Sunday, March 1, 2009
Another Tug on My Heartstrings
Monday morning's visit won't be just for the fun of it, however. My Uncle Skip, my dad's little brother, is staying in the hospital after suffering a massive heart attack this past Friday night. Our families have not been close for many years, but he has always had a special place in my heart for as long as I can remember. When I was little, he teamed up with Santa at Christmas times to make the holidays extra real for me. One of my most cherished hardcovers, Where the Sidewalk Ends, bears an autograph even more valuable to me than if Shel Silverstein had signed the book himself: Merry Christmas Missy, 1983. Love, Santa and Uncle Skip. My dad and Uncle Skip were business partners at the gas station for many years, following in the footsteps of their father. Because our families rarely see each other, I feel the need to give him a hug, tell him I love him, and remind him to hold fast to that strong, tenacious Fluegge spirit. Whenever we do cross paths at family functions, I look forward to his sparkling eyes and strong, familiar embrace.
I believe he is going to be okay. I don't believe in anything unless I feel *really* feel it in my heart. But I appreciate your prayers for God to heal his heart and I know his family would, too.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
My Kids Say the Funniest Things
Mommy: Max, you've seen him like this before. Be extra patient. Mitch is so tired he can't even think straight.
Mitchie: Yes I can! Two plus two is four. Ten plus ten is twenty. Forty plus forty is eighty. See?
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Holding On
Friday, January 16, 2009
More Questions I Can't Answer
Mommy: (picking him up, giving him a hug) I don't know, Honey. I wonder if Gabriel grows up or stays just like a baby. (long pause as I think about the other babies and search for the right words) What do you think?
Mitchell: No. Because I don't want people to make fun of me for wearing diapers in Heaven.
And he's off to play again, with a fresh diaper on his five year-old bottom.
These kind of conversations melt me and freak me out at the same time, and not because I am worried about Mitchell wearing diapers forever. That is the least of my worries.
Monday, December 1, 2008
On the First Day of Advent
Friday, October 24, 2008
Take a Picture ... It Will Last Longer
For years, my brothers have teased me because I take so many pictures. When we were little, we walked around Lake Harriet in late spring in the Twin Cities, my parents leading the way, me scampering back and forth from snapshot to snapshot with my little Fisher-Price 110 camera, Danny dragging along rather unhappily, and Brian smiling good-naturedly in his stroller. Never mind the fact that Danny wanted to turn around and go back the way we came when we were a quarter mile away from the car, almost all the way around the lake. We could almost see the car from our vantage point near the bandstand. Never mind the fact that Brian was too little to even remember how many pictures I took. He would have gladly made funny faces for me for a hundred more photos.
When we get together and reminisce about good times, the subject of Lake Harriet almost always comes into the conversation. For a couple of minutes we talk about Danny's illogical request to "turn around" and walk a few miles to the car instead of a few blocks, and then my brothers craftily switch the conversation to how many pictures I took of the dozens and dozens of ducklings we saw at the lake.
"How could you take a whole roll of pictures of ducks?" they exclaim.
"Good thing you ran out of film!" they continue. The teasing goes on and on.
And the teasing continues at every birthday, holiday, or afternoon on the patio when we are together. "Take a picture, it will last longer!" they used to say. They don't say it anymore because they realized I would take another picture. I ignore almost all of it, because I love taking pictures and I know my photos are good. I love taking photographs of beautiful landscapes and postcard-perfect shots. I love my photograph of the Heidelberg castle in Germany, my shot of the valley of Big Sur National Forest, looking down from the summit at sunset, the picture I took in Yellowstone National Park of the terrace at Mammoth Hot Springs, the photo I snapped of authentic Mexico in Bucerias. I love the picture I took of the view of New Ulm from atop Herman the German because it reminds me of home, somehow painting a thousand memories into one four-by-six photo.
But the pictures I love the most are the ones I didn't plan to treasure. I have so many special pictures of everyday moments that maybe didn't seem special at the time. There is the impromptu photo I snapped of my sister-in-law Christine wearing her pink and purple feather boa when she was the guest of honor at the baby shower I hosted for her. I didn't know she may have already had kidney cancer then and we would have to say goodbye to her a year later. I can't find words to explain the emotions and the trueness of Christine that I captured in that moment.
