Role Changes

So back to the circle theme - my family is poised for some drastic role changes. We're going to have new aunts, new parents and new grandparents in the next few weeks. We'll layer these roles over our current roles of children and parents. I suppose there is already a script of sorts, the new parts we'll play have been played by others before us and we'll surely draw from the previous productions. But, we'll be playing out this version in a new setting and the new dad brings experiences that the other players don't know about. That should shake things up a bit!

I was thinking about all of this as I was driving back from a visit with my daughter and son-in-law. They will be parents the next time I see them. I have a lot of confidence in their parenting abilities. They are level-headed young people who come from supportive homes and have a strong marriage. They'll have a great time with this baby. I'm not as confident of my ability to play the grandmother role.

I see the grandmother position as one of advisor, supporter, cheerleader. I believe in raising independent children and I think I've done a good job of that. So, have I left myself room for the grandmother part I want to play? Will the new mom and dad ask for the advice I'll want to give? And if they don't ask, will I feel compelled to offer that advice anyway? I didn't ask for advice from my children's grandparents; did I hurt their feelings? Did they want to be more included in their children's lives as parents?

I'll just wait for the moment. The baby will arrive, the new aunts and the new grandparents will congratulate the new parents and we'll all get to see the circle rotate a little as we live in the circle game.

The picture shows Megan holding the quilt Aunt Kathy made from fabric purchased by Grandma F. who died before Megan and Kristopher got married. So there's a circle within a circle, Grandma F.'s influence is here. And with her presence, a role model for new grandmothers. I am grateful.

Ahhhhhh, home for Christmas!

It's Friday, December 22 and...

...school's out!!!!!!!!!! The last little darling was picked up from the school office where I work by his very late mom at 4:20. I have been gifted with enough cake and cookies to stock the church coffee hour for a good 2 or 3 months, and some Starbucks cards to go with the baked goods. My NCAA football bowl pool sheet has been submitted - that would be $20 worth of entertainment 'cause I surely won't win. We'll be at the 10:15 service for Christmas Eve. I've got my food assignments for Christmas dinner - breads, red jello mold (we've got those Midwestern roots, remember?), pecan tassies and a chocolate Buche de Noel.

After I hit send on this blog post I'm going to make a cup of tea in my new giant snowman cup and watch my daughter make dinner. Ahhhhhhh. It's the holidays! Did I mention that someone gave me Irish Cream liqueur and butterscotch schnapps? She says to mix them together. I'll let you know.

Bah & The Humbugs

This group has made me laugh over the last several days. I hit their podcast during a search on Christmas. It's pretty irreverent, occasionally needs to be censored from children and should be shared with others. Hang onto your seat, tune into WCOMMERCIAL, "All-Commercial Radio."

The Nuns Have a Podcast!

The Carmelites of Indianapolis have a terrific website called Pray the News. Each week they offer a reflection about some current event. A couple years ago I joined their mailing list and I get an email newsletter several times a year. Through the newsletter I've met the convent dog Lucy. What fun it was to see in the latest issue of the newsletter a link to the nuns' podcast! It's great to hear the nuns' voices. And, it's so much fun to hear Lucy speak out, too. Enjoy the website - get there by clicking on the title of this post. Light a candle. Pray the news, it can only help.

T Minus 5

I'm writing this as I watch and listen to the Space Shuttle Discovery's final preparations for launch. The launch is currently on hold because of thick cloud cover "at the launch facility." The astronauts are loaded, the "Orbiter Access Arm" has been moved aside. The planes are up and making last second weather assessments.

Time is ticking away.

The clouds aren't thinning.

The launch window is closing.

And now comes the announcement that the launch is scrubbed.

The astronauts will have to climb out of the seats they had fastened themselves into with such anticipation. Five of them have never been in orbit. They had toasted each other (with water) at dinner tonight. Good byes and good lucks had been said all around. But tonight the launch sequence was held at -5 minutes.

