2008 June | A Deaf Mom Shares Her World

News Flash: Phillies Beat the Reds

I was hoping they would lose.

Steven, my youngest kiddo, suited up this morning for a playoff game. His team, the Phillies, was playing against the Reds. Steven’s friend Blake, was on the other team.

When the playoffs loomed early last week, I was telling the Phillies coach, Dave, that we had vacation plans. We were planning to head up to Michigan last Thursday, assuming the Phillies would be out of the playoffs quickly after Tuesday’s game earlier in the week.

They won.

In the last inning, Steven was playing first base–he fielded a runner out and threw to third for a double play to end the game. Right after the game, Coach Dave came bounding over. ”You’ll have to cancel your vacation plans!” he grinned.

So when the game began this morning, I was pretty sure we’d be finished with baseball in a few hours. After all, we were playing a team with one of the best records–they had only lost two games the entire season.

Sure enough, it was the last inning and we were down 8 to 6. We had two outs and then Steven came up to bat.

Uh oh. Joe and I looked at each other. The last time Steven faced the same situation, he struck out and that was the end of that game. He was pretty bummed out about that. We were afraid that it was going to end on a bad note.

Steven swung–strike one. He swung again–strike two. The third base coach came over to talk to him and told Steven to move in closer to home plate. I held my breath. I was so afraid it was going to end on the next pitch.

Crack!

Steven connected with the ball and powered a line drive into center field. Two of his teammates crossed over the plate to tie the game.

It was the bottom of the sixth and the Reds were up. They needed just one run to win the game. Bases were loaded. The Reds popped a fly ball, the Phillies’ pitcher caught it and fired the ball to Steven on first for a double-play. The inning ended with the next batter.

The game went into extra innings. The Phillies started a hitting rally and Steven scored a double. The Reds tried hard to come back, scoring four runs, but it wasn’t enough to catch up.

Final score: Phillies 14, Reds 11.

Coach Dave came running again, but he didn’t have to tell me–by this time, I had caught playoff fever and beat him to the punch.

“Yeah, Coach, we’ll be driving back from Michigan on Tuesday for the Championship game.”

Bookmark me!

More »

Tags: Raising Deaf/HH Kids by DeafMom
3 Comments »

Deaf Writer Jumps Out of a Plane… And Survives!

No, no, it wasn’t me.

It was Meryl Evans.

To celebrate her blog’s eighth birthday, Meryl vowed to jump out of a plane if readers donated $5,000 worth of stuff to give away.

Five grand–she figured she wouldn’t get anywhere near that much stuff donated. So she thought she was pretty safe. After all, a mom of three kids shouldn’t be jumping out of planes, right?

At first, it looked like Meryl would be able to keep her feet on the ground. Then at the last minute, she received a donation that put her over the line. She made an appointment with Skydive Dallas to jump on June 20th.

She breathed a sigh of relief and dismay when the weather forced her to delay the jump. “Oh great,” she told me, “More time to be nervous.”

And then she got cold feet.

Yesterday, she sent me an email. “I’m not sure I am going to do it now,” she wrote. ”Technically, I didn’t get the $5k worth of prizes by June 1. And hearing some stories just made me want to stay on Earth.”

That’s ok, I reassured her. Your readers will understand.

Hell, I understand– I’m a mom of three kids and the thought of jumping out of a perfectly good airplane gives me the willies. It would be fun, yeah, but going splat–that would hurt.

Well, what do you know, she jumped.

And she survived to tell the tale.

Meryl, girl, you rock!

Bookmark me!

More »

Tags: People You Should Know by DeafMom
4 Comments »

Are You Living Your Dream Life?

I asked a simple question:

“Are you living your dream life?”

The question just came to me one day and I was curious how other people would answer such a simple, yet loaded question. So I started asking around. Just that question, “Are you living your dream life?”

When I asked it face-to-face, I got some startled looks. When I asked it via email, Twitter or IM, I sometimes had people asking me more questions.

“What do you mean, dream life?”

“Why are you asking this kind of question?”

”Why do you want to know?”

“Dream life, who has a dream life?”

Whoa, baby.

But others got right down to it.

Ben Lachman, a friend from the Chicago area, was pretty open with his answer. “Nope,” was his answer. “Well, my dream life is basically pretty selfish,” he explained. “It has to do with massive financial success so that I can use that to support my hobbies and my family, as well as contributing money to causes that I support. Also, my dream life contains a loving wife and children, and those are yet to be attained.”

