Communications

I need to write,

To wring out my day’s thoughts and feelings.

I wish I could communicate,

With people rather than a page.

 

I wish I could communicate.

Arguing politics or religion,

Debating mayo versus Miracle Whip,

Giving my honest opinions on the assets and faults of my favorite football team.

 

I wish I could get people to laugh and feel humor in return.

To tell someone a joke and feel proud when they laugh that I told it right.

To get a giggle and smile from someone having an otherwise bad day.

And to belly laugh in front of others without worry that the joke was at my expense.

 

But I don’t communicate because I am a chronic mis-reader of people.

I keep my opinions to me for fear of judgement from others.

Better to sit here with my non-judgmental paper and pen.

Better to keep things to myself, to just nod and smile.

Better to do that than to have it confirmed that no one cares at all.

 

I want to converse and communicate and be heard.

To not feel alone in a room full of people.

My depression’s reality

There are days spent,

in a world I create from clouds of nothing.

Where I control the whos and whys,

the whats and wheres,

the happys and sads.

I look how I want to be seen.

I visit who I want to meet.

I go places I want to explore.

I love, I laugh, I look, I talk,

without anxiety, worry, fear of judgement.

Content to be there, happy even.

Under a comforter in my bed all day.

My world on the inside.

The reality of depression.

My photography model

 

My cat Lucy is becoming more and more the subject of my photographs. I think she is beginning to love it too. She just loves the attention and is even beginning to be able to follow some simple direction like a real model.

Something stormy this way comes.

I live in the Midwest and Spring is also storm season here. And there is one brewing now.

The clouds are literally ready to burst forth rain and thunder.

Hope it isn’t too bad. I hate thunder and lightning. And so do all the pets in out house. On a night like this I can count on waking up with two seventy pound mutts and two unhappy cats in my full size bed.

Spring, baby you are a firework

I woke up a few days ago to exploding trees and I grabbed my iPhone to go on a quick adventure.

So I began at the beginning. This is actually the crooked old lady in the front yard. She was so dark and decrepit all winter. And then Spring came and gave her a make-over. Nothing too huge, just a little color to pick up her attitude.

She had enough attitude to ask for a close-up.

Of course the fireworks show for Spring included millions of bursts of green.

Even the pathway around the yard was littered with bursts of color, and anyone who reads this blog knows that purple is my signature color.

And I know the world discounts some of nature’s most bright flowers and plants as “weeds” but I would never judge such beautiful creations. Only the thorny ones are the ‘w’ word to me.

Evergreens aren’t actually green all year. At least not green like this. I thought the shape of this burst warranted a close-up.

And here she is my inspiration! She was the first tree I saw this morning that had exploded into Spring color. She is my Mona Lisa, only so much more colorful.

The dark bark against the bright purple-y pink flowers. Too pretty to pick. Thank goodness for cameras.

Perfectly posed.

On the way in was a girl not so obviously a beauty. Most people would walk past her without a second look. But she has her beauty too, it is just a more quiet kind of beauty.

Up close she had bright and beautiful red buds. And here is a secret, in the sunset she is on fire. She blazes with a beauty like no other. Soon in a future blog, I will show you her sunset beauty.

So I pondered if I should include this tiny beauty. She is a classic beauty, tiny and petite. Perfect and pink. But she is not my own, I didn’t buy her or grow her. I see her everyday and envy her from a yard away. But she was exploding with Spring’s beauty on this day that I was running around taking pictures. So I included her here. I hope you have some of Spring’s explosions where you are and that you can take some time to enjoy them. Even if they are in a neighbor’s yard.

Earth Day 2013 otherwise known as Spring finally comes to Indiana

Spring finally showed up in my neck of the woods. We had seen a little peek of her but then we had two days of frost. Spring can be fickle here. But then we had a small explosion of color in the front yard. I am so excited. Though I am young-ish, I have the very old lady hobby of loving to garden. My Grandma Kennedy taught me how to garden when I was a little kid. She would give me an old serving spoon and a pot of dirt and show me all the nuances of making something beautiful grow. And my Mom and I would spend summer days baking in the sun as we weeded the little gardens sprinkled over our acre of yard. These are grape hyacinth flowers. We have some that came from the farm my Grandma grew up on in Southern Indiana. And I have some irises from my Grandma’s old house too. I like that our garden is full of our heritage. Our family history is in bloom from Spring to Summer and I can’t wait to get some more gardening done!

href=”https://jadelonblog.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/20130422-141355.jpg”>

<a

Beauty along the road

Friday was a hard day for me. But I did not fail to notice the beauty of the nature around me during the day. At the door of the doctor’s office was where the first picture was taken. In a shady corner near the door, the small patch of grass was covered in tiny purple flowers. Purple is my signature color. So the ground cover made me smile. Hours later as I left, I noticed a large grape hyacinth in full bloom. My Grandma Kennedy loved hyacinths. I would always cut some out of our yard and give them to her in a bud vase for Easter. I took seeing these as a sign that she was watching over me. I believe she has become my guardian angel since she passed because she sends me signs that she is there. I believe the grape hyacinth was a sign because I had been to that same doctor only a few days earlier and there had not been a patch of purple flowers there before. I do choose to find meaning in these small things. I think I would miss her so much more if I never saw the heron or didn’t notice a huge bloom of grape hyacinths growing next to the sidewalk. I got really hard news at that doctor’s office that day. The next few months are going to be hard too. I am glad I have a strong guardian angel to look out for me. And I am glad I can find such spirituality in Nature.

