I was staring out the dusty screen door of our canary-yellow, cookie-cutter rambler when I first realized he had superpowers. ....Watching him, I learned there must be something deeply satisfying about rowing a boat you made with your own hands. In so doing, you earned the pleasure of it all. And somehow, building that boat built him.
Beliefs are an amazing thing. Though intangible, they have a weight and power all their own. They can propel us to great heights or they can keep us chained to the ground. What is a belief after all- it is just a thought you have over and over until you take it to be the incontrovertible truth. Maybe it starts with evidence. I believe in gravity, for example. That belief is reinforced as I stick to the ground with every step. Maybe it starts with intuition or faith...
I was listening to a series of lectures by Pema Chödrön the other day. She is a Buddhist nun and teacher who I find very insightful and inspirational. In her lecture, she said something to the effect that we should never underestimate the human drive to avoid discomfort. I was taken aback by the sheer… Continue reading Growing Pains (There’s a reason why they’re not called Growing Joys.)
As soon as I shut the door, I knew. I heard the click of the lock and my stomach sank to my feet. I collapsed forward. My forehead hit the top of the window giving me an unobstructed view of my purse and both sets of my car keys sitting prominently on the passenger seat mocking me. Don’t ask why I had both sets of car keys, I have no idea. With a symphony of colorful words going through my mind, I raced around the Jeep trying each door even though I knew they too would be locked. I called my husband. I’m not sure what kind of magic I thought he could do from 15 miles away. His first question, “Where’s your spare?” had me banging my head on the glass.
She was three and a half when I spied her heading for the front door out of the corner of my eye. She shuffled down the hall in a pair of my black heels intently watching her feet. On one side, her tiny fingers were outstretched to the wall for balance. On the other, she had slung her diaper bag over her shoulder. It skipped and bounced across the carpet with each awkward step. I was curious, so I let her go.
Last weekend, my best friend and I recruited a few enthusiastic volunteers (our husbands and one of our dear friends) and we pressed 400 pounds of grape must. I have been making wine from kits for about 20 years with pretty solid success. In addition to getting about 30 bottles of delicious vino for my troubles, I have always marveled in the process.\...
For the last couple of weekends, I have been shooting my daughter’s senior portraits. It was so special to me that I was able to do this for her- that she wanted me to do this for her. Though I have shot a number of senior portraits and I always feel honored to do it, this one had a weight to it. I was at once thrilled and saddened at the mere thought of it...
I remember when we picked him up. After months of looking, we found him at a breeder in Omak. My husband has a knack for tracking down the best pups. Dog-less for a year or more, we finally decided it was time for our daughter to have her own dog. After much negotiations on breed, color and sex, we settled on a brindle Boxer of either gender....
The summer before 5th grade, my father took me on a week-long backpacking trip in Glacier National Park. We planned the trip over the spring on our every-other-weekend visits. My dad pinned a map to the wall in the living room of his one-bedroom apartment. Back then, the map shifted from grey to a deep green as you looked east across the page. In my child’s mind, I imagined an endless park stretching across the state. In thick black ink, he traced the route across Washington and Idaho. The line snaked through Kalispell and north to Hungry Horse. Montana sounded so exotic....
I have a confession to make. I have a box in my garage that I take out every time I am wondering about whether I am making a difference in this world. It’s not full of trophies. There are no framed awards in the box. Nothing is engraved or embossed. It is a box of notes and gifts I received as a teacher. Some are on beautifully printed cards. Most are on college ruled paper. Some of the things in the box only I would understand- like ....
One of the challenges of parenting is knowing how much information to give your child. I remember my daughter once asked me where rain comes from. In retrospect, the correct answer at the time was “It falls from clouds in the sky.” But I was a science teacher, so I was a full paragraph into the technical aspects of the water cycle before my husband intervened wisely with “It comes from clouds in the sky.” Her eyes had glazed over ....
