It’s like salt. We all need salt, our bodies crave it. This flesh refuses to function properly and will down right kill us without it. So we seek it out. Where it is scarce it becomes currency more precious than gold. There are markets dedicated solely to salt and all it’s various flavors, colors, and crystal composition. Gourmet salt, who knew? For some reason the common salt mined and scraped out of the ground has become the inferior grade. We desire “Sea Salt”. Supposedly, it is superior. Yet our bodies don’t give a lick whether the salt is from the ground or the sea. Any old salt will satisfy the bodies need.

I can remember my daughter telling me how she and her husband would go out and harvest salt in Hawaii. A few days after a storm, they would go to the areas where the waves would crash upon the shore and leave small pools of salt water in depressions on the lava benches. In those few days the water would evaporate and leave the sea salt behind. It was important to get it at the optimal time. Too soon and there’s too much water and too little salt. Too late and the salt would be dirty or blown away. “Ya gotta know when to skim, Mom! It’s an art.”

Time is like that. It slowly disappears leaving behind the bits and bobs of memory and life. Ya gotta know when to skim….

To stand at the edge of the sea, to sense the ebb and flow of the tides, to feel the breath of a mist moving over a great salt marsh, to watch the flight of shore birds that have swept up and down the surf lines of the continents for untold thousands of year, to see the running of the old eels and the young shad to the sea, is to have knowledge of things that are as nearly eternal as any earthly life can be.”

Rachel Carson

I like words.

I like the sound in my ears.

I like the way they fit in my mouth.

and dance on the page

and create pictures in my head.

I never knew that about myself until recently. I guess it’s like a little kid who needs glasses who never knew what they were missing until one day when someone plops a pair of glasses on their nose. Suddenly the world opens to a startling clarity. The child believed until that very moment that everything was viewed exactly the same by everybody.

So I was for me and reading.

Once I mentioned how I remembered something I had read as a youth. I think the discussion was about “Gone With the Wind”. The title is not important but the concept is… I saw the book… It moved then and still does; like watching a video. My friend looked at me as if I had uttered an obscenity. I described the colors that surrounded the characters, the facial expressions, the variation in conversational tone. I even described the weather. “You must have seen the movie,” she said. “Of course. And it was a disappointment compared to the book.” I said.

It’s that way for most books. I always expect more from a movie. It’s a medium constrained by time (and the average person’s attention span) that proves lacking. Don’t misunderstand me, I like movies. They can be very entertaining. They lack depth for the most part. And it’s the depth, the between the lines stuff that I crave; the unwritten intention and continuation implied by the text. The continuing development and improvement in CG techniques has actually brought movies much closer to what has already existed in my mind.

The irony is that I struggle to clearly express myself in the written word. I assume that others can “see” the unwritten portion floating seemingly randomly in my thoughts negating the need to spend time and energy actually put it all down in words. I assume that the readers are somehow clairvoyant and just “know” what I mean. So I will try to explain and forgive me if a bit of redundancy creeps in. It’s not simply that the words create pictures in my head… the words ARE pictures in my mind. I see, not read, most of the time. Because of that, I can read a book out of order and still put it all together cohesively and accurately. I usually read the first chapter or two, depending upon the length of the book, skip to the end, and then pick up sections from the body of the work rather piecemeal. I ALWAYS read good books more than once. I am still rereading books from high school. lol.

To be honest, I used to have a trusted friend who would “recommend” books to me. I have missed that over the years. I’m much to lazy to waste my time on a “bad” book and finding a “good” book takes more time than I seem to have available. I would be glad to try any suggestions y’all might have for me. Not interested in romantic novels.

Mom was a great cook… but frankly a lousy baker. I began making all the cakes, cookies and “whatevers” at the ripe age of 10. And being the eldest of 6 sisters (my brother only used the kitchen  for eating meals) it became my responsibility to pass down this skill to those other 5 girls. To this day they remain amazing in the kitchen, especially Sister Three.

