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."

Baby boy

Living in Indiana and New Hampshire, back in the 80s, I watched with mild envy during Christmas programs while some other young mother held her newborn baby in the annual nativity tableau. Peter was born too late, in mid-January, Matt and Sam were springtime babies; David was nearly three months old by Christmas.

This month, while we tended two of our grandchildren: Eliza, age 4, and Link (Lincoln), age 1, for nine days, I started learning "Mary Did You Know". I was inspired by our friend, Marilyn Foley Jodoin, who died November 22nd. Many remembrances of her included how she sang that song each Christmas, accompanying herself on guitar, her long, red hair swaying to the music. Eliza sang it to us, impressing us with how much of it she knew by heart.

So, at four in the morning, I sang it, over and over, to soothe wakeful Link. I looked into his clear but troubled eyes and wondered at the miracle of this baby boy. I realized that I'd always focused on the story of one night, but that baby of Bethlehem grew up, day by day: one week, one month, one year. I'm sure his mother marveled each day, long after the shepherds and magi were gone home, just as I had for my own six children and as I do now for our dear grandchildren. I’ve never felt closer to the story of Bethlehem than while looking into the large blue eyes of our babe of Boston.

A year of Nerd Fitness

 This month I turned 65. It hit me like a ton of bricks, to use a cliché (which I’ve been informed GREAT writers never do.)

I’ve always laughed at birthday numbers. I’ve proudly announced my age: 40, 50, 55. But 65 has thrown me for a loop. (Oops, another cliché. Must be losing my stuff.)

Growing up in America, age 65 has been the official commencement of old age since July 30, 1965, when President Johnson signed Medicare into law. I was eight years old. A presidential signature. 65? You’re old.

I subconsciously put it off. I didn’t sign up for Medicare until 12 days before I turned 65. I had vaguely heard the advice to sign up three months in advance of my birthday, but I didn’t do it. I don’t recommend the ‘head-in-sand’ approach. (Another cliché)

It all worked out. I’m officially on Medicare and working on understanding what that means.

I’m also working on overcoming my dismay at being officially old.

Please don’t comment with ‘you’re as young as you feel,’ or any such pep talk. Let me wallow in my self-pity for a post.

A year ago, on December 1^st, I joined Nerd Fitness' one-on-one coaching. My first coach resigned (I’m not taking it personally: she bought a farm with her husband and was expecting a baby) and Coach Sarah and I have been working together since February. She’s a weightlifter in Ohio and has a pet duck.

Lately I’ve been skipping workouts, feeling old and worn out. Writing this, I’m suddenly reminded of the night before Peter was born (our second child). It had been lightly snowing and I was in very early labor all day. Since our doctor was in Indianapolis, an hour north of Columbus, Indiana, where we lived, we decided to drop Rachel (now R’el) off at our friend’s house for an overnight while we went to a Red Roof Inn in Indianapolis. Our kids can explain to you what a big deal that must have been. I won’t regale you with the whole story, but after a whole movie in a theater (Tootsie with Dustin Hoffman) sans contractions, I was awakened in the Inn at 3:30 a.m. with powerful ones. I told Jim I didn’t think I could handle this and he gave me a firm coach-to-pregnant-woman-in-labor lecture: basically, buck up. (Well, what else could he offer?) That helped, a lot. He was a fantastic childbirth coach for each of our six births. I’m grateful he was there by my side, helping me through contractions, one at a time.

Fast-forward 38 years: yet again I’ve got to buck up. I’ve now spent enough time whining about being old. I was appalled the other day when my nearly-four-year-old granddaughter said, as she took off running, I’m faster than you! It was true.

I can only go forward. Hopefully I can maintain strength, maybe improve a bit. It is a big challenge. Back to those Romanian Deadlifts.

Oma Duty

 For the past thirteen days, our big house has been blessed with additional occupants: three-year-old Eliza and twelve-week-old Link (Lincoln) (he was ten weeks old when he arrived) and their parents, Sam and Savannah. As I discovered last summer, when Eliza stayed with us for ten days while Sam and Savannah drove from California to D.C., tending young children is exhausting at age 64. Sam and Savannah have been working everyday (the only way this visit has been possible is with remote employment) and we've watched our young charges each afternoon.

