baby love letters

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Thanks for joining me at Friday Letters. Since publishing the little book, Held in the Arms of Love, (see June 26th post and cool mom picks ) I have been asked lots of questions about writing letters to one's children. Friday Letters is to make the process easy and fun. You can join me just for today or come back on a weekly basis. The purpose of this blog is to help parents create a meaningful letter to their child, even if it's only one paragraph long and takes 15 minutes to write.

Each Friday a new question will be put up on this blog. Your response to this week's question can stand on its own or be joined together with answers to future questions.

1. Read this week’s question and spend no more than 15 minutes writing your answer.
(Obviously everything you want to say can’t be said in 15 minutes but this gets your thoughts down on paper and you can always write more letters in the future.)

2. For the photographers of the group
Create 1-3 photographs on this topic to accompany your words.

3. Save your letter in a place where you keep important papers.

Content and images on this site are copyrighted.

Friday Letter questions are for individual use not for commercial purposes, without the author's permission.

Friday Letters...87

          "Everyone smiles in the same language."

"A kind heart is a fountain of gladness, making everything in its vicinity freshen into smiles."

Washington Irving

             

Even though my children are now adults I can't look at the moon without remembering the description our daughter gave to it when she was barely old enough to talk. You know when the moon is a sliver in the sky...that's a "fingernail moon." Always makes me smile.

Friday Letters...86

"In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted."

Bertrand Russell

Every morning my forever friend, Syl, gives me a call on her way to work. She always sounds like she's in a tin can and therefore carries that prestigious name on my list of favorite friends. We have been friends since we were four. Her call today might not of happened, as this week she almost choked to death. As she calmly recounted the story in an almost humorous way I nervously laughed along as she shared the weird details. But the minute I hung up the phone I realized I would never take our friendship for granted again.

Our lives have so paralleled one another... though at different speeds. I'm the proverbial tortoise and she the hare...probably what got her in trouble gulping down that bite of steak. Her humor has always balanced out my seriousness and her get up and go has prodded me to great things or at least to get off my duff.

How can you regain so many years of experiences with a new friend? You can't. But the things I've learned with Syl help me establish every new acquaintance I make. Knowing that all of the work, tears and tenderness of friendship is worth every moment of effort.

It would be natural here to show pictures of Syl and me growing up and then some of us now... but Syl hates pictures of herself so I won't share the few that I have. Our images are the hugs and experiences of our lives and they just can't be captured on film or file.

This is to honor my friends...whom I will no longer take for granted!

Friday Letters...85

work:

the physical or mental effort directed at doing or making something

Encarta World English Dictionary

"Work is either fun or drudgery. It depends on your attitude. I like fun."

Colleen C. Barrett

"Three Rules of Work: Out of clutter find simplicity; From discord find harmony; In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity."

Albert Einstein

The quotes above have two stories to go with them...

1. Something has come over me recently...I haven't been taking notice of the incredible good in my life. Everything seemed like work...even things I loved to do. Yesterday I got a glimpse of that attitude and looked from a different perspective. A shopping trip to find the perfect invitation for a party became an adventure in marketing instead of a check off line on my to do list. I'm sure the shop owners wondered why a customer was spending so much time in their store looking at every little item. There were so many great ideas tucked in those shelves...some I will use as kick off ideas for new items in my life. I really had fun!

2. The image from this week has a story. Ten years ago I started playing with my camera creating sketches of mother/baby father/baby and babies. (Still one of the favorite things I've ever done...searching each subject for their essence.) Well, in the midst of photographing a birthday party, the boy I sketched 9 years earlier walked in front of his baby images. It was one of those moments when he was totally preoccupied with something else, which gave me time to line up the baby he was with the boy he had become. Every one of Einstein's "Three Rules of Work" came into play.

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Friday Letters...84...Father's Day

Today I want to thank the dads of daughters.

To those who take time to know what second position is in ballet,

whose praise leads to confidence in every effort his little girl makes in her journey to womanhood,

who is thrilled to know his little girl could someday and everyday be anything she wants to be,

who holds his little girl in high respect and finds her as wonderful as the sons in the world,

who sees wonder in tenderness, intuition and spirituality and knows that both sexes should hold these dear,

who has such a fondest for and closeness with his daughter that he bestows upon her precious nicknames,

who literally shines with pride when taking his daughter to his workplace and introducing her to his buddies,

who not only sees the outward beauty of his daughter but cherishes her inward spirit,

who can find as much pleasure watching a football game with his daughter as he would with a son,

who feels honored to know his daughter is daddy's little girl.

written by Bev Hawley 2008 for her dad

Happy Father's Day, Dad!

