A Gathering of Poetry: June 2023

It's the third Thursday of the month so I'd like to welcome you to A Gathering of Poetry. I perused many of my favorite poets (Mary Oliver, Billy Collins, Ted Kooser, Wislawa Szymborska ...) and while they have all written poems about birthdays, none of them was quite what I was looking for. 

But I found a new-to-me poem by a new-to-me poet that was just right. The Academy of American Poets website Poets.org allows you to search more than 10,000 poems by occasion, theme, and form, so this is an excellent resource if you're ever looking for a poem (rather than waiting for one to come to you).

Crossroads
by Joyce Sutphen

The second half of my life will be black 

to the white rind of the old and fading moon. 
The second half of my life will be water 
over the cracked floor of these desert years. 
I will land on my feet this time, 
knowing at least two languages and who 
my friends are. I will dress for the 
occasion, and my hair shall be 
whatever color I please.
Everyone will go on celebrating the old 
birthday, counting the years as usual, 
but I will count myself new from this 
inception, this imprint of my own desire.

The second half of my life will be swift, 
past leaning fenceposts, a gravel shoulder, 
asphalt tickets, the beckon of open road. 
The second half of my life will be wide-eyed, 
fingers shifting through fine sands, 
arms loose at my sides, wandering feet. 
There will be new dreams every night, 
and the drapes will never be closed. 
I will toss my string of keys into a deep 
well and old letters into the grate.

The second half of my life will be ice
breaking up on the river, rain
soaking the fields, a hand
held out, a fire,
and smoke going
upward, always up.

====

Sutphen, Joyce. "Crossroads". Straight Out of View, Holy Cow! Press: Duluth, 1995. 

You can read more about the poet here. 

(And Happy 66th Birthday to me!)

====

Thanks for reading and joining us for our monthly Gathering of Poetry. Be sure to visit Kym and Kat so you can gather more poetry and you can add your link below if you would like to share one of your favorite poems. The more the merrier!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Thinking of My Father

I came across this in my jewelry box, and it was a sweet and timely reminder. 

My father on the far left, with his brothers

Tomorrow would have been my father's 87th birthday. He's been gone for a little over a year and a half, but of course, I still miss him. I'm glad that I can think of him and remember the silly little dad jokes without recalling the years of sickness and sadness first. And the silly little dad jokes do make me smile. :-)

Gifts You Give Yourself

I haven't been consciously trying to adhere to a yarn diet lately, I just haven't seen anything that I had to have. But then something happened that changed my mind a couple of weeks ago ...

I follow #muststashyarn on instagram, as I always enjoy looking at pretty pictures of gorgeous yarn. I've looked and admired, but then they posted something I simply could not resist. I looked at the photos, clicked away, clicked back, told myself that it was almost my birthday, and a couple of skeins would make a fine gift.

They are the best gift!

This is Mordor Fun Run, featuring "20 stripes of perilous adventure". I think it's amazing, and even more so once it's knit.

Sometimes the gifts you give yourself are simply the best!

Happy to Be Here

Happy Birthday wishes from Justin's bank. I'm not sure why they would send this to me, but I'll take it!

Tomorrow is my 62nd birthday. Ordinarily I'm not much of a birthday celebrator, but this year feels a bit different. I'm profoundly glad that I didn't keel over in Philadelphia airport upon my return from Denver with an undiagnosed pulmonary embolism, quite grateful that I didn't die in the three days before I was diagnosed in MD, and pretty darn happy that I have good doctors and medications to keep me around to love and enjoy my friends and family. So Happy Birthday to me, and I hope for (and continue to work towards) more healthy years.

Sometimes Monday ...

... is a good day for a quick update. I had planned to be back to posting sooner, but things got a bit busy. In the last two weeks, I have:

• Had a wonderful time in Fort Collins with Ryan
• Enjoyed lots of interesting beer and delicious food
• Cleaned out Ryan's gutters, window wells, and weeded and repaired his patio
• Visited The Loopy Ewe!
• Played chess (very poorly)
• Wondered how someone who has absolutely no interest in gardening (I'm referring to Ryan) can grow such a lovely clematis
• Had the world's best gyro and caipirinha
• Been insulted (in an indirect and slightly amusing way) by a stranger in the Denver airport
• Visited my mother-in-law who was in the hospital with congestive heart failure, and helped set up her hospital bed, Meals on Wheels, and other arrangements when she came home
• Celebrated our 37th wedding anniversary
• Turned 61 years old
• Bought a house in Maryland
• Tried to get caught up on laundry; I'm still trying!

I'll tell you all about the details of these things over the next few posts. There will be photos of yarn!

Let Them Eat Cake

I've been working on organizing digital photos (still and always), and when I came across folders labeled "Food", "Baking", and "Cakes Cookies Pie", I decided that some of these might be worth a blog post.

Our whole family loves cake (like most families!), and since I like to bake, it was nice when the boys were young and lived at home. I used to use almost any excuse reason to bake a cake, and my two growing boys were always willing to eat cake.

You did well on a spelling or math test? Let's celebrate with cake!

If you got a 5 on your AP Chemistry and Calculus exams, you deserve a cherry cheesecake.

