Goin’ to the chapel… The earth moved under our feet… I can see clearly now…

Funny how it seems too easy to use song lyrics to summarize events, but sometimes it just works…

The initial reason I went to Los Angeles for a week was to attend her wedding at the end of March.

She is my brother’s daughter, and the last grandchild to get married. This will very likely be the last wedding in my immediate family for quite a long time. It was indeed a very special and very happy occasion.

Often parents sit horrified as they watch their child go through a ceremony that will officially begin a relationship with someone they view as the worst possible choice in a partner.

No one was worried that the girl would make a bad choice. She had very high standards. In fact, when my mother was alive, she worried the girl would not be able to find the right man to be her husband, but my mother was wrong. She has found a wonderful man.

Her mother and father are delighted.

We are all delighted

It was an evening wedding, and they had a simple dessert reception rather than a meal. It was quite fun…

...especially a few minutes after 9 p.m., when an earthquake hit on a fault not that far from the venue. It was one of those rolling type of quakes that seemed to last for quite a while, and almost immediately people were heard singing the opening lyrics to the Carole King song. The earth did indeed move under our feet.

The only noticeable change at my Dad’s house was that the quake had stopped the pendulum in the grandfather clock in the living room, so we knew exactly when the quake occurred.

And then unplanned, but coinciding providentially with my trip, the ophthalmologist who takes care of my father decided that the cataract in the eye in which he still has some vision (he is blind in one eye) would be removed a few days after the wedding. The eye drops (two different kinds, four times a day) needed to be started 3 days before the operation, so I was there to supervise that and to help take care of him after the operation, when he then had to put in three different eye drops four times a day.

My younger brother drove us to the hospital, and when we saw the other patients who were having cataracts removed that day (the doctor schedules all of these operations on the same day) coming out of the surgery with gauze pads over their eye, we were a bit concerned. It would not do at all for our father to have his good eye covered, which would basically leave him blind. But we needn’t have worried. The doctor put a clear cup over the eye.

That evening my sister and my other brother, the father of the bride (who brought his dog Rosie), came to see how Dad was doing, and we hung out in the den watching Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune. We always guess what color dress will Vanna White will be wearing. We all guessed wrong.

My sister worked on my Dad’s toenails, which were in dire need of being trimmed (I didn’t realize how hard it is for elderly folk to trim their toenails), and he got to love-on Rosie a little bit.

The next morning when my dad got up and sat down to watch the morning news, the first words out of his mouth were “Wow, this is great. It is really clear!”

I started to get a little angry. Why did they wait until the man was 89 years old to do this? Why didn’t they do this much earlier, before the cataract got so big? Well, no point in getting worked up about it. The fact that he can see clearly now after who knows how many years in the fog is indeed a blessing.

I'll do it myself...

Years ago, when his sisters came with their children to visit Pater (which is what they called their father), my dad had a knack for entertaining his nieces and nephews by making funny faces.

I was very happy, when I saw him at the end of March, that he was feeling lively enough to give me an encore performance when I began taking his picture.

 It brought back many wonderful memories of boisterous gatherings in the living room with aunts and cousins laughing at his antics.

And on this particular morning, as he does on most mornings, he begins by eating a bowl of homemade yogurt, which he makes himself and has done for probably 30 years or more,  topped with a variety of fresh (bananas), canned (pineapple), and stewed (prunes) fruit. Nearly every day he also eats eggs and bacon, which he has cooked himself and has done since my earliest memories of him. He has no sign of cardiovascular disease. Go figure.

On this particular morning, I watch as he struggles to open a can of pineapple with a hand-operated can opener – the sort that you clamp down on the can and then turn the knob. He will be having cataract surgery in a few days, and I expect his difficulty is partly because he can’t see too well.

Would you like me to help?

Nah. I can get this, he says.

I restrain myself from grabbing the can and the can opener and leave the kitchen to do some cleanup in the bathroom.

When I return, he has indeed opened the can the old-fashioned way, the way they used to do it, before the second-generation of can openers was invented. He has used a “church key” to punch holes around the edge and has grabbed pliers from the junk drawer to pull up the lid enough to shake out the pineapple. He has managed to do this without cutting himself. Whew!

I understand how important it is not to try to take over doing the few things that he is still able to do for himself. My sister suggested that I not leap up to do the dishes after breakfast. Let him take care of it, she says. So I don't. I also leave the drainer full of air-dried dishes so that he can put them away himself. In the first few days of cleaning up after myself, I put a few things away where they did not belong. He has come behind me and rearranged the knives in the knife holder, and I have put the containers that are used for leftovers in the wrong spot.

We made some major mistakes in trying to control what Richard’s father did when he came to live with us. I don’t see my father very often, but I am determined not to make similar mistakes when I do.

Little cat feet....

