Don't Get Me Started with Linda Sharp

My Heart Runneth Over

Happy Thanksgiving to all of our blogmunity family, and guests who have found their way here over the past year through the sharing of stories, election trauma, and now holiday giving. I certainly hope our guests will discover what makes DGMS so special - the open hearts, care, kindness, yes - large amounts of snark, frank discussions, and ever present warmth - and decide to stay.  

This morning as I wake up in a condo with just my spouse, it would be easy to focus on what is missing - my children, my sons-in-law, our wonderful extended family, and my Marlowe Belle.

Our family is used to being dispersed, but being used to a weird normal does not make it easy or shrug offable.  Yet as we all wake in our separate places today, we do it knowing our hearts are in the same one - together - knowing that we will all be joined again at Christmas to hug, celebrate, eat too much, and simply be happy to be breathing air in the same zip code.

So this morning, in the quiet of my home, here is what I am thankful for -

~ Another sunrise.  In a world where uncertainty reigns, and death touches so many innocents, I feel the privilege of watching the sun fill the sky.  I wake to a view of water, palm trees, and clouds the shades of the most beautiful watercolor palette.  And for those brief moments, I find peace.

~ My son, Toby, far away but in the safe embrace of his oldest sister and his brother-in-law's family.  He continues to be someone I revel in, laugh with, and admire more with each passing day.  He is my hero and my heart lifts every time he lights up my phone each day.  I am thankful for him making me smarter, showing me that I will always have more to learn, for his patience, his strength, his talent, his truly awful sense of humor - a Sharp trademark - and for his determination to get on with his life - critics, haters, ignorance of others be damned.

~ Culley, my oldest, now a wife and mother, but who is firmly carving her own amazing career path in this world.  I am thankful for her easy smiles, brilliance, compassion, wicked sense of humor that rivals mine, her monstrous love for her siblings, and for every phone call and Facetime as she makes sure my connection to Marlowe stays strong despite the miles.

~ Kendall, also now married, charting her course as DOCTOR Kendall Sharp in California.  I am never not humbled by the bravery she exhibited as she methodically worked towards her own end game - grad school and getting on with the business of earning her doctorate so she can now spend her days helping children and families.  I am thankful for her strength, her understanding that people are more than what they seem on the surface, her championing of her siblings, a sense of humor that is Ninja in its subtlety, yet Grand Canyon in its scope, and for always, making sure her people are ok.

I am thankful for the two young men I am privileged to call sons-in-law.  Sean and Daniel understand, at the deepest level, the trust placed in them by Rudy and I as they build their lives with our daughters.  They are strong, caring, focused, and are loved by all of us beyond measure.  That M has Sean as a father and Daniel as an Uncle makes her the luckiest little girl in the world.

~ Marlowe, my effervescent granddaughter.  A feral princess of a child whose laughter in response to my idiocy is the fuel on which my heart runs.  I did not understand how it could be possible to love someone, who is not my own child, this much.  But I do.  And being called Mimi holds the same level of honor that being called Mom does.  Every moment spent with her is the purest, simplest form of love.  She is magic, mayhem, and unicorn farts with a ponytail.

~ I am thankful for my husband.  Thankful that he is still willing to learn, love harder, and remember me all the days I am not where he is.  After almost 34 years of marriage, 36 knowing each other, that is something rare.  I am thankful for how hard he works to provide for our family, and how much he trusts me to hold up my end of this partnership.  We have finally spent more years together than apart, and as the word 'retirement' is beginning to take shape in the ether of the not too distant future, I am excited to see what adventures unfold.  Together.

 

~ My sister, well, there is not a day that I am not thankful for her.  She is my safe place, the person who would only need a phone call, no reason given, to be here as fast as possible.  All I would have to say is, "I need you."  And she "gets" it.  She is brilliant and bold, but she is also unafraid to let her inner child out and I cannot wait for the next Disney cruise where we do just that.  Again.     

~ I am, as always grateful that I opened this piece of internet real estate so long ago.  It has widened my scope on the world, challenged what I thought I knew by expanding it with other viewpoints, and making me smarter and more compassionate in the process.  It has also brought the most amazing people into my orbit.  The sharing we do, the laughs we provide one another, the tears we trust to one another - sight unseen still in so many cases - cannot be explained.  I sit here wanting to write all your names, what you mean to me, but know I may leave someone out, so please just know YOU MATTER SO MUCH TO ME.

~ And finally, I am thankful because at this time of year, when we again take on the task of making Christmas happen for total strangers, you never fail to join the campaign.  You read the stories of those asking for our help, and respond with your trust and faith in me, your dollars, and your amazing hearts that only need to know others are hurting.  To that end, I want to update you on the family we are helping that are struggling to find their footing in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene and the displacement that finds them states away from where they called home.

Your donations for them have toys and clothing heading their way.  But they also are now in receipt of a Christmas tree with lights, ornaments to hang, tinsel to string.  (The kids are all excited about sitting the tree up  thank you thank you so much for putting a smile on my children's faces and brighten them up and giving them the spirit back this means everything to me.) 

