Latest Autumn

 The yellows are fallen and browned. A few stubborn dark leaves, chiefly oaks, hold on.

I lived in a little town in central Pennsylvania until I was nine. I loved the rolling hills surrounding our little Susquehanna River valley. To me, after the leaves fell, the hills were covered with soft brown fur. As I grew older I realized that my impressionistic view was a fantasy. Bare tree limbs and twigs catch your jacket and scratch your face. But the childish fancy won't give way to reality. The sight of a late autumn wood is comforting and cozy.

My oldest cousin, Lola, owned a sugar beet farm in eastern Montana and we visited them in 1995, the summer of our cross-country trip, after stopping at my Dad’s old stomping  grounds in Choteau County and Fort Benton, Montana.

Lola and her husband Dick were gracious hosts. They took us in their pickup truck to view the sugar beet fields and their oldest son gave my kids rides on his horse.

Their oldest daughter had moved to West Virginia. She was quite homesick and one day called Lola and said, “Mom, the leaves have all fallen off the trees. It is so ugly here!”

Because of that report I have pondered late autumn. It would be a shock to first experience an Eastern late autumn in adulthood. I’ve grown up with them. I love the contrasts and the continual change in color and texture all through the year.

Out my kitchen window I see trees, a few small ones in the foreground and a large maple tree a block to the north. It has a pleasing rounded shape and I’m reminded of a poem I once wrote. I visualized my brain, which had failed me so utterly, as a large deciduous tree with thousands of branches and twigs. My marvelous brain, for all its failings, was as glorious as a mighty oak.

I’m very proud of the fact that I can say and even spell deciduous. I’ve often felt it was a pretentious adjective for such a familiar object. I just learned that it comes from the Latin: to fall down or off. So prosaic.

Sunglow, burnt sienna, and honey

 I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before. For the past thirty-eight years I have reveled in the simple but deep pleasure of living in New England: a place other people go to on vacation. In the fall, I enjoy walking and driving, day after day, watching the colors change from the deep augustal green through reds, oranges, yellows, and browns.

According to The Boston Globe, “Summer 2023 was the second-rainiest on record in Boston,” with more than 20 inches falling in three months.

In drought years the trees turn color early, and this year they turned late. I was happy to see that even though we were in England until October 12th, we hadn’t missed the peak in New England. Two weeks later Jim and I took a drive west to Petersham and ate supper in Barre at Red Tomato Pizza, enjoying delicious Italian food. We’d been to the town before: Barre is the terminus of my beloved Route 62.

As we headed home on this late afternoon, the sunlight on the leaves nourished our souls.

Two days later we drove to Manchester, New Hampshire, where we lived for seven years. Four of our six children were born there at Elliot Hospital. I’ve always loved the mix of deep forest green pine trees and deciduous trees in New Hampshire.

As I’ve been driving around the past few weeks, composing this post in my head, I’ve paid especial attention and tried to name all the colors of late fall. I’ve been surprised at the vibrant reds: I think of red as an early fall color. And it is. These deep scarlets are mostly single trees, obviously from a nursery and not native to the soil.

I’m also surprised by the yellows still on the trees. How to describe the colors? I went to a website website for some linguistic help. Here are some of the colors I’ve been trying to describe:

Burnt sienna, golden brown, amber, autumn gold, sunglow, golden puppy, harvest gold, sandy taupe, antique gold, cognac, aspen gold, dark goldenrod, maize, candlelight gold, saffron, honey, and caramel. Good enough to eat.

Anniversary: November 5, 1995

 On November 5th of 1995, I went crazy, bonkers, insane, out of my mind. Literally.

I once heard Kurt Vonnegut, author of Slaughterhouse Five and other sixties (and seventies) classics, talk about his family history of mental illness. “Bats in the belfry,” he said cheerfully. I loved his bluntness. I don’t judge anyone else’s sensibilities, but I personally don’t like euphemisms, if for no other reason than that they don’t have the intended effect. New terms for old conditions can’t keep up with popular culture turning them into insults.

So on that first Sunday in November (I’m on deadline here), I stood outside the kitchen in the warm autumn sunshine as a kind older mother combed out my long hair to remove head lice nits. I stayed home from church, a very rare occurence, because some of our family were infected with lice. Later that afternoon I started wandering around the house making no sense to anyone but myself. I was convinced evil men were trying to kidnap my daughter. I thought I could read Jim’s mind by studying his facial expressions (and did pretty well with that). When my bizarre behavior escalated a good friend took me to her house. Later a few friends drove me on Route 2, a four-lane highway, to Lahey Hospital. On the way I unbuckled my seatbelt and said I’d get out. Luckily I still could be persuaded by my friend as she said, “You don’t have to do this, Mary,” reaching across my body and calmly buckling me back in the minivan seat.

I spent several hours in the emergency room and then about four days in the psychiatric unit on the 5th floor of Waltham Hospital. I was so naïve that it took me a day to realize the doors were locked.

It was a memorable weekend. I review parts of it most weeks at the newcomers meeting of my support group: DBSA Boston: Depression Bipolar Support Alliance. Just this past Wednesday I told part of my story again. Later, as the other Zoom participants introduced themselves, a young woman thanked me for my story. It gave her hope to hear me share and see that I had survived and flourished despite my illness.

