Change Is Hard

…but change is certain.

Category Archives: family


by 9 Comments

Six years to say goodbye

Yesterday was the 6th anniversary of Dad’s death. He was killed while driving to the airport, on the way north to visit family for Christmas.  He was killed by a sleepy truck driver who didn’t notice that traffic had stopped.  He was killed because some people put profit over safety.

I wasn’t going to blog about it.  No one wants to read a sad blog two days before Christmas.   We should be concentrating on package wrapping, grocery shopping, tree decorating.  But the reason we do all that is for family, and sometimes family has to travel to be together.  And sometimes traveling is not so safe.

This morning as I was lying in bed thinking that I had survived another anniversary I began to feel sad that I hadn’t written about Dad.  As if ignoring the anniversary in public somehow lessened the loss or his worth.  Which is, of course, not true.  And it’s also not true that I didn’t think about him all day yesterday, because of course I did.  And compounding all these thoughts was the fact that  yesterday my brother was driving to the airport and flying up to stay with us for the holiday weekend.  It was a complicated layer filled emotional day.

And the point is that though the pain recedes it never goes away, and though the fight to make our roads safer, to enforce the laws that are on the books and to pass new, even safer laws never ends, we’re all made of pretty strong stock, and we’ll keep fighting through the pain.

Next year on this anniversary I want to be able to say that we’ve made progress with the length of time a  truck driver can legally drive, that we’re closer to having on-board recorders that make it harder to cheat on the hours of service rule, that we’ve stopped bigger, heavier trucks from being allowed to roam freely across the country.

For now I’m happy that Dad’s picture, along with many others, hangs in the offices of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.  And that the Truck Safety Coalition is a constant reminder to them (and sometimes a bur under their skin) of the importance and urgency of their work.  It’s not enough but it’s a beginning. I’m thinking we’ve already saved lives and Dad would be proud.

Meanwhile, all of you traveling this holiday weekend…be careful out there.


by 9 Comments

Missing Mom

During all the hustle and bustle of this holiday season I’m taking a small quiet moment to miss my Mom.  I know I’m not alone.  Many of you out there are heading into another Christmas season without a Mom.  So I feel bad whining about missing my own.  Still, it’s my blog and I can whine if I want to.

Last night I was putting ornaments on the tree.  Husband was off to a big box store looking for plumbing parts – no, he wasn’t Christmas shopping for my gift – so I was alone with the tree and a big box full of memories.  So much of what we hang on our trees are memories.  The ornament from childhood, the one that was a gift from family.  As I contemplated the perfect spot on the tree for each I smiled.  Mom would have liked these birds in nests…a cousin gave me this box of ceramic ornaments years ago…I remember when my sister and I shopped for these glass stars.

Then I found a box filled with tissue paper, the only ornament inside a glass santa.  And suddenly I remembered the last time my Mom was here, just before Christmas in 2003, when we went up to  Bronners giant Christmas store and I saw this little Santa ornament.  I told her I thought it was like one that her mother always had on the tree years ago.  So Mom bought it for me.

This year as I put the little glass Santa in a prime spot, high up  on the front of the tree, I felt that old familiar pang.  I miss my Mom.  And I think about how she must have missed her own Mom all those years after Grandma died, though I never asked her about it.   I wish I had.

So this Christmas I hope they’re hanging ornaments on a tree together, reminiscing about Christmas days gone by.  And eating Mom’s famous cranberry jello, the one with the big globe grapes and crunch celery.

Merry Christmas Mom.  I’m making that cranberry jello again this year.  And I’ll be thinking about you.


by 8 Comments

Auburn skies

I was going to write a post about conflicting feelings and Black Friday.  But this morning as I sat down to write I turned the TV on, so Katie the dog would have something to do that didn’t involve me, and a sports analysis station was talking about yesterday’s football games.  Important games.  Like the long time rivalry between Auburn and Alabama.

My mother retired from Auburn University and was a big Auburn football fan.   So my ears pricked up when I heard the sports guys talking about Auburn’s  come from behind win over their arch rivals, Nick Saban and the Crimson Tide.

I listened to all the talk about the first quarter when Auburn couldn’t get a first down and Alabama was racking up points.  I listened to the excited description of the second half where Auburn held Alabama to a mere 67 yards and outscored them 21-3.  And I wondered if Mom had watched this game from heaven.

But what caught my attention the most this morning was an almost emotional description of one of the sports guys at the end of their conversation.  He said most of the day was cold and gray, but near the end of the game he looked up at the sky and saw patches of blue dotted with orange clouds.  Auburn’s colors, blue and orange.

