Miss

Tilly's at her grandma's house tonight, as Emma's out on the town and I am working on the house. 

 

It's the first night we've been away from her.  I was looking at her photos, and I really miss her.  I can smell her sweet baby head smell, and hear her noises.  

We love you Tilly, see you tomorrow.  

Work Is Prayer, or, The Theology of Drywall

Friday evening in dry Minnesota springtime.  I am drywalling Tilly's future bedroom closet, imagining the wonderful moments she'll breathe in in her sun porch, when I get a call from Emma, requesting that I bring over to her friend's house--where she's had a glass of wine or two--two nursing pads, in case there's some untoward leakage when she and the ladies go out downtown tonight.  

As I drove over, fuming mildly at the interruption to my work (said friend's house is 3 blocks away), something hit me.  

I had a flashback to my Grandpa Bernard telling me that his parents always told him that "Work is prayer."  

Emma has felt my mildly-fuming wrath more than once when she's interrupted my work with other similar requests.  In her family, I believe, meal time or together time trumped all.  

In my family, you didn't go in to the house for lunch or dinner until the work was done, or some phase of it had come to an end.   Work--both its results and the process itself--trumped everything.  

So--it just hit me--work approaches something sacred to me...not only a means to an end, but an end in itself, and if you extend my grandpa's saying a bit, a contributing factor in salvation, or at least a responsibility to God.  

The Theology of Drywall, therefore, is a belief that when I am working, I am doing something that, when properly channeled, actually pleases God.  And depending on the activity (and the music on in the background, which right now is U2 Achtung Baby), I do at times get deeply lost in the work itself, and in the idea that it's pleasing God that I am using my time here given to me for something productive.

Not saying this is my new religion, or that I am going to go build a compound in the jungle honoring Saint Drywall Screw Gun--just some random thoughts on a Friday evening when Annie our Goldendoodle and I have the house to ourselves. 

It's hard being the oldest child, Tilly.  Here in this post is proof.  

Grave Crawl

The pictures above are from our annual family Grave Crawl, which has been held for four years now on Memorial Day Weekend.  The pics above are at the King Pin Pub in Plato; the Arlington Haus in Arlington; St Mary's Cemetery in Arlington; and on the way home, we stopped to meet some friends who were camping, so Tilly got to meet Joe and Judy and got to see Jim, Holly, Alexus, Oscar, and Ellie again.  

For four years now, a collection of us have visited graves at several cemeteries in the area where I grew up (between Arlington and Green Isle, Minnesota--literally, the land of Little House on the Prairie).  We travel to a pub, then a cemetery, then a pub, then a cemetery...you get the idea.  This year we started at Maggie and Dennis' house in Glencoe--it's never too early for a nip of Jameson.  

We went from Maggie's to the King Pin Pub in Plato--Tilly's first official visit to a pub.  She seemed to acclimatize just fine.  After a drink there, we traveled to Jessenland and St Thomas Catholic Church cemetery.  

In Jessenland, we saw Frank and Nellie Connolly's graves (my paternal grandparents) and the graves of their parents, also a match of a Dennis and a Margaret.  Dennis was the youngest of 15 children, and the story goes that his mother Josette Norman didn't know any English, as she was a French Canadian/Indian, and her husband Patrick Connolly didn't know any French, but they managed to get along, it would seem.   Patrick and Josette are also buried at Jessenland, but we didn't find their graves this year.  They are Tilly's great-great-great-grandparents.  So for a time yesterday, our group and those we were visiting represented six generations of our family.  

The photo above where Tilly is displeased was at the Arlington Haus, where we also saw Tilly's aunt Colleen who was working there this year and couldn't join us.  My dad is buried in Arlington.  He would be 63 years old this year, if he hadn't died in 1974.  It would have been a joy to introduce Tilly to him.  

There are some bittersweet feelings on this Grave Crawl.  It's a joy to visit and remember people, and honor the memory and legacy of those we never even met.  But it's also quite sad to visit graves of people who died far too young, like my father.  

 

It seems that with Tilly's arrival, the world simultaneously got older and younger.  For me, she bumped Nellie and Frank into the category of great-grandparents (had they been here to meet her) and so on down the line...Josette and Patrick, who I think of as my my great-great-grandparents have a 'great' added to their labels now because of Tilly.  So the grinding wheels of history make another rotation, wear us all down a bit more with Tilly added to the equation.  But Tilly also simultaneously resets the clock fresh back to 'start' again, and the world begins all over, with so much to fall in love with and discover and learn, all over again.  

I heard yesterday that my grandpa Frank's father Dennis walked 60 miles from Jessenland to St Paul to purchase the engagement ring for Margaret (I think I am keeping the facts and names straight).  This would have happened sometime in the 1880s or 1890s I guess.  What an adventure that would have been, at that time.  

I wish I could have a day again with each grandparent, all the great-grandparents and great-great grandparents, and down the line--and my father...living a day in their shoes with them, to learn of the people and ideas they cared about, the adventures they lived, the close calls and joys and amazing moments they lived--and just to see their daily life--so that all those things wouldn't necessarily have died with them.  

I put a bigger batch of photos here too:

http://www.pcp.smugmug.com/gallery/8335300_5QGSa#546232951_p3PfM  

Take Me In To The Ballgame

Last night Tilly finally made it to her first Twins game, an 11-3 pounding of Milwaukee.  It was a very auspicious debut as a Twins fan, one that may be impossible to top. 

