Tag Archives: family

Memories from Lincoln City, Oregon

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(originally posted in 2013)

The time to be happy is now. The place to be happy is here. – Robert Ingersoll, The Great Agnostic

Ocean is more ancient than the mountains, and freighted with the memories and dreams of Time. –  H.P. Lovecraft

I think it would be interesting if old people got anti-Alzheimer’s disease where they slowly began to recover other peoples’ memories. – George Carlin

My husband and I just returned from our most recent trip to Lincoln City, Oregon. We’ve been going there since 1984 – when we discovered the magic of Lincoln City  on our honeymoon.  We were trying to figure out how many times we’ve been there in the last 29 years, and we figured we’ve made a pilgrimage to Lincoln City probably 27 times – every year, with one or two exceptions.

You know how photographers do time lapse photography to show Nature unfolding in quick time? Yeah, I’m thinking if we took the days my family has spent in Lincoln City and sort of condensed them into a time lapse photography kind of deal, we’d see something like this…

There we are in 1984 – young, confident, and hopeful – starting our life together – unaware of the challenges ahead, and unaware of the blessings, either – running on the beach – limbs strong and quick and joints well-oiled. My aunt Junie showed me the art of agate-hunting when I was a youngster, and now I’m teaching my new husband how to pick up the glow of an agate on the beach – how to discern the difference between a bona fide agate and a rough piece of quartz…

1992:  Introducing our firstborn to the ocean for the first time. His baby body rests on my knee, facing out to the sea. His eyes have locked onto the ocean and taken note of it – he’s chewing his lower lip, eyes moving back and forth along the sea’s horizon, taking in the sights and sounds and smells. It’s becoming a part of him.

1994: We have come to Lincoln City as parents of childREN. We are old hands at parenthood now. Today it is our youngest son’s turn to meet the ocean. We take off his booties and lower his toes into the water. It is a sort of ritual baptism of baby feet – a bonding with the Pacific.

1999: The sons are playing with the surf – letting the waves chase them up the beach. The ocean is their comfortable old friend now.

Jump to April, 2008: I am in crisis.   Struggling with severe depression. I am desperate to escape from myself and my constantly-churning thoughts. Oldest son knows I need to get away and asks me if I’d like him to go to Lincoln City with me for Spring Break. How many 16 year-old sons do you know who’d be willing to accompany their moms on a 14-hour (round trip) road trip? I am blest beyond words. On the way to Lincoln City we stop and visit my Aunt Junie, who shares our kinship with the ocean and lives in Depoe Bay, an hour north of Lincoln City.  I confide my struggles to Junie, and the feelings of guilt and unworthiness that seem to be a symptom of my illness. Junie is appalled at my feelings of worthlessness. “All her instincts” tell her that I am a good person, she says.  “There are no unrightable wrongs, no unforgiveable sins, no fatal mistakes, no fatal diseases, only the eternal now.” She is like Yoda.

July, 2008: Still struggling with the  depression. Lincoln City is my respite. I sit on the balcony in the sun and look down on the beach and watch the sons running and cavorting on the sand below.  There have been times lately when I’ve wished myself not born. But, watching my sons, it hits me that if I hadn’t been born, they wouldn’t have been born, either. They give me purpose. And the ocean gives me comfort. We stop in Tilamook on the way home and I am drawn to a garden plaque that quotes The Great Agnostic, Robert Ingersoll: “The time to be happy is now. The place to be happy is here.” On impulse, I buy it. It will sit in a place of honor on our mantel when we return home.

2009:  The family meets on the Oregon coast to celebrate Aunt Junie’s life, and spread her ashes on the ocean.  We will not get as far as Lincoln City this time, but the ocean that she is now a part of will touch the beaches that have provided such solace to me over the years.  And every time I’m near the ocean, I’ll think of Junie – her humor and wisdom and kindness to me.