In a couple of weeks, my daughter will begin her senior year. Stamped in my mind and on my heart is a picture of her decked out in pink from head to toe; smiling from ear to ear; proudly carrying her backpack filled to the brim with fresh school supplies on her first day of kindergarten. She was raised in school. She was only a few weeks old when she attended her first wrestling match. She toddled on the track in the spring and by fall she was learning to walk at the football games. She gazed pie-eyed at the glittery cheerleaders and clapped gleefully at band concerts. Sometimes on the weekend, she would ride her trike up and down the hall outside my office.So, when it came time for kindergarten...
I’ve had so many friends over the years who describe gardening as a zen-like experience. I, myself, have had zen-like experiences but never while gardening. I don’t doubt my plant-loving friends. I find that zen feeling while cycling or painting or staring through my lens or doing yoga. I want to love gardening. I want… Continue reading Elusive Zen of Gardening
When I was a little kid, I felt strangely like two different people. In retrospect, I imagine that other children of divorce felt the same way. But it was the 70’s and divorce was rare in our Catholic community, so I didn’t have anyone to compare my experience with....Those two parts of me converged one day on the snowy hills of Snoqualmie Pass with an object lesson I will never forget.
On that day, I learned that the limits of my personal strength were so much greater than I had ever imagined. I learned that sometimes people need an object lesson in their ignorance, but there is no reason to rub it in their face. Actions speak louder than words and experience is the best teacher. I learned that I might not be able to change other people’s long held beliefs, but I don’t have to be a victim to them either. I learned that people may try to set limits for me, but I don’t have to accept those limits. I learned I was stronger that I thought.
It got me thinking about the purpose of my own life. That is one of the biggest of all questions. Why do I exist? For that matter, why do Woodchucks exist? Or Banana Slugs? I believe there is a purpose for everything (– to paraphrase Ecclesiastes 3:1 and The Mamas and The Papas). I believe I have led a purpose-driven life....
Marriage isn’t always easy. In my experience, it’s not endless days of wine and roses. It is knowing someone knows you better than anyone else and loves you for everything you are – everything. It is knowing that person has your back – always. It is knowing that love shared, in the end, will always dwarf the stress, fear, grief, and pain inevitable in this life.
Everyone should have a walk up song. We should be celebrating the amazing things we do with the same passion that a teenage softball player does when she hears her walk up song playing on the way to home plate.
I thought this post would be easier to write. I realize that no matter how carefully chosen, my words will likely be inadequate. It is ironic since I have entitled this “Nothing Left Unsaid”, and yet, surely, there will be something left unsaid....
Being a mom is a humbling experience. I have learned more from my daughter in the last 18 years than I learned in any classroom....
I am not a gambler. In fact, the betting window would be closed and the race long over before I even identified all of the variables or made my first graph. The horses would have died of old age before I analyzed all of the data. ...The truth is, the world is not always predictable or quantifiable. Yes friends, I said it. You can’t measure or calculate everything. And it turns out that some of the most rewarding things in life come after a massive leap of faith into the unknown.
We all have, to make a lasting impact on other people’s lives. We just need to remember what the best coaches know.
If you visit our house, you will get a warm welcome from the four-legged creatures and, of course, the two-legged ones. Buttercup, our two-year-old Boxer (or The Toddler as we affectionately call her), monitors the door vigilantly...
The fact is that weeds are just flowers that grow where you don’t want them too. Sometimes their beauty is missed because they are inconvenient or not what we wanted...
That's how life is really. We can stay on the surface where it is plain and dull. It takes no effort at all. You don't get messy. The only pain is boredom or loneliness. But if you put some effort in; if you are willing to get a little messy; if you are willing to scratch beneath the surface- well that is where the beauty in life lies. Beneath the surface. And I have found that those parts of my life forged in a little fire are the most beautiful parts of all...
Sometimes things just happen, good and bad, that you just can’t predict. Despite my propensity for planning and my natural tendency toward being a hunter, I have learned that sometimes you have to roll with the punches and trust there is a lesson you need to learn. I didn’t always feel this way. No, this is a lesson I learned the hard way (my preferred method even as a young adult)....
