Category Archives: Family

November 26, 2023 · 8:40 pm

How not to fall apart

It was 26 degrees outside when I went on a walk this evening. There was no wind, so it was actually a nice evening. My face got cold, and I had to stop wearing my glasses because they fogged up pretty quickly.

I have not been at a 100 percent for some time now. I have good days, but some dark moments. Times where I want to dissolve into the air, to let my molecules fall apart hoping that will release the sadness from my soul. But somehow I hold it all together.

Here’s how I do it.

Walking. Like tonight, I took my short route because it was cold. I took the photo I used in the title banner on the walk. When I got home I had my daughter take the photo to the right. But the coolest thing happened on my walk. I saw the best shooting star I have ever seen in my life. The meteorite even flared out like a small firework. No, I didn’t take a photo. I stopped right in the middle of the street and watched it shoot across the sky. It was beautiful.

Taking time to walk, to think, to feel the emotions of the day allows us to remember we are here. That we are human. That we have our feet squarely on this earth, and that means a lot.

Writing. Even if it is just a note of something good that happened today. The act of writing builds a connection between our life and our emotions. Poetry is my way of making sense of the world. This blog is a bridge between you, reader, and me. Writing is creating a connection between the abstract of our spirit into a reality. So, is any art from. Writing is just my main art form.

Believing. I believe in Love. Without getting into any kind of spiritual debate or discussion, Love is proof that there is more to us than all the hate and other negative things we express in this world. Even though the world keeps trying to prove me wrong, Love changes the world. I believe this and try to live my life each day according to my belief. 

I have wanted to simply fall apart almost everyday since last April. There have been some really tough days. But I’m keeping it together by living through the things that matter the most to me. I may still fall apart (we all do to a degree) but I know I’ll write about it because I believe one of the most powerful ways to show love is to be true to what makes us who we are.

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November 21, 2023 · 8:04 am

Music Post Pick Me Up

I needed something to change my mood today. So I decided to write a music based blog post. Two of my favorite things. Plus it has been about six months since my last music based post. It was time to share some music with you.

First song up is “Never be a Right Time” by Tom Grennan. Right now, my second daughter and I jam out to this song in the car. This is one of the wonderful aspects of life, sharing a song with someone. A song that both of you light up to when those first notes start. Right now, this is ours.

Second song is a personal classic. My best friend and I are creating our top 100 songs of all time. We are having a hard time deciding on what format the final list should be presented in because we both have songs that are not available on streaming services. We have the cassettes or CDs copies of the songs, but to burn CDs for the final 100 songs would take some time. Now, YouTube does have some of the songs… but not all of them… but it does have one of the songs I want on my list… from 1987 Saga, “Only Time Will Tell”!

The third track is a song my daughter introduced me to, and it just makes me feel good when I hear it. And that’s what this post is about. Lily Mae Harrington, “TGTBT”.

And the last track for this post is not as ‘happy’ but that is OK. My mom and I would share music with each other over the years. One artist we both love is Teitur. When I visited my dad this summer, he was playing music in the living room. As we got settled he asked if I remembered how mom and I loved Teitur. He then switched the music to his first album (which I had given my mom as a Christmas gift). 

I could tell he had been listening to music to help with the pain of losing his wife, his best friend. Music is one way we build connections with people. Music takes us back to moments in our lives. Music helps us in so many ways… Here is “Rough Around the Edges” by Teitur. (Yes, in my top 100 of all time!)

Enjoy the music today!

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November 8, 2023 · 9:19 am

From Home to School

As many of you have, we have a route we take every day to school in the morning, then follow the route in reverse from school to home. It’s part of the daily routine. It takes about 15 minutes to get to school, 30 minutes round trip. That’s if there is only one trip that day.

Yesterday, I made three trips to school and back. At the moment we only have one car. So, my daughter had morning basketball practice. I dropped her off and returned home to get the rest of the crew for school. At the end of the day we went home, then to my junior high daughter’s game in a nearby town. After her game we returned home, but I had to go out to school to get my other daughter who was making sugar skulls for her Spanish Club.

We finally settled down at home after 8 o’clock last night.

It got me thinking about how many times I have traveled the streets from home to school and back again.

So, being conservative (I did not include summer or holiday breaks or even weekends when I come to my classroom to grade.) I calculated some numbers.

We have lived in our home for about 12 years. My oldest son started junior high around that time. In those 12 years… again conservative numbers.

I have traveled 33,000 miles on just that route.