However… “whatever” did not include pies. Pies belonged to Daddy. Happy Pies, Sad Pies, sometimes Drunk Pies. It all depended on his state of mind (and body as in the case of the Drunk Pies).  He scavenged the ingredients; strawberries and rhubarb in the spring, apples in the fall, blueberries at the dawn of summer, a stray pumpkin occasionally. But the showcase of his pies was the Elderberry. Those took planning and cunning and stealth. You can’t buy elderberries at the market. Oh, no… maybe rarely today but never some 50 years ago.  Elderberries only grew wild then, not cultivated. Elderberries had to be hunted. Elderberries are wiley and clever, hiding in the most difficult areas to reach. And almost impossible to spot.

The expeditions began in the Spring. Out he would send his trusty scouts… find the blooms!!!! Slow drives in the countryside overtly labeled ”The Sunday Drive” were actually covert expeditions to find that rare and coveted delight. He would carefully note the location in his mind, never on paper, and return to track the bushes progress through out the growing season. 

It was an obsession with him. He would change routes and times. He was convinced that he was being tracked and watched. Spies were everywhere. The standing location of any large concentration of bushes was closely guarded. Papa was known to pull to the side of the interstate to climb the hillside and harvest his treasure.

Timing was tricky and of the utmost importance! You had to “know” when to pick; too soon and the berries wouldn’t be optimally ripe. Too late and the birds and any other deadbeat locals that may have thought they had successfully staked an exclusive claim to our bushes would make off with the prize… delicate umbrella shaped fans of dark purple/black beebie sized berries. One morning we would wake up to porch full bushels brimming with clusters elderberries waiting to be gently popped off of their umbrellas and into bowls, pots and any other sundry item capable of holding the tiny berries. It requires a whole lot of berries to make one little pie. Did I mention that these berries stain your fingers like no other. Mom made us shuck them barefooted (no we didn’t use our toes, lol) because she could never get the stains out of our socks and shoes, well shoes, would track them throughout the house. Those little stinkers could travel; miss the bowl and away they bounced. Such a bountiful mess : )  Notice I didn’t mention, purple lips or tongues. We absolutely NEVER ate raw elderberries. In fact, we young-in’s wondered how it was the ground was not littered with little bird carcasses ringed around those bushes each spring. A raw elderberry is the most bitter beyond sour berry in all of God’s creation. We, Sister Two and I, used to laugh till we cried whenever the newest addition to our shucking crew would make the mistake of sampling the booty.

Then Papa would process those berries and transform them into pie filling frozen until the pie mood struck him, or Thanksgiving arrived. You may have looked forward to your Pumpkin Pie… WE had our Elderberry Pie. Each pie was accompanied by the long story of how much time, and work, and planning went into the making of that pie. Every Pie. Every Time. A not so subtle dig at those who had failed to capture the elusive treasure of the wild Elderberry. 

There is only one frozen brick of filling left.

There will be no more.

Papa passed this week, and even though they say you can’t take it with you, he did. The secret of the Elderberries is his alone. Perhaps his spirit will guide me as I stalk the elusive bush this Spring. Maybe not.

Still I will have my memories of purple fingers and toes and the smile of a man well pleased.

As some of you know, I go on and on about trimming Robbie’s tree.

It’s a beautiful dwarf crabapple (not that Rob was crabbie in any sense) You’ll also remember that some years back, when the tree was only a few years old, a series of winter storms caused damage to this tree. The damage was hidden until the spring thaw. The weight of the snow, nearly as deep as the tree was tall, left a very obvious gap where a young vibrant branch had been torn from the trunk. Thus it became Robbie’s tree, in memory of the way Robbie has been torn from our lives.

Yesterday, I received the news that my Dad had passed away in Florida. He chose to go home, quietly, in his sleep at just about the same time as my Mom did twelve and a quarter years ago today… exactly… on my dear brother, his only son’s birthday. Bro spent the entire evening sitting, just sitting in his truck. 

I’m still numb.

Today begins the process of bringing Dad home. He will be placed “in the wall” with Mom at the Gerald B.H. Solomon Saratoga National Cemetary. It’s a national veteran’s military cemetery  We will watch with sadness and pride as the Military Honor Guard fires a 21 gun salute and Taps is blown for the last time.

And in the Spring…

I’ll plant a new tree

I’m really getting so tired of living in perpetual stress.