There is the picture of Grandma Aggie holding Mitchell, him clutching her thin, bony fingers the way he always loved to do, she smiling because she loved it, too. After that, he was too heavy for her to hold, and she died the next year.
There is the picture of ten month-old Max covered in the orange and green of his chopped avacado and macaroni and cheese, sitting naked in his high chair except for a diaper, looking so tiny and lost in that chair that he couldn't even fit in today. At the time, I had thought, How am I ever going to get this kid cleaned up? but now I want that moment back. The picture is the next best thing.
There is the picture of Max smiling joyfully at Epcot Center, holding a very expensive Mickey-Mouse shaped cookie, standing next to an elaborate fountain. The snapshot tells nothing of the fit he threw minutes earlier inside the crowded French bakery, kicking and screaming until I had to haul all forty pounds of him out the door. But I remember, because I have the picture. There is also the picture that Troy snapped of me breastfeeding Mitchell on the ground in the next-door England section of Epcot, back when Mitchell wanted to nurse anywhere and everywhere and all the time. Amazingly and sadly (especially if you know the extent of my extended breastfeeding experience) it's one of the only photos I have of me nursing my boys.
There are the pictures from Mother's Day earlier this year, when Mitchell was having such a tantrum at the little Mexican restaurant we went to for dinner that I had to take him out to the car. The pictures I took of his silly, tired, not-in-control faces while we waited for Max and Troy have given me a hundred smiles in the months that followed that frustrating evening.
I have hundreds of photographs that are just as special to me as this handful of memories. (Just ask my brothers. They will gladly tell you how many gigabytes of digital photos I have.)
You would think that by now I would catch all of those better-take-a-picture moments, after years of practice, but sometimes I still miss the biggies. Two days ago, we returned home after being out of the house for most of the day, and when we opened the front door, the air inside the house seemed colder than the air outdoors. I went upstairs to check the thermostat, and when I saw 64 degrees on the display, I knew it was time. My days of having no heating or cooling bills were over for at least six more months. I reminded the boys that the funny furnace smell would fill the house for a few minutes the first time we turned it on for the season. In winter, our thermostat does reach 64 many times, but that night, I needed to take the chill out of the house, especially since my kiddos don't stay covered at night.
Later that evening, as the boys were getting ready for bed, Max jumped up and down and shouted, "Hey! It's the first day of turning on the furnace! Let's take a picture!"
He sounded *so* much like me in that moment.
"A picture of what?" I asked with curiosity, ignoring my brothers' taunting voices that were getting louder in my head.
"Of us standing next to the vent and shivering," Max said. I didn't take the picture -- but now I wish I would have. Somehow, his joy that evening turned out to be one of those everyday moments that I didn't really treasure until later.
Summer is Not Gone
Every morning this week has been cold and gray, except for glorious Monday. Glorious Monday is sometimes at the top of my list of oxymorons. Normally, Mondays are my laundry days, my get-a-jump-on-school-for-the-week-days, my days when my expecations for myself are way too high to meet. Mondays are also my new "start the week right" day, and for three weeks now -- it takes 21 days for something good to become a habit! -- I have woke up before everyone else, tied on my battered running shoes, turned up my favorite workout music a little too loud, and made time for running that I thought I didn't have.
This was my best Monday morning run yet. I covered less than two miles, but I had the same euphoric feeling as if I had run eight, and I was fast. But the good feeling didn't come from me or my running ability. It came from the gifts I opened on my run. I ran past a father running his little girl down their long driveway to hop on the bus, and I felt *truly grateful* to be able to homeschool my two sons. I ran past a neighbor who smiled warmly and waved to me as he was driving, and I felt *truly grateful* I am that he survived cancer. I ran past the last brilliant red leaves of sumac hanging delicately onto their branches, and I felt *truly grateful* to be able to see those deep colors in nature's palette and experience each season of the year in its Minnesotan extremes. I ran east just in time to see the sun rise, which seemed to happen in an instant, and I felt *truly grateful* for one more day in this challenging, beautiful world, a day that would be as unique as each new sunrise. I ran home, seeing the white of my breath and feeling the sweat on my skin, and I felt *truly grateful* to be so alive.
I had my moment of summer before the real day even began.