day of the rehearsal

As predicted, we wake up to a gray and cool morning. Well, let me correct that: we wake up before we can see much of anything outside. Isis is at it again -- fussing upstairs (even as the mouse ran free downstairs). My girl has the young person's attitude toward sleep -- it just sort of happens. I wait, mark the minutes and eventually give up and pick up something to read.

It's good to eat breakfast as a threesome (if you call Ed's recent morning diet of mango a 'breakfast'). We delay getting up from around the table. It will be a busy day. Let's ease into it gradually.





A real frost warning is ahead of us and Ed tells me he'll harvest all remaining tomatoes -- green or otherwise.
No! No time for harvest this weekend! And still, wedding or not, the last of this year's crop must be brought in.





Time to get going. Ed asks -- as long as you're driving out, can you take the mouse and release it along the way?
We throw the container in the back of the car and promptly forget about it.





As we come into the city, I mentally check off things on my to do list. Oh, oops!  The mouse! Okay, little guy, you've got to make do with a city park...


I have to be at work for a while, but before, I stop at wedding central -- my older daughter's home. Everything that's fun is there now. They're picking music, they're filling baskets for out of town guests (Badger State stuff... you can guess what; yes, yes, cheese figures in it in several ways) and mainly, they're having fun. If you stick close to people who enjoy life, it rubs off.



the soon to be bride




the baskets


After work, I deliver some of the baskets to places around town. And then suddenly it's awfully close to evening. At the farmhouse, I pull Ed outside.
I almost forgot! I need to give you a hair cut and a beard trim for tomorrow! He cooperates. Thank God.



before



after


And he plays the helpful guy again as he drives me and my little one's freshly arrived boy friend downtown and to the church.

As we wait for the priest and the wedding coordinator to give instructions, I glance around us. It strikes me how pretty this particular church is. I'd been inside plenty of Madison's churches, but, despite the fact that my girls attended preschool in the building next door, I'd never been inside this one.

The wedding party slowly gathers. The ring bearer watches as my girls have a moment together...





And, with a jovial dig at the habits of others (in our church, we don't believe that the rehearsal ought to be longer than the wedding itself!), the priest spells out the steps for tomorrow. After the walk down the aisle, the dad is to gently push the bride toward the groom. Not that this girl needs any prodding...





A special a instruction goes to the ring bearer.






...and a general one to the wedding party. (And when I wave my arm like this, you go there...)






My little one helps with the unfastened ribbon of ring bearer's little sister...






I look up at the very happy couple...







And we're done! Off we go to dinner on the Capitol Square.






Wisconsin fare at the lovely upstairs room of the Old Fashioned!







(Finished off with a blueberry crumble.)


(Isn't it interesting how guys all take the same pose when they casually stand and chat?) May I present the groom and his groomsmen.






This is the evening for bridesmaids and groomsmen toasts... And good luck hugs from flower girls.






Alright, time to end the festivities. A last shot of the tired but happy couple:







Ed comes and picks me up. It rained earlier today, but for now, the night is calm. A few clouds, a crisp cool breeze... It sure feels like fall. Oh! That's right! Saturday is the wedding day and, too, the first day of the new season.

nighttime update

Late Thursday night, my little girl, the sister of the bride, the Maid of Honor comes to the farmhouse. We stay up late, talking over this and that. Her boyfriend arrives tomorrow, Ed's asleep (with Isis!) upstairs. This is one of those rare moments when you can have your grown child in your arms again and pretend that she is not twenty-seven but maybe two, or seven… But within a short while, she sits up.
What's that?
I smile. My urban child is not used to farmhouse noises. At night we have animals pawing to get in, or merely passing through, alerting us ever so slightly to their presence. Just the usual, I tell her with a yawn.
No, mom, listen!
I indulge her. Yes, sure, animal noises.
Mom, I'm looking at it -- there's a mouse in here with us.

Oh no! The cold air has come, the mice are doing their annual search for a winter condo in a warm spot, preferably with good eating venues nearby.
Hang in there! I'll get the trap and a plastic bin!
But I can't keep it in place for you!

I run to the basement, dust off last year's trap and load it with almond butter (sorry, mouse -- I'm out of peanut butter). In the meantime, the mouse keeps going back and forth from under the end-table to behind the bookcase. I set down the trap, we climb onto the couch and watch.

The mouse runs around the trap, knocks it down and, frightened by the ruckus, runs to the next room.
We're going to lose it! -- my girl groans.
I cannot fail my little one. I grab a large plastic bin and with the determination of a mama bear, I chase the fat little guy, slam the bin on top of it, weigh it down with some heavy cook books (and, being fastidious, wash the floor where the mouse has scampered) and look at my girl's smiling eyes.

