Author: bflynn

Brenda currently lives in Stoneham MA, but grew up in Mineral WA. She is surrounded by men, with two sons, one husband and two boy cats. She plays trumpet at church, cans farmshare produce and works in software.

Parenting without kids

Ready to go!

On Saturday, I drove the familiar route to Logan airport. I go there all the time. I pick up visitors. I travel for work, or for fun. It’s a rare month that I don’t mentally try to figure out whether I want arrivals or departures. (Well, I’m arriving at the airport, but departing later, and oh I’m parking and is it Terminal B?) This time, though, I had Thane with me. And only one suitcase. We did all the line-standing together, and all too soon he was heading down the gangway with a veritable pack of unaccompanied minors. I sat in the warm sun with a collection of other parents sending their kids to Seattle for the April vacation week, talking about parenting, the difference between Seattle & Boston, and the independence of our children.

My gigantic eldest son

I did not leave the airport after the last glint of wing had fled the glooming sky. I stood unmoored in the center of the vast high ceilings of Concourse D – eyes on the escalators. Not much later, Adam and Grey showed up. Grey is getting so old and tall and big. He was not much for sentimentality in the eyes of the watching public, so a quick hug later I went to retrieve my car. I came home to an empty house and strapped on my shoes for a run before the weather turned bitter. (Good news – I ran the whole way. Bad news – my pace is terrible. Unsurprising news – my legs are SO SORE today!)

Adam came home not long after, and we cleaned the house, marveling that it might actually _stay clean_ for a WHOLE WEEK! The kids are off with different grandparents (Thane is with my folks, Grey is with Adam’s mom) for the April vacation week, and we are… on our own.

I write great blog posts in my head while I run. The success rate of actually getting them down on paper is rather less than 100% though. During that run, I thought about how hard it is to know whether you’re doing a good job parenting. So much of who and how your kids are is up to them. That gets even more true the older they grow. I found myself wishing that we were as thoughtful and organized about setting goals and seeing if we were meeting them in parenting as we are in, say, work. What would my objectives for parenting look like right now? Long term? How would my performance be rated?

One of my greatest objectives as a parent is to raise children who do not need me (but hopefully will still want me around). I want children fitted to earn their livings, of good integrity, with wide skills and self-sufficiency. I want to raise children who see clearly what it is that needs to be done, and have the insight, strength and knowledge to do it. Tragically, the way to accomplish this as a parent is not to “try harder” but to be wiser about what you say and do. I’m working on that. It made me feel hopeful, watching my sons courageously venture off alone, that a good start has been made.

Lucky to be married to this handsome guy!

There are many advantages to this April break scheme, but one of the excellent ones is that it gives Adam and I time to be together. You know, like a pair of people who married each other because they dig spending time together! Last night, we celebrated by going out to a “fancy fancy” restaurant – the Meritage in Boston. We got ready in a leisurely and unhurried way. We didn’t worry about what time to get home. It was crazy!

This was food. It was delicious.

Today, I confess to playing hookie from church. Sorry! Adam brought me coffee & the paper in bed, and we looked through all the things that were happening to see what we wanted to do. We began with brunch at a local diner. (Named, inventively, “My Diner“.) It played a lovely contrast to our fancy dinner last night. (Don’t judge all the eating out this week – it’s effectively “half priced restaurant week” for us.)

Possibly my favorite of the Eschers, showing none of his trademarks

Then we drove in to Boston to the Museum of Fine Arts to see the MC Escher exhibit and Phantasmorgia display. We read every word on every display piece in three different exhibits (we also checked out the revival jewelry exhibit). We LOVE going to museums together, but it’s a hard thing to do while contending with different attention spans. This lingering was a great pleasure.

Almost as great as watching Adam eat a pickled grape, which was a study in expressions.

He made this face every time he ate one
I got video for another grape
Profile pic, right here
Despite this face, he ate them all

We have similar plans for the rest of the week. Maybe some board games with friends. Checking out the new restaurant in town. Staying in Cambridge. Craziness!

I am coming to think, though, that as nice as this is as a vacation I already miss my little boys and the energy and vibrance they bring to our lives. We are all the better for practicing our independence. But I’m so glad that there are years yet before they leave me. I miss my sons!

My boys

Running towards danger

I rarely repost old posts, but as we come up to Marathon weekend again, I can’t help but think of that day five years ago. Sometimes you may not guess who around you is a hero. Caitlin is to me, many times over.

bflynn's avatarMy Truant Pen

During Monday’s Marathon bombings, my friend Caitlin Rivet was working as a volunteer EMT at the Boston Marathon. I’ve known Caitlin since she was about 12. I taught her and her churchmates in Sunday School, youth group and confirmation. We’ve been close ever since, even as she moved into adulthood.

