The Nature of Family

After two months away from writing or reading blogposts, it feels a little artificial to start right in again with no explanation for my absence. Be it enough to say my grandchildren moved into my house? Probably, but au contraire, it's not within my nature to leave it at that.  If any reader friends are still out there, I'll indulge in one post about our new adventure, then return to nature blogging, with renewed intent to keep personal life out of it, except as it applies to my observations of the natural world.

Though I hadn't intended the June 19th post to be my last, on June 23, our daughter, Sarah, and her two children, Makayla age 8, Nickolas age 4, moved into the basement apartment of our house—a major lifestyle adjustment for all of us. Evenso, I kept expecting each day to be the day I would post again, but with grandchildren at every turn, it didn't work out that way.

When I retired five years ago to tackle a long-imagined mirage of becoming a writer of children's stories, I knew I didn't have a lot of years left for such an ambitious undertaking. I worked hard (am still working hard) on this project, and advised both my daughters not to wait till the end of their income-earning careers to make of their lives what they most longed for. I vowed to encourage their visions to whatever extent I was able, as my mother had mine.

So we were not surprised—and wanted to be supportive—when Sarah, who was then working in a university development office, envisioned graduate school in her chosen field of visual arts—especially after she had undergone two major surgeries to remove a paralyzing tumor on her spine, an ordeal that hurled all of us into a new recognition of the fragile nature of time vs life goals. Sarah's husband, Thad, is equally supportive of her vision. Sparing you all the wheels that had to turn to make it happen,  Sarah and children will be living with us in Atlanta during her stint in graduate school, while Thad continues working in Florida with plans to come to Atlanta once a month until he can find work here.

Initially, of course, the apartment preparations and daily summer childcare consumed my leisure hours heretofore spent "long sitting" outside, which had been my path to blogging, in turn allowing the regular practice I needed for more imaginative writing. But everyone is settled now, the children are in school, and Sarah and I have a firm commitment to each other to spend the precious school hours pursuing our own visions, she in her basement studio, I in my upstairs office, which I call the Aerie for its elevated view of the backyard. (V.Woolf's room of one's own, you know.)

Now I look forward to more structured writing hours and have high hopes for mother and daughter to achieve their longings while there's still time. At ages 33 and 63 we must get on with it. Enough about that. dkm

Mak, Sarah, Nick, Thad, Oct 2011

Giant-Cell Tumor on Thoracic Vertabra #3

Setting out to write a daily topical blog without including personal reflection or family events has proven to be difficult for me. For the last seven weeks it has meant no blogging at all.

On November 18, my 29 year-old daughter Sarah, who lives in Florida, called with the alarming news of a tumor on her spine. Could I come to help her young family through her ordeal of surgery and recovery? Of course, I went---and stayed until she and her husband could manage again on their own, which meant fulltime housekeeping and childcare for my two precious grandchildren, ages 20 mos and 6 years, through the holiday season.

It's not that I didn't write during that time. Regular e-mail exchanges to keep family and friends abreast of Sarah's progress kept everyone informed and me afloat. But I am eager, now that I'm home, to take up my pencil again in the simple act of paying slow attention to the backyard. I feel surprisingly forlorn, though, and out of practice at the art. Learning that my daughter's health is to be fully restored after having feared for her life has not left me unchanged. I wonder what I will see now, as I return to backyard observation. dkm