2010:  Hoping, but not with high expectations, I ask my youngest son, who’s just turned 16, if he’d like to make the same road trip that I made with his older brother two years ago. To my surprise and delight, he says he would! We spend two days at the ocean – flying a kite, looking for agates, running (well, okay, he’s doing most of the running now) along the beach.  Before we leave on our trip I ask Xander if he’s remembered his swimsuit, long pants, shorts, sweatshirt, sneakers, toothbrush, and sandals. He assures me he has. When we arrive at Lincoln City, I realize that I am the one who’s left her clothes, laptop, and toothbrush back home. It is all very humbling. But there’s a certain freedom in the forgetting, too. I’m scraped down to the bare essentials. Having no laptop is a good thing.  I have become big into photography in the last couple years, and I have, at least, remembered my camera. Camera, son, ocean, and the clothes on my back – what else does a person really need? 🙂

2013: The sons are all grown-up now. They have jobs and things to do.  For the first time since we became parents, we will be making our Lincoln City pilgrimage alone.  We eat at our favorite eatery there – The Lighthouse Brew Pub – take long walks together, hunt for agates, and remember together who we were when we first found Lincoln City.  Young, strong, confident, hopeful. Our lives stretched out ahead of us.  And we think about all that’s happened in the 29 years since. And it’s all been good. All of it. Even the bad stuff has been good, really. Just like those blossoms unfolding in time lapse photography – our life together has unfolded most wonderfully.

A No Car Day

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Home is the dearest spot on earth, and it should be the centre, though not the boundary, of the affections.
– Mary Baker Eddy

The sons, husband, and I had a No Car Day yesterday. It was lovely. We went for a walk to the old cemetery, and then came home and made a fire in the wood-stove, and brought our the old board games – Stratego, Monopoly, RISK. We filled the DVD up with old favorites – Christmas Vacation, The Christmas Story, Pirates of the Caribbean – and our bellies up with garlic mash and turkey. The cat sat on top of the chair, the dog lay on her bed at our feet. Christmas lights sparkled from the mantel and the Christmas tree, and reflected off the wrapping paper littering the floor.The sound of convivial board game competition and laughter filled the air.

Ah! Bliss! 🙂

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photo of Christmas wrapping paper (Karen Molenaar Terrell)

 

 

My Address Book

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I brought out the old address book this weekend to work on my Christmas cards. I’ve had that book about 30 years – I can no longer remember exactly where I got it or when  – but when I first started writing names and addresses in it I’m sure I didn’t realize how significant it would one day become to me. It has become a chronicle of sorts – a record of friendships and family ties.

My mom was the youngest of ten children and my dad the middle of three – at one time I had 11 aunts and uncles  – and their names and addresses are still in my address book, though they are all gone now – Mom and Dad are the only ones remaining in their generation. As I l started flipping through my address book, this was brought home to me. “I don’t have any more aunts or uncles to send Christmas cards to,” I told my husband, sort of in shock.  My cousins, Julie and Skip and Chris, are gone now, too. And Craig and Mark. And I’ve lost friends through the years – Kim has passed, other friends have moved away and on, and I’ve lost my connection to them.

For a moment I was overwhelmed by sadness as I realized how many dear ones are no longer walking this earth with me.

But then, as I started working my way towards the back of each alphabetized section, I started finding more recent names and addresses – a record of new friendships and a younger generation of family members with their own homes.  There was something about that discovery that lifted the sadness from me a little. Yes, I’ve lost loved ones through the years, but I’ve also gained new friends and new family. In the last ten years I’ve added the names of new friends living all over the world – people I’ve met through the internet or through my books  – addresses  for new friends in Minnesota, Michigan, Florida, Ontario, Nova Scotia, England, Kenya – people I never could have imagined knowing when I first got my address book all those years ago.

Although the book is pretty full now, I am happy to note there is still room for more addresses, more friendships. There will always be room in my address book. If I have to, I’ll just tape in more pages.  It’s cool to think of all the new names and addresses my address book might hold in the future.

A Family Dinner

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family dinner

photo of Mount Rainier by Karen Molenaar Terrell

 

Love is…

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Love is...

photos by Karen Molenaar Terrell and Scott Terrell

One Last Song

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Without any words you sat down at the piano one last time before heading off on your new adventure. You knew I would come and hear – pulled by that irresistible sound of your fingers on the keys – and all in a flash I saw you again as a toddler – the back of your round little downy-haired head as you sat on my lap at the piano, your tiny fingers pushing down on the keys, then your face turning up to me, a grin of pure glee there… is there anything more powerful than love?