At church this morning, Caitlin was there. Her face has a strip of abrasions from shattered glass from the explosion, and she shies away from talking about her Monday. It’s too close, and too hard to put in words. But she wrote this narrative about her day, and gave me permission to share it.

When the marathon was just a fun sports event. When the marathon was just a fun sports event.

4.15.13 – A Reflection

The Boston Marathon is one of the world’s premier sporting events. This year it was marred by two bombs that were detonated close to the finish line. During a time when most marathoners…

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Stoneham Election April 3, 2018 follow up – what I meant by “bankrupt”

In my post on my choices for the upcoming 2018 election (which you can read here) I said the following:

More seriously, she [Caroline Colarusso] has bankrupted our water and sewer system to the point where all our rainy day funds are gone, and you will see a 29% increase in your next bill. That’s an average of $75 a quarter this coming year PLUS we have no money in the rainy day fund now. Caroline led the charge, sending out flyers for the Water and Sewer policy that ran through the savings we’d put aside. She wants to bankrupt our trash system in the same way. (Mark your calendars for the Town Hall Meeting Monday, May 7, where we need to show up and fight this fiscally irresponsible plan.)

Caroline asked to meet with me this weekend, taking umbrage with much of what I wrote, but in particular this section. “There’s $692k in the account! That’s not bankrupt!” She asked how I could justify that statement. Since she’s proposing we make this exact mistake again, in the upcoming trash fee discussion, I thought it was worth discussing at more length.

Question: How can you have money in an account and still be bankrupt?
Answer: When your expenses exceed the amount of money you have to pay for them.

There are three possible amounts of money we should have in our water and sewer reserve fund. Some recommend 10% of costs. Some recommend 15%. Our current stated target is 3 months worth of operating expenses. In 2014, the town had 2.24 million in the reserve fund (3 months). Today we have 692k in the reserve fund (~6%). If a 30% rate increase had not been approved for the next bill you will get, dear taxpayer, that sum would be $0, or negative. Zero percent. The difference was the initiative led by Caroline to drain our reserves for a temporary rate cut.

Perhaps you think it’s not important to have this money set aside in the reserve fund, but please note that this is the money that is used to pay for water main breaks. We have had numerous such breaks in the past years, and it would be surprising if we went for a long time without having more. If all of a sudden North Street is flooded, do you want to hear that we have no money set aside to fix it? What if it’s a sewer main, spilling literal crap into our streets?

There was not enough money in the bank this quarter to pay our bills without either using the very last drops of our reserve fund, or raising rates. If we completely wiped out our reserve fund this quarter, those big rate increases would still come next quarter. And we’d be hosting bake sales to pay for water main breaks.

I’d love to direct you to the links on the Town of Stoneham website that include all the agendas and supporting details on this. By law, those documents are required to be available. However, despite the fact I could have sworn they were available previously, they are no longer there. I had to ask Selectman Anthony Wilson to help me find the information. I’m attaching my sources to this post, and invite correction or (better yet) for correct data to be posted to the town website by the appropriate authorities.

Water and Sewer projections from 2017 (which are very close to actuals)
Water and Sewer retained earnings (reserve fund)
Slides showing how the previous rate cut impacted our reserve

Water and Sewer was clearly bankrupt because without a 30% increase, there was not enough money to pay the bills. And Caroline is advocating that we do it again, this time with our trash services. Let’s at least be smart enough to learn from our mistakes.

My heart is filled with longing

A month ago, I wrote that winter had lasted forever. There have been several forevers in the interim, and still there are shoulder-high snowbanks, and just today flakes flew across the street in front of us, like a veil of winter. You can’t walk along the sidewalks. You can’t really go hiking. The world seems to close in on itself. I’m sick of every single room in my house. (Which – hey! April 3 is THE DATE for demo to begin on the attic project! We have a backup plan of if the snow is still so heavy we can’t park on the street.)

The last two weeks or so, my brain has started playing some tricks on me. As I walk through my day to day, my mind will flash a quick scene in front of me. There’s that stretch of Hwy 16 in New Hampshire near Ossippee where a lazy river runs under a steel bridge with an expansiveness of space and time my busy life can barely imagine. The beeches, with their course green and gold leaves, in the campgrounds of White Lake and Covered Bridge, flicker in a remembered sunlight. The vast fields of milkweed, in the shadow of Mt. Whittier. The loon on the lake. The mists settling across marshes at sunset near Tamworth on 25. The crackle of the fire, springing sparks up to a warm night sky.