There was a man standing on a Florida hotel balcony with a clear view of the launch pad. It was going to be a spectacular sight. Smoke and fire and a deafening roar would accompany the lift-off. Breath would be held until the shuttle went past the point where the Challenger exploded. But no, none of that will happen tonight.

The balcony has cleared by now. The man is back in his hotel room, disappointed. He'll be home tomorrow and we'll talk of the missed opportunity. Was it a once-in-a-lifetime chance missed? Maybe. It would have been fun to compare notes - the balcony view and the internet view. Multi-camera angles vs. multi-sensory experience.

From the official NASA launch blog:

9:34 p.m. - 1 minute, 30 seconds of window remaining. We're still waiting on the weather.

9:36 p.m. - We have exceeded our launch window for today, and without clear, convincing evidence of favorable weather, tonight's launch attempt has been scrubbed.

9:37 p.m. - Space Shuttle Discovery is being safed. There's no word just yet on when the next launch attempt might be; weather at Kennedy tomorrow is expected to be worse than today, with little improvement Saturday.

9:45 p.m. - The team is still discussing the best options for another launch date. Please check the Space Shuttle Web site for the very latest.


Wow. Launch blog. This 51-yr-old has come a long way from the 7-yr-old who watched black and white TV coverage of Friendship 7!

Wait, Don't Panic

It's December. November gave us a full week after Thanksgiving this year. It was glorious! There has been time to mentally adjust to the roller coaster ride into secular Christmas without the ominous post office warnings of "mail by ... to get your package to ... on time." Ahhhhh, but now it's really December!

Advent will start tomorrow. There is a funeral in my church today. The nave is full of flowers, pink ones and white ones to celebrate the life of a strong Liberian woman. How wonderful that this matriarch loved pink! So, there are more than 4 dozen pink roses in the flower arrangements that the flower guild ladies (that includes me) put together for her funeral. The casket spray is beautiful. It has orchids in it and is just perfect. More flowers will be set around the nave, the narthex (a church word for lobby) and the fellowship hall. They will all be gone tomorrow. Tomorrow we begin waiting.

Amid the cultural hustle and bustle of malls and concerts and Nutcracker performances is the message of Advent. Wait. The One you're looking for is coming. Wait. Be watchful. The One you're looking for is coming in a manner different than you're expecting. Look next to you, look behind you. The One you're expecting to lead you will arrive among you, not in front of you. Wait. Listen. The One who can change everything for you will arrive with the groans of childbirth, the fragile cry of a newborn, the relieved sigh of a watchful spouse. Eventually there will be crowds, a parade, pageantry. For now, wait.

Ghosts of Thanksgiving Past, Present and Future

Over the river and through the wood? Some of my childhood Thanksgivings were certainly over the river if they weren't actually through the wood. The road to T'giving dinner went west from Ames, Iowa to Walthill, Nebraska. The river crossing was between Onawa, Iowa and Decatur, Nebraska.

Thanksgiving excitement would start with piling into the family station wagon. The goal was Grandma and Grandpa Kilzer's farm. The four hour drive went through rural towns with names like Boone, Carroll and Dennison. My favorite town was Soldier. Each town had its name on the watertower. Most towns also had a grain elevator. By the time we reached Onawa, we were primed for bridge spotting. All of us kids wanted to be the first to see the shiny, erector-set-like bridge that would take us from Iowa to Nebraska. Seems like we'd drive through Macy in the dark and finally arrive at The Farm kind of late. I know we had a good time. I know we ate lots of mashed potatoes.

Thanksgiving for my children has meant driving from Reston to Springfield. The route has changed from Beltway to Fairfax County Parkway. The destination has been my cousin's house. The towns are named Herndon, Fairfax and Burke. They're marked by exit signs instead of watertowers. Nobody knows what a grain elevator is! We began the tradition with the K....y family having teen-agers and the F....s family having little kids who shared a piano bench at the dinner table. Then the K....y kids went away to college, married, had their own kids and needed to rotate attendance at the holiday meal with their in-laws. And now, the F....s kids are juggling college and in-laws.