My Easter

So I thought it was high time that I write in my blog. Originally it started out as a writing blog but as my photography skills got better my pictures kind of took over. And I am so grateful for all the positive response and new followers my pictures have brought me! But my talent has always been writing and so here we are.

Today is Easter Sunday and I consider myself a Catholic. But here I am blogging away but not in Church. I believe in God and the saints and the rituals of my religion but I have serious doubts about the politics of the Church. I have serious doubts about politics in any area in fact. But I have found it very hard to go back to Church even though I love so many things about it.

When I was growing up Church and Easter meant family. I remember going to Mass with my Grandma and Grandpa Kennedy and a gaggle of my cousins. Everyone lived closer to each other back then. We could take up three pews if we all tried to sit together, and we always did. I loved to hold hands with my family while we said the Our Father. I loved comparing our cute Easter dresses with Christy and Lauren and my Aunts. I loved standing side by side in the pews of the church with my family. I loved to pick out the voices of my Aunts as we all sang the different songs during Mass. My favorite songs were Church songs and I don’t know if it was the comfort I got knowing they were always the same ones and would always be the same ones, or if is was the words and melody that attracts me to every song I fall in love with. With Catholic Mass there is a great comfort in repetition, imagining I am saying the same prayers that had echoed through the Church for hundreds of years.

And then there was the family time after church. Whether it was an Easter egg hunt in the backyard or the pounds of ham devoured for brunch, I was with my family. At my other Grandparents house, my Great Grandma Adams always made these huge overstuffed Easter baskets and hide them around the house. I would wake up in the morning in my night gown and a knot of long curly hair on my head and groggily search the whole house. Ultimately to find an Easter basket taller then I was. And all the pictures I have of those times are some of my greatest treasures. Swarms of kids outside in their church clothes searching newly blooming flower beds for plastic eggs filled with goodies while being yelled at not to get dirty. Family pictures where my Dad and Tom have the same scowl on their faces partly from the Spring sun in their eyes and partly because they were forced into neckties. I remember trying eggs Benedict for the first time at my Aunt Jan’s house for one Easter. I love the feeling of a huge family stuffed into a slightly too small house and celebrating not only the holiday but simply being together.

But these days things have changed. Both my Grandpa and Grandma Kennedy have passed on and my Great Grandma Adams and my Uncle Joe and too many others. As the family has grown up, they have spread out too. I am lucky to get to see people from either side more than once a year. I know that all things change and the happiness they have found in growing up and having families of their own brings me so much joy. I thank God everyday for things like Facebook and cell phones because they keep us connected. But with Church it is harder to find the joy that used to be there. I still believe in God and living a good life. I say my Hail Marys often and ask for forgiveness when I feel I have done something wrong. But when I walk into Church, I can’t hear the beauty in the music anymore. I don’t feel the comfort in the prayers that I used to. And I hope the feeling won’t last forever, I honestly do. Until then I know God still hears me and that my Grandma Kennedy sends me signs to show me she is still watching over me and is my strongest Guardian Angel. And I will cherish the one or two times a years when I get to squish into a house a little too small for all of us.

So I do want to wish Happy Easter to everyone who celebrates whether religiously or bunny-centric or a little of both!

Sorry for the lack of blogging

 

I have been so sick for the last few days. My poor family has also been sick. I find it super hard to be creative when I feel so bad. So I have been super lazy about blogging. And for anyone else who is under the weather, I hope you GET WELL soon!

My Grandpa’s Birthday, The Aftermath

 

This is one of my favorite old Polaroids. The guy with the baby is my Dad. And I am sleeping away sweetly in his arms. Behind us are my two Grandpas. My Mom’s Dad, Grandpa Kennedy, is on the left and my Dad’s Dad, Grandpa Delon, is on the right. Today was my Grandpa Delon’s 80th birthday. But along with being happy for him and grateful to still have a close relationship with him, I inevitably started thinking about him being 80. That isn’t exactly young. A few years ago I lost my Grandma Kennedy, my Mom’s Mom. It was a devastating shock for our whole family. And my Mom’s Dad passed away when I was 19. He suffered for so long and I knew that no matter how sad it made me, he was truly in a better place. So the time I do have with my other Grandparents is very valuable to me. And I can only hope that my Grandpa stays healthy and happy because I am so very bad at saying good bye.