Showing posts with label Family. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Family. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 15, 2024

And Here We Are After All

Ramona 2018

Last week we hosted the DalĂ­ Quartet, the featured guest artists for the Symphony's season debut concert, with two of them staying in our home and the other two next door. Our living room became their rehearsal space for the week. My study was serving as a bedroom during that time, so I spent my days (and some evenings) at the kitchen table, reading, writing, baking, and much of the time being serenaded by Chamber Music America's 2024 Ensemble of the Year. (Yes, they are phenomenal.) 

With the quartet rehearsing in our living room daily and my study unavailable, I had to plan what I needed to lay out (books, files, pads to write on) each morning before they started. We had moved the coffee table into the next room, usually our downstairs study but currently an instrument holding pit for Hyer Percussion, but sometimes I came up short on my planning. The musicians would not have minded my walking into the living room to grab something, but I did not want to do that. I could coast and shift gears when needed.

One of the things I found myself doing in odd moments was reading back over old, old blog posts. What did I write about ten years ago? How about 15 years ago, when I started blogging? (15 years ago? Dang.)

In rereading, I came across a post from September, 2018, written after a trip out to Portland and time with Ramona, who was then six. In it, I reference the (still) in-progress MS novel I was writing, which features a 12-year-old Ramona, and then describe to Warren how on that day with Ramona I "met" my granddaughter—the one who was 12 and the one I would never live to see.

That sentiment about never living to see that future Ramona was not me being overly dramatic. In looking at old blog posts, I am more than a bit taken aback at how ever-present the myeloma was, the toll it was taking on me, and the growing sense of time slipping through my fingers. So when I wrote "I will never know Ramona at 12," that was a realistic projection.

After rereading that post this weekend, I shared my thoughts with Warren and read him the lines towards the end about meeting my future Ramona. My voice broke again, just as it did in 2018. When I finished, we both sat quietly for a moment.

Ramona 2024
Ramona turned 12 on September 1. My granddaughter: 12. Like my speculations in 2018, she is amazing and wonderful. And I am here to see that.

What a gift. An absolutely unexpected, marvelous gift.

Sunday, September 15, 2024

All These Days

 It has been a month since I last posted here. No surprise why. We have been consumed by clearing out my father's house in order to get it on the market by October 1. We will hit that deadline with several days to spare, but it has taken a toll on all of us—my brother Michel, his wife Kate, their son Timon, their grandson Arlo, Warren, Warren's son David, and myself. We have all pitched in to the last full measure, but the job has taken huge bites out of our respective schedules, other obligations, and health (in some cases). And it is not as if the rest of the world stopped spinning to accommodate the clearing out of Stuff. 

A few more items from Dad's house came home with me. A green sweatshirt (pullover, no hood). An eight-pointed serving bowl that graced our supper table for years. A few tools. One of dad's paintings. But not much else. 

This bowl dates back to the "Made in Japan" era

I have kinda sorta managed to keep up somewhat with the kitchen garden as I am having a boon tomato year. There is more pesto to make. The cosmos and the agastache are full of bees and butterflies and sometimes I remind myself to stop and watch them. 

Bee in the agastache

I have poked books and writing letters into spare moments, most often in the evening. For the first time in forever, I have nodded off more than once while reading. And at least one letter bore marks of exhaustion: writing my address instead of Tani's on the envelope, being off on the date by a month (when did September get here?). The High Holy Days are approaching and I have not given much thought to them and their importance.

Indeed, these days are full. All these days. I do not regret or resent the time spent on Dad's homestead, but we are all ready for it to be done. 

And it almost is. 

Wednesday, August 14, 2024

The Lure of STUFF

 I have written before about Stuff: the tangible items we fill our homes and lives with. You know what I mean: furniture, books, pencils, cookware, pictures on the wall, dishes—you name it, we all tend to have it (often in excess).

I try hard to eschew acquiring more Stuff at this point in my life. I noted in a long ago post that someone had challenged me on the sparseness of my life,  suggesting I really wanted to live a more luxurious life. The inquisitor loved (and purchased) lots of Stuff: tons of clothes, expensive meals in fancy restaurants, and pricey tickets to special events, to name a few.

Nope, wasn't for me then. Not for me now. If anything, I am often looking for way to lighten the overload of my Stuff in this house. (It's a long journey.)

All the same, I am in the midst of a test of my willpower to stay true to my principles and NOT add more Stuff to my life and this household.

As I have mentioned in recent posts, my father has moved into a one-bedroom apartment in an assisted living facility. (Wonderful move.) As he settles in, he has made it very clear that he wants very few items from his home of 54 years—no photos, the kitchen bulletin board full of more photos, most of his clothes, all but one or two books, and so on. As a result, his apartment is crisp and has a few items that hold deep personal meaning for him, but the rest of the Stuff of his prior life is not in the way. [And, for the record, Dad calls these items "Stuff" too. To quote him yesterday and today when I asked him about specific items, he looked at me and said "I don't want that Stuff here."]

As a result, my brother Mike, his wife Kate, their grandson Arlo, Warren, and I are taking the lead on clearing Dad's house of Stuff. There is a lot. A. Lot. And this is where I find myself being lured...

Last evening Warren and I went out to the house to deliver some items (for Mike and Kate to work with today) and we looked at a few things while there. Look at the pans—oooh. Oh, look at the blue ceramic serving bowl—ahhh. There was a snug-looking hoodie sweatshirt (a zip jacket) in Dad's closet (more about that later). 

My hand was on the bowl to "just" think about it. Warren and I pulled out several of the pans, which match some of ours. Then it hit us both: we have pans and plenty of them. As for the ceramic bowl, I have bowls that I like and those are more than enough. As for the hoodie sweatshirt, it came to me at about 5:00 a.m. (my usual waking time) that I have a hoodie zip-up sweatshirt, one that in fact Warren bought for me on a trip out west when I needed something warmer for a day at the Oregon coast. Whenever I slip it on, I think of that trip and smile. In short, we did not need any of these items, we lack the room for some of them (the pans, definitely), and we are more than okay with the Stuff we already own and use. 

But I confess: the siren call of Stuff caught me in the end.

I was opening various drawers in the kitchen to see what all was there. Potholders galore (decorative and "cute" if you are into that kind of thing, some of them still in the wrapper they came in, but not very functional for heavy-duty cooking and baking) in one. An outdated can of baking powder in another. You get the idea. 

And then in one drawer...

A manual can opener. Not just a manual can opener, but a bright red,  lightweight one. 


We have a can opener at home. It is large and it works well. It is also heavy. This one is red and shiny and light. This one had never been taken off the cardboard backing it was on when purchased for the staggering price of...wait for it...$2.00



I didn't even hesitate, but picked it up and brought it home. I took it off the backing this morning, opened a can zip-zip-zip, and smiled.

