Saturday - 106th

Feeling nostalgic for some event or place from the past can be very pleasant. You recall a moment well lived. How good is that!

But in these times of great uncertainty, it can be hard. Many have said that we all will carry that marker with us forever: before March 2020 and after. It's not that the "after" will remain dismal. The hope is that many, indeed, most of us will pull through and do alright (and it's not a far fetched hope). Nonetheless, the "before" is full of such innocence, especially for us Americans, that it hurts to go there. We so want to reclaim anything that once was deemed merely ordinary.

For me, music and photos are the triggers. There are songs that recall visits and travels with my daughters when they were just entering adulthood. Lovely memories! Then there is this one song on my shuffled playlist -- je t'emmenerai -- you can listen to it here:

I first heard it on French Radio during one of those car rides with Ed in and around Sorede -- the village in the south of France he and I returned to many times before he had enough of travel. I don't think any period of time was ever so free of worry for me, so perfectly attuned to the moment as those weeks in Sorede. Life moved seamlessly from a croissant on the main square with a cafe creme and a good book, to a lunch in the shaded garden, and a dinner sometimes at home, sometimes at a favorite pizza joint, once in a while in a real restaurant. In between, we visited markets, swam in the sea and hiked up daunting trails that took you to the Spanish border and back. True vacation stuff. But more importantly, we took not a single worry with us. Our days were squeaky clean!

Still, you can look at the upside of "now:" Ed and I know each other far better than in those Sorede years. We may not be living through calm times, but our understanding of where we are in life is far greater now than it was back then.


And photos? Well, I don't have much from the years when my daughters were growing up. Somehow the pics all got moved to Chicago and so I haven't great access to them. That's okay for now. I have them etched in my memory. But then along came Ocean. It's only a year older than my life with Ed, so you could say that the blog traces perfectly my time with him. And it traces all the years of my being a grandparent. I don't go back often to posts from the past. Not now, when I'm still so insanely busy with life in the here and now. But in cleaning out my (overloaded) computer drive, I did have a real run through my earlier years with my grandkids.

I don't know what you miss most in this strange period of social distancing or isolation. I'm sure it's time spent with people you love who are just too far away and perhaps not safe for an elderly person's visit. Of course. For me -- I miss the stupidly simple acts of going places with my grandkids (the two here and the one in Chicago). What makes me shake my head in disbelief is how suddenly we lost our excursions to the park, where Snowdrop loved to play ice cream store on the playground equipment. Or, with Primrose -- a walk to a coffee shop where she and I would play with the camera over a mini-lunch. Sparrow never got his adventuring moments. Last summer he could not walk and so trips to the playground were less interesting to him. How would he treat them now? Would he chase his sister and try to figure out why something that looked like a metal post was suddenly being called an ice cream stand?

These are, of course, sweet memories. Not necessarily of happier times -- all my hours with family, with Ed (those are the only people I see now) have plenty of happy times, even now. But they were of another era. The "before we had to deal with all this stuff" era. Life was far simpler and that simplicity can be very beguiling!


Today, it is hot. I mean, steamy hot. We should be bringing the fan to the porch. Breakfast, close to noon (after a morning of cleaning up and out all rooms of the farmhouse -- Ed is doing a haul to Goodwill as we continue our attempt at downsizing even more)...






More chores, indoor, outdoor, food related, garden related...






And I plant some peas. It's totally the wrong time to plant peas, but I had not imagined we could get away with a crop. The groundhog had always found ways to get to the shoots before I could snip off any pods. But this year, the decorative peas are doing fine and so we thought we'd give the edible ones a try. Even if it is nearly July. Way too late to be guaranteed any peas at all.






Finally, as it's Saturday, I attend to the pick up of my Community Supported Agriculture  box. What additions this week? A cucumber. A bag of peas. Oh, how ironic, given my own late planting. Cabbage, of the salad variety. And some spring favorites that I've seen before: green onion, broccoli, lettuce, kale.


And toward late afternoon, Snowdrop comes for a sleepover.


 



She hasn't had one since... winter. Or was it fall? Now, at nearly five and a half, she knows her own mind and she has planned out all meals and many of our activities: book reading, movie watching -- we do it all.























It's late by the time the farmhouse is completely quiet. Snowdrop sleeps, Ed and I put our feet up and read. Well, I read, he dozes. I have lots of fizzy water, a glass of wine, a piece of chocolate and the cool air from the AC. Incredible luxury, don't you think?