Wrapping paper, tape, tags, and bows will help the mom wrap your magic for under that tree.  (As we emailed about Christmas and what it means to us she wrote back: It's one of my favorites too cause there's always so many memories with seeing all their smiles and excited about a certain gift and especially this year because honestly I didn't think they would have anything after us getting everything swept away from us because of a tragedy and me having to start from scratch to even get us a source of income which has been a nightmare and us living, eating, ect day by day. This blessing from you really means the world to us and I appreciate it from the bottom of my heart. I can't thank you enough.) 

A generous gift card for food and sundry other items we take for granted like shampoo, toothpaste, toilet paper.  (Oh my goodness. You got me in tears thank you so much.) 

And I am not done.  Five children are a lot to elf for and the time it takes is worth every eyestrained moment when I find just the right things.

(We still have time, so if you know of someone struggling to make Christmas magic, send them my way.)

HAPPY THANKSGIVING, and as you say your prayers at your tables, or offer up your silent thoughts for a better world, please remember that people like you are out there proving what I still believe:  The good people in this world still do outnumber the bad.

Love you all,

Linda

 

When Push Comes To Love - A Special Nudge Of The Sleigh

I have written several times in the past about our experience being in the literal eye of a hurricane and coming out the other side.  September 11, 1992, the island of Kauai in Hawaii.  Small, idyllic, a slice of paradise.  When Iniki came along it ate the entire island.  Directly over, bounced off the warm water, came back the opposite direction, bounced again, finally went back over and out to sea.  There was not a structure on the island untouched.  Wind, water, sand - they all had their way with every house, hotel, shop, telephone pole, palm tree.  Our home, a 60+ year old rental we lovingly referred to as the Shit Shack for its single wall construction and tin roof, was obliterated, carpet pulled from the foundation.

And while loss of life in the storm was kept to a single person (there were several others in the aftermath), not a single life was untouched.  And being on a island, there was no way to drive away from the storm before it hit, or once it had moved on leaving a full third of the residents homeless.

Starting over is overwhelming.  The idea of "nothing" is hard to wrap a mind around before a hurricane hits.  Trying to digest the reality afterwards when you see everything you owned and worked for gone is numbing.  There is no roadmap, no guidebook.  But what I can tell you that there is, is kindness. 

The best of people is revealed in the worst of times.  And that worst does not have to be happening to them, they only have to see it happening to another for them to be moved to action.  Humans are remarkable that way.  At our deepest level we know that we all laugh, cry, struggle, bleed, and mourn the same.  We can imagine being in a situation with having to be in a situation.  And we are moved to help.

That is how Rudy and Culley and I began to rebuild our life.  Strangers who heard our story; new co-workers of his when we were moved to a new town and were living in the hotel.  Sheets, silverware, blankets, clothing for our baby, enough to start to make a life and furnish an apartment when we moved from that hotel.  Strangers supporting us when we were unsure how to even take the first steps forward.

Which brings me to the keyboard tonight.  In the past, our Yes, Virginia requests have often been supplemented by special stories and circumstances that come to our attention.  Donations come in specifically for a family and their needs.  The year we bought a new bed and pillows and bedding for a mother and son - that one always stays with me, the pictures of what they were sleeping on forever embedded in my head, on my heart.  Tonight I am writing to share with you the family that has joined our sleigh over the weekend.

A single mother with five children who had been living in Asheville, North Carolina.  When Hurricane Helene raged up from the south, flooding entire cities, the trailer home they were renting was destroyed.  Their belongings, toys, food, clothing, even important papers like birth certificates.  (We only still have Culley's, water stained as it is, because we threw it and other papers like our marriage license into a garbage bag and into the trunk of the car before the hurricane hit.)   

With nowhere to turn in a city that was underwater, the mother reached out to a friend all the way up in New York who offered to take them all in while they begin to figure things out.  

I have been her, but I only had one tiny child to worry about.  She has five ranging in age from 6-14.  We lost our home, too, but we had a hotel company that found another position for my husband and allowed us to live on property for months.  I cannot begin to wrap my mind around the enormity of loss and fear this mother currently lives with.  And the children who are all old enough to understand that something massive has happened to completely upend their lives. Security and stability are everything to a child, and theirs has been torn from them.

I am asking that we make a special effort for this family.  That donations can come in specifically for a huge DGMS effort to make Christmas happen for each child, to help with basic clothing items for each, and to fund a gift card that will help feed them all while they stay with the friend whose home is small, but opened it to them nonetheless.

There are still YV funds I am working with for other children.  This would be independent of that money.  

Again, I have been there.  With nothing, and not knowing where to turn.  And I am grateful to this day that total strangers did know where to turn.  They turned their smiling faces, their open hearts, and their generosity toward us.  And with their support we started moving forward.

Please help if you can.  We have the capacity in this group of incredible people to reach out and truly help a family begin charting their new course.  When push comes to love, no one does it like DGMS.  Especially at Christmas.

Love you all,

Linda

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