I guess it’s better than living alone, but I want to be able to breathe freely again. I want to stop “thinking ahead” about every move, meal, event; you name it. I want to have spontaneity in my life again. I want to focus on other aspects of life. This whole situation has overtaken everything. 

Everything requires some level of pre-planning. And respect for limitations, an endless ever growing list of limitations. People remind me that I’m not sick, my H is!! And that is true on the surface. But as anyone who has ever walked this path knows, it’s not that simple. My Honey wants to be strong for me but that facade of strength brings no comfort, only a sense of separation. He doesn’t want me to worry, so he doesn’t talk about his feelings or fears. He thinks he’s helping me. He’s not. He’s simply shutting me out.

We’ve been here before… We will survive this bump in the road.

Again.

What a Life…. What a week…

The last two years have been a comedy of errors series of improbable events which taken one by one are not particularly impressive, yet strung together form a mountain of indisputable evidence that aliens have abducted my life. So much so that I have not blogged much the past two years. It’s said life is stranger than fiction?

Believe it. I’ve lived it.

I’m not complaining, just explaining. The craziness swirling around me has provided a whole lot of free entertainment to family and friends. Not bad for the most part, but really really interesting. 

I’ve managed to maintain some semblance of continuity. For example: I was able to replace the gazebo that the hurricane ate; found most of the patio furniture intact in the neighbor’s pool; and the roses, my miraculous October Roses, did their best to bloom (hopefully they will fully recover next year). We still have to reseed where our pool once stood. H said that we had to leave it as is and allow the chlorine to “dissipate” before trying to grow grass. He must have been right because not even weeds made a home in the circle. Next spring we will scrape out the sand, bring in topsoil and reseed. 

So… 

It’s time to prune Robbie’s Tree.

And… 

The aliens have struck again.

Part of my pact with sanity was to continue to be the Den Leader of my G’son’s Cub Scout Den. They’re Webelos Scouts this year. Yay!!! Maybe, just maybe, I shouldn’t have considered playing soccer with six nine year old boys. Maybe. BUT you should also know that I exercise regularly, have been physically sound (basically) for most of my life and had no reason to expect otherwise. I should have remembered that I am approaching a “decade” birthday and I do know the the impossible always is probable then; but that is a discussion for some other time.

Anyways

As I was warming up, yes I got no further than warming up, I heard then felt my left knee pop out of joint and, thankfully, re-pop back into joint. What the What!!!! I immediately stopped the activity that precipitated the dislocation. The discomfort was not enough to take me off my feet. Not until the next morning when I found I could not walk. Well, I could if I could figure out how to do that on only one functioning and responding knee. I’m such a klutz with a cane. Downright dangerous.

Now, I’ve been here in my chair for the past four days, “resting” that bad boy.  I am frankly surprised at how little pain there has been. I am able to walk once again. Stairs are my nemesis; I still need the cane for those. I will also have to wear some kind of brace or appliance whenever “exercising” or whatever for the time being. Bother. What doesn’t make sense is that it was my “good” knee that malfunctioned. One would have logically expected to be the other knee… the one that was damaged (and not correctly treated) in a so called minor auto accident when I was 12. The growth plate was affected and… well, it doesn’t matter.

What does matter, is that I have to find a way to stabilize myself on a ladder and bring Robbie’s Tree back into shape. Hopefully, this will happen before the snow flies. I will NOT let H anywhere near any of my trees/plants. He is pure destruction and certain death in the garden. The memory of what he did to the Hemlock in the front garden still haunts me.

Another Sad Story……..

Sounds like something you would find in a Yoga class or maybe Pilates. 

If not, a music studio surely.

NOPE

A little story…..

