My piece posted a remark about space and I responded ‘Space is underrated’. It started a thinking thread in my mind about Space. Maybe saying it is underrated is too sweeping of a statement. But here is what I got to thinking about today. When we moved into the city I heard now and then, People steal flowers off the porch. So I decided I wouldn’t buy flowers I couldn’t afford to lose. I think I have lost a basket once out of 16 years. Living in the city has also made me hold things loosely. If I worry about losing the money I spent on flowers, I’ll never have flowers on the porch and there would be that much less cheer. Today I was our walking along the Greenway and someone left a couple chairs in the space between the path and the water. Sure, they can easily be stolen. And even more easily enjoyed.
Its always helpful to think up a title before you think about what to write about! I was looking through old CDs for something easy to read to and came upon Hovahness, whom I probably haven’t listened to in decades, and thought it would be good writing music, too, so here goes.
Its pretty quiet in House Woebegone these days. Christmas was lovely. One afternoon I went upstairs for a little nap and I could here the hum of my children’s voices visiting with each other. Better than Hovahness. But once they all left I got a little sicker each day till Sick Week happened. And now that I am better, my dear husband is sick. Only sicker. He got me a lovely record player /radio/ cassette player for Christmas, which is timely. All the things that enamored me about modern day listening experiences wear thin after a while. At first, a streamline service was so nice because I could choose which parts of the recording I wanted to listen to. Sometimes I could be sold a CD because the first song I heard on it caught my attention. Now I like listening to the same kind of sound for awhile as you get in one recording. I got out records of my parents that I kept when my mother was busy getting rid of everything, and its like stepping back into other parts of my life. Some of it is definitely their music and I might let a few of them go. Music brightens a room. Especially when it’s cold outside and you don’t feel well.
Sometimes I want to write about being old. And then I think. “Who wants to hear about that??” It’s rather more fun writing about children’s antics. Well. being old has no cure and death is the exit point, but in the meantime, i’ts not all bad, either. I also wonder about how things were for my grandparents and parents and there isn’t a record, so maybe I should be a record keeper!
One advantage is that I don’t have to go back to work the day after New Year’s Day!! I don’t use an alarm clock. I have time to go for a walk in the morning. Sometimes I walk around the house for exercise when the weather isn’t smiling at me. It’s harder to find food at a restaurant that suits me, so I spend time doing some good cooking. (Jamie Oliver is queued up). I’ve always liked to cook from scratch. When my husband goes to a Trade Show I tell myself I am worth cooking for. I used to tell myself it was a great time to save on groceries, but that just got depressing. Sometimes I think of my grandmother who lived alone in the birch woods of Minnesota. I was always happy to go there. We brought along our own hubbub, but it must have felt awfully quiet after we left, which was probably a relief for a few days. But I don’t picture it that way. I remember her bemoaning how her eyesight was deteriorating and being able to read was the one thing that kept her going. I have no clue how my other grandparents spent their days. My dad started having strokes in his early 60s and that took over their lives for the next 10 years gradually taking this piece and that from him for the next 9 or 10 years. I’m 65. I’m on blood thinner. But I have great eyesight and good teeth. Most of the time my joints work fine. And it makes me feel so grateful. I think we are generally unaware of the thin line between equilibrium and disequilibrium. Last week I felt like I could get nothing done without a tissue, or kleenex as I usually call it. And it might take over the rest of…… the winter maybe. (cough . cough)
That brings me to another subject. Winter is underappreciated. I think most everywhere in the world there is a season of dormancy, cold or not. I often think of winter as hard. And it is that. We are often more vulnerable in colder weather and resources that we have might dry up quickly in a crisis. I always drive with my gloves on, “just in case”. I don’t want to get stuck in cold weather with no gloves on! On the other hand, I love the coziness of a fire, which has never gone out of fashion despite the Industrial Revolution, the opportunity to not need to work outdoors and lots of hot food. At this age, I can set the pace of my life, more so than when I had school-aged children, but I had thicker skin when I was younger. Last evening when I was brushing up on Frank Lloyd Wright for a children’s art class and project, I whipped out my art gear and tried out a project having to do with stained glass windows. This still feels like a luxury of time to me. It was actually very fun and I think I’ll do more!
