do nothing days

“Grandma, do you ever have days when you have nothing to do?” Avery asked me one day this past spring.

My answer was, “I have days when I do nothing, but I always have something I could do.”  

Jay bopped in one day after school and asked, “How can you stand it just being here all day long?”

I laughed and assured him I was fine being at my house all day and not going anywhere.

A  phone call from Avery often starts out with, “Grandma what are you doing today?”  

After I tell her what I am doing she decides whether it is more exciting  here than what is going on at her house.  Hint:  “Can I come down?”  Coming to our house is down….we go up the hill to her house.  Unless I am about to leave to go someplace, I can usually expect my nine year old granddaughter at my door within five minutes after we hang up.

In order to help me find something to do, Carter said to me after Jay’s comment about how bored I must be just staying home, “Grandma you should write a book.”

“What would I write about?” I asked him.

“You could write about your life after I got here.” Carter is seven.

“I could write about my life before you got here.  That is a longer period of time,”  I said.

“You could write about where you have visited.”

“Yes,” I said.  “I’ve gone a lot of places.

Even though my grandchildren may worry that I don’t have enough to do to keep myself from getting bored, a very used word in their vocabulary,  I explain that I am never bored.  The art of doing nothing is really deciding to spend some time doing whatever comes to mind.

For me that often is reading a good book or magazine, making popcorn, writing, walking to the spring, taking photos, finding the dog so I can pet her, going through old letters and pictures, messing in my craft room, sending a note to a friend or taking a nap.

In my working years I had little time for do nothing days.  My to do list was always a mile long.  In the summer, after our family’s ten day getaway,  I started in the attics and spring cleaned all the way to the basement.  There was nothing I left undone.  Besides that I sewed clothes for my daughter and me for the next school year, canned what we liked for the winter and just never seemed to have a spare moment.  Perhaps that is why do nothing days now seem earned and a reward for hard work in the past.

However doing nothing one night scared my children.  We had finished a family dinner on a summer evening.  I was tired after cleaning up in the kitchen.  The grandchildren were out playing by the creek and I went out to find them.  Walking into our big yard, I decided to lie down on my back and just look at the sky.

One of my children happened to look out the window and shouted, “Mom’s down!”  As my daughter came running across the lawn, my daughter-in-law called 911.  Before she had a chance to say anything I sat up.

She hung up and the 911 operator called her back.  I think she was embarrassed when she had to tell the operator she thought something had happened to me, but I was really O.K.  The whole incident, while laughable to me, showed that my family was ready to act quickly on my behalf.

Doing nothing is never a boring concept as I experienced just looking at the clouds that summer evening.   In many ways it is like the summer days of my childhood. Summers seemed endless as a child and by August I was asking my mother when school started again. Now summers fly by and I cherish a few days here and there when I choose to just do nothing.

“To lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer’s day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time.”   -John Lubbock

Summer Meadow

Long ago I took a photo

of three children and

a dog standing in

a field of daisies

It was that time

in late June when

flowers explode to

form summer meadows

The children squinted

into the afternoon sun

and I captured them

in all their innocence

Such a short time

to take a snapshot

of the season and

all that it offers

Such a short time for

children of summer

sunlight to cavort in

a meadow with their dog

What's A Man To Do?

What’s a man to do when his favorite tractor dealership goes out of business and his barber retires?  It puts a crimp in the way he’s always known.  We learn to depend on certain things in life and we don’t like those things to change.

The same man,Tom Schaner, has been cutting my husband’s hair for 45.years.  He has cut four generations of men in our family.  It started with my father and then my husband, our son and now our two grandsons.  

My husband claims that a man can talk to his barber about all sorts of topics.  It has to be a sort of therapy for all men, just as a hairdresser is for a woman.  Men don’t always have as many friends as women do so finding a barber they can chat with is important.  So when his barber, who has been cutting hair for about 50 years retires, what’s a man to do?

