Open with Caution! This post is packed full...

Wow!  The past couple of months have no real effective description.  How much life can a person pack into a few weeks?  What a seminar on moderation, deliberation and soaking up life!

Cycle back to:  I am a DESIGNER in search of a CONTEXT.  I am listing out what I have been reading and doing over the past few weeks.  There is a wide range of issues that I am learning about and a number of problems I want to get in on.  I read over one of my recent posts and yes, TO GET FOCUSED GET BUSY is good advice.  But, getting too busy doesn't help the focus.

YES!  To get focused get busy, but not too busy.  I am all over that right now.  Yes, I need a context, and yes, I need focus, and yes, I want to start spinning the plates I have so carefully been washing and drying.  But, let me tell you what I have been doing that has kept me so BUSY!!

Here is a list to keep us structured:

1.  Dad's memorial service
2.  Awarding scholarships
3.  END OF THE SCHOOL YEAR TIMES THREE
4.  ISRAEL
5.  Get social at the Hoe Down
6.  Beginning of college
7.  Transplant

1.  When a parent dies it is a big deal.  If this comes unexpectedly or if it has been a long process doesn't matter; it is a big deal.  It matters not if you have been close, not so close or really estranged; it is a big deal.  I am a parent and I was born into a family with two parents and one of them died.  There were aspects of our relationship I will never understand, and aspects of each of our personalities that bothered the other but I also know that my fabric comes from my father, and my mother, and from my own life.  There is no perfect world, and no perfect family, and no perfect parent.  But, I was graced with the father whom I had and I will miss him.  I have made peace with the fact that I will never show him so many things, but then that wasn't going to happen even if he lived to be 150.  So, I respectfully mourn him and all of really solid, good things about him.  And, the memorial service was lovely and respectful and gave people a place to pay their respects and visit his spot on the pond.  It was well done.
2.  If you want to learn about kids in high school give them a scholarship.  Give them an application to fill out that has thoughtful questions on it.  Ask them to tell you what they can do, where they have been, what they are reading and how they spend their time.  Don't ask them about grades or class standings.  And, then, read between the lines and deliver your decision in a video you have made yourself complete with music and inspiring quotes (and pictures of your kids or dogs or travels).  Or, just get up and tell them what wonderful human beings they are (using all of the skills you learned in speech class.)  Those kids will teach you a thing or two--and it isn't about their grades or class standing.
3.  School is not for the faint-hearted, especially not high school.  Try doing six things at once well.  Try figuring out what six or seven or eight teachers want you to do, and how to fit in just that 30 minutes or hour each night that their class requires for homework after spending all day at school and then sports after school and dinner with the family because it keeps you together, and then sleep?  When do we have to cull books and notes to complete tests in our adult lives, or find passion in subjects that may never have a bearing on our lives?  When was the last time you did a whole semester of some type of work just to get the practice? (Well, maybe this happens more than I would like to admit.)
This one has at least a couple more posts-worth...
4. ISRAEL!!!  What a trip!  My family and visited the old city in Jerusalem and so many holy sites.

  It is wild to walk streets that are old, knowing older streets lie beneath them; knowing people who I read about in ANCIENT HISTORY did mundane daily tasks and had glorious moments that changed the world RIGHT THERE.  Then, we travel through a check point (we are not in Kansas anymore) to Bethlehem...BETHLEHEM to meet George who really changes my world.  Welcome to the West Bank, Palestine and the nasty wall.

 I found out about settlers, and maybe think about our own settlers in America a little differently.  I met people with so much dignity and pluck.  And, a whole world of history that just walked right into my conscience.  One minute I was in 2013 Palestine and the next in ancient Rome.  The land under the feet of Israel has been around for so long that the stories could be plumbed like the ice cores from Greenland.  Walking in Capernum, in Nazareth, in Cesaria or Haifa was so much more than taking a picture and sending a postcard.  The United States is so young because we have not asked about what came before us.  Israel left me with such breathable history and experiences.  George left me with a completely new view of contemporary life in a place that is home but is being eked away.  And, I have a new appreciation for the definitions of sacred, dignity and compromise.
5.  Nothing can replace old-fashioned, in your face friends and family activities.  And, nothing can replace my father-in-law's Hoe Down.  As a proud member of the Hoe Down Concierge I have been there for each one.  Dunk tank, elephant, mariachi band, fife and drum corp, egg toss, what's your strength?, Wild Bill, and much, much more ending with karaoke and fire works.  This year add bag pipes, a killer acrobat act and Latvian New Year -- oh, and the best behaved and cutest baby I've ever seen.  We returned from Israel on Wednesday, Hoe Down on Saturday--need I say more?
6.  One day a child is graduating from high school, the next there is an international trip with the family, the next is a huge social event, the next I am waving good bye as that child passes into a new realm.  Make no mistake, I will still have a place, but he is riding his own bicycle and I am here now if he wants me.  It is a chillingly humbling moment yet so exciting.  I have to remember to pray and breath, breath and pray...
7.  I am transplanted for a few weeks.  I enjoy living in my own skin and wherever I am led.  I still want my creature comforts (and for this time maybe a dehumidifier.)  There is global warming, and it makes the weather wetter and more violent in my part of the world.  But, there are also amazing moments...

So, I have unloaded the past several weeks and now I can move on to more game design and getting my context back!