The Loons

These visions come unbidden. Some of these things I can’t even believe I remember. Many of the scenes that show up are ones from the road – and I’m almost always going about 55 through those zones, after 3 hours of driving. How can my memory so perfectly lay out not just the field, but the shape of the milkweed across it. The shadows on the east side of Whittier. The music on the radio. The warmth of the air. I do not think I could have voluntarily pulled that image – that memory – from my mind. But without summoning it, there it is.

I think I find these even more precious when I discovered they are not universal. I know and love some folks with aphantasia. Not everyone can close their eyes and be back in a moment they loved, or see from afar the fields and forests where their heart lives.

I wonder what my subconscious is telling me? It feels like a hopeful message. “Wait”, it seems to say, “This too will pass. It will not be winter forever. There is such a thing as summer, and you will know it again.” In these moments, my heart is filled with longing for what I saw – but also for hope. I will see it again. Soon. This summer. In two months, I’ll be wending my way up Hwy 16, past the lazy river and milkweed fields once more. Be patient.

There is another gift in this. It is remarkable to discover what treasures your mind has stored up for you, all unknown to you. I did not stare hard at those moments, willing them to remain in my memory forever. They just passed past my eyes and stuck there, like gold in the bottom of a pan. How many beautiful moments lurk behind my eyes, waiting until I need comfort or consolation to appear? When my eyes darken with age and my limbs will no longer take me to the woods, will these all be waiting for me? A treasure trove of beauty I didn’t even know I was remembering?

I hope so. And I look forward, with joy, to adding to that trove again this summer.

Beeches in the setting sun

Ready – set – go!

On a near-monthly basis this year I’ve talked about how we’re JUST ABOUT READY to start our attic renovation project! Just a few weeks! Almost there! Nearly happening!

Well, this time it’s for real. At least, the “please start work now” deposit has been paid, the contract has been signed, the stuff we ordered from the plumbing supply company is in, and we’ve for reals cleared out the linen closet and 95% of the attic. (We need to make a few trips to the storage facility to make it to 100% of the attic.)

We found the floor tile to go with the countertop and backsplash

The project is a big one. We’re totally gutting and putting plumbing into the third floor. We’re replacing all the windows on that floor. We’re making a walk in closet, a bedroom and a nice bathroom. Then on the second floor, we’re putting in a laundry room where once there was a weird deep linen closet. It’s going to be messy, disruptive, expensive and – hopefully – transformative. And it’s really happening!!

The fine line between caring and obsession

My plum tree has been on my mind a lot lately – as I wrote about last week. The kills of the last two winters have made my hypersensitive to this time of year. It’s a time of great hope and anticipation, and great fear. Will one of the first heralds of the spring be a white-decked lady, a debutante of the back yard effulgent in lacy buds? Or will the last jealous grasps of winter shear off her bloom yet again, like some jealous Disney villain? And just how cold does March need to be to kill summer’s hope?

A text I sent to my husband

I thought we might have escaped this year, but then the overnight forecast showed itself unkindly. I fretted in the days leading up to this weekend, wondering if my tree would make it. I found this very useful chart, upon which I anchored my fears. The temps were supposed to get down to 10 degrees. I have no idea what my backyard microclimate is. I’m not really sure what the budding stages are, but I am decided that bud swell seemed like the closest option. Even so, that looked to me like a significant killing frost – taking out maybe 50% of my buds? If only I could get the temps up for a little bit?

If that’s a “tight cluster” instead of a “bud swell” we can just write this year’s harvest off.

Adam and I swapped links on smudge pots and fans. I definitively ruled out renting a helicopter as a solution. (That’s actually a thing.) I am still not super sure I understand how fans raise temperatures, even though I read several articles on it. It also wasn’t clear to me how many degrees swing you could get using some of these techniques – and I needed quite a few degrees. But I couldn’t just sit back and do nothing and watch my plums die AGAIN! They deserve a chance!

My husband loves me dearly. He’s so patient with my insanity. After careful thinking, I decided our propane heater was too dangerous to leave running unattended – even out in the backyard in the snow. But we have this electric oil-filled space heater, see. It’s gentle heat – so no chance of fire. I’m not sure if it was enough heat, or if it could possibly make a difference. Still, under the waning light, we set up the space heater under the tree, hoping the cement wall would reflect the heat and help it stay warm.