What if we all believed that we could get better at something, master it even, just by learning from our mistakes and trying again? What if we didn’t have a story about the past that limited our experience in the present? What if we saw our failures as learning and not as personal deficits? What if we believed we could change the outcome merely through increasing our effort and applying our talents? What if we acknowledged and acted upon the possibility that we might have talents we have not yet discovered?
He looked me in the eye and in a quiet voice said, “There is going to come a day not too many years from now when you are going to want me to trust you...
No longer able to rotate and move the bike forward, physics prevailed, and I flew over the handle bars. With extensive experience falling off things, I tucked my head, hit the pavement with my right shoulder and tried to roll through. Unfortunately...
Don’t get me wrong, education is absolutely important. Everyone needs a good education. Having a job or career that fits your life is important. But a life is so much more than that. And what is important in life is so much more than that. Knowing you are part of a family ....
It takes just one person in your life to change your whole trajectory. One person who sees all that you can be. One person who sees your gifts not your challenges. One person who knows you have it in you to do the hard work....
I found myself sifting through old Easter pictures this week. It’s not surprising really. I often find myself looking back when holidays roll around. This is one of my favorite Easter pictures. I keep a copy on my desk. My daughter was three in this picture and the youngest of a herd of kids at… Continue reading You’re Never Too Old for a Little Joy
My grandpa lived a simple life. He loved big and loud and true. He hugged with gusto and danced with abandon. He was the solid part of my quicksand life. I learned so much from him...
My daughter is a junior this year. She is our only child. The good Lord blessed us with only one child but, in so doing, He blessed us every single day after. In just over a year, she will leave us to go off to college and start this new adventure. The part of her life where she becomes an adult independent of us. Every day I fight the primal urge to cover her in bubble wrap leaving holes only so that she can breathe...
Let me just say at the outset, I know that this story is going to reveal with lights and sirens the unhealthy relationship I have (or had) with my Jeep, Angus. Yes, I named it. Don’t judge. We were together for 10 years...
I was two months into my first year in a new school when I found myself hunched over a lunch table in the staff room praying for an earthquake. Not a big earthquake...
When I was a new teacher, I applied for a job in a small town in northwest Washington. I remember driving into town wearing my most professional skirt suit, firmly ensconced in my big old pickup truck. It was a beautiful drive from my house 52 miles away on country roads they brazenly labeled highways...
In the fall of 1988, I started my teacher training at Seattle University. Armed with a newly printed Bachelor of Science in Biology from the University of Alaska, I enthusiastically set off to change the world – one sophomore at a time...
As I was driving home from work tonight, Corey Hart’s Never Surrender came on. You probably will only know this song if you were embroiled in teenage angst or young adult drama in the mid-1980s. It was the theme song for that. I remember it because I recorded it on cassette tape and sent it to my best friend, naively hoping it might help to wake her up...
My daughter missed her dentist appointment this week. In general, she is a very responsible teenager. I only bring it up because every time I hear the word dentist, I can’t help but run my tongue over the edge of my top right front tooth. You see, I have a chip in my top right front tooth. It is not...
My first was Charlie. You always have a soft spot in your heart for your first. He was a blonde who had the subtlest hints of caramel. I loved running my fingers through his hair. He was short, a bit overweight and not at all athletic ...
I had a very rocky start to my Tuesday morning. Keep in mind, I am a morning person. I jump out of bed no matter how early it is and greet my dogs (I even named one of my dogs Buttercup just so I could say “What’s up Buttercup?” every morning...
I am going to preface this post with “No children were harmed in the making of the story” (well not permanently anyway). If you were a child of the 1970s...
I was sitting at Finaghty’s Irish Pub the night before we celebrated the life of my father...
Over the course of this week, as we prepare to celebrate my dad’s life, we have all been poring over pictures. And I remember so much of what I forgot. And I see things I didn’t know but they are so obvious to me now...
