one more day

Out my window, this morning, a baseball field in winter.

My visits to Chicago follow a familiar pattern -- one that my girl knows I love. I quickly grab a coffee at Steingold's Bagel Shop downstairs (I'm staying at the Zachary Hotel in Wrigleyville Chicago).

And then I Uber over to my daughter's home, where she has a bowl of oatmeal ready and waiting.

This morning she has embarked on an ambitious cooking project -- to make (her first) pierogi, with me casting a critical eye.

I loved my grandmother's pierogi. She made them all -- with cabbage and mushrooms (my favorite), with cheese and potatoes, with blueberries. My mother wasn't a cook so she never made them and I myself wasn't keen on introducing them to my young very American family. I made them maybe once. Enthusiasm was tepid and so I never made them again. (Ditto bigos, ditto stuffed cabbage.) Still, I'd been at my grandmother's side while she rolled them, stuffed them, arranged them neatly on her large wooden board. They're not hard to make, albeit they take time.

And so I keep an eye on the project now, though of course, my daughters are fabulous cooks and need no real help from me. Juniper and Primrose are eager to take part and even my son-in-law dusted off his (partly) Polish roots and helped roll and stuff some.

 

We didn't cook them this morning. Juniper needs the pierogi for a school "international day" and they'll put a couple to the test this afternoon. But they're looking good! (Stuffed with potatoes, cheese and onion, we call them "Ruskie," though more recently people have taken to labeling them "Ukrainskie.")

 

We go out to brunch at Middle Brow. Familiar, favorite, beloved. 

And my daughter doesn't end things there. She suggests an outing to nearby Daisies -- another favorite! We pick up bakery treats for home and a strong coffee for me, for the drive back.

And there it ends. A beautiful birthday weekend. And I have the same feeling on the ride back that I always have: the car is flooded with my music favorites, and I think back, and I think forward, and I miss this young family so much already! One minute I'm tying ribbons for Juniper and pinching pierogi and the next I'm behind the wheel, on my way to the farmhouse, even as their days will continue and Juniper will nap, and then Primrose will likely do an art project, and dusk will turn into evening, and they'll start thinking about getting ready for the week before them.

I'm sure til the last visit I ever make to Chicago, I will always feel this loss as I pull away, at the same time that I'm not unhappy: I know they have a strong and joyful family life and I have no doubt that it will continue thus.

Besides, I do look forward to getting home to Ed.

There's plenty of sunshine on my drive back and I have this idea that I should stop along the way at our local park for a quick jaunt up and down our favorite trail. I need the movement. The clear head. One last reflection on how good it all was. 

And then I pull up to the farmhouse and Ed is at the door greeting me and he shouts out -- hey gorgeous, want to go out for a walk? I have to laugh. I just did that! But we go out again, together. Same trail, same sunshine, same comfortable recounting of events. Same love.

 

 

 

I'll end with that. We dont watch football, so our evening is much like any other: I make a pot of chili. We settle in on the couch, content.

with so much love...

about time!

My younger girl's birthday is in January. I cant always celebrate it with her on the very day of her birth because she has lived in another city since she was 18 and so it's not possible for her to drop everything for a visit from an eager mother. Even this year, though I made myself very available closer to the actual date, scheduling a get-together proved to be difficult. She had conflicts, and then I got Covid and that emptied out the calendar some more. It isn't until this day that I can drive over and give her a fortieth birthday hug. And yes, it's late in the game! The Zodiac calendar has moved away from Capricorn (her sign) a long time ago! Indeed, it's about to move from Aquarius (the next sign) onto Pisces (the one after)! Neither of us follow that stuff, but still, it's indicative how far from her birthday we are right now. And yet, here I am, getting up way way way before dawn, loading up the car with her presents, feeding the cats quickly (Ed! you do the chickens!), getting behind the wheel and heading for Starbucks (I need my coffee!), then turning the car south, to Chicago, to celebrate her day.

Since we had plenty of time to plan out my visit, I have before me quite the wonderful two days. And it all begins downtown. 

(so little traffic early on a Saturday morning!)

 

(driving underneath the El reminds me of my youth: I bought my first very very used car when I lived in Chicago as a graduate student; taking it downtown gave me my first taste of moving around by car in American cities) 

Remarkably, we both arrive at the agreed upon parking garage at the same time. Primrose has a dance class nearby and their routine has her go to class while the parents and Juniper hang out at the Art Institute waiting for her to be done. So this is how it works today: we walk the older girl to her dance class, then her dad stays in the studio, while Juniper and her mom and I walk over to the Art Institute. Do you know the museum? It's fantastic! It has one of the best Impressionist collections anywhere! The young family signed up as members of the museum, and they get this privileged entrance at an early hour, before the general public comes in. I get to join in as their guest.