True love in action

Adam cooked up the idea to use insulation on the other side of the heater to further guide the warmth tree-ward. So he chopped up some staves, staple-gunned them to the insulation, and pounded them into the frozen soil. All without wearing a sweater, of course. We New Englanders basically give up on winter garments as a regular thing about this time of year, due to being sick of wearing them.

Chop chop!

I have no idea if it worked. The buds all look the same, of course. The forecast shows the end of the killing frost (or at least it’s five degrees warmer tonight). The forecast looks quite chilly. The highs don’t break out of the 40s for the rest of the month. (By comparison, it got up to 70 in February.) But if April comes and goes and the green leaves break out and there were no blossoms – we’ll know that winter won despite our best efforts.

Here’s hoping to see white instead!

Yankee ingenuity – or possibly insanity

Dueling Poets

My Reply To “Piemas XI”
Grey Flynn

I think I do believe it fair
To write some rhyming verse
To write a poem from my own lair
About this awful curse

You truly call that a rhyme?
With your Shakespearean whim?
Good god, you couldn’t improve with time
“Oh look at me! I’m just like him!”

Why must you copy Wil?
The amazing bard himself?
Are you so empty you cannot fill
A single poem by yourself?

You try to improve a poem with gods,
Greek to be exact
But then your poem stinks like sod
That is a true fact

“To thine ownself be very true”
People tell me this and that
That should be a lesson to you
You boorish copycat

Please don’t take this as a jest
Don’t rhyme about a board
At least I have poems with zest
“Oh do enter, me lord”

Respect your writing elders
The ones, the very best
The ones, the word melders
Never take a rest

That’s all I have to say
You can go along
I have some advice until the May
Do not write a song

(P.S)
I love your sense of humor Dad
You’re the one I sought-er
You know I am quite glad
That you are my father

See here for the original poem by Adam.

The Impossible Dream – Damson Plum Jam

Many of you are familiar with my age-long quest to make Damson Plum Jam. It’s been six years now that I’ve had a plum tree in my yard, waiting for that magic year when the winter wouldn’t destroy the entire region’s stone fruit crop (it has the last two winters in a row), when my tree was mature enough, when those stupid cut-worms were off-timing so that I could FINALLY get some plums off my tree.

Friends, I have terrible news.

I’ve been keeping an eagle-eyed watch on my plum tree this year, largely due to the complete kills from the last two years. When the end of February hit and the weather was so warm, my plum tree started getting ideas about it possibly being spring. This is what’s killed my harvest the last two years. So I checked on bud progression every day, willing it to take it slow and not try to grow up too fast. (Parenting and plums have more in common than you think.) And I noticed this weird black stuff. I didn’t think too much of it. Trees have galls and weird things all the time. Surely this was just a weird thing. I poked at it. It seemed very hard, and it didn’t crack off. I resolved to look up what it was “later”.

Black mark of deathly doom

Later arrived Sunday, in my survey of the state of blooms as we batten down for our third Nor’Easter in like 10 days. (Starting Tuesday. UGH.) I finally Googled “plum black knot” and the results curdled the pit of my stomach. It was like eating prunes, only I don’t have any prunes because I don’t have any plums and also I kind of like prunes.

Black knot is a fungal disease that strikes fear in the hearts of owners of plum trees. It doesn’t matter if they are edible plums or the decorative, landscaping variety, the trees could be fatally affected.

(citation)

It seems so unfair! This tree has yet to bear a single plum! I don’t even know what a damson tastes like! I’ve been nurturing it for 7 years now. And now this! A number of sources were like “Yeah, if your tree has this you should probably just get rid of it.” Noooo!!!

With the thaw coming any day now, and the return of the warmer weather likely to happen SOMETIME in the next two weeks (please please please) Adam and I went out to deal with it immediately. If we were going to do this, completely and early was our best strategy. Maybe we can stop the spread to the other branches? There were six galls, but only six. I was still in my church dress. We ravaged the limbs of the quiescent tree with ruthless branch clippers. Limb after limb, studded with incipient buds, was severed and dropped onto the snowbanks below. We lost the second largest stem of the tree. This isn’t a great time to prune, either, since right now the tree is susceptible to more infections from these scars we inflicted. It feels like a long shot. Did we buy the tree time to at least have a few plums first? Is is a lost cause? Am I forever condemned to go damson plum jamless?

We will see what this spring brings, and hope.

Dreams I have had