Adding up the time… 84 days traveling that route! If I started driving back and forth from home to school to home without stopping today, I would drive that route continually until Jan 31, 2024.

It’s been a hard year. Even now my wife’s side of the family is dealing with another tragic moment. Time and the importance of my life have been factors that trouble my soul, but as I thought about this small moment, driving to school, I realized two things.

One: Life happens in the smallest moments. Singing songs, laughing at my bad dad jokes, venting about a bad day, getting a blueberry muffin at the coffee shop as a surprise, all these moments are the moments that weave the fabric of my life. The quality of my day is elevated in this routine. The bonds with my children and my wife are built in these small moments.

Two: There are no throw away moments in life. Our daily life has routines that fill lots of time, usually in small chunks. But it adds up. To be honest, this was something I thought about as I listened to my dad talk about mom at her graveside. How a life is not defined by the big moments. A life is the individual strands of yarn we weave together to make a tapestry of living. If we do it well, others can find warmth and comfort by wrapping it around their shoulders.

Today, we only have two trips to make. I have some new dad jokes to tell during the trip.

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October 15, 2023 · 9:15 pm

This house is not a home

I am not going to talk about all the dots life has been sharing with me about this idea. There have been many, some very deep and challenging. Instead I’m going to jump right to the point of this post, and that means we are jumping into deep waters right away.

Our lives are our homes.

A house is just one of the facets of building a home. It is a central spot where we build our homes. But it is just one of the elements to a strong home, a strong life.

Our routines are central to the quality of our homes. This doesn’t mean our lives are just a series of repeated actions, far from it. Routines that build a sense of safety and love allow us to do wonderful things. 

A major routine I have is to wake every child with Care Bear or unicorn energy. Even if they have the morning blues, I make sure they know a new day has begun, and I am happy to wake them. (My boys still talk about how much they hated my energy in the morning… but with smiles now.)

Another routine we have, as many of you readers know, is Sunday morning blueberry muffins.  We also try to have dinner together every night, even with practices, musical concerts, and games.

Even the simplest routines influence the sense of home during the day. For example, I fill everyone’s water bottle in the morning and make lunches when they don’t like the option at school. Every day.

I could go on, but these routines would happen anywhere, any house, under any circumstance, and they have. They happened when I was jobless. When we lived with the in-laws for six months. We were home.

Another aspect of home is the people we let in the front door. The people we let into our lives. Now, this is a tough element to delve into. If someone came into your home and started breaking your dishes, throwing them on the floor, and ransacking the cupboards…Would you just sit there and let them? Or if they started screaming at your children or taking a hammer to the walls? Would you just sit and smile while you watched them? I don’t think so.

Yet… yet, we allow people to emotionally do this to us. To walk into our lives and destroy us in the name of family or friendship. Our home becomes filled with fear, angst, doubt and negativity. We would defend our dishes, but not our hearts? Our home is influenced by the people we ask into our lives. 

I understand the complexity of relationships, especially when the family is used to justify accepting someone’s actions. But I will protect my home, protect my heart from being thrown on the floor to break.

The final aspect of a home is the decorations, the pictures, the figurines, and the books on the end tables. The stories and memories we create are hung on the walls of our lives. A beautiful home is created by living fully with the people we cherish. 

Yes, big moments, like family vacations. But also the small moments of breakfast at McDs or taking snack walks. The walls of our lives should be filled with stories. Our lives are our homes… and a home is where we should feel free to live.

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October 7, 2023 · 8:01 pm

A Simple Sentence

I have had a small phrase tumbling in my head for a few weeks. I’ve wanted to write about it the day I heard it, but life has been pretty busy, and I think it wanted me to experience some dots connected to the phrase before I wrote about it.

This post will center more on the phrase and the thoughts I have about it in our lives. The moments I experienced (the dots) may be mentioned, but sometimes the lessons are for me, not the blog.

At church, a couple of weeks ago, during the sermon, Father said a simple sentence that just woke me up. It was one of those moments when a truth hits hard because you hear it in a new way or from someone different. If you are a constant reader of my blog you might be surprised why this phrase hit me so hard because you’ve read posts that align with what Father said… 

He said, “We are free to love.”

I’m not even sure what the homily was about, my mind and heart just took off with understanding and agreement. Then questions on why we don’t live this…

Let that sit for a moment. Feel the liberating sense of joy bubbling deep inside your chest. Knowing that you can smile, tell someone to have a good day. You can dance to your favorite song. Hug your kids. Hug your parents. Write a poem (or a blog post). Walk under the stars and let the knowledge that you are standing under a million stars. That you were given this moment to love… to love life, to love others, to love yourself.