Yes, it's one more item of Stuff. But it's red. And lightweight. And...I can live with adding it to our home.

Tuesday, January 9, 2024

My Analog Life

2024 has arrived. Now what?

I am still (no surprise) figuring out what my life looks like post-medical catastrophe: physically, mentally, emotionally. On the very plus side, as in "wildly positive," I am walking daily (okay, there have been some weather call-offs) with a good pace and increasingly distances (a mile to two plus). Given that my first post-catastrophe walk was .16 miles from our driveway to the end of the block and back, with me hanging onto Warren's arm, I am thrilled.

But I would be kidding myself if I think I am back to my pre-catastrophe self physically because I am not. And will never be in some areas. That's just the reality of age, long-term cancer, and the catastrophe. (And on the mental front, yes, my intellectual capacity took a hit too. Given that dementia runs heavily in my mother's side of the family and I am at significant risk for developing it, I am keeping an eye on when I have blips that are more than just forgetting a name.)

But, back to 2024 and my continuing to shape my new life. As I have shared with close friends, I am learning to create a flow that seems to work best for me now. One huge piece of my life now is that I am spending more of my time in what I will call my analog life.

Here are some things that my life contains.

A jigsaw puzzle that my friend Maike, who knows that Warren and I (especially Warren) are huge admirers of Frank Lloyd Wright) found at a thrift shop and sent our way:


Books, books, books, the old-fashioned way:



Reactivating my sourdough starter, which bit the dirt during the medical catastrophe. I know, I could have asked my next door neighbor to give me some of his starter, but, hey, starting it is no big deal:



And other pieces that were already in place and continue to give me a quiet space to work (head or hands or both): letters to friends (of course) and walking (previously mentioned), washing dishes by hand, taking time to watch the seasons and the skies and the weather and the birds. There is a farm near my father's house where the last two times I have gone to see him, there has been a huge murmuration—starlings, perhaps?—as I am heading back home driving past the farm. "Wow" does not begin to describe the sight.

Back in my earliest days home, my friend Katrina, in response to my comment that I did not have the strength and energy to talk on the phone more than 10-15 minutes, and how some (including my father) would blithely plow past that limitation, sent me a timer. Oh, Katrina! What a gift! I rarely used it on the phone calls, as I could see on my phone how long the call was lasting, but what this timer has done for me is given me controllable time back. I know, I know. Phones have timers and alarms. Our 1970s era stove has a timer clock for the oven. But setting the dial on this timer and letting it run until its distinctive ding, has made my baking and other activities (my now daily nap) so much easier to track. Who knew?

A life changer! 
The catastrophe and some other important matters impact how and whether we will do much (any) traveling this year other than getting to Mayo sometime later in the year. I hope. I am doing telehealth appointments right now; I do not have the physical capacity yet to drive to Rochester and flying, even without factoring in Covid and flu and RSV, takes even longer than driving. I told Warren this weekend that I have made peace (reluctantly) that I will never get back to Maine, a trip we hoped to take last July but scrubbed because of Symphony matters. I realize it is highly unlikely I will make it out to the PDX area this year to see my family. It is what it is.

Fellow blogger Laurie recently wrote about her "football sweet potatoes" and I asked for a photo, which she gladly provided. My interest was prompted by photos from Orlando at Thanksgiving, scrubbing sweet potatoes as big as his head, even adjusting for camera angle. (I called and asked; adult confirmed the sweet potatoes were massive.) My son Ben is making plans, still tentative, to come back here in May, with Orlando (who starts kindergarten this fall!) and I hope that all comes about, whether we are scrubbing massive sweet potatoes, baking a pie, or just hanging out in the sweetness of time (analog, of course). 


Thursday, March 16, 2023

All That Time

 

Photo by Eric Rothermel on Unsplash

14 years ago tomorrow, I started this blog with a post about the magic of opening doors.

This is my 842nd post. If I play with the math, that means I have averaged 60.14 posts annually. But the average is meaningless. If you look at the Blog Archive in the column to the right, it shows how many posts I wrote in any given year. Best year? 2009, the year I started, where I came in with a mighty 101 posts. Worst year? 2021: a year of still coping with the pandemic, five brutal months of hard school mediations, and my wrapping up my paid professional life. Small wonder I did not write; I am surprised I even managed 8 posts that year.

Through these years, there have been some common themes: the garden, the Symphony, pies, my children, my grandchildren, money, traveling, reading, books, writing, family, cancer, community. There have been births along the ways (those grandchildren!) as well as deaths, including my older brother, my mother, and my Aunt Ginger. 

Time has just kept flowing along.

For the next few weeks (months?), I may be putting up posts using quotes from my commonplace books as the jumping off point for the post. My first book dates back to the later 1980s; I had started one before that in the mid-1970s, but that one got tossed decades ago (before starting the current volumes. Why did I toss it? I have no idea. (For the record, I am now in volume 5.)

I skim through the various volumes (always close at hand in our downstairs study) every four to six weeks, often looking for a reference or a quote I just know is in one of them. I am usually successful. But what I wonder, considering that the books scan some 35+ years of collecting quotes, is whether I would now find some of the quotes of little interest or even invalid for the person I am now. So I will use the quotes as random prompts and see where they take me.

Like any blogger, I have made friends in the blog-o-sphere along the way: thank you for reading my words. There are also personal friends from my pre-blogging life who have been on this since the onset or have joined on: thank you for reading my words. And thank you,dear Warren, for being there all along the way.  

I am grateful. 

Friday, July 8, 2022

The Best Newberry Winner Ever

 


Ever.

Friends who know my reading habits know that one of my quirkier reading accomplishments (feats?) is that I have read every Newbery Medal book from the first in 1921 to the present, the 102nd. I did it out of curiosity and a love of reading; my initial read was in 2011, and I have read each year's winner since then.

In 2011, I wrote that the very best Newbery Medal book ever (ever!) was When You Reach Me, the 2010 winner by Patricia Stead. When You Reach Me is a beautiful nod to Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time (which won the Newbery in 1963) as well as a skillfully, wonderfully wrought story. 

Every year since 2011, when I read the newest Newbery Medal winner, I mentally compared it to When You Reach Me, my gold standard. There have been some superb Newbery Medal books since then. Last year's winner, When You Trap A Tiger by Tae Keller, came as close as any book to taking the title of "best." It was certainly right up on the heels of When You Reach Me, a very close runner-up.  

And then this year's Newbery Medal book, The Last Cuentista by Donna Barba Higuera, came home from the library last weekend with me.

