Ohhh, that's how y'all do it?

My grandmother is wonderful and she is very funny.  She has been quite gracious over the years about allowing us to laugh 'with' her.  She laughs a lot and she is perfectly comfortable laughing at herself.  She has taught me about why that is important.

She says funny things.  Often.  She says funny things and we latch onto them, and she has to hear them, repeated with a sarcasm only afforded to family members, for years and years.

A few years ago (I believe it was while playing cards), she said, "Oh, that's how y'all do it?  That's not how we do it.  We . . . . . "

Let me break this down for you.  Here is what it really means.  You poor thing; you do it like that?  Oh, Honey, precious darling, that's not the right way.  Let me tell you the right way to do it and then you'll know.


For instance, 'Oh you play cards like a bunch of morons under water?  Allow me to show how to really play.  There are rules.'

Or 'Sweetie, you actually cook in this kitchen?  I'll bring the correct accoutrement next time, so we can actually cook something.'

Do you get the picture?  She has an understanding of things in a way that little ole us just cannot grasp.  It's that simple.

Well, sometimes a granddaughter must borrow a phrase from her paternal grandmother, and so today I am putting her quip to good use.  Today I will be the one who really gets it and you will be the y'all.  Here goes . . .


Oh, that's how y'all do it?  You put a load of sorted laundry into the washer.  And then you swiftly change them to the dryer, pulling them out just ahead of the finish time to avoid wrinkling.  Then you gently take the fresh, clean clothes and gently place them upon a folding surface, flat and smooth and clear of debris.  And then you immediately set about folding them perfectly, while each clothing item is a morsel of springtime.  Next, of course, you move quickly and efficiently from room to room, lovingly stacking and arranging each loved one's latest cleansed wardrobe items in each photo-worthy closet.  


That's how you do it?  How odd.  How very odd.


That's not how we do it.   We throw a load of clothes into the washer on the way outside to deliver someone to somewhere and the wet laundry in the washer just has to sit at the end of the wash cycle, one moist piece upon the other.  


Next, we remember we need to change over the load to the dryer and we say a word or two that might not be acceptable in mixed company and we dash up the stairs towards the laundry room, barely missing the masses of abandoned items on the stairs.  


Then we transfer the clothes into the dryer, though a few smaller pieces fall out and land on the floor.  (We'll deal with them later, when we decide whether they are dirty and need to go into the washer or if the are clean and need to find their way to the dryer.)  


We forget about the lonely load by then, dismissing the finishing bell as some 'strange noise' we cannot explain.  


The clothes then spend some good, quality time inside the dryer.  The wrinkles set in while everyone in there gets to know each other better.  


Next, some someone, some desperate someone, in search of the one item that will make their outfit complete; pulls open the dryer door with the strength of the Jolly Green Giant and sticks a head into the dryer well to fetch said item.  At this point, a few more pieces from the load take their place in the floor.  Someone will deal with that later, this someone dreams.


Someone else comes along - someone attempting to be helpful - finds the long-left load in the dryer and lovingly wraps both arms around the wrinkled mess and whisks it away to the safety of the big white chair in Mama and Daddy's room.  

While upon the white chair, some of the laundry that is clean falls close to some of the clothes that were dirty, and there is a melding, a joining together, of these two very different animals.  It confuses us and so we walk away.

That's how WE do it!

And now for a word about yesterday's WHAT IS IT? photo contest.

The mystery photo looked like this:

And it was actually part of this:

There was no random drawing this morning between the correct answers - there were many guesses but only one was right!  Amy H. is the winner!  Yay!  Amy, would you like the photo session or  the accordian mini-album?

Thanks for playing, friends!

MONDAY MORNING / WHAT IS IT? 4-9-12

A Happy Monday to you all!  I hope your Easter celebrations were joyous!

Let's get this week started . . . have a look at the photo below and try to guess what it is.