On top of that,The Power Shop, the tractor dealership in Fremont where my husband 

has bought mowers, a tractor, parts and drooled over machinery is going out of business. Because one partner has died and there are complications with John Deere, the business is closing. That is a great disappointment because my husband very seldom goes back to the town where he taught for 28 years without stopping at The Power Shop.

It can be frustrating when the little things that have been constants in a man’s life are disrupted. There will be another barber, but it won’t be the same.  John Deere tractors can be found at other dealerships, but it won’t be the same. The familiar friendly men that my husband has trusted to take care of his needs and humor his desires will be spread to the winds.   Some people just can’t be replaced.  Life is ever changing, but that doesn’t mean a man has to like it.

Picture Perfect Garden

As a surprise on Monday, my husband drove me to the garden of Linda Schnell outside of Fremont.  Linda had posted some pictures of her garden on Facebook and Hack was sure I would love to see it. Her children were students of my husband's when he taught at Fremont High School. I am going to let the pictures do the talking on this post.  

Impression

Like a waterfall cascading down the hill

The white bells were drops of snow

Among the shiny emerald leaves

Lily of the Valley perfumed the air and

Engulfed me in the tides of spring

There was a scent in my discovery of

The tarnished spoon snuggled in a box with other

Treasures of the departed

Impressed deep in the metal were

Lily of the Valley cascading toward the bowl

A monogram on the back showed ownership

And a sense of a love for all things beautiful

I purchased the spoon knowing art

And nature are close companions

Winter will come of course but I can run my

Fingers over the silver flowers and

Visualize the white bells falling down the hill

Why Obsess?

It has occurred to me that in my life I have spent too much time obsessing about things.  What things you may ask?  I suppose most of it has to do with words that come out of my mouth or things I write and send into the atmosphere.  But sometimes it is remarks that are made to me out of the blue that get me thinking that someone doesn’t approve of me or how I live my life.  As I age these remarks should have less effect on me, but for some reason they don’t.  They often haunt me in the middle of the night.

After long conversations with friends one on one I often think of all the personal things I didn’t need to reveal.  I remember my mother always worrying about what people would think and maybe there is some residue of that in my mind.  She seemed to think that family business should not be spread around.  I do not tell everything I know to everyone I know, but there are certain friends I have where things slip out.

The interesting thing is that at the end of a long conversation with someone, I barely remember what they have said to me, only what I have revealed to them.   So I am hopeful that they have forgotten what I have said as well.  It’s all silliness but part of the human experience.

We can not live this life without getting our feelings hurt over sometimes small insignificant things.  But if we carry it into an obsessing mode then we are hurting ourselves more.  But letting things go is often easier said than done.  On a trip to Canada one year with my husband we were driving back home across Saskatchewan.  That province goes on and on with only wheat fields to see from the expressway.

I had a notebook and was writing furiously in it.  My husband blames that on my taking Ambien the night before and called it My Ambien Day. Ambien always made me feel depressed.   I hardly spoke to him the whole day.  But there were two things going on.  I was hungry.  I am not a nice person when I’m hungry and second I was reliving a slight by a group of friends that I couldn’t get over.  Once I had it all written down I felt better even though I was still hungry.  My husband had asked me if I wanted to stop and get something to eat, but I was so caught up in my feeling hurt that I just said no.  

Another example of dwelling on feeling hurt came when my brother and his family  did not come to our daughter’s wedding.  We had gotten an answer that he and his wife would be there, but when they hadn’t shown up by the time the wedding was supposed to start all kinds of accident scenarios went through my mind.   When confronted by my father on the phone several days after the wedding, my brother  said he had been at a barbershop quartet gathering  in another state.  When my father told him how upset I was, my brother listed all the slights he thought I had given him in the past and that seemed to be his defense.  

I always loved my brother deeply and couldn’t understand why he hadn’t let me know he would be out of the state.   When he called me a couple of months later to apologize I told him I had already forgiven him.  I can not carry a grudge for very long.  It hurts too much to do that.