In the bottom of the fifth inning--when the Brewers were bringing in their 3rd or 4th pitcher--she was shown up on the big scoreboard, thanks to a roving cameraman.  Her image in the little pink earphones that her mom got her specifically for this night made 35,000 people collectively go "Awwwwwwwwwww!" 

She was making friends left and right...a big burly guy with rubber bands wound up in his beard stopped to say hi.  A twenty-something year old guy--not the typical baby gushing demographic--asked if he could take a picture to show his girlfriend.  Mildly drunk fratboys, young floozies, and old ladies...people couldn't get enough of her.  

It filled me with joy...I have never had that much fun at a Twins game, and I think I have attended 200 or more.   That feeling of redemption came back...no matter past mistakes or sorrows, I have contributed to the creation of someone so wonderful and adorable and that just makes everything feel alright.   Tilly was a magnet for other people's smiles, joy, and tenderness.  She slept thru most of it, but also intentionally smiled at me for the first time last night while we were there.  

Last night literally fulfilled a dream--to be able to attend a Twins game with my baby.  I don't know if my father was a Twins fan or not, but he and I never got a chance to go to a game together.  

I waited just about the full 6 weeks that our pediatrician recommended.  Tilly will be able to say she attended a game in Metrodome.    

To top it all off, the Twins rightfielder Michael Cuddyer hit for the cycle (for readers and relatives Down Under, a cycle is when a batter hits a single, double, triple and homerun in one game).  That's only the tenth time a Twin has done that in a ballgame, and they've probably played close to 7,000 games since arriving in Minnesota.  

Yes indeed, a hard night to top.  

    

  

Prettiest. Girl. In. The. World.

...bar none.  

Bits and Pieces

Some pics of Tilly from the other day.  

Thanksgiving

Sipping a wee bit of scotch and soda.  Plunging off the suspension bridge of nostalgia on a bungee cord made of love and words and memory.  Snapping back heavenward on an updraft of air smelling like all mixed up baby lotion and hands that smell like wet diapers (and scotch).  

There is/was a group from Hawaii/Chicago/don't know where else called Poi Dog Pondering.  I purchased one of their albums on a hot summer day in 1990. This song (lyrics below) is on that album.  Emma and I had it as one of our first wedding dance songs.  (By the way, if you need to know about Emma and my relationship, look no further for a start than how we each needed a song of our own as our first wedding dance.)  

This song makes me think of Tilly and Emma and my life today.  I had no idea that day--a clueless college kid, living in Dinkytown in a house for the summer, no idea what I wanted to be, or do, or make out of my life--that that album held this diamond which, when unraveled and laid out in the sun, is in hindsight an absolute road map of the subsequent 19 years.  Can't believe how relevant that song is now to life as I know it.  (The mandolin makes the song, gives it that achy, 'unrequited love that you're grateful' for feeling...and really, it's literally only a wee bit of scotch in my half full glass).      

-----------

Thanksgiving, by Poi Dog Pondering

Somehow I find myself far out of line from the ones I had drawn. 

Wasn't the best of paths, you could attest to that, but I'm keeping on.  

Would our paths cross if every great loss had turned out our gain? 

Would our paths cross if the pain in had cost us was paid in vain? 

There was no pot of gold, hardly a rainbow lighting my way

But I will be true to the red, black and blue that colored those days.  

I owe my soul to each fork in the road, each misleading sign

'Cause even in solitude, no bitter attitude can dissolve my sweetest find

Thanksgiving for every wrong move that made it right.  

Strike a Pose

Here she is: three weeks old.  It's been a while, a week since my last posts.  Time is flying by.  

These are some shots I took tonight at home while watching the Twins.  I think she will be a willing if not enthusiastic model for my photography passion as she grows.  

Like I tell everyone, I am biased, but I really think she's one of the prettiest little babies I have ever seen.  Luckily, she got her mom's looks and my height.  

It's been a busy week.  She went to the dog park for the first time on Saturday--made four laps, perfectly content, sleeping in the baby bjorn.  

That same day she also went on her first photography scouting trip with me, to a golf course in Oak Grove where I will shoot a wedding in June.  She traveled well in the car with Annie, and didn't get too ruffled about anything.  I fed her some soy formula as she sat on the back of the car while we waited for my photo client to show up, and that went well (the formula and the client).  

We also made a stop at Northern Tool and Equipment on the way home, where she helped me pick out some gardening tools.  She made a stop at Holiday, too, and watched as I checked the oil in the car.  

I want to involve her in everything I do from as early an age as possible.  They already know her by first name at Cupcake, my favorite coffee shop, and I hope to always involve her in my life, everywhere I go and everything I do.  

When the time comes, she will choose her own path, but I want to have her by my side every step of the way on my own path to show her everything I know.  

It's Good in the Hood

We all went for a walk today when I got home from work.  It was the first day back to work after three weeks home with my girls.  It was strange and odd to be at work.  

I really really like my work, but now that I have Matilda, nothing else -- work, my photography, the Twins, traveling--is quite as important as it had been.  It's all still great stuff, but all of it has permanently slipped a notch in the priority list through no fault of its own.  

Out walking, we saw several neighbors and friends.  People shouting and waving from moving cars, neighbors out walking their dogs and doing their gardening.  I think we stood at that intersection for literally 10 minutes trying to cross, but we kept seeing people who kept stopping to talk.  

Again, this neighborhood is one of a kind.  It's almost like living in a time warp.  Or, as I also describe it, it's like living in my hometown of 2,000 people...but I can see the downtown Minneapolis skyline from my bedroom window.