Ben has encountered some stumbling blocks along the way to financial success, but he has no doubt that he’ll be able to achieve his dream life.

Phyllis from Ima On (and Off) the Bima says that while her life may not seem interesting, she’s definitely living her dream life. “I have a wonderful family — husband, children, parents — we are all blessed with good health, I live in a nice home, with access to almost anything I could possibly want,” she said. “I work in what is truly my dream job: I decided that I wanted to be a rabbi when I was 12 years old and here I am. And to be honest, very few obstacles stood in my path. It all seems very charmed and I know it — and I can only appreciate it and be thankful for it, and know that blessings are here for us to accept and live and love and cherish…so even when things don’t seem quite right or I am annoyed with someone, or the kids wake me up all night or the laundry doesn’t get done, in the moment I might get cranky or annoyed (trust me, I do) but in the grand scheme of things I know how lucky I am.”

Over at Crunchy Carpets (whose motto is, “Clean socks are a privilege, not a right”–my kind of Mom!) Kerry says she isn’t quite living her dream life, but she knows what it looks like: No hassles from the in-laws, no pain for her husband, his website taking off, a home big enough for them all–and money to enjoy it.

But she’s not done. There’s also another baby and another home somewhere near the ocean or perhaps out in the country. And to top it all off, her dream life includes having her blog take off and bring in the big bucks.

Oooo, nice dream life. I like it.

If there’s anyone who I think is living a dream life, that would be Peter Shankman. The guy skydives for fun. I stumbled across his blog just a few weeks ago. Peter is the CEO of the PR firm, Geek Factory, and he recently launched Help a Reporter, which is growing so fast (11,000 and counting) that he is connecting reporters with sources at lightning speed. So when I asked Peter that dream question, he simply said, “I’m trying to!” But he also had more to share: “I think anyone can [live a dream life]–it simply comes down to not being afraid. If it doesn’t end with ‘time of death was…’ or ‘international incident,’ or ‘bail is set at…’ then why the hell not try it? You can always get a job somewhere and make money if it doesn’t work.”

Joanna Young, from Confident Writing, tells me that her dream life is in the process. “I’m creating it, building it, writing it down to make it happen and grateful for the good bits I’ve got.” Joanne recommends the book, Write it Down, Make it Happen to take steps towards a dream life.

Some people shared emails and asked me not to include their answers in the blog. No, they said, they weren’t living their dream life. Life was hard, money was scarce, they were in jobs they didn’t like, some had no goals, and some were in the middle of life changes that could possibly lead them to their dream lives, but they weren’t ready to make those decisions public.

If there’s anyone living a dream life, I knew it had to be my brother. So I fired off the question to him. “Yup!” he responded. “Airplanes, islands and gas to get there, it doesn’t get any better.” My brother and his wife are on Kelly’s Island up at Lake Erie and they’re heading over to New Jersey in his plane to visit her family tomorrow. Ah yes, dream life, indeed.

So I turned to my friend Sue. Sue and I have known each other since college and we’ve shared a lot together. Sue went through a divorce, went back to school to get another degree, and met her current husband at a Halloween party. She’s happily married to a great guy, so of course, I emailed the question to her.

“As for the husband and kids, everything’s great!” she said. “But I want a job where I can be mentally stimulated, use my mind and make tons of money!” Her other desire for the dream life is to have someone come and clean her house on a regular basis. Oh yeah, I have that dream too.

And then Sue shot an email back to me:

“Are you living your dream life?” she asked me.

So I had to sit back and think about that for a second. And I came to the realization that, yes I am living a dream life. I’ve got a hubby and three great kids, my extended family, a roof over my head, food in the fridge, and chocolate stashed in the desk drawer. Toss in a great circle of friends, a well-behaved dog (most of the time) and a place to escape to on the weekends. I do have dreams yet to be lived, for that’s what makes the dream life so good– one can create more and more dreams to experience as life is lived.

So tell me, are you living your dream life?

Bookmark me!

More »

Tags: Inspirational Stuff, Uncategorized by DeafMom
26 Comments »

Proud Mommy Moment: My Baby Hit a Home Run!

Public service announcement for the day:

In the playoff game between the Phillies and the Cardinals, Phillies outfielder, Steven Putz, smashed the ball into center field and rounded all the bases for a home run. The Phillies won, 12 to 5.

That concludes this public service announcement. You may go back to your daily scheduled activities.

Bookmark me!

More »

Tags: Raising Deaf/HH Kids, Uncategorized by DeafMom
4 Comments »

A Mother’s Journey, And a Final Goodbye

It was one of those evenings.

