a love story Part II

hmmmm, seems to me i left off right where it was getting kinda interesting. . . a Christmas brunch, a forgotten camera, and my mother.
it was December, 1990 in Phoenix. my sister and i were unable to make it home that year so our folks were on their own for the holidays. a woman in my parent's Sunday School class had passed away and left her husband very unexpectedly alone at Christmas. her grown children had come in for her funeral and to spend some time with their father.
now my mother, being 100% Polish and therefore genetically predisposed to using her great culinary skills to heal all sorts of ailments, including grief, depression, and loneliness decided to have the family over for comfort food. my parents had just built a steel frame house with a lot of room for some good old world hospitality - and so brunch it was. (much later the widower would tell me how for a little while that day, he enjoyed the food and forgot for a time, the nagging pain in his heart.)
now one of the widower's daughters brought her camera - took some pictures and promptly left it behind. my mother found the camera and realized too late that the owner had already left for home in the Pacific Northwest. so well, she boxed up the camera with a note and sent it on. and from time to time they touched base with each other, my mom wanting the daughter to know that her father was being looked after.
eight months later my mother had died suddenly of misdiagnosed stomach cancer and my father found himself alone for the first time in 36 years.
Kris and i knew that mom had forseen this possibility and had made it very clear that he had her permission to remarry. now there were single women of an appropriate age at church and at his work but i think they were all kinda waiting around for a reasonable and respectable amount of time to pass before making their intentions known. (it was interesting - women i did not know sent me kind notes offering their sympathy and availability to check in on dear old dad, if that would put my mind at ease. . . uhhhh, yeah. . . ).
it was while i was back in Phoenix that November to help dad close my mother's estate that he showed me an interesting letter - a letter from the owner of that forgotten camera. she was writing to share her shock at the suddenness of my mom's passing and sympathy for our family.
she was also writing to introduce her best friend to my father. her best friend living in Denver. . .
my dad showed me the letter and asked me what he should do. . . wow! let me tell you, i took the easy way out and told him to call the best friend. (understand that my mom had only been gone about 6 weeks AND i was not looking forward to having THAT TALK with my dad about how the dating culture had evolved since 1955. besides, this woman was of the right age - old enough to be my mother! - and lived far enough way to ensure this relationship would take some time to develop).
ok, i was right about the age thing but suffice it to say that they officially tied the knot much sooner than the "ladies-in-waiting" thought "reasonable and respectable" - less than 5 months to be exact.
my step mom sold her condo and made a profit large enough to bring her daughters home from Hawaii for the wedding. that was amazing, since she had only made one, yes, only one mortgage payment before she met my dad.
i am not sure how supportive her kids were about this shot gun wedding (ok, there was no shot gun) but Kris and i could see how quickly and deeply they had fallen in love with each other. we gave them our support, our love, and our fierce loyalty.
they have been really good for each other and therefore, really good for us.
and yes, some days it was hard to balance the grief of losing our mom with the truth of our father's happiness. but it was worth making the tough choice, the choice to love a woman who so openly loved our dad.
so yes, this is a love story. . . a family love story. . .

A Tiny Apartment Transforms into 24 Rooms

a love story Part I

yesterday my dad and my step mom celebrated 18 years of marriage and i found myself thinking about their wedding and their courtship and how they found each other.

and then i found myself being very, very, grateful that they found each other.

she had been on her own for 12 years after her marriage stopped being a marriage. writing rent checks all those years, she had finally taken the plunge and got her "own" mortgage on her "own" place. she had come to terms with her life. . . fair or not, it was still her life and now she could live that life in something she owned.

and he, well, he had just become an unwilling widower after 36 years of weddedness (i'm pretty sure that is not a word but "wedded bliss" is a cliche with a lot less truth than use. . . ).

my sister and i knew what we had to do when mom died - we took dad out to breakfast and laid down the law. our mother had been pretty emphatic that if anything happened to her, dad was to remarry. she knew him best and we kids wanted to honor her by giving him our blessing.

(side road here - giving a blessing to the remaining parent to remarry while still knee-deep in the grief process is not easy or painless. . . it is an act of will. it is self-less and takes courage - courage on a daily basis. it takes a fierce love and a tremendous amount of trust. my sister, Kris and i had none of that in our heads or hearts that morning in Denney's - let's be honest, we were afraid of mom. if anyone could make it back from the other side, it would be her. . . and she would not have been pleased if we had been stingy with that blessing.)

seriously, all Kris and i knew is that we loved our dad and wanted him to be happy. we had just lost our mom to cancer and we didn't want to lose our dad to a broken heart.

you would think that all it would take at this stage of the game is a chance meeting at church, the grocery store, a favorite restaurant or mutual friends. but you see, he was in Phoenix and she was in Denver. chance meeting at any location was not in the cards.

so how did these two people destined to find love again actually find love again???

well, it all started with a Christmas brunch, a forgotten camera and my mother. . .

Tractor Square Dancing - Go Figure. . .

Amazing Fire Illusion! How'd they do that???????

lessons learned in the gym

ok, i am not a gym rat. . . not even close. . . i'm not even a gym rat wanna-be. although i do own two pairs of gym shoes. . . that's gotta count for something, right??

anyways, i ended up joining a small group (read three women) with a personal trainer (more about her later) for 5 sessions, yep 5 count them. . . what was i thinking??????

obviously i wasn't but i have learned a couple of things. . .

lesson #1
a gym membership is worth nothing unless you actually haul yourself over there AND actually exercise. sweating while sitting in your car in the gym's parking lot on a hot day trying to muster up enough courage to go on in is NOT the same as working up a sweat while exercising inside said gym.

lesson #2
there is no such thing as flattering gym wear when you are overweight and outta of shape (read have too much shape in the wrong places). sooooooooooo stop the "as soon as i find something flattering, i'll go" self talk. . . it ain't happenin' sister.

lesson #3
your personal trainer is NOT your friend. . . let me say that again - your personal trainer is NOT your friend. she is the paid enemy of fat and flab. she is not there to boost your self esteem or help you attain your true center of peace. she is there to help you come to terms with the fact that you are now wearing a first grader around your waist and you're an idiot for not noticing and doing something about it sooner. (and may i remind you - YOU ARE PAYING her to help you come to terms with the fact that you are now wearing a first grader around your waist!!!)


lesson #4
"coming to terms with the fact that you are now wearing a first grader around your waist" involves PAIN. yes, it does. so i have become a big fan of ben gay, icy hot, aleve liquid gels, ice packs, and bags of frozen vegetables (frozen peas preferably - when i have used up all the instant and re-usable ice packs). i'm not a big fan of pain but i'm a realist and if a small amount of pain due to locating and using muscles i didn't even know i owned will have some health benefits, well then, i will continue to make numerous trips to walgreen's in search of more and better pain reducing products. besides, all my purchases - however small, but numerous - have to be helping to jump start the economy, right???

anyways, the good news - i'm afraid of my personal trainer and that fear has motivated me to stick to my diet and exercise more. (it has also given me nightmares and tension headaches. but taking the aleve liquid gels for the muscle inflammation seems to be helping with the tension headaches).

i'll let you know how it goes. . . two sessions down, three to go. . .

7,500 Online Shoppers Unknowingly Sold Their Souls

FOXNews.com - 7,500 Online Shoppers Unknowingly Sold Their Souls

it's make you wonder who else has claims to our immortal souls. . .


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