Archives for category: Reflections

You Hurt My Feelings…

March 11, 2015 //

When I was a little girl, the worst thing I could do was to hurt someone’s feelings. It was bad enough to have my own feelings hurt, but hurting someone else was even more painful. Talk about feeling lower than low. It was the Golden Rule ingrained in me from the very beginning.

I still feel that way. Even in these days of empowerment, standing up for ourselves, and saying what you think rather than holding it back, there is something to be said for the childhood lesson we should have all learned.

How can you not hurt someone’s feelings by bullying, making racist remarks, or not respecting each other’s religions, sexual orientation, nationality or other beliefs? I’m speaking of adults now. We can still hurt each other’s feelings, even though we use all kinds of adult terms to describe it.

These days I feel more and more like the little girl I was. How cruel people can be. And, I still wonder how they feel when they know they hurt someone’s feelings. They can’t really feel good about themselves, can they?

Maybe we all need a little time out these days.

Tags Hurt feelings

Categories Family, Friends, Reflections

Frosty Day

March 3, 2015 //

The nice thing about Oklahoma is that you never know what the weather’s going to be, so we get to experience a little bit of everything, short of hurricanes. We opt for tornadoes instead. We’ve had a mild winter, especially compared to the east coast, so when we get a little snow, it’s mainly an annoyance.

What do you call it when you get a couple of inches of snow and it’s more than a dusting and less than a blanket?

I drove from Tulsa to Stillwater on Highway 51, the old highway I used when I was in college with a few improvements to make it a little safer. I like the turnpike, but this road has so much nostalgia for me. I like it. The roads were clear, but the views were snowy. I was taken with the tree limbs covered with snow early in the morning.

On the old two lane highway between the Arkansas River and Chandler Park, I drove through snow covered rocks and hills of snow covered trees on one side and an icy river on the other. I didn’t have my camera, but I had my iPhone, so I would pull over and take pictures as I drove along. So much for getting to my meeting on time. I was mesmerized with the beauty of the winter landscape.

Eventually, I pulled into a drive, turned around and was struck by the sun trying to break through the icy sky…

I wish I were the kind of writer who could take you there with wonderful words, but I also believe in the power of photographs. I’m a fan of both. Here are some beautiful trees…

And that wonderful sun was still trying to break through…

I turned down a few country roads…just because… Wonder what critter walked under the barbed wire gate?

The ghost town of Ingalls in the snow…

Something about the tiny general store gets me…

Some unexpected views from the road…A landmark ruin…And black cattle on the white snow.That sun never broke through so the drive back home was cold and frosty, with fog at the end. I did stop on the bridge to get a shot of the beauty of the Cimarron River. What can I say? Sometimes the dreariest days have their own beauty to lift your spirits…

Tags Cimarron River, Ingalls Oklahoma, rural Oklahoma

Categories Nature, Photography, Reflections, Seasons

Pillar of Strength

February 21, 2015 //

My family has gone through some pretty scary illnesses, the kind that bring an outpouring of responses from the people around you. During this most recent episode, there were lots of people who prayed and kept us in their thoughts. Having been through it before, I have strong feelings and have kind of come to terms with my feelings about it.

I never pray for someone to be healed or for miracles, although I do believe miracles can happen. The reason I don’t do that is because it puts God or whichever power you pray to in the position of making decisions on who gets a disease or gets hurt and who gets healed or spared. If you and all the people you know pray and it doesn’t work, does that mean you deserved it or didn’t pray hard enough or what? Why would I think that my family deserves to be damned or saved any more than anyone else, that we would be the chosen ones today or flicked away tomorrow? Why would I want to feel like my God let me down if it doesn’t work out? I can guarantee you are mad and scared and floundering and wishing there were someone to blame or yell at and I really don’t think it needs to be God. You are shaking your fist at nature and all the variables it brings to our lives.

What I’ve learned is that the power of prayer and wonderful thoughts is very, very strong because there is no way you can’t feel the energy from all the good vibes that are being sent your way. You and your family are wrapped in love and it sends a strength that makes it possible to deal and live with the challenges you are facing. That is something you can’t underestimate.