Ants had gotten into the kitchen and were serving themselves dinner on the crumbs of food that the kids had left on the counter earlier in the day. I was filling out the school registration forms in triplicate and trying to figure out the best pay period to submit the check to cover the cost of the fees and still have enough money left over to cover the license plate fees. The kids were complaining that they had nothing to do. I sat there frustrated, because there was so much to do and I didn’t know which item to tackle first.

I went into the den to sit down and submit an article that was due and discovered that the computer wouldn’t turn on. I unplugged it, fiddled with all the wires and plugged it back in.

Nothing.

Out of frustration, I slammed my hand down on the on/off switch.

Nothing.

I unplugged every wire, grabbed the computer and headed over to Geek Squad. The technician plugged it in and it worked just fine over there. I came home and hooked it back up– it worked.

With a sigh, I signed into Twitter and decided to catch up with some conversations. I wasn’t ready to face the work that I needed to do. I came across this Tweet by Guy Kawasaki:

The link is to a slideshow of a mother and her son and a journey with cancer. Take a moment to experience it (it is captioned):

A Mother’s Journey.

I sat there and I cried.

What I had been feeling tonight was little stuff; what this mother has gone through is huge.

And sadly, this brought back memories of Tod Morris, a friend who passed away from cancer very suddenly. You can read Tod’s story here: In Memory of Tod Morris.

So I’m taking a moment to feel that mother’s pain in losing her child and then I’m going to reach out and embrace my kids.

The little stuff can wait.

Bookmark me!

More »

Tags: Uncategorized by DeafMom
9 Comments »

Welcome to my World, Deaf, Hard of Hearing, Hearing–Entwined

On Saturday morning, we headed up to Busse Woods for the annual West Suburban Association of the Deaf picnic. This year, the picnic was sponsored by CSDVRS Clear Blue, a program by the relay company that aims to give back to the Deaf Community. They provided lunch and drinks for everyone. Joe, my hubby, volunteered at the picnic to support the WSAD softball team and the upcoming NRAD racquetball tournament.

WSAD has a special place in my heart. I played volleyball for the WSAD team for many years. I became the secretary and then the first woman president of the club back in the early ’90s. Today, the club is run by another woman president, Julia Anderson, who is also featured on my other blog: Jobs, Careers and Callings.

There were hundreds of deaf and hard of hearing people at the picnic and hands were flying everywhere. What I love most about these gatherings is that every conversation, everywhere we go, is accessible for me and my family. There’s an ease that I can’t explain. When I gather in a group with an interpreter or if I have to lipread– I’m usually exhausted after an event. But when I gather with deaf and hard of hearing friends, my brain just seems to kick back and let all the conversations roll.

At the picnic, I was finally able to meet Teri-Lyn Calhoun from the Heartland Deaf Center. Teri-Lyn and I had emailed each other for a long time, but had never had the opportunity to connect until now.

The kids were having a blast. David and Steven entered a bean bag contest and they were leading in the competition when I announced to Steven that it was time for us to leave and head to his baseball game. He wasn’t happy about leaving, as he was having a good time chatting with everyone and tossing that bean bag. There was no way we could have missed the game, as his team needed to win to get into the playoffs.

Steven scored three runs, his team won by a large number of runs and the coach announced that he was going to treat everyone to ice cream at Dairy Queen. Steven has been pretty comfortable with his team this year and I watched as he rough-housed with the other boys and cracked some jokes. Sure, he fits in, up to a point. The friendships on the team are mostly surface ones. He does well with conversations that are one-on-one, but when the whole group is talking about something, he’s left out. Bless those kids that “get it” and make the effort to communicate. Ditto to the parents that take a moment to get to know us as well.

We headed home to throw brats in the oven and hot dogs on the stove. Our grill was a goner–with two huge, rusted holes and an ignitor that wouldn’t spark. A bunch of friends spent the rest of the evening with us, kicking back together, enjoying the meal and conversation.

Stephen Hopson, on his Adversity University blog asked his readers to name one situation that could have gone south, but didn’t, because of a changed perspective. Here’s what I shared with him:

“I became deaf just a short time before I transferred to a college that had several deaf and hard of hearing students on the same floor. I didn’t see it as a blessing at the time, because I was going through a “woe is me” period for several weeks and mourning the loss. But it did indeed, turn out to be a blessing, for I finally accepted myself as a deaf person and brought a new language into my life along with many, many new friends.”