When I woke up from the anti-psychotic-drug-induced sleep twenty years ago, I was in my right mind and shattered. I knew no one, NO ONE, with mental illness. Intellectual disability, (we respectfully called it mental retardation in my childhood), I was intimately aware of. My little brother, Michael, was born severely disabled and I lived with him daily. I knew his classmates and later I trained as a special education teacher.

But I had no such history with mental illness. Soon after my first hospitalization, a woman we met at church generously shared her experiences with Jim and me. I vowed that I would be open about my illness. I wanted to be the person a 'young Mary Johnston’ could turn to. I often have that privilege at DBSA Boston.

I talked on the phone today with my brother, who has been sober for as long as I’ve been married. He started an NA (Narcotics Anonymous) meeting in Butler, PA, many years ago. He told me, with passion, about a man he knew whose life was changed by NA. It reminded me of something I sometimes forget in the administrative throes of being president of DBSA Boston. We do what we do because it changes lives. It makes a difference. That’s what we are here for.

Prayer

 As a young girl, I was quite a Pharisee. I wanted very much to be religious but even more I wanted to be seen as religious.

When I was about 10, our pastor at Holy Trinity Church in Westfield, NJ, where I lived from age 9 till marriage, gave everyone a challenge: spend more time praying in church. Wanting to be spiritual and very attuned to challenges from teachers (I was a pathological grade hound), I made a promise. I’m sure I wanted to please my parents, and was disappointed that they never mentioned it.

So, on Sundays, before Mass started, I stayed kneeling longer than my parents and siblings did. Unfortunately, I didn’t know how to pray for more than about two minutes, so I just knelt in mind-silence, wondering if anyone knew I was faking it.

This morning I went to the Bethesda Ward since I’m visiting my older brother, Steve, and his wife, Maria. I rolled into the parking lot at 10:07 a.m. for the 10:10 sacrament meeting. The lot was empty except for a row of about seven cars in the corner. The building had  a sign: Washington DC North Mission office down the stairs and in the rear, so I assume these are extra ‘mission cars’ up for sale.

I walked around the building to verify what I already knew: all the doors were locked and the chapel empty. Probably it is stake conference here, the semi-annual meeting of all the congregations in the stake (like a diocese). I pondered whom I would communicate with to suggest a change on the Church global website. I’m sure it would cause huge technical challenges to list stake conference dates for the 3,500 units worldwide. I know in our Cambridge Stake the dates change from time to time.

We’ve had this experience before. I guess it indicates how often we travel. A memorable time was in June of 2001. All eight of us flew to Paris on our way to Florence, Cinque Terre, London, and the Orkney Islands. We had found the address of the Paris church and found our way to the door. But it was locked. It was a commercial building, not a free-standing church building, and we wondered if we had the correct address. A large window in front with a curtain had a Book of Mormon on the windowsill, so we were confident of our location. But no meeting.

We did attend church in French once. We all were visiting Quebec City, one of my favorite places in North America, and found the small branch, also in a commercial building. The American missionaries were pleased to see us and became impromptu interpreters.

So, this morning, as I sit in an impromptu private devotional on a red metal bench with no cushion, I am creating a Primary lesson for my grandkids in the Bronx. They are about the age I was when I made a promise to pray more and then felt guilty for never fulfilling it. I want them to know that like a good conversation, sincere prayer takes effort and focus. A friend of mine once observed that God isn’t a ‘cosmic bellhop.’

In preparation for our lesson, I read an article on the Church website I happened to see after logging onto the chapel’s Liahona network. (Every church building I know of uses the same network name and passcode.) "God Knows and Loves You" It became the basis of my lesson. I'm also going to play a clip of Louis Armstrong singing "What a Wonderful World," and a karaoke "I Am a Child of God."

I'm still learning about prayer myself. I often 'shoot beyond the mark.' I'm not all that good at conversation, so I have that to overcome. But  I'll keep trying.

Smorgasbord

I was sitting in the ‘cultural hall’ (aka gym for those of you who aren’t LDS), waiting for stake conference (the semi-annual meeting of our stake (like a diocese: a group of eleven congregations in the Boston area)) to begin.

For some reason, I thought about service, and being the perfectionist I am, I focused on all the good deeds I’ve left undone.

A new and comforting thought came into my mind unbidden. Perhaps service opportunities are like a smorgasbord. (How often have you heard that word in the last fifty years? They were all the rage in the seventies.)

A smorgasbord is a Scandinavian way of serving food at a party. Instead of one entrée, many different kinds of food are presented at a huge table and guests are invited to sample those that look appealing.

When I was in college, a sweet and generous older man invited a friend and me to his favorite restaurant, which featured a smorgasbord. I was in seventh heaven. So many choices! I wanted to try all of them. The result was a memorable meal.

But in life, with that same attitude of trying to sample everything, I often feel discouraged and down on myself. When I fail to step up to a service opportunity, especially one that has no appeal to me or will be difficult or awkward to time-consuming, I feel like a failure.

I don’t mean to excuse myself for the things left undone that I really should have done. But life is a smorgasbord. There isn’t time to sample it all. A skill I’d like to develop is the ability to enjoy the fact of choices coupled with the wisdom that I must choose and that happiness lies in the direction of making good choices and being content with the outcomes.