When you face something that challenges everything you hold dear, you need every bit of inner strength you can muster. We have reserves built through years of learning and loving and being loved that need to be reenforced with the knowledge that you have others who will pick you up when you feel like falling down. It’s important.

You also build up these reserves by sending love and concern to others when you feel strong and they feel weak. They will return it to you when your positions are reversed. I don’t care if someone says they pray for me or have me in their thoughts or light candles or send a card. It all helps.

If you’re going to live a life of faith or strive to be a good person, you are going nowhere unless you learn to love others, even those who aren’t so obviously lovable. I think that’s what all the great religions, writers, thinkers, songwriters, poets and artists tell us.

Thanks for all the good vibes, prayers, thoughts and messages that have come our way through the years. I look forward to being able to send the love right back to you.

Tags prayer, Strength

Categories Family, Friends, Nature, Reflections

My Funny Valentine

February 14, 2015 //

I’d been married less than two months on the first Valentine’s Day of my marriage. We were in college, at Oklahoma State University, and I found the perfect Valentine in a shop by campus. The year was 1967 and here was a goofy dog made of then cool burlap in a stand-up card. Little did I know that the funny valentine would be with us all the way through our marriage.

Every year, for 31 years, I pulled the card out of hiding and set it on my husband’s dresser so he would see it first thing. He always gave me his big grin, our start to every Valentine’s Day.

No, that wasn’t all we did. There were flowers and candy and cards and dinners and jewelry and other traditional gifts through the years. I still have some of the valentines he gave me that I read once in a while. My husband was a romantic guy and liked to do it up right. He was 6’4″ of cuteness bringing in his surprise gifts which might range from grocery store roses to lovely jewelry, depending on our finances at the time. He wasn’t one of those guys who picks up something at the last minute and, even if he did, he would have thought about it all week.

But, I can pull out that first card and remember it all. It’s such a fun look at how we were, two kids starting out. It was so simple in the beginning when you loved each other and just knew with all your heart that it would all work out because of that. Sigh…

Today, we’re celebrating a day of love, no matter where you find it. It can be with pets, friends, family and special loved ones. Feel lucky that you have love of all kinds in your life. And treasure it!

Tags Oklahoma State University, romance, Valentine's Day

Categories Family, Friends, Holidays, Memories, Reflections

Sun to Sun

February 8, 2015 //

Sunrise, sunset
Sunrise, sunset
Swiftly fly the years
One season following another
Laden with happiness and tears
Fiddler on the Roof

My heart captures the sunrises and sunsets my camera can’t. They fill my memories with beauty as the years go by, framing each day I’m here to enjoy. Stunning beginnings and endings to days of our lives. Spectacular because each one is different, no matter where you are. Memorable because we don’t have them every day. They stop you in your tracks.

The sunrise in the first picture greeted me this morning through the trees.

This sunset lit up the sky recently. Sharing an Oklahoma sunrise and sunset…

Enjoy the overwhelming beauty wherever you live or travel.

Tags Oklahoma, sunrise, sunset

Categories Nature, Photography, Reflections

Heaven

January 28, 2015 //

I found this piece I wrote about 10 years ago – long before I had a blog. It’s all still true, but I’d add my son and others to the list of those who are there. Thought I’d share…

There is a heaven. I decided this in my heart a long time ago. I tried to rationalize it as something our brains make up to help us get through the tough times in life or that the idea is planted there by stories and myths. I tried to think like those of the Jewish faith that this is all there is. When our life is over, we are gone. I tried to fit that into my head and hold onto the thought. But, in my heart, I have found that my truth is that there is a heaven. Of course, I won’t know until I die if I am right, but that is beside the point. What makes sense to me now is that there is a heaven.