I was sitting on a plastic couch in a hospital waiting room sobbing in that heart wrenching way you do when you are racked with grief. I had just finished the making those difficult phone call to friends and family, when one of my sisters sat down beside me. She put her arm around me as I wept. She gave me a squeeze and said, “Hey. Come on. Lean in.”
I think at the end of a life, it is the little things you remember most. The seemingly inconsequential moments become indelibly written on our minds and hearts. ..
I have never been one for New Year’s Resolutions. I think it might be my very well-hidden but absolutely well-developed rebellious side. Oh, I keep it in check ...
A couple of years ago, all of my sisters descended upon the eldest’s home in the sweltering heat of mid-July in Arizona. We came to sort through boxes of pictures my mother had kept...
Before the digital age of photography, we printed our pictures and mounted them in albums. We had wedding albums, graduation albums, christening albums and vacation albums. We made scrapbooks chronicling every detail of our child’s life ...
I think people fall into one of two categories naturally. Oh sure, people can change. People can even change back and forth. But we all have a fall back type we are most comfortable with. I think people are either hunter or gatherers....
Last night I went to my favorite Christmas party. I have been attending this party for 26 years,...
I am a very competitive person. Now, I know what you are thinking. You’ve heard that before usually from someone who is really nice and says it with a slightly deprecating laugh as if ...
I have lived in the shadow of the Cascades for most of my life. Slogging through traffic on a clear day, I am struck by the deep blues of the sky framing Mount Baker in the distance...
I love school. I love it so much in fact I have spent 42 years of my life in school and another 6 supporting schools so far. Basically, I was 4 the last time a whole year went by and...
On the walls in my office hang three signed limited edition Judi Rideout prints, one signed limited edition Jon Van Zyle print and an original watercolor by an artist who shares my last name. Guess which one I love the most. If you guessed the water color on construction....
Last weekend, I found myself once again standing in the middle of a bridge at dawn. My youngest sister was in town for the Thanksgiving holiday and I took her up to see the Eagles on the Skagit river. There was a brief misunderstanding wherein she thought we were going to see Joe Walsh at sunset....
When I was a little girl, my father gave me a copy of Marguerite Henry’s All About Horses. He worked for a publishing company and loved books so it wasn’t unusual for me to get one for my birthday...
Twenty-nine years ago, I was a student teacher in my home town. As you can imagine, I was so enthusiastic. I vibrated with idealism. I waltzed into....
I think this is my very favorite picture and that is saying a lot given the sheer volume of my collection. I didn't take this picture but when I look at it I truly wish I had met the man who did. When...
I think in just about every situation we can learn something. It has been my experience that it's usually something we need to learn right when it is time to learn it. It is not always something we want to learn. It’s been my experience unfortunately that the universe...
When I was a kid, my dad gave me Masterpiece for my birthday. It was a board game in the mid 1970's much like ...
I’ve always wished that I could be one of those women who goes through life with nothing more than their cell phone in their back pocket ensconced in one of those really cute Kate Spade cases...
Last Sunday morning at 0530, I found myself next to an empty field on the outskirts of Concrete, Washington. No, I was not deposited there after an alien abduction. Also I am too old to pull an all-nighter (debauchery-filled or otherwise) so I was not in the clothes I wore the day before, if you know what I mean. No, I was there intentionally. In fact, I had intended to be there in late September or early October but life, as it sometimes does, got away from me. I was hoping to photograph one of the elk herds in the area.
I like really old stuff. I have so much antique glassware my husband recently told me he thought we might have to fortify the foundation of our house. Hyperbole not withstanding, I have a lot. I like drinking out of glasses my grandparents drank out of. I like eating off of plates that were used to celebrate holidays and births generations ago. Though inanimate, I feel like my 100 year old cordials hold in their shiny molecules the sum of their history of wakes and weddings, birthdays and baptisms, conflicts and congratulations. This is my lofty goal for my photographs...