Here’s to the friends who fling the communication gates wide open!

Bookmark me!

More »

Tags: Uncategorized by DeafMom
9 Comments »

What I Learned From… My Dog

Today’s post is a hat tip to Robert Hruzek, the guy who wears a twenty-gallon cowboy hat. (Yeah, it isn’t ten-gallon anymore–have you seen the price of gas lately?) Every week, Robert corrals a bunch of people to write about stuff and the current theme is: What I Learned From Animals.

Instead of slaving away like the rest of us, Robert and his wife are lounging on vacation at Laity Lodge. But to be fair, he did submit his entry before he left:

The First Step to Effective Communication. Go read it, he’s got some funny stuff about a deaf cat.

I’ve decided to turn this blog post over to Kaycie, my West Highland White Terrier, whom my sister-in-law/dog-groomer affectionately calls a mutt, because she’s missing some AKC papers. I had a long talk with Kaycie the other day and she taught me a few things. So I’m letting her share it here. Without further ado, here’s Kaycie:

Woof, woof, arrh, arf, ARF, arroooooo.

(Uh Kaycie, you need to use English here. Not everyone is versed in doggie-speak.)

Hi, my name is Kaycie. Karen went upstairs to take a hot bath and read a book. I’m going to share a few things that I’ve observed in my life that you can apply to yours.

First of all, I see you people running around a lot, darting from one activity to the next. The garage door keeps going up and down, up and down, several times a day. It keeps interrupting my sleep. And you know what happens when you don’t get enough sleep? That’s right. You end up with a cranky dog. I’m more likely to snap at you when I don’t get my zzzz’s.

But, while we’re on the subject of sleep–let’s talk about naps. For some reason, I don’t see you people getting enough sleep, nor taking enough time out for naps. Don’t you know that a nap does wonders? When you’re tired, ya gotta slow down and take a nap. Heck, when I take a little ten-minute power nap, then I’m up and ready to chase some rabbits. I get a lot more speed on me that way. Every day, I gotta get those varmits outta the yard for Karen. She doesn’t like it when her pretty yellow flowers are chomped on.

Speaking of being on top of my game, every now and then I like to take some time to zone out–or as you people call it– meditation. Sometimes I get really stressed out when I can’t find my bones among the mess in the house. I take a few minutes to calm my mind and then I fire up the nose again. I can usually find my bones that way.

I also find that it’s important to learn something new each day. Not only can I follow commands by voice, but I know them in sign language too. I get a little pissed at my master though, because in the winter time, she’s inside signing “go to the bathroom” and I’m outside in the cold trying to take a dump. But anyway, I was talking about learning new stuff. That’s how I keep my mind sharp– I like to try new things. I tried taking up guitar, but discovered that I didn’t have any talent in that department.

Of course, Karen doesn’t like everything I try. For instance, I once tried to chew the leg on a kitchen chair. Karen got all cranky and there were a couple of “No’s!” hollered at me. I learned to let that one go.

I’ve learned that sometimes you gotta love your enemies. Grandma has a big collie named Sonny. I don’t like Sonny all that much–he likes those Milk Bones out of a box and I won’t have anything to do with those tastes-like-paper-fake-looking-bones stuff. But somehow, we get along and every now and then, we’ll head to the yard and chase away the squirrels together.

Everyone needs a friend or two to hang out with. I hang out with my dog pals, Buddy and Pepper when they come over to visit. Once in a while, we get on each other’s nerves and have a brawl–especially when one of them digs into the wrong supper bowl–but we find a way to get over it and buddy up again.

But you know what’s important in life? The ones you love. I get all excited when the kids come home from school. I jump all over and tell them I love them. When Grandma Griffard comes to visit, even though she’s not crazy about dogs, I roll over and let her rub my belly and she finds a way to love me too. Every night, I hop into bed with Karen and curl up at the nook in the back of her knees. Once in a while, I go over and give Joe a nudge.

Life is good. Enjoy it.

Bookmark me!

More »

Tags: It's All About Me, Uncategorized by DeafMom
16 Comments »

Discovering the Deaf Gene in my Family

From left to right: Thomas Friedman, Penny Friedman, Dr. Andrew Griffith, Karen Putz and Anne Madeo

For many years, my family was unique when it came to stories about hearing loss. Everyone in my family, for five generations, was born with hearing in the normal range. My Mom started losing her hearing as a teen. She became deaf at the age of 27. “I was at a family BBQ and all of a sudden, I realized I couldn’t hear anything,” Mom shared. “I could see that lips were moving, but no sound was coming out.” Just like that, my Mom became deaf. Her five siblings also were deaf or hard of hearing.