Ah, to be a hero to my kids again!

the Thursday before the Saturday

Even if you are like me -- a person who never entertains huge crowds if she can help it -- you'll understand that I can't help but get excited by the descent and congregation of friends and families for the event of my daughter's wedding. And I don't mean just my friends (though their coming to town is monumentally important to me -- hear that, Diane, Ernest and Barbara??). I do also like my girls' friends. Maybe because they make my daughters happy or maybe because they're all so damn spirited and funny and incredibly loyal to each other that I find myself wondering why it is that one loses the ability to pump joy so quickly and spontaneously into every hour when one gets older? It's as if it becomes an insult to the severity of our various hardships to let out a giggle every now and then.

Thursday is a hellishly busy day for me and this one starts way too early, as Isis -- whom we (unfortunately) did not kick out of the farmhouse last night -- asserted himself now and then in the middle of the night. Still, it was good to feel Ed closer to his old self. His getting up for the cat, or picking up the laptop in the middle of the night and smuggling it to bed -- these are things I'm used to and I can groan and sigh, but none of it bothers me really. Sleep is something to make up the next night if you don't get enough the night before.

I ride Rosie to work on this cool but bright (almost) fall day, feeling like maybe life isn't so complicated after all.





By the time I am into my fourth hour of lecturing, I am horse and I explain to my class that in between today's lectures I spent time rehearsing my (short) wedding toast in the quiet of my office. They want to hear it, but I decline. I need to save the freshness of it. I need to keep it tightly in my heart until I let it go after the wedding.


And then the day is over and I am at my girl's home again, finishing cuttings and pastings, now in the company of my littlest one (who is up from Chicago for the festivities and to fulfill her Maid of Honor obligations) and in the company of their closest friends.


I'm writing now from the farmhouse, after a repeat of a meal I've now had too many nights in a row (see last post and the post before that).  Ed is snoozing again, but I can't be surprised. He spent time on building closet shelves in the Lemon Room (where my little one and her BF will be staying) and he went up to his place of business and, as if that weren't enough -- he picked (the last?) tomatoes again. Here they are -- being wheeled in in the dark of the late evening.






That's more than he's done in the last ten days put together.





Tomorrow, after work, we have the wedding rehearsal. I've never been to a wedding rehearsal. Let the weekend festivities begin!

not like childbirth

Why do we have slow, dull days, weeks, months even? So we can store and then call forth saved energies for the other weeks. Like this one.

It could be that I'll have trouble posting this -- I came home to no Internet and so far as I can figure out from my landlord (Ed), I'm not likely to have it until someone comes to investigate the problem. My landlord is not sure when that may come to pass. I see myself driving around at midnight looking for a bar with WiFi. Perhaps I'll be posting from such a bar.

When the day began, I'm thinking we have finally switched to the lighter road: one with sparkles and smiles, without the anxiety that had been so evident in the farmhouse this past weekend. It is a cold morning, but hey, we're good with that. The farmhouse has a functioning furnace. It's on.





Still, Ed tells me we lost a good three-fourths of the tomatoes to overnight cold. On the upside? Finally! Diminished pickings! I am no longer beholden to the tomato harvest!

The sun bursts through the morning clouds and I am there to revel in the wonderfulness of the moment. Yes, finally, we're forging ahead!





Ed is terribly weak but he's slowly expanding his eating repertoire beyond Campbells chicken noodle soup. Slowly, but surely. I can see a future for us again. Thoughts of a wedding and funeral have morphed into just wedding. No funeral.

Life is is indeed golden.





Memories of this past weekend are erased. Like childbirth: you forget the pain when you finally get to hold the swaddled newborn kid. Fever? What fever? We are on the upswing!






But not trouble free.


I eat breakfast alone still, though I run up some mango slices to the once-sick-one who is feeling a tad too comfortable to come down.






As the day progresses, I note (from afar -- I'm on campus all day) that Ed is returning to tasks -- at a price. He's like a falcon that soars and then plummets for lack of strength. Up and sown. If you hit him at the right moment (and only then), you'd never remember that he was ill.

Evening. I help paste wedding programs at my daughter's place.


 


At home, supper has to be simple -- more roasted cauliflower, squash too, smothered in tomato sauce with kernels of corn.





Ed has a nibble and that's a good thing.

And now I have Thursday before me, a full and bursting with work Thursday so I have to say, that promise of a sun-streaked gold-paved easy path ahead? Misleading. Indeed, I just saw on my iPhone that we're in for storms any minute. Rains, winds and hail, to be continued, possibly through the wedding day.