Right then I knew Mom had watched that game.  And for sure they have cable in heaven.


by 12 Comments

Grindstone City

I bet you all know that Michigan is shaped like a mitten, but did you know there is a grindstone cemetery of sorts at the tip of the thumb?  Grindstone City was named in 1870 for the large grindstones that were mined and shaped there, then shipped throughout the country.  You can read more about the city in this short historical essay. (The picture above was borrowed from this website)

As a youngster I stood with my Dad along the shore of Lake Huron at the tip of Michigan’s thumb among huge grindstones that had been dumped there years and years ago.  I’ve held this vague memory for decades, and last weekend I stood in the same place again, feeling Dad with me, as my husband and I explored  the shoreline until we found the grindstones.

It amazed me that the grindstones were still resting on the shore much the way I remembered.  To think they’ve been there all these years…that I didn’t know exactly where we’d been more than 40 years ago and yet here I was again feeling the same sense of history and wonder I’d had as a kid.

I walked among the grindstones, touching the rough surfaces, the square holes in the centers, thinking about the people who had made these stones, and wondering about the reasons these particular stones had ended up as defects on the shores of the big lake.

The sun was warm on our shoulders, the water lapped peacefully near our feet, the stones offered up their stories silently.  I could easily have sat on the warm stones imagining history and remembering that trip with my Dad all afternoon.

Just another place that holds a piece of my heart.


by 7 Comments

Catch a shooting star

I went to bed early last night exhausted from nights of sleeplessness.  But it was another restless night.  As husband slept, and dog slept I watched the clock.  Finally early morning, maybe 2:30 a.m. or so I got up.  Naturally Katie did too.  And as soon as we ventured out to the living room she starting running around barking.  As I’m shhhhing her, afraid she’d wake up the husband, I turned on the floodlight in the backyard.  There, right near the house was a little rabbit.  A terrified little rabbit looking for somewhere to run.  I turned the light off and tried to distract the Sheltie.

We went out the front door, she sniffing the ground, then wandering around till she found the right spot to do her job.  I sighed as I shivered in my pjs, wondering why I, the only one with a job, was standing outside in the middle of the night waiting for Katie to finish.  Then I urged her back to the house, posted the this mornings wordless Wednesday entry and tried to go back to bed.

Nothing doing.  Katie had to go out AGAIN!  Seems I rushed her inside too soon.  She has a persistent bark that means I’m not going to get away with ignoring her.  So out we went again.  Maybe 2:45 a.m. now.  We wander around until she finds a new perfect spot.  I sigh some more, watching the stars, which were heavy and low in the crystal clear October night.  To me the Big Dipper represents Dad, and Orion’s belt is my Mom.  Mostly because those are the only two constellations I can recognize.  Still, I talk to them regularly while Katie and I are out in the dark.

And then, just as Katie began to do her thing, the biggest, brightest most wonderous shooting star arched across the sky right above me.  It was amazing.  It was beautiful and it shot through the sky for a full second or two.  Katie didn’t notice it.

But I did, and right there hugged my baby-girl for making sure I was outside on a chilly October morning so that I could see such a beautiful thing.

Way to go babe!


by 11 Comments

Dream speak – and driving a boat over a cliff

I was going to post about an experience I had over the weekend, but this early morning I am awake and remembering a dream.  It’s 4:30 a.m.  and I’ve retreated to the living room because no way will I be able to go back to sleep in the bedroom.  And to get the dream out of my head I’m going to share it with you.  Hope it doesn’t keep you all awake!

I’m driving a pickup truck and towing a big boat.  I think it’s a sailboat but that’s odd because we’ve never owned a big sailboat.  I’m attempting to get the truck and boat down to a beach which has a boat launch of sorts.  The problem is that the “road” down to the boat launch is more like a very steep, very narrow hiking path.  The kind that is more like a trail to climb up a mountain, or a place where water has run and carved a fissure in the rock.  And it’s almost straight down.

But apparently this is the way down to the boat launch, so I start down it.  I remember that my Dad, whose boat and truck I am driving, told me that the weight of a boat makes it harder to stop and so I downshift to the lowest possible gear just as I get to the steepest part.

Then in the dream I have parked the truck with the boat somewhere and have climbed back up to get some belongings I need to take with me out in the boat.  I am worried because the boat launch turned out to be two parallel chunks of concrete with water in between and I’ll have to be an expert to back the boat trailer out onto it to launch the boat.  I am thinking I’ll need to find someone that can back up a trailer better than me.  I’ve never hauled anything larger than a jet ski, and I’ve never backed up towing anything on a trailer.

