The Musings of a Latte Queen: Narratives of Everyday Life

  This morning, someone dear to me posted a link on Tumblr that was so moving, so true, and so on-point for me today that I am sharing it here.  How many of these are so true for you?   life lessons 45 LIFE LESSONS, WRITTEN BY A 90 YEAR OLD 1. Life isn’t fair, but it’s still good. 2. When in doubt, just take the next small step. 3. Life is too short not to enjoy it. 4. Your job won’t take care of you when you are sick. Your friends and family will. 5. Don’t buy stuff you don’t need. 6. You don’t have to win every argument. Stay true to yourself. 7. Cry with someone. It’s more healing than crying alone. 8. It’s OK to get angry with God. He can take it. 9. Save for things that matter. 10. When it comes to chocolate, resistance is futile. 11. Make peace with your past so it won’t screw up the present. 12. It’s OK to let your children see you cry. 13. Don’t compare your life to others. You have no idea what their journey is all about. 14. I...

I was given a diagnosis that no one wants to hear.  I am fighting a disease that no one wants.  I am reaching for life, for those dashes.  Every day that I wake up, I am blessed.  I can look at my daughters and see their smiles, their innocence, their hope and reach out and touch their soft skin, and I smile. The wonders of technology enable me to be in touch with my son in Alabama, my sons in Kansas City, and my family scattered throughout the states and world.  I am in their lives and they are in mine. My words, the message of my soul, the song of my spirit reaches out through the keys and touches the hearts of those who encounter my etchings.  I am honored that someone loved my essay or was moved by my poem or even debated me about one of my essays.  The joys of my life. I am not finished living, my dashes are still going on, those spaces that connect one thing to another, those pauses in the middle of the action to say something impo...

There is a song, an anthem, a mantra, that says, "What doesn't kill you, makes  you stronger." I am not sure why I thought of it today, the morning after I received a devasting diagnosis and am looking at a very serious illness and recovery.  It is in knowledge that wisdom, healing, and wholeness can come, even as I hold onto my faith, my belief, and prayers for a total recovery. Once-upon-a-time, my father was very ill.  He had rheumatoid arthritis and a bone disease, hypertension, high blood pressure, and finally cancer.  He had to take a boatload of pills and once commented that the medicine they give you to cure one thing, kills another in your body. All these years later, I hear his powerful voice uttering those words now. The illness I have is directly related to the antibiotic I was given to fight the microbial bacterial that caused my submandibular gland to swell resulting in surgery.  It has been a little over a month since t...

"Mommy please come to church today, we are singing in the big church," asked my youngest daughter as she excitedly bounded into my room on this sunny Sunday morning. "Ok, baby, what are you going to wear?" I tiredly threw back the covers and made myself swing my legs out-of-the-bed...I had already told my husband I was planning to stay in and get caught up on my studies before my two-day training this week for an upcoming temporary project. I went to the shower and as the water cascaded over my body - washing away the aches I still held after a week of overcoming a bad bout with shrimp and a day in the park celebrating 100 years of Girl Scouts - all I could do was smile that my daughter was able to get me to do something I hadn't done in a while. The issue of the church I attend sits on me, but this morning, I pushed that aside and threw on my jeans and early-fall orange sweater.  I wanted to make sure I was matching the girls were told me they were wearin...

Tradition is a good thing. Every year, as summer transitions to fall and the children have all gone back to school, my little community has one more tradition that announces another change, another season. The Greentree Festival is a beloved event in my little town.  Schools have had volunteers decorating floats, the high school pommies have practiced routines, and neighborhood groups have loaded up on candy.  The parade is like mini-Halloween for some of the kids who get a pre-taste of treats to come. My family started attending this little event the first year we moved here.  It is a community event that brings together old and young, rich and poor, black and white, from here and not-from-here, for an annual rite-of-passage.  The parade always features a new group and the little little kids are always tuckered out by the time they have marched the 2 mile distance, yet they press on, and put candy in eagerly awaiting bags of their fellow citizen-kids lining ou...

There is a certain exhaustion in rejection, in not being good enough. This morning, while sipping my coffee on the ride to the city, there was an NPR report about the jobless, those who have simply stopped looking.  There was the older woman who went back to school to get retrained and still was unemployed, the older man who used to write programs but now couldn't get hired because he didn't have experience in "the cloud." The stories went on and on. I sipped and thought about these, all white people, and what would be my chance, a middle aged black woman with business degrees and background.  Corporate America and I parted ways in 2003.  I have been back in (helped open an upscale retail furniture store) and have even taught those who probably told the older man he was either (a) overqualified for the entry level job or (b) inexperienced (and presumably, too old) for the new systems.  I thought my writing and my engaging teaching style (highly rated on all my re...