Eh, not important. The tide has turned, that's for sure. We're well, surely we are and the future looks fine! And, the Internet just came on!

Tuesday

It's very nice to be in a crowd of sympathetic souls. I know you, friends of Ocean, will understand that there isn't much time (any time?) for writing this week.

The morning breakfast, usually a leisurely affair, is indifferently tossed indoors, hurriedly disposed of at the kitchen table. The cereal tastes terribly micorwaved and the fruit seem old news. Brown around the edges.

Ed has had a better night (even as I still stayed mostly awake, too caught up in the anxiety of the entire messy week-end), but I don't dare hope we're completely done with health worries. Ask me tomorrow, when we will have had two solid days of calm.


Later, in my office, I think -- tired. I am tired. Yes, Ed may  have been ill, but I am the one who is just barely keeping on my feet today. Like the guy I see outside my office window, out there on Bascom Hill...






Late afternoon. I finish teaching, I dash to complete and check off errand number one, number two, number three. Then home. I pull into the dirt driveway and I take a stroll around my flower beds. Surely there's an old Polish proverb that'll tell me - when you're tired, direct your gaze toward the flowers...






And, too, toward the tomatoes. Ed has picked a batch in the hours I was away (yes, he's up and moving!) and now I'm caught in the routine of sorting, washing, freezing, admiring them.





Of course, I want things to be just smooth as peaches again --  for us to return to the pre-worry routines where we were like kids, moving from work to play to work to play. It's as if I've already forgotten that only a short while ago, I would have given a lot to continue, even with imperfections, just so long as we could, in fact, continue and not be undone by events of catastrophic proportions.


I cook up cauliflower, eggplant, tomatoes -- with a fried egg on top. (Ed makes do with chicken noodle soup... no curds yet!) The quintessential comfort foods. Yesterday was like this, today is like that, so let's eat and let the world settle down again.

I see that they're warning of a frost possibility tonight. Don't get stuck in summer thoughts. We've moved on to the next stage. Like it or not, we're in a new place now.

Monday

There are many hours between breakfast and night time. And without moving much, you can run through a hell of a lot of emotions in that time period.

Start then with breakfast.
Will you eat something this morning?
No.
Sure?
A slice of mango then.
Want to come down?
(pause) Maybe...
Don't. I'll bring it up. Along with mine.  Call it breakfast in bed. We've been together for nearly seven years, but this is a first.



(my portion of it)


Then comes the wavering, the shifting of the winds, the uncertain positioning of all that matters: will it be this way? Will it be that way?

It's cloudy and even a bit chilly outside. Ed stays put. In bed, upstairs. Wedged into a pose that at once he fell into but, too, he is now fashioning for himself.

I'm off to yoga. At the studio, I try to pick up those stellar moments of calm and yes, the stretches and poses are good, the teacher is quite excellent and after, I'm zipping home on Rosie hoping (and succeeding!) to beat the rain...


 
(just to the east of us)


... but at the farmhouse, it's as if we're on square one.

You okay?
Fine.
Need anything?
No.
Even as I see the eyes sag and the skin pale.
Can I suggest?... I ask this as if I were some neophyte. You, readers, know better: how effective was that last querie?


So I go to my daughter's. Monday is my day to work on classes and I surely have classes: I haven't taken any days off for the wedding -- not this week nor next, but the crunch is suddenly there: she needs help. I push off lecture work for the night and I spend a most lovely set of early evening hours folding, pasting and ribboning wedding programs...

...while the blue heron outside her window does his wonderful "curl into my own self" movement and I'm thinking -- I know that gesture. I've seen it. At the farmhouse, not too long ago.



(by Wingra Creek)


I return home. First the report from there is on the dismal side: he sleeps, wakes, offers an inconsequential comment, sleeps again,  but then, in a sudden turnaround, he speaks wistfully of chicken noodle soup. In a flash, it's there, he's eating it and I'm thinking -- maybe we'll pull out of this unscathed after all.

Maybe.

night frets

So long as there are tomatoes ripening on the kitchen counter, there will be fruit flies. That's just the way it is.

Ed, who once worked in a science lab with fruit flies reassures me that their life span is very, very short.

And so long as there is an ounce of energy left in Ed, he will persevere in living his convictions, some that I should think need a dusting and an infusion of modernity, but no, not according to him. They are his and they are what they are. This last sentence is really an answer to all those wonderful and kind Ocean reading souls who have urged me to urge him to go to the doctor. Indeed, doctor friends have urged me to urge him. But don't you see -- I can't do it. He takes chances that way. It is who he is.



hummingbird, for once -- resting


And so after a night of high fevers (Thursday), I have a night of relative quiet (Friday) and I think I am done with this illness of his, whatever it is and then boom! The third night (Saturday) he's hot again and I listen to him pant in his sleep and I gently and ever so quietly reach for his pulse and yes, it's high and yes, he's warm and then he wakes up and reminds me that he wants to be left to his sleep.