At first, Link was evidently not happy with the level of care, and I put an emergency call out to my trusty Relief Society (our church's women's organization): baby swing needed!

The swing has made a huge difference to my sanity, just as when we had babies back in the eighties. Swings have changed over the years. Our lime-green thrift-store special sported a hand crank, four long, thin aluminum legs.  and a vinyl sling for a seat. The swing we borrowed takes two people to move and must be rated to withstand a magnitude five earthquake. It's electric and has settings for various sounds and music (who knew a child needs to hear "Greensleeves" in the first year of life?)

Link can get very hot and bothered, but when he's calm, it's magical. His dark blue eyes, startling under the mop of dark brown hair, sparkle and he chortles with glee. My heart melts. Every day he changes, a little more interactive, a little more in control of his body.

Eliza is a self-possessed young girl. I'm delighting in sharing my favorite children's books with her. Today it was Hey Al by Arthur Yorinks, illustrated by Richard Egielski. In 1986, it won the Caldecott Medal for illustration. She loves it as much as I do.

Holiday Weekend

 The weekend with Andrew and Victoria went better than I dared hope. They are wonderful houseguests. They told us the next day that they had cried in bed Saturday night, after we had sung them good night. But Victoria’s report Monday evening to her mom was that she didn’t miss her because she was having a great time. It was an immersion experience. I had decided not to fret about undone work and just enjoy creating a wonderful holiday weekend for our grandchildren.

Friday evening, Peter and we met in front of the Town Line Diner in Rocky Hill, just south of Wethersfield, Connecticut. Wethersfield has been a source of romance for me ever since falling in love with The Witch of Blackbird Pond in fifth grade. Back in the 1600s, Rocky Hill was part of Wethersfield.

I’ve been driving up and down I-91 for 36 years, going to New Jersey to visit my parents, D.C. to visit the temple (before the 2000 opening of the Boston Temple, which reduced our temple trip mileage 100-fold, from 450 miles to 4.5.) I’ve seen the highway sign for the historic Wethersfield ferry, but never stopped to investigate. Service began in 1655, making it the oldest continuously-operated ferry in the United States.

When Peter got to the parking lot, where we would ‘exchange prisoners,’ we proposed a birthday supper at the diner. I've loved diners longer than Blackbird Pond. I had moussaka and asked the waitress if she was Greek. No, Albanian. We were nearly the only customers and she treated us royally. On Monday, when we met Xiomara at the same parking lot (it’s within two miles of being halfway between our homes), we talked her into a meal there as well.

The weekend felt so spacious. We planned our last day, Monday, on the white board: playground, fly Andrew's drone, foosball, cotton candy, go home.

As the slogan says, “If I’d known grandkids were so much fun, I would have had them first.”

Cotton Candy and Hauling Water

Last week we hosted our annual ‘Summer Retreat’. Two of our children, their spouses, and the three grandchildren came for the whole week. We had never gotten our act together to rent a summer house: when the coronavirus hit, procrastination proved to be an excellent strategy. Instead we invested in making our home a ‘grandchild magnet’. The most popular item was the foosball table. Seven-year-old Andrew became an avid player.

About two months ago, five-year-old Victoria asked for a cotton candy machine. Jim scoffed at the idea, but one of my fondest memories of childhood was the magic of a cloud of sweet fluff. I loved how it melted in my mouth. We experimented with coloring our own sugar, but didn’t like the result. Besides, white granulated sugar is much more inexpensive than the commercially-colored sugar: being the classic under-spender that I am, I went with plain white, pristine as clouds in the sky. Jim continues to improve his technique and can spin them as big and fluffy as my childhood memory.

I lived in Northumberland, a sleepy little hamlet nestled on the Susquehanna, until I was nine years old. A regular summer outing was to Rolling Green, a small amusement park with a large swimming pool, Ferris Wheel, roller coaster, other rides, games, and food. I loved watching the cotton candy machine, with its huge steel drum, as the wispy threads magically appeared and the operator deftly twirled them around the white paper cone.

Andrew and Victoria had enjoyed cotton candy in New York, but it was a new experience for two-year-old Eliza. She watched Jim make one for Andrew and then he asked her if she’d like one. She shook her head firmly. I held out a piece for her to try, but she said, “I don’t like hair.” I laughed and said it didn’t taste like hair: it was candy. She didn’t budge. Watching Andrew and Victoria enjoy their treats, she finally relented.