I have four older siblings. My sister, Linda, was almost three years old when she fell off of a chair and hit her head on the corner of a baseboard. Later that week, my Mom noticed that she wasn’t responding to people. She began to stop talking. She was diagnosed with a profound hearing loss. My brother, Dennis, grew up with normal hearing and at the age of 36, he was hit on the head by a wooden beam at work and woke up in the hospital with severe hearing loss. My sister, Jeanie, grew up with a unilateral hearing loss and around the same age as my mom, began losing more hearing. In her mid-forties, she slipped on a rug and became profoundly deaf. My brother, Kenny, developed a moderate hearing loss in his 40’s.

I became very sick with a high fever as a child and my parents believe it was that illness which triggered my hearing loss when I was in elementary school. My first hearing aid was given to me when I was nine- but I only wore when at school. I found that it caused headaches and tinnitus and I often took it off after school and never touched it during the summer. When I was 19, I was waterskiing on my bare feet at a high speed and fell sideways into the water. For weeks, I thought I just couldn’t get the water out of my ear. I had become profoundly deaf. From that point on, hearing aids were a constant thing in my life. Years later, my brother Kenny also lost some hearing from barefooting.

Whenever I would share my family’s story about how we all became deaf and hard of hearing, people would be incredulous at the events that lead to hearing loss. “Y’all need to stop banging your heads,” one person remarked.

I knew that genetics obviously played a part, as there were so many family members sporting hearing aids. We went through the testing at Gallaudet for the Connexin gene and it came back negative.

My friend, Tina Childress, an audiologist, said to me one day, “I think your family has Large Vestibular Aqueduct Syndrome (LVAS).”

So off I went to the ENT to take a pretty picture of the inside of my head. “No, you don’t have LVAS,” said the radiologist who read the scan.

I then sent the CT scan results to Anne Madeo, a genetic researcher at the National Institute on Deafness and other Communication Disorders, part of the National Institutes of Health, to have them take a look. Anne asked some questions about our family history to construct a “pedigree”, a term that researchers use to describe a family in graph form.

“Because the inheritance of the hearing loss looked as though it was coming from women through to all of their children, but from none of the men to their children, we thought there was a very good chance that it was due to a mutation in one of the mitochondrial genes,” said Anne.

With our permission, Anne assembled a team (Andrew Griffith, Penny Friedman, and Thomas Friedman) from NIH and we all gathered at my home. The team spent the day collecting information from each family member and drew blood for the genetic testing.

We learned that we are the third family in the world identified with a mutation in the mitochondrial gene. The specific mutation is called 7510T>C. The most interesting thing to family members was learning that our specific mutation, like all mitochondrial genes, is passed through female family members. There is almost a 100% guarantee of passing the mutation from a female to the offspring, but not from the males.

What this means for my children is that my daughter will have children with this gene, but my sons will not.

People have asked me why we pursued the genetic testing in our family. There were two reasons for it. One of my nieces was hard of hearing. My other niece began to suspect that she might be losing her hearing. However, tests showed that her hearing was within normal limits. A nephew also had an episode where he thought he was losing his hearing as well. So we wanted to figure out the genetic pattern and see how the gene moved through the family. The other reason was simple: after years of questions from other people, we wanted to see if we had a name for the gene.

The results were surprising for my nieces and nephews. The niece who thought she had the gene was relieved to find out she didn’t. While she was happy to find out that she didn’t have the gene, she also felt a sense of “survivor guilt,” in knowing this information. My other niece has it and will pass it on to her children should she have kids. My nephews didn’t participate in the research, but from what we know about the gene, we know what we can conclude for each of them. One nephew has the gene, the others do not. The biggest shock came to me months later, when a cousin of mine obtained hearing aids and then mentioned that her kids were struggling in the classroom. I suddenly realized that the gene was in their family as well. Her grandmother and my mother were sisters.

“I think sometimes, on a really fundamental level, it can make you wonder who you are when you learn something like this about a specific gene mutation” said Anne. “Even though I know and try to tell people that we all carry gene mutations-they don’t define us. Yet, suddenly you’ve learned something fundamental about yourself that you didn’t know before.”

Sometimes learning about genetic results can shake up a family or cause individuals to blame one another. “That probably happens most in families that weren’t doing well already,” explained Anne. “Maybe it wasn’t a strong marriage, maybe the diagnosis in the family was really tough, maybe they’re going through an already stressful time. Not every family (at all) starts pointing fingers.”