The dog’s sharp claws make a staccato tattoo on the asphalt as she trots briskly ahead of me. The Flexi Leash is almost fully extended. She is able to sense how much tension is on the thin cable that connects her to me, and if I walk faster to catch up with her, she just speeds up even faster. On the few occasions when I have launched myself into a jog to see if I can draw up even to her, she has shifted into a gallop to make sure I don’t.

She often needs to be persuaded that she is not the leader of the pack.

I have given up trying to count the number of steps she makes to one of my steps. I can’t manage two counts at the same time, which I suppose is a good thing, otherwise I’d focus on counting steps instead of thinking about more important things, like rehearsing what I am going to say the next time I teach Sunday School... writing lead sentences for blog posts that never seem to get written...  

This morning a heavy fog has settled like shroud over the hills and hollars of the route we walk. I am reminded of the Carl Sandburg poem

The fog comes   
on little cat feet.   
 
It sits looking   
over harbor and city   
on silent haunches
and then moves on

The sun appears briefly as a pale, white disk. I can look directly at it, and then the mist swirls and it is gone again.

We walk around the pond just about every day. And today, for the first time, I notice a Red-winged blackbird...



arrived back from wherever he has spent the winter, flying into the large tree near the water’s edge. Its bright red epaulets flash briefly, and then it begins to sing.

It is supposed to be 70 degrees today, so although it is a bit chilly right now, there is no need for the knit cap, the ski mask, heavy winter coat, or the gloves.

The crocus have appeared...

their sweet lavender and yellow flowers pushing up through the leaf litter.

Spring is arriving, much like the fog on its cat feet… not quite as silently though, the birds make sure of that, but no one is quite ready to believe the winter is truly over.

In the footsteps of giants

Two days ago, when the dog and I walked the loop that circles the large pond near our house, the only footprints in the snow were those that we had left several days earlier.

In the meantime, the sun has come out, the temperature has warmed a little, and the snow is starting melt.

I noted with some interest that my footprints in the thinning show had increased in size. My footprint now extended beyond my toes by at least 4 inches and was also considerably wider. And the footprints of the 15-pound dog trotting ahead of me had turned into those of a 150-pound St Bernard.

Someone attempting to analyze who had been walking around the loop might think I was a giant of a person with a very large dog. And of course, they’d be right.

Where'd you say you were from?

The character Henry Higgins in the movie My Fair Lady had the ability, or so he said, to tell where a person had come from by the way they talked (There even are places where English completely disappears; in America they haven't used it for years). And of course his ability to change the way Eliza Doolittle spoke, so that she was able to fool another expert, was a key point in the plot of the movie.

In a general sense, our language is very fluid. Words pass out of common use, new words are added, and the meanings of old words change and become something very different. And for me at least, the way I talk and express myself has most definitely changed over the years.

When we arrived here in south central Missouri in 1981, both of us California natives who had spent all of our lives to that point in California (except for 2 years in Oregon), I made a conscious decision to change the way I spoke and chose words, and even pronounced words, so that I felt like I fit in more with the local people, after someone told me “you ain’t from around here are ya…”

As I began to meet more and more people and get to know them better, I discovered that almost everyone "wasn’t from around here" either, and even more interesting I thought, were that many of those who I became friends with, who were born and raised right here in this town and who never left, didn’t have a noticeable accent and sounded just like me. Or at least I thought they did.

I was given a link to a Web site with 25 questions about vocabulary and dialect, and depending on your answers, it provides a map with three cities that are likely candidates of your place of origin.

So, where did it decide I was from? Denver, Colorado, and Louisville or Lexington, Kentucky. Huh? What?

Denver makes sense because my mother was born in Colorado Springs and raised in Elbert, which is near Denver, and she certainly influenced the way I learned to pronounce words as a young child. Not sure about Kentucky though, except that makes sense in a way too, because Missouri and Kentucky share a bit of border in common.

Even as mathematically challenged as I am, I have figured out that I have now lived more than half my life here, in a place far from my linguistic roots. My vocabulary has, obviously, changed. But I found myself shocked to the core at what came out of my mouth during a conversation with a man I saw recently.

He and his wife own a trailer house (that would have written mobile home in a past life) on a lot that I walk by every day. For a while a young couple were living there. They had two small dogs that were loose in the yard, and every time we walked by, they would bark as us; it was all bluster, no actual threat implied, but Miss Molly became nervous about passing.

Then, suddenly, the trailer was empty, but it took Molly a while to realize the dogs were gone, so I still had a bit of a struggle with her.

One day not too long after they had left, when I was coaxing her to pass by, the man pulled up in his truck to pick up mail from the route box, so I asked what had happened to them. He said they (his son and daughter-in-law) decided they wanted to live in town. I said, “Well, when they were living here, my dog was ascairt to pass by…’

Ascairt? Where did that come from?