But first, Juniper insists we walk over to the Bean.

Oh, the Bean! So much fun in one shiny Bean!

(I can still lift the girl!)

From there, to the museum. I'm tearfully grateful for this quiet moment among these canvases. (I'll restrain myself here and just show you four images of our beautiful half hour among the best of the best.)

As members, they also have access to a place where you can get refreshments. This is where we wait for Primrose to be done with her class.

We eat lunch, and then Primrose wants to show me her favorite museum displays.

 

 

 

Do you recognize this next piece? A stained glass window by Chagall. This was my one moment of remembering the brutal destruction taking place in our country right now. Why? Well, I was of course a United Nations kid. (Read about it in my book,  Like a Swallow.) I first learned about Chagall when I visited (repeatedly!) the U.N. in those very young years. The New York U.N. headquarters are home to a large Chagall, full of symbols of peace and love. The window in Chicago very much reminded me of the UN piece. And I had to think how far we've strayed from its message in recent days...

We leave the museum.

And now we have an extra treat: right across the street there is a new ice cream shop and these guys know it well -- it's a branch of a favorite from across the ocean! We get ice cream. I get ice cream! You can get three flavors just as a "single scoop!"

Back to the Bean, because Primrose wants her turn to play with the reflections.

We then go to their house for the afternoon. Juniper still likes to nap and this gives us a chance to hang out and catch up. And once the little one is up, we do a full scale celebrations: presents, snacks, delightful minutes of family! 

(This book was for Primrose, from Paris and it totally pulled her in.)

 

 

For dinner we head out for dinner at Antico. It's classic Italian and warm and lovely to boot. A perfect meal over which I can say happy birthday to my Italian loving girl (she, like me, learned Italian just for the heck of it).

(yes, of course I had to tell them it's "her birthday!")

 

Such a beautiful and full day! I could not be more thrilled with this visit to Chicago. Could not!

I decided it's easier for everyone if I stay at a hotel for one night and so I make my way afterwards to my new place of choice-- the Zachary,  across the street from Wrigley Field. Not that you can see it tonight, but it's there!

If I ever wanted a distraction from the country's chaos right now -- this is it. Your family will do that for you -- lift you up and take you away into beautiful places, full of magic. And love. You let go of the rest, at least for the moment, and oh, it feels so so good...

with lots of love...

 

that's us

We are that country. Throwing money down a swampy river until it sinks: investing first in the health of the poor disease stricken unvaccinated hungry (for decades now), then cutting them off in mid-meal mid-medication dose mid treatment, throwing the rest away, just to show how... what, mighty we are? Mighty stupid. We are that country.

Ed says over breakfast that we did help pull China out of poverty and to an extent, India as well. But I'm not talking about a grandiose vision of a good life for all. I'm talking about hungry children and the growth of pathogens. We are the country of people who can sleep well at night, pulling the plug on food and medicine (and let the remains flow down a swampy river) for children. That's us. Not reshaping, reimagining, reinventing better paths, perhaps less expensive, perhaps more targeted, but instead, dumping it all, wasting it (because there is no one anymore to distribute expiring medications, no refrigeration to keep fresh and viable that which is there), just because. (Why exactly? I do not know. But we are that country.)

Well, I for one did not sleep much last night. Ed asks -- is it the news? Is it that I have a lot on my plate right now? I can't tell. Since I've been back from France, I have felt like I am rooted to a seat in a movie theater, watching one horror flick after the next. I suppose sleep is going to be elusive for a long time.

 

It's cold but not that cold. The wind has died down, but I need to investigate the damage it did to farmette trees last night. Ed said he heard a crash, but I find everything is still standing. That's a good thing!

Breakfast, lovely, in love, pleasant, until we go on to That Topic. 

And soon after, a Zoom call with my law school friends. We've been through a lot together, but honestly this month ranks high on the unimaginable becoming imaginable and indeed a reality.

I'm ticking off events of the day here on Ocean -- haircut next... I ask my old reliable hair cut person -- do you think that in the half hour I've been here, my hair has turned even more gray? It looks like that to me!

 

Lunch after,  a quick French lesson, and then I pick up the kids.

Today is one of those days where she has to be at a violin lesson toward evening and he has to go home with parents, but I linger for just a few minutes at the drop off point, just to catch up with the mom, because, well, it's been so chaotic that the small details of daily life have fallen off the radar just a little. 

And now I am home. We were to have a snow storm tomorrow, but it's projected course has shifted to the north of us, which is a very good thing because I am to be out on the road again and I dont need slick highways to move me along. I get ready for an early departure, I scramble some eggs, make salads and exhale. With Ed, on the couch.

It's been some week.

with love...

 

Ice

Funny how so many words can have a double meaning! But truly, mine today is purely meteorological: we wake up to ice. On the walkway. On the cars. Sleek, shiny, slippery. You can't really see it, but it's there to trip you up.  