I’m also worried because I don’t know how to sail a big sailboat.  I don’t even know how to sail a tiny sailboat, and the ocean (yes this is all at an ocean with big swells of water) is crashing on the rocky shore.  There’s a rumor of a baby shark out there too who’s been snapping at swimmers.  Great.

Then somehow I’m walking around trying to find where I parked the truck and the boat and I can’t find where I parked it, and more than that I don’t have any memory of actually parking it, just the vague feeling that I did.  I can’t find it anywhere and I start saying that aloud, that I can’t find my boat, and finally a woman asked me if it’s the crumpled brown one that is bouncing around between the piers on another side of the peninsula we’re on and I say I don’t think so, but that I can’t remember anything after I began the decent down the steep mountain and shifted into low gear.

She gently says that she thinks it probably is my boat that is totaled over on the other side, and the truck is over there totaled as well, and there’s blood on my forehead and I’m thinking Dad is going to KILL me for ruining his truck and boat and I still have no recollection of anything after I started over the cliff…and I walk by this shallow part where there’s a “baby” shark that’s about fifteen feet long and people are petting it, like in a petting zoo, and some little kid is crouched on the end of a rock petting the back of it’s head and it turns it’s head around and you can see it’s teeth, and the kid is petting it’s snout and I tell the kid “This isn’t Disneyland you know, that thing is real.” and I turn my back quick because I don’t want to see what happens next and I climb back up the steep mountain to get to the other side to see if it’s my boat.

I can’t even remember what “my” boat looks like and now it’s possible it’s a ski boat not a sail boat…and I don’t remember what color the truck is, and the lady is leading the way through some sort of back door into a dark hallway that is supposed to take us to the other side of the mountain where my boat is crumpled up.

And I wake up and find my knee hurting and the dog sleeping on top of my leg and I am SOOOO glad that I didn’t actually drive the truck and boat over a cliff.  But if I had I am SOOOO glad I survived it.  And I’m sure I’m not going back to sleep because I don’t want to find myself  back on that mountainous peninsula  looking for my truck again.  Ever.

So Katie and I are out on the sofa now.  Think we’ll try to get another hour or so of sleep before the work week begins.  She’s already asleep.  Wonder what dogs dream about?


by 16 Comments

Disclaimer: This one's about trucks. And hope

Do you remember hearing about a horrific crash out in Oklahoma a year ago June?  Ten people were killed when a semi driver didn’t notice that traffic had stopped.  I wrote about it then in a blog called “It’s not all about Michael” because the news that day was all about Michael Jackson’s death.  I remember being upset that one celebrity death was overshadowing the deaths of so many innocents.

Well, the NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board) has made a determination about the cause of that crash.  Bet you can guess.  Here’s a bit of their findings:

“The National Transportation Safety Board today determined

that the June 2009 fatal multi vehicle collision involving a

2008 Volvo truck-tractor semitrailer and a traffic queue

near Miami, Oklahoma, was caused by the truck driver’s

fatigue stemming from his acute sleep loss, circadian

disruption associated with his shift work schedule, and mild

sleep apnea. The 76-year-old driver failed to react to

slowing and stopped traffic ahead by applying brakes or

performing any evasive maneuvers to avoid colliding with the

traffic queue.”

“Ten passenger vehicle occupants died, 5 received minor-to-

serious injuries, and the driver of the truck combination

unit was seriously injured.”

I’ll spare you the description of how these people died.  Whatever we imagine is probably not as bad as it actually was.  I was disheartened to read the report this morning that confirmed my suspicion that this crash was almost exactly like the one that killed my dad.  It just seems as though the death continues and no one takes notice.

I was going to write this blog entry about my outrage over an issue that I feel is at the center of the fatigued driving problem – the lack of good and honest record keeping on the number of hours a driver drives – which could be solved with the mandate of Electronic On Board Recorders (EOBRs.).  EOBRs would keep the drivers, and their management honest, would allow drivers to rest when they should, and would monitor the bad drivers and companies in order to get them off our roads faster.  I was going to write about how the NTSB has been advising that EOBRs be mandated on all commercial trucks for almost thirty years but no one was listening.  I was going to write with passion about the thousands of people that die every year, the hundreds of thousands that are injured yearly and how EOBRs would be a relatively inexpensive way to lower those numbers.

I was all fired up.

