A glorious visit

From the MIM, here’s the Artists’s Gallery experience:

ARTIST GALLERY

Celebrate music’s most influential artists.

In every time and place, there are musicians whose art deeply touches the lives of many. MIM’s Artist Gallery highlights these personalities with ever-changing exhibits that span sound, style, and era. Through generous partnerships, MIM features historic instruments owned, played, and loved by the musicians who have created a shared soundtrack to our lives for generations.

Nearly 40 displays showcase instruments and artifacts from some of the greatest musicians in the world. See and hear instruments played by icons such as Elvis Presley®, Tito Puente, the Carter Family and Johnny Cash, Roberta Flack, Glen Campbell, Joan Baez, Maroon 5, and many others.

https://mim.org/artist-gallery/#

Here are a few photos from my aunt’s visit:

What is your idea of a perfect house guest? What do you like to do when entertaining company?

A welcome visit

brother with two sisters
Mom, her older brother and my aunt who my mom practically raised.

Who are visitors that you welcome with open arms?

Beware the Ides of March

Mom and me in the 1990s.
My mom and me in the 1990s.

Today would have been my mother’s birthday. The Ides of March. (Mom died New Year’s Day.) Today I’m going to my brother’s house and we will reminisce and have dinner with family including my mom’s little sister who is 13 years younger than mom.

My mom often told me that she raised her little sister.

My cousin wrote me a loving sympathy letter that included a funny story I had never heard before about Mom, my aunt (my cousin’s mom) and red squares.

My aunt had a friend over and my mom, as the older sister, had them in a competition to earn red cloth squares. I’m not sure what ages they were, but Mom had them busy doing chores. They would earn a red cloth square for finishing their chore first.

I talked to my aunt about it and she said whoever earned the most red squares won the grand prize. She said she wanted the grand prize more than anything!

She won — and the grand prize turned out to be a bigger red cloth square.

Mom was a strong Christian and I have memories of her giving us a Bible verse each morning. She typed hundreds of them on 3 1/2 by 2″ cards.

She was big on chores and that’s one thing I despised the most coming home from school. We’d come home to an empty house, as latch key kids when Mom was earning her degree in Music at the University of Washington. She already had a degree in Home-Ec Education. Mom would leave a legal-sized yellow sheet of college-ruled paper with both sides filled with chores to be done before she got home. She had an ineligible scrawl that was hard to read.

I realize now, she not only wanted dinner cooked, the dishes done, the house vacuumed, the garage swept (you get the idea) — she was keeping my brother and I out of trouble. She was keeping us busy.

Tomorrow we spread her ashes at our riverfront property.

Here’s a photo of her in her teens or early twenties at the river.

What chores did you have growing up? Did you have your children do chores too?

Feeling a little blue

mother and daughter
Mother Daughter photo.

I miss my mom. She passed away New Year’s day this year. I’ve been really busy and have felt pretty good most of the time. But today it hit me.

My daughter warned me that grief will come in waves. She lost a close friend to suicide not long ago and has struggled through her grief. She said just like waves come in sets, so does grief.

I was running errands and stopped to pick up mail before I drove home. There was a dear letter from my aunt (my mom’s little sister) that included a booklet about Heaven. There was also mail from CenterPoint church in Utah, where my husband’s childhood best friend is pastor and founded the church.

The letter from my aunt was encouraging me to reflect on my mom being in a better place. The synchronicity of receiving these letters and booklet gave me chills and warmed my heart. It was not a coincidence. I got the message right when I needed it.

What is the difference between coincidence and synchronicity?

Coincidence and synchronicity are related but distinct terms. The term “coincidence” describes a seemingly related series of events that occur without apparent cause. The term “synchronicity” requires that the individual ascribe deeper meaning to the coincidence; indeed, Carl Jung described synchronicity as “meaningful coincidences.”

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/synchronicity

What are your thoughts about coincidence and synchronicity? Do you have any examples that have happened to you? I wrote about it a few months ago HERE.