Author Archives: owonderful

Girls’ Weekend

My daughter and I had a “girls’ only” trip to Arlington over the Presidents Day long weekend. My oldest son wasn’t feeling well and my second son had a rehearsal he had to go to, so on Sunday afternoon my daughter and I unexpectedly found ourselves heading up to Arlington on our own. My dad happened to be in L.A., so when we arrived we had a cozy dinner with just my mom and sister. That night, after I got my girl tucked into bed, I slipped out of the house to catch up with my friend Janel. When we got kicked out of Starbucks at closing, we returned to my parents’ house, where we continued whispering and laughing into the wee hours of the night.

The next morning my daughter and I joined my mother on  a stroll down memory lane. She asked me to drive past our old house in Arlington, which she hadn’t seen in years. She always regretted having sold it. “I’m mad at them for taking down my blueberry bushes,” she grumbled as we drove past the house. When we drove past the bank we used to go to, I told my daughter all about how my mom used to torture bankers there on a regular basis. “I was young. I had energy back then,” my mother said wistfully. Finally, we went grocery shopping, partly to stock up and partly so that my mom could get some exercise as she slowly walked up and down each aisle.

We saw these:

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A strange glint caught my eye. I bent to get a closer look and saw this abomination. Those are rhinestones glued to the center of the roses:

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A clear example of “gilding the lily,” or in this case: “bedazzling the rose.”

One aisle brought back another memory that made me laugh out loud. I’m sure the other shoppers thought I was insane as I chortled and took a picture of this:

IMG_1988I was remembering shopping with my second son when he was maybe four or five years old. As we walked down the aisle, he ran his chubby little finger along each of the packages.

“What are these?” he asked.

“Oh, uh…they’re just things for women,” I answered vaguely.

“But, what are they? Cheese sticks?”

“Yep. Cheese sticks. For women.”

I brought my mom back home and then my daughter and I headed out again to meet up with my friendy Wendy and my sister. We paused to admire the view of D.C….

We decided to split up for lunch. My daughter was delighted to get Auntie Sissy all to herself. I dropped them off at the Shake Shack, from whence they sent me this photo:

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I took Wendy to Teaism in Dupont Circle, a favorite old haunt that we’ve gone to many times over the years.  We had one of those long, heartfelt conversations that make you laugh one minute, cry the next, and love your friend all the more. As we were leaving, Wendy pointed out a table of young women and started saying something like, “They could be us years ago. Now look at us, we’re so…” At this point I plugged my ears with my fingers and started singing, “Tralalalalalalala” so as not to hear the rest of her thought. I’m choosing to think that she was about to say, “…we’re so much more fabulous now!”

I called my sister and asked if she and my daughter would like me to come pick them up. My sister put my daughter on the phone. She had taught her how to say this:

Leave a comment if you recognize this line…

Oh, how I love these women!

Baci, the Therapy Dog

I had just come to terms with the fact that my dogs are “otherly abled.” Sure, they pee on my couch whenever I turn my back for one lousy second. Sure, they eat poop and rocks.  But, by God, they’re awesome at…ummm…well…They sure do look cute when they’re fast asleep.

Then I met Baci, the Therapy Dog.

Baci and his human Debbie came to visit the Helping Hands kids last Friday. Baci has passed tests to become a certified therapy dog. He is brimming with intelligence and is exceptionally obedient. When Debbie very casually says, “Look,” Baci practically gives himself whiplash as he turns to gaze soulfully into her eyes:

“Please, tell me what I can do for you? Can I pour you a cocktail? Solve a quadratic equation for you? Shall I find a cure for cancer?”

Therapy dogs work in a variety of settings. In nursing homes and hospitals, they bring cheer to people who are separated from their own pets or are unable to have pets of their own. Some therapy dogs work in school settings. One program, for example, pairs up children who are struggling with  reading with therapy dogs, who sit and listen to them read out loud. Sometimes therapy dogs  visit disaster sites to provide comfort to those in need.

Recently, therapy dogs from all over the country visited Newtown after the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School. There are beautiful stories of children opening up and speaking for the first time since the shootings after spending time with the therapy dogs. Some of the dogs returned to Newtown to be a gentle and reassuring presence when the children returned to school in a new building.

Debbie explained to us that dogs are so well-suited for this kind of work because they never judge, or make fun of a human. They love unconditionally. They don’t talk back. But not just any dog can be a therapy dog. Debbie told us that people who are interested in training a therapy dog can do certain tests to see if a puppy will be suitable. A first test might be to see which puppies in a litter will come when called. Another test is to turn the puppy on his back. If he doesn’t struggle to right himself, that’s another good sign that he will be trainable. Therapy dogs have to love people. They must be gentle, calm, and tolerant. They have to be obedient. In a hospital setting, where someone might drop a pill on the ground, for example, a therapy dog would have to “leave it” on command. They can’t be easily spooked or distracted. One of the tests Baci had to pass before getting his therapy dog credentials was to continue walking without paying attention to a set of keys being dropped from a height into a metal bowl.