You can say a million things about the rightness or wrongness (probably the latter) of this approach, but I think I ought to warn you -- attempting to *change* someone is not likely a good starting point. He is determined to follow his own nose on this one, duke it out himself,  and if it kills him, so be it. This, from a man who loves science, fruit flies (or the study of such), loves innovation, loves clever and novel approaches to old problems facing the world. He's been too healthy too long to worry now about being in need of care.



the ever beautiful nasturtium and alyssum


If you're from the Midwest, you'll know that this was one beautiful day -- full of gentle sunshine and balmy warmth -- the last such day we are told and I believe it. It almost felt unreal now, in the middle of September when the leaves are starting to turn dusty greens or worse  -- dusty brown.

I stayed indoors cleaning the farmhouse. Not much of the wedding centers around the farmhouse, but still, it must be ready as we all must be ready, just in case.

And I went to yoga. I had to.



trying on the wedding shoes after slipping into yoga stuff


Child's pose: clear the mind of this undefined menace at home, clear the soul of anxiety, forget about the hours at night listening to that rapid pant next to me, ease into a stretch, inhale, exhale.

The ride back on Rosie is splendid, but as I zip past the tennis courts, I csn't help but think -- wow, how quickly patterns can change and life can take off in odd directions.





In the evening I cook chicken stew (with garden tomatoes!)...





... the young couple arrives -- the last Sunday meal where they are together but not married. Ed comes down and joins us because it is such a happy time right now that even he cannot resist being part of it.





And then he is upstairs and I am downstairs and Isis is with us and I wait for the night to see if finally the fever has disappeared for good and we can return to normal again.

Saturday

A lovely reader from far away writes that she has a problem opening Ocean. And then another writes  and now it's not even breakfast time and I have four people and they have one thing in common: they all use Internet Explorer and they can't read the most recent Ocean posts. So this is the puzzle: Why is Ocean corrupt for them?

Five hours (yes, that long) later, Ed and I locate the issue. I would have felt better if I could have blamed Blogger or Internet Explorer, but really, the problem was me and the way I write my posts (in Word, then I snatch and drag them over to Blogger). It’s much much funner to blame someone else.

But, here’s the good thing. Though I’m still eating meals alone...

...and Ed is still wrapped in a quilt down here on the couch, nonetheless he’s not burning and he’s lucid, lucid enough to work with me on my blogger problem.

And sweet enough not to give it a second thought.

So you take this guy in his rich and varied colors – not much into seeking help from anxious traveling companions or the medics, not much into weddings either, but here, stubbornly functioning under his own set of imperatives and yet... would you deny it? I will not: he is such a good soul.

I go to yoga late in the afternoon – the class with the fast paced instructor who nonetheless lets us pause at the end to think about the people in our lives. And I do.

I do.

denial

At night, Ed is hot, chilled, flushed – in other words, he’s fighting something or other and believe me, it is very odd to see him this way as neither he nor I are especially prone to viruses, infections, fevers and the like. I cannot remember the last time either of us burned like crazy from within.

In the morning, I eat breakfast and listen to his words of denial (Do you feel sick? No!)

That is his approach to most anything that stands to weaken him. And so I leave him smothered in a quilt (on this lovely and sunny day) and go to yoga where I attempt to shake off the feeling of anxiety that always comes when someone I care about is not well.

The ride on Rosie is delightful, the sun is dazzling, the fields are in that stage of golden brown that you come to accept at this time of the year, just as you accept the fact that you’re never going to bend and twist and balance as perfectly as all the young nymphs around you. And you accept that sometimes, people get sick.

At home, Ed tries once or twice to get up from underneath the quilt (I’m going to pick tomatoes!), each time retreating to another long spell of slumber.

A friend with a great deal of medical wisdom comes and looks him over and nudges him to shed his reluctance to be cared for, but he’ll have none of that. 

She leaves. I sit, watch, listen. The farmhouse is suddenly not the focal point of all weekend activity. I water a few flowers, but without enthusiasm. There are projects -- some half started, some yet to be initiated, but suddenly this isn't the time for them.

