Posts Tagged ‘Love’
Sixty Years
Sunday evening was definitely the grand finale of the weekend family celebration of Cyndie’s milestone birthday. It would have been easy to confuse the occasion with a Friswold Christmas dinner for a number of reasons, most noticeably, the inclusion of the artificial tree (left up all year in the rarely used basement these days).
Cyndie’s parents and brothers planned, prepared, put together, and pulled off one heck of a spectacular customized evening to give the birthday girl exactly what she wanted, and more.
With tie-dye patterned flags and a “peace” banner adorning the tree, they presented a basket filled with a wide variety of crazy photos of Cyndie in every stage of life. Family members took turns selecting photos to hang on the tree, presenting each with a personal message for the girl.
Love overflowed. The tree and Cyndie glowed.
Fred offered readings from some ancestors’ letters providing fabulous historic perspective, followed by a powerful statement written recently by brother Ben, addressing present-day issues. The profound meaning of this sharing was perfect for an occasion to honor and celebrate Cyndie, especially with honorary “adopted” sister, Rabi, from Kenya present (who surprised Cyndie by flying in from out-of-town for the event).
There was also a light-hearted reading from Marie, ala the custom-composed candy prose she masterfully wrote and designed. I didn’t see if Cyndie, or nieces and nephews, ended up with the haul when it was deconstructed.
Marie set out well-loved appetizer choices and Carlos enlisted assistants to put finishing touches on place settings for dinner. Truly works of art that lifted the evening to out-of-this-world (and incomparable) levels.
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The meal was some of Marie’s best beef tenderloin ever, garnished with just the right compliment of potato, vegetables, salad, and bread. Of course that was finished with Norwegian Cream and some obligatory birthday cake.
It was truly a wonderful evening. The best of everything family. There is no questioning the Friswold’s ability to put on a special birthday party.
The entire weekend was an absolutely perfect way to celebrate sixty years of Cyndie’s amazing life.
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All About
Cyndie. This Weekend, it’s all about Cyndie as we celebrate the milestone of her 60th birthday. With Jackie tending to animal chores at Wintervale, Cyndie and I are submersed in the loving energy –and I do mean energy– of the Friswold family. We are staying at her parent’s house in Edina, MN, but have twice in a row found our way to downtown Minneapolis.
Last night, it was dinner and music at the Dakota, where we ate like royalty and swooned over Shawn Colvin‘s very personal solo guitar song performance.
This morning, Cyndie is sleeping in. My brain is busy trying to process the onslaught of activity, memories, and emotions –not to mention distractions of mental and physical preparations for my biking and camping trip that starts on Friday– conspiring to confuse me over whether it’s all about Cyndie, or all about me right now.
I had the great pleasure of starting the day yesterday riding bikes with Cyndie’s brother, Ben. He rode over from about a mile away just as a rumble of thunder rolled over us.
We took pause inside to watch the radar long enough to see we would have a perfect window of opportunity after a very short wait. The tiny disturbance sliding south of us was just a precursor to the precipitation that would arrive in the middle of the day and hang around for the afternoon.
While the sky was watering the earth, more of the Friswold clan gathered for lunch at Jimmy’s restaurant near our old Eden Prairie stomping grounds.
After a little nap before heading out for the night, attention turned to a gift brother Barry presented to Cyndie. Her jaw dropped when she saw her younger face on the cover of a memory book of pictures he had spent many loving hours to produce.
Just as she finished a first pass through the overwhelming collection of memories the images trigger, we stood to witness Justify run for the triple crown. Then eleven of us headed out for dinner and the concert.
With noted local musician and song-a-day YouTuber, Zachary Scot Johnson opening the show for Shawn Colvin, we were treated to a range of guitar-accompanied stories, providing me with a second recent prompt to wonder whether I am still a guitar player, or not.
A variety of reasons have combined to allow months to pass without my spending time with fingers on frets. I am inclined to blame my yet-to-be surgically treated arthritic left thumb as the primary culprit for the hiatus, but deep down, I have a sense I may be giving that more credit than is due.
Somehow, while distracted with too many of my own concerns rarely focused on accomplishments, I have been granted the chance to flutter around the bright light that is Cyndie for 44-some years.
It makes for a tangled web that isn’t so much all about her or me in the end. It really has become all about us.
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Love Rules
Love rules the day. I was going to write a blog post this morning, and then a royal wedding showed up. The wedding of Harry and Meghan is so far away from my world, that I had no intention of bothering to watch it, despite the almost universal broadcast coverage being made available.
Cyndie wanted to watch it. Not long ago, we did a binge watching of early seasons of the show, “Suits,” where we came to feel Meghan Markle was someone we knew. She set an alarm so she could get up early to see the wedding.
I had no idea that I would end up having dreams of getting ready to view it in my parent’s bedroom in the house on Cedar Ridge Road in Eden Prairie, and that my dad would be there among others who had gathered. As dreams do, it later morphed to my being on a roadside curb looking to reserve some space with Cyndie’s brother, Steve, to watch the procession move past.