I'm spending time here trying to find how to wrap the image with text and all it has done is change my font to this old fashioned typewriter look. Technology changes fast and things I enjoyed doing 10 or 15 years ago are practically defunct and it is sometimes hard to figure out how to do the simplest things you used to do with ease , albeit with simpler tools. So if there is an older person in your life you think is inept. Be patient. And not so judgmental. My MIL could never operate our toaster. She even bought me one when she thought mine didn't work! Eventually, it came in handy! Andnow I have had enough of this!
Sometimes I repost Aunt Grace’s last Christmas letter. A couple months ago I cleaned out a desk and an old USB had this on it. I’m putting it here as another way of saving what I wrote 12 years ago.The photo of my shadow is on Bear Creek at the highway end of Gramma’s Rd.
A few weeks ago my mom’s youngest sister, my aunt Grace, died. She was the ‘fun aunt’ and it is hard for me to picture her laughter and her jaunty walk silenced. I have to tell myself that laughter is more real in heaven and if God had the humor to make her such a jokester, lets her joke in some way in Heaven. I often say that my mother’s family is the happiest bunch of people you could ever hope to be around and Aunt Grace certainly had her measure of good cheer! She’d play and play with us when we were young, put us off when we’d ask her how old she was, corral us into dish crews after meals and share her bed with us. She was an English teacher and as we got older included us in conversations and was always ready to discuss a good story, making us feel that our contribution to the discussion was important to her. She treated her students the same, I could tell, as I read sympathy cards from people whom she taught as long as forty years ago saying she was the best teacher they ever had and she kept up with them and their families. So when I learned she wanted the ‘Calhoun girls’ to sing at her funeral, it tipped my balance toward going. So I got on yet another airplane (now that I know how easy it can be!) and flew to Omaha to my sister’s and the two of us hopped in the car and drove to Minnesota. Aunt Grace had inherited my grandmother’s house and I was anxious to stay there, since I figured it had been 20 years since I had and what is to become of the property is not exactly certain. It has piles of wonderful, idyllic memories for us kids, being in the birch woods and running through the hills. It became Breakfast Central for my other aunt and uncle who were also staying there, and those who stayed in the motel where the breakfast was ‘inadequate’. I’d wake up while it was still dark out and stare at the stars until they faded. Then I’d dress quick and go ‘hunt’ for deer. Her 10 yr old dog, Corky would come along, glad for the company and the exercise. The last morning we stepped out the door and he ‘pointed’ right away and a deer bounded in front of us! The first morning Uncle Lester held court and gave us a lecture on the geology of the land, which is full of rocks. He told me after Gramma died he and Grace burned a LOT of brush. “We were like pyromaniacs!” he said. We also walked to the end of ‘the road’ and saw a root cellar that my great grandfather built from sandstone blocks. I remember it from when I was little. I always picture it when I read stories that include a sod hut. There is a chimney that pops through the grass. I remember going there when I was little and it was so hot and buggy! It gets pretty swampy back there, too.
‘The Road’ was just a two tire track when I was a kid and the birch trees grew right up to it. When we got there in the night and the snow weighed on the trees and the branches slapped against the car. My dad would replenish the woodpile while we were there and attach the sled to the back bumper of the car and let us fly down the road a short distance. Now there are a few more people living down there and the road is a little wider and graded smoothly. I can always spot the same cluster of bushes that distinguish it to me. My grandmother would get up first in the morning and get the fires stoked up again and soon the fragrance of coffee would waft through the house. We would crawl in bed with my parents and watch for deer bounding across the meadow.
It is always great fun and encouraging to me to spend time with my cousins. I always think that cousins are like the perfect relationship because we are family enough to enjoy the same things and yet we don’t carry the same baggage we often do with our immediate family. It is an opportunity to sit around and talk about what is really happening in our lives, share a meal, and get a little acquainted with each other’s kids.
