Of gardens and change and aging

 

A corner of my yard two years ago

Microsoft or whatever genie lives inside my computer decided today to show me pictures of the garden two years ago when it was lush and green. It was particularly inappropriate today because John, the lawn guy, came this morning to walk the yard, talk about what was hopeless, what might come back, what to do through the winter. The new rosemary is toast, the honeysuckle needs to be cut way back and should be pulled—you know it was hot if it killed honeysuckle. The lantana might make it. And so it goes. Of course, in this uncertain world, the weather is one of the most uncertain—he said if we have an early killer frost, as we did last year, it will be a double whammy some plants might not survive. But our new grass is strong and good—a bright spot.

This focus on change came on a day when I read two blogs about aging and change. The first, “More Than a Shoe Part” by John Clark on the Maine Crime Writers blog, talked about “lasts.” When was the last time you did something that you know you will never do again in your lifetime—rode a rollercoaster, went fishing on slippery rocks, climbed a mountain or hiked ten miles. He had a friend who went hunting and had to use his rifle as a cane to get home—you know that was a last.

Susan Witting Albert, writing Senior Chronicle #2 in her Place and Thyme column on Substack, also talked of the things she no longer does, though she suggested that we now have more power with the things we do. On her list of lasts were a brisk two-mile hike every morning, foreign travel, driving around the country on book tours, intense gardening. But Susan points out that technology now enables us to do much of that virtually—an author may not tour bookstores but through social media can stay in touch with readers, we may not travel but we can visit far-off lands virtually (I love videos about Scotland). We need not be confined by age; it’s simply different.

On my list of lasts, things I know I won’t do again are another trip to Scotland, probably another trip home to Chicago where I grew up (my urge to go these places is overridden by my dislike of flying these days). Sitting on a dune in the Indiana Dunes watching the sun set over Chicago and Lake Michigan. Giving a big old party for sixty of my nearest and dearest. Briskly walking my neighborhood and studying the ever-present changes—a walker makes that difficult. Driving a car, though I must say I don’t miss that so much. I adore my little VW convertible Bug, but I don’t want to drive her again.

But there are so many things I do daily that bring me joy—keeping in touch with children and grands, reading and writing, visiting with friends, cooking for my family, studying recipes, keeping up with the news and voicing my opinion. My days are full and happy and, I’ve said this a hundred times before, what I can no longer do is balanced by my wonderful memories of doing so much of it.

Some of you reading this are too young to think about lasts, but I know others my age or close to it read my blog. So what’s on your list of lasts and how do you feel about that? I used to think ahead to retirement and worry about what I would do all day, how I would feel about the things that slipped away from my life. What I’ve found is that’s not a problem at all—it’s lovely to look back at the memories, but it’s also lovely to be in the present, to enjoy the now.

You really can’t go home again

Friend Jean told me that the newspaper had a feature on the Indiana Dunes and she thought that was where my family and I spent summers. It was, and I was excited about seeing the article, anticipating memory-evoking prose and maybe some familiar scenes. She brought me the article when we had supper at Tokyo Café tonight, and I could hardly wait to get home to read it.

A major disappointment. At first glance, I thought it wonderful that the Dunes had been upgraded to national park status, but reading further on I realized that the national park is a much larger swath of land that encompasses the smaller Indiana Dunes State Park of my memory. A major highway cuts through the national park which also encompasses such surrounding towns as Chesterton, Valparaiso, and Beverly Shores—all familiar names from my day but surely not part of the park. Tours suggest staying in those towns, down to what B&Bs and restaurants are recommended.

In my day, some sixty-plus years ago, there were two entries to the park—the beach, which featured a pavilion—we called it The Pavilion—which was always to my mind crowded and dirty. People were not careful with their bathroom habits, their food, and their trash. To get to our secluded cabin by the beach, we would have had to pick our way through crowds of beach bathers (I have less attractive names for them) and then walk a mile down the beach, in the hot sun, carrying whatever we needed. My family much preferred the woods.