In the October 2007 General Conference of the Church, Dallin H. Oaks gave a memorable talk, "Good, Better, Best." (I just googled Dallin Oaks and the first fill-in was ‘good better best.’) He talked about the many choices we have in life. Like the old Sears catalog he and his farming family pored over before Christmas in his youth, the choices can be labeled good, better, and best. The question is, are we making the best choices or are we satisfied with good ones.

I took the message to heart and I still recognize great good in it. But my interpretation can sometimes be toxic.

I recently listened to President Oaks’ talk to refresh my memory. It is interesting to note that much of his talk is geared towards official Church activities and over-scheduling children and youth. Those have nothing to do with my current personal life choices.

Jim and I often talk about choices, emotional paralysis, and time use. Since he is self-employed and I’m an independent homemaker, our schedules are largely our own. The freedom can be exhilarating; it can also be paralyzing. Sometimes we make a priority list and then avoid working on what we named as our priorities.

Today I have 328 unread emails in my inbox. It’s a backlog from our two-week trip to Oxford, Cornwall, and London. When I got home it was over 700. I also have undone DBSA Boston work (I’m president, remember?), an unpublished blog (obviously I chose to post if you are reading this), work to do on my memoir, as well as laundry, food preparation, and a myriad of other worthwhile time-use choices.

Writing that list raises my anxiety. Can I really relax and enjoy the smorgasbord?

Meadows of Clover

1 Oct 2023

We’re staying with some friends who moved to Kennington, England, a village outside Oxford. I think Harry Potter used to live here.

We went to a baptism this morning and I ventured out myself in the afternoon. I walked around the village cemetery, St. Swithun, which had only fairly recent markers (it was established as a civil parish in 1936), then the Sandford lock and weir. From there I found the Thames foot path and further along walked a mile or so on a country lane. In two hours I walked over five and a half miles.

I realized that my walking makes no more sense than golfing, which I’ve disparaged. (apologies to any golfers reading this: I’m repenting today.) Long-distance walking is not productive, except as healthful exercise. Golf can also be healthful, if one walks the course. But just as golf enthusiasts I know can be obsessed with pushing a little pock-marked ball around a large field, I’m obsessed with mileage.

I don’t particularly enjoy hiking in the woods and positively would not enjoy wilderness hiking without a knowledgeable guide. I once got lost in Lower Vinebrook conservation land in Lexington. Seriously lost in an area that was probably much less than a half square mile in area.

As you can see from the map, it’s not large. It was a Sunday morning about twenty years ago and as bishop Jim would be at church all day. I felt like calling 911, but decided I’d rather die in the wilderness. I prefer well-defined paths. Urban hiking is my forte.

The Thames foot path has a great advantage: as it meanders alongside the river it is clear where you are. I didn’t have my hosts’ cell phone numbers and Jim and I both have our phones on ‘airplane mode’ to avoid accidentally incurring the $10 travel fee our carrier charges. So there was no way to let him know if I needed help.

Along the way I found a large field of purple clover, more than I’ve ever seen.

It reminded me of the old children’s song, “I often go walking in meadows of clover; and I gather armfuls of blossoms of blue.”). Delightful.

(Learn a bit more about British time zones)

Sadness at McLean

 I had a sobering experience. My DBSA (Depression Bipolar Support Alliance) office key has been dodgy for years. Last week it finally wouldn’t work at all. Our office is located in the cafeteria of McLean Hospital, a world-renown psychiatric hospital that was founded in 1811.

I decided to call my husband, Jim, to see if he had any suggestions. The reception in the cafeteria was poor, so I walked outside towards the parking lot to talk.

A woman came walking by with a companion who was obviously a McLean staff member. I recognized the woman: an acquaintance from long ago at DBSA. She always had a ready smile.

The change in her was striking. She walked very slowly. When I called out her name, she stopped and looked at me. I wasn’t sure she recognized me, so I reminded her of our connection. I rattled on about how DBSA has been on Zoom for three and a half years and how we missed being in person.

She looked at me intently but never said a word. Then I said I had to go (because I had run out of things to say) and she continued her slow walk.

It was tough. I know nothing of her history the past several years. I know nothing of what brought her to McLean this time. She acts so differently from the friendly person I knew way back when.

It made me realize anew what a serious condition mental illness is. I have been blessed: the medications, for all my love-hate relationship with them, have allowed me to have a full life. They are far from perfect. Sometimes I feel like we are in the era that general medicine was in before antibiotics and chemotherapy drugs. Like chemotherapy, psychiatric meds are a blunt instrument with serious side effects. Although researchers continue to learn more about mechanisms, many of the drugs are decades old. I think there are many kinds and causes of mental illness which makes it very difficult to find effective medications that target the specific cause.

Whatever the reason, psychiatric drugs are, in the words of David Anderson, TEDxCaltech presenter, Your Brain is More Than a Bag of Chemicals (January 2013), like trying to change your car’s oil by pouring oil all over the engine hoping some of it reaches the right place.

My encounter at McLean reminds me that mental illness is a terrible illness with huge costs to those who aren’t’ treated successfully. My heart goes out to all who still suffer.

Oil tanker or trim little schooner

The night before our Bahamas cruise, in our Tampa Bay hotel, we slept in a king-size bed. I have never understood the appeal. It feels like an oil tanker: I’d rather ride to sleep in a trim little schooner.

