Valentine’s Day: I Love You

Feb 14, 14

Posted by Melanie in Family, Mel & Me, Our Story

Some days I am overcome by love.  When I pull up at the school and let my kids out,  I watch them tromping off with their lunch boxes and backpacks and my heart fills up until it overflows and fills my eyes with tears. I love being married and seeing how good we can make it and how fast we can recover from when we make it bad–when we mess up and have to fix it or get over it. I read a friend’s blog recently.  He was describing the death of his lover.  His raw words of love touched me deeply.  It was as if he opened his heart on the page–splayed open for everyone to see.  It was just love.  I loved him for the open-hearted love he shared. I watch my parents aging and I want to ease their way.  I want them to stay eternally young like they are in my mind.  I want to be able to spare them the agony of growing older.  I want to protect them from the elements of time and my heart fills with love and compassion for their humanness and frailty.  I love them so much and yet my love can’t keep them from experiencing their challenges. I think of two family members who got mad at me and don’t talk to me anymore.  On bad days I protect myself with anger and on good days I remember that their anger can’t make me stop loving them.  Memories of them fill my heart and I surreptitiously send loving thoughts their way and wish them well. I love dinner parties.  There is something about the echo of laughter over food that fills my heart.  I love the people I laugh with.  Especially if they think my jokes are funny. I love saying I love you to friends.  It was something I realized years ago.  It did once go bad when I told my friend Mara I loved her in a phone message.  Her husband listened...

Ancestors and Applesauce

Feb 12, 14

Posted by Melanie in Family

A few months ago, Mel spent the evening making some home-made applesauce with the apples from our tree in the backyard.  He used his grandmother’s recipe.  The apples are tart and small and delicious if you have a lot of time to work with them.  He peeled and chopped about 40 apples and we ate all the applesauce for dinner.  I remember my grandmother having containers and containers of home-made applesauce.  I wonder how my ancestors managed to preserve so much food. For the last couple of years, I have been working to try to put some food away.  I am shocked by the volume of food that is required if I want to eat it during the winter.  I buy what I consider large quantities of things–a bushel of tomatoes, a flat of strawberries, and they disappear as I make jam or sauce.  That is kind of what happened with the apples. I have been judging myself by a tough standard, I realized.  I am the first woman in my family to continue in a career after I married.  The women I admire who were fantastic at putting food away were housewives.  If it were my job to put food away, I imagine I would be a fair bit better at it.  I picture them never really sitting down, but then I think of the handwork my grandmother did–always making something–and I realize she had to sit down for that.  And she watched her soap operas.  I am not sure her life was quite as full as I thought it was.  She had some down time I think. I spend my time in front of a computer.  It is ironic that I work and feel lazy because I can’t do all the tasks women from previous generations...

Bull’s Eye

Feb 05, 14

Posted by Melanie in Art