My Two Little Brothers

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My parents found an old photo album that I hadn’t seen before and looking through it brought back a flood of happy childhood memories…

I have two “little brothers” – Pete and Dave. I can’t remember a time before Pete – he’s only 13 months younger than me, and my accomplice in toddler shenanigans. I see those old black-and-white photos of us, our heads together, big grins on our faces after we’ve managed to escape unscathed from some new exploit. We were always up to something. We kept Mom on her toes. And there’s my youngest brother, Dave – he’s four years younger than me and I DO remember the first time I met him – I remember looking in his crib as he slept and whispering in awe to my mom, “He’s got long legs!” And he did. And he does. At 6’3″, my “littlest” brother is now a full foot taller than me.

Pete and I both went to Washington State University and worked at Mount Rainier during the summers – we climbed to the summit of Rainier together back in ’76. Dave took a different route – went to Western Washington University to study marine biology and spent time with NOAA, traveling on Japanese fishing boats around the Pacific. Life took us separate directions – to our own careers, travels, adventures, marriages, children, trials, failures, achievements, successes (among other things, my long-legged youngest brother, Dave, turned out to be an ultra marathon runner – yup, he’s one of those dudes who runs 50 miles a day on mountain trails for the fun of it). But a few times a year we all come together again to tromp around in the mountains together, or to celebrate Thanksgiving, Christmas, birthdays.

Just a few weeks ago we met up to celebrate Dad’s 96th birthday. At some point in the festivities Pete and I found ourselves standing together at the folks’ fence, looking with some longing towards the fields and woods at the back of their property. Neither one of us had been back to the creek for a really long time. There were thistles and thorns and an over-grown trail between us and the creek. Pete was wearing shorts; I was wearing capris, and sandals. Trying to bushwack our way to the creek could be tricky. We put our heads together, as we ‘d done when we were toddlers, and once again conspired shenanigans. “How hard could it be?” “What’s the worst that could happen?” And then – just as we’d done when we were toddlers – we set out together for a new adventure – Peter opened the gate and we maneuvered our way around the thistles, stomped down the thorny things, and set out for the creek. Half-way across the field, we turned around and saw that Dave and his son, Casey, and my husband, Scott, and our son, Andrew, had seen us, and were all coming to join us.

The creek holds some really rich memories for my brothers and me. Over there, under the canopy of cedar branches, was my “Secret Place” – the place where I’d go to be alone and watch the squirrels doing their high-wire act in the treetops.  Past my Secret Place, my brothers had made forts and bridges in the woods with their friends, and, later, our own sons had built the imaginary little community of “Bridgeport”. While Casey and Andrew went off now to check on the fate of Bridgeport, the older generation stood by the creek and breathed in the rich smells of wet earth and green growing things – skunk cabbage and cedar trees and wet ground cover.

It hit me, then, how very glad I am to have my brothers. We’ve known each other since the beginning of our lives. We’ve been there for each other during the good times and the bad. They hold my history in their memories, and I hold theirs. I am proud to be their big sister, and grateful for our sibling friendship. How different my life would be without my brothers, and how very glad I am to have them in my life.

Sibling relationships — and 80 percent of Americans have at least one — outlast marriages, survive the death of parents, resurface after quarrels that would sink any friendship. They flourish in a thousand incarnations of closeness and distance, warmth, loyalty and distrust.
-Erica E. Goode, “The Secret World of Siblings,” U.S. News & World Report, 1994 January 10th

To the outside world we all grow old. But not to brothers and sisters. We know each other as we always were. We know each other’s hearts. We share private family jokes. We remember family feuds and secrets, family griefs and joys. We live outside the touch of time.
-Clara Ortega

Children of the same family, the same blood, with the same first associations and habits, have some means of enjoyment in their power, which no subsequent connections can supply…
-Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, 1814

“Beauty is a thing of life…”

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“The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or how badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.” – Kurt Vonnegut