We would park in a small parking lot with a canteen that was sometimes open, sometimes not. Then out came the duffel bags and backpacks because we had to carry clothes, groceries, books, whatever we needed, and we headed into the woods. I can almost follow the route and the various trails in my memory, though surely if I were there today, I’d be lost. Usually we went in the daytime, but I remember one night when Dad stopped all of us on the trail to let a skunk pass. A mile of up and down on sandy trails, watching for poison ivy, and we were home, home being a small cabin with no running water (a cistern pump), no electricity, and an outhouse. We thought we were uptown when we got bottled gas for cooking and a real refrigerator.

The back of our cabin looked out over the serene woods, while the front, high up on a dune, offered a spectacular view of Lake Michigan. The cabin sat literally at the southernmost tip of the vast lake, and it was where I learned to love storms, watching them roll down the length of the lake from the north.

I got no sense of that long lost world from the article, which seemed written for the tourist who wants to drive, in comfort, from one B&B to the next one, with a nod to those who want to hike. A two-mile trail takes in the Bailly homestead, site of early settlers to the area. It was definitely not in the park I knew.

My dad and a friend owned the cabin as bachelor physicians, and we continued to share it with that other family all the years I remember. Sometime along the way the State of Indiana exercised it eminent domain rights and took over the cabins, leasing them back to previous owners every year. It was always a waiting game—would the lease arrive this year? In 1969, the year my folks retired and moved to North Carolina, the lease was cancelled. The state rented the cabins as weekend getaways for a few years and then burned them all.

I don’t think I could bear to go back and see the spot where our cabin stood, though the way dunes shift and change the landscape, I probably couldn’t even find it. But I often go back in my mind. I had a favorite spot, halfway down the dune to the beach, on a path to friends’ cabin. There was a little outcropping, and at sunset I could sit there, my arm around Timmy, our collie mix, and watch the sun set behind the skyscrapers of Chicago, some forty miles across the lake. The sun would be a huge red ball and the skyscrapers, tiny black dots in front of it. Sitting there, in my mind these days, I am in my safe spot.

I guess maybe memories are better than today’s reality.

With every season.....

Please welcome Jennifer Anderson, my Wednesday guest. Ref, chauffer, master chef and booboo kisser. When she’s not wielding her super mom powers, she likes to weave sentences together and offer a little escape to readers. You can usually find her sitting in the dark in front of her computer, falling in love with her characters. Send chocolate!
Today she talks about change—in real life and in fiction.

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With Every Season...

The seasons may do it four times a year, but we as humans experience change on a more rapid pace, if not daily. And some handle it better than others. My husband, for example. I love him to pieces and over the twenty-plus years together, I know this little trait about him and try to soften the blow when I know I’m about to change up his routine.
But I feel I’m a happy-go-lucky kind of girl and crave change. Or at least, I thought I did. I blame getting older or maybe just the current age I’m in where I have three kids who are constantly changing.
Ding. Ding.
My oldest daughter is thirteen going on twenty-three, and she’s making plans for high school *gasps*. During her 7^th- and 8^th- grade years, she’s allowed to shadow a high school girl at one of our local Catholic High Schools, deciding whether or not she wants to attend their school when she graduates *grabs chest*.
When did my baby become a teenager looking at high schools? Wasn’t it just yesterday that I was giving her baths in the kitchen sink and reading her bedtime stories? Next, she’ll be driving a car, going on dates, prom, high school graduation and then she’ll want to look at colleges. The nerve!
So while I might think I’m strong and brave when it comes to change, my inner mommy is cowering in a corner, rocking back-and-forth crying in her empty glass of pinot.
Lucky for me, good fiction should tell a different story. A heroine/hero is faced with a change (death, affair, end of the world) in their life and we want to see them push past the difficulty and succeed. In Finding You, a bomb is dropped in Jessica’s lap. How she deals with the news tells us how strong she is and if she’s adaptable.

Finding You

Jessica Crispin sets out to find her mom but discovers more than she planned.