Do I live my life trying to get to heaven? I don’t set it as a goal or a prize. My life on earth is not worth much if I don’t make the most of it, if I don’t use the moments I have to see the beauty of people and earth I have around me here. It’s like when I travel – I try to see everything I can because I don’t know if I will ever get this way again. I don’t want to be a good person because I am afraid of what will happen if I’m not. I want to be the kind of person that I can live with for eternity, because in the scheme of things, we will always be with ourselves.

Heaven has been on my mind. My grandson was telling me what he knew about heaven – that his Sunday School teacher told him that you could run and run and not run out of breath. And that God and Jesus would be there. And he pictured his granddaddy there, running and running and not out of breath. It made me smile because I doubt that is what his granddaddy would be doing. I would imagine in his heaven he is hunting and fishing and playing golf and walking around the fields and watching the stars in the night sky. I would imagine he is cooking for his family and cheering on his teams and having a beer with his buddies and coming home to tell me his stories and hold me in his arms. I can only imagine.

My heaven? My heaven.

My heaven will look like earth. There will be mountains, hills and plains, oceans, lakes, rivers and streams. There will be water near me where I can swim and dive underneath and sit beside it and walk on its shores and smell it and hear it and feel it in the air.

There will be days and nights so I can see sunrises and sunsets and feel the sun and watch the stars and moon.

There will be changing seasons so I can watch the leaves change colors, the flowers grow, the snow falling. I will be able to feel the heat of the sun and the chill of the air.

There will be rain with thunder and lightning.

The people I love will be there. I will have my husband, my father, my grandparents, and all my friends who have gone before me. There will be people to talk to and there will be laughter and conversation.

I don’t know how we will look. I leave that detail up to heaven. I guess it doesn’t matter if we are young or old or all the same age. I suspect we will recognize each other. I don’t care what we will be wearing. In my heaven we will be comfortable.

We will watch fireworks and go to school carnivals.

There will be big dinners and the men will cook outdoors and we will all bring something and everyone will be talking around the table.

There will be music and there will be dancing.

There will be times of quiet reflection.

In my heaven, we will sit before fires when it is cold and under the stars when it is warm.

We will blow bubbles and sway in swings and hammocks.

We will hold each other close and know that we won’t have to say goodbye.

There will be sex, heavenly sex, with the one I love.

I will see the earth and watch those I love and know that they will be ok. I will visit them when they need me to let them know that I am never far away and they will feel me near and know that I love them.
What will not be in my heaven?

Worry. Disease. Hate. Meanness. Cruelty. War.
I have known life on earth. My heaven would be to choose what I get to take with me forever.

Because I can’t imagine that there are things more wonderful than what I have known here.

Maybe that will be the surprise.

Tags Heaven

Categories Family, Friends, Reflections

The Hospital

January 22, 2015 //

When I entered the hospital yesterday, I was fully aware of the memories it held and would bring back. They start 65 years ago when I stood on the street and my mother waved to us from her hospital room window after having my sister. Children weren’t allowed inside back then. My memories with this building flooded my mind all day.

I had a minor surgery here when I was in high school

Two of my children were born here

My daughter had surgery on her shoulder after being hit by a car at college

Seven of my grandchildren were born here

My father and mother were here with various surgeries and tests through the years

My mother died here

My husband had cancer surgery and some chemotherapy here

We’ve had numerous visits to the emergency room with many family members

My son was diagnosed with cancer here and pronounced dead here 10 years later

I had two surgeries here a couple of years ago

The list goes on and on and I can’t even focus on the other friends and family who have been here at various times in their lives

Walking the halls for even a second brings back so many emotions, both good and bad, but all strong, overwhelming even. Yesterday, I went to the surgical waiting room to sit with my daughter while her husband had cancer surgery. Family and friends gathered throughout the grueling day and they were so important to help us through the hours of waiting. The waiting is always the hardest. Sharp contrast to our family waiting for new babies to be born on that happier floor.

The Hospital is an amazing place, where worried families wait and worry and try to understand medical language and diagnoses and friends come to visit hospital rooms to show love and encouragement and support. There are volunteers who compassionately help you through the procedures and to find your way through the winding corridors. The medical staff has always been incredibly wonderful to my family in every conceivable circumstance.