The Last Cuentista is set in the future. Earth has been destroyed and only those few hundreds chosen by the Collective to carry on humanity were on the escape shuttles to create a new world in a far distant galaxy. Petra is on the shuttle, a young girl who wants to be a storyteller like her beloved abuelita (grandmother), and awakens from her suspended animation to find that the Collective was not pure minded and noble. I'll stop there; go read the book to see how it turns out.

The book is classified as Science Fiction. Yes, definitely. And just as When You Reach Me was a love letter to Madeleine L'Engle, The Last Cuentista is the same to many science fiction and fantasy writers, many of them referenced by name (Neil Gaiman, Octavia Butler, Ursala Le Guin, to name a few). You can see Higuera reaching further back to Orwell and Huxley and their dark futuristic works. But don't dismiss it as "just " sci fi.  As with all great tales, it is a story of love, of family, of resilience, of making connections and bringing out the best in those connections. 

I am more literate in the science fiction/fantasy genres than I used to be, thanks to my sons Ben and Sam. Even so, I am sometimes still slow on the uptake. The morning after reading a significant chunk of the book, I was raving about it to Warren, then stopped mid-sentence and said, out of context, "Oh! Hyperion! OF COURSE!" 

I finished the book just before we headed off early afternoon to set up the stage for the evening's 4th of July concert. I read the very last page of the story and let out a small cry of love and sorrow. I sat there quietly, holding the book to my heart, with tears running down my face. 

It was that stunning.

As we drove over to the concert site, the book still fresh in my heart, my son Ben called to talk. I told him about the book. My voice broke in connecting it to me to him and back again and I was in tears all over again.

I ordered Ben a copy for him and Ramona and it is en route. (In fact, may already be there.) I ordered myself a copy as well. I don't buy books (or much of anything else, for that matter) ever, so that tells you a lot about what it meant to me. 

When You Reach Me will always be on my very short Newbery Medal book "read this one" list. So will When You Trap A Tiger

But The Last Cuentista

The best Newbery Medal book ever.

Ever. 


Sunday, March 6, 2022

This Year's Garden, Part One

 


Yesterday was really warm. Warm enough outside that a sweatshirt without a jacket over it was plenty. (Today, at least as I type this, is also warm, but the temperature will fall later today.) Warren did a fair amount of his shop work outside on the back patio, which his shop (the repurposed garage) opens directly onto. He had instrument parts to spray, and I could hear the telltale rattle of the spray paint can as he shook it walking back and forth.

Our next door neighbors were out in the far back part of their yard with a large measuring tape spread across the grass. Having baked sourdough crackers to share, I walked a container over to them and got to see what was going on. Warren joined me as well.

They had staked out a 10' x 20' area of grass, with a continuous string connecting three of the four stakes. "We're trying corn this year," said Maura, nodding at the plot.

Adam chimed in. "From what we read, you need at least a ten by ten plot so the corn gets fertilized, so we went slightly larger. We're planning on enclosing it with chicken wire to try to keep the critters out." He looked at the grassy plot. "Getting that turned over will take some time." 

Maura turned to me. "So have you ever grown corn?"

As a matter of fact, I have grown corn in town at the house I lived in when my children were younger, just a few blocks from where I live now. I thought back to that long ago experience and said, "Yes and the biggest issue was the squirrels." 

Eyebrows went up. 

"Squirrels would eat the shoots as they came up,"I explained. "I mean, they didn't get them all, or even most of them, but I learned to really dislike squirrels."

Alice, their young daughter, spoke up. "We could put a top over the garden to keep the squirrels out."

No, not a solution, said Adam.

We talked gardens for a while longer: what they planned (hoped) to grow, what I plan (hope) to grow. I blogged very little about last year's gardens, for many reasons, and am hoping this year will be more satisfying and more productive.

Adam mentioned they had ordered "a lot" of peat moss starter sets. "More than we thought." Would I like one? 

Absolutely.

They turned back to their corn-patch-to-be. Warren headed back to his shop. I talked to our neighbors on the other side, who were also out enjoying the sun and warmth, then headed inside. The afternoon rolled on.

Much later that day, Warren came into the kitchen with a tray in his hand and a quizzical look on his face.

"Peat pots? Are these for you?" He had missed Adam's offer outside.

Yes, peat pots! And a starter tray! 

Just a few days earlier, I had bought a bag of Seed Starting Mix. I don't start all the garden inside like I used to; I buy most of my major starts (tomatoes, peppers, cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli) at a local farm market. But after my pitched battle with squirrels over the zucchini last spring, I'm starting the zucchini inside and will use the peat pots for that. During our travels last summer, I picked a few flower heads gone to seed from ditches along the road. I have been saving small yogurt cups and larger ice cream containers through the winter and will use those filled with the starter mix to try to sprout the flowers.

Even with climate change, it is still too early in central Ohio to start planting a garden. The farm market I mentioned above, a family run one on the edge of Delaware, will not even open until April 1. I still have to put some thought into what and how much I am growing. I will talk with my dad to see if he wants me to plant anything for him; at almost 89, he may not be doing much gardening this year, but I also know what it means to him to have a few plants out in his back garden. A friend I just talked with mentioned she would be gone too much of the summer to try to keep tomato plants going; I reassured her tomatoes would not be a problem. 

So yes, there is still planning to do. But the warmth and the neighbors and the talk and the peat pots have lightened my heart and stirred my thoughts. 

Spring is coming. So is gardening. 


Monday, January 31, 2022

Ghostbusters, Ben, and Me

 Yes, I know. The correct grammatical construction of the title is "Ghostbusters, Ben, and I," but I'm following E. B. White's sage advice that sometimes it's better to go with your ear and not the rule. Thank you, Andy.

The original Ghostbusters movie came out in 1984. My oldest son Ben was born in late 1985. Thanks to a bootleg video copy made by my brother Mike sometime in 1987 (I think), Ben and I watched Ghostbusters not just once or twice, but easily two dozen times or more.

Probably more. We knew every character, we knew all the scenes, we knew it all.

How could you not love this this scene?  


So when Ghostbusters II came out in 1989, Ben and I were at the movie theatre in Sacramento on the opening day, our excitement of seeing it the very day it opened outweighing the hour drive to get there.

Ben was not disappointed. Neither was I:


Time moves on. Little boys grow up, interests change, and the once beloved movie or book or game ends up tucked away in fond memories.

Then in late 2021, Ghostbusters: Afterlife came out, reuniting much of the original cast. When I heard about it, my first reaction was, "But Harold Ramis died. They can't do Ghostbusters without Egon."

I didn't go see the movie. (Confession: I have seen no movies at a theatre in these Covid times but neither did I rent it to watch online.) I doubt Ben saw it in any format. I do remember sending him a quick email noting the new movie. After that, I put it out of my mind until I caught an interview with Bill Murray, Dan Ackroyd, and Ernie Hudson, the remaining Ghostbusters, in which they talked about making the movie without Harold Ramis, but also with Harold Ramis, being careful not to give out any spoilers.

