Parenting

From Sea to Shining Sea

~ MaryG ~ 11 Comments
Daily writing prompt
Are you patriotic? What does being patriotic mean to you?
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One thing that makes me feel patriotic is beautiful, sweeping American vistas. I have been known to break out singing “America, the Beautiful” in public. I think it should be our national anthem. The words are better than the “Star Spangled Banner.” And most people can sing it. It’s not as hard.

O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountains majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America!
God shed His grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!

I’m also a big fan of “This Land is your Land.” I can – and will – join in singing harmony whenever I hear it.

This land is your land, and this land is my land
From California to the New York island,
From the redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters;
This land was made for you and me.

Here’s the Woody Guthrie original version from 1940.

Other countries have spectacular scenery too, but ours is so vast and varied—from sea to shining sea.

🎵 🇺🇸 🎶

Maui, Hawaii, 1993
San Francisco Bay, California, 2012
Palm Springs, California, 2010
The incredibly blue Lake Tahoe, California, 2012
Moonrise, Lake Tahoe, California, 2012
Great Sand Dunes National Park, Colorado, 2009
Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado, 2009
The hallowed ground of Gettysburg National Park, Pennsylvania, 2017
Taughannock Falls State Park, Trumansburg, New York, 2022
Lake Cayuga, Ithaca, New York, 2021
Saratoga Springs, New York, 2019
The Green Mountains, Stowe, Vermont, 2014
The White Mountains, Bartlett, New Hampshire, 2013
The rocky coast of Maine, Kennebunkport, 2022
Nantucket, Massachusetts, 2007
Walden Pond, Concord, Massachusetts, 2023
The beach border of Westport, Massachusetts and Little Compton, Rhode Island, 2006
Newport Harbor, Rhode Island, 2023. This is the 1970 America’s Cup contender Heritage.
Watch Hill, Westerly, Rhode Island, 2021
The Outer Banks, North Carolina, 2003
Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, 2009
Delray Beach Florida, 2021
Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, 2014
The aquamarine Gulf of Mexico in Longboat Key, Florida, 2022

LAST ONE: the iconic Grand Canyon, Arizona, 2023. Pictures don’t really do it justice. There’s a quiet awe to the place that perhaps this video captures just a tiny bit.

If you made it to the end of this post, THANK YOU for looking at all my pics. I loved taking them.

🇺🇸

Related posts:

Family Road Trip: Colorado edition

TO READ list

Grandparents

~ MaryG ~ 3 Comments
Daily writing prompt
What were your parents doing at your age?
View all responses

When my parents were my age, they were new grandparents to my daughter. They only have two grandchildren and she was their first. They were thrilled to have a granddaughter and helped me out a lot. My mother would visit and babysit at least once a week. I was lucky that they lived within an hours drive.

Outside of being grandparents, they were big travelers. They went on many trips to countries around the world including China, Japan, Russia and all over Europe. I have some beautiful gifts from places they traveled to.

All families have issues (mine included), but I know I’ve been extremely privileged to have two responsible, caring parents who are still alive and well and married to each other! How many GenXers can say that? I know I got really lucky in the parent department.

They’ll be celebrating their 85th and 90th birthdays this summer, as well as their 62nd wedding anniversary.

Here we are on the beach in Florida five years ago. I’m looking forward to visiting them in Florida next week. It’ll be my first trip down to see them in their “snowbird” locale since the pandemic. I feel so lucky that I get another chance to make this trip.

The Before Times

~ MaryG ~ 7 Comments

The most important invention in your lifetime is…

The internet. It was like that movie title: everything, everywhere, all at once. It really changed everything.

I honestly can’t remember how we did certain things before the internet. Obviously we did them, but how?

Here are some recollections of how we did some things in the before times:

Airline tickets – no idea

Restaurant reservations – called the restaurant

Job opportunities – read the classifieds in the back of the newspaper

Real estate – dealt with human realtors

Banking – went to physical banks, which was always a challenge because of their limited hours; everyone ran to the bank at lunch (or left work early) on payday

Spelling and writing – used a physical dictionary and thesaurus, which came in various sizes. Most homes had at least one huge, heavy dictionary with all the words.