Soon we'll add a grandchild to the mix. Suppose the younger generation will fight over the piano bench seats?

Fall Is Moving On...

The first weekend in November the people of St. Anne's head to the Virginia mountains. Some years I watch my fellow church friends go, sometimes I travel with them. For the past three years I've been lucky enough to spend a November weekend in the Blue Ridge.

Unlike the craggy mountains in the western U.S., mountains in the eastern U.S. have deceivingly gentle profiles. The long, smooth lines of their ridges flow along the skyline. This time of year the steep mountainsides display their autumn finery. The hardwood forests on the way to Shrine Mont are dressed in the deep oranges and russet reds of late fall. Gone are the bright orange, yellow and peachy colors of earlier fall. I was surprised at the glory of leaves turned almost brown. A heavy frost on Saturday morning warned of winter days to come. Fall is moving on.

The church is moving on, too. Saturday morning's frost gave way to the sights and sounds of a new season in the Episcopal church. Presiding Bishop Katherine Jefferts Schori was installed to her new position in the National Cathedral. Miles from Washington, DC, the people of St. Anne's, linked to the celebration by the world wide web, marveled at the colors, gloried in the sounds, imagined the scents of the installation ceremony. During the eucharistic prayer I stood between our new presiding bishop's projected image and our St. Anne's associate rector Jackie. The two women spoke the same words, blessed wine and broke bread, prepared to share the same body and blood of our Christ. Jackie asked me to serve the chalice. The installation service continued with a Spanish language communion hymn. I was torn between singing the hymn and saying, "the blood of Christ, shed for you." We are so blessed. Our god is an awesome god.

May God keep us mindful of our family bond. May we, God's children, remember each other as the family God wants us to be. May we, God's family, gather often at the Table, respecting and loving our sisters and brothers.

LOTS of Circles!

I'm still not ready to open this blog to anyone. Eventually, there will be the circle who is invited to see it. I've been thinking a lot about my circles. I chose the title of this blog because I figured it fit so well with my life. Clearly, there are others who thought the same thing! :-) A search on "circle game" led to many circle games in the blog world. Unique? I guess not!

So, the priest at my church has started a group to explore Parker Palmer's book A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an Undivided Life. Wouldn't you know, it's all about circles, circles of trust. During the 5 minute meditation time I kept seeing a Venn diagram of my circles of people. I really should sit down and draw.

They're Coming Home!

It's fall break at Longwood University. That means the 21 and 22 year-olds will be home tomorrow. There has been a comfortable rhythm about the girls being at school. With both of them at Longwood, we've been lucky to deal with just one academic calendar. But this is the last fall break. They will both get their bachelor's degree in May. One of them will make a transition to the non-college world, the other will start graduate school. Neither of them will have this cherished long weekend in October. They're coming home with plans of hair appointments, pedicures and meal requests. Yes, they'll have some classwork but they'll also hit the mall, bake some cookies and tell me which movies I should watch. We'll talk about getting from fall break to the next break - Thanksgiving. Oh, my. Then, they'll pack up the sweaters that didn't go to school in August and head back to the lives they've built in Farmville. I'll enjoy the whirlwind of their visit. They're coming home!

And the Seasons They Go Round and Round

It's fall, my favorite time of year. I love the colors, the cool mornings, the warm days, the nippy nights. I love the apples, the pumpkins, the college football. Nine years spent in the tropics reminded me how I appreciate the cycle of the temperate zone seasons.

Now I find myself looking at fall as a season for my life. Because fall is my favorite season, I'm not too worried about thinking of the fall of my life as a morbid time. Hopefully, this will be a season full of harvest, a time to savor the events of spring and summer.

I'm 51, my daughters are 21, 22 and 25. There is a grandchild coming. A grandchild that will be born in the winter. Seasons, round and round, too slow, too fast. I want to stay in fall for a while.