***

Oldest son is home from university for spring break. As I’m upstairs, working on some photos I’ve taken this morning, I hear him downstairs, practicing snippets of songs on the piano. I go down the stairs half-way and sit on the steps around the corner – positioned so he can’t see me – and settle in to listen. Soon he gets up and moves around and sees me sitting there – I’m busted! He grins. “Will you play some more?” I ask. “Sure,” he says – he is a good sport, my son. He goes back to the piano and I make myself comfortable on the sofa, stretched-out horizontal, eyes closed – and listen to the perfect beauty of Pachelbel. After a minute or two I open my eyes and glance into the dining room – and there’s the youngest son, finishing up a project for an art class. Two images flash into my memory: The oldest son sitting at the piano as a toddler, a big grin on his face; The youngest son on his knees on a chair in front of the dining room table, a paint brush in his little two year-old hand, creating a watercolor.

***

Oldest son is three-fifths of the way through War and Peace. Something has just struck him – he’s been wondering why everyone is learning to play music in this book – and at first he’s thinking – why is it so important?  And then it hits him – oh… yeah… if you wanted to share music with your friends 200 years ago, you had to be able to play it yourself!

I am surrounded by expressions of Soul. I feel wealthy beyond description.

        Whatever inspires with wisdom, Truth, or Love – be it song, sermon, or Science – blesses the human family with crumbs of comfort from Christ’s table, feeding the hungry and giving living waters to the thirsty. – Mary Baker Eddy

Beauty is a thing of life, which dwells forever in the eternal Mind and reflects the charms of His goodness in expression, form, outline, and color. – Mary Baker Eddy

 

No sour grapes here, nosiree…

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What mean ye, that ye use this proverb concerning the land of Israel, saying, The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge? As I live, saith the Lord god, ye shall not have occasion any more to use this proverb in Israel. Behold, all souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine… – Ezekiel 18: 2-4

The transmission of disease or of certain idiosyncrasies of mortal mind would be impossible if this great fact of being were learned, – namely, that nothing inharmonious can enter being, for Life is God. Heredity is a prolific subject for mortal belief to pin theories upon; but if we learn that nothing is real but the right, we shall have no dangerous inheritances… – Mary Baker Eddy

***

I realized today that even in our own families there are things we skirt around in conversation. The things it’s okay to talk about are trips we’ve taken, hikes we’ve hiked, how much money is in the savings, what books we’re reading, and what movies we’ve seen. The men in the family bond over talk of sports and car up-keep, and the women bond over talk of politics and  flowers and pets. And I mean in no way to belittle any of those conversations  – they are legitimate, they have a place, they bring us together. But there are other conversations that we skip around, things that would be helpful to say, and that maybe should be said – but we’re afraid might bring confrontation or discomfort, or make someone feel hurt or attacked. And so we don’t go there.

Today as I sat at breakfast with my oldest son and my husband – as they talked sports and car up-keep – I realized I was standing at a sort of verbal crossroads – I could go the safe direction and throw in my two cents about the Seahawks and Pete Carroll, and the price of petrol, or I could go that other direction and maybe hear something that would hurt, but might be helpful to me.

I took a deep breath, and plunged towards the scary path.  I’m not going to tell you what I asked, or what was answered, because I do not want to. But because I went down the scary path, I had an epiphany this morning.

***

Speaking from a materially-genetic, hereditary standpoint, I guess you could say that I’ve inherited two very different natures from my very different parents. Mom is a wise, nurturing, loving, compassionate  empath –a  defender of the down-trodden, and champion for truth, justice, and equality.  She is Frodo Baggins in a Superman cape – a homebody without ego or the need for adventure, although she has had her share of adventures.  Dad is… Dad is a little more complicated.  He’s an explorer, an adventurer, a Renaissance man – artist, mountain-climber, geologist, hydrologist, ski instructor, cartographer, author.  He’s always up to something.  Last summer, at the age of 95, he finished a mural he’d painted on the side of their shed – and this mural covered a space that was 12 feet high – so I’m guessing there was some ladder-climbing involved. He’s traveled to six of the earth’s continents, hob-nobbed with politicians and celebrities, and lived a most unusual life. There are certain traits he possesses that have allowed him to lead this unusual life.

