Juxta girl

What seems a lifetime ago, I had the pleasure of choosing this month's Photo 52 themes. (Thank you, Tracy!!) I aimed for a nice blend of gentle warm-up before moving into a bit more of a challenge. It's been fun and interesting to see the many interpretations of these themes that I really kinda labored over choosing. We have a lot of new faces in our group this year and it's been off to a great start, with loads of enthusiasm.

As for me, I've been running just a bit behind (for me, that is - there's no requirement), and am a bit out of order with posting my photos on here, so here goes with weeks  two and four.

The second week was a theme of "in the kitchen." This theme feels so close to my heart. The kitchen is the heart of the home for so many people. Shared meals are so much more than just body nourishment.

On top of my feelings about that, a huge part of my identity is as a cook. My time as head cook at camp: cherished! Lately I've been even more nostalgic than ever about those days, with the passing of my friend. (He was my head dish crew - and oh the times we had and oh the food I created.)

Even now, I love so much to make something wonderful for my R, especially on the weekends when I have time to indulge and experiment, and I still love to make everyone's favorite whenever I can. So it was a fun theme and a gentle theme.

This was my runner up for week two - mmm meatloaf with sweet potatoes, for my sweetie pie. 

Originally I was thinking I'd create some masterpiece of cooking, or some sort of fancy arrangement - something that exudes warmth, deliciousness, and a wow factor, but I'm not much of a wowwer - I'm just homey. Since so much of my cooking and kitchen treasures bring to mind precious memories and thoughts of those I cherish, the route I ended up taking just seemed most genuine: cookbooks.

Cookbooks are a bit of a weakness for me, not that I ever really use them as more than a suggested course, adapting them freely, but they're still absolute treasures. The ideas, the history, the depth of community - I love it! The one I used for the photograph was given to me by my mom last year - it's her favorite. It was a wedding gift to my parents. We grew up on a lot of the recipes from this well loved book.

Honestly, I was a little alarmed that she was giving this to me...  but she knows I love looking at recipes - and, really, she just doesn't cook as much anymore. Also, she said that she has all her favorites memorized, so no need for it. (Even though she's called me more than a few times asking me to email her some of the recipes...  oh mom! ☺)

So here you go - in case you need to know the way to a man's heart. That cracks me up every time I see it... and I just so dig those cute little dancing cooks!

Week 2 of Photo 52: In the Kitchen

I also sneaked a few other kitchen treasures into the background - other beloved cookbooks and the set of fishy glasses that P. gave me when I visited her in New York. And some chocolate, of course.

Yeah, I love this photo. It's simple and homey - it's me.

It also makes me sad. That's me too.

So many things that bring me joy also bring much sorrow. I'm a cook. The culture and memory of cooking together and sharing meals is so special to me... my family history, my camp history, so many friends, R's history - and the history we are making together. All of these and so much more I imagined teaching, and passing down, to our children. I loved having kids in the kitchen at camp with me, loved teaching how to follow and how to create. How I want that with our children. Maybe it wouldn't have taken. Maybe they wouldn't have cared to make their own breads or coconut stewed chicken. Maybe they wouldn't have valued from scratch comfort foods. Maybe they would have. One thing's certain: I'll never know.

This, this my friends, makes me very sad.

Just think, my mom felt so good passing her recipes on to me - prematurely, though it was. She loves when I want one of her recipes, or when I beg for her lasagna. I make a mean lasagna using her own recipe, myself - but I'll never stop begging mom to make it for me. It's the way it is - but not for me. Maybe it sounds inconsequential, but to me it's just another of so very many losses.

I try not to let it steal my exuberance for the kitchen, because I have R to take care of - and that is an honor in itself, but the loss is very difficult.

Sometimes joy is also sorrow.

Speaking of joy and sorrow dwelling together, week four of Photo 52 was juxtaposition. I picked this one for a challenge. I'd no idea what I'd do for it. As the month went on and tragedy struck, I wasn't so sure I was up for a challenge. Ahh, but a photo challenge is hard for me to resist - and, as always, great therapy.

I racked my brain for juxtaposition. Nothing I could think of really made the cut. I think I understand how to create juxtaposition more in the literary sense, photographic juxtaposition...hmm - tougher. Yet I wanted something that was true to me - and also lovely.