News – watched the nightly network news and read newspapers, which got ink on your fingers

Travel planning – went to the library or bookstore travel section

Shopping – wandered around the mall

Dating – met people at school, work or through friends

Concerts tickets – can’t really remember, but have a vague recollection of calling Ticketmaster – over and over – trying to get through

Learning anything new – got books at the library or took a class

Popular culture (trends, celebrities, fashion) – read magazines; magazines were huge

I was always very happy to receive my monthly Seventeen magazine, especially if Phoebe Cates was on the cover.

Swimming with Sharks

~ MaryG ~ 6 Comments
Bloganuary writing prompt
What’s the thing you’re most scared to do? What would it take to get you to do it?
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I can’t think of anything I’m scared to do that I actually want to do. I’m scared to jump out of an airplane, but fortunately, I don’t have a burning desire to go skydiving.

Hmmmm….

I love the ocean and have been snorkeling a few times. I guess scuba diving would be cool, but it also seems scary. What if your air tank fails? What exactly are “the bends” anyway?

I remember I couldn’t get myself back onto the boat fast enough when our guide pointed out a shark on a snorkeling excursion in the Bahamas. (I whacked my leg on the boat’s ladder so hard that I had a huge bruise on my shin for weeks.) I did NOT enjoy seeing a real shark without 4-5 inches of plexiglass between us. I prefer aquarium sharks.

In order for me to go scuba diving, I would need to feel very safe and have a highly qualified instructor. In addition, I would need one of those shark-repelling electronic shields, like Annette Bening had in Nyad. If all that could be arranged, I think scuba diving would be amazing.

Underwater selfie (Bahamas, 2012)
Snorkeling scenery
The SHARK – tiny at first, then pretty damn big when it came right up to the boat
The shin-whacking boat ladder (with shark in the water) – I was the first one up and out of the water, even though both of my kids were still in. I guess I figured my husband would save them.
The snorkeling group

Sports Mom

~ MaryG ~ 2 Comments

What are your favorite sports to watch and play?

I played a bit of competitive tennis when I was young, but I was never much of an athlete. However, I really enjoyed watching my son play soccer, basketball and lacrosse for many years. He loved playing sports.

I felt awful that his senior lacrosse season got cancelled because of Covid. He was a team captain, and he and his friends had been playing together since 5th grade. Because of the lockdown, they never got to play a single game together as seniors in high school. It totally sucked. Lacrosse was his favorite sport. He played for a year in college, but we didn’t get to go to any of those games because of Covid. Fortunately, the games were available online so I got to see him score a goal in college. At the time, I thought I would still have many more chances to watch him play in person, but it turns out I didn’t.

It seems you never realize when something’s happening for the last time, while it’s going on. Just another reason to live in the moment and try to be present.

You need to bring a lot of layers to watch lacrosse in New England. 🥶

The college goal I got to watch online:

Related post:

Things I Will Miss About My Son’s “Cancelled” Senior Spring

Museum controversy

~ MaryG ~ 3 Comments

List five things you do for fun.

I’m trying to think of how to not post a completely boring answer to this prompt, but I’ve got nothing. So here’s my boring, honest answer:

Go to movies

Sing in a choir

Blog

Read

Go to museums

I do have a museum story for you. When we were visiting the Greek Antiquities section in the Louvre in December, I saw a group of French school children (around age 8) gathered around a sculpture, listening intently to their teacher. From where I was standing, I could only see the back of the sculpture — a reclining woman.

What was so interesting about this sculpture? I mean, she has a lovely bum, but why the looks of amazement?

Then I walked around to the front.

“Hermaphrodite Endormi” (Sleeping hermaphrodite)

Oh, OK, now I get it.

I couldn’t help but think of the contrast with the US where a Florida principal got fired for allowing 12-year olds to be shown a photo of Michelangelo’s “David.” Parents said the quintessential Renaissance masterpiece was pornographic.

Mary the Badass

~ MaryG ~ 3 Comments

Write about your first name: its meaning, significance, etymology, etc.

I have the most common female name in the history of Western Civilization. Like many little Catholic girls in the 60s and 70s, this Mary got a second name tagged on. I posted about my double name here.