Then I saw an interview with director Jason Reitman (whose father directed the original two movies) in which he explained how they went about bringing Harold Ramis or, rather, his character, Egon Spengler, back using a combination of a body double and CGI. (Brilliantly, I might add.)

What is YouTube for if not to see bits of movies? Including the ending of Ghostbusters: Afterlife.

Without recapping a movie I have not watched, let me just say that the movie's final battle brings back Gozer (from the original movie) against the remaining Ghostbusters. When all seems lost, Egon's granddaughter Phoebe, who has been discovering and learning the lore and knowledge that her late grandfather had stored about the earlier battles, steps into the battle with Egon's proton pack on her back. She loses ground against Gozer until a translucent adult hand appears to help steady her aim. It is the ghost of her grandfather, who returns her amazed look with a gentle smile and helps her battle on until his former companions can rejoin the fight. 

The part I have watched repeatedly is the final scene, after Gozer has been defeated, between Egon's ghost and his estranged daughter, Callie. Callie's version of family was that her father had abandoned his family and her heedlessly. Egon looks at her longingly. Will she forgive him for seemingly running out on her so many years ago? Will she understand that he left his family behind in order to protect them?

Spoiler alert: yes, she will and she does. She goes into his arms. and they embrace. His hope fulfilled, Egon's dissolves into the night sky. 

Ben and I are not estranged. We live far apart, true, but we stay connected. So I don't have that element. But if wishes come true, when I transition from life to death, I would love one last opportunity to meet up with Ben, my Ghostbuster pal of yore, and have that one last loving embrace.


And then Ben, not unlike Peter Venkman in the end of Ghostbusters: Afterlife, can go have some hot cocoa. With or without marshmallows. 

Sunday, January 2, 2022

And All at Once, It Was Over

No, this post is not about gardening. Yet. 

I am not talking about the end of the year 2021, although that too ended in a second when the clock hit 12:00 a.m. on January 1.

I am talking instead about my (finally, finally) last day of "paid government employment," as my erstwhile boss, colleague, friend, and neighbor Dave announced to our local Bar at the December meeting. After some 43 years of employment in the legal field, I ended my career (careers) on December 24.

I had noted that my job end was coming in my post last July.  What I did not realize back then was how much it would take for me to get from there to that last day. Much of that was the work itself: finishing projects (a very few), getting projects into good shape to be handed off (all the rest). Some of that was physical. My progressive, incurable cancer is always a factor and it did not take a break for me to wrap up my job.

And it's not like my daily life came to a halt while I wound down the job. Our home life continued, my treatment continued, the Legal Clinic continued, the garden continued. We even slid in a long-hoped-for trip to Washington and Oregon, driving every inch of the way, in mid-August when my Mayo oncologist listened to the precautions we would take, asked when Ramona would resume school (two days after we planned on leaving), then closed his eyes and said, "Go right now. That door is about to shut."

To bring it back to the present, my first whole week of not working just concluded. It was freeing, relieving, and bittersweet. 

It has been a mashup. Or a smashup. Or anything else that goes with "up." In random fits of energy, I am clearing away the detritus and chaff of the last few years from my office. What a mess. And I am walking. A lot. A whole lot. Walking to think, walking to sort things out in my head, walking to just walk.

I don't make resolutions for the New Year, but I have been thinking about goals.  Financial goals (especially now that my income has shrunk considerably). Gardening goals (last year's gardening experience was a mixed bag, to say the least). 

And writing goals. As I shared with my friend Tani, for the first time in a long, long, time, I am feeling the need to write, too long submerged, starting to stir within me. Hence my photo above from a long ago seed spouting. My desire to write is finally breaking through and lifting its head.

May 2022 hold kindness for us all. It's good to be back.

Friday, October 8, 2021

That Moment of Then Now

 


That table is long gone.

That kitchen is long gone.

Three of the women around that table are long gone.

That moment of then now.  

The kitchen is my Grandma Nelson's kitchen at the farm that she and my Grandpa Nelson owned for all of my childhood into my adolescence. I knew every bit of that kitchen. No running water, only a hand pump at the sink for water. All food prep was done on the table as all of the very limited counter space was filled with containers and canisters, there being little to no pantry area. If you look just past the head of the woman seated at the center of the table, you will see the pots and pans needed for this meal stacked up to be washed later.

The open door beyond the pots and pans was the door to the side yard, the only yard any of us used. Beyond that door is a small wash area (remember, there is no running water) that held a small bath tub (filled with buckets) and perhaps a wringer washer (filled the same way).

The house that held that kitchen has been down for over forty years. 

My grandmother is the woman on the left closest to the woman seated at the end. She is the woman with glasses, her hands to her mouth, possibly removing a chicken bone or a string from a green bean out of her garden. Grandma was not a warm woman, but she could make fried chicken better than anyone in the world. 

The woman at the end of the table, white haired, aproned, looking down? That is Grandma Gullett, my great grandmother, Grandma Nelson's mother. She taught me how to braid hair, using my troll doll. In her younger days, she was a crack shot with a rifle, something my grandmother was also. Grandma Gullett lived to be 94, so I had her in my life for many years. 

Another of her daughters, Aunt Venice (my great aunt) is also at the table, the dark haired woman on the left next to my grandmother, her sister. Aunt Venice could make fried chicken like my grandmother, so perhaps both of them made the best fried chicken in the world.  Where Aunt Venice could beat the whole world was in quilting; she was a master quilter and quilted right up until her final months of life. 

All three women gone. 

The occasion in this photo? Maybe hay bailing, maybe soybean harvest. The men would have eaten first so they could get back out to the field. And, let's acknowledge it, they were the men. In fairness to all, it was a small table. At our noonday Sunday dinners, my grandparents and my family of six made for a tight fit, manageable only because four of the six were children. With adults only at the table, as in this picture, six would fill the table.

My grandparents sold the farm in 1970, when I was 14. They moved to a small ranch outside of a small village, maybe all of eight miles from the farmhouse. The farmhouse had been on the outskirts of an even smaller village, so the move was downright urban. Central heat replaced the coal furnace in the cellar; there was indoor plumbing. There was a larger table to sit down at and eat. 

And that was over a half century ago.

The farmhouse, as I noted, was torn down with the outbuildings sometime after the farm was sold and the land subdivided. Where there was once a lane leading to a small farmhouse and on deeper into the fields there is now a small cluster of homes and a stubbed township road.

But that photo. That moment of then now. I remember. 

I remember. 

Monday, April 19, 2021

This Year's Newbery


Ever since 2011, when I read all of the Newbery Award winners to date (even the really awful ones), I have made a point of reading each year's winner. I just read the 2021 Newbery Award book: When You Trap a Tiger by Tae Keller.