I reheat soup and mostly eat alone. I’m hoping the medicine called “denial” works wonders and that this whole period of heat and shallow breathing comes to an end just as fast as it came upon us.

vegetable soup

I did warn you, right? On Thursday, here, on Ocean, I'm scraping the bottom of the barrel. There are no quirky ideas festering, no time for creative thought, not even a handful of minutes to take the camera outside for a photo or two. (How easy is that: go outside and shoot a photo of a flower! No? No.)

The day starts early... So early! I read email, I go downstairs and think -- this is the time to make do with a quick picture, as requested by one of my commenters. There you go – dry Chinese lantern. Note how it looks a tad pale after 14 months on a sunny windowsill. Note, too, how gloomy it is outside. Dark enough that I have to turn on the lamp.

It’s cold, cloudy, dreary -- all of it. And wet. I take the donkey car. There’s no other way. Yesterday’s bike ride seems like it was from another era.

And when I drive home it’s even colder and darker and grayer. If the corn fields are golden now, you wouldn't know it.

The farmhouse is chilly enough that we consider putting the heat on. Ed is (vicariously?) tired. I make a pot of minestrone soup and he tells me it’s good to have hot soup on a cold day like today.

I clear the dishes and sit down to write. Ed dozes on my shoulder. It’s rare that we’re both so zapped. Worn to the core. Tomorrow will be better, brighter, newer, finer... it always is.

late

I always complete work on my first class of the day before I even leave the farmhouse.


 


The final task before scooting off is to print the finished product.

Today, the printer stalls, then goes into overdrive, then completely malfunctions and with that little act of defiance, it nearly ruins my great desire to bike to campus.

I had not biked on any of my work days thus far this semester. Rosie has been my ride of choice. I hadn’t the time for a slower commute. But today – well, today is REALLY the last warm day of the season and I am determined.

When the printer fails, sucking up precious minutes, I curse. Loudly. Then I call in Ed to help.

(That same Ed, who has been gently and continuously scraping, priming and finally painting the grate that covers the AC unit outside.)

My printer is fixed, the lecture printed, I am off, speeding, because I am also late.

(Though not so late that I would not be able to take a photo of the goldenrod en route.)

To my surprise, Ed catches up with me by car. I think – how wonderfully sweet! Later, I find out that he was actually on his way elsewhere, but no matter: he gives me a two mile boost and with that, I can pedal my way to a timely arrival on campus.



I finish work. I have before me a late afternoon bike ride home: those are at once the best and the worst rides. The best, because the landscape is beautiful and golden and the time pressures have receded.

The worst because the last mile to the farmhouse is hilly. And I’m tired.

Ed is out biking tonight and so I eat my Nicoise alone.

And I think uncomplicated thoughts, like how warm it is today and how good it is that I got to bike on this last day of the warmest summer season ever.

fall day

A cool morning, a Rosie ride, a pause to admire and to breathe in, breathe in, so deeply, no yoga necessary, deeply, the beautiful early autumn air. I remember a day just like this slightly more than a decade ago.

Corn husks are turning yellow, soy, too, is golden now. The warm and blustery air makes me want to stay all day on the rural roads.  I look around me and think -- nothing should change, nothing should be repositioned. 

But, on this day (and on some other days too)  I have three and a half hours of lectures and believe me, there isn’t much that I can give to this world after I’m done with my time behind a podium.

I take Rosie to Paul’s for an iced tea and meet Ed there just before Paul's closes for the day. It’s funny that there, Ed should sleep and I should do more work for tomorrow, but we are in this pattern of odd cycles and it often comes to be that we aren’t in sync. As in so many small details, in matters of when to sleep or not sleep, we do not automatically key into the same patterns.

Later in the evening we play tennis. I'm hardly dressed for it but we play anyway and the game is good which only goes to show that being good is not an altogether predictable thing.

At home I scramble eggs and grill a few remaining chicken brats and toss a salad – one with many, many tomatoes –  and I say:  that’s it, I can do no more.

And then Isis starts his meowing routine again.

Cat issues. We surely have our share of them. Isis is no dummy – he’s figured out that if he meows loud and strong, he’ll get Ed to pay attention. What Isis wants is for Ed (or me, but he targets Ed) to follow him to the sheep shed and stay with him there.

I do get it. The sheep shed (not the farmhouse) is his real home. He has his food, his in and out door, his litterbox and, most importantly, he has Ed’s messy desk which abuts the corner windows and there Isis likes to recline and watch the world go by.

Yes, I get it. But it means now that not only nights but evenings, too, are interrupted by the great meowing routine. Until Ed gives in. And Ed always give in. (To Isis, not to me. We’re still “talking” about his involvement in my girl's wedding.)

Isis has considered and rejected most anything that we offer him. He leaves, the room grows still. I like still. And, for this hour at least, quiet. Farmhouse quiet.