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Friday Letters...83

"You cannot be lonely if you like the person you're alone with."

Wayne Dyer

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Friday Letters...82

"Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything beautiful, for beauty is God's handwriting."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

My friend, Candy, and I took off early this morning for the little historical town of Aurora,Oregon. We go out ever once in awhile and spend several hours photographing something other than people.It winds up sparking our creative juices again and it's always a special time between friends. One of the places we visited today was Aurora Mill Architectural Salvage. If you want to see some of the beautiful things we saw click on this slideshow.....aurora slideshow

Friday Letters...81

FRESH;

*Excitingly or refreshingly different from what somebody is used to or what has been done previously

*Natural, pure and wholesome,

*Recently harvested or made and showing no sign of staleness or decay.

    

a few of the definitions from Encarta World English Dictionary

"Each morning the day lies like a fresh shirt on our bed; this incomparably fine, incomparably tightly woven tissue of pure prediction fits us perfectly. The happiness of the next twenty-four hours depends on our ability, on waking, to pick it up."

Walter Benjamin

It's a fresh start for us this week. I think all of the definitions above apply to our move back home. After 3 years of structurally putting our house back together, we are finally seeing it from a fresh, new perspective. So... FRESH had to be the topic this week.

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Friday Letters...80

"If I could tell the story in words, I wouldn't need to lug around a camera."

Lewis Hine

To spare my children I won't put my favorite images of them on the web.

But I have a picture of two of my grandchildren from a couple weeks ago. Their mother had told me about something that happened the night before and wanted to see if it would occur again, this time in front of my camera.

Picture this:

A dad half way around the world on a work assignment. Add to the mix, a series of NBA playoff games where his hometown team is on tv. Another ingredient: his two little children wanting to be sitting beside their dad during the game.  Enter amazing technology...skype. Now arrange the furniture so the childrens little table is sitting in front of the tv with a chair on top of it. Perched on the chair is a laptop computer tilted at just the right angle so papa, in a far off land, can see the tv. Sitting on two little chairs on either side of the computer, with arms wrapped around the laptop, are his children. Twelve hours apart and yet all together watching the game.

Did I get that snapshot? Sort of...but the words are actually better this time.

Friday Letters...79

"Each moment is a place you've never been."

Mark Strand

My dad was from Sweden and when I was quite young he, my grandfather and uncle took a propellor plane back to their homeland. While there they also spent a few weeks traveling around other parts of Europe.

A few gifts from these far off lands made there way to our home. The tan leather purse that was made of such soft leather it felt like a slowly cooked marshmallow, but without the stickiness. A delicate vase with gold etching, which I managed to break years later while carefully dusting . A cameo bracelet that was so fragile no one ever wore it. And my favorite...the tiny madonna painting that my dad had watched a street vendor paint in Florence.

During college my best friend, Syl, and I took a summer and travelled Europe in the powder blue volkswagen bug we bought at the factory in Germany. Our favorite place was Florence, Italy...we fell in love with a couple Italians and swore it would be our place to return the following summer. But that never happened even though Italian lessons lasted for a few months upon our return and romantic letters were shared for about the same amount of time.

I grew up that summer...became so much more confident in myself...a world traveller.

Not surprising I wanted my children to love Europe like I did.

Friday Letters...78 Happy Mother's Day!

"Making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body."

Elizabeth Stone

Somehow I always had the feeling that being a mother was a couple decade experience, and somewhere along the road it would morph into a grandparent mode. I have no idea where I picked up this notion. Now having traveled down the road a little farther, for me motherhood gets more expansive as I watch my babies turn into adults and then to mothers and fathers in their own right.

No longer do I have to count to 3 to make sure I know where each child is...and that they are safe and cared for...I'm counting to 12. My heart is now walking around with my children, their spouses (my next set of children) and my grandchildren. Gracious sakes... can you see this continuing to multiply?

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