Father's Day

Just for today, I don't want to be comforted.

No platitudes about Heaven where he has gone.

I don't want to be told how happy he is,

Or that he wouldn't want to be missed.

Today, let me grieve the life that was lived.

Let me ache for the man who is gone.

Let me think of how he was - 

Don't make me force a smile instead.

My soul, he was so real!

My daddy was a giant.

His heart, his personality, his laugh was massive.

He had a smile to match.

I miss the hugs from arms like beams;

The thumping of life in his chest.

I miss calling him for his advice,

Because "father knows best".

My dad put time into each of us.

He called me and the girls when he passed by our town,

Just so we could yell out loudly,

"WE LOVE YOU, PAPA!"

Even when he wasn't here, he was close.

You don't get over that in a minute.

Remembering those sweet things

Makes it hurt worse... makes the soul ache.

So let me shed my tears.

Do not begrudge me this grief.

I will always cry about my dad,

And those tears will bring relief.

I have apologized my whole life

For having big feelings in response to things.

But this is how I was created, and

This is what such gigantic love brings.

There was never anyone like my dad.

He was the biggest, the strongest, the best.

There will never be another man like him,

Now he's entered into rest.

Taking this moment is for me and for him...

This moment, this space is for 'us'. 

I am not wallowing right now.

I am grieving, and that *is* allowed.

Today of all days - Father's Day,

It is hard not to be lost in tears.

I was so privileged to be so deeply loved

For my first thirty-five earth-side years.

Goodbye again, my sweet dad.

It isn't right that you are gone.

Yet, somehow I am jealous, too.

That you get to be with pain forever done.

I wish I could hug you a minute in Heaven,

So you didn't have to come back down here.

You got exactly what you wanted,

And I know that you are finally free. 

See? This is what grief does.

It moves in waves all on its own. 

It overwhelms the soul, as if to drown,

But moves through again to acceptance. 

This is why I say don't force it.
I don't want to hear the cliches.
I am a walking, weeping, living cliche.
I wouldn't ask my dad back down to earth.

He did not want to be here,
And he didn't deserve the pain he had.
Just for a minute... a single minute,
I want to go visit my dad.

Garden/Spring Update June 11, 2017

Things are really growing in the small backyard of this small but contented family! <3 :) 

This is a bucket of lettuce. There are many kinds in here, as you can see. We have been consistently eating them and they are still booming! haha

I looove having these on sandwiches, tacos, burritos, as a salad, and any other thing you would add a 'green' to. 

The flavors and scents range from sweet to herbal. My daddy would be *so* pleased to see his buckets so full of life! There is not one bucket he gave us that is not booming!

Giraffe's zucchini plants have really taken off! We planted almost everything in our garden this year from seeds. It is extremely gratifying to watch them grow and produce!

The first zucchini came in from the garden the other day. (Not pictured.) It was at *least* around eleven inches long and was also nice and fat!

We cannot wait to share our bounty with our favorite neighbors! It is a highlight of our summers to share the bounty of our garden with them each year. They love zucchini the best. We're ON it!! :D

Tomatoes are also on the way. There are many little flowers blooming and a few tiny fruits themselves. :) 

Our markers got misplaced, moved, or weren't placed at all so each plant is going to be a surprise to us when they ripen. 

Will this one be red? Brown? Yellow? Yellow-red? Large? Medium? Tiny? Huge? It is hard to tell! 

It is late to add to our crop but I am eager to get more plants started. I want to make sure that every single variety is well represented! I am most eager to sample the steakhouse, sunrise bumblebee and big rainbow!

Some of the plants are small and just starting out. These were seeds sewn directly into the straw of the bales.

We kept an eye open for what was growing well and what wasn't. On my dad's birthday, little Koala and Giraffe went through the garden, adding seeds wherever we had empty spaces. Some of those are just now showing up. 

They planted everything from more watermelon to cucamelon, pumpkin to pole beans... you name it, we have seeds for it planted in here somewhere! :D This is SO much fun! We will continue the process of seeding and planting until the garden is nice and full. :)

My spinach is growing well and tastes delicious! I believe that we have a variety of four types of spinach this year. These were planted by Giraffe on the same day in which I planted all of the lettuce and the red cabbage into other buckets.

You can see that we need to thin it out a bit. That is exceptionally hard for me to do, though! lol I tend to eat the leaves when they are still small 'baby' spinach. I'm sure I will try to grow some guts and thin these beautiful babies out. 

I love the lettuce and spinach mix we have going this year! I know that I am a broken record about it, really, I do. This just brings me such joy, generally. This year, it brings much-needed relief to my heartache. 

My herbs are still growing well in the cast-off straw from last year's bale garden. 

You can see that my basil (far left) is starting to flower. This has never happened to me before. I need to look into that. 

Purple basil is in the middle and looks lovely. Parsley is far right. I am most enthusiastic about using this herb. :)

Cantaloupe and cucumbers also coming along. This year they are primarily growing out the back of the garden. I have two rows of bales, where last year I had just the one. 

I would still like to tie these up to the trellis. Last year, the cantaloupe and cucumbers helped hold up tomatoes. I never had a problem with one strangling the other. They made great trellis mates. I may have to go again.

Here is a better picture of some of our little cucumbers that are growing. Again, these came from seeds we planted! Yay!

I also have to tell you something else... these belong to my littlest little! She has two bales that are hers. In them, she is growing cucumber, zucchini, cucamelon, watermelon, and beans. 

I let her choose what to plant and where she wanted them. It has been both sweet and joyous, watching my little baby tend to the garden in her own little way! 

