memories | Change Is Hard

August 25, 2015
by dawnkinster 6 Comments

Reflection

Morning quiet

Early in the morning I sit on the deck overlooking the still lake. It is cool, surprisingly cool, as I prop my feet up on the railing and open my book. Neighborhood dogs are barking at something up the shoreline, but here on the deck it is quiet except for the fluttering of wings. So many birds flitting around the trees, I only catch a glimpse of some; a house finch, a cardinal glowing in the dappled morning light. I think the birds are startled to see me there, being used to the emptiness of this house. A hummingbird suddenly appears. It stares at the red t-shirt I slept in last night and am still wearing. Then he zooms away and I feel sad that there is no food for him, that there hasn’t been a feeder here for the past 11 years.

Mom always kept the feeder full.

August 21, 2015
by dawnkinster 9 Comments

WordPress Photo challenge: Today was a good day

I’m a lucky person. I’ve had hundreds of good days and I’ve photographed many of them. Some of the very best days happened during trips; you’ve seen lots of them right here on this blog. It seems impossible to pick just one day, much less one photo from one good day.

Still, that’s the challenge.

Yosemite grandeur

So here’s a photo from a trip to California. We wandered Yosemite National Park during a misty chilly day. It was stunning, and not just at the famous and often photographed spots. Oh sure those were amazing, the waterfalls, the mountains, all were perfect even in the mist, but it was stunning everywhere we looked. And that’s what made that day a very good day.

Go to the original post to see other interpretations. Or check out a few of my favorites here, here and here.

Now take a moment and think about your life. What makes a good day for you? Share it with us, we’d like to see!

Walk into beauty

August 18, 2015
by dawnkinster 11 Comments

Weeding peace

How does your garden grow?

I weeded tall grass out of our wildflower garden this morning. It’s such an easy garden to maintain; this is the first weeding I’ve done, and with the grass as tall as I am it was easy to figure out which was weed and which was not. Plus I got to weed standing up, always a plus.

Pretty in pink.

In the cool shade with a little breeze weeding was actually enjoyable. The only noises were the birds at the feeders and the bees buzzing around the flowers. I hummed along with them as I worked.

Bzzzzzzzzz….

At one point, carefully standing in the middle of the garden I looked up and thought – – I should go get the camera. This is so pretty Mom would like to see it, I’ll email her some photos.

Does anyone know what this is? About 3 feet tall.

And then, for a split second I remembered and waited for the sad to come rolling over me. But it didn’t.

Royal colors.

Instead I felt sure she was already seeing it, even before I took the first shot. And I was also sure she thought it was just as beautiful as I do.

Crazy beautiful.

I remember as a little girl picking her flowers from the fields and woods around the house. She put them in a juice glass and set them up on the windowsill above the kitchen sink. So when I accidentally broke a pretty pink zinnia I tucked it in my shirt right next to my heart. And when I got inside I put it in a juice glass.

And I smiled.

For my mom.

August 11, 2015
by dawnkinster 13 Comments

Happy Birthday Mom

You’d be 86 today. We miss you.

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Love,

All of us

July 18, 2015
by dawnkinster 18 Comments

Hard hit

Stormy times

The safety of everyone on our roads and highways took a big hit last week. The Comprehensive Transportation and Consumer Protection Act of 2015 (S. 1732) passed out of the Commerce Committee and is headed to the full Senate complete with all the anti-safety aspects that we fought to extract. The ability for a truck company to hide safety statistics from the public, to allow the hiring of 18 year olds to drive across the country (some states had higher minimum ages, but this will now be overrun by federal law), creating more hoops for the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration to jump through in order to mandate higher insurance requirements, all of these and more are still included in the bill. Every amendment presented by a safety conscious Committee Member lost by one vote, or by a voice vote. Every amendment offered by a American Trucking Association supported Committee Member passed.

The voting was straight down party lines.