My friend V is such a dear. She sat with me for who knows how many hours, over delicious food over course, discussing juxtaposition. Granted, there were other topics and tangents, but we focused on juxtaposition. We often cracked ourselves up over some of our sillier ideas, alternating with staring off in different directions thinking deeply, which cracked us up more wondering what our waitress and miscellaneous passers-by might think seeing these two girls sitting in a booth together, but in their own worlds and looking kind of irked... not knowing we're really just thinking together. Still, by the end of the night, I had a better grasp on some possibilities.

In the morning, it came to me: lemons. It was a loose idea, but the old saying about when life hands us lemons was steeping in my heart. Of course there's a spin on that saying, adding that when life hands you lemons, find someone to whom life gave tequila - mix them together and have a party. Though I seldom use either of those phrases, it really got me thinking...  After all, we all get handed some lemons, but I'll be honest, I sometimes - cough, cough: always - think I may have gotten handed a few more than my fair share.

Yet, as a matter of fact, I've also been handed more than my share of amazing.

My life is one huge juxtaposition: overwhelming gratitude and inconsolable grief. I doubt I'm the first human to acknowledge the juxtaposition that is this life. To varying degrees, that is probably just part of the human experience, I imagine.

Week 4 of Photo 52: Juxtaposition

Lemons aren't always easy to juice thoroughly, but I'm trying... trying to make lemonade. I'm so very grateful that I was also handed so much glorious sugar (gahhhhh - sugggar!!!) and even a few splashes of tequila. Still, those lemons... oh, those darn lemons.

Still... keep on squeezing. Keep on trying... trying to move forward, to love, to not grow weary in compassion, to have (for others) more happiness than jealousy, to not bathe in bitterness, and... and just to be who I'm still meant to be. To trust. To be still. To listen. To hear. All of this is really why I'm out here pounding away at these words, seeking newness and life.

This is my story. Cookbooks and lemons. Gratitude and grief.

With love,
HJ

Start spreading the news...

The long awaited writing of number 21 is here. I guess it's only been a few weeks, but it's been a long few weeks. As you know from my last couple posts, my delay in writing about number 21 in no way diminishes its importance to me...  Frankly, I adore number 21!

Twenty-one, thy name art... friend! 

My work brought me to New York a few weeks ago - and that just so happens to be where my dear friend P. lives so, of course, I desperately wanted to take this opportunity to meet her for the first time. We've been friends for a few years, yet had never met. 

I was so excited for the opportunity, yet nervous too. She's walked alongside me in some of my darkest hours, these last few years - generously giving wisdom, humor, and love - yet would she like me in person? Would my strange country bumpkin ways put her off? Would my complete disregard for proper gift wrapping techniques cause her to throw them back in my face and run away? Hmm. It's one thing to connect in writing - a whole other to sit across from one another... and spend hours and hours together.  

Well, this is my friend, P., and number 21 was getting the pleasure of meeting her in person.

This photo was from the first time we sat down across from each other to enjoy a glass or two of vino. It's not a good photo in the technical sense, but it makes me so very happy - therefore I declare it the best of photos! We sat here for many hours in this charming little Italian restaurant - just talking and laughing and talking and laughing: perfection! 

What a strange, new world is this, that I can have made such a dear, dear friend without having met her in person. As you can see from the following photo, I didn't ever want to let her go. 

  

From the moment I stepped out of the hotel elevator carrying a bottle of Diet Pepsi, and saw her there carrying her own bottle of Diet Pepsi, and a gigantic bag of perfectly chosen gifts, I was sure it would all be good. Hard as it is to believe, she's even more amazing, hilarious, and gorgeous in person. Plus, it seems she loves cupcakes as much as I do - a match made in Heaven, to be sure. (We both have pretty fabulous taste in purses too, I might add.)

Good conversation, laughs, wine, open mic night at BB King's Broadway Underground, some cupcakes in Grand Central Station, and a little breaking and entering...  a full, wonderful, and only slightly felonious day! 

It was so very hard to have to walk away when her train came, but I thought throwing myself around her legs and refusing to let her go might be going a bit overboard for our first date. I'll wait till the second time we can meet up to really terrify her.  I'm old-fashioned like that. 

Week 3 of Photo 52: Landmark

New York, New York... it's never been this country bumpkin's kinda town - but it surely is now! 

The view from my work meeting. 