(the chickens have no problems with it: must be their clawed feet...)

 

We are up early once again. I dont even know why. All your adult life you think sleeping in the greatest thing on earth and then when you can do it, you don't. 

Ed joins me for an oatmeal breakfast.

And then I spend a lovely morning on Zoom with my Warsaw friend Bee. This is the way you have to approach a call or a visit with a friend these days: you dont start in on The Topic. The world may be toppling, or imploding, or going mad -- you'll get to that, but you have to start with all the sweetness in your life first. We review trips taken, the antics of grandkids, plans for the weeks before us. And only then, properly soothed and with a steady hand, you dive into That Stuff. The news of the day, or is it week, or maybe two weeks. It's not good, in fact it's so not good that you can't quite get a handle on it because there are so many details and moving pieces, and hurts and fears, but hey, your friend reads the news or listen to stuff on the radio, she knows. The world knows. Yeah, they know that it's tough to be an American right now.

 

There is sunshine outside and I do take a walk afterwards. Ed's feeling lazy so it's just me. Short and to the point. It's beastly windy and where there is shade, there is ice, but still, whatever else happens in my day, two things must take place: movement, and a French lesson. (Ha! I bet you didn't see that one coming!) I do both.

And then it's time to pick up Snowdrop. Just her this Thursday. And here's the thing: ice means salt. Our roads have been salted three times over and then some. The car is one salt crusted heap of metal. It needs a wash. I ask Snowdrop is she wants to go over to a new car wash near us. Always enthusiastic, she gives her approval.

Unfortunately, everyone in town has the same idea. There are six cars before us. Sure you want to wait? I ask her. Yes! 

Once in line you can't get out. Six cars may seem not much. But my watch tells me each car is taking at least six minutes. 

It's a long wait.

We make up poems as we crawl forward. Lots of silly lines, lots of laughter. But I know what will follow: her utter disappointment that we lost that much of our reading time.

 

 

The path leading to the door of the farmhouse is shaded. And so the ice there did not melt. Uff! Ice is messing with my day! Even as I know that it messes with the days of others in a much more serious fashion.

(Snowdrop bounces back like no kid I know! Or perhaps like all kids whose lives are good and happy...)

(It's been a while since I've seen them tussle... always with loads of giggles coming from her)

The winds howl, the temps drop. The ice wont melt any time soon. Ed and I are lucky: the farmhouse is warm, the food is good, we have each other.

with love...

 

distractions

People use distractions to turn your attention away from the real menace that is brewing under your noses. You're outraged by the enormity of the "distraction" and meanwhile things happen that you should have been paying attention to, but for the distraction. Litter the airspace with distractions and watch people run wildly in every direction trying to understand what's going on and what comes next. Me, I am always under a pile of distractions of a different sort -- ones that take me away from what I really want to be doing. Many of them include doctors visits. For a person who appears actually quite strong and healthy (for my age), I sure have a lot of doctor visits in my calendar. Why? Well, they come recommended. To check on this, to check on that, to recheck something else. Ed does none of this and wastes no time in doctors offices. Question is: who is leading the better life? (I'll let you know once one of us keels over.)

Today I had another recheck (which revealed nothing of great consequence, and demands that I do nothing more, except knowing me and knowing my doc, I bet we'll be rechecking this again in a year or two). It took the better part of the morning. A distraction from what I want to be doing.

I did have time to feed the cats and chickens...

... and though it was very early, Ed did come down to breakfast with me and the tulips.

Yes, I do have a lot of tulips on the table right now. February is the month when I allow tulips to enter the scene. Because February signals the tail end of winter for me and the imminent (well, not so imminent in Wisconsin) arrival of spring. Some are grocery store tulips, but, too, I have a basket of forced tulip bulbs that sprouted just a couple of weeks ago. Altogether, it's looking nice here, on our kitchen table.

Since my morning is made threadbare, I decided to rip it up completely and so after the doc visit, I went grocery shopping. I think it's my first time in the new year (I've been saving time by ordering food online in recent weeks). I like my grocery store and I like pushing a cart and putting beautiful foods into it, but I dont like driving nearly 20 minutes to get to it (and then 20 back). But hey, I was downtown anyway, so I shopped.

And I may as well give it up after that. A quick lunch (still munching on granola bars), and then I'm off to pick up the kids.

There wasn't a good reason to say no to the weekly ice cream treat (though I wonder -- how is it that I got bamboozled into a weekly ice cream treat?) so we go to the Chocolate Shoppe...

At home, we dive for the book (Pine Island Home) and for the fruits and for the Lego pieces (that one is Sparrow's domain).