When we’d been married two years, Jim was offered a job interview with Ford in Detroit. We were such hicks then, even though Jim had grown up near the University of Chicago in Hyde Park and I in the sophisticated suburbs of New Jersey. Very budget-conscious, we packed canned food for the trip, bread and peanut butter and crackers, not expecting an expense account. The secretary in charge of reimbursements couldn’t believe we had spent nothing on food.

We chuckle about it now. We were such babes in the woods.

The hotel was fancier than any I’d ever stayed in, perhaps to this day. I felt bad getting cracker crumbs on the carpet. The bed was enormous. I suppose many people in America had a king-size bed, but it was new to us.

I still don’t like king-size beds. We started married life in a sublet studio apartment of a Princeton grad student. Our honeymoon trip, at Camp Liahona, the family campground owned by the Church, was kiboshed when our Nova’s water pump broke just outside of town. Back to the sublet we went, where we had a wonderful first week of marriage, soaking up reunion lectures at Jim’s alma mater.

In August we drove to Chicago and moved into married student housing at the University of Chicago. Jim’s dad had negotiated the purchase of much of the furniture of the departing tenant couple. A white vinyl pullout couch, four painted oak chairs, a drop-leaf table, and a double bed with wooden headboard and foot board. We were told that the mattress was old and needed replacing. They were embarrassed to sell it to us. We kept it for six years. When we did finally carry it out on the curb for trash pickup, it started to rain and as I watched out the window I realized with a pang that there was no going back.

Each of our six children was conceived between those head and foot boards and we still have the frame to this day, though I think we’re on our third or fourth mattress. (The current one is from Bed In A BoxBedInABox and came wrapped in strong plastic. When we unwrapped it, the foam unrolled and inflated as we watched. Within a month my chronic back pain had disappeared.)

The few times we have slept on king-size mattresses, when we stay at an upscale hotel, have left me mystified. What do people see in them? Perhaps because I have slept on a small bed for forty-four years, I’ve developed the habit of only inhabiting a few square feet of mattress. King-size beds are wasted on me.

And too, isn’t a point of sharing a marriage bed to be close to each other? There’s plenty of room in our bed for no-contact sleeping, but it always feels very cozy.

I mean no criticism to those who need more space to sleep. And it is fortuitous that I prefer a double bed. Our 1895 house was not built for king-size beds. To get even just the double-bed box spring up the staircase when we moved in in 1993, our friend, Marc Butler, had to remove the window frame at the stair landing. Four people were needed to hoist the box spring into the window from the garden and pull it through the window frame. If we ever do get rid of it, we’ll have to chop it up first.

 

A Perfect Day

 Our Summer Retreat, the annual reunion with our children and grandchildren, just concluded on Saturday. This year was a first: we took a cruise with Royal Caribbean to Key West and the Bahamas. I’d been to St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands, many times from 1992 to sometime in the teens. My mom bought a shore-side condo in St. Croix, US Virgin Islands, in about 1989, and my parents invited their children and grandchildren to spend time with them in paradise.

I was intrigued with the idea of the Bahamas, especially after I listened to The Republic of Pirates by Colin Woodard. From 1706 to 1718, a loose confederation of privateers turned pirates wrought havoc on international sea trade. Their headquarters were the Bahamas, favored for its many small islands and cays (keys or quays) among shallow waters and dangerous reefs that offered protection from larger navy ships that couldn’t navigate there safely. The pirates practiced a form of democracy: all the crew members voted on their leaders and could oust them at will. Plunder was distributed evenly.

Each year that I visited St. Croix, usually in February, we watched a cruise ship arrive on Wednesday. I concluded that my situation was far superior. I was able to really get to know the island and while the cruise passengers were hurrying back to the ship at 4 p.m. I was going out for my late-afternoon swim. We would often enjoy supper on the veranda, watching for a green flash at sunset. I like to avoid full sun, so having scheduled island time be between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. would have cramped my style.

But here I was, on a cruise. And it was fine. I especially enjoyed visiting new places, conversations with family members, the nightly entertainment, and the delicious food I didn’t have to prepare or clean up after.

After a day in Key West, we cruised to a small cay (a small low-lying island composed of coral rock and reef) owned by the cruise line. Evidently the staff aboard the Grandeur of the Seas are trained to say “Perfect Day at Coco Cay.” I never heard them refer to the destination simply as “Coco Cay.”

For me it was a fine day, but not perfection. The beaches featured row upon row of lounge chairs and beach umbrellas and expensive souvenirs. I borrowed mask and snorkel from Annie and R’el (I forgot to pack my own) and swam for over an hour in the turquoise waters. Then I walked along the whole beach area and around the cay, thus including two of my favorite activities.

The next day was closer to a perfect day. In Bimini, I talked some of our party into walking along the only road in search of a beach less crowded than the one next to the cruise pier. It was a hot walk, and we weren’t certain what we would find. The third person we asked directions of gave a clear description of our route (we had already walked for over a mile): up the hill, past the Catholic Church and Anglican Church, and onto a beach.

And what a beach! White coral sand, the shade of a tree, gentle waves, and no other people. (This was not perfection for my grandson. He spied some people far down the beach and asked, “Can’t we go over to them?” But he was overruled.) Again I swam over an hour and was in paradise. When I came back to shore I discovered that I had worried Jim. He wasn’t concerned about my swimming ability but about what would happen if I had a seizure or some accident.