The Hospital is a place of fear, of hope, of excitement, and of healing.

The Hospital is a place where the world outside keeps going while your life stands still.

You wear your best walking shoes just to get wherever you’re going from the parking lot. You try to remember where you parked this day. I’ve stood in the parking lot a few times so exhausted that I could not remember what floor I had left the car on, trying to keep back tears of frustration. My daughter was smart enough yesterday to take a picture of her parking place with her phone so she would remember.

You learn where all the bathrooms, snack machines, and cafeteria are located and how to find the chapel if you need a quiet moment. You become a part of the big machine that is helping your loved one, a part of the process.

And, life outside goes on.

I guess there is a comfort in the familiar, although I am in disbelief when I start to remember so very many visits there. I’m grateful I live a short distance away and have such resources available to my family. I’m grateful for all the wonderful doctors, nurses, and every member of the staff who are so encouraging and make it as easy as they can for patients and families. I’m thankful for the times we live in where medical procedures are advancing forward at such rapid rates and we can benefit by these new discoveries.

I’m thankful for family and friends, who give us hugs and shoulders to lean on and listen to us and bring food and love and care for us.

Life goes on outside, but The Hospital is always there, waiting for us when we need it. I hope you have a place like our hospital when you need it. The Hospital is where I go when my life stops for a moment and then it goes on, changed in a new way each time.

Tags hospital, St John Medical Center Tulsa

Categories Family, Friends, Memories, Reflections

New Year…

January 1, 2015 //

New Year’s Eve used to mean getting together with friends to toast in the next year together, complete with hats and horns. Those days gave way to staying home with the kids and banging pots and pans while listening to the sounds of the celebrators in the distance. And then it became a day to end the old and bring in the new, whatever it was bringing with it.

I’m trying to remember all my New Year’s Eves, especially the ones that came with promises of lives changed. There was the year right after my father died, helping my mother get through it.

There was the year my husband had cancer. We went to a Bowl Game with the strength he found somewhere and flew home while my mother was having quadruple bypass surgery. That was a year that started off with us knowing there would be changes.

The millennium 2000 celebration was hard because I’d always pictured it coming in while I stood by my husband’s side. Who knew he wouldn’t be there with me?

I don’t know. New Years are always full of hope and promise. This year I’m thinking of turning the calendar differently. We’re all older, which goes without saying. We’re celebrating the fact that we’re here, kind of like we celebrate our birthdays.

This year, I’m going to celebrate that it’s 2015 and not 1915 or 1815 or before. This is a great time to be alive, a time when we have possibilities not even imagined earlier. There are more chances for learning, for exploring, for creating than ever before. If we want to change our lives, there are resources available. If we are sick or injured, there are more medical options than at any time in man’s history. If we want to play, there are more exciting places to do so.

I’m going to take this year to be grateful for all I’ve been able to see and do and all the wonderful people I have met. I don’t know how this year will stack up with the others I’ve known, but it doesn’t matter. It’s all a journey where some years are smooth, some are rough, and some are thankfully boring, but all are steps forward to being who we are.

My husband told me once that we always pray for strength. I was taken with the surety in his voice when he said it, so I’ll follow his words. We pray for the strength to face what the year brings us as we rejoice in the fact that we’re here to face the future. May I see you here next year, facing the next year and then the next and then the next…

Happy New Year!

Tags Happy New Year

Categories Family, Holidays, Reflections

‘Tis the Season

December 27, 2014 //

Looking back over the holiday season, starting with Halloween, it’s been a different one. For sure. Nothing was the way it usually is in my life up until Christmas Day, which was its typical madhouse of family and fun. Thank goodness for that.