I finished it yesterday morning, sitting in the parking lot of the nearby Home Depot while Warren went inside. I started crying soon after the start of the 39th chapter (I had teared up a few times just minutes before that) and my tears did not stop until I finished every last word.

Tears all the way to the end. I'm glad we were parked on the far side near the big doors where contractors load so that no one would see me sitting there crying. Not because I am ashamed to cry but because I didn't want anyone knocking on the window to ask me if I was okay. 

Why did I cry? Because Tae Keller writes beautifully. Because she captures lyrically and authentically the emotions of loss, of love, of change. Because it is about a young girl trying to save her beloved grandmother, who is dying of a brain tumor, and finally realizing that she can't save her from physically dying (the granddaughter's magical wish) but that the stories and secrets she unlocks can provide relief to her  grandmother by letting her know how much she meant to them all. (And yes, I cried because I saw myself and my Ramona in those roles and this book reminded me of how hard it is to leave so much love behind and how I have to continue to keep my hands open to death.)

Back in 2011, I declared the book When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead to be the best of the best when it came to Newbery books. It won those honors in 2010. It too is a stunning beautiful book and I was in tears reading part of it. I still love it. (There are a lot of Newbery books I love.)

But When You Trap a Tiger? Oh, Tae Keller, well done. Stunningly well done. 

Thank you. 

Friday, March 12, 2021

Long Time Passing

 I knew it had been a long time since I had posted, but I didn't realize it had been that long.

Lots to say, lots to share, but not yet. Not because I am being coy, but because the tsunami of school attendance mediations has not yet finished. The run-up has been extensive due to the devastation the pandemic has wrought on our families. The five of us who make up the Juvenile Court school team are exhausted; after today we are in the 4th quarter for the 2020-2021 year. 

Yes, we are counting weeks (10). And days (48).

I hope to be writing more regularly come later spring. About money, about retirement, about my family out west (no, even with the vaccinations, we cannot travel safely because of my overarching cancer status), about baking, about...everything.

For now, here are some loaves I made last night. The recipe still needs tweaked; it came from King Arthur Flour and you can find it here.

Catch you all later.

Last night's baking






Saturday, January 23, 2021

Jumpstarted by Two Youths

This is not a post about Millennials or Generation Z. When I wrote "Youths" in the title,  I was referring to individuals under the age of 15, and I'm only hedging on that because I can't remember how old Liam is, although he is still in middle school, so I know I am more than safe with that age range. The other young person is Ramona, who is not yet eight and a half years old.

So, jumpstarted by youths. I could say "inspired," but "jumpstarted" is more accurate. I just had my car battery replaced, and Warren had to jumpstart me on two different occasions just before that, so that sound of turning the ignition key and hearing the power surge on is spot on. 

Ramona first. Ramona my oldest grandchild, Ramona the amazing. After months of irregular video chats,  complicated by busy schedules, online schooling, activities, family matters, and time zone differences, to name a few factors, she and I now chat online on Wednesday afternoons (my time) as Wednesday is the weekday her online school classes are the shortest. As has always been the case with Ramona, she hits the conversational ground running and we never know where that talk will lead. It is a blast.

During our most recent talk, we started off talking books. Ramona reads a lot of fantasy, especially if it features dragons. She is enthralled with the Wings of Fire series and sometimes we explore tangential threads to that series, including dragonflies of the genus Pantala, also known as rainpool gliders, which Ramona immediately connected to the Rainwings in the series and drew comparisons between the characteristics of the dragonfly (I read them aloud) and the dragons.

She then segued to a "chapter book" she is writing. She wanted to read some of it to me, but it is packed away in preparation for her family moving (today, in fact). However, she recited (or pulled up on her iPad) a list of the characters and ran through them quickly. I then shared with her that I was writing a novel, but I had not worked on it in months (well, years).

Ramona bounced straight up. "What? You're writing one? What is it about?" I  told her it was a novel about her completing a quest with the help of Aunties Jenna and her little brother. She beamed when I said it was about her. "Read some of it to me," she demanded. 

Well, what could I do with a command request like that? I got my manuscript (which is always, always setting out) and told her I would read her the prologue, after asking her if she knew what a prologue was. Polite eye roll. Yes, she was very familiar with prologues (and correctly explained it to me) as well as epilogues (the same), adding, patiently, "I know all the logues."

So I read it to her. 

There was a split second of silence, then an outburst. "That's good! Read more."

I read a little more, with Ramona asking questions, then told her I haven't finished it and haven't been working on it. 

Ramona cut me no slack.

"You need to finish it."

After we finished talking, I told Warren about reading some of the novel (which he has not read) to Ramona and her response. Then I added, "I want to go back to it and see it through. I thought it was just a discarded idea, but now I feel ready to tackle it again." 

Ramona jumpstarted me. 

The second jumpstart was with Liam, the middle-school aged son of my friend Cecelia. I have known Liam since before he went to kindergarten. Recently, Liam got both a Facebook page and a new camera, and has been posting photos on his page. 

Liam has a good eye. Several of the adults in his Facebook world have said that to him, including me. It's one of those intangible "I know it when I see it" qualities; Liam has it.

I have written before about my love of photography. When I was Liam's age, I started thinking about whether I could be a photographer; National Geographic was my goal. I set that career path aside long ago, but I still love photography and cameras and seeing what others are doing in the field. I have a great camera; I mean to use it more, but, like the writing (all writing, not just the novel), it gets set aside too easily.

Yesterday Liam posted some of his latest work. It was really, really good. I had my same reaction: Liam has a good eye. (And you bet I told him that on Facebook.) I had a second reaction, which I did not post but came naturally: I miss photography.

Which is why when I saw the morning sun lighting up the kitchen, particularly the pot of beans on the stove, I took this photo, then posted it on Facebook with the comment, "Liam, you are totally responsible for this shot."

Just because

Because he was. Like Ramona, his enthusiasm for photography jumpstarted my too often dormant love of it. Because of that surge of energy, I saw the plain pot and the sun and the day entirely different.

Jumpstarted by the young ones. What a gift.

Friday, December 4, 2020

This Week

 This entry will be short.

It has been a long, hard week. My mother—our mother, counting my two brothers—died Sunday after a long, weary, draining (on her, on my father, on all of us) struggle with dementia. 

Add to that a workload, both at Court and in the volunteer arena, that has skyrocketed courtesy of the pandemic. The stories I am hearing range from matter-of-fact to heartbreaking and are only going to get worse as the pandemic and its economic fallout deepen. My two coworkers in the mediation department are also swamped, which is why I held mediation for two and a half hours the morning of my mother's afternoon graveside service. 