For me it was an echo of my time in St. Croix. I used to swim the mile to the Fredriksted pier. Before 2001 I would sometimes touch the cruise ship below the water line, just because I could. And then I would head back to my parents’ condo. I always stayed close to shore, but I loved the tranquil loneliness.

Palmyra, the Taghkanic Mountains, and the Berkshires

 Earlier this week Jim and I met Xiomara and their kids in Albany, New York (about 2 ½ hours away), and drove in one car another three hours to the Eire Canal village of Palmyra. In late June we had taken a bus trip with our Cambridge Stake youth group and wanted to share the experience.

The Airbnb was a homey, two-story house with three bedrooms circa 1920. We visited all the Church history sites. Everyone’s favorite was the Grandin Building, where the first 5,000 copies of the Book of Mormon were published. The informative tour described Joseph Smith’s experience and explained the nineteenth-century printing process. We each got a sheet with the first 32 pages which we folded into a quire.

I had lugged two bases and a frisbee to the ward campout two weeks earlier and never used them. In Palmyra I got my chance. In the late afternoon we found a grassy area near the canal and played running bases, taking turns being basemen and throwing the frisbee. It only landed in the bushes a few times.

Monday we had ice cream outside the Chill and Grill and the next evening I enjoyed Maine blueberry ice cream at a Byrne Dairy convenience store. There was plenty of butterfat and the rich taste of Maine.

Our family book club selection this month is the Netflix’ series, Wednesday. I cancelled my Netflix account in protest many years ago, when the company suddenly split their DVD and streaming services, doubling the charge for subscribing to both. That controversial business decision was made in 2011, but I’ve never forgiven them.

However, my Oma heart can’t resist Victoria; Wednesday is her selection. So I subscribed for a month and Jim and I watched the first four episodes at home. I found the character disturbingly dark, but she lightened up a bit as the series progressed. I could pass on the gore and physical suspense, but at least the scary music warned me to get ready to close my eyes. In Palmyra we watched the final four episodes together. Andrew and Victoria had already seen the whole thing and Andrew had a hard time not delivering spoilers to me. I warned him quite sternly but lightheartedly.

After we left the Bronx crowd on Wednesday, I drove Interstate 90 from Albany to our home. The late-afternoon sunlight suffused the Taconic Mountains and the Berkshires with a golden-green glow. The forests are dark green, soon to enter their autumnal phase. I even saw one tree with a tinge of fall color. I composed this post as the Mass Pike wended its way through the wooded rolling hills of western and central Massachusetts.

To quote my favorite Massachusetts troubadour, I drove "the turnpike from Stockbridge to Boston."

What a difference a year makes

 A year ago Jim and I joined our children and grandchildren in Roatan, a Caribbean island belonging to Honduras. Then we flew to the mainland to visit Xiomara’s home town and her relatives.

I got the usual traveller’s complaint and made it through two more family reunions (in the excitement of the lessening of the pandemic, three branches of our family planned travel reunions.).

I didn’t recover with my usual speed. Actually, I don’t usually get sick, so I didn’t realize that 104 degree temperature is dangerously high. I went on our annual Church campout because I didn’t want to disappoint our four grandkids: we’d planned for it all year.

At the campground, I fell three times on the gently rolling lawn. In a state of total denial, I blamed my old sneakers, with worn-slick soles. Turned out it was a kidney infection.

Anticipating the campout this year, with our two grandkids from the Bronx, I felt an inexplicable dread. I finally realized the anxiety was caused by a fear of a repetition of last year.

But I hadn’t been to Honduras this year and I didn’t fall once at the campground. Instead of sitting, exhausted, in my camp chair by the pond, I swam some laps and paddled with my granddaughter. We're all looking forward to next year.

In the Weeds

 Saturday morning I spent two hours in the weeds.

About six weeks ago I noticed some leaves of three (let it be) with a tinge of red growing alongside our driveway. You may remember my brush with poison ivy five years ago. After a terrible bout of rash while in Charleston, SC, and a dose of steroids I came home, bought a full-body Tyvek suit, and was successful in eradicating the menace from my north yard.

This time I warned my teenaged assistant gardeners to stay out of the patch and bought another suit. I then spent six weeks vacillating between pulling the plants and spraying herbicide. Every few days it would rain, which postponed the project. In between there was a trip to Church history sites in Palmyra, NY,, with our Church youth group, a week of Girls’ Camp, and Joe Cannon’s funeral in Chicago.

Jim had suggested mowing the patch. I resisted. Mowing wouldn’t remove the roots and the stems close to the ground. The mower blades might send particles of poison into the air. I wanted to eradicate the plants, not just cut them back. (Jim later suggested my approach was irrational. I have to agree.)

The Thursday before, Jim had mowed our backyard again. Afterwards he told me he was tempted to mow the patch and pointed out that it was just getting worse as I delayed.

So, the next morning I donned the Tyvek and a pair of industrial-strength blue PVC gloves and marched out to face the task.

I saw to my horror that the ivy had spread and other woody weeds had overtaken the area. But undaunted I started at the far end, just east of a large maple tree, clipped the woody plants to the ground and pulled the ivy where I could, cutting it when necessary.