I really don’t like viewings, but, being family, we are scheduled for the duration, in this case, from 4:30 to 8. So I pulled my game of SLAM Scrabble out of my purse to keep some young cousins, and myself, busy for a while. I have a problem with dead bodies. I know it’s an emotionally healthy thing to see the dead body, but I always think, ‘Nah, not her/him’ and figure I will stay healthy and try not to think about the ‘box’. Singing ‘In Christ Alone’ with several other first cousins was definitely a highlight and something I was glad to do to honor my aunt and her love for Jesus and her hope in Him. My cousin, Steve, preached a compelling sermon on prayer, at her request, to her very full church. It compels me to pray for my family, immediate and extended, every day. I missed Joel while I was gone, but I also felt refreshed being with this family of mine with their love and gratitude to God for what He has done for them. My love to all of you.
I’ve kept a hard copy journal this past year and found myself writing often on the first day of the month, November is so apt to get shortchanged, I thought I would make note of the last day. It’s Thursday today, and Thursday is usually low key for me. No too many hard driving plans. I drive hard earlier in the week and I need to take a breather. I do like the pleasure of handwriting, but it is not easily shared, if I want to share. So here I am, with a new laptop and ready to share!
Speaking of November getting shortchanged I want to say so many times over, Do you know the first Sunday of Advent hasn’t happened yet? It’s still Fall! I decided to keep my fall decor up until December 1st. And I am resisting the mad rush into Christmas and not getting a tree till the 2nd Saturday of December. Even if it’s cold. I like to keep it into January if it’s not crowding me too much. January is so dreary. There are still colored leaves on trees now. It seems pointless to drag out Christmas stuff. You do what you want. but. technically, it’s not Christmas yet
I went to the eye doctor for the first time in over 50 years! Last time someone came to the school and did tests. That’s when my sister got glasses. And guess what? I’m fine! It must have been fun for that eye doctor to look into 60 something healthy eyes. I do use reading glasses for reading, playing the piano and yes, typing on the computer. Is it still called typing??
We went to Jeannette’s for Thanksgiving. She and I plowed through the Costco traffic together. It’s a wild amount of stuff. She is in a small chorus that sings Early Music and their concert was the Sunday before, so we got in on that, in a beautiful church with very high ceiling the music soared into. We checked out the Harvard Museum of Natural History and saw an amazing amount of birds and butterflies and bugs and dinosaurs and glass flowers. Next time I’ll go for some more glass flowers . We got in some good grandson time while we were there. They’re teenagers and I fret about how often I’ll see them. They have a Thanksgiving Dinner rhythm going and even though we would have been glad to help, it was gratifying to watch each take their part and dinner wasn’t a big burden on anyone. Except for maybe the one who has to put away the food. I think our Thanks giving traditions are a concoction of the 50s. It’s nice to change it up a little every now and then. I gave J money for the turkey because a good turkey is too much for a host family to have to cough up, plus everything else that must be done.
We came home the next day via the Hudson River, haha. We avoided Connecticut and New Jersey. Near the town of Poughkeepsie,NY is a walking bridge across the Hudson. We didn’t go all the way across, but enjoyed getting out for some exercise and it was a beautiful day
And now it’s the last Day of November and I will clean out the Fall, except for my radiant red snapdragons that insist on continuing to bloom.
For a long time my brain has been cold. I’m not sure what’s makes it so, but characteristically, I think in the morning. That doesn’t mean I’m a morning person. It means that in that space of consciousness when I come out of sleep and before I throw the blankets back, I compose. If I think, “What am I going to do today?”, nothing comes to mind, even if I have it written down somewhere. But I think about things and then I think I need to Write. Well, its been about 2 hours since that happened, and I’m finally getting around to writing, having forgotten what I was thinking about! But I’ll make a stab at writing anyway.
Currently, I’m listening to Anthony Doerr’s Four Seasons in Rome. Its about a year he and his wife and infant twin sons lived in Rome. It is actually my first Anthony Doerr book and it is delightful. Also, Good Husbandry, a farm to table story by Kristin Kimball. I also listened to her previous one, This Dirty Life. It made me think hard about our years with our own greenhouse business, and the perspectives we missed that are learned the hard way. It encourages me to shop locally as much as possible and not complain about the prices of good food. I live in a good place for this, and I’m thankful. Its my second time through and Im enjoyingbit more without reliving my own trauma. Previously, I listened to The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. Her prose is so picturesque you feel like you’re reading poetry. Some readers can read in such a way you picture each character as is and this was one and easily slipping in and out of the local Florida dialect where the story takes place. It is the story of a boy and his pet deer and a sort of coming of age story, for both the boy and the deer, but could be enjoyed by most any age, I’d think.