The work group that I was sent there to meet with is planning on another meeting in October... so that's something I'm now really looking forward to, despite my intense fear of flying and despite how I previously dreaded having to go to that big city that never sleeps.

On that note, it's worth mentioning that this was also the first round trip flight I took that was both R and Xanax free, in several years now. I've flown without R for work a few times in the last couple years - but always with Xanax. And I flew one of the flights to the Bahamas without it, but R was with me. I tried one of the other flights to the Bahamas too, but ended up taking one. So this was the first that I went without, completely. I had it with me, but felt like I was doing okay, so refrained from taking it. I no longer have shame in taking it when needed, but I'm pleased I was able to gauge myself and do without this time.

Thank you, P., for a most splendid number 21!!  Until we meet again!  ♥

Our friend

So. About the last few days. Well, they have been completely, totally, and in all other ways, exhausting. R and I went down to Madison for my friend's funeral. It was so unbelievably hard, to say the least. (And if I may say it one more time - my R is just... he's... oh, I don't even know anymore - I'm just so blessed and grateful to be his wife!!) It was really hard, but it was also joyous, as so many of our mutual - and oh so dear - friends traveled to be there for Adam and for his sister. That was amazing! He'd have never guessed how much he meant to us all. It was amazing to have so many of us there... Amazing that all of us who lived at camp full time, during the same time that Adam and I did, were there was beyond special. What times we had.

And so we cried and we laughed together...  Oh how we cried and oh how we laughed!

Sister is in the middle and friend is on the left - and the other one is me, I guess.
We are old friends ourselves - and three of the very many who love him for all time. 

During the service, the pastor asked if anyone wanted to share any brief and appropriate stories about him - he several times emphasized brief and appropriate. While there are no shortage of stories of hilarity and love and kindness, none of our old gang stood up, except one that was pre-planned; the truthful joke being that not a single one of us has a story about him that is either brief or appropriate. Lengthy and inappropriate - sure, no problem!!  I have about one million of those, myself... most of them completely unexplainable to anyone who wasn't there.

After the service, burial, and luncheon, many of us took up a corner in a local establishment for many hours - and there we let the stories and the laughter rip.

Some gargoyles are born that way, others choose the harder path to gargoyledom. Adam was never afraid of a challenge. 

Adam and me. In case it's not obvious, we are posing so that we can later
superimpose ourselves sinking down into a vat of red cool-aid. True story. Why yes, that is a Scottish tam
 hat I'm wearing, which so wonderfully matches the necklace Adam made for me out of a
tablecloth and the knob from the Hobart mixer. That's just how we rolled!! 

Up on the mantle right before having two others join him so that they could all sing some praise songs to their adoring fans. (One of the camp administration guys that attended the funeral was a little alarmed to see this photo there...
"Uh, I didn't know you guys went up on the mantle...."
"Uhhhhh umm, yea, we didn't really advertise that to you. Don't worry, it worked out okay.")  

Our friend was a sweet, wise, and hilarious man of faith. He will always be missed. As his sister so appropriately chose as one of the quotes for his slide show, Adam has been, and always shall be, our friend. (Mr. Spock)

Like the rest of us, he wasn't a perfect man - we all have our issues and demons to face in this life - but he was a man who knew grace, and is now staring into the very face of Grace... the very face of Love.

This song is one that Adam taught me, and this song is one that Adam lived:

"So if I stand let me stand on the promise
That you will pull me through
And if I can't, let me fall on the grace
That first brought me to You
And if I sing let me sing for the joy
That has born in me these songs
And if I weep let it be as a man
Who is longing for his home"
(Rich Mullins)

So we weep and we laugh. He'd have joined in the hilarity... and in our grief, he'd have hugged us and coddled us in some hilariously sweet way.

He's our Adam.

Hopefully, tomorrow or Wednesday I will write about new number 21. This week has been most difficult and my Very Little Brain has really only been with Adam and company. 

With love,

HJ

Farewell, for now

I was going to write a blog post this weekend, but I suddenly fell childlessly sad. It happens. It happens a lot, actually, but usually I can handle it okay. Sort of. Anyhow, I guess I still handled it okay this weekend, too - but because it was Saturday, I didn't have to muster up the energy to smile and go about my business... I could lay low and sometimes that's the best thing to do because usually I can't.