What had been little patches of ivy over a month ago had become a jungle of vines, five and ten and even fifteen feet long, partially hidden by the woody plants.

Eventually I considered giving up. I went inside: two hours had transpired. My project would take at least four more hours if I had the strength. I called Jim and asked him to come survey the scene. I was careful not to touch anything with the contaminated Tyvek suit and gloves. He served me a much needed glass of water with a straw. I was dripping sweat inside the suit and the tips of my gloves had pools in them.

Jim assessed the situation and said the woody plants were thin enough to mow. I asked him to do it: I was worn out. (Back in 1981, just before we moved to Columbus, Indiana, for Jim’s first big job, I called a man on Saturday about some arrangements. He answered the phone a bit breathless and said, “I’ve been working in the strawberries. Excuse the language, but I’m pooped.” I thought it was charming and chivalrous. It wasn’t until years later that I realized he considered ‘pooped’ improper because it implied excrement. What impeccable manners.)

Jim put white plastic garbage bags over his shoes and made three passes with the mower, creating a swath of mowed grass and weeds six feet wide. We watched for a rash, but none developed. He’ll probably finish the job today, before we leave for Utah.

As I worked on my poison ivy project I started writing a sermon in my head, all about facing a nasty job early on when it is manageable. I imagine the original project would have taken an hour. (Actually I imagined it would have taken a half an hour but I am very bad at estimating projects.) The sermon seemed very wise and nuanced, but now that I’m writing this, I’ve lost most of the thread. It’s really pretty simple. I had a nasty but doable task. I put it off. I put it off some more. The ivy wasn’t waiting for me. I didn’t even realize how much volume had grown over the six weeks, since it was hidden among the weeds. Many of the vines were under the grass and weren’t visible until I started pulling one end.

Poison ivy is pernicious. It manifests in many ways. It can be a single plant, a bush, a vine among the grass, or a vine up a tree trunk. It does always have three leaves, but they can be any shade of green from light to dark. The leaves can be shiny or dull and have smooth edges or a few coarse notches.

I did develop a small rash, under my unprotected chin. I went to urgent care, remembering the painful incident five years ago where a single bump became extensive rashes on both arms, severe enough that I couldn’t bend my elbows for days until I went to urgent care in Charleston and got a steroid shot and oral medication.

Jim, of course, did some web reading and found that best practices is to use herbicide to kill the ivy. Pulling it stimulated growth of the roots. Unfortunately, a herbicide would kill the grass too and leave a large area bare. For now, Jim will keep mowing and warn visitors to stay away.

Explosion of Green

 I flew back from California May 24 and drove with Jim to my 45th college reunion two days later. Never has the Mass Pike seemed so verdant, so lushly green. Mile after mile the hills were packed with tall deciduous trees in every direction. In Main Line Philadelphia stately maples and ancient copper beeches graced the countryside.

California was lovely. I’ve never visited in May and didn’t expect so many roses in gardens and wild flowers along the highways. Northern California, Oregon, and Washington presented majestic evergreens. But for sheer volume of delicious, deciduous green in rolling hills, nothing matches the East Coast.

I returned home just in time to enjoy a glorious season of rhododendrons. I’ve made a study of them over the years. They always bloom in the same color order. Right now, the earliest color, a light purple, can be seen all over our town.

What did we expect?

 Maggie and I are on a two-week Sisters' West Coast Road Trip. I flew into LAX and the next day, after a tour of John’s amazing Orange-County garden, we headed north. We planned to drive the Pacific Coast Highway, California Route 1, north through Big Sur to Monterey, but it is impassable due to mudslides. So we toured the Hearst Castle instead. Driving the southern portion of the PCH that is open, we walked along a boardwalk and watched female elephant seals lie on the beach. They looked quite lazy, but out in the deep ocean they dive 2000 feet in search of food.

Yesterday as we drove from Berkeley to Crater Lake, I continued my love affair with Mt. Shasta. I first saw it with our kids, in 1995, when Maggie helped me drive from southern California to Seattle. We camped near Mt. Shasta and I was smitten. Why had I never heard of it?

This time around we stopped in Weed, California (prominent citizen Abner Weed settled the area around 1900). We took a few pictures and then headed north on US 97. As Maggie drove I watched my beloved mountain, and we stopped a few times for a picture from yet another angle. At the Mount Shasta Scenic Viewpoint we saw the mountain in its full glory. A informational sign included John Muir’s initial reaction to Mt. Shasta in 1874:

When I first caught sight of it over the braided folds of the Sacramento Valley, I was fifty miles away and afoot, alone and weary. Yet all my blood turned to wine and I have not been weary since.

In the evening we made our way west on Route 62 and entered Crater Lake National Park. Neither of us were able to use our new Golden Eagle passes: the entrance booth was unmanned. Many small piles of brush were smoldering along the roadside: a prescribed burn. The buildings of Rim Village were barely visible among the 20-foot snowbanks. The lodge was the end of the plowed road. Rim Drive, which encircles the lake, was completely snowbound.

What did we expect? A pleasant and scenic drive around the caldera. A few hikes in the woods.

What did we get?  A lot of snow on the ground. Hikes on the asphalt between the lodge and Rim Village. What did we not expect? An afternoon of snowshoeing and time sitting on the veranda watching the lake mirror the surrounding caldera. A friendly grey bird.