I am exhausted. Today in trying to schedule a mediation while on a Zoom meeting with colleagues at Court and at our high school, I stopped and said, "What day is this? What day are we looking at?" One of the participants kindly said, "It's Friday the 4th, April." Thank you.

One small note and then I will close. While working today, I heard a knock at the front door. When I went to look outside, a delivery person was holding a flower arrangement in her hands. "April Nelson?" Yes. She set the container down on the porch and left.

The arrangement was a vase of yellow roses, my mother's favorite flower. My dad had a spray of them on her casket at the service. I knew it had to come from someone who knew my mom well. I was right; it was from a lifelong friend, Mary Lou, whose daughter Cindy has been my friend my entire life.

And that is a wonderful note to end this long week on. 


Saturday, August 29, 2020

A Longer Commentary on August

Yesterday's post was not a teaser. Truly. It was the best I could do after almost an hour of staring at a blank screen. 

Last night Warren and I talked about many things, as we so often do: how his day went, how my day went, Court issues, Symphony issues, what the weekend holds. You get the idea. (Yes, our offices are only about five yards apart, but there are days where we can spin off into our programs and meetings, not reemerging until supper.) 

For the curious, the weekend looks a lot like the week, except that I do not turn to Court work at all, and Warren tries to minimize Symphony work. Warren works in his shop; I do laundry and read. Our at-home weekends never fail to disappoint my close friend Cindy, who often starts her Monday email to me with asking me about my weekend, this past week asked "Did you do anything FUN over the weekend?" Keeping within our Covid-19 restrictions in this state, she buys feed, buys groceries, shops at Goodwill, and sometimes eats out during her weekends. When I pointed out that I am still pretty much on medical lockdown, she emailed back that I "must be" getting restless by now and ready to GO DO SOMETHING.

Not really. The one thing I really wanted to do—travel west to my family and then northeast to friends in Maine—got scrubbed months ago. Those trips aren't coming back this year and I have made peace with that. But otherwise, while I would like matters to be different, I am more than satisfied with my stay-at-home life. I have not been in my office at Court for over five months; all of us have had to learn new ways to do our old jobs. Life rolls on. 

As I mentioned yesterday, August has held some hard times. A close friend/colleague had a serious medical crisis erupt in her family and that hurt both professionally, because we had to work around her absence and the uncertainty of her return, and personally, because we are such good friends. The major medical crisis started to resolve positively when she found herself in ER. None of this was Covid-19, for which all of us are grateful. Other close friends are dealing with the death of a beloved dog. Someone else near and dear to my heart is struggling with major depression. There are some family stressors (larger family, not me and Warren) going on. In none of these situations can I show up and hug the person, which is what I want to do. I can only talk on the phone or text or send wishes into the air for them.

August has been heavy at times.

But the rest has been good. Today was the livestream funeral mass of a longtime friend and colleague who died back in the winter; watching that brought back wonderful memories even while I cried. I had a wonderful, uplifting long phone call with a young friend who is headed back to college for a career change and our talk reminded me of the joy and power of direction. Our Legal Clinic continues to operate virtually; I am the volunteer who assigns the attorneys so I have firsthand knowledge of who we are serving and how our attorneys are providing these people hope and advice and direction. The Symphony participated in its 6th Benefit in the Barn, tackling hunger and food insecurity in our county and one adjoining county. Go here to watch it; that's Warren speaking in the beginning.  Between the Clinic and the Symphony, I am reminded how I am always humbled with the strength of our community. 

And our Poetry Group started meeting again, by Zoom. That was a good thing, because Emily had been sulking. We meet again this Sunday and I can't wait.

Emily D. sulking 

And then there was a surprise this month: a stunning, amazing, never-saw-it-coming-ever surprise. About a week ago I received an email from a name I did not recognize, titled "Uncle Ski." 

Uncle Ski was my uncle, an engaging, wonderful man who died seven years ago. I blogged about him after his death; you can read my words here. So the title on the email was so specific that I thought it was not spam or a phishing attempt, and opened it.

It was a lovely email from someone, a man named Sam, who read my blog post all these years later and reached out to me directly. After thanking me for my words, Sam wrote "I really appreciated reading it because it gave me some perspective on myself."  Then he dropped the bombshell: "Your Uncle Ski was my grandfather." 

I had to catch my breath. I'm still catching it.

Sam and I have exchanged several emails. My stepcousin once removed (his mother was my Uncle Ski's daughter) is a writer and blogger. Imagine that. You can find his blog at All the Biscuits in Georgia. He just saw his oldest son ship off to his first Navy deployment, a fact that would have made Uncle Ski, who served his whole life in the Navy, immensely proud. I have given Sam my dad's phone number and encouraged him to call him; my dad, when I told him what had happened, marveled at the connection, then said, "Oh, I have a lot of stories to tell him about his grandfather." 

You could hear the anticipation in his voice.

Sunday, June 21, 2020

A Look at the Gardens

Back in late April, I shared that our vegetable garden, the one I call the "kitchen garden," had been cleared and tilled by Warren, and was just waiting for planting. It looked like this then:


What I have not shared, because my posting has been, ahem, irregular at best, is that we added a second garden, the Hej (pronounced "hedge") garden. The Hej garden actually sits on our backyard neighbors' parcel. The owner before the current ones was an avid gardener, a certified Master Gardener, and she had established a thriving vegetable garden in the far back corner of the yard, just where it butts up to the little dogleg on Warren's parcel. It has been tilled but not planted for several seasons, as our current neighbors have many, many demands on their time and a garden just wasn't one of them. So I proposed that we take over the garden, they can have some of the vegetables grown on it (making me a sharecropper no matter how I look at it), and there we go. 

The Hej garden is our zucchini garden, because our kitchen garden does not have enough space for zucchini. It has been planted twice, because the first planting of 20 zucchini seeds resulted in five coming up.

Five.

You could toss a coin, call "heads," and get better results than that.

About three weeks ago, I tore out everything but those five zucchini and planted it over again, this time marking the seeds (which I doubled and tripled) with spoons:



And today, I was in the garden at 6:30 a.m., transplanting the zucchinis that came up in twos and threes to the spaces where there were still not results, marking the transplants and their former companions with the spoons upside down:


It's been a lot of work. This garden also contains  five extra tomato plants we had from my over-ordering tomatoes this year; they are along the fence on the left side of this photo. 

The kitchen garden and I likewise got off to a rocky start, but we have smoothed out our most of our differences. How rocky? Lettuce that didn't come up, parsley that didn't come up, marigolds (border) that didn't come up. You get the picture. So there was some extensive replanting in that garden as well. 