And, speaking from a materially-genetic standpoint, I might seem to be a weird combo of these two antipodal individuals. Sometimes these two natures seem to be at odds in myself. I can recognize the good stuff I seem to have inherited – the kindness and empathy that are qualities of Mom; the need to explore, discover, and create that are qualities of Dad. And I can recognize the other stuff – the not-so-good stuff –  I seem to have inherited, too.

A lot of people have labeled me “sweet.” Sweet is good. I kind of wish I was wholly that person.  But I am not.  People are sometimes surprised, and disappointed, when they realize at some point that “sweet” is just a part of my human personality.  My human personality has also been known to be impatient, angry, self-righteously indignant, opportunistic, cranky, and reactive.  There have been battles with ego. The human personality is not always “nice.”

Does the bad of the human personality totally negate the good? Does the cranky negate the sweet?

Geeze. I really hope not.

So a couple things:

Regarding genetics – I don’t think I ever fully recognized that I even had this belief until today. But this morning my belief in heredity was exposed. I saw that I had allowed it to make a claim on me – had, without being aware I was doing this, allowed genetics to be an explanation, and maybe an excuse, for being who I am.  I had made it some kind of law that I had to follow. And, as Mary Baker Eddy writes in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, the textbook for Christian Science, “Heredity is not a law.”  It never was a law, and I never really was thrall to it.

Regarding the nature of man – In reality, we are all the children of God – the image and likeness of Love – and all we can inherit are the qualities of Love. There’s nothing Love, God, can create which could be in any way unlike Love.  That’s the truth about all of us – Mom, Dad, me, and you, too. In reality, there IS no dual nature of man.

I recently changed my “author’s bio” on Amazon  – removed the part about my up-bringing and how I was raised . I am responsible for my own behaviors at this point. Genetics is a two-headed coin – if you accept the heads of it, you also have to accept the tails. And I don’t wanna. I’m not dependent on inherited glories.  I don’t need to accept inherited pains, either. I am my own self.  And the only real inheritance I have comes from my Father-Mother God.

Instructions to a First-time Mom: “Love her. Just love her.”

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My mother tells me that when I was born and she held me in her arms for the first time, the weight of the responsibility of raising and caring for me suddenly filled her with great fear. She was so afraid she’d mess it all up somehow.

She looked up at the doctor and shared her fears with him. The doctor smiled at her sweet face and said, “Love her. Just love her.”

This was something my mom knew how to do – and do really well.

My brothers and I may not have had the most conventional up-bringing – but none of us could have asked for a mother with more love in her heart.  We grew up witnesses to how she expressed love to others –  seeing her voice her protest for those who were being treated unfairly, watching her take in stray animals and make them part of the family, seeing how a room would light up as soon as she entered it and smiled her love on everyone. And the love she expressed wasn’t some feigned thing, either. It came from deep inside her – true and pure. She truly loved mankind and all God’s creatures – and we saw this, and incorporated her example into our own sense of how to live a decent and moral life.

As I think back on my younger years, there’s one moment that stands out for me. I think I must have been in my early twenties, and there was some sadness about a break-up with a boyfriend or something – dashed hopes of some kind – I can’t remember the specifics now – but I was feeling lost and alone – not sure what direction I was supposed to take in my life. I was home visiting Mom and Dad, and had gone out into the backyard to look up at the stars and pray. Mom must have known I was out there, and came and stood beside me. I shared my sadness with her then – I think I shared how I was feeling like a “surplus” person – like there seemed to be no place for me. My mom reached over to one of her rose bushes and gently plucked a rose from it and handed it to me. She looked into my eyes and said, “This is you. I see you unfolding into a most beautiful rose.” And then she went back into the house.

Wow. Those simple words, spoken with perfect love, totally reversed my thoughts about myself and my circumstances. Mom loved me. Mom thought I was unfolding like a beautiful rose. How cool is that?!

I’m grateful to say that Mom is still with us here, still loving her fellow creatures, and still an example to us all of how to live a “good” life, and how to be  the best kind of mother.

“As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings…” – Deuteronomy 32: 11

“A mother’s affection cannot be weaned from her child, because the mother-love includes purity and constancy, both of which are immortal. Therefore maternal affection lives on under whatever difficulties.” – from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy