Coming Down Off the Mountain

Posted on June 27, 2012 by Coming East

The Smoky Mountains

There are Sea People and there are Mountain People, and I have always loved the sea. But I have to admit, my foray into the realm of the Mountain People was quite enjoyable. There is a peace and beauty in those blue hills that equals that of the ocean. I have felt that same peacefulness in the desert, too, when the sun is just coming up and the cactus and rocks are bathed in early morning light.

We left the cabin after breakfast each morning and didn’t return until suppertime because going up and down those steps more than once a day was tiring for me. We had to be back before dark anyway because the “road” to the cabin was too treacherous to travel after dark.  Evenings were spent sitting out on the porch, sipping glasses of wine and listening to soft classical music while we grilled out.  Mornings were spent with a cup of coffee on the porch or inside, listening to the old Victrola which we started listening to after trying to get something on the radio and hearing, “I ain’t making you chicken and gravy, and I ain’t gonna have your baby.”  Gene Autry with his sweet voice and gentle lyrics was infinitely more pleasant.

Here is Gene singing a song that will bring tears to your eyes.  I want this sung at my funeral.  Are you listening, children?  Oh, and I’m signing up for yodeling lessons as soon as I find a class.

After just a few days on the mountain, I began to feel like a mountain girl.

Here I am with my “Mountain Woman” face, ready to get me some b’ar (that’s bear to you city slickers).

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Stairstruck

Posted on June 26, 2012 by Coming East

Before I broke my foot, my husband and I had planned this great get-away to a rustic cabin in the Smoky Mountains near Asheville, North Carolina.  Since the timing of the trip was specifically to celebrate my brother-in-law’s special birthday, canceling or postponing the trip was out of the question.  My husband rented a wheel chair and bought a walker for me, saying, “Honey, we will make this work.”  After consulting with my sister-in-law, who assured me there were just a few steps I’d have to negotiate to get to the cabin, we left Thursday, my heart light and my spirit renewed.  Never trust your loved ones.  They will lie through their teeth, if it suits their purpose.  Here, then, are the few steps I had to “negotiate.”

Oh, you may say that surely I jest, and you would be partly correct.  These aren’t the actual steps I had to climb, but they might as well have been, because when we arrived at the cabin, the actual steps were so daunting, I was ready to turn back.  Here are the real steps, no joking.

My doctor has forbidden me to put any weight on my foot, so I decided the only way I could scale those heights was to sit on my butt and pull myself up, one stair at a time.  The two brothers had another idea:

You can almost hear my husband laughing at my expense. Brother-in-law, taking the picture, was laughing even harder.

Despite the brothers’ protestations that the hand truck idea would really work, they begrudgingly let me do it my way.  My husband cut two pieces of cardboard, and I went up backwards, one step at a time, while my husband kept switching the cardboard pieces from one step to the next to save my poor trousers.

By the time I got to the top, the sun had nearly set, but it was definitely an occasion that screamed “Fist pump!”

Celebrating the climb with hubby and sister-in-law.  I felt like I had scaled Mt. Everest.

This trip, though quite a challenge for me, was terrific.  It also has presented me with more blog fodder, so expect more to come in the next few days.

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Ah, When We Were But Babes

Posted on June 20, 2012 by Coming East

As I was telling one of my blogging buddies when she asked how my foot was, it is still broken, and as I’m not supposed to put any weight on it, I can’t even get outside and enjoy the warm spring sunshine.  I would be going stir crazy if it weren’t for good friends like N. who came to visit me yesterday.  We both enjoy good books and like to discuss literature.  The book we talked about yesterday made her think about her childhood because it had been a favorite of hers when she was little, she told me.  She said she had read it many times during her younger years, enjoying it more and more each time as she came to see the subtle nuances, delicate turning of phrases, and the unfolding personalities of the characters.

Of course, discussing favorite childhood books made her think of other things about her childhood, and I asked her many questions, trying to draw her out as I found her stories of the old days so fascinating. Alas, there were not many stories she could tell, whether because of age or reticence to share on such a personal level. Or maybe it was that her babysitter came to the door and told her it was time to go home.

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Regrets Pity Party

Posted on June 15, 2012 by Coming East

I just read Diane Owens’s blog, In My Opinion, and she wrote an excellent answer to the question, “Do you have regrets?” As I said in my comment to Diane, since we can’t go back, we just need to go forward. Though we all know dwelling on regrets isn’t healthy or productive, none of us can totally avoid it. Sometimes it helps to drag out some of our regrets and have a pity party for them before we move on. The trick is not to have a pity party too often or over and over again for the same regrets. Here, then, are some of my regrets:

I wish I’d asked my parents more questions about family before it was too late. I have no idea who some of those people are in old photos, and there’s no one left alive to ask. I’m hoping we aren’t related to some of them.

I wish I had learned to like beer. It is so much cheaper than wine.

I wish I had pursued my junior high dream. I could be sitting on the Supreme Court right now. I would have been one of the liberal members.

I wish I had learned to ice skate. I wish I hadn’t stopped taking piano lessons and practicing. I wish I hadn’t cut my beautiful long red hair the day before our wedding (but thank you, George, for marrying me anyway). 

I wish I had chosen the black bathing suit in the L.L. Bean catalogue for my first new bathing suit in years instead of the polka-dot blue one (no, it is NOT a bikini). The black one would have gone much better with this grey space boot I will be wearing for the next twelve weeks on this broken foot. Speaking of that, I most heartily regret having my hands full and wearing the sweatshirt that got caught on the screen door last week that led to this whole mess in the first place.

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Posted on June 13, 2012 by Coming East

I just reread my daughter’s latest post on her blog, My Pajama Days, and it reminded me of one I wrote when I first started blogging. I took another look at it and saw only a few people had read it because I was new at this blogging thing. I’ve decided to repost it because it seems appropriate as summer vacation has just begun for most kids in the States, plus I’m finding it hard to come up with blogging topics cooped up in the house with this worthless broken foot. If you’ve read this post before, my apologies.

Coming East's avatarComing East

When I grew up in Connecticut in the ’50’s and ’60’s, my father made a good salary, and when school was out for the summer, we could have traveled to California or Florida, seen the Grand Canyon, or Yellowstone.  But our summer vacations were more fabulous than that.  Every summer we drove to Ohio to visit my grandparents and cousins.  My brother and I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.

Summer was sacred.  It was not a time to pack in more “stuff” to do.  It was a time to play with the neighborhood kids and build relationships that lasted into the classroom and beyond.  It was a time to use our imagination and creativity because no one was going to entertain us.  It was a time to sleep late and stay out until you were dragged inside in the dark.  You had time to read, time to make…

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OpSail 2012 in Norfolk, Virginia

Posted on June 12, 2012 by Coming East

Though my broken foot kept me from enjoying OpSail 2012, thanks to my dear husband, who walked from his office in downtown Norfolk to take some pictures of the tall ships, I have these to show you. All of the ships weren’t berthed in the same place, but he was able to see quite a few of them. I wish I had been able to see them in full sail as they left the Lynhaven Anchorage and sailed across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel and up the Elizabeth River into the harbor, but at least I have these pictures.  Enjoy the slide show.

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Supergluing My Life Together

Posted on June 11, 2012 by Coming East

He studies the directions on the package of frozen vegetables.  “Cook for 3 1/2—5 minutes.” How do I know how long to cook it? he thinks.  “Put on a microwaveable plate,” it says.  Aren’t all our plates microwaveable? he wonders.  I have to tell him the best plate to use.  I watch as he stirs the beans with a stainless steel spoon in my non-stick pan, and I cringe.  Should I say something?  I decide I have to.

“Honey, could you please use a wooden spoon to stir those beans with?  That spoon will scratch my pot.” He quickly apologizes and exchanges spoons, and I almost wish I hadn’t said anything.  He is trying so hard to negotiate this foreign territory, as clueless in the kitchen as I am when it comes to cars or finances.  This broken foot of mine has made him my caretaker, and he does his job tirelessly and painstakingly, without a word of complaint. Without so much as a sigh. I hate to see him work so hard, but I need him, so there’s not much I can do. Besides, it’s not like he hasn’t always taken care of me. This is just in a slightly new arena for him. The fact is, my husband has been supergluing my life together for a long time.

Over these more than forty years of being married to me, my husband has used a lot of tubes of Superglue. Not long ago we headed to the hardware store for yet another multipack of Superglue after I accidentally dropped a little angel I was trying to get out of harm’s way when we were removing the wallpaper in the kitchen. Unfortunately , I was harm’s way when it slipped out of my wet fingers and cracked across the angel’s face. I picked up the two pieces and nearly cried because the angel had been a gift from my brother and sister-in-law when they returned from Italy. But then I remembered the superglue and said to my husband, ” You can fix this, can’t you?” It was more of a statement than a question. And he did fix it so well that you can hardly tell that it was ever broken. My little angel’s nose just seems a little out of joint, but I think that’s the way with most angels, isn’t it?

Over the years my husband has glued back together another angel’s wing, my grandmother’s fruit bowl, which was quite a feat because it was in about ten pieces, a beautiful Delft crocus bowl, the lid to a prized cookie jar, and a host of other items that are special to me. But more than things, my husband has held me together over the years when I have felt broken into tiny pieces.

Many times people have asked me how we’ve maintained such an intense love for each other for so long. They joke and say I should write a book on the secret. I would make a killing. I don’t know the secret, and I have no answer for them other than to say, “We’re madly in love with each other. That’s it.”

I hate that I’m so helpless and need so much from him. I like being the one who takes care of him, or at least I like doing my fair share. Before I got married, I went to a Bible conference with my mother and went to a lecture on “How to love your husband.” I have never forgotten what the lecturer said about marriage. “Marriage is not a 50-50 proposition,” she said. “It is about giving 100%, even when your partner can’t.” Well, this is the time I can’t give my 100%, but my husband is more than making up for it.” He is, has always been, and will always be my hero. 

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My Own Grim Fairy Tale

Posted on June 7, 2012 by Coming East

Once upon a time, there was a beautiful, young princess ( sounds better than an old hag, doesn’t it?), who had just bought a brand new camera with a super zoom lens to take pictures of the tall ships that were congregating in her village for a once-in-a-lifetime event. Okay, let’s just cut to the chase. After an unfortunate event, the princess asked her long-suffering mirror, “Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who is the klutziest of them all?”

That would be me. I broke my foot last night in one of those flash moments you wish you could do over. It started with my husband calling me before he came home from work, asking me if I’d like him to pick up some wine to have with dinner. We usually don’t drink any wine except as a treat on the weekends, but the day was gorgeous and sunny, and we decided to bend the rules. My husband walked in with three bottles of wine and asked me which one I would like him to open. I went for the most expensive one, a cabernet. He poured glasses for both of us and we took them out to the patio. I only had a sip or two before I went to the refrigerator in the garage and pulled out a box of frozen green beans. “I’m going to get these started while you throw the brats on the grill,” I told my hubby. I grabbed my glass of wine in the other hand and started through the screen door. Unfortunately, my sweatshirt caught on the door handle, and not realizing it, I kept going before it jerked me back. I had no free hand to grab onto anything, even if there had been something to grab onto. I teetered. I tottered. But there was no help for me. I managed to not drop the glass, though there wasn’t a drop of wine left in it, rolling my foot horribly. I yelled for my husband, and he came running in and saw me sitting on the floor in a puddle of red.

“Oh, my God, what happened? Where does it hurt?” He thought I was losing all my blood, but when he saw my empty glass, he realized it was wine and relaxed a little. Long story short, we went to the emergency room, my foot is indeed broken, and I will be out of commission for a good couple of months. I will miss seeing my beautiful ships.

Now let me tell you how this works. I am like my father. If he ever got sick, he went into his room and closed the door and didn’t come out until he was all better. He did not want anyone fussing over him. I hate that I am in this position of being essentially helpless. I hate putting anyone out, I hate having my poor hubby do so much for me, and I don’t want to repeat this story again. That’s why it is in such detail. This post is not for you, dear Readers. It is for my family and friends. I do not want them to call and say, “You poor thing.” I don’t want them to ask me for any more details. If they come and visit, I want them to ignore my foot, don’t even glance its way, and pretend this whole thing never happened. If I could just go in my room and close the door until I’m all better, I would do that, but six weeks seems a long time to go without food. And human contact, of course.

So there you have it. You will not be getting any fabulous pictures from me from my fabulous new camera. If you are my friends or family, you will not pick up that phone and call me and make me talk about this. And if I’ve learned anything from this, it’s that I should have chosen the Malbec.  What a waste of good wine.

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Today

Posted on June 6, 2012 by Coming East

In order to participate in this week’s photo challenge, we had to post only pictures we took on the day of our post.  We couldn’t cheat and go into our archives.  Last night I bought a new camera with a 42X zoom lens.  This morning I took that camera down to the Chesapeake Bay and photographed some Navy ships that were headed into Norfolk and a couple of tall ships that were anchored near First Landing State Park.  The ship movement is all part of OpSail 2012, a gathering of naval vessels and tall ships from all over the world.  Tomorrow I hope to go back to the Chesapeake and take more pictures when the rest of the tall ships should arrive.  Here are a few pictures from this morning.

This first one is without using the zoom.  You obviously can’t see much.

Two of the tall ships. No zoom.

Here are the same tall ships using my amazing new zoom lens.

This was the little ship on the left.

I couldn’t quite use the full zoom or I wouldn’t have been able to get the entire ship in the frame. Notice you can see the people on the boat.

Here are some of the Navy ships that were crossing the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and Tunnel.

You can see the bridge behind the ship.

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On the Train to Secaucus

Posted on June 4, 2012 by Coming East
My daughter-in-law’s mother and me

Friday afternoon I received a phone call from my daughter-in-law’s mother.  We don’t talk often, but whenever we do, I always come away from the conversation with a new insight or appreciation of life as this woman focuses on Life’s gifts everywhere she turns.

I could hear the excitement in her voice the moment I answered the phone.  I can’t remember all the details, but she had taken the train into Penn Station in New York City for an appointment.  In the station she noticed a young man playing the guitar and singing.  He had a hat out for tips.  His voice was pleasant and my friend took the time to stop and listen  for a few minutes before she continued on her way.

When her appointment was over, she went back to the train station and caught the next train to Secaucus, and as she took her seat, she turned her head, and sitting across the isle from her was the young musician. Of all the trains and all the train cars and all the train schedules, this young man, who had started her day with such a sweet beginning, was sitting beside her on a train bound for Secaucus.

“This is not a coincidence, wouldn’t you agree, Susan?” my friend asked. She watched this young man take out a croissant and begin to eat it. “He would pull off tiny piece after tiny piece and let each bite melt in his mouth before he ate another one. I watched his musician’s fingers delicately pinch off each piece. You could tell he appreciated every bite. It was as though it was a prayer he was saying with each morsel. And I thought of you and George and how George had said such a beautiful prayer the night of our children’s rehearsal dinner, and I knew I had to call and share this with you.”

My friend continued that later that day (whether she was still on the train or was at home, I don’t recall) she had an apple. She looked at the apple and thought of the musician, and she ate her apple “prayerfully,” savoring each bite, fully aware of its sweetness, and thankful for it.

I came away from that conversation with such awe. I want to always live life by being fully present in each moment, fully aware of Life’s sweetness. This amazing woman, time after time, makes me stop and breathe, makes me want to slow down and savor the moments, makes me want to really see the world instead of rushing through it. I wonder what today will show me?

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