Now I’ve got such a stack of serious books waiting to be read, I am going to have to budget time to read them, while I am awake enough to do it! I have an alarm that goes off at 7:45am, so I don’t lose track of time. Unlike yesteryear, my mornings are quiet and I need the nudge.
Currently, Joel is remodeling one of our bedrooms. Hopefully, we will be able to move back into it this weekend. Yesterday he installed a new dishwasher for me. We’ve been several months without one, but the garden months will finish me off. And now that they are over, we will have it for next summer! (and currently)
Currently, there is a sweet baby boy getting bigger and sweeter every day too far away from me! I think I have to switch devices to post a picture.
Currently, this chair is too cozy! So off I go into the day. I wish I had a poem at my fingertips to leave with. Maybe that will come later as well. who knows? I’m going to clean my kitchen, putting my dishes into the dishwasher…..
It feels a like a writing morning. I miss the halcyon days of blogs. I’ve been reading Mrs. Belz’s book and she said after using the word ‘cerulean’ in one essay, she might as well use halcyon!
And then there is the discussion of ‘as’. I haven’t gotten to the ‘used to’ yet, but I remember it well, we had such fun with with it!
I took my coffee out on the balcony this morning , it was so nice out. I didn’t stay. It was just little bit of chill, that would steal the pleasure. The view is pretty much brown, except for daffodils, which might start popping this week! We have temps in the 70s predicted as well as snow! We shall see.
I have been helping a friend with a homeschool co-op she has started this year. I said I didn’t want to be in charge of anything, just helping hands. Sometime in November I let “I can teach handbells” fall right out of my mouth. I volunteered to teach diagramming, too, but no one has taken my bait yet. Actually, I’d need to get a good book and refresh myself. Its been since I taught Latin. So I got a spiral book of poster size paper and drew in lines horizontally, got colored markers to match the bells (I call them music education bells) and filled up the book with , hopefully, a good variety of songs. I’ve had only 2 classes so far, it’s once a week. I can see I got better at drawing as I went along. I haven’t been in the teacher seat for a number of years.
I try to keep some art, exercise , and music in my life regularly. The music has been here the longest and it is sometimes the hardest. I need someone to sing with and my fingers are going twisty. But 10 minutes a day, which quickly turns into 20 or 30, can be so rewarding. This morning I went through a supplemental book I made nearly 20 years ago and I still like the songs. Do you ever find yourself really liking a song at a particular time in your life and later it sounds silly? I have different collections. I have collections of music I have sung with young children, Christmas music, hymns I played at each of my parents’ funerals, songs sang at New City, loose copies I needed to keep together of songs I liked. I even get pleasure out of thinking about them as I write. A Frostiana collection from which I have totally misplaced ‘A Girl’s Garden’ which is my favorite. The most used are the most abused.
Well, there are some not so interesting but necessary things on my job list that I will glad to have gotten done when I do them, so I am going to get to it and get it done unless I break a leg. Try diagramming that sentence why doncha!
I have had a loose marble running the ramps through my brain, reminding me that I have not blogged in quite some time. Actually, it’s not as long as I thought becaise I see I did when I canned tomatoes! So here are some of the things I have been thinking.
Winter is real and winter is hard. There are few things we like better than getting cozy by the woodstove. In fact, when it first got chilly and we started the stove, it warmed up…. so we put on a YouTube video of a fireplace And I watched it! Often the weather is not as harsh as it looks, but I have been doing more walking up and down my house. We do our best to keep the gloomies away, knowing that its a lost cause when we get to February. We have had a lot of rainy days recently, and then we’ll have a beautifully brilliant one!
