Tag: connection

little one

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Taken at the hospital, Katherine is one day old in this picture.

What a wonderful weekend we had! Katie’s Grandpa Tim traveled here by train from Connecticut to meet his new granddaughter. And her Uncle Nate & Aunt Shea drove up from Georgia, too. Everyone had lots of chances to cuddle with the little one, and everyone was treated to a little smile.

My computer wizards fixed my laptop while they were here – yes!!! And I decided to celebrate by changing my blog theme.

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Nine-day-old Katie in her stroller.

Tim & I had a chance to take Katie out for some fresh air yesterday. She loved the bumpy parts of the stroller ride and kept her delighted grandparents enchanted with her ever-changing facial expressions, and also busy adjusting the shades whenever the sunlight threatened to get in her eyes.

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Tim and the little one. ♥

an animal’s eyes

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8.23.14 ~ Groton Family Farm

An animal’s eyes have the power to speak a great language.
~ Martin Buber
(I & Thou)

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8.23.14 ~ Groton Family Farm

Yesterday we went to pick up fresh eggs from our local family farm. While there I decided to pause and capture some photos of chickens. Well, this sheep presented himself and was very interested in me, as a possible source of food, no doubt. He seemed to be very good natured and patient with all the chickens clucking and cooing around him. And one decided to stand on his back!

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8.23.14 ~ Groton Family Farm

We’ve been having a quiet, peaceful weekend, with lovely low-humidity weather. It’s a rare treat to putter and meander through the days without feeling rushed about anything. Very refreshing and restorative!

human inventions

“The Reader (Young Woman Reading a Book)” by Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919) French Impressionist Painter
“The Reader (Young Woman Reading a Book)”
by Pierre-Auguste Renoir

What an astonishing thing a book is. It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.
~ Carl Sagan
(Cosmos: The Persistence of Memory)

in another direction

“Girl with Chrysanthemums” by Odilon Redon (1840-1916) French Symbolist Painter & Printmaker
“Girl with Chrysanthemums” by Odilon Redon

We say one thing and do another. We feel one way; then our hearts open in another direction. We see one thing but don’t understand that blinders hinder our vision. We plod along a well-loved path and then see a road, an alleyway, a river that tempts us….
~ Lisa See
(Snow Flower & The Secret Fan)

this old age

"Self-Portrait, 1669" by Rembrandt (1606-1669) Dutch Painter & Etcher
“Self-Portrait, 1669” by Rembrandt

Old age is the most unexpected of all things that can happen to a man.
~ Leo Tolstoy
(Promises to Keep: Thoughts in Old Age)

Old age. All the facial detail is visible; all the traces life has left there are to be seen. The face is furrowed, wrinkled, sagging, ravaged by time. But the eyes are bright and, if not young, then somehow transcend the time that otherwise marks the face. It is as though someone else is looking at us, from somewhere inside the face, where everything is different. One can hardly be closer to another human soul.
~ Karl Ove Knausgård
(My Struggle, Book One)

This old age ought not to creep on a human mind. In nature every moment is new; the past is always swallowed and forgotten; the coming only is sacred. Nothing is secure but life, transition, the energizing spirit.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
(Circles)

heirloom rocking chair

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4.28.14 ~ Aunt Flora’s rocking chair, newly re-upholstered

To stir up a bit of family history excitement there is nothing quite like the anticipated arrival of a new twig soon to be grafted onto the family tree. Our new grandchild will be a girl! Larisa has felt her moving and so we are all very excited!

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Uncle Ed & Aunt Flora

Aunt Flora was the youngest sister of my 2nd-great-grandmother, Elisabeth Emma (Freeman) Thompson, who died in 1876 at the tender age of 25, of a “stoppage,” when her baby son (my great-grandfather) was only 18 months old.

Susan Flora (Freeman) Swift was born in 1864 and died in 1963 at the age of 99, when I was 7 years old. My grandparents were caring for Uncle Ed, who lived to be 102, and Aunt Flora, at their home in Woods Hole on Cape Cod. I remember these delightful ancient ones very well. They never had children and so doted on my grandmother (the granddaughter of her sister) and her family.

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Uncle Ed, holding Barbara (me!),
sitting in Aunt Flora’s rocking chair

When I became a mother for the first time my grandmother gave me Aunt Flora’s favorite rocking chair. She had it re-upholstered for me and I spent many happy hours feeding and rocking my babies in it. It’s history meant so much to me. The upholstery eventually wore thin – it was well-used – and my babies grew into adults. I finally stuffed it away in storage.

But it has been brought out of storage and now I am having a taste of the joy my grandmother must have felt when she had it re-upholstered especially for me! It will go to my daughter soon and I’m looking forward to seeing her and her own daughter take their places in the family story. 🙂

to be human

Sarah Margaret Fuller Ossoli (1810-1850)
Sarah Margaret Fuller Ossoli (1810-1850)

Who can know these and, other myriad children of Chaos and old night, who can know the awe the horror and the majesty of earth, yet be content with the blue sky alone. Not I for one. I love the love lit dome above, I cannot live without mine own particular star; but my foot is on the earth and I wish to walk over it until my wings be grown. I will use my microscope as well as my telescope. And oh ye flowers, ye fruits, and, nearer kindred yet, stones with your veins so worn by fire and water, and here and there disclosing streaks of golden ore, let us know one another before we part. Tell me your secret, tell me mine. To be human is also something?
~ Margaret Fuller
(Meditations of Margaret Fuller: The Inner Stream)

things unnoticed at the time

6.21.08 ~ Provincetown, Massachusetts
doorknob to the house in Provincetown
6.21.08 ~ Provincetown, Massachusetts

For memories are always impure, joined together in another order – doubly exposed, impossible to separate, part of a different kind of logic and a confused chronology which is the hallmark of memory.
~ Lars Saabye Christensen
(The Half Brother: A Novel)

It’s surprising how much of memory is built around things unnoticed at the time.
~ Barbara Kingsolver
(Animal Dreams)