Send your guess to me through email (graham.deana@gmail.com) or message me on fb.  Make sure you've 'liked' the Deana Graham Photography Page on facebook to play.  On Tuesday morning I'll choose the winner at random (random.org) from the correct guesses.  The winner will receive a free photo session to be used within a month.  (If you have already had a shoot, or are scheduled for one, I'll be happy to make you an accordian mini book instead.  You'll love it!)  Send me your guess - you might win!  Thanks for playing and spreading the word!

List Thirteen - Five things to consider on Good Friday

1. This is a strange day, and my children always ask the smart question . . . "Why is Good Friday good?"  There are many explanations for why Christians call this day good, but I tend go with the one that explains how early modern English used the word good to mean holy.  I like that explanation.  And far more than that, I am thankful for all that this weekend means.  I'm thankful for the many ways that my Christianity allows me to begin again and over again every day.  I'm thankful that I am given Holy Week each and every year to prepare for Easter, and I am eternally grateful for all of the ways that I KNOW that Easter is about way more than a new dress and great chocolate candy.  
2. If you have never participated in a foot washing celebration, I wish you would force yourself to sometime or another.  Every Maundy Thursday, I dread going to the service; and every year I am so glad that I did.
3. Spend some time today and tomorrow considering new life, beginnings, starting fresh.  Sometimes this holiday is hard to really think about when there are too many plastic eggs around, so maybe we can use them as props.  Hold an egg (plastic or real), study a bird's nest on your porch, take a moment to stare into the face of a child or concentrate on one of the fresh blooms in your yard - then spend a while feeling thankful.
4. Try finding out something about how someone different celebrates in the springtime - it's always interesting to hear how very much alike we all are.
5. Get in your car.  Roll the windows down.  Listen to The Indigo Girls - Southland in the Springtime.  Proceed smiling.  (Please don't ever tell me if you do not like that song.)

A thoughtful and thankful Good Friday to you, friends.   And may you get to sing happy Easter songs all day on Sunday.

The Road to the Mexican Restaurant . . .

As I said yesterday, no matter how many times I learn, I should never allow myself to think "Wow, I am just awesome at this parenting stuff!"  But, alas, it happened again a few days ago.

Here is the deal.  We were having a wonderful Saturday.  Tim and I had promised ourselves and each other that we would make sure that getting outside and getting some exercise was the main goal of the day.  It was a beautiful one, the temperature was just right and there were no excuses not to get the kids out to enjoy it (or to at least get them out and explain to them that they were enjoying it).  Stuff got in the way, though, as it is apt to do when there is a house full of kids around.  A bunch of nice of kids ended up at our house and everybody was having a ball.  We decided to put off our family field trip to bike or hike or whatever.

We were feeling laid-back and allowing the house to be trashed, screaming kids to run through and lots of kitchen items to be whisked 'secretly' from the house to be used for things I'm not sure I want to know about.  It was a good day.  I worked on some editing, Tim worked on his sermon and small people of various sizes and sexes ran back and forth.  We finally reached that point that it becomes quite clear that to keep the day a good memory, the children must be put back in their own homes.  You know the moment - they can't stop fussing, everyone is speaking in a high-pitched animal-like whine, they can't stand the look of each other and they are begging to spend the night together - THAT moment.

Being the perfect parent that I was at the time, I offered to take everyone home in the back of the truck.  (In this time of fear, vigilance, rules, etc., a ride in the back of the truck through our neighborhood is the closest thing we can offer to the care-free fun of our own childhoods.)  My offer was enthusiastically accepted and the gang of mostly boys piled in for the ride.  They alternated between smile and tired whine on the ride home, were dropped off dirty and smelly in the driveways of their houses, and I returned home with just my own.  That's when I, in my infinite wisdom, concocted the way to save our early morning promise of 'getting the family outside together to exercise and enjoy the day.'

I got home and excitedly offered Tim my plan.  In his usual willingness to indulge me and my wishes, he agreed.  We would walk together, as a happy family, to 'the Mexican restaurant' near our house.  It would be wonderful.  We would laugh and hold hands and soak in the springtime air.  We would get our exercise and we would be together on an itty bitty journey of magic memory making.

This restaurant is very close to us.  As the crow flies, it isn't even a mile.  As the crow flies.  As the crow flies.  As the crow flies.