Often on a Friday when I am out running errands, I pop in at our Amish friends, who used to be our neighbors. If it’s lunch time I pull up a chair. Sometimes I just get in a quick ‘hi”. Recently, I said on a pullUpachair day, “Can I just do this every week?” And we agreed. I thought early this week that her birthday is in early December and I am going to get ahead of the game and make her soup and cookies. When I called him today to say what I was doing he said “Do you know it’s her birthday today.?” We ate and then I said, It’s such a pretty day, what would you like to do.? So we went to schoolteacher daughter’s school for a visit. She teaches about 20-25 students, 1st-4th grades, in a one room school, of course. It was a hive of activity and they wrapped up our visit by singing to us, including ‘happy birthday’ I have been to Christmas programs, but I think this is the first time I have been to a regular school day. They made a binder with a few notes about each child, their names, their parents” names, their grandparents’ names ,what they like
to do after school. At the bottom was space for a message for the guest. Most of them said, Thank you for coming” or “Come again”. I had a little chuckle at one the said “Good-bye” (perfectly logical) and one went all out and said, “I love you!” My friends grandchild, no less!
We had a great Thanks giving. We started Wednesday night with fish and chips. Nick and Sonny came over. Nick’s birthday is around Thanksgiving. The next day we were at Mary’s for dinner. We share in the cooking. I hustled some grandkids out the door for a little walk in the park. We listened to the father-in-law tell stories, had dessert and homemade ice-cream and came home. Joel took Friday off and we went to Winterthur Gardens and got a membership. We love that place. Sometimes the drive stretches us a bit, but we get there and think Ah yes, this is worth it. We stopped at a sub shop and ordered sandwiches and a bag of chips. It came to $30. Which surprised us a little. I waited and Joel went to the other side of the building to Starbucks. When we got the sandwiches we got Two big ones instead of one halved ,maybe we said ‘cut in two’ and the ‘two’ was heard. Lunch And supper. And it was good. And I spilled my Frappuccino in the car! The lid didn’t come off, but it cracked and I had to try to do emergency cleanup with oversized sub on my lap! Argh. I survived and the car got a nice little cleanup when we got home. The next day we got up and drove to our friends in Philly for brunch and it was the quintessential brunch! It was so good you couldn’t hope for anything else, even though absolutely every breakfast food wasn’t on the table, it just tasted like it was. I think it was the best brunch I’ve ever had. We got caught up with each other and took the scenic route home, through Valley Forge. We walked into our house and knew something was amiss. A squirrel had invaded! We saw pistachio nuts and shells scattered, the cookie bag opened and emptied! Joel found it on a window sill in a bedroom. He chased it amd it managed to get in the basement. Joel set a trap and we settled with our suppers in front of the tv. When I went to take the tray down the stairs, It came through its secret passageway to the stairs. I yelled, it ran and the circus began. We opened the front door and it ran right up the stairs, leaping over my shoulder. It went onto the front room that had a curtain rod all the way across for safety. I opened the window. Joel urged it to let go of the curtain with the broom. We still hear it from time to time. We keep finding little stashes; two pistachios between the sofa pillows, two on the piano, a cookie in Joel’s recliner and one under a stuffed chair cushion in the living room. I don’t know where all the cookies went but I daresay it might have a belly full, a Thanksgiving feast, if you will!
And on Sunday we rested. And ate leftovers. Because, you know, Monday… we probably ate more leftovers then, too.
When I was a mother of young children, my grandmother told me that when she had a garden and a houseful of kids, she decided to count, and she got up to 200 quarts of all things canned combined
. Then she decided to go for 400. And she did it. So I decided to count. I got up to around 160, things canned and frozen combined. Of course, by the time you need all that , the older children are old enough to help. I used to look at my closet of jars and think, what beauty. And it is.And it’s a pleasure for me to stock up for the winter. One summer when I was feeling super tired, I said to my husband “Remember all those shelves of food?” And he said ” Yes, Melinda Pride! ” I don’t think he meant it negatively, but I thought, “If I’m too tired for pride to motivate me, what will?” The next day at church our pastor read for the call to worship, ” Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, so it all to the glory of God. ” I felt convicted. I am sure I have spent an inordinate amount of my life being motivated in less than virtuous ways, but today, I am thankful for these canned tomatoes and the sense of pleasure they give me… And for the grandmother who inspired me.