Confession time. I was a science major. There, I said. It’s out. What a relief! Does that mean I am not also an artist? Well frankly, I sure thought so. In fact, I could make you a chart quantifying my non-artistic characteristics. (My friends are shaking their collective heads right now both in exasperation and agreement- I really will make you a chart. It will be a work of art.) I thought people were basically artists or scientists. And every other “ist” was just a branch of those two categories. Clearly, I spent too much time on Linnaeus. In my overly dichotomous mind, I am a scientist. I definitely see the world through that lens. Even when I am literally looking through my lens, ...
I am a morning person. I love the stillness of the morning. I love the way the groggy silence envelops me. Everything slows down. Without the noise that fills every other space in the rest of my day, I can see so much more clearly. I can hear my own voice so much more loudly. My favorite mornings are the cold fall mornings when the earth is on the verge of waking up. The air is crisp and cold. A veil of fog hangs from branches pelting my cheeks. My breath billows and clings...
When my daughter started rowing four years ago, I had a lot to learn. And of course, the ink wasn’t even dry on the check for rowing camp before I was grabbing my camera and heading for the shore. Needless to say that even shooting wildlife, I was used to a much slower subjects. Everything is a sloth next to a junior rower. Though I felt really comfortable working with my gear, there was just so much I didn't know about shooting a race on water and it seemed like I was in the middle of figuring one thing out when the boats zoomed by - picture the aquatic version of a roadrunner cartoon...
The truth is I probably get a good shot about 1 in 5 times. (And that might be generous.) I recently got a new computer and transferred over 23000 Images. That means I’ve shot over 100,000. This doesn’t include the years BD (Before Digital). I fail far more often than I am successful. And failing is a skill we need to learn to do better. We live in this instant, reward-based culture. We give up too easily. Some things take a lifetime to perfect. The fact is life isn’t instant or reward-based. We learn from failure. We learn the skill better ultimately. I’m a better photographer for having to figure out what I didn’t do correctly. I’m a better person for my failures. I learned perseverance. I learned compassion. I learned how to solve problems. (According to my dad, I got character.) Don’t get me wrong, I love a trophy and an A+ but I only value the ones I got the hard way. The ones born of struggle hang on the walls of my heart and mind. ...
One Sunday morning - ok practically the middle of the night- I convinced my husband to accompany me on a quest to shoot the sunrise over the Port of Everett. I knew the exact spot. I had glimpsed in passing these abandoned pilings of piers unused for decades. They had an almost romantic quality. I could see grizzled men tying up tenders and wrangling flotillas of logs. In my mind, the sun would rise slowly over my back revealing the shore bathed in golden sunlight. The tide of course would be halfway out exposing fragile creatures scurrying for cover. The glossy texture of the lazy tide would contrast perfectly with the grit of rock and barnacles. Predatory shorebirds would swoop and soar in the tableau....
If you’re old as I am, you probably remember buying film. Film was a relationship. Film was like giving up the lease on your apartment and moving in with your boyfriend. You committed. You committed to black-and-white or color. You committed to speed. You committed to brand. You loaded it into your camera and unless you were really good at reeling it back in and forwarding it to just the right spot (and I’m not -hence the scary ghost pictures of my dog at the beach- but more about that later), you shot the roll – the whole roll. And then you waited for days for the film to be developed. If you were lucky, you had more good shots than bad ones.
We are bombarded with images. Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook deliver cute, scary, heartwarming, devastating, lush, and stark to our mental doorsteps every day. Don't get me wrong, I love a photographic documentary of a puppy raised with a lion cub who become lifelong friends as much as the next person. I just think that we are exposed to ordinary magic every day and we miss it because we are just not present.
I suppose like all photographers I began very young. My first memory was of my dad lying on the ground in Volunteer Park in Seattle shooting up and to an awkward angle as brilliantly colored cyclist raced wildly around the corner on the knife-blade edges of racing slicks. I was fascinated and I was hooked.I carried around a cheap point and click for years wasting who knows how much on cartridge film ...