Tallis, Chloe, obviously no one’s expecting you two to pass any kind of test anytime soon. But you better up your game, because Baci is making you look even worse than usual!

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PACEM

On Saturday our Helping Hands kids (an after school service group I co-lead) helped transform the Fellowship Hall of Westminster Presbyterian Church into a PACEM homeless shelter:

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Many years ago, my children and I took a train trip to Staunton, Virginia. The train goes past the woods behind Farmington Country Club, perhaps the most exclusive neighborhood in Charlottesville. The expansive and luxurious homes here sell for millions of dollars. As I looked out the window, I noticed that there were blue tarps scattered throughout the trees. I was shocked to realize that homeless people were living there. On another occasion, the Helping Hands kids were picking up trash from the nature trail behind our elementary school. From the debris we found, we realized that there must be people living in the woods there as well. The best estimate we have is that there are about 240 homeless people in our community. Another sobering statistic says that there are about 450 children in our area who are either homeless or living in shelters that are unfit for human habitation.

PACEM (People and Congregations Engaged in Ministry) is a grassroots interfaith organization that formed in 2004 to address the problem of homelessness in Charlottesville after members of the clergy reported the common experience of finding homeless individuals sleeping in the doorways of their churches. PACEM coordinates volunteers and space (mostly in churches and temples) for a rotating shelter that operates in the colder months when homeless individuals are most vulnerable. From late October to early April, homeless men and women come to an intake center on the Downtown Mall. From there they are transported to separate shelters (one for men and one for women), where they receive a warm dinner and a bed for the night. In the morning they are served breakfast and are transported back to the Downtown Mall.

My family has learned a lot from volunteering with PACEM over the years. I had always assumed, for example, that the homeless were also jobless. I was surprised to learn that many of the PACEM guests do in fact have jobs. Many of them work physically demanding construction jobs. Recently, I also learned that there are young PACEM guests, who are students in one of our local public high schools. The very first year we helped with PACEM, my oldest son was about seven or eight years old. One evening we helped cook and serve dinner. The staff gave him the special job of loading up a dinner plate for a guest who used a walker and would have found it hard to go through the cafeteria-style line. My son delivered his plate to him at his table and then sat down to chat with him for a few minutes. I remained in the kitchen serving up food to the other guests. My son ran back to find me in the kitchen, and said excitedly, “Guess what?! He speaks English, just like us and he was really, really nice!” In that moment I realized how valuable this program is, not only for the homeless individuals it serves, but for the volunteers who see the human face of homelessness.

To learn more about PACEM and how you can help, please click here.

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The Fragrance of Ink

Many years ago I saw a traveling exhibit of literati paintings of the Choson Dynasty from the Korea University Museum. I was enchanted by the name of the exhibit – “The Fragrance of Ink.” Inspired by that evocative phrase, I wrote this haiku. (Is it cheating that I didn’t make up 1/3 of the poem)?

The fragrance of ink
Is subtle, but insistent
Lingers, and is gone.

This literati painting is my favorite work of art that I own. It was done for my father by his friend, a well-known calligrapher. The words are a description of my father’s character:  “Deep thoughts, Great spirit”:

Detail:

I love how the vigorous characters boldly wriggle, leap, pirouette and undulate as if they were going to dance right off the paper.

May your weekend be filled with beauty.

A love poem

 

The Kiss, Auguste Rodin's sculpture in marble ...

The Kiss, Auguste Rodin’s sculpture in marble (Musée Rodin) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

If I could take a leisurely trip,
I would voyage inside you.
I’d navigate the pulsing red rivers,
Stop to visit islands on the way,
And finally arrange my limbs
Within yours,
Peer out of your eyes,
And send my breath through your lips.

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True Love

IMG_7076Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day, the day we celebrate romantic love. Couples will exchange kisses. They’ll gaze lovingly into each other’s eyes over candle-lit dinners. Many will get engaged. Bouquets of roses and boxes of chocolates will be given.

Today I celebrate a higher order of love. This love is not expressed with cards or chocolate, but with bitter tears. This type of love is messy, sad, and complicated. It’s what remains when falling in love happened a million years ago, and maybe it’s even what remains after we’ve fallen out of love. It sears us with pain. We should all be so lucky to experience it.

My dear friend’s husband died yesterday. When she first met him, there was a lightness in her step, a twinkle in her eye, and a quiet joy that I’d never seen in her before. On their wedding day the look of adoration in her husband’s eyes brought tears to my own. He looked as if he couldn’t believe his luck to be standing next to this amazing woman. The words he spoke during their vows reassured me that he knew her worth. He understood who she was and truly, deeply appreciated the person who was joining her life to his.