I don’t understand. If you’re elected by the majority of people in your state, but you’re only going to vote the party line without listening or even considering another opinion, what’s the point of discussing anything at all? If you can’t listen to the safety concerns of many of your constituents, if you can’t let the overwhelming evidence sway you even the slightest toward safety, if you are more concerned about your campaign contributors than the safety of regular citizens, well, then there is no hope for the future.

I’ll be honest. It has been a difficult few months. It’s hard to look forward and figure out what the next move is. Obviously the next move is to call Senators when S1732 gets to the floor of the full Senate. But sill, it’s been so discouraging. It would be easy to just let it go. I’m beginning to wonder if we’re wrong. Maybe this is what the population wants…larger trucks, younger drivers, longer driving hours, the public shouldering the expenses when a crash occurs…if so, so be it.

I was driving this morning, looking for a photo challenge shot. Out in the cornfields of rural America I had all sorts of negative thoughts bouncing around my brain. But as I drove the dirt roads, past farms and small towns, other voices started to push their way into my brain. Voices of the families. The sons and daughters, wives and husbands, siblings, grandparents, and parents of those we’ve lost. I remember saying years ago that if we saved one life my family would be even, and my sister responding emphatically that no we wouldn’t. We’ll never be even, never be whole, no matter how hard we work.

But that’s no excuse for giving up. It’s no excuse for abandoning those who can no longer speak, no excuse not to expose the horrors and the grief, no excuse not to push for change.

By the time I made my way back home I had taken a deep breath and begun thinking about what’s next. There is more than one way to approach safety. If we can’t get it done through Congress maybe we can get something done through the DOT. And if the DOT can’t get anything done then maybe we go straight to the big trucking companies. We’ve already done that with one, that company realizes that safe can be profitable. Maybe we just have to spread that word. Meanwhile we still provide support and advice and love to the families who have been forever changed by truck crashes, one family at a time.

We lost big time this month. But we won’t give up and we won’t go away. There’s only one way to move and that’s forward.

Did I get the photo I was looking for? You’ll have to wait and see.

Clouds around every corner.

July 6, 2015
by dawnkinster 16 Comments

Memories of black raspberries

Berries in bowl

Warm, sweet, juice running down your fingers. That’s the way I remember the black raspberries I picked behind my grandpa’s workshop on the farm years ago when I was a kid. We each got to spend a few days at grandma’s house during the summers back then. I tried to choose days when the black raspberries were ripe and if we were lucky Grandma and I had fresh berries on our cereal every morning.

Years later my sister came here for a visit and we went for a long bike ride. One of the highlights that day was coming across a huge patch of black raspberries, hundreds ripe for the picking. So we did, turning our fingers purple with memories.

This year in my own backyard, where I haven’t noticed any growing before, I found plump ripe berries today. Reaching into the thorny bushes for the perfect berry I was 12 again and back behind the workshop picking for my grandma’s breakfast.

It was sweet.

Grandpa’s workshop

July 4, 2015
by dawnkinster 3 Comments

WordPress Photo Challenge: Door II

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Another take on the WordPress photo challenge this week. These are doors at Fort Gratiot in Detroit. It was built in the 1840s and now is in disrepair but still fascinating. And beautiful in it’s own way.

Enjoy.

June 30, 2015
by dawnkinster 12 Comments

Elasticity of time

Fields of summer

I’ve been retired a month now. My hope before I left work was that time would unfold in the slow dreamy way summer days did when I was a kid.

You remember those days don’t you? Warm summer days when you got up with the morning light and lingered over breakfast, wandered outside later in the day, climbed a few trees, goofed off with neighborhood kids, stayed out late into the evening chasing fireflies.

Each day stretched out indefinitely.

Retirement started out that way. The first few days, perhaps the first week, seemed to last forever. Even now most of the day I don’t know what time it is, and that’s fine with me. And I’ve long since lost track of what day of the week it might be.

But time is speeding up now, just as my grandmother told me, years ago, it would.