Spring is approaching

Last week I  found myself watching the Connecticut coast roll by from the window of an Amtrak train on my way to visit my oldest brother in Bethesda, Maryland, just outside Washington, D.C.

When I was nine, we moved from a little town nestled on the banks of the Susquehanna in central Pennsylvania to New Jersey. (Watch it! I’m very proud of my New Jersey roots.) In high school I often took the Northeast Regional train from Newark’s Penn Station to D.C.’s Union Station to visit said brother. I love trains.

This trip brought back fond memories from high school and later trips to Philly’s 30th Street station during college over 45 years ago.

Seven years ago, I took a night train out of Salt Lake City over the Sierra Nevada to Sacramento, California, and then a northbound train up the Oregon Coast to Seattle. After riding all night I spent each day soaking up the natural beauty through the floor-to-ceiling windows of the observation car.

In my brother’s house I stumbled into another memory. Nine years ago, from March until May, I lived in their guestroom and spent all my days at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. (One of my sons created an acronym: WRENMIMIC) Our Army medic son, David, had AML (leukemia) and flew from Korea, where he was stationed, to Bethesda. After two months at WRENMIMIC he was transferred to MGH and lived with us during his treatments. Fifteen months later he died peacefully in our home.

Jim and I drove down to meet David at Dulles Airport on March 26, 2014. Spring had definitely begun and the daffodils and greening lawns were a bright spot in a dark time. Every day those green patches of grass expanded and shrubs blossomed.

One afternoon when David didn't need me, I took the Metro subway to the National Mall. I walked to the Washington Monument, then to the Jefferson Memorial, and around the Tidal Basin. A cherry blossom canopy floated above me. I was walking among pink clouds and it was glorious.

When our kids were young, we spent many an April vacation driving to Bethesda. The contrast, especially from Manchester, New Hampshire, where we lived for seven years, was striking. In April New Hampshire had barely emerged from winter. All the tree branches and limbs were still bare. In Connecticut the yellow of forsythias dotted the landscape.

Flowering shrubs and trees appeared in New Jersey. Bethesda was in full bloom.

A week later we backtracked, and Spring reversed herself until we were back in the land of bare limbs. But Spring was coming: we’d seen it approaching from the South.

My trip back to Boston last Saturday started out slowly, literally. Through my own fault (I forgottten my brand-new cherry-blossom umbrella behind and couldn’t bear to leave it behind) I arrived at the Amtrak gate one minute past closing. Happily a Northeast Regional was due to leave only 25 minutes later. Even though I had missed my train through my own fault, Amtrak graciously exchanged my ticket.

I’m back to bare limbs from cherry blossoms floating above the lawns. But Spring is coming. I’ve seen her approach.

Two Hymns

 I’m on a Fredrik Backman kick. I was listening to Us Against You, the second book of the Beartown trilogy. A husband and wife lost an infant son years before. The father remarks that the feeling never goes away, but somehow you just keep living. It gave me a twinge of guilt: am I enjoying my life too much, leaving grief in the past?

I let the query pass.

In sacrament meeting the following Sunday, it was announced: we would sing “O Savior Thou Who Wearest a Crown of Piercing Thorn” to the tune of “If You Could Hie to Kolob.”

I rarely can choose a favorite: my favorite fruit is either the one in front of me or the one I’ve  not had for the longest: blueberry, peach, rhubarb, cranberry, cherry, the list goes on and on. Food, movies, books are much the same. I love things passionately but can’t elevate one above all others.

However, I realized as I heard this announcement that these were my two absolute favorite LDS hymns. The haunting harmonies pierce my soul.

Realizing that I knew the harmonies of Kolob by heart, I turned to “O Savior” and started to sing. Within two words tears were forming in my eyes. After another line I couldn’t see the page for tears. I tried to mouth the words, but couldn't manage. I dropped the hymnbook into my lap, bowed my head, and wept. Sorrow overwhelmed me. As I sat in the front pew, trying not to sob out loud, I wished there were an angel to put her arm around my shoulder. I literally thought that, strange as it sounds even to me now. A few moments later I felt an arm around my shoulders. I couldn’t trust myself to look up. I struggled to contain the sobs and a gentle voice whispered, “It’s okay to cry.” I wasn't alone.

As the hymn ended and I regained my composure, I glanced at my human angel, it was Sarah, our Relief Society president. When I told Jim the story (as on most Sundays, he attended church at another building that day to serve in his calling), I asked him to guess who the angel was. He guessed immediately, which surprised me. She sits right behind you, he explained, and she’s the Relief Society president.

I felt so loved. God can work through other people.

So what caused the intense grief attack? It was easy to explain. When David was living at home, dying at home, I went through a phase where I would play my CD of Ralph Vaughan Williams' 5 Variants of Dives and Lazarus. (It’s the same tune as “Kolob”). I memorized the hymn lyrics, then played the piece over and over as I washed dishes (this was five years before our automatic dishwasher), tears streaming down my face. Over and over. I’ve sung “Kolob” in church several times since David’s death, and never had this reaction. But the novelty of swapping lyrics and tunes exposed a raw nerve I’d forgotten I had.

I don’t regret the incident. I want to feel. I’m grateful to understand that I’m not heartless and I don’t need to feel guilty. What would David want me to do? Miss him, yes, but also live life to the fullest. Enjoy the experiences of mortal life that he is missing.