I think I am trying to see clearly in a fog. There are just some days that exist where everything I want to do, seems to be happening in slow motion, like I'm waiting for some Thing, some Event that is supposed to take place before I can move from point A to point B. It could be completely a lack of sleep, too many things scheduled at once, a late board meeting, juggling busy schedules and kids' with just one car, maybe too much time in the car with my spouse and kids, too much time just waiting or simply jetting from place to place.  I think I am in a vortex or something, like one of those mist machines and all the mirrors keep making me turn circles because the place I'm going looks just like the place I left. I think I am trying to give myself permission to meander, to wander into the forest and actually stop and look at the tall trees, touch the leaves, smell the scent, feel the grass underfoot, and truly look up at the sky and see it, the real of it and the place...

I remember. We all remember. The event has marked a generation, a generation that has only known life after that, no memories of life before that. We pause and recognize the impact it has had on the nation and the lingering impact it has had on the families directly dealing with loss. We remember. I remember. I pause to acknowledge. 9/11

It is Sunday morning.  The cool breeze, brought in by the rains on Friday, have a gentle wind whisping through the trees outside my balcony window.  The sun is streaming in, there are birds chirping, it is quietly serene. Is that not God?  Is that not His presence and His reminder that He Is? It is another Sunday morning and I am sitting here, alone, pondering my faith.  My unquestioning love for God, yes, and yet, my unwillingness to get dressed and go to the place my husband has chosen for us to worship. I am baffled sometimes by this place of peace I have in my love for the Lord and yet my place of resolute to not sit in a pew with people who would never have a cup of coffee with me, would never acknowledge anyone who looks like me, or simply that our family ends up scattered in three different parts of the church since each age has a different service.  That, to me, is not a family worshiping together.  So I am not there, again, choosing instead t...

It was hot, steaming hot, one of the hot, hot summers that made you want to join a nudist colony.  It was record-breaking heat, the kind where you can see the heat waves and air circulation was absent.  The kind we remember for a long, long time to come. Summer 1988 in Chicago was that oppressive, stifling, sweaty season where no relief was in sight. I was pregnant, big pregnant, huge, actually.  My ex-husband and I lived in a third-floor walk-up in Oak Park.  We had a huge living room with hard wood floors that even held onto the hot.  I would walk up the stairs after work, his job to pick up my older son, at the time a toddler of 20 months, and literally start stripping at the door.  We moved a futon into the living room to be closer to the air conditioner, I couldn't take the bedroom anymore.  We pretty much wore shorts and ts around the house.  Unbearably hot and my huge, huge stomach on my skinny skinny frame couldn't get cooled off enoug...

It is the Tuesday after Labor Day.  That day when almost all the kids in the nation are back-to-school and stay-at-home moms are breathing a sigh of relief...just how many more art projects can I cram into this summer? It is a time when working-moms can give their checkbook a rest...has anyone seen the cost of summer camp lately?  It is a moment to pause and appreciate the goodness of summer and then thank goodness that the sensibilities of fall are fast approaching. In the middle of our household transition from summer to fall, I noticed that our cabinets, refrigerator, pantry, and laundry room were almost literally empty of all our staples.  We really did have a busy summer, traveling every month, camps, college, surgery, too many things going on to make my monthly run to Trader Joe's and Target. I knew it was bad when I was planning to make dinner and only had $7 in my pocket, a bag of white beans and a container of chicken broth left.  What was...

What a summer! My family literally traveled every month of the summer. We saw historic monuments and awed the mountains.  We visited family. We took in the arts. Summer 2012 was epic for us. I had a major unexpected illness and surgery.  My husband ran miles along a lake.  My son took in every last possible moment with his fellow 2012 graduates before they all parted ways for their new lives in college.  We had lazy mornings and my husband had Fridays off. One thing that came back was that we are truly blessed to be able to do what we do.  Even if, as my husband says, we have to "stretch" or "figure something out" we managed to let our kids have a great experience in New York, Washington DC, Kansas City, Montgomery,and Chicago.  In between there, they celebrated an 80th birthday, had two family reunions, attended violin camp, read books, played outside, rode their bikes, went swimming, ate snow cones, and drank lots of water. Today, on Labor Day...