Justin wanted to practice baking a German apple torte for home ec. extra credit, so he did the baking; all I had to do was get some ice cream to go with it.

And then there were birthdays. While this one didn't involve baking, the boys decorated the ice cream cake for John's 94th birthday (which may have actually been his 49th).

Ryan baked my birthday cake, and decorated it with chocolate syrup. (It was delicious!)

Ryan celebrated his 19th birthday in the fall of his freshman year at college. It was his first birthday away from home, so I made his cake and took it to Gettysburg. Have cake, will travel.

And then there was the cell cake. Justin had a biology assignment to make a cell using materials of his choosing, and he chose cake.

I baked the cake, but he decorated it with a cookie nucleus, green gumdrop chloroplasts, fruit leather vacuole, licorice Golgi apparatus, pink taffy mitochondria (the powerhouse of the cell!), icing for the endoplasmic reticulum, and sprinkle ribosomes. You can tell it's a plant cell by the yellow fruit rollup cell membrane and the outer green cell wall.

My weekend may need some cake, and I hope there is some in yours also!

Birthday Presents and Birthday Cake

Yesterday I told you about buying some yarn at The Loopy Ewe, today I'll confess to the rest of it.

Ryan and I wandered around the store for quite a while and had decided on two skeins of Hedgehog Fibres sock and three skeins of Uncommon Thread Everyday Singles, but then we spied the Wollmeise and Fresh From the Cauldron skeins. I put our first choices back and happily purchased the ones I wrote about yesterday.

We were sitting at dinner, and Ryan (excellent yarn-chooser and enabler extraordinaire) mentioned that he had been thinking about our first yarn choices and wondered if I should have gotten them. I pack in only a carry on bag, so I knew I didn't have one bit of extra space for more yarn beyond what I had already purchased, and then there was the cost of more yarn ...

Some birthday presents to open!

But the more I thought about it, the more I convinced myself that I needed more yarn. Ryan pointed out that the timing was right and one of the colorway names seemed like it was meant to be, so I went ahead and ordered the yarn, had The Loopy Ewe ship it, and it arrived on my doorstep before I did.

Happy 60th Birthday to me!

Almost ...

Since today is a little bit special, I set out with my phone to take a few photos.

I inhaled the intoxicating aroma of our honeysuckle.

Took some time to appreciate the plenitude and beauty of the roses.

Was delighted by my bleeding heart blooms, especially because I just planted them.

And also found a couple of other things to photograph.

I've been thinking of my age as "almost 60" for several years now. This is my last year of "almost" and I'm going to make the most of it!

Older, Wiser, and Happy Birthday!

Nobody is more deserving of a rare Sunday post than this kid. 

Today is Justin's 23rd birthday, and while I can hardly believe how fast the years have flown, he has grown into a young man that I'm exceedingly proud of. He's charming, funny, able to think for himself, solve problems, and do the right thing, even when it's not the easy thing.

Justin is interested in all types of wildlife, from large-mouth bass (always catch and release), to bears, chipmunks, and horned lizards that shoot blood out of their eyes to deter predators.

He taught himself how to taxidermy rattlesnake skins (which I think is pretty darn cool).

 He also has a fine appreciation of sunrises, sunsets, and the beauty of nature.

In a recent Messenger conversation he said, "Work hard, learn something, take pride in your work, and good things will come." Justin does all those things and I wish only good things for my wonderful son!

Throwback Thursday - Cakes, Cookies, and Pie

I've been trying to organize our digital photos, without much success, if I'm honest. I may have created a bigger mess than when I started, but during my initial cull and deletions, I was struck by one thing - the number of photos we have of cakes, cookies, and pie. These are just a few among hundreds.

I had forgotten that I would use almost any reason to bake a celebratory cake. 

 There was a requested congratulatory cherry cheese pie when Ryan got a 5

 on the AP chemistry exam. 

Who doesn't love a good plant cell cake, complete with fruit roll up cell wall

 and cookie nucleus?

 We celebrated Ryan's first birthday away at college by taking his favorite zucchini cake

 to him at Gettysburg.

I wasn't always the baker. Justin made a delicious apple tart and deer antler cookies.

Ryan made me a birthday cake, complete with chocolate syrup writing.

And the kids got clever on John's 49th birthday.

Our digital photos may still be in disarray, but in trying to organize them I'm reminded of 

how much I treasure and miss these sweet times.

A Quarter Century!

Twenty five years ago, one of the very best things in my life happened; Ryan was born!

He spent much of his adolescence engrossed in video games,

 and still loves any free time he can steal to enjoy the diversion.

He likes to find places far from the madding crowd.

The standing ovation he received at graduation was a well-deserved 

recognition of all his hard work, motivation, and responsibility.

Ryan does difficult math and loves it.

He has always liked looking for and finding good rocks,

and still enjoys the search. (Living in Colorado is perfect for this!)

This is one of Ryan's photos; he says he identifies most strongly with the

 goose on the right. (He definitely knows how to think for himself!)

Happy 25th Birthday, Ryan!

Thank you for giving me the privilege of being your mother, 

and thank you for being such a wonderful, extraordinary son (and person!)