PAGE TURNING DAYS (the month of May-hem)

The oldest children of our oldest children graduated from high school last week. The week before that, the youngest child of our youngest child graduated from pre-school. The week before that, Dave attended the 50th reunion of his high school graduating class in Bethel Park PA. And the week before that, one of my dearest friends graduated from life on earth. I have Pomp and Circumstance running as the soundtrack for the month of May. Plus there were are lot of important and memorable in-betweens in there as well. I  am currently caught in a swirl of reminiscence that makes me feel like I am slammed against the wall of a spinning Tilt-a-Whirl and I have absolutely no power to save myself from the forces being hurled at my heart right now. I am a mess of laughter and tears, realizing that my self-definition is once again shifting and I don't feel prepared. Change is hard. Even good change is hard.

When Timo and Sophie, my first grandchildren, were born I was 45 years old, relatively young to start redefining myself as a grandparent. My kids had all grown and flown by the time I was in my early forties. At the same time I got really sick with Guillain Barre Syndrome. There was a mighty shift in my life then. I’ve adjusted, but it sure took a while. Now I feel a little panic rising in the center of me, a sort of PTSD. I have to catch myself and tell myself to release the tension, to relax my legs from digging in my heels to try and stop all of this, to verbally talk myself down: “It is perfectly normal for you to feel this way. You will get through it. Just breathe and try to enjoy the process as you actually DO move into old age!”

I recall that long-ago day when we were with friends at Lake Powell and I decided to try hang gliding. Because I was heavy, I thought I should start back further on the rock structure bordering the lake. When the boat took off and I was running behind it on the rocky shore. The air lifted me up then dipped me down, dragging me across the rocks instead of the water before it took me high above the reservoir. I floated up there, my legs and feet throbbing, tears streaming into my hair against the thrust of the wind. I told myself to enjoy the ride. “Isn’t this so beautiful? (Ow ow ow ow) What a view! (Ow ow ow ow) You’d better enjoy this because you are never going to do this again.” I shouted this to myself up there as I looked down at my blood dripping into the lake far below me. Some processes are just painful regardless of how beautiful they appear to be.

Looking back, I realize that life, by nature, comes in segments. There are chapters that are pretty universal. That day you go to kindergarten, the day you get your driver’s license, the day you graduate… and so on. At least that’s how it seems to roll in my first-world culture. Pretty much every woman, regardless of their cultural or economic status, can tell you about the day she started her period, though for some reason in our culture we have attached unnecessary shame to it. Most people can recall their first inklings of romantic love and to whom those feelings were connected. I call these page turning days; pivotal moments that had a well-defined before and after that are separated by that event. Frankly, I don’t remember that feeling of first going to kindergarten, but I can recall with clarity of emotion the first day each of my own children went to school for the first time. I was handing them off, like the baton in a relay race, to people I frankly did not know. Handing-off your kids takes a whole bushelful of trust. You feel your legs stop pumping beneath you, despite the momentum you’ve gained. It’s a sudden shift, and you feel pain and relief at the very same time. It feels like, with graduation, I am floating above my life and watching my heart drip life-blood into the reservoir of memory. It sounds dramatic. And it is.

Herewith, since words are failing me at the moment, are thousands of words caught in picture, because May 2022 was a page turning month:

My girl and her boy.
(Timothy Petersen)

My boy and his girl.
(Sophie Connors)

My girl and her girl.
(Tessa Merrill)

 

This is Timothy Petersen, our oldest grandchild.
Timo is a drummer, percussionist, vocalist, 
pianist and composer. He played in Lyceum Orchestra, Caleb Chapman's 
Jazz bands and Mountain Ridge High bands and Jazz Band. 
His compositions have been performed in Abravanel Hall, Utah Arts Festival,
Lyceum Spotlight Concert and Mountain Ridge Band Concerts.
If you have been to my Christmas Concerts you've also heard him, first as
a little boy in my Heavenly Choir, then last year as the drummer in my band.

He also sang in the Jazz Choir and Madrigals under
the tutelage of the amazing Kelly DeHaan.

He was Mountain Ridge High's recipient of the Louis Armstrong Jazz Award.
He was offered scholarships to Boston Conservatory,  Berklee College of Music,
BYU, U of U, and BYU I. He chose to attend University of Utah.

He was super stoked to receive the score to the film
How to Train Your Dragon as a graduation gift. 
(He's unapologetically nerdy like that)

Timo has been blessed...

 

... with really great friends and mentors.

He was captain of the Mountain Ridge Drum Line
and lettered in choral and band music,
with eleven additional bars. He was an honors graduate
with distinction in band and choral music.

This is our Sophie...

...Sophie Hannah Connors. Sophanna Banana.

She was part of the Farmington High Golf Team.

This year she was Team Captain.

Yesterday she got back from a fun Senior trip
with her friends and a few of their moms.

She has also been blessed with dynamic friends...

... and mentors.

Sophie was a beautiful dancer
before CRPS told her body not to dance.
She has learned to deal with chronic pain
with grace, elegance and good humor.
She now uses her strength and energy
to help people with their physical therapy,
and she teaches swimming. 

She is one of the most well-balanced people I know.
She is smart, kind, selfless but also has measured confidence.
She will be attending Utah State University studying nursing.

This is Tessa Jane Merrill.
She graduated from Farmington High Pre-school.
She is kind and sassy and talented and funny.
I love her.

She turned five years old
two days after graduation.
She got to hold a baby lamb
on her birthday...

... and ride a pony. Yee Haw!

Gratefully, this grad
still likes to play with me.

That guy in the middle is His Honor, 
my Dave, with his best friend Karl Kern
at their high school reunion.

Karl, Dave and their pal, Bizzy.
No friends like old friends. Karl is a heart surgeon in Tucson AZ.
He bestowed Doctoral robes on his son Matt this May, as he
graduated from the med school where Karl teaches.

And lastly, the close of the graduation ceremony for
my dear friend Marsha Bradbury.
She was goodness personified.

All these humans have altered my life, every one of them for good! I love them more than they could ever imagine!

(I need a nap.) 

(We all need a nap.)