But just a day into summer, and it is looking good:




Bit by bit, it is coming along. Tomatoes are starting to form:


Indigo Rose


Early Girls


My very favorite feature is the ceramic partial border in the kitchen garden. As I continue to sort through stuff in my house, some of the stuff is headed west to my sons out there. Sam declined any of his childhood pottery attempts; Ben and Alise took a few. I couldn't just toss my children's offerings over the years, so I put them in the garden instead. 

The border



A ripply plant impression plant by Ben


A skull by Sam



I smile every time I walk by, seeing my children's art springing to life in the garden.




Sunday, March 29, 2020

The More Things Change

"The more things change, the more they keep changing."

I admit it: I stole that line from the our Juvenile Court judge, who is my employer, a neighbor (our backyards connect), and a longtime close friend. Because that pretty much sums up life around here.

As I type on this 29th day of March, the wind outside is picking up as our part of Ohio moves from balmy springlike weather (it was 72 yesterday!) to what will be a drop into the 40s and 30s. I believe we are also under a High Winds Advisory from the National Weather Service for good measure.

As I mentioned in my last post, I have been walking daily, taking my camera along, and posting what I photograph on Facebook. Friends both near and far have been watching to see what I come up with each day. chiming in with stories or memories or their own shots. It has been a lot of fun.

I did not walk today, despite the sunshine and warm temperatures earlier.  The unwell feeling from the myeloma has been building over the last several days, so I skipped the walk. Instead, I posted some of the shots I had taken over the last week or so but not used before. I shared my health situation; my status brought a comment from a concerned friend (ranting against the myeloma) that led me and my friend and boon companion Anne, lawyers both of us, to riff on the application of the law of adverse possession as it relates to my myeloma. I don't know if the author of the initial comment appreciated our levity, but Anne and I certainly did. (I also realize that last sentence is probably incomprehensible to anyone who has not sat through first year Property Law.) You know you are in quarantine for a long time when you make law jokes with good friends.

I have been watching friends and family build community through these times. We cannot visit, but we reach out through other ways. At the Facebook site for the Central Ohio Symphony, we are posting a video every day: our musicians, our conductor (a world class trombonist), pieces by some of our composers. (You do not need a Facebook account to reach the Central Ohio Symphony's postings; they are open to the public.) Other friends are also sharing and posting music, visual art, and more. Today I joined the church service at All Saints Episcopal Church in Vancouver, Washington. So what's a Jew like me doing in a place like that, be it the venue (a church) or the distance (2400 miles)? Because the churchman conducting the service, Father Joe, is my child-in-law's father and my grandchildren's grandfather. In short, family. Family that I love and miss. Like so many other places, his church is closed because of COVID-19 and today was the first livestreamed service. Of course I watched it. And afterwards I said the Shehechiyanu, a Hebrew prayer I recite often, giving thanks to the Creator for the fact that I am still alive and sharing the moment. (And while I was watching the service, Warren surprised me with making and bringing me lunch. You bet that prayer of gratitude includes the fact that I have this dear man in my life.)

This post is all over the board, but so is life today. So I'm going to close with the best example of resilience I have seen in a long time. When it was so warm yesterday, I spent over an hour in the morning starting to clean out the vegetable garden, which I had brought down but not cleaned out last fall. Last October or November, I had tossed out a potbound planting of thyme, burnt out from a hot summer and fall. The clump of roots and soil had been in the garden upside down all winter. I turned it over and found new growth on the old thyme. Despite being burnt out, despite being thrown out, despite being left to the winter blasts, the thyme came back. Now that's resilience!

See that little bit of green to the left? That's new thyme! 

And yes, I replanted it, this time in the garden.

Saturday, March 7, 2020

100 Words

Warren and I had a long evening last night for First Friday. We ate at home, then went back down, Warren working,  Amanda and I chatting with parents looking for their children’s artwork on display.
Once back home, we were tired and cold and hungry.
“What about popcorn?”
So we made a bowl of popcorn and sat together on the couch eating, the shared contentment reminding me of my childhood. Popcorn was the go-to snack in my family when I was growing up: it was cheap, it was easy to make in quantity, it was filling.
There was always enough.

Saturday, January 18, 2020

Some 2020 Thoughts

Everyone—everyone—is writing about the new year, their ideas about what the year may hold, some goals they hope to attain. Letters from friends reflect the same: what will 2020 bring?

Writer Katrina Kenison is standing on "pause, choose." Ben Hewitt, whose writing I greatly admire, just posted his first 2020 words at Lazy Mill Hill Farm, reflecting on being too busy to take notice and write, then promising himself to "pay attention," if just for the moment. My child-in-law Alise has set the intention to step free of "that old' gifted child' trap of perfectionism," being okay with not being immediately good at something, and hoping that her 35th year (she's a January 2 baby) she can give herself "some grace to continue to learn and grow."

The new calendar year is not yet three weeks old and I find myself wondering about 2020 myself. I feel I have only half-baked thoughts at best, but here are some of them.

HEALTH
The myeloma, progressive and incurable, continues to be surprisingly stable. My longevity (15+ years), flatline labs (no gains, no losses), and other medical markers, including no bone involvement, make my oncologists shake their heads. I am truly an outlier. Nevertheless, my overall quality of life, including declining energy and dragging around this disease's growing weight (figuratively speaking; think Marley's ghost), continues to deteriorate. I've had to step back from commitments at work and in the community, and from coffee dates with dear friends. I've met with my supervisor about changing projects I am too ill to undertake to the same degree I had intended. It has been several months of coming to accept that my body is wearing out.

That being said, I go on. "Persist," my longtime oncologist Tim told me Tuesday, as we discussed this. And I will, until it is no longer beneficial to persist. Part of my persistence in 2020 will take the form of being even more mindful of my daily life activities, especially diet and movement.

WRITING
In the last months of 2019, my writing trailed off. I only have a few posts on this site (and some of those just about the mundane topic of money); my last Myeloma Beacon column was in September. Perhaps, like Ben Hewitt, I have been too busy to take notice and need to pay more attention.

Something I will try in 2020 is a once-a-month 100 word post on this blog. Over my most recent trip to Mayo (just last week), I read the excellent Shapes of Native Nonfiction, a series of contemporary essays. One of the writers (and I did not note this closely enough) spoke about a series of 100 word essays she and other Native writers had published and the discipline it takes to write in only those few words. I was intrigued. Cait Flanders writes several 100 word posts within a larger post, which is one approach, but I am more interested in the spareness of just 100 words.

I am looking for ways to write more, be it this blog, poetry, or other forms. I just got my first poetry rejection of 2020 (okay, listen, one of those poems was really superb) and am aiming for 100 rejections this year. They don't have to all be in poetry.  As I think about it, I have TWO rejections for 2020 as in a first-time-ever move, my editor and publisher at the Myeloma Beacon rejected probably some of my best writing ever for being dark and too blunt. Only 98 to go.