Now, as an ex-Catholic, the religious symbolism of my name isn’t terribly meaningful to me. However, when I gave birth to my son, with a midwife and no anesthesia, I remember thinking of Mary giving birth to Jesus in the manger. It’s basically ALL YOU, when you have natural childbirth. It’s hardcore and badass. I was in a hot tub, I got out, the midwife threw a blanket on me, and it happened (thanks to me)—the miracle of birth. Mary did that too. Her baby may or may not have been born to save of us all, but she gets MAJOR credit for birthing him in those conditions, with no anesthesia.

Mary the Badass with her big-headed baby. My son was also born in December and weighed 9 lbs, 1 oz at birth.

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The Double Name

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My policy

~ MaryG ~ 10 Comments
Bloganuary writing prompt
Where can you reduce clutter in your life?
View all responses

Everyone knows there’s one really great way to declutter: MOVE. Moving forces you to go through all your stuff and evaluate whether or not each item is worth bringing to your next space. But moving is major. Nobody does it just to declutter.

Once, after a move many years ago, I developed a “policy” with my clothes and shoes. (We lived in a tiny antique house and my closet was from colonial times.) If I bought something new, I made sure to get rid of something I didn’t wear anymore. Something in, something out. It kept things in equilibrium. It also helped me see my clothes more clearly and put together outfits that I never would’ve thought of when everything was packed so tight. Eventually, I extended my policy to other things, like books and toys.

When we moved to a bigger house, I largely kept the policy. It helps keep clutter down. I have a large shelf in my closet, which I like to think of as “purgatory.” It’s where I put things I plan to get rid of. Things typically sit in purgatory for six months or so — retrievable, if I change my mind — before I donate them to Big Brother/Big Sister or to my church’s “trash and treasure” sale.

My son’s huge collection of worn out sneakers has largely been kept under control by the policy. (If he wants new sneakers, he’s got to agree to toss some old ones.) I even do it with my jewelry. If I’m tempted to buy new earrings, I’ll get rid of a pair I never wear. (They go to purgatory initially, in case I miss them and want them back, and then to the jewelry donation box at my church.)

Occasionally, I get rid of something and regret it later. For example, my son wanted to play tennis out of the blue last summer, but I had donated all our rackets to the Boy Scouts because nobody had used them in 5+ years. They were in the garage, which really needs a full “move-like” decluttering. We need to pretend we’re moving and take every single thing out of the garage, clean it, and then only put back the stuff we use.

That’s a job for the spring.

Family Road Trip: Colorado edition

~ MaryG ~ 5 Comments
Bloganuary writing prompt
Think back on your most memorable road trip.
View all responses

In summer 2009, we took the kids on a fairly epic road trip in Colorado. They were eight and fourteen at the time and it was their first trip to the Great American West. We covered a lot of ground. After flying to Denver from Boston, we visited friends in Evergreen (who had recently relocated from Massachusetts), then visited Boulder and Rocky Mountain National Park. From there, we went to Red Rock Canyon and Colorado Springs to visit my cousin Andy and his family–some of whom I’d never met. After that, we headed to Creede, an old silver mining town in the San Juan Mountains, to visit my Aunt Mary and her boyfriend Harold, a real Western mountain man if ever there was. Along the way, we visited the Great Sand Dunes National Park and a few other sites, including a giant thermal swimming pool and an alligator farm, before returning to Denver for the flight home.

I remember it as being a really good trip. We saw a lot, including friends and family, and everyone got along well. When you’ve spent your entire life on the East Coast, it’s quite an experience to see those giant open skies and magnificent mountains for the first time. I hope my kids remember the feeling of it. It even smells different out there.

Harold and my namesake Aunt Mary, an East Coast girl turned true westerner
The rental car was solid. You don’t want car problems on those crazy mountain roads!
Rocky Mountain National Park
Creede, CO

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Mary had a little lamb

~ MaryG ~ 4 Comments

Describe an item you were incredibly attached to as a youth. What became of it?

If you name a little girl Mary, someone’s bound to give her a lamb. “Lamby” was my very special stuffed animal when I was small. I’m not sure if the song reinforced my love of the toy, or vice versa, but Lamby was far and away my favorite stuffed animal. And I had a lot of stuffed animals.

Lamby was too important to toss and currently lives in a box in my attic.

I got to hold a real lamb once, but I didn’t get to take it to school.
Lamby looking pretty good for 55+

Related post:

Back when we were tiny