That was then, and it was beautiful. In these past few months, my friend’s husband became so ill that he slept most of the time. My friend’s days revolved around his pain management. They made plans not for the future, but for the end. They met with hospice workers. They discussed funeral arrangements. The twinkle in my friend’s eye was long gone, and had been replaced by sad resignation. Pill bottles, delirium, mental and physical exhaustion are not beautiful, and yet this formed the backdrop of a scene of pure and exquisite love that surpassed any romantic love they shared in the salad days of their relationship. So today, the day before Valentine’s Day, I celebrate this love and the fact that my friend’s husband was blessed to experience it as he left this world, and that my friend had the strength, courage, and love to give him this gift above all gifts.

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Oh, to be more like…the Hellebores

 

  • glamorous – in a dark, edgy sort of way
  • a little moody – the flowers incline their heads like thugs lighting up in a dark alley…you have to get up close to appreciate them and then KAPOW! They’re a knockout!
  • a little dangerous to know – many are poisonous…the name says it all: HELL-ebores
  • iconoclastic – they bloom in February, even through blankets of snow
  • entirely self-sufficient – they thrive and even seed themselves in poor soil
  • tenacious – they come back bigger and badder than ever every single year, with blooms that last for months
  • invincible – deer? Please! Those suckers take one look and keep on moving.

Wishing you a wonderful, wonderful weekend!

Junks I Collect No. 5: Bonsai Trees

My husband and I got married at the Meridian House, in Washington, D.C. This Neoclassical house was designed in 1920 by John Russell Pope, the architect also known for designing the Jefferson Memorial, the West Wing of the National Gallery, and the National Archives. It was built as a personal residence for Ambassador Irwin Boyle Laughlin and remained in his family until 1961 when it was sold to the American Council on Education and then to the Meridian House Foundation, which became Meridian International Center in 1992. It is now used to house the Center’s office as well as for event rentals.

I love the fact that my British husband and I got married at the home base of an “organization dedicated to promoting international understanding.” I love the Latin inscription over the front entrance to the house:  “Quo habitat felicitas nil intret mali” (Where happiness dwells, evil will not enter).

Front courtyard of Meridian House

But what I loved most about the property was the rear garden with its pebbled courtyard and allée of pleached linden trees that form a sort of natural outdoor cathedral.

Rear garden with pleached linden grove…My dad walked me down the aisle and then performed the ceremony!

In keeping with the tree theme, our wedding cake featured a tree on top of it (and underneath the tree – my dog, whom I’ve written about here).

We used little potted bonsai trees as combination seat markers and favors.

Potted Serissa seat markers around the base of the centerpiece

The day before the wedding I picked up dozens of  little Serissa trees from Merrifield Garden Center in Falls Church, Virginia. This is my favorite gardening center, and really – my favorite store period. I sat on the floor of my parents’ back porch for hours repotting the little bonsai starters into tiny little terra cotta pots tied with ribbon. My sister poked her head in, took one look at me and my dirt-smeared face and dirt-encrusted fingernails, and stated the perfectly obvious: “You’re insane.”

Since our wedding, I’ve had a sentimental fondness for Serissa trees and have tried and failed to grow them ever since. Wikipedia says they are “fussy”: “It responds adversely…if over-watered, under-watered, if it’s too cold, too hot, or even just moved to a different location.” Oh, how I can relate to this plant! I have come to terms with the fact that I’m incapable of keeping my Serissa trees alive, so whenever I get the chance, I replenish my stock at Merrifield Garden Center, the only place I’ve ever found them as starter bonsai plants. I know they’ll die, as all my others have, but I think of them as cheaper and slightly longer-lasting than cut flowers, which I never buy. (The words “false economy” are ringing in my ears as I type).

These Serissas were about $10 each. You can usually find even smaller ones for about $3. I pot them up in bonsai pots (also from Merrifield Garden Center) and cover the soil with moss. The garden center also sells tiny little sculptures that you can add to your plants. I usually just add a little seashell or something of that sort.

I placed an ammonite fossil at the base of this one:

Believe me, I’m not blind to the sad irony that this symbol of our love is constantly dying due to my mismanagement. But I console myself with the thought that persistence (even in the face of repeated failures) counts for something. In fact, the ability to acknowledge and accept our failings, as well as a healthy dose of (often black) humor, has helped us to hold it together for almost sixteen years now. Just this morning my husband started referring to himself as “my better half.” He caught himself and said, “Actually, I’m more like your ‘tolerable eighth,’ maybe even sometimes your ‘intolerable sixteenth’.” Finally, he hastened to very generously reassure me that I was his “magnificent 7/8ths”!

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Silver Diner

Just a few photos of the kids at their new favorite restaurant…

We must have heard “Lion Sleeps Tonight” at least seven times…