteran Affairs serving our Veterans. Today I give tribute to both men in their work and their lives.

Roy meeting with Governor George Wallace while he served the Veterans of the Military.