Perhaps I need to go back to Los Angeles so I can learn to talk again.

++++++++

Update several hours later: Took the test again because I just couldn't believe the first results. This time some of the questions were different and my answers map showed Stockton, Fresno, and Modesto, all cities in central/northern California. That's a bit closer to home...

I Imagine Happy Ever After

I grew up watching Walt Disney animated feature-length films. Very sad and scary things almost always happened in these films, but by the end, one could be fairly confident that the “good guys” in the story would live happily ever after.

We tend to want our novels and movies to resolve so that the characters with whom we have become emotionally involved will live happily ever after, even if we know in the real world that they probably won’t.

Even so, it upsets us when they don’t. Take, for example, what happened at the end of season 3 of Downton Abbey. The actor who played Matthew Crawley in the series decided to leave because he wanted to work on other projects. Instead of simply replacing him with another actor to carry on the Matthew character, the “powers that be” decided to kill him off. Fans of the dramatic series were furious. I admit I was too. Although I threatened to boycott Season 4, we started watching last week when the new season began.

Unfortunately, real life does have away of coming up and biting us on the butt,  just like what happened to the fictional characters on Downton Abbey, and we often face situations that do not lend themselves to “happy ever after” but must simply be “got past” and dealt with.

None of has a guarantee that there is going to be a “happy ever after” here on earth, and this was especially true of our son, Nathaniel. I have a good imagination, but as years passed in his life, it became harder and harder for me to imagine a “happy ever after” for him. Nathaniel had such a difficult time negotiating life. One of our greatest concerns was what was going to happen to him after we died and weren't around to be a safety net for him.

Now, however, I have no trouble at all imagining him living happily ever after. I have no trouble imagining the scene that took place when Nathaniel stepped out of his body on the morning of January 13, 2011, sometime between 11:30 and 11:45, and walked into eternity and into the arms of the Savior in Heaven.

Knowing that he is now living happily forever after, knowing where he is, gives me great comfort.

The crushing grief of his death is passing away, but I still miss him and always will.

In loving memory of our son...

Nathaniel (Feb 12, 1977--Jan 13, 2011)

A Different Drummer

I drove to town yesterday afternoon to pick up the mail, run some errands, and go for a walk in the park. Despite the bitter cold, very little snow fell on Sunday, and so the roads are not bad at all.

In fact, we were having a bit of a heat wave yesterday: it was a balmy 29 degrees according to the thermometer on the sign at the local grocery store, the wind was not blowing, and it didn’t seem that cold. It really didn't.

I had a very odd feeling when I got to the park.

On Monday when I went to the park to walk, I could see that nobody had been there since the light snowfall on Sunday. I knew this because the snow on the walking path was pristine. There were no footprints at all, anywhere, except for some meandering trails made by rabbits, squirrels had been scampering around near some trees, and a dog (or perhaps a coyote) had passed through.

Yesterday when I went to the park, the walking path was still pristine, except for my footprints from Monday.

We like to think of ourselves as special and unique – there is nobody exactly like us in the whole wide world, right?

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away---Henry David Thoreau

Some people do indeed walk to the beat of a different drummer, but usually they can find someone else who also walks to that same beat. I think we all feel bit more comfortable when we are not so far out of step from everyone else.

As we made our way around the park, I began to feel very uncomfortable as it dawned on me that I was obviously, the only person in town crazy enough to walk in the park in the cold.

It is all the dog’s fault. She has unhinged me.

I see now that I have a screw loose. I need help.

Who was that masked woman?

Well, that would be me, of course.

Once upon a time I worked for this organization...

Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.

And although I did not deliver mail in the gloom of night, I did deliver mail when it was very hot, in a torrential downpour with thunder crashing and lightening flashing, and when there was a foot of snow on the ground.

I don’t have to do that anymore. And indeed, I don’t venture off more than a few feet from the back door if there is heavy snow or ice on the ground (I cannot afford to fall down again).  

However, a compulsive dog owner will take the dog for a walk if it isn't raining too hard or if the road is clear enough of ice and snow that it is safe to walk. This is part of the costume one wears when she ventures out on a balmy 15° afternoon (with a brisk breeze blowing).

What the picture doesn’t show is the two pairs of sweat pants, an undershirt, flannel shirt, zippered hoodie with the hood pulled up, heavy winter coat, and gloves. My sweet sister gave me the knit cap not long after we moved here – I’ve had it about 30 years and it is very warm.

And the dog? Well, to spare her the embarrassment, I did not take a picture of her, but she is decked out as though she vying to be on the list of the Top 10 Worst Dressed Dogs. Richard jokes that, “the bag lady has a bag dog.”

This came about because in our search for the pack rat, Richard went up into the attic and found several plastic bags of clothes that were not actually in the bags any more because the plastic had disintegrated (that gives you an idea of how long the clothes were up there). Amongst the clothes was a very nice bright red crocheted pullover vest type sweater thingy. Obviously homemade. I no longer remember where it came from.