Now that my brother is gone I think back to all the things we should have done to get together when our children were young. Other than major holidays, we seldom saw each other, always blaming the distance between us or the fact that we were too busy.  

But here I go blabbing family business.  However I will not obsess about telling the story.  Our lives are filled with family dynamics and there are bound to be hurt feelings now and again.  It is just not healthy to dwell on anything for too long as it becomes counter productive.    

I came across a quote by Doris Kearns Goodwin the other day that surprised me.  She is such a wonderful historian and I thought her life must be perfect.  But what she said struck me as so universal. 

 And as for the final sphere of love and friendship.  I can only say it gets harder once the natural communities of college and hometown are gone….It takes work and commitment, demands tolerations for human frailties, forgiveness for the inevitable disappointment and betrayals that come even with the best of relationships.  

It is so easy to dwell on the negative aspects of friends and family, yet it serves no purpose.  If I have not heard from a friend in a long time and I want to see them, I don’t concern myself with the fact that they haven’t called me in ages.  I just want their company and if they want mine they will accept my invitation to coffee or lunch.  They almost always oblige and our conversation starts where it left off the last time we met and all is good.  

I will still chafe at a slight or comment or worry that I have said something out of turn, but in the end I will get over it.  I always do.  I hope you do too.

Lilac Thief

I was on my way to deliver a gift when I passed the old school house turned house and gasped. The house had been empty for quite some time and the real estate sign was gone so I wondered if it had been sold. I decided I would stop to take a look on my way back home.

That I did.  I pulled over into a driveway that was fading and looked at the overgrown lawn.  The front door was very close to the road so I peeked in the window to see if the place was truly empty.  

O.K. good...no one to ask if I could pick some lilacs that were leaning over and touching the front door.  The road going past the house was not a busy one, but still I felt a little guilty if anyone saw me.  

The reason I had gasped when I first saw the lilacs was because of the colors.  The lilac bush closest to the house was a dark vibrant purple, not a color frequently seen.  The bush next to the purple one was a beautiful bluish shade of lavender, not the pale color that is so frequent along roadsides.  The last bush contained double white blooms which seemed rare to me as well.  

I started breaking off the dark purple stems and heard a car coming.  I ducked my head into the bush as the car passed.  My problem is I have never taken anything except flowers without asking permission but even so I didn’t want anyone to recognize me.  

In order to get to the lavender lilacs I had to step in a ditch and it was deeper than I thought.  After picking the lavender blue lilacs, I walked along to the double whites and another car drove past me.  I then walked in the small ravine toward my car.  Before I got out of the ditch I had brushed against something that stung my feet which were only in sandals.  I guess it would be my punishment for taking without asking if I got poison ivy.  

Van Winkle School turned house, place of the lilac thievery, was one of many schools my father attended when he was a boy.  He told me how he would walk to school and some Russian boys would steal his lunch.  He was small for his age.  He finished the 8th grade at Van Winkle.  I wonder if there were lilacs growing there when he was a child.

The purple, lavender, and white bouquet was a picture to behold and I don’t regret my transgression.  When I think of lilacs I always think of Walt Whitman’s poetic tribute to Abraham Lincoln.  The poem contains sixteen stanzas, but three gives one a taste of the whole.  

When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d

1

When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d.

And the great star early droop’d in the western sky in the night,

I mourn’d and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.

Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring,

Lilac blooming, perennial and drooping star in the west,

And thought of him I love.

2

O powerful western fallen star!

O shades of night - O moody, tearful night!

O great star disappear’d - O the black murk that hides the star!
O cruel hands that hold me powerless - O helpless soul of me!

O harsh surrounding cloud that will not free my soul.

.

3

In the dooryard fronting an old farm-house near the white-wash’d palings,

Stands the lilac-bush tall-growing with heart-shaped leaves of rich green,

With many a pointed blossom rising delicate, with the perfume strong I love,

With every leaf a miracle-and from this bush in the dooryard,

With delicate-color’d blossoms and heart-shaped leaves of rich green,

A sprig with its flower I break.