Grandma Mama

 

photo from web



Excerpt from article:

"What's the nicest thing mom has ever given you? Chances are it won't top Linda Sirois's gift to her daughter Angel Hebert: a healthy baby boy. The Portland Herald Press reports that the Maine grandmother, 49, acted as a surrogate for Hebert and her husband Brian and delivered their son Madden by C-Section on August 17..."

Read the rest of this amazing story.


Oh World Wide Web, I love you.
~Ally

A solemn wish, a prayer uttered

...that a way will be provided so that all of the cousins and their children can get together in Indiana in October for Grandma Ruthie's memorial service. With no one missing. Including us Snyders.

Thank You.

~Amen.

Today I am Grateful...

1. that I didn't just choke on that slice of apple that got caught in my throat as I tried to answer the phone! (it's the little things....)

2. that I have a dear friend at work who always visits me during the day and cheers me up, and he's back from vacation!

3. that my boss made the right decision and went on his year-long sabbatical...though i will miss him lots, he will love his new assignment for the year!

4. that i have now had as many wonderful bosses as insane ones, possibly even more (am too timid to actually count them up for fear the totals might still be swayed the other way...). regardless, this last one was GREAT.

5. that i am not laid off YET. still don't know if the axe is coming or has been averted, but today, i am going to earn some pay, so that's a good thing.

6. am hoping to gather together with my extended family soon for a memorial service for Grandma Ruthie, in Indiana. i cannot tell you much it will heal my heart just to see and hug them all again.

7. our daughter is growing and learning by leaps and bounds. last night we bought her a multi-faceted musical toy/book/piano thing with bday money from her Mimi, and tonight we will have fun playing with it.

8. new baby Snyder is growing and making her/his presence known - middle of the night must-have-cereal attacks, leg cramps, inability to fit in any pants, hormonal rages, and poking his/her sister during her middle of the night snuggles with Mama. that last one is fun. new baby's all like, "get offa me!!" :)

9. dear friends who continue to support and love me, through all the ups and downs.

10. that i can still see that others are struggling more than i am, and have love and compassion for them. as long as i can see someone else through my fog, i feel things for me will be okay.

~Ally 

absolutely worth reposting

Prayer for Our Daughters

by Mark Jarman
May they never be lonely at parties
Or wait for mail from people they haven't written
Or still in middle age ask God for favors
Or forbid their children things they were never forbidden.

May hatred be like a habit they never developed
And can't see the point of, like gambling or heavy drinking.
If they forget themselves, may it be in music
Or the kind of prayer that makes a garden of thinking.

May they enter the coming century
Like swans under a bridge into enchantment
And take with them enough of this century
To assure their grandchildren it really happened.

May they find a place to love, without nostalgia
For some place else that they can never go back to.
And may they find themselves, as we have found them,
Complete at each stage of their lives, each part they add to.

May they be themselves, long after we've stopped watching.
May they return from every kind of suffering
(Except the last, which doesn't bear repeating)
And be themselves again, both blessed and blessing.

"Prayer for Our Daughters" by Mark Jarman, from Bone Fires: New and Selected Poems. © Sarabande Books, 2011.

image borrowed from sunflowerplace.net

The steadfast love

of the Lord never ceases

His [her] mercies never

come to an end

They are new every morning

New every morning

Great is thy faithfulness, O Lord

Great is thy faithfulness.



Gradeschool's Large Windows

Gradeschool's Large Windows by Thomas Lux weren't built to let the sunlight in. They were large to let the germs out. When polio, which sounds like the first dactyl of a jump rope song, was on the rage, you did not swim in public waters. The awful thing was an iron lung. We lined up in our underwear to get the shot. Some kids fainted, we all were stung. My cousin Speed sat in a vat of ice cubes until his scarlet fever waned, but from then on his heart was not the same. My friend's girlfriend was murdered in a hayfield by two guys from Springfield. Linda got a bad thing in her blood. Everybody's grandmother died. Three times, I believe, Bobby shot his mother. Rat poison took a beloved local bowler. A famous singer sent condolences. In the large second floor corner room of my 4th grade class the windows were open. Snow, in fat, well-fed flakes floats in where they and the chalk-motes meet. And the white rat powder, too, sifts down into a box of oatmeal on the shelf below.

____

I have no idea what this poem "means," but it has some well-spun imagery that I love, and makes me think. Which is enough for a reason to post, in my opinion. I welcome your comments and thoughts on this poem...

~Ally

worth reposting (from May, 2009)

Poetry as Insurgent Art [I am signaling you through the flames]
by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

I am signaling you through the flames.
The North Pole is not where it used to be.
Manifest Destiny is no longer manifest.
Civilization self-destructs.
Nemesis is knocking at the door.
What are poets for, in such an age?
What is the use of poetry?
The state of the world calls out for poetry to save it.
If you would be a poet, create works capable of answering the challenge of apocalyptic times, even if this meaning sounds apocalyptic.
You are Whitman, you are Poe, you are Mark Twain, you are Emily Dickinson and Edna St. Vincent Millay, you are Neruda and Mayakovsky and Pasolini, you are an American or a non-American, you can conquer the conquerors with words....