Maybe I’m more aware these days, now that I’m not caught up in all the things I did in my past lives, things like racing four children around to Christmas programs and parties, cooking madly every day, sending out Christmas cards, running a retail store during the holidays, preparing for a Christmas fundraiser (several times at various stages of my life), or wrapping a million presents. I still do cook and shop and wrap presents, although I don’t have to run around town or the whole state looking for a rare Star Wars character or a special purse or all the “had to have” gifts for my kids that we had to physically look for in the olden days. I shop both local and online, so I can find what I want pretty quickly, unless I don’t have a clue what to get. Still a problem.

Thanks to Facebook, I traveled the holidays with friends far and near, watching the preparations of the younger families, sharing memories with my older friends, delighting in masses of photos of how the kids and grandkids are growing. It’s a gift that keeps on giving, this sharing of lives. Thanks for Mark Zuckerberg and whoever invented Instagram for that and don’t let me hear your gripes. It is what it is and you don’t have to be a part of it if it’s not your cup of tea.

Mostly, I’m taken with the people I know who have suffered through the holidays, suffered with loneliness, depression, health issues, grief, anger and bitterness, debilitating illness. There are a lot of people battling demons during the season in which we are supposed to be jolly. There were political issues and divides and scary world threats and all kinds of things that should have made the season not so great. No matter how hard we try, we can’t make the world perfect even for a few days to celebrate the rituals of our faith or the beginning of a new year that we hope will be more perfect.

But, we keep trying. I watched as people I love reached for the joy of the season to stave off the realities of the days that will follow, days of realization that a loved one is gone, days of facing new situations in life due to job loss or illness or more days of loneliness ahead. Some are beaten too far down to lift up for the holidays at all. They suffer through, waiting for it to all be over. Our hearts are touched, even in our own days of celebration.

So, we’re mostly past the season of being jolly, just waiting for the end of this year, waiting for the new year that will bring us…well, we really don’t know what it will bring us, do we? So the message is to celebrate each day we are here, celebrate the good things in our lives, reach out to those who need us to be there for them. There are no guarantees in this life and we really have no idea what lies ahead, no matter how much in control we think we are. The best we can do is to love – love life, love nature, love others, love ourselves. The love of this season and every season and every day is the message.

I hope your 2014 was good and that your 2015 is the best!

Tags Facebook, holidays, seasons

Categories Family, Friends, Holidays, Memories, Reflections

Santa years

December 19, 2014 //

There are so many ways to mark the history of a family. Birthdays, holidays, seasons, vacations, school events and every day activities are signs of passing years. Before photography…well, I can’t even imagine what they did. There weren’t that many paintings or drawings per family that I’ve ever seen.

I don’t know when the first pictures with Santa started, but they were probably with department store Santas as a way to get customers in the door. I know there were visits with Santa before that, but the photos were a commercial addition to our holidays. When I was little, we didn’t seem to do it every year. In fact, I only have one. Here is me with my brother and another one of my husband, both photos taken in 1950 when my husband and I were both 5. By the time my children were born, it became an annual event, part of the traditions of the holidays. I took them to shopping centers and later to Santa House, a non-profit fundraiser which I worked on for years. Here is one taken in 1975 with me as the elf, weeks after giving birth to my son. The matching dresses were made by my mother-in-law. Don’t ask my youngest daughter about having to wear those hand-me-downs for years. I was President of the group that year…with four children. To be that young and energetic again…Here they are a few years later, towards the end of our Santa picture years. How in the world did I ever get the four of them that scrubbed up for a picture? So the years went by and those children grew up and started families of their own. Our first three grandsons were born the same year, all within 8 months. This was in 1997… And those little families grew and had Santa pictures of their own…And these children grew older and then their cousin came along…And she is the last of this generation to visit Santa.

We measure our lives in so many ways, counting the years through as many memories as we can. Photos like this are a mirror of the years, the generations, and the commitment to making more memories for those we love. No matter what your beliefs, I’m sure there are special events to record. It’s nice to be able to look back and take it all in, put it in the perspective of Santa visits for this particular memory thread in the ever-weaving pattern of my life.

Cheers to more generations to come, adding their own memories and love.

Tags Santa visits

Categories Family, Holidays, Memories, Photography, Reflections

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