One summer day my college aged daughter asked me if ‘perspectival’ was a word. Even spell check is trying to switch it out on me. I started looking through the variety of dictionaries I keep on hand. Found it online. Then she says, “Dr. V. writes ‘History is perspectival’ across the board every day. And my response was , “Well, if Dr. V uses it, it’s a word.” I like to say it’s the adjectival form of perspective. I feel as though I am at a point in my life where I keep needing to shift my perspective, there are things I couldn’t see before. For instance, one time while visiting a friend who was caring for her mother who was in early stages of dementia, she showed me the coloring book she was filling up of beautiful birds to help keep her brain as alert as possible. I assigned such coloring to dementia therapy in my mind, a long way away for me. But one time, in the art store, I couldn’t resist. There was one of all these magical drawings of trees. It sits on my shelf. It looks too complicated to color. Sometimes I use it for drawing inspiration. I look at these magical drawings and try to envision it with realistic colors. I just do not have the eye for this. I color one, then another….. and I start thinking while I color. I got new markers for Christmas, paint brush markers and I pick one up and start at one side of crazy designs and putting it wherever I feel like it and then another and another, and I see a circle where everything had been a jumble to me before… and a turtle, a snake, a bird. I color while I eat. I put the marker down a while, it does not have to be finished in one sitting. This is kind of a big deal to me. It’s probably as big a deal as not losing my temper when I put too much stuff in my Ninja blender and it spewed the mess of my rotting banana peels I was going to put around my tomato plants And I didn’t lose my temper. Joel and I agreed that was probably a first.
So while coloring this it reminded me of a conversation my husband had with a friend who farms. They could go on and on about what is under the surface of the soil. Maybe we go through life with the perspective of ‘ the grass is green, the trees are brown, the sky is blue’without taking much time and thought of what made it so. Maybe the atmosphere is Full of color all the time , but we get a glimpse only when the sun shines through the rain. Maybe, like under the surface of your skin, under the crust of the soil in your backyard fabulous things are going on more amazing than the bright colors of my coloring page. And while it may seem like a lot of this and that going here and there, there is also a wonderful symmetry to it. It all works together. Everyday life might have a simplicity that doesn’t show its source often, but I want to be on the lookout for when it shows. There is a Christmas story called ‘The Holy Night’by Selma Lagerlof and at the end the rough shepherds who didn’t want to help the poor man begging him for coals to warm his wife and child, has compassion when he sees their poverty and offers sheepskin. In that act his eyes are opened and he sees cascading angels singing of the holy night of the Savior being born. The story ends with ‘What is needful is that we have such eyes as can see God’s glory.’ It shows up in unexpected places. Sometimes it shows up in places we weren’t looking for it.
I’m afraid I haven’t got one. Or much of one. I often think that what I have been operating from all or most of my life is seriously flawed. I don’t know much about balance and/or expectations that is both healthy and profitable. I think that ‘having something to do’ sounds like the old people’s home. (These ARE confessions). Which leads to several misconceptions about old people that being one exposes.
My mother was Swedish and ‘coffee time’ was as ritualistic as the Latin siesta. She worked hard and fast, but when coffee time rolled around, she took a break. I have often been thankful for this example of work and rest, but also found it hard to not let the steady stream of duties eat at me. Or feel like I’m being a slacker, especially when around other people who don’t know how to take a break. The fact is, I like break time a lot better than work time. Why don’t I like working? Is it because I’m just basically a lazy person? Why do I see certain tasks as a waste of time and energy? I know enough about work to know that certain kinds bring me joy. But it’s hard for me to take joy in Doing some things that will benefit me for being Done. And some mundane everyday things I take joy in, most people I know never do, like hanging clothes on the line and making bread, and it seems superfluous to take the time to do them.
So what if I were to reconstruct my philosophy of work, instead of bemoaning it? Could I come up with something that would work for a young mother, a busy 40 something, And a 60 something like me? I do think in a context of women, because that’s what I am. I don’t know if men ever stress about this in anything like the way women do. Does a philosophy work whether you get up and go to work at the same time every day or stay home? If you read books all day for your job or manufacture something? Sometimes we (as humanity) fall into the trap of thinking that what works best for us is what is best. Period. Maybe what works best for us is best for us but people are different.
I think my biggest problem is that what has motivated me most of the time is what other people will think of me. I can give lip service to the audience of One, but I forget about it most of the time. So when I find myself at home a lot, by myself, what motivates me? Am I just in the wrong place for an extrovert like me? Is it just that I have ADD or a stink pile of bad , twisted attitudes?
QuidNunc/QuidTunc? 