As the family walks, it is not as simple.  Though I often pretend it is not so, our home backs up to a very busy road.  The street has four names, none of which help make it sound any less busy; and the worst of which is 'The By-Pass.'  It's not the kind of road along which you often see your neighbors walking.  I had saved the day already, though.  On our truck ride of happiness, I had spotted what I knew to be a secret and nicely cleared path, which would grant us easy walking straight to the restaurant.  It would be wonderful.

This new path I noticed, would allow us to stroll gaily through our neighborhood, through the wooded beauty beyond and spit us out on this 'by-pass' for just a split second walk to the chips and salsa of our dreams.  It was all worked out.  Tim and I were ready to go, but for the chore (which neither of us offered) of telling our children.  Somehow, we knew, we knew in that way only a parent knows, that these precious little offspring of ours were not going to jump for joy at this idyllic offering of love and open air.

We told them.  It did not go well.  We did the best we could, we forged ahead and we reveled in the fact that two of the three faked happiness about the whole idea.  We found matching lace up shoes for all five of us (this is harder than it may sound), we gave Sadie a treat and we headed off to familial bliss.

The neighborhood portion of the trip was just fine.  Harry found a Louisville Slugger bat he had lost six months ago in a friend's yard, we enjoyed catching up and the bug spray we had force-sprayed upon the children worked.  And then, more quickly than I had remembered, we came upon this new miracle trail I had spotted.  "Hmmmmm," I thought, as it didn't seem to be headed off in the trajectory we needed to cut off the by-pass.  It was our only hope, so we trotted along.  I prayed, desperately hoped, that the direction it appeared to be going was not actually the direction it WAS going.  I was wrong.

In approximately nine seconds we had come to the end of the miracle trail.  It had spit us out on the by-pass, about fifty yards from our neighborhood entrance and not the quarter mile down the road that I had worked out in my brilliant mind.

Hmmmm.  Folks weren't as happy then as I had hoped.  Tim and one child cheerfully headed off along the unkempt shoulder of this busy road, and the rest of us followed.  It was not pretty.

One child marched in a fear of being spotted by anyone, mortified about walking along among the debris.  It wasn't a smooth walk, as the littered cans, broken glass and road-kill forced a jagged course. The front two made a lot of ground quickly, as I fell farther and farther behind with the child who cannot walk and talk at the same time.  The child who feared being spotted walked angrily along in the middle, fifty feet from the front two or the two of us in the back.

I was fortunate to be walking with a happy child, but one who needed to stop and smell the . . .  well, stop and smell stuff.  We wondered about things.  We wondered how things had gotten there, why people litter, how each of the fried creatures on the road's edge had met their death and any number of other items.  We did not move fast.  Cars whirred by us and our conversation was muffled.  So then, of course, we had to stop and start it again.  We had a swell visit, we did, as the rest of the thirty or so thousand of our town passed us.  Sometimes we had to go way down in the grassy brush to head off an impediment and sometimes we had to hold hands and walk closer to the tarmac of doom.  There were no birds whistling happily in the sky at this point; or if they were there, we could not hear them.

Way up ahead I witnessed two of the family turn into the safety of the restaurant parking lot.  They had reached the summit; now just three of us to go.  Eventually the lone child in the center veered in, safe and still as overjoyed as ever.  The last two of us, though, took our time.  We had things to discuss, stuff to wonder about and piles of once-living things to investigate.  It took a while.

Finally, all five of us were safe.  We had made it.  We hadn't actually heard a word each other had said the majority of the stroll, but we were there.  We joined the throngs of folks who had taken the easy way out and simply arrived in their heaps of metal and fiberglass.  Bless their hearts.

The waitress asked if we'd like to sit inside or out, and I overtook the wishes of the other four and yelled out for a table outside, overlooking the beautiful bypass we had just enjoyed, up close and personal.  It was pleasant sitting outside, and luckily everyone agreed.  Dinner was ordered and folks were happy.   Everything tasted just right and the sun set silently over the East Newton skies.