The plan had been to write about new number 21 - the halfway mark. I even started it, but just lost the energy. Number 21 was awesome though! It involves a very special visit with a very dear friend, who I met in person for the first time. So, since I lazed out over the weekend, I thought I'd write tonight - Monday night. After all, I woke up feeling much better after a good sleep and then a lovely Sunday visit with another dear friend - one who I first met in person some 25 years ago - and her really sweet and hilarious daughter. Incidentally, both of these friends are exactly the kind of mom I so wish I could be - they're truly amazing. Strangely, knowing them - and how wonderful they are - actually makes me so happy. Anyhow, I'd have written last night, but R got home and I wanted to spend it with him.

Then this morning, I found out the worst kind of news. A dear, dear friend - from way back when, from camp! - passed away last night. I just went to his wedding two months ago. He's my age - a tad younger. He's been through so much, yet he's found peace and happiness in his life. His bride brought him so much new happiness. There were other reconciliations happening. The world was before him. And just like that - he's gone. No warning - nothing. Life is so fragile.. so incredibly fragile.

There's a lot of shock. I am in shock. His wife, his kids, his sister, who is also my dear, dear friend... pray for them, please. Pray like the wind!! Like all of us, he was "never picture perfect - just a plain man and his wife... who somehow knew the value of hard work, good love, and real life..." (Rich Mullins) 

Just when you think your heart can't break any more.

My favorite photo of my friend and me. 

Oh, my friend.

I remember my pastor, Pastor Larry, saying this to me at my dad's funeral:
"Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope. For we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him." (1 Thessalonians 4: 13-14)  

But we still do grieve.

  

For we who are still in the flesh, oh how it breaks our hearts to say goodbye.  And I loved you more than you could have ever known, my Number One. So very much.

Serendipity

Looks like I've made it to the big 2-Oh!  Without further ado, I'm counting the use of a tripod as my new number 20.  It was a most fabulous gift from wonderful friends - and I look forward to using it more and learning some new techniques along the way.

In the meantime, it allowed me to get a group shot of my family over Christmas - the first in about umpteen years.

I have to work some at arranging people, but just getting them in the shot and looking content was a major victory. What an awesome gift!

Christmas did bring me a couple spots of sadness this year, but was mostly very pleasant. R was, as always, such a sweetheart to me... making sure he and I stopped for a little solid us time in the midst of a very active week that had some potential landmines. A little sushi on Christmas Eve, and a little cocoa and chocolates on Christmas day, before getting together with people went a far way to make the tough parts so much sweeter! I'm so blessed to have him!

Speaking of tripods, what serendipity that the theme for the first week of the 2014 Photo 52 challenge was me, myself, and I.  When I suggested that as a theme, I had no idea that I'd actually have the help of a tripod!

Even so, trying to get a photo of myself - or something that represented me - proved difficult. I tried a number of different things and I was just... awkward, all around - until this one.

Me, myself, and I: Photo 52, Week 1

I'd had the tripod set up in our living room on New Year's Day, trying different things. R didn't know I'd changed the set-up when he came out of the kitchen munching on some New Year's goodies. I'd set the camera on 10 second delay - 3 shots in a row. This is the second one it took.  In the first shot, I look super startled by R's appearance right in front of it, and in the third shot he'd realized that he walked in front and he looked super startled, but this one was just too cute. R felt so bad because he thought he ruined my shot, but he actually made it, because this middle shot was so cute to me. Unexpectedly, I had my shot!

As I wrote with my introduction to the new Photo 52 group when I posted the photo, I know too well how life often does not go the way we hope and expect, but this photo totally illustrates something else I know very well - that so much of the joy and humor and wonderfulness of life is equally unexpected. Whatever else is, I'm incredibly grateful for such vast quantities of unexpected joy. So this photo, like so much of life, is not what I'd planned... but I'm going with it.

When I posted it in the group, one of the ladies used the word serendipity - what a great word!!

As for this shot, I guess this isn't really serendipity, since the moon comes out every night and the city is always there, and it was in my work parking lot... but in the moment it really took my breath away so it felt like serendipity.

Sadly, when the highs are below zero, I'm not dedicated enough to get out of my car and take a photo, so this doesn't really do it justice - but it was just gorgeous that night. And cold, very cold. The most I could do was roll down the window and snap from my car. Still, cold to the bone though I was, the moment felt magical.

So, all in all, 2014 is off to a good start. Here's hoping that it will hold many more unexpectedly wonderful things for all of us.