It is never too early to teach children the value of life... all life... and to encourage their love of cultivating it! <3 <3 <3 

My peppers are struggling, I'll be honest. I have two Sweet California Wonder. These are what you might recognize as the multi-colored bell pepper. There will be red, yellow, and green when they finally grow tall and well. 

I also have two Emerald Green bell peppers growing. I couldn't tell you which set of two this is. You can see that they are quite tiny. I am going to be fertilizing them soon and keeping a closer eye on their progress.

Peppers are meant to be planted two plants at a time, as companion plants. This helps them to flower and produce better, and provides them better protection. When they are larger, I will be staking or caging them, as well.

This is one of my Red Acre Cabbage plants. :) I planted these seeds much earlier than my Green Acre Cabbage so they are larger. 

I absolutely love the purple coloring and veins stretching through the leaves. I truly cannot wait to have entire heads of red and white cabbage! This is one of those 'first time' veggies that has me beside myself! hehe

This set of buckets contains another mix. There is celery growing in the small blue bucket. I keep telling myself that I will move that poor thing to a bale somewhere! lol 

The celery plant has been hidden by the massive leaves of my Snow Cauliflower. You can see that it is the star of the show in that particular green bucket. The bucket split but I am unwilling to lose it, since it was my dad's. I red-necked that thing together with some duct tape and am going to keep growing in it! haha

The smaller, lighter green leaves are from my radishes. I am growing these every three weeks. They do very well every time, so far!

I still have another 40-ish pictures. I won't be able to share every plant in the garden this year. 

I am going to end this by abruptly switching tracks on you. Okay? lol

We have continued to use our new popsicle molds, much to the children's delight! Mine too... who am I kidding?

This week we did some that were strawberry, some strawberry-peach (in strawberry-banana jello), and a special more diabetic-friendly combination for me. 

Instead of jello (with its high sugar content), I added peaches and strawberries (which have their own sugar) to blueberry tea. I found this to be an especially good idea for me. I will continue to make tea pops for myself through the summer, with and without fruit. :)

Father's Day is coming up. I am a wreck of emotions this year, given that I've just lost my dad in March. However, mixed in there is the deep love I have for my husband and partner in life. He is a million kinds of wonderful. I look up to him in a great many ways. 

He is kind, strong, compassionate, gentle, loving, assertive when he needs to be, and a strong defender of his family. We are best friends and lovers, individuals and equals. I am very secure with this man. That says a lot for me, as I struggle with feeling safe anywhere in general. 

God has been kind, in sending me someone to walk through both the beautiful and the ugly of this life. I recognize the great fortune I have in being his and do not take it lightly. From the bottom of my heart, I love you forever, Hubs! 

Happy Father's Day!<3 <3 <3 

To My Husband

Dear Hubs, 

    I was thinking about what I wanted to write to you for Father's Day, and I couldn't come up with anything that seemed good enough. I wanted to write a poem, but am afraid to lose some sincerity in rhyme. I thought of writing a straight you-themed blog, but that too seemed a daunting task. 

     How am I supposed to put my entire heart into words? I've tried off and on through the years, and have never yet come up with anything that sums it all up. For someone who enjoys talking and writing, and who loves you so dearly, I struggle mightily when it comes to this topic... the topic of you, and of my love and feelings towards you. Even now I am embarrassed, recognizing that already I am stumbling over this letter so badly. Please excuse that. <3 

     There are the big things, of course. The separate moments that we fell in love with one another, and the time we spent cultivating it... our wedding day, and the first years of our marriage. The miscarriages that dashed our hopes and broke our hearts time and time again. The eventual diagnosis that we had developed an infertility issue, which seemed like a crushing blow. 

   Then there was the pregnancy test that turned pink, and the baby that stayed and eventually turned our whole world pink. Giraffe entered our lives in a way we had never been told to expect. The day I watched you become a father you almost became a widower, and childless. It was the hardest thing we have ever gone through. I will never forget the hours we spent sitting together in broken silence in the N.I.C.U., or the mixed look of tragedy and love on your face every time you watched over or held our big little girl. 

(Gack! There goes my make up! Perhaps I should not have written this before church!)

   I saw something else in that N.I.C.U. ward too, though I was too upset and distracted to realize it at the time. I saw you becoming a father, and really, it seemed more that you already WERE a father. I always knew you were the kind of guy who was meant to be dad, and when the world exploded and Giraffe was here, the transformation was instant. You changed all of her diapers so gently and tenderly with love. Every single one, without complaint. You learned to dress her without further injuring her damaged and paralyzed body. 

   You championed me for seventeen hours a day, and even every two hours those short, painful nights making sure I had clean pumping supplies, and running scant drops of colostrum from the Ronald McDonald House up the long, long corridors back to the N.I.C.U. You were my rock when your world was falling apart as rapidly as mine. I can't keep going... there are too many memories... but I need you to know that you are the single strongest man I have ever met. The things we've gone through have been rough, and there have been times where we lived in more pain than promise. Through it all, you have have been the loving, tender, humble, yet strong leader that this family needs. You guide us through the good and the bad, and make sure that all of your girls feel safe and loved at the end of the day. 
   

When Koala joined us nearly two years ago, I got to see you shine all over again. You were so doting and attentive. You exhausted yourself seeing to it that I stayed pregnant and that she got here safely. Your home is completely surrounded in feminine energy, your life immersed in flowers and ladybugs and giraffes and pink and well, it suits you beautifully. <3 I know we have to run now so I'll end this, but I just want you to know that no man could ever be more loved, more appreciated, more adored than you. 

                                                                    Eternally Yours, 
                                                                                     ~Lynn

PS: I owe you one killer barbecue grill. ;)