Mid-bite of some morsel of deliciousness I realized something that was not a happy thought.  It was dark.  Dark.  Dark, like when you can't see where you are walking.  Dark.

We began to consider our options.  Should we call a friend, get a ride and suffer the laughter that would ensue?  Normally, it is impossible to eat at this particular restaurant without seeing friends or acquaintances at at least four of the six closest tables; this night, however, the place seemed to be inhabited by only strangers from afar.  They were not our friends.  They were outsiders, taking the places of familiar faces.  They were no help.

Eventually, Tim decided he would walk back along, fetch the car and come back to retrieve us - our knight in shining mini-van.  Harry couldn't pass up that adventure, and went along.  And that was when sheer, pure bliss came over the faces of the girls.  That was the moment of the whole debacle they loved the most!  The eased up, enjoyed the last few bites of Mexican vittles and everything from then on was lovely.  They were safe, relieved of the embarrassment of the walk of doom; saved from the immense effort that would have been needed to scale the embankments of grossness.

Somehow it all worked out.  I guess.  It was not the moment of shining parenting perfection I had envisioned hours before, but we were all safely home.  We had walked.  We had been outside.  We had eaten dinner.  And, through thick, thin and road-kill, we had done it all together.

Parenting perfection . . .

Every now and then, things are just wonderful.  You know what I mean.  The sun is shining (it always is when you have this feeling), the little folks in your home are not killing each other at that exact moment and for no particular reason, you just think you're a swell parent.   Usually (as in any other arena when you begin to think too highly of yourself) one, two or three children burst your bubble and send you plummeting back to earth - but for that moment, that one shining moment, your home could be on a television show.

I remember one day a few years ago when I began to have those magic thoughts inside (Deana, Deana, Deana, you are really a great one.  You are THE mother today; these children are so, so lucky.)  I should know by this point that the immediate second that I think anything like that, I should STOP - I will soon be shown it untrue.  But, alas, we go with it.  For one fleeting particle of time, we relish the thought that we might be doing some wonderful things and our children just might not parade their childhood years in front of God and everybody on the Oprah equivalent of their day.

On this particular day, my children each had a friend or two over.  I had cleaned off (well, used a one-armed swipe to slide the stuff into a large bag) the kitchen island.  I had introduced those poor souls (who had never known the thrill of victory) to the sheer joys of shaving cream.  I was changing their lives, one pile of cheap sudsy cream at a time.   The babes giggled as they created masterpieces of mountains and flowers, they tossed blobs of the slimy mess onto each other, and I - oh great I in my laid-backness just giggled happily.  It was an illustration for all of you, from me, the great one.

With a smooth segue from shaving cream to pizza fixings, we cheerfully cleansed the artful island to make room for our next adventure in fun moments.  Out came all of the ingredients of a tasty pizza - whatever you could dream of - all in little bitty bowls to make it even more precious.  The children were delighted.  One little dab of shaving cream on each bitty turned up nose and a plop of pizza sauce upon every chubby cheek.  Each child stood happily on a chair, enabling them to reach all of the needed parts of their own pizza extraordinaire.  It was surely a moment they would never forget.  It was beautiful.  I pitied the poor parental fools who weren't like me, who didn't understand the secret of these moments.  I was sorrowful for their boring souls - those regular parents, the ones who didn't come up with these unforgettable afternoons.

Some of the memories have left me now, but I am certain that some cheerful children's music played at just the right volume in the background; learning songs created just for the moment, I am sure. Other children in other places must have been thrown idly in front of their televisions, sad and bored, but oh no - not at my house.  I was in the middle of parenting bliss and victory.  I was good.  I was managing many.  They were happy.  They were engaged.  They were creating.

And there I was, thinking about how darn easy it all was, how sad I was for those around me who just couldn't figure it all out.  Poor things.

(Here is where I would make the loud car-brake sound if I knew how to spell it.)

Here are but a few of the things that happened in the next milli-second, the one following my thinking I was such a divine instrument of parenting perfectness . . .

