House proud

Exterior being painted, June 2006

In between running my business, preparing for upcoming conferences, writing articles and being a teacher, I've been spending a little time freshening up the house for our visitors from Paris who arrive tomorrow.  It's been nearly seven years since we finished renovating the house, but it seems like yesterday.  Here's a picture of the new back of the house, where Leroy's study is bumped out by ten feet and where you can see the entirely new second floor with front and back dormers.

June 2006

The one area of the house that is almost ready for a renovation is the basement flat, though I suspect it will be perfectly acceptable as a self-contained guest space -- complete with kitchen and other amenities that allowed us to live down there for a full year while the renovation was taking place upstairs --  for another year or so.  It's cozy.  And it's ready for our guests....

Valentine's Day...

We move so fast through the world that sometimes it is hard to slow down long enough to express our affection for friends, colleagues and family.  I admit writing a blog entry is an expedient way to send my affection to many, but see it as a way to use my own voice.  Earlier today, I posted a photo and the last stanza of an e.e. cummings poem for my husband.  Here is the whole poem for you.

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in

my heart)i am never without it(anywhere

i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done

by only me is your doing,my darling)

                                                      i fear

no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want

no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)

and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant

and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

Photo: Ruth Hoover, 2010

Checking in with my mother

Today is the birth date of Margaret Cecilia Hayes Sowers, my mother.  I have been thinking of her intermittently all day as I prepare to teach tomorrow's operational risk course. 

Growing up, I'm not sure you ever appreciate your mother.  From my perspective, I didn't think that I caused a lot of trouble.  I mostly liked to read.  I think it was my attitude that frustrated her.  I thought most anything was possible and do-able.  "Crack ahead!" she would say in the direst of voices.  I knew that meant "you will reap what you sow" and that she felt I was being reckless.  Like most children, I thought I had well-thought out plans, whether it was checking out ten library books a week or earning enough money myself to go to the University of Iowa.  She too was a reader, with a vivid imagination and a love of travel, so I suspect most of her dread came from imagining what terrible consequences might obtain from my ambitions.

Today I know that "Crack ahead!" is not the same as "Take risks with confidence," our corporate mantra at ASA Risk Consultants.

But I wonder sometimes if I would still have ended up in the same profession if she had not said that to me so often.

Happy birthday, Mother.