The clothes were washed and rebagged to go to the thrift store, but I held back the red sweater. I no longer wear bright red because parts of my face are permanently red, and wearing red just makes my face look more red. But I could tell it was very warm... and the dog needed a warmer sweater....and so I cut the sweater apart to make a warmer coat for the dog than the vinyl-backed fleece coat she wears when it is rainy out. And yes, we go for walks in the rain.

I haven’t finished her new coat yet, and so I have used the other half of the sweater to make a temporary coat for her, which I have to sew on her so it stays put. And then I put her vinyl-fleece raincoat on over top of that.

She looks ridiculous, and probably so do I...

But she indeed is very warm, and so am I..

Taking care of the girls…. it was quite a hen party

We were not sure what to expect when the young family with 3 children moved in to the building next door that used to be our church. For the first time we have had actual “next door neighbors” that are not a half-mile down the road.

We wondered what the children would be like. Great kids, it turns out. Happy, cheerful, polite, and very friendly. Two of our neighbor’s three children are girls, and the oldest child is a boy who likes to ride motocross. We were a little alarmed when they turned their front lawn into a motocross track, but because of the lay of the land and the trees between our property and theirs, the noise of the motorbikes wasn’t bad at all. 

A couple of days before Christmas, she came to the house with the kids and told us they were going to leave on Christmas day in the RV and head South to someplace near Florida so the boy could ride on a large motocross track and get some training.

Would I take care of the girls?

Sure I would. But it wasn’t her daughters she was talking about, it was these girls….

 I don’t remember how long it has been since I have had chickens but it has been many years. And even in the last years when I did have chickens, they were not permanent residents – they were the Cornish cross chicks that one buys from the feed store and raises for 2 months and the eats.

I had forgotten how much I like chickens. The soft sounds they make as they talk to each other, the clucking…

And these girls are beautiful… 

One of them laid an egg almost every day, despite the cold and the short days.

I did not mind taking care of them at all, but it came to an end today.

When I took the dog out this morning for her morning squirt, I saw the RV parked in the yard, so I did not go today carrying hot water for their bowl.

We did have omelets for dinner though.

Fatcicles and Channel 13

On Saturday nights I listen to the Prairie Home Companion radio program, but because our local National Public Radio station does not broadcast reliably – the transponders in our area frequently not functioning – I usually stream the broadcast from Minnesota Public Radio in Minneapolis, which is the link given on the PHC Web page. Periodically there will be breaks in the program for station identification and what not, and Minnesota Public Radio is good about giving weather reports during these breaks. Last Saturday night I found it very helpful to know that the forecast for overnight low was going to be “30 below.”

I am not being sarcastic. I am very grateful that –30° is not our temperature here. I feel a little less compelled to complain when it is in the “high teens.” It could be worse.

The fact that it has been colder outside overnight certainly -- and often during the day -- in recent weeks than it is in our refrigerator has been a big help.

Now, my husband does not go hunting for food with a weapon, but he does arm himself with grocery ads and fulfills that primitive instinct to “hunt and gather” in a less bloody way. Turkeys and chicken went on sale just before Christmas, and so within the last week or so he has come home with 4 turkeys and 9 packages of chicken legs and thighs.

Two turkeys spent two days in the car because there was no room for them in the refrigerator, and they were still frozen when we finally brought them in.

The house has been periodically filled with the smell of baking poultry and the stove top occupied with a large stock pot of boiling bones for broth. And with the refrigerator filled with plastic bags of meat ready to go into the freezer, it is a simple matter to put the 2-gallon pitcher of hot broth in a bucket with a tight lid (to keep the raccoons from getting it) and leave it out overnight for the fat to rise to the top. And indeed it is not only risen to the top but is semi-frozen, which makes it even easier to peel off the top of the broth.

And the fact that it is on the porch makes it is less likely that I will forget that I have the broth (things have a way of getting pushed to the back of the refrigerator, dontchaknow) and end up throwing it away because it has gone bad.

And we are still giggling at what my younger brother did at Christmas.

When we were in L.A. in October, both of my brothers made references several times to “Channel 13,” and Richard didn’t get what they were talking about. Back in the day, Channel 13 was an independent TV station in the metro Los Angeles area that ran a lot of commercials for gadgets that you could only buy on TV (But Wait! Order now and we'll double your order. Just pay extra shipping and handling...)

So, my younger brother sent Richard a “Channel 13” present.

A “Clever Cracker.”

It actually does work. It does crack the egg, but it also broke the yolk on all of the eggs I used it on. Perhaps that they were jumbo-sized eggs might have had something to do with it.

My brother assures me that we can look forward to a Channel 13 present every Christmas from now on.

Yippee!