I woke almost every fifteen minutes after 5:00 a.m. and wondered when Cyndie was going to turn on the tv in our bedroom. Eventually, I heard her getting up and assumed she was going to sneak out to allow me to sleep. I let her know that she could turn it on here.
As the pageantry played out, we exchanged fun banter over the spectacle of the event. Then love burst forth in the form of one Michael Curry. The Most Rev. Michael Bruce Curry, the presiding bishop of the American Episcopal Church gave the perfect wedding sermon.
You can read the text online, as Kensington Palace released the transcript immediately following his delivery. However, it is his delivery, including small enhancements to the script, that is necessary viewing to grasp the full impact of emotion and truths of which he spoke.
Love is my “religion.” Remove all the technicalities of each and every religion with their variety of origin stories and various traditions, and beneath it all there is love.
Bishop Curry boiled it down nicely. Watch it. Then go out into the world and love.
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First Ever
This is the first time I ever tried to do this. In honor of Mother’s Day today, I have given Cyndie the day off and I have taken over the job of making her classic caramel rolls for the family brunch this morning.
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What an adventure. Just melt too much butter, a lot of Karo syrup, and way more brown sugar than can possibly be healthy, on the stove and then pour it in the pan(s). I lined one with nuts, first.
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Using a pre-made sweet dough cuts the job down to size, but what a challenge it was getting that sticky blob to roll flat and then stay formed for the cutting.
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Arranging the rolls in the pan is a guessing game of wondering how much the dough will rise before baking.
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With a little creative arranging, I got everything to fit.
I’ll be a nervous wreck in front of the oven, but the hard part is done.
Best wishes to all you mothers out there! I have great respect for all that you do.
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Two Wolves
Last week, Cyndie and I squeaked in time after a hard day’s work to watch the Disney movie “Tomorrowland” (2015) that arrived in the mail on our Netflix subscription. We liked it a lot. It includes significant references to the popular teaching legend about two wolves, which highlights the importance of how our thinking influences our lives.
We have been repeating variations of the punchline with noticeable frequency in the days since.
A simple synopsis taken from the movie:
Casey Newton: “There are two wolves” … You told me this story my entire life, and now I’m telling you: There are two wolves and they are always fighting. One is darkness and despair, the other is light and hope. Which wolf wins?
Eddie Newton: Whichever one you feed.
This resonates for me, because it reflects my direct experience from my years of chronic depression through the ensuing years following wonderfully successful treatment. I learned to feed the good wolf instead of the bad one.
This recent focus on the two wolves legend has renewed my attention to how often I still automatically default to a negative perspective, despite my desire and intentions to do otherwise.
I stepped in the house at the end of a long, strenuous day of laboring on our property and Cyndie checked in with me, commenting on the vast number of things we accomplished. Without missing a beat, my response grabbed the equally vast number of tasks that remain in need of attention.
Luckily, that default response no longer goes unnoticed by me. I caught myself and admitted I was feeding the wrong wolf.
It’s as if I feel the cheery perspective of the state of things requires a counterbalance to keep it from being a false representation of reality. But, thinking about it, I could see that no matter how I chose to frame it, either mental perspective did not physically change how many projects we did or didn’t complete that day.
The reality of whether the grass needs mowing or downed branches need to be turned into piles of wood chips does not change based on how I assess our achievements of the day.
So why not feed the good wolf?
In life’s ongoing battle between darkness and despair, and the alternative of light and hope, which one should we be feeding? I vote for light, hope, love, peace, compassion, understanding, and even more love.
Thank you, Tomorrowland, for sowing the seeds.
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Hearty Impression
What might the message be from this tree with an old wound that it is growing around in the shape of a heart?
I don’t know, but I’d like to think it is something heartwarming.
When we were cleaning out the landscaping around the back side of the house over the weekend, I discovered that a tie holding a maple sapling to a support stake was too tight and had begun constricting the tree’s growth. What a sorry sight to stumble upon; an occasion where my efforts to help a tree had ended up hurting it.
Trees seem to grow slowly, in general, but at the same time, there is a dramatic amount of activity happening in relatively short time spans. I think the trunk of that sapling has doubled in size since it was tied. I would have liked to see a time-lapse of that progress.
Just a week ago we were digging out from beneath a huge snow storm, and yesterday, on my drive home from work, I could already see the tops of tree clusters developing a green tinge from sprouting new buds. It warms my heart to know the leaves will soon be making an appearance.
Ever wonder how many leaves grow on the branches of mature trees? There are a lot of variables, but an oft-repeated average seen in the results of a Google search is around 200,000. That number makes my heart flutter like the quaking leaves of our poplar trees.
At the extension class we took last month to learn tricks of identifying trees, (did I already write about this?) we found out the thing that makes some leaves oscillate in the wind is the square shape of the leaf stem. It isn’t round, it has four flat sides.
Fun facts for people who love trees. Hopefully, that includes everyone. How could anyone with a heart, not love a tree?
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