A Farewell To My Father

by Rebecca Valentine1 Comment
Yesterday, my dad asked his beloved wife Lee to help him find his passport and then get him to the airport. He had a trip to make. Lee assured him she would. The thing is, she won't. My father had a stroke on April 11. He spends his days in the advanced stages of dementia. My father is dying. Those words are not easy to write. When I think of them--which I do, about 247 times a day--I feel guilty. Sad. Powerless. He is my father; during the best parts of our relationship, he was my dad. Now, he is an 81-year-old man who cannot do anything for himself...who survived emergency brain surgery only to barely escape falling victim to heart attack and then was left too ravaged to fight off pneumonia. He has lost 45 pounds in five weeks. He doesn't want to eat. He hardly wakens, and he will never again do those things which brought him happiness--read a book, watch a...
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In Search of the Perfect House

by Rebecca ValentineNo Comments
It doesn't exist, this perfect house I've built in my mind. Rick and I have been house hunting now for months. We need to choose one and be done with the search. The only other house I've ever owned was in Windsor, Colorado. I knew it was the house I wanted to raise my kids in the second I set foot in it. There was never any question; 900 Juniper Drive was home. Finding the house we want is proving more difficult this time around. For one thing, Rick and I come from vastly different backgrounds. In all honesty, I could live in a primitive log cabin and be perfectly happy. Do I love the jacuzzi? Absolutely. Do I like living on the water? More than I can say. Is having an elevator in my home a necessity? Ummm, no. It moves at the speed of smell, as Max would say. But my relationship with luxury is relatively young, and at 47, I...
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2011: An Evolutionary Year

by Rebecca Valentine1 Comment
Wow. Time passes so quickly when you're immersed in living. I last posted a column several months ago, though I've thought many times to myself, "Oh! This would make a great essay!" as an intriguing idea or topic coursed through my brain. Unfortunately, I'm still trying to acclimate to waking at 6:00 almost daily; by 9:30pm, I'm wiped out. And those hours in between are spent working, ferrying kids back and forth, fixing meals, shopping for meals, or trying to keep up with this giant house and its many needs. I, a voracious reader, have not cracked open a book in weeks. That's criminal. But it's almost my birthday, and that is the time of year at which I look back and take stock of my life. I will turn 47 this weekend. Forty-seven! That's almost 50. That's almost a half-century. That's almost...old. Older. Kind of old. I am grinning as I type because no matter how I word it, 47...
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So This is Maine

by Rebecca Valentine1 Comment
I write this sitting on the sofa in what we call the "main room" while listening to Seals & Crofts. To my left is a fireplace, where a fire is roaring. To my right, on the floor, lies Kya, our beloved pit bull-lab; she is keeping my feet warm with her massive body. The view from where I sit is noteworthy: Rain is coming down in sheets, sometimes sideways, other times, all whirly and swooshy. The leaves on the trees that line our side of the inlet are red and orange, gold and green. The leaves on the other side of the water are still green.Wind keeps the scenery ever-shifting as trees sway and the water current swiftly churns. The tide will come in later today, as it always does, and the water line will be higher than usual. I love being here. The kids and I have lived here now for six weeks. We are still transitioning, and probably will be...
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Packing Up, Taking Stock, Moving On: Thoughts on Leaving Home

by Rebecca Valentine3 Comments
My house has always been cluttered. I share an intimate love-hate relationship with "stuff," and though I've tried to change my evil ways, I have never succeeded. Now my stuff is in boxes, neatly labeled and stacked along the perimeter of rooms. Except when it's lying in the middle of the floor, or stuffed into bags to be put in the garage and unpacked later this week for our yard sale. One of my favorite things, my simple pleasures in life, is to walk through my home at night, when children are asleep and lights are dim. I have taken comfort in checking doors to be sure they're locked, in folding that last load of laundry (alas, never putting it away until I need an empty laundry basket), in replenishing the dogs' food and water bowls. Before bed, I blow out candles, kiss the dogs, turn out the lights. To walk through this house at night now is to put one's...
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Do You Know Who I Am? I’m the Bejeweled, Long-Haired Cheese…the One in the Mini Dress

by Rebecca Valentine1 Comment
As of this past Saturday, I am the mother of three teenagers and one "tween." Technically, one of those teenagers is an adult, but that's a term loosely used on any 18-year-old, I don't care how mature or wise he may be. Three teenagers. Three! How the hell did this happen? Well, I know how it happened. But I mean...how? I am 46 years old, clearly old enough to claim these kids as my own. But I don't feel like I should be able to claim them. Just this morning, Tavi was chastising me for buying this very cool, multi-colored peace sign bracelet cuff. It screamed my name as I did my best to walk by and ignore it in the store. But seriously--that bracelet belongs on my arm. And it was under $5, which I interpreted as a sign from God that it should go home with me. Tavia informed me that I should give it to her, because I'm "way too...
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Of White Lights & Wisdom

by Rebecca Valentine1 Comment
In two days, I will celebrate my 46th birthday.I can't look at that number without chuckling because it is the same age my mom once was, only then, it was as ancient as Mesopotamia to me. Now *I* will be the bearer of 16,790 days of life experience, and yet I feel remarkably...not old.2010 was a year of change for me, and more often than ever before, I'd find myself pondering my life, my choices, my circumstances. Like most 46-year-old women, I have teeny white Christmas lights strung across the headboard of my bed. I like to lie there at night, looking at them, thinking. At first, I could only think about how cool those lights were. Everything looks better--dreamier--in the soft glow of white Christmas lights. It's true. Scientific studies have proven it. Now I have too.But as I grew accustomed to having a purple bedroom with white Christmas lights on the headboard and vibrantly dyed Mexican sarongs hanging...
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Like a Phoenix from the Ashes, Good Things Rise from Difficult Transitions

by Rebecca Valentine1 Comment
Every now and then, something happens that gives me pause to consider my life and where I'm at in the grand scheme of things. Yesterday, my newly published book arrived--100 copies of that book arrived, actually. And for a writer, I'm not sure there is a greater thrill than holding your book in your hands for the first time. It's heady stuff. In this case, that 500-plus-page book is the result of a year's worth of labor. So of course, I can't help but think back over the year. And what a year it's been. My life has been on ongoing series of transitions in the recent past. I left a 12-year relationship with the father of my daughters. It was a painful, gut-wrenching decision, one I had been struggling with for years. We had never married, but that fact didn't make the parting of ways any less difficult for us or our children. We had bought a house together, lost a...
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