Why don’t we live this way?

In answering this question let me share just a little bit about one of the dots life gave me, my mother’s memorial. It was a graveside ceremony that my dad presided over. I read two poems at different times during the ceremony. When my dad brought up the moment I became part of the family, I broke down a little. See, my parents did not have to include me. My siblings did not have to include me. It’s a long story, but they chose to love me as a son, as a brother, as family.

The first part of why we don’t live with the ‘freedom to love’ is choice. Now I’ve written about this in a number of past posts. But there is something different about the mindset to the idea  of ‘the freedom to love.’ The choice to love is more of a gift of ourselves than a responsibility we check off of our to do list. And I love giving gifts!

But giving a gift has its risks, which is also why we don’t live such joyful lives. REJECTION and all the complicated emotions and pain that come from someone rejecting our gift, in this case our love.

Not going to sugar coat this. It hurts. It can break us when we love someone with every space available in our hearts, and they walk away.

I don’t have a magical potion that will take that pain away. I’ve been there, I still deal with the effects of some devastating moments. What I know is that giving my love to people that accept my gift is one way to heal. I also know love may be the only thing that grows the more you give it away. we are free to love as much as we want.

We are free.

We are free to love.

To love others, to love life, to love ourselves.

I hope you accept this blog as my gift to you, with love.

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September 3, 2023 · 10:46 pm

What Death has Taught Me

Which song should I play as an intro? “Live Like You Were Dying” by Tim McGraw? How about Kris Allen’s “Live Like We’re Dying”? I’ve got some more songs that didn’t make the radio but have the same message. 

And I agree with the message. But death is not a pop song. A life isn’t 3 minutes and 20 seconds long. The death of my mom this summer and the death of my wife’s mom yesterday morning has taught me some hard lessons that you won’t find in any lyrics because there are some tough things to process.

The hardest lesson is the reality that death brings the end of a life. That’s it. One moment they are in this world, there is a chance, a hope, possibility to talk, to eat breakfast. After the last breath, that is all gone. As I stated in an earlier post, there is not even a today for that person, for us. Their story has ended.

Even as a poet I can’t describe the empty space in life that death makes when someone has passed. When I went home to visit my dad this summer I felt it in the house. Yesterday, we visited my father-in-law and I felt that same emptiness in the house. They are just gone. 

I know there are memories, pictures, and the effects of the relationship built with someone. But the physical reality of them not here challenges my heart. There are no hugs, no laughter, no opportunity to share moments with them. There is a silent emptiness that reminds me that they were here. 

Both my mom’s and my mother-in-law’s death destroyed them physically. Which in turn took away a part of who they were as people. My mom couldn’t read her mystery books or take walks. My wife’s mother hardly moved, she was in and out of consciousness. The fear in my mom’s eyes haunts me. My mother-in-law’s painful mumbles echo in my head. 

Part of who we are is connected to the condition of our bodies. When the body starts to deteriorate, so does our ability to be who we are. I had never held my mom’s hands so much as I did the months leading up to her death. At times that was the only way to say I was there. To say I love you. 

Death is not a final scene with soft music playing in the background. It is a harsh reality that challenges everyone. 

Then there is life, which continues, even as I mourn the loss of two mothers, two wives, two grandmas. Two stories that have ended. Yet, the sun rises each morning. Orion appears in the night sky. Other stories are being told all around me.

I don’t want to live like I’m dying. I want to live so that when the time comes for my story to end, my loved ones can close the book and say, “that was a good story.”

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July 31, 2023 · 7:25 pm

That’s a Wrap!

Thirty-one blog posts! In a row! 

There were only a few days that I didn’t have a clear idea to write about, but I got rolling once my playlist started and my pen or fingers started writing. 

These monthly challenges have forced me to pay attention to my everyday routine. Sometimes my routine was thrown for a loop at the beginning of the month as I figured out when to complete that month’s challenge. But by doing that, I had to take inventory of how I spend my time. On a deeper level, was I spending time doing things that correlated to what I say is important to me?

For example, you may notice most of my posts are done in the evening. After dinner, after spending the day with family. Yes, I have my coffee next to me as I write. What you don’t know is that I took my walk earlier. Today we spent the afternoon buying school supplies. I had a doctor appointment this morning. Recorded the next episode of The Creative Moment with my son. 

I spent my day as a dad and husband. That’s important to me. 