And I came home to an email from the Executive Director of Truck Safety Coalition that told me two Senators introduced today a bill on the Senate floor to mandate EOBRs on all commercial trucks.  Really.  I had to read it twice to believe it.  And I’m having trouble breathing right now I’m so excited.

We don’t have a bill number yet.  But when we do, and hopefully we’ll have it soon, I’m going to find out the best way for us to make it clear to our Senators that we want them to support this bill.  If any of you want the text from Senator Pryor’s (D-AR) let me know and I’ll forward the email.  The other sponsor is Senator Alexander (R-TN).  I’m excited by everything about this; that it’s in the Senate, not the House, that it’s bipartisan, that someone gets it and is willing to do something.

I know that time is short with this legislative session.  I know it could die on the Senate floor.  I know we’re still a long way from making this law.  And I know that every day we wait 13 or 14 people will die.

Let’s not wait anymore.  Let’s get this bill passed.  Truck companies are behind it.  The NTSB is behind it.  Safety groups are behind it.   There’s no reason we can’t get this bill passed into law.  It’s worth the effort.  Because each of us is worth the effort.

Safety is  not partisan, not religious, not sexist, not elitist.  Safety just is.

Let’s not waste this opportunity.  Dad’s watching.


by 11 Comments

Portrait of an amazing woman

I’ve never tried portrait photography, though I’ve admired many photographic portraits over the years.  I especially love those of older people, whose faces show some of their history, whose eyes have become wise with time.  But I’m a shy photographer and asking someone to sit for me is difficult.  And of course I’m shooting with a point and shoot and never figured I had the right equipment for “real” art.

So when Kathy over at her blog Lake Superior Spirit mentioned that she had an photographic assignment from Scott at his blog Views Infinitum that required her to try portrait photography I was intrigued.  And I instantly knew who I wanted to photograph.

My husband has an Aunt who just celebrated her 95th birthday, though you wouldn’t know it to look at her.  She’s beautiful.  But she also, like most people, doesn’t feel she takes a good picture.  And I’m still shy.  So the photo I’m going to share with you was taken while she sat in her chair in her apartment looking at an ancient photo album filled with family pictures, some over 100 years old.  She was entranced enough that she didn’t notice me taking pictures.  I understand from reading that a real portrait would have her engaged with me.  We’ll work on that!

She’s sitting in her favorite chair, sunlight coming in from her left, wearing her reading glasses and telling us the names of family members in the photos.  I like that the shot includes her hand which has a character all its own.  This was taken with a point & shoot camera, on the automatic setting.  I darkened it up slightly in “post production.”

I think she might let me try again if I ask.  Now that I know there’s a “portrait” setting on my camera!


by 6 Comments

Busy busy busy

Katie and I have had virtually no time to work on anything this week.  Well, that’s not entirely true.  Katie has had time.  Me?  Not so much.  So this week’s training challenge is being postponed to next week.  In it’s place I’ll share with you a bit of our weekend.

Saturday was Bruce’s Aunt V’s 95 birthday.  We arranged to take her to lunch, and several family members came along. She didn’t know that other people would be there and became more and more excited  each time another person arrived at our table in the restaurant.

After lunch and back at her apartment a great nephew shared a very old photo album he had inherited from his mother.  In it were photos of Aunt V’s family, including her mother and her aunts and uncles when they were young.  Aunt V spent a good amount of time pouring over those pictures, telling us who everyone was.

It was a tender moment and I was trying not to cry.

My husband and I  had a wedding to go to that evening.  It was in an outdoor venue quite close to where we live, so we hugged Aunt V goodbye, wished her a Happy Birthday again and headed over to the wedding.

They sky was getting dark as the wedding began.

but everything went well and they were married before the first rain drops fell.

All in all a lovely and celebratory kind of day.  And to top off the weekend my husband and I are going to Ann Arbor this evening to listen to the season opening performance of the symphony.

Life is good.


by 6 Comments

Melon memories

I bought a melon with my Mom yesterday.  Not literally you understand, as she’s been gone six years now.  But she was right there.

Mom told me years ago when I was a teenager that you could tell a ripe honeydew melon by feeling the rind.  The ripe melons have a softer, more velvety feel, rather than the slicker skin of an immature melon.

I’ve never tried to buy a honeydew before, but somehow when I saw that stack of melons displayed at the store yesterday I reached out to touch.  And I found one, just one, that had that velvety texture.

I smiled, along with Mom, as we rearranged the display to take home that one melon, way at the bottom of the pile, that we both knew would be just perfect.

Moms.  Always there.  Always right.