• one child slipped off of the chair and began crying
• someone's shaving cream from their shirt got a little bit mixed up in the pizza sauce
• there were not enough pepperonis to go around
• a couple of the children did not realize that the same hand motions used in manipulating shaving cream were not the same motions needed in pizza assembling
• one child tired of the pizzas and grabbed the can of shaving cream
• two children began to argue, thus sending a few of the toppings into the air
• another child slipped off of a chair
• there wasn't really a great way to mark each child's creation to be identified after the baking
• a couple of the little darlings weren't really hungry
• and then - worst of all - one of my darlings looked up at me, with big beautiful brown eyes and asked the unthinkable - "Mama, what are we doing next?"

WHAT?  Next?  Next, everyone under the age of forty will be air-lifted from the kitchen through a hole I will now blow myself and flown to another continent! And we will never ever use shaving cream again or make pizza again or maybe never eat again - that's what's happening next!  Got it?

Hmmmm.  Maybe that wasn't one of those moments of parenting utopia I had thought two and a half minutes before.  

But, even though I know better, they still happen . . . had one the other day.

And, I believe tomorrow I'll tell you all about it.  

I am a lucky photographer . . .

Being a photographer puts me in a special spot.  I get to spend time with good people, laugh with them and hear their stories.  I get to watch those moments when a little hand reaches up for a big hand or  a couple of folks forget to look at the camera but look at each other.  When things are really fun, the subjects of my photographs forget what we are doing and they begin to really tell their stories.  They make each other laugh, bring up good memories and enjoy the time together - a time that focuses only on them - a moment with no cell phones or news or work demands or noises or distractions.  A photo session that reaches that place is a special one, and I am fortunate to spend time with amazing people in that space.

Recently, I got to shoot a couple of the coolest kids ever.  I know their Mom well, but I had not met her daughter or son.  My friend wanted some photos of her kids, where they are now, doing what they do.  One is an avid baseball player and one loves soccer.  I thoroughly enjoyed this shoot because the emphasis was on them  - the way they are on any given day.  

We met on a Sunday afternoon and they showed up in their practice clothes.  I dug that.  I loved that we were to set about documenting this time in their lives, and that we did.  What special kids they are.

Isn't it fun when you meet young people whose smiles and energy are contagious?   That describes Emily and Evan.  They are truly beautiful, inside and out.  It was a pleasure spending a bit of an afternoon with them, laughing and listening to their dialogue - a loving conversation between a couple of youthful, vivacious human beings that are sure to go far!   

Thanks, Elecia, Emily and Evan - you three are awesome!

And a word on yesterday's WHAT IS IT photo -

The mystery photo was this:

 

and it was this . . .

Good guesses, folks!  The winner, drawn at random from the correct guesses is . . .
Fleeta B.!  Yay, Fleeta - I can't wait to hear the plans for your free shoot!

Monday Morning WHAT IS IT? 4-2-12

Before I show you the WHAT IS IT? photo for today, I'd like to take a moment to thank you all for your amazing support of last week's blog.  It was a wonderful and hard and meaningful and funny and memorable time for me to devote all of last week's posts to my Mom.  I feel like I spent the week with her, and I loved that you were with us, too!  I heard from so many, listened to new stories and laughed with so many of you.  It felt like a celebration, and I just know that Mom was celebrating with us. 

I wrote more than I planned last week, but I am glad I did - it's not ever a mistake to tell the stories and get to know each other better.  You all are kind.  I am thankful. 

And now I find myself curious about your stories.  Consider telling us about someone who has marked your life.  We would love to hear . . . you know, everyone loves a good story.  Do tell.  (I would be honored to have a guest blogger, one of you telling us one of your stories.)

And now, on to today's photo . . .

Check out the photo below.  Try to figure out what you think it is.  Send your guess to me by email (graham.deana@gmail.com) or private message me on facebook.  I'll choose one winner (random.org) from the correct guesses and announce the winner on Tuesday.  The winner receives one free photo session - equal to $150.

Take a guess - have some fun - spread the word!  Have you 'liked' Deana Graham Photography on facebook yet?  I wish you would! 

Thanks, friends.