Notes from Purcellville, 2006

Notes from Purcellville, 2006

As the days end so early, I remember that it is not long now until the Light returns. Never mind that the Winter Solstice marks the beginning of the true cold – at least the days will start getting longer.

It’s been an intense year, and I end it grieving for my two old dogs who passed on this year, especially for Chewbacca, (world’s best dog). Grieving and glad: glad for the great parts of this year. Glad for my grandson, Alex, now 19 months old, still needing a little help breathing from a ventilator, but so full of life and love. He can’t move his long muscles – he can’t raise or lower his arms, legs or torso, but he can wiggle, and wiggle he does, especially if he’s delighted. He can blow air kisses and nod his head enthusiastically, to say Yes! (Of course he also knows how to shake his head to say no—as well as how to wail when he’s unhappy.) Alex is wonderful, and he’s already taught me so much. Alex doesn’t know anything about disability – he only knows that he is learning to do more cool things all the time.

There are family events to report, vacations to report, places visited, bar mitzvahs & weddings, special birthdays, camping trips, amazing and amusing events, two trips to Kentucky, two to visit my land in the Great Smoky Mountains of North Carolina. Many church happenings, work happenings, tai chi classes, singing in the choir, old friends, new friends… greetings and farewells….. Where to begin, where to edit? What is insufferably boring to all but me? What to include and what to cut? Some of the highlights of the year’s vacations are in previous blog postings (below), as are remembrances and photos of both dogs. (Lila died in June of a degenerative nerve disease that cut off the nerves from her hind end. Chewie died in October of bone cancer.)
Greetings and farewells….

)The photo in a restaurant with Alex, Michele & Elias in the foreground was taken on the occasion of Mus' 80th birthday and Trevor's 14th.)

So, feel free to review my other blog postings (below this one) if you are so inclined. I’ll try not to duplicate the trip logs here-- although you should check out the photos of my guy Bill and me in the wintry sunlight of a chilly March afternoon high in the Smokies – in bathing suits in an open air hot tub, fed by natural hot springs, on the banks of the French Broad River in Hot Springs, NC. That was one of the more spectacularly weird and wonderful highlights of the year.

It’s been a year for moves. I counted the number of households of people closest to me who moved in the last year (at least five). My office (netASPx Herndon headquarters) moved, too: we moved from the office I’ve been in for 7 years, to similar spot a mile down the road in Herndon – in the middle of a screamingly busy work time —and, it sounds a lot easier than it was. What does it mean that so much packing, cleaning, sorting, loading, hauling, and unloading has been swirling everywhere around me but not here in my home? Is this a sign that 2007 will wind up being my turn to move? I hope not – how I hate moving! But, maybe this is a sign that I should get busy and start sorting out and throwing away some of the ….stuff (for want of a less polite word)…. around here.

On the job front, I’m still with netASPx, still the Director, Human Resources/Only Person to Water the Plants. Still waiting, after 7 years, to see what will happen next. I do like working for small companies – so many interesting random factors. And, the people are great—though, when someone I’ve worked with for years leaves, it feels like losing a friend more than losing a co-worker.

Bill is still teaching history at western Kentucky, seeing for the first time that in only four years there will be an exit door from the dark, tenured tunnel of teaching too many kids in too many classes. Retirement at 60! Heck, I can wait four years to be together full time. Retirement, or maybe semi-retirement in a few short years is looking extremely attractive to me!

I’m still busy with church stuff, mostly loving it, not burned out (yet). Had a revelation that my church family and my family-of-origin complement each other – and it’s good that they’re separate, so we all have something to tell each other about. My friend Glenda says that we each have our spiritual wounds that we bring to church to heal: part of that healing is in the way that church family and family-of-origin complement each other.