It's a late day here for the kids, but that's fine. They too are a distraction -- they keep me off the computer! And sometimes, that's a good thing.

with love...

sunshine

There are vast oceans between continents and great distances from north to south, but ultimately, we are not separated by much. That is to say the people of one corner of the planet have the capacity to mold themselves in much the same fashion (they have the same vulnerabilities, the same emotions) as the people of a very distant region. I have to think that if Americans are being seen right now as "callous, sadistic, full of misplaced grievances and utterly resistant to introspection" (NYT commenter from Canada, who can hardly be faulted for viewing us this way), well this is because all of us have the potential to become that, and many over the centuries have indeed strayed in exactly this direction. It did not serve them well in the end, but hey, they surely were beasts before their ultimate fall.

As I keep reading reactions to the events as they unfold here, in the U.S., I see that some Americans feel unfairly chastised: "I did not vote for this and neither did 77.5 million Americans" they say. Maybe, but here's another truth: nearly 90 million eligible people did not vote at all in 2024, which is to say that nearly all of those fellow Americans were okay with handing over the presidency to the person now in charge (they did nothing to try to stop it), and of course 77 million positively endorsed the team now running the show. So tally the numbers: 167 million were at least okay with putting at the top the person who is in fact legitimately captain of this (sinking?) ship (unless you think that actually Elon is in charge and of course he got 0 votes, but that's another story). 77.5 million is not looking very sizable by comparison. 

I was born in Poland in 1953, then under a "communist" dictatorship. We didn't legitimately vote for that, it was forced upon us and though some tried to eek out the best possible outcome given what we were stuck with (my father was such a person I think), most just concentrated on getting by, because really, it was a challenge! And we did not get much sympathy for our plight from the rest of the world. Ultimately Poland dug its way out of that horrible autocratic era on its own, though it was helped by history handing us for once a deck of cards that allowed things to fall into place with some but not too much violence. But this much is clear: we couldn't be called "callous, sadistic, full of misplaced grievances and utterly resistant to introspection," because really it was not our fault. Later, as Poland once again toyed with a dictatorship, you could point fingers at those who voted in favor of it, but in the end the majority, and I mean a real majority of voters spoke and the autocratic beast was pushed aside. Sure, this is my reading of history, but I think most would agree with this narrative.

So what I thought deeply about this morning is this: how does it feel to live in a country where a vast majority of the people (167 million!) either voted for or indirectly supported what we have now?

To me it feels like something that could happen anywhere at this moment in time. To repeat, we all have the potential to become "callous, sadistic, full of misplaced grievances and utterly resistant to introspection." None of us is above being selfish, and when pushed, we can all take on behaviors that would make our grandmothers wince (or my grandmother wince, because she was such a sweet person!). Nonetheless, it feels awful to know that your country now leads the way in this world in being "callous, sadistic, full of misplaced grievances and utterly resistant to introspection." Yes it could happen anywhere, but it happened here, among my fellow country men and women. This is what pains Ed as well -- that the vast majority chose or at least was okay -- is okay -- with what is happening in America right now. And once more, I feel compelled to go on record here on Ocean to say that we, us two, are not okay with what is happening in America right now. Sort of like a bulletin being flashed on your TV screen (remember when that happened, in the olden days?!) -- we interrupt the regularly scheduled programing to bring you this special bulletin, so too here, on Ocean, I feel the need to flash our bulletin, even as Ocean remains apolitical and is a friend to all good and kind humans everywhere -- and here it is -- we are not okay with this! 

 

It's cold out there today! I feel it when I go out to feed the animals. It's before dawn. Another one of those nights where I may as well get up and get going because I'm not going to get any more sleep. But oh, do we have a pretty sky! I do think south central Wisconsin rules in terms of big beautiful skies! (Fine, that makes no sense, but it sure looks that way to me!)

 

We eat breakfast. No gloom today. It's not that we're getting used to what's happening, it's just that one cant ignore the tulips blooming on the table and the utter deliciousness of a cinnamon roll from Madison Sourdough.

Even though it is only 14f (-10c) out there and the wind is making it feel like it's really 0f (-18 c), I urge us to go out for  a walk. And we do. To the development next to us because it's close and there are buildings to shield us from the wind. Still, I feel like Ed came very close to significant frost bite! (I had my face covered by a scarf, but the guy doesn't own or acknowledge the need for scarves.)

(looking back toward farmette lands)

More reading and some munching followed, and now it's time to pick up the kids.

There is talk (among the young ones) about getting ice cream. I get cold just thinking about it. I postpone it for another day.

What really made this day more bearable weather-wise was the amount of sunshine that came our way. Even a thin haze in the afternoon failed to make this day seem gloomy. There is a special kind of magic behind February sunshine and I was thrilled to feel that magic today. 

Still, it was cold. Split pea and lentil soup for supper! Yeah, a perfect night for it.

with love...