*sigh

I started blogging in the dark ages with absolutely no technical no-how at all.  Everything changes and people are so much better at it, but I am still rattling around here in the dark yelling “Hellllllllp, Tristan,” to my long-suffering son-in-law with some regularity.  I mean, the whole blog crashed like 3 months ago and I am still puttering around some default template, unfixed, un-personalized.  Tsk.

This was the header when I first started, 11-29-06.  The leaves actually fell and swirled.

As I approach the date of the 7th (the 7th!!!) anniversary of my first dip into blogging waters, I am restless and embarrassed not to have gotten better at it.  It doesn’t feel like me right now.  It should be about something specific, right?  It shouldn’t be all over the map of serious-to-ridiculous, of well-formed thought-to-explosive opinions and stupid jokes, should it?  By now, I should have found my voice and my rhythm and a nice tidy package labeled “identity.”

my out.

Oh well.  That is why I named it after my favorite elementary school art unit: collage.  I named it Thought Collage because that meant I could cut colors and scraps and shapes and symbols and pictures from any and every area of the magazine of my very existence and paste it all together to say: Look.  I think this – all of it, even if it sometimes conflicts with itself.  All the pieces make up the whole.

Collage (From the French: coller, to glue, French pronunciation: ?[k?.la??]) is a technique of an art production, primarily used in the visual arts, where the artwork is made from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole. -Wikipedia.org

brace yourself.

Worse yet, I am going to quote myself from these very blog pages over the next 10 days or so to celebrate this monumental anniversaire.  Yes, I am!  You’ll be forced to reread something I already said that I still like when I read it.

“It’s a trail of bright colored Play-Dough bits and crayon drawings of “piles of snow” and stickers and paint and Light-Saber battles with vacuum hoses and cookies and orange pop and more cookies and dancing to the Fiesta Latin music channel (learning to do the twist and to shake our booties) and announcing, “Watch Nonna, I’m gonna fly now” as we jump from 3 steps up and Nonna’s heart is temporarily arrested until the landing is obviously successful.

It’s Guini loving the most dangerous thing a one-year-old could love: neon-colored plastic jacks, which she likes to pull one by one from an old Quaker Oatmeal cannister and place on the floor and then immediately one by one they go back in. She actually squeals with delight as she pulls them out, dazzled over and over by the colors and we just watch her and she dazzles us.

It’s Hunter begging to be frightened again and again. He makes me put on the Darth Maul mask and chase him, but screams in utter terror when I truly surprise him and then lifts the mask to make sure: “Nonna?” Ok. Relief. It is just Nonna. Back to being chased. Then, time to cuddle and repeated requests to sing “Jingle-bells-all-the-way.” With Hunter, nothing is ever done once. If once was good, many times are better.

It’s Gavin “posing” me with a couple of stuffed animals as he cranks and adjusts Grandpa’s tripod, pretending there is a camera there. He tells me to wait “just one second” then instructs me, “Say cheese.” He squinches his eyes and I smile as he creates a clicking sound with his tongue and then he tilts his head and says, “Awwwwwe…” because I smiled so prettily. And as he thanks me for sitting still, I wish I were aiming a real camera back to capture this exact moment of pretend into which I was invited. And I force myself to see it deeply so I can never forget this February afternoon…

Being a mom was the most wonderful thing. Being a grandma, I am completely undone.”

It is proof beyond any possible reason: God is good and He rewards you even when you couldn’t possibly deserve it.  I am so thankful to have had this little bit of cyber-real estate where I have captured the great record of His faithfulness and find reminders of the glorious color of love and life I have experienced so far…

Come back tomorrow.  We’ll dig through the archives again!   :)