Before Peter’s family left, we did some yard clean up. Xiomara started emptying buckets of wading pool water onto the garden. Completely inefficient and time consuming, but I felt connected to my garden as we carried water, two gallons at a time, to drench our rhubarb, tomatoes, and raspberries. It’s been a very dry summer and the soil is a dusty brown. When Xiomara was a young girl, she and her sisters carried water home from the river in Honduras. I felt the simplicity of that life as we used the leftover pool water to nourish our plants.

Cake with pink frosting

I’ve always pictured addiction to be like water pressure from a fast-moving river on a dam. I thought that the cravings increased in intensity without a break.

But, my recent mindful experience with food cravings is that they ebb and flow. I’ve known that part for years. When I fast for 24 hours, the hunger pangs don’t grow at a steady and inexorable rate. I feel acute hunger, then it subsides. If I get involved in an interesting activity, either intellectual or physical, the hunger goes away. Not just because I’m not focused on it: when I do think of my fasting again, I’m often not hungry.

This week I realized that visual cues are hugely important. I’ve always pooh-poohed the idea of putting your temptations in a cupboard. How ineffective, leaving only a cupboard door between myself and the temptation: I still know the sweets are there. What I didn’t realize is that simply seeing the sweets activates the craving.

Case in point. Our granddaughter, Eliza, visited us for a week while Savam drove across country, from L.A. to D.C. (To the East Coast! Huzzah!). We had a delightful but exhausting time. Two important details:
1. Two-and-a-half year-olds don’t stop except for naps and bedtime, and sometimes not then even.
2. Although capable of independent play, Eliza’s grandparent’s attention radar is always on full alert. Within five minutes (I’m not exaggerating) of my focus being on anything besides her (weeding the garden while she played with water toys, cooking or reading my phone while she played), she was on top of me, demanding my full attention. The day she decided not to nap and screamed to be let out nearly outdid me. Her bedtime became my bedtime.

We successfully executed some activities (reading my carefully collected and curated storybooks was a hit), including baking a Betty Crocker cake with homemade buttercream frosting. She particularly enjoyed watching the pink paste food coloring swirl into the white frosting base. (I’ve loved pink frosting since I was a girl.) Cracking eggs was above her paygrade.

Jim was in Chicago, so we didn’t make much of a dent in the cake. Every time I walked by the cake, I felt an urge to cut a piece and eat it. I resisted, sometimes, but it was hard. I finally put it on top of the microwave and under a cupboard in the corner of the kitchen. The cupboard shielded it from my view. When I went to use the microwave and was confronted with the enticing pink frosting inches from my nose, a wave of craving crashed over me. I overcame the urge, but it was powerful. Keeping the cake out of sight, even though I knew where it was, really helped my avoid it.

How do you fight your cravings?

Eliza visiting

Our son Sam and his wife, Savannah, are moving to D.C. this week. Being our youngest has its perks: a backyard trampoline, big screen TV, and Blue-ray player in the past, free child-tending in the present.
Sam and Eliza flew from L.A. to Boston Saturday night. He returned home Sunday and Eliza began her extended stay.
It took me a day to get my ‘sea legs’. For weeks I had fantasized how she would play happily in the yard while I gardened. But when my attention leaves her, she's there to reclaim it in no more than ten minutes. I went to bed disillusioned.
Tuesday morning I was more at peace. It helped that her nap time yesterday had been long and quiet and that after breakfast Jim offered to play with her for an hour or so while I wrote, I jumped at the chance and was much refreshed to start my shift. While she played with our old Fisher Price airport, house, and barn, I was able to clean out the fireplace ash (four months after the last fire of the season). She wanted to play in the filthy bucket water. I was nearly done wiping down the hearth, so I happily rinsed the red plastic bucket, filled it with fresh water, put on her flip-flops and my sandals, and headed out for the shade of the backyard.
After watching her for a while, contentedly filling and emptying plastic nesting cups, I went to the garage, put on knee pads, and started weeding in the garden bed nearest her. In about five minutes she came over, asked what the knee pads were, what I was doing, and then stated that she wanted milk (which was inside the house). That was the end of that project.
       Knowing that milk could segue into lunch and a two-hour nap, I readily acquiesced. I’m finding the balance between catering to her whims and holding the line. Milk and juice are only allowed in the kitchen and dining room. She turns into an angry little dog and growls at me, but I just growl back. She doesn’t know how good her life is. I hope she isn’t disabused any time soon.