I did another sermon in September, titled “Just Do It”. I do believe that we have the ability to heal ourselves, in many ways, spiritual, emotional and sometimes even medically, to heal ourselves with help from a Higher Power (however you define that 'higher power' in your personal cosmology). My problem is that I just get glimpses of how to heal myself—and then I backslide into my old unhealthy habits. So, I keep trying to speak the sermon that will make those glimpses clearer – to me, more than to anyone else. If you’re interested, you can actually download the audio, and hear me do the sermon. (You can hear someone’s cell phone ringing in the background at church, too…. Sigh…). To hear it, go to http://www.uuloudoun.org/, click on “Ministers and sermons”, and look for mine on Sept. 24, 06. There are also some really good sermons from other folks there – I especially recommend Rev. Amy’s exigesis of the Wizard of Oz, titled “Things are not Always as they Seem”, on Sept. 10, and a musical sermon from Andrew McKnight, “In Thanks, For Giving” on Nov. 26. I continue to find inspiration and (even) hope for the world in worshipping with my fellow Unitarian Universalists in our beautiful, historic little chapel. Photos are from the Halloween event: "Trunk or Treat: the Pancake Throwdown". That's Witch Dene and Cowboy Mike, and Mike with Butterfly Peggy (special credits to Ricky, who created the butterfly wings).

Still in Pittsburgh, my daughter Meadow and Dora (her husband) moved a couple of blocks to a nicer (and cheaper) apartment on the third/top floor of a Victorian house—still in gritty-but-fun Bloomfield, an almost-gentrifying transitional area. Dora still walks to work as chief chef at a nearby pub (I’m so jealous—I won’t speak of how much it costs me to commute to Herndon from Purcellville). Meadow is still working as a closed-captioner for TV programs, rising through the ranks as she continues to get faster and more accurate. Not only is she really good at it, she gets to work the afternoon-evening shift to mirror Dora’s schedule, and indulge her inner night owl. Now, if only the shows she does the captioning on were of a bit higher quality.

My son Elias, his wife, Michele and their little boy Alex moved, too, out to a wonderful house in a quiet neighborhood northwest of Pittsburgh. It’s all on one level, even the garage, which makes life SO much easier for them all. At the old house they were hauling fast-growing Alex and his vent machine up and down the stairs several times a day. The new house has a great, big yard, too (and it’s flat—amazing for Pittsburgh). I’m certain that at some point Alex and his parents will find a way for him to roll himself out in that yard and play in the sunshine.

Larry, my buddy and ex-spouse, is living in Takoma Park with his lady, Susan. He’s still working for a local school system as a technology coordinator, still deeply involved in Shambhala Buddhism, and working on living his Buddhist principles. He seems mostly happier and calmer every time I see him. He’s a vegetarian again, growing his hair out, looking a bit on the long-haired, scruffy side … just like when we lived near Dupont Circle in 1971 (maybe there’s a wee bit little less hair on top, now).

My sister, Linda and her husband Frank moved too, this year, from the small chalet at Bryce mountain resort, in the Shenandoahs, to a slightly bigger place (just enough bigger – not too big) – with a splendid mountain view. Linda’s got some really great, eclectic stuff on her blog, including some fascinating stuff about our ancestors, some of them rather eccentric and unusual. It’s so nice to have someone in the family to do that stuff (so I don’t have to.) Go www.webcroft.blogspot.com to check out Linda’s blog.

Now, if I can just persuade Linda to go retrieve the diaries of our great-grandmother, Mary Amaryllis Hammer, from the Humphrey Memorial Museum & Park, in Evergreen, Colorado. Mary Amaryllis, her diaries and her adventures are a long story I won’t bother with here: I’m just hoping I can get one of Mary Amaryllis’ several talented descendants to use the diaries to tell her story. She was quite an interesting character: articulate, opinionated, feisty, determined, a social climber, an organizer and president of many women’s clubs, suffragist: altogether, a force to be reckoned with.

Speaking of talented descendants of Mary Amaryllis, my niece Marie’s book was published this year. It’s called ‘Stalking the Wild Dik-Dik”, and you CAN get it from Amazon, if you’re interested. It’s ostensibly about the Africa leg of her round-the-world-without-using-airplanes trip in 2001, and that part alone makes for great, fun reading, but, she sneaks in a journey of self-discovery and how she learned to stop running away from love. I think it’s pretty terrific (but, I could be prejudiced).

I hope that 2006 has brought you good things, greetings and farewells, insights and intuitions. May 2006 have brought you hope, for the light of hope will help us through the dark and scary nights.

Blessed be, in peace, love,
& Hope,

Peggy

The photo to the right is from the Hammer descendant reunion in August. Clockwise from lower left: Chewie, Peggy, Dolly, Meadow, Frank, Linda, Simone, Kurt, Mus, Doats & Marie.