Suddenly it’s Tuesday, another weekend ended, another week already moving along, a whole month gone since I last commuted to work. Midsummer and the 4th of July are right around the corner. Somehow a quick after lunch nap stretches into early evening, a few minutes reading on the deck out back and the morning is gone, check Facebook and the sun drops below the horizon without warning.

Time seems to be an elastic band snapping back at me with intensity, a pendulum swinging toward the future at increasing speed. The world seems to be screaming past, daring me to catch a ride, to fling myself up into the speeding vehicle moving toward something unknown. But I’m dragging my feet, hanging on to the golden sun, the misty mornings, the glowing fireflies.

I’m hanging on, trying to slow time down. Just for a little bit longer.

Golden summer marches on.

June 21, 2015
by dawnkinster 17 Comments

Father’s Day

Dear Dad,

I’m thinking about you today, sifting through pictures, reaching back, oh so far, for the smallest memory. Not that I don’t think about you every day. Both of you.

Remember all the great trips you took us on every summer?

Going on a trip!

I went camping up north a couple weeks ago. I thought of you as I put up my spiffy modern tent alone. Remember the big heavy green canvas tent we all camped in? How it took forever and more than a few hands to get it up? How it smelled like wet tent when it rained and you told us not to touch the walls or it would leak? Remember how we used to fall exhausted into sleeping bags scratchy with sand every night after full days at the beach? How we roasted all those marshmallows over the fire and you ate the our burned ones? Those were the days.

I remember, too, how you could fix anything.

Polishing the fender.

I don’t know how you learned the way everything worked and how to make it work again when it broke. But you did. We’ve been using the tools in your workshop to fix things around the lake house. Seems like you had one of just about everything. And we keep finding little notes like the one written on a stud in the garage about when the driveway was last sealed or the house stained. In fact we found the can of house stain you left for us, labeled by you, so we were able to paint that new fascia board to match.

And did you see I retired this month? I’m not sure how you reacted to that because I’m still pretty young.

Catching some shuteye.

I remember when we were kids how you’d come across us sitting around somewhere and you’d ask us what we were doing. We knew we better come up with something because if we didn’t you’d have some chore waiting. I was thinking about that this week when I spent two whole days doing absolutely nothing. That felt kind of uncomfortable. I guess I was expecting you to show up and ask me what I was doing. Napping never seemed like a good answer in those days, but I’m hoping you understand. I’m thinking you probably do.

And remember how you used to read the Sunday comics to us, even when we were old enough to read them ourselves?

Once upon a time…

You read a lot of stuff to us, guess that’s how I turned into a reader. And a story teller. I wouldn’t mind hearing you tell one of your stories one more time now. We sure laughed around the dinner table a lot growing up didn’t we? Back then I didn’t know all families weren’t like that. I just figured laughing until our sides hurt and the tears ran down our faces was typical at dinner tables across the country. Turns out not to be true, but I’m glad it was that way at our house.

Remember all those family portraits we took? How we’d gather in one spot, get ourselves all arranged, and then you’d set the timer on the camera and rush back to get into position before it went off? How so often it wouldn’t go off at all and you’d go back to figure out why, and then it would flash? How we used to laugh.

Oops!

This is one of my favorite pictures. Not because it was perfect, or we were perfect but because of the laughter. Even though half of us were sick with the flu that day we couldn’t help but laugh because this was just so typical of us.

Anyway, I guess I could go on, turn this into a long eloquent thank you speech, but you were never so much about long speeches. You were more about doing. Judging from the photos and notes on Facebook (do they have Facebook in heaven?) there are an awful lot of very special dads up there with you. I was thinking maybe you could organize a dad’s club of some kind, maybe go around and fix stuff for people. But then again, there’s probably not a lot of stuff that needs fixing there.

So I guess you’ve earned a nap. The best you can do is watch over all of us and give us a sign now and then that you’re around. Maybe point us in the right direction when we’re looking for something in your workshop.

You taught us good Dad and we’re getting by, all of us, day by day. But it sure is hard.

Love,

Your Kids

1990

Change Is Hard

…but change is certain.

Tag Archives: memories