About three weeks ago, a shiny yellow spot began to glow on the dashboard of my car. I’d never seen anything like it in the twelve years that I have owned this vehicle. So, H being unemployed, still, drove my Buddy to the dealership garage. I hate going in there for service. They always cost big money, much bigger than taking your vehicle to an independent garage. But it’s a computer thing and “his guy”, Hubby says, does not have the proper computer. Mechanic hooks Buddy up to the machine and begins to diagnose the yellow spot disease. At first, nothing shows up. Machine says Buddy is fine. But Mechanic is not convinced. Yellow spot disease is always serious says he and spends the next two days poking, prodding and invasively exploring the tender undersides of Buddy after which Mechanic announces that he may have found $omething. At the end of day four standing amidst the scattered remnants of Buddy’s front end, Mechanic confirms: Terminal Tranie Degenerative Syndrome. Considering that the weekend interrupted this whole process, I have now been Buddy-less nearly a week.

For the remainder of that week and greater part of the next my Buddy endured the humiliation of front end exposure while the dealership and Mechanic scourered the countryside for “parts”. For goodness sake, it’s a Taurus… only the most popular and most sold vehicle that Ford has had for decades… AND you are the DEALERSHIP. Don’t you yahoos have a parts inventory!!! Bah. Still they had Buddy back to me before Christmas Eve. All I can say is that Santa came early to that dealership this year. Buddy’s miraculous cure cost big money. The kind of big that has your fingers cramping and your eyes tearing as you pay the bill. I mean, I’m still not convinced that the repair was not more than the Blue Book value. Waiting for a Christmas present from me? Gimme a call. I’ll come collect you and take you for a ride in Buddy.

Anyways…..

I told you all that to tell you this. H takes Buddy out of the garage to bring me to work on my first day back after Christmas. I’m hearing a little knock, knock noise. I say to H, “Sounds like the engine is knocking. Do you think Mechanic messed up reassembling Buddy’s innards?” “That sounds more like a problem with the exhaust”, says he. Now, I’m not one to gently and graciously spend big money. I tend to get grouchy if I suspect that more big money is going to be spent fixing an problem caused by the fixing of a former problem. Next day the knock, knock is sounding more like a putt, putt. Still H grits his teeth and drives on. The next day I refuse to drive Buddy instead absconding with the beloved F-150. Then Friday morning H drives me to work. Buddy now sounds like a souped up lawn tractor at the County Fair. Once again I grumble and ask him to take this d*mned car, no longer MY Buddy, to a local muffler shop. Surely they will be able to deal with a ruptured exhaust system. (Intentionally sabotaged in my opinion) I used the ultimate threat of driving this d*mned car back to the dealership and having a hopefully polite conversation with the service manager and idiot Mechanic, to boot. 

Thankfully, the muffler shop is one of those that will inspect your major components, exhaust, brakes, and items needed to pass your yearly Car Inspection, for FREE. The shop gave my Buddy a clean bill of health.

AND

a 16mm impact socket found tucked up in the front end resting on the “harmonic balancer”.

Is that anything like an “inertial damper”.

I went ballistic. Good thing hubby dealt with it. I wanted Mechanic’s head as a hood ornament. H said everybody makes mistakes. I’m so blessed that H is such a level headed guy. Thanks to him, I will not be spending New Year in the hooscow. (County lockup, to the rest of you) 

Mama would sing when she was happy. I know my younger siblings may not believe this. Mama was not always happy. In fact, there were periods in her/our lives where happiness was scarce. It wasn’t that Mama was particularly sad. It was more the absence of emotion. The simple act of living consumed joy.

Late at night we could hear her. Little snippets of some hummed melody. Probably not a song at all, just the bubbling of contentment rising to the surface. After a while, a tune would become recognizable. Occasionally words would escape and little phrases of some remembered song. A private pleasure indulged in only when she felt safe and alone.

And although her children were her life and love, it was the rare occasion when she would find herself overcome with the need to smile and then eventually break into song in our presence. Elvis and Sinatra were her guilty obsessions. But there were times when even they could not coax her happy hum forth. 

Christmas was the exception. On one hand she would would bemoan the fact the the holidays existed. Verbally she would insist that she was not fond of and at times hated the holidays; an impossible concept for us young ones to comprehend. What did we know of the day to day struggle to survive. 

Yet we could feel her conflict. 