For my own family, the information we learned was simply an interesting piece of the puzzle that has been unfolding over the years. My only beef with the researchers is that they didn’t give this gene a cool name. So in my family, we’re naming this gene in honor of my mother and grandmother: the Valle gene.

For more information on genetic research:

http://www.nidcd.nih.gov/

http://www.nidcd.nih.gov/research/scientists/griffith.asp

Dr. Andrew Griffith with my Dad

Penny Friedman and my brother, Kenny

Bookmark me!

More »

Tags: It's All About Me by DeafMom
7 Comments »

Football, I Hate Football

I hate football.

There. I said it.

My oldest kiddo is in football camp at his high school. I tried to talk him out of it, but it fell on deaf ears (oh yeah, pun intended!). So here I am at Panera Bread each morning as I wait for him to sweat out two hours of hitting other guys. It’s a 20-minute/half hour drive each way, so it makes no sense for me to head back home after dropping him off.

When I picked him up yesterday, he was covered head-to-toe in sweat but had a huge smile on his face. He excitedly told me about the drills and how his neck hurt from craning it to see the interpreter while face-down during some exercise. He’s the only deaf kid at the camp, but there are two others in different grades.

“It was hell, Mom, but I loved it!” he said.

Did I tell you that I hate football?

I used to actually like it. Back in college, I would follow football on TV and actually sit next to the hubby and watch entire games. We even hooked up the tv in the bathroom and watched an entire playoff game when the Bears were playing– from the tub, complete with snacks and drinks. (What can I say, we were thin and in college back then! Mom, cover your eyes and don’t read this.)

Then along came Fantasy Football. The kids were little. I still liked football enough to help the hubby decide on a few players to play each Sunday. I listened to him as he agonized over the player’s fumbles, the low passing scores or an injured player. I celebrated when his wide receivers racked up yards and scored touchdowns. I even attended the Fantasy Football drafts to help the guys run the meetings.

Good gosh.

As the boys became older, the hubby sucked them right into football. The youngest kiddo dog-eared his favorite football book to the point it fell apart in two. He could tell you which helmet belonged to which team and one year, he was fixated on the Maimi Dolphins and received a Dolphins headrest for his bed. We’ve got Raider pillows and another bedrest for the oldest kiddo featuring some green team. (That’s how much I don’t follow football anymore, I can’t tell you the name of the team even though I pass by his bed every morning.)

The oldest kiddo played football in eighth grade. I went to a few games and cringed every time I saw him slam into another kid. I know why I hate football, it just seems so brutal to me now and I hate seeing the guys hit into each other. Plus, I’m afraid my kid is gonna get hurt. Or hurt someone else.

So this fall, I plan to attend the football games with my dark sunglasses on.

Perhaps I can weasle in nap time during the games.

Bookmark me!

More »

Tags: It's All About Me by DeafMom
12 Comments »

Writing Up at Christie Lake

I’m up in Michigan this weekend with the hubby and kids, visiting my parents and sister. I love the view in the morning from the kitchen window– watching the mist on the water evaporate when the sun comes up. I usually miss this as I sleep late up here, but the oldest kiddo woke me up early– asking where I packed his glasses. He almost never wears them, but this time, I remembered to bring them along. Both boys took off in the pontoon to go fishing.

I always enjoy writing in the kitchen and looking out at the lake. Dad has several bird feeders in front of the window and we’ve seen so many different varieties of birds. I especially love watching the cardinals, yellow finches and the occasional woodpecker. Every now and then, we’ll get a visit from a blue jay.

When we arrived yesterday, I noticed that my Mom’s peonies were in full bloom. There’s a bit of a story behind this particular peony bush.

One year, Mom decided to move the peony bush to the edge of the property. She dug up the bush, taking care to keep the root ball intact, and planted it in a different spot. The following year, it died. It didn’t make it through the tough Michigan winter. Mom later learned that she chose the wrong time of the year to move it, and peonies don’t move well when they’re dug up. Mom resigned herself to the fact that she wasn’t going to see those pretty magenta blooms ever again.

That spring, Mom noticed a tiny sprout in the old spot. She must have left a little bit of root from the original bush in the ground, and there it was, growing back again. She can now enjoy the stunning blooms again each year.

peony flower

I guess there’s a lesson in here– always make sure you have a backup if Plan A fails.

Bookmark me!