ESSENTIALS
I continue to work at cutting out the noise (literally and figuratively) of daily life. My phone is often on silent; I try not to automatically turn to the electronic siren of Facebook and email and Google. I find I am still breaking that twitch, sometimes hourly, sometimes daily.

I still tend towards piles building up before I sit down and tame them, but I am getting better at reining the flow in before having to tame it.

Concentrating on writing more (see above) should help. (I usually write with pen and paper before turning anything with a keyboard on.) And although it is only January 18, I am increasingly thinking of this year's garden. I want to join Thoreau in fishing in that stream of time.

MONEY
I'll write about money issues in a separate post. As I looked back on 2019 spending on food, I made some observations and I am still turning those over. Stay tuned.

Although my earnings have increased in 2020, the demands on my money have become much tighter. I'll write about that too in the weeks to come.

Warren and I have been doing some retirement planning, realizing that it will be him alone in retirement as even with persisting, I likely do not have that many years left. Our mutual goal is to make sure he is in a good position after I am no longer alive and part of this household.

More to come.

TRAVEL
We (Warren and I) don't know what this year holds in terms of travel, conferences, and such. As I noted in my last post, we did treat ourselves to a slightly longer excursion to Mayo last week. Instead of blasting up and back, we meandered up and dallied back, spending two nights in Chicago (with the additional bonus of Warren being able to attend a board meeting of KV265 in person instead of over the phone). There are grandchildren in the Pacific Northwest, and dear friends in Maine, one place in this country I would very much like to see again. The League conference is in Minneapolis this June and I string together wild plans to travel to PDX (solo), meet up with Warren in Minneapolis, and then drive home via Mayo (my next appointment will be that time). I don't know if I am able to fly solo that far (see HEALTH, above) or able to afford that side trip (see MONEY, above). But it's fun to think about.

ALL ELSE
In the aforementioned rejected column, which may see light in some other site, I noted the amazing freedom in saying out loud that I can feel my body (and life) starting to wind down. It is as if the emotional and psychological equivalent of the 4th wall in the performing arts came down with that acknowledgment. The world has become far more immediate, far more real. Amazingly, it has stayed that way since that moment.

And that is something I can carry into 2020.

Friday, November 29, 2019

The Unexpected Thanksgiving

There was not going to be a Thanksgiving this year, at least not in the traditional sense of family members gathering to eat.

This November has been a hard month. My silence on this blog reflects that: I have been pulled and stretched too thin to find the quiet inner space in which to be still and write. November held two conferences out of town: one to Pittsburgh (mine), one to Indianapolis (Warren's). November also has been a bucket, filled to the brim and slopping over, of family and friends struggling: financial issues, health issues, hospitalizations, deaths.

Certain friends and I at particularly difficult stretches of life will say in passing, "So, other than that, how did you like the play, Mrs. Lincoln?"

It's been a Mrs. Lincoln kind of month.

Two of those hospitalizations involved my dad, who just earlier this week was released from the hospital to a skilled nursing facility to regain his strength and independence. Throughout it, my siblings, our spouses, and I were all dealing with long hours at the hospital, irregular schedules, broken days, and lots of stress. We're not at our best as a result.

Originally, my and Warren's Thanksgiving was going to be at dad's house, where my youngest brother Mark and his wife now live too. After dad's well-being took a tumble, and after we wore ourselves out (Mark has a chronic, progressive illness which wears him out and I am into a decade and a half of my progressive, incurable cancer), my brother and I talked and agreed to cancel Thanksgiving. They were tired, we were tired. That worked for the four of us, and our other brother Mike had his own family to host, so his plans were already set.

Well, that was his plan until his wife Kate called me earlier this week. Could they join us for Thanksgiving? Please? There would be five of them. Warren and I talked. Okay. But wait! If we were eating at noon (our plan), that would eliminate two of them (son Mike Jr. and daughter-in-law Hannah who would not be coming this way until later that day). Okay. Then a granddaughter who didn't want to go to her stepdad's family was added. Okay. Six of us total. More plans were made: you bring this and that, we'll make that and that.

On Thanksgiving morning, their youngest son, Timon, driving down from Cleveland, showed up early. Per his mother's instructions, I put him to work helping pull chairs out, washing china, setting the table. Then I get a phone call from Mike Jr.: they were coming earlier after all. After I got over my shock (I ordered him to hang up and call his mother immediately), I recalculated. Okay, now we're up to eight. That meant reconfiguring the table settings, adding another table, washing more china. That's okay, though: I had help. So we all worked some more, although Timon said, as we rearranged things, "I bet you they don't make it in time. They'll be late."

My brother, sister-in-law, and their granddaughter arrived. The turkey was close to done; we may have had it out of the oven already. One of their phones rang: the travelers are turning back to switch cars because the check engine light came on. Sorry, they are still coming, but they will be late.

Timon pumped his fist in the air. "I told you I'd win that bet!"

We pulled down the folding table that had been added to the end of our kitchen table to fit eight. We hastily took up the extra place settings. Warren started cutting turkey and piling it on a platter. Food went into bowls, water glasses got filled, and we all sat down.

I anchored one end of the table, my brother Mike the other. He looked around the table, beamed, and said "It's good to be here at this table and to all be together."

Those were more than just casual words tossed out to make everyone feel good. Mike was the brother I was least close to, both when growing up and as an adult. In the spirit of full disclosure, I am the one who kept Mike at arm's length over the years; Mike did nothing to create that breach. When I was diagnosed with the myeloma in 2004, I apologized to Mike for how I had treated him by, frankly, not treating him at all. Mike just smiled and said, very gently, "It's okay, April."

Mike meant it. It was okay. And now here we were at the most improbable of Thanksgivings, a Thanksgiving that wasn't supposed to happen and surely in a million years would not have been spent with Mike and crew.

The meal was wonderful. We shared good food, good conversation, and laughter. Mike and I shared stories from our childhood of Thanksgivings (and Christmases). We passed the turkey, we passed the rolls, we passed the love.

The pies were delicious.

As Kate, Warren, and I started clearing plates and making containers of leftovers, the door opened and Hannah and Mike Jr. walked in. We made a clear spot at one end of the table, rescued the settings we had swept off the table earlier (I had just set them on a small couch in the study) and loaded them up with food. Warren started the dishes. Several of us grabbed dishtowels. Talk flowed through the kitchen; talked flowed in the living room.

And then it was over. Mike, Kate, their granddaughter, Timon, Mike Jr., and Hannah headed out to go see dad before going their own way. Hugs, thanks, "wait, Grandpa forgot his phone," goodbye waves.

And, like that, our unexpected Thanksgiving was over.

2019 marks my 64th Thanksgiving. There have been some great ones.

This was one of them.