Until Christmas time approached. Right after Thanksgiving she would begin to hum Christmas Carols. Soon it would evolve into full-throated song. She had a lovely voice; strong, vibrant, holding the promise of a much better day. It was required that all the children in grades seven and eight in my tiny parochial school sing in the choir. Absolutely required… no if’s, ands or buts. The nuns would drag us out to “perform” at all parish events from the Festa to the Spagehetti Dinner (O Sole Mio) and two Sundays a month. Our crowning glory was the Christmas Pageant/Concert held in the school’s basement cafeteria.

Sister Two and Sister Three and I would sing our hearts out in the kitchen each night as we three conscripts sang “We Three Kings” in three part harmony (sic) until our heads ached and our neighbors’ ears bled. It was then that Mama could no longer resist.

And Mama would sing; a loud, strong, soprano to our alto. I think she was a diva in a previous life. She was four foot almost eleven, but her voice was seven foot eight. Pounding, piercing, powerful, proud. Our Mama. Who would have thought. Carol after Hymn…  Day after day….  She knew all the words by heart… She was amazing; if only for the season. The New Year brought silence. And we would have to settle for snippets of song and moments of melody, hummed in the last hours of the night.

Time and age have added understanding to my youthful ignorance. We were poor, then. We didn’t know it. My Dad drank, we didn’t know it. Disappointment was a constant burden that my loving stoic mother was forced to shoulder. She never unloaded it on us. She was the keeper of secrets, dark and desperate. She never let the skeletons out of the closet.

My mama would sing.

I can still hear her voice in the last moments of night as I drop off to sleep.

My mama would sing.

I can still hear her voice in the semi-dreams of first wakefulness in the early morning.

My mama would sing.

So contrary to my usual habit…. I left something to the last minute.

An online class that I needed to recert.  It needed to be done today. Bah. Luckily I had schlepped my laptop to work with me, “just in case”. No, not to Facebook…. the Barracuda eats that up before it leaves the server. They pretty much want to guarantee that no employee ever have any fun online even on their own dime or their own harddrive. Not usually a problem except for the tiny issue of having to print my updated certificate. I can access the WiFi but not the printer from my laptop because we are not allowed to “tie in” attach a UBS cable, thumbdrive, anything whatever to the network (ancient juryrigged system).

So there I sat with my desktop work computer trying it’s best to crowd out my laptop… Did I mention that my desk was probably a cast off executive desk; from the 1930′s.. wood drawers and those handy dandy pull out wood shelves. But definately NOT set up to have a key board and monitor on it. You know the type, all the cables have to track across the desktop, and everything plunked smack dab in the middle of the desk top. Add to that a telephone, adding machine, in and out trays, etc. I’m left with a patch of ancient black mystery material the size of a large postcard on which to process my paperwork, that’s when I’m willing to do the stiff arms stretched out over and frameing my invoices in a vain attempt to read, type and calculate at the same time. 

Well, then, you say; use your desktop…silly man You don’t know how dedicated this place is to the “no fun” rule.There I sat with a wireless laptop with no printer access and a desktop comp connected to a printer but lacking a sound card and speakers. God forbid any itune or YouTube slip through. Wait, no YouTube… the Barracuda eats that too. 

Did I mention the class was in an audio video format.  So I did the class on my laptop during my lunch hour and signed on my work comp to print the certificate. Remember I couldn’t transfer it to a stick (not allowed) or email a copy (the class program was not set up to allow that choice) Oh brother……

I’ve never expected to breeze through life without difficulties.  It’s a cliche, I know, but it’s so true… we were taught that when others said “Why ME?”, we were to say, “Why Not?”  Looking back I can see how I developed into a steadfast pragmatist. Although I grew up happy in the midst of turmoil, we (my siblings and I) learned to deal.

I’m not a true pessimist, I don’t expect everything to be negative; I’m just not surprised when negative things happen. What others see as a steadfast calmness in the face of chaos is simply an inbred and well formed fatalist view of life in general.

I knew life wasn’t fair long before my 10th birthday. 

I’m not going to dwell on my childhood, except to say that not much has changed in 40+ years. You’d think I’d be used to disappointment and pain, the frustration of random acts of God and man detouring at best, devouring at worst, the well made plans of mice and (wo)men.

Today I’m having an uncharacteristically difficult time getting from “ME” to “NOT”.

But I will, no doubt. Time and tears…..