As life often does, this idea of living life as close to one’s central beliefs has been a part of different conversations with different people over the last couple of days. My best friend’s new job allows him to travel but mostly work from home. My dad is dealing with the tough decision of what to do next in life. My daughter can’t wait for college to start, to finally start focusing her time chasing her dream of being a film director.

I don’t know if I will keep my streak alive of blogging everyday, but if you check the Archive menu, you will see I have been blogging for a long time. So, that won’t stop anytime soon. But I have some other aspects of life I have been wrestling with. How can I live out in my daily routine the things that are important to me? That’s a topic for another blog post.

What I do know, from doing these challenges, is that living is an active endeavor. You have to have an open heart, be cognitive of your actions, and step into your day – even if it is a routine part of the day. We all are given a life, we are responsible for how we live it.

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July 30, 2023 · 8:23 pm

Blueberry Muffins and Time

It is Sunday and faithful readers, you know we had blueberry muffins for breakfast. But this morning I got to travel forward in time, at least a little bit. At breakfast there were only my three youngest daughters with my wife and I. This will be our normal Sunday morning crew in a few weeks.

Today we held an open house for my in-laws’ home. Below are two pictures of the tree in their front yard. The winter picture is from 2011. The other picture was taken today.

The connection? Time.

More specifically, how time changes everything. There are good changes. There are regrets and heartbreak with some of the changes. 

We all know the cost of time. I don’t think we live our lives with that knowledge, though. If we did, our daily life would be drastically different. We would love without fear. We would dance more. We would eat cereal at midnight and our desserts first at restaurants.

But time is a tricky one to catch, because what happens is that we look up one day and a dozen blueberry muffins will be too much for just my wife and I. Time changes everything, even if we don’t see it.

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July 29, 2023 · 8:08 pm

Curious over Coffee

I finally had to use one of the WordPress prompts for today’s blog. The prompt was “What are you curious about?”. 

As I normally do, I brewed a cup of coffee to sip on as I sit here writing this. This is a routine for me. Whether it is poetry, stories, or blog posts, I usually have a cup of coffee next to me. I love when I get the chance to go to the Blue Moon to write for a while. I usually get a Bizarre Orange Encounter latte when I write.

But I will also have coffee when I am reading. When I know that I will have 30 minutes or more minutes to just read, a coffee cup sits next to me. 

I remember reading (from somewhere) that coffee houses were important places during the American Revolution. I have attended open mics and slam poetry events at coffee shops.

When my parents would visit us, my mom and I always had an evening coffee. I have had long conversations with friends over coffee, some of those moments were at the Blue Moon. I got engaged at the Blue Moon (even had wedding pictures taken there).

During our high school days, when I slept over at my best friend’s house, we had scrambled eggs, toast, and coffee. Yes, we thought we were cool drinking coffee in high school. This was the 80s before everyone was drinking some form of coffee. It was still seen as an adult thing to do.

It is interesting how coffee is an aspect of my creative and personal life. I enjoy trying new blends. When visiting new places I try to visit local coffee shops.

And I will always remember how my mom would hold her cup with both hands as we talked about life. Life is good when you have a good cup of coffee, especially if you are sharing it with someone.

Daily writing prompt
What are you curious about?
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July 28, 2023 · 7:54 pm

A Blog Post about Nothing

So, yeah. It took to the 28th day of the challenge to get to a blog post about nothing.

Now, it was a normal day for me. A day filled with running errands. Car was serviced; why does the cabin filter always need changed? 

Got some groceries, which I love to do. I don’t understand how people just order online and then sit in their car waiting. How do you find an impulse buy? How do you know there is a new Pop-tart flavor? Or better, a new flavor of chips!

We made our famous Pizza Bake. Really easy dinner. Ground some hamburger, add pizza sauce. Use a crescent sheet on the bottom of a 9×13 casserole pan. Now here you can add any pizza stuff you want. We usually use pepperoni on half. Then place the hamburger over the whole bottom. Sprinkle grated cheese over the top, then cover with another crescent sheet. Bake until top is golden brown (about 14 minutes at 400).

We have almost 10 pizza recipes… and we still order out for pizza. 

I did not get my walk in today. That is the only negative.

So, I could say nothing happened. But really, life happened. 

My youngest daughter and I sang the song Whoomp! (There it is) in the car this evening.

I talked with both my boys by text this afternoon.

My second daughter and I ran to the library.

My third daughter still has my computer. She is working on a personal art project.

And it reached 102 degrees today.

This blog post is about nothing, nothing but life.

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