The Longest Day of the Year

"Do you always watch for the longest day of the year and then miss it? I always watch for the longest day in the year and then miss it."

Matt’s email three days ago quoting The Great Gatsby, informed me that I again missed the longest day, because I was too busy living it. For several Junes since we read Gatsby for our family book group in 2013 Matt has emailed Daisy’s question.

Saturday, the longest day of my year, was spent with two adorable grandchildren, Andrew and Victoria. It was sunny and hot and we played in our wading pool. I had bought two spray nozzles and attached them to garden hoses so they could have water fights while I watered my rhubarb with a third hose.

As Xiomara and I sat in the sun-warmed pool late in the afternoon, she reminisced about her childhood in Honduras. They received just one pair of shoes a year, so they went barefoot most of the time, including to school and on their daily mile-long walk to the river to fetch water. Being the youngest, Xiomara only carried two one-gallon containers home: the older children carried five gallons on their heads. Her resourceful father bought an acre of land outside of town and planted mangoes, bananas, pineapples, and coconuts as well as beans and vegetables. As poor as they were, tropical fruit was cheap and plentiful. It's a stark contrast to the prices in New York.

My dad grew up in a ‘ranch house’ among the wheat fields of Montana with no running water. I remember using the outhouse the summer of 1965 when we flew to Montana for a reunion.

A few days ago, I planted several zinnia seeds in small pots and by Saturday they had sprouted cotyledons. (The embryonic ‘leaves’ that nourish the plant until true leaves can grow and start photosynthesis.) I gave one to Victoria to take home and today, by video, she proudly showed me her thriving plant.

Another botanical project is my Christmas cacti. My mom grew beautiful Christmas cacti (which aren’t technically cacti at all) and enjoyed collecting varieties. She had pink and white and even an orange one. They bloomed at Christmas or Thanksgiving or Easter.

My oldest cactus sat for years on our old piano; the brilliant pink blossoms cascaded down one side of the pot. This year I decided to take the old, lopsided plant in hand. I perched it on top of an overturned wastebasket in the kitchen and studied it for several days. I came to see that I could restore balance by pruning it severely. Two younger but also unruly plants needed a deep trimming as well. I filled several small pots and a large, shallow pot with soil and planted about 20 slips. I’d never thought to prune a Christmas cactus. A week after the pruning, all three plants are sending out fresh new leaves. I hope they enjoy their new state.

I got a haircut too, the first in twenty weeks. My hairdresser, Pauline, has rearranged her salon to allow for safe distancing. She's always been meticulous about cleanliness: the main change is the box of disposable face masks on her counter. I left about four inches of grey and white hair on the floor, just in time for the hot weather.

My Melting Heart

We last saw Eliza at Christmas time, when she was 13 months old. At 21 months old, she is bubbly, bouncy, and verbal. When she first saw me last week and said, “Hi, Oma!” in a high and clear soprano voice, my heart melted.

We had our annual Summer Retreat: a week dedicated to our immediate family. Eliza won my heart; Andrew, age 6, and Victoria, just turned 4, already had. Several months ago, an older friend of mine said, "Grandchildren just melt your heart." I agreed that grandchildren are wonderful (“If I’d known grandkids were so much fun, I would have started with them” quips a tee shirt), but this week I experienced what she was expressing on a deep level. It’s an astonishing thing, to be accepted fully and without reservation by a tiny human being.

I love Victoria and Andrew; our relationships are more complex, in good ways. We can tell jokes and tease and talk about how things work. Andrew is teaching me how to play Pokemon, a game I ignored when his uncle was young and enthusiastic about it. Victoria and I play with kinetic sand and read stories.

Eliza is endearing as only a one-year-old can be. The freshness, the little personality in a pint-sized body: every encounter is magical.

When Victoria was this age, I visited them in New York. She returned from an afternoon doctor’s appointment and came into the living room; she saw me and ran to me, arms outstretched. The love of a child is deeply healing. The love of three is beyond measure.