I have been terribly absent from this place. I’m not sure anyone notices. I’m not one of those big time bloggers who
has thousands of followers and sponsors.
If I was, I’m sure I would have been fired by now. I’ve always done this space for me. Gathering thoughts, chronicling our lives,
putting things out there in the universe to remind me what I’ve thought is
important in our lives or the world.
But things they are a changing. Many of the big gaps in my blogging are due
to stupid mundane things like misplacing the magic connection cord thingy that
lets my camera talk to my computer.
(This has happened way more than I’d like to admit….) But ironically enough, I’ve also found myself
go silent when big things, painful things happen. I think a lot of people who blog might find
this to be true, even if like me you suppose that only a handful of people,
most of them related to you and therefore obligated, read what you write or
look at the pictures you post.
me and Mom, Mt. Bonnell in the 90's
I’ve joked before that only my mother and three other people
out there read my blog. The total tally
may or may not be true. I let myself
look at how many people were following me on Pinterest one day, then briefly
compared it to my friends, and then realized how incredibly junior highesh I
felt (Why didn’t I get invited to that girl’s party? Why does know one like me?). Now one of the really painful things makes
that statement untrue, whether the overall total is right or wrong. Now my mother is not here to read this. She died August 29, 2012. And that makes me incredibly sad.
She was my biggest fan, and the most
complicated relationship in my life. She
loved seeing pictures of my boys, and would occasionally say “I checked your
blog, but you haven’t posted anything lately.”
I spoke with her often, but the pictures were another way to stay
connected over distance.
the Grand Canyon, 1991?
So now, with her gone, I want to get back to blogging, but
maybe do some of it a little differently.
Even before my mother died, much had changed or happened in my life that
is important to me. Much of it has gone
unnoted here. Although it’s been over
two years, our foster daughter went back home to her family. That event, and the experience with CPS and
the previous 18 months she spent with us, were incredibly life changing and
educational. A little over a year ago, I
went back to school part-time, trying to finally finish my undergraduate
degree. And this past summer, I got a
part-time job. A real, paying, part-time
job, which I’m loving. All these
experiences have introduced me to people and ideas and websites and books that
I think have value and are important. I
think I want to start noting some of these things here.
This does not mean that I won’t still chronicle other
aspects of our lives here. I still
consider mothering my main gig, and if I do say so, I have some pretty handsome
young men in my house and I’d like to keep including pictures of our
adventures. But it turns out that older
children are a lot less agreeable to having you post cute pictures of them sleeping
or perhaps dancing gangnam style. And
who knew, teenagers like their privacy! While
the 10-year-old is enough of a ham that he’s pretty amenable, and the teenager
probably doesn’t me mind lauding more and more grownup type achievements, like
getting his Learner’s Permit, I’m ready to mix it up more, and share some of
the really interesting things I’m learning about through my college classes and
my work teaching adults English, and just all the neat things I learn from the
incredible people I’m privileged to call my friends and family.
So for the other 3 of you that were the loyal readers with
my mom, hopefully I won’t bore you terribly, and you can carry the load. She’s left a pretty big hole.
in memoriam
Peggy Joyce Harper Waller
April 11, 1937-August 29, 2012
St. Mark's Square, Venice
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