"O Savior Thou Who Wearest a Crown of Thorns"

"If You Could Hie to Kolob" (Malea Lunt)

hunh! Gentri already did it!

Groundhog Day!

 I rarely can pick a favorite. Maybe it has to do with having six children: mothers aren’t allowed to have favorites. I do love fruit. But which fruit is favorite? I never can’t decide between half a dozen.

Same with movies. But in my all-time top five is Groundhog Day. I literally have three copies: a regular DVD, the 20th anniversary edition, and a Blu-ray version. I watch it at least once a year, on February 2nd, and usually more often. I have actually watched it at least two dozen times. Stop the action at any moment and I can tell you the next several lines of dialogue.

One of my four sons emailed me that Groundhog Day is playing in theaters on February 2 this year. Guess where I’ll be tomorrow?

Have I mentioned I love this movie? I once gave a Relief Society lesson about it. (Relief Society is my church’s women’s organization. We meet together on Sundays for spiritual lessons.) For me, the movie is profound and deep. The director, Harold Ramis, once stated that people of disparate spiritual traditions have told him that the movie is in tune with their values and traditions.

It's a story of redemption. Like many cliched terms, redemption is used so often because it expresses something deeply human. Many of us crave redemption: from mistakes we’ve made, from mistakes others have made that have harmed us, and from pain caused by this very imperfect world.

Phil Connors finds himself thrust against his will into a hero’s journey. He’s finds himself waking up day after day in the same little town of Punxsutawney, living through February 2nd over and over and over again. (The screenplay deliberately obscures how long Phil spent in February 2nd. Estimates have ranged from 10 months to 33 years.). His journey inspires me every time.

If you love the movie, watch:

Harold Ramis on the Metaphor of Ground Hog Day [sic]

Britt-Marie Was Here

I've listened to Fredrik Backman's novel Britt-Marie Was Here three times. I love Britt-Marie.

I listen to a lot of reading material: novels, non-fiction, scriptures, and religious works. It helps get me out the door for long walks, do weight-training, and sweep and scrub my kitchen floor.

When I was a schoolgirl, I invariably answered the question grown-ups often asked children, What do you like to do, with a one-word answer: read. Reading opened up worlds to me.

 

When reading became difficult, a few decades ago, it was a deep wound to my self-image. I was a reader, that was near the core of my identity. Yet my depression, and medication, took that away.

 

After several years of resignation, I finally took my son Matt’s advice and tried audiobooks. It opened up the world again. I still have trouble retaining what I hear, but at least I can comprehend and enjoy it at the time.

 

I belong to a women’s book group and in November 2021 Brit-Marie was on offer. A book about a socially-incompetent old woman, a ‘nagbag’ who starts coaching a children’s soccer team? I took a pass. But it was late fall of 2021 and the group was going to meet in person. Introvert though I am, I was starved for social contact. So, four days before the meeting I changed my mind, got the audiobook, and was smitten.

Backman has a marvelous talent (I’ve now listened to A Man Called Ove, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry, Britt-Marie Was Here, And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer, Beartown, Us Against You, The Deal of a Lifetime, Things My Son Needs to Know About the World, and Anxious People. The Winners is on my Libby hold shelf). He draws complex and sympathetic characters and helps readers fall in love with unlikely candidates. He’s an astute chronicler of human nature with all its nobility and foibles.

Many of us may be like Britt-Marie, more complex and layered than can be detected from the outside. Britt-Marie is so much more than her nagbag exterior. She has a history no one fully knows and appreciates and capacity even she is unaware of. I believe that’s part of being human.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the most famous American poet of the mid-nineteenth century, observed, “Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not, and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.

I whole-heartedly recommend Britt-Marie and every other Fredrik Backman book. If you do read it, or already have, leave us a comment. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Holiday

 We had a wonderful Christmas Eve. All our five living children were home that day and evening, along with our four grandkids. We had vegan chili for supper and opened presents. Our grandson, Andrew, led us in singing “The Sounds of Silence,” which he had just performed with his fifth-grade choir at school.

I decided to take Christmas week off, just take a full holiday. It was wonderful, including yesterday when, for the New Year’s Day (observed),  Sam and Savannah, Eliza and Link, came for a supper of Alexander's Pizza and a game of Five Crowns. I don’t even remember who gave the game to me, many years ago, but I’d never talked anyone into playing it before this holiday.

But today dawned, drizzling and grey, and yet again I didn’t have enough time to do all the things I hoped.

I realize, yet again, that it has been a story of my life: always fantasizing about doing more than humanly (or at least Mary-ly) possible. A few months ago, I sat in an Adirondack chair, gazing at my fall garden. I realized that sincere gratitude is a huge piece in the quest to find calm and peace. I trust that the serenity gained from deep gratitude will help me as I let go of the false idea that I can do everything.

This is a perennial topic between Jim and me. Jim has been self-employed since 1986. I've been a homemaker since 1981. You'd think we'd have figured it out by now, but we haven't. "Whereever you go; there you are." We realize we are bad bosses to ourselves. If an employer treated his staff the way we treat ourselves: constantly setting up unattainable goals and expectations, the employees would quit and the business would fail.

I don't have any answers. But it's a new year. I'll get up tomorrow and try again.