Monthly Archives: July 2012

The good aunt and sticky friendships

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Please forgive the later-than-usual post today. I was spending time with a dear friend and her family earlier today and then came home to find sugar ants all over my kitchen counter. A war ensued, and though I’ve left the kitchen and moved to my home office, ants keep crawling down my arms (so please also forgive any typos – crawling critters make me spastic).

Anyway, what I really want to share with you today is a call to take up arms in a different sort of battle: a battle for stronger friendships.

Yesterday’s New York Times published an intriguing article about why it’s so difficult to form friendships after the age of 30 (Thanks to Enuma Okoro for calling this article to my attention – she’s one of those amazing “people magnets” that I’ll speak of in a moment). The article points out that college is one of the last times most of us have an easy time creating deep friendships.

Now I know there are some of you out there well past college age who have absolutely no trouble making friends. Some of you have the sort of personality that draws people to you with little effort on your part. I’m friends with a few of you, and you “people magnets” can go read some other blog if you like.

But for those of you who have drifted away from more friends than you care to admit, I challenge you: decide which ones mean enough to you to make a true effort at rekindling the friendship. For those of you who have met someone you think could be a friend but haven’t quite connected with, follow the article’s implicit advice: ask that person to meet you for coffee, even if you have to schedule the date for several weeks from now.

You may be wondering what this has to do with good aunts. Many of us without children long to be not only good aunts to the children in our lives, but also good friends with women who have children. You might be surprised by how difficult this can be, especially for women in their thirties and forties, during prime child-rearing years.

Continue reading →

The enchanting garden

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One of the days my husband and I were out in Oregon, he came back from his morning run very pleased. He had a surprise to show me on the campus, one that he knew would delight me. He wouldn’t tell me what it was, though, not wanting to spoil the surprise.

Let me back up a moment to remark on the beauty of the University of Oregon’s campus. Both my husband and I attended universities that were of a mostly utilitarian, bricks-are-best style, and while in Eugene, we found ourselves commenting again and again what a pretty campus it is.

While my alma mater has an arboretum near the main campus, UO’s website boasts that its campus “is an arboretum” (emphasis mine). To call it an arboretum isn’t a stretch, considering the rest of the campus description: “… with museums, libraries, laboratories, and lecture halls situated among over 3,500 trees of more than 500 species. Bring in the harvest at the urban garden, explore the nearby historic cemetery, or walk along the banks of the Willamette River” (Source). They’re not exaggerating about the nature that is an integral part of the university.

Back to the day my husband took me off our usual path through campus. Here’s where our journey took us: Continue reading →

Proud aunts

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I’ve written before about the pride we aunts take in our nieces and nephews, and the 10 days I spent in Oregon at the U.S. Olympic Track & Field Trials brought out a number of proud aunts to cheer on their family’s elite athletes. Today, I’ll share three “good aunt” stories with you from the competition.

Proud aunts follow through on a father’s inspiration
Early into the trials, I saw an article in the The Register-Guard talking about Amanda Smock, an expert in the women’s triple jump. She competed in the 2008 trials, but finished 5th and didn’t get to go to the Olympics that year.

After those trials, her father encouraged her to keep pursuing her dream, though he didn’t live to see her succeed. He died from cancer a year later, but four of Smock’s aunts (her father’s sisters) made the long drive from Minnesota to the trials to surprise her and cheer her on.

Smock finished first in the trials, and because of qualifying requirements to compete in the Olympics, she’ll be the only athlete to represent the United States in her event. Of winning and what it meant to have her four aunts watching from the stands, she said: Continue reading →

You’ll see these faces again

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Happy 4th of July!

What better way to celebrate than with some photos of our 2012 US Track & Field Olympians? The trials were amazing this year: Ashton Eaton earned a world record in the Decathlon, Julia Lucas broke our hearts with a 4th place finish in the women’s 5000 meters, and Jeneba Tarmoh and Allyson Felix made history of their own with a tie (to the thousandth of a second) in the Women’s 100 meter final. And their story put track & field in the news for longer than it might otherwise have been.

For ten days, we cheered and cried and gasped and applauded and put ponchos on and took them back off as we watched spellbound to see who would represent the United States in this year’s Olympic games. Here are just some of the faces you’ll see again in London.

The women’s 5000 meter final, early in the race

The winners in the women’s steeplechase: Shalaya Kipp (l), Bridget Franek and Emma Coburn. As the stadium announcer said of the incessant rain, “Every hurdle is a water jump today.”

The men’s 200 meter winners. Wallace Spearmon (center) will have a chance at redemption in this year’s Olympics. In the ’08 Olympics, he had begun a victory lap thinking he had medaled, only to have officials disqualify him for stepping over the lane line.

In her final jump, Brittney Reese had to protest the judge’s initial call that she had fouled. The jump was declared legal, and it gave her the win.

Leo Manzano and Andrew Wheating celebrate making the men’s 1500 team. Both are Olympic team repeats.

From left to right, Shannon Rowbury, Morgan Uceny and Jenny Simpson take a victory lap to celebrate making the women’s 1500 team.

Several US Olympians show off the uniforms they’ll be sporting in the games.

We celebrate our independence from England today, but our best athletes are on the bus headed to London, where they hope to take over and bring home the gold.

Our flag flies over Hayward Field. Happy 4th of July!

How are you celebrating the 4th? And which athletes do you most hope will bring home a medal from London?

Aunts (lovely and vile) in literature

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I hope you won’t mind a lighter post today. I’m flying back from my vacation in Eugene, Oregon, where I spent 10 marvelous days watching the US Olympic Track and Field Trials. If you missed the trials and want to know who made the team for London, check out my favorite running site: Flotrack. I’m sure there are some proud aunts (not to mention moms and dads, too) of our US athletes.

For today’s post, I wanted to mention some aunts in literature, some that you’d love to have as your own aunt and some that are vile, ornery or downright evil.

I owe the inspiration for this post to a fellow blogger Jodi Chromey, whose post about Beverly Cleary’s Ramona and Beezus (and their aunt Beatrice) got me thinking about other aunts in literature. Check out her post. It’s a lovely tribute to Cleary and the power of literature in a child’s life. And Chromey describes in moving detail why Aunt Beatrice means even more to her now that she’s all grown up and a woman without children of her own but a niece and nephew to adore. Continue reading →