A long-lost grandfather dies, leaving Jessica Crispin a sizable inheritance. The only catch? She has to find her mom, whom she hasn’t seen since she was two, and she only has thirty days to do it.
Enlisting her best friend Violet, Jessica sets out on a road trip determined to solve a mystery fed by deceit and misinformation from people she thought she could trust.
On the way, she meets Jackson, whose kindness and sexy pale blue eyes make her wish he would come along for the ride.
Clues from her mother lead her far from home and to a secret Jessica never imagined. And as the deadline looms, Jessica must make peace with the ghosts of her past and risk dreaming of a future pursuing her secret passion with Jackson by her side.
Find Jennifer at Goodreads:
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5326672.Jennifer_Anderson;

Website (http://jenandersonauthor.com/)

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The excitement and fright of a new computer

After two hours in Best Buy with my second son and oldest granddaughter, I am the proud owner of a new computer, a  new remote monitor, keyboard and mouse, a subscription to Microsoft Office, and a new landline telephone. Best Buy is their favorite store and they are like two happy children cavorting around in there. Jamie looks at this one, then that one, then decides on one, then changes his mind. Wants me to judge which weight is better, which keyboard. I finally sorted out my priorities--keyboard matters when I travel and don't have a remote keyboard; weight is less important because the difference is small. We've been so preoccupied with the computer, no one has even looked at the phone--have to figure that out later. I must say Jamie has been absorbed all afternoon--I have had a nap and kind of been a casual onlooker--I have no idea how to transfer files, etc. And, frankly, the idea scares me--what if some deathless piece of prose doesn't make it to the new computer. So far, apparently, everything has been transferred to the new Lenovo except my email, which is causing great angst and may well take someone from TCU to figure it out. But of course no one is there on a Saturday.
Jamie was out the door this morning at 5:30 to bike and ride--30 miles and six. I know he's tired, and I've urged him to quit. But he says "just one more time." I wish I could be more helpful."
But there's a plus. I've had the company of some of my favorite people today. And I'm so grateful to Jamie for doing this. When he's really frustrated about the email he says, "I'm not a computer guy, not a tecchie." Unfortunately, his brother-in-law who is a computer consultant by trade is in Hawaii--which is another story. Now I have to worry about children and grandchildren in stormy Hawaii.
And Jacob, who had a wonderful day at football scrimmage at Baylor and met players and the coach, leaves for a week at camp tomorrow. Sometimes it's all too much change to comprehend, but I figure being flexible about change is on way to keep young. On the other hand, not sure I wanted to keep young by learning Windows 8.

TCU's chanaging campus

Jamie (my second son, third of four children) and his lovely family--Melanie, and their daughters 15-year-old Maddie and 11-year-old Eden, spent the night last night after Jacob's family birthday--a delightful warm affair with lots of laughter and catching up and kids. I goofed (again!)--forgot to turn on the a/c in the guest house and it was hot, so I had them all under my roof. It always somehow  gives me a warm glow to have my kids under my roof, and Sophie was ecstatic. They all loved on her, and I thought she'd sleep with the girls but when I woke up she as on her bed next to mine.
As he usually does Jamie went for a run this morning, through the neighborhoods of his youth--Berkeley, Park Hill, TCU, Westcliff, etc. and came home to report that our city is changing--in a good way. I've been concerned about all the look-alike quadraplexes going up, but his argument was that in most instances they're an improvement over poorly maintained small houses (we'll see in five years). He thinks our part of Fort Worth still has its charm but is looking sharper.
This is not a family that hurries, By the time we got everyone up and dressed, we went to breakfast--breakfast, mind you--at 12:15. At Ol' South--Jamie is also nostalgic about eating about the pleaces of his high school and college years.

Then we drove around the places he'd passed while running. Wish I'd been smart enough to have a camera. Began with a behind the scenes trip through thee TCU Campus--places I'd never seen, didn't know you could drive--I've been off campus four years and the change is amazing. Mel said, "Wow! I'd come back here and go to school again." I said I didn't think you could drive these places, and Jamie, a law unto himself, cheerily said, "I don't think you're supposed to." Made me a little edgy because I'm a rule follower, but it was a fascinating look at the campus, with Jamie and Mel pointing out their dorms, where the main used to be, etc. Not sure how fascinated the girls were.

I'm so used to back roads that when we drove by the new grand front entrance to the library I realized I'd never seen it--and it's apparently been under construction for some time now. Finally, we drove by the chapel where they were married.
I felt like I had my eyes opened. Maybe I need to pay more attention to my surroundings these days. But TCU is in a world of change--I guess it's all for the best but I tend to cling to the past. If you're in Fort Worth and haven't seen TCU for a while, it's worth exploring--but I think you'd have to go on foot for much of it and not Jamie's route which was probably slightly trespassing.