vignettes, continued

Such a day! And yes, I am now 60 so I officially feel like middle age is behind me and I have joined the ranks of seniors. (For example: in many countries of Europe, I can start reaping the benefits of senior discounts!)

Such a day. I finished last night in dance mode...





(In answer to a reader question -- the kids presented me with a beautiful, totally modern and terrific sounding stereo turntable and speaker set. They carted over my huge record collection -- locked in storage for years and years -- added a few new albums for me to consider and set up a place for me to listen to the wonderful music of decades ago. Much of it is the wonderful rock stuff I grew up on, but there is also a significant set of classical stuff and, too, the funky quirky albums that I accumulated with the funky quirky taste that I have for music.)

I started the morning in a cooking mode. Spinach mushroom potato frittatas, chicken sausages, juice, fruit, olive oil cake with almonds and chocolate chips. There is no better way to begin your next decade than to have these guys at the table, appreciatively waiting for brunch to begin.
















And here's another shockingly wonderful thing about this day: the forecast was for cool temperatures and rain. It did start off cool -- we noted that as we visited possible places where a future wedding could be held...






But in the afternoon (after the kids took off), the sun chased the clouds away and suddenly, the day seemed as all April 21sts have always seemed to me to be -- sunny and spring like.






And so I could do what I so love to do in early spring: work in the yard.
















Ed is my assistant. I have many many perennials that need to be moved and we move them all. Time flies in the way that it does when you are famously engrossed in what you're doing.






There's no dinner to prepare. Not today. (Well, just a simple salad.)






Ed picks up take out Thai and we reach for a library DVD and maybe that's not a very typical way to eat a 60th birthday dinner, but for us it is warm and wonderful and the glow from the weekend stays with me and I know that once the movie's done, I'm likely to put on a record and return to a simple dance around the room.





To commenters and emailers -- thank you for all your kind, kind birthday greetings. I've said this before and it was true then and it's true now: your words mean a lot. I'm super grateful for them all.

vignettes from a birthday weekend

Sunshine goes to your head. It confuses your understanding of reality. It shouts splendid messages of spring and warmth and blooms and outdoor pleasure. In other words, it can be very misleading.

Breakfast in the sun room had, if you can believe it, too much sun! We ate in the front room and caught just dappled streams hitting this flower or that cup...





My little girl is in town already and I was to meet her and her sister for a first of the season outdoor market. I revved up rosie and scootered to town and only then did it hit me -- it really isn't all that warm... In fact, did we dip below 32?

Still, the market is vibrant and colorful -- you can't keep people indoors on a day like this. The winter has been long, the appetite for an outdoor stroll -- insatiable.

I didn't buy much. Cheese curds for my guy back home. But hey, you never really buy much the first market. You savor. We savored.





And after, we needed a warm cup of tea to chase away the chill.





They had errands to run and I returned home, to finish fussing over the farmhouse and, too, to pick up stuff at our local store. What stuff? Well, for one thing, Ed asked me if I wanted a birthday card. There is so much sweetness in that offer! The anti-holiday man, the one who most likely has never ventured into a card store in his life took me along to help guide him through the process.





(He did ask the clerk how come they had so many more birthday cards than, say, divorce cards. The poor clerk rushed to find him some divorce cards... only they're not happy cards -- she tells him anxiously. He thanks her for her effort and goes back to the task at hand.)

We spend a lot of time looking at cards. You pick one -- he'll say. No no, it has to come from you -- I retort. He picks one. Puts it back. Picks another. Goes back to the first. Changes aisles. Comes back and starts all over again. Delightful. Totally, heart warmingly delightful.

In the late afternoon I bake a breakfast cake (my birthday is really on Sunday, but we're having the celebratory dinner today. With a brunch tomorrow to finish off the weekend before the Chicago pair sets off for home).





And finally, we, the six of us, go for our Sardine dinner. It's a lively place with terrific food and enough informality that it can even keep an Ed happy.














Happy. That's the key word.

What makes you happy? An image of love? Of your two daughters in love?









Yes, for me that.

In a few minutes I'll be sixty. My girls (and their mates) installed a system of music at the farmhouse  where I can listen to my records, my music, my world of memories. Amazing.

Nearly sixty. Wow. I made it there. Incredible.

such a day

As always, let me focus on what is before me, here, in the Midwest, just a little south of Madison. In so many places around the world, terrible and wonderful things happen. I do not write about that. Others will step up to that job, I hope. Me, I continue to describe the wee things. Because (thank God) this is what is before me.

So here's a small thing. A wet, cold small thing: sleet, on and off throughout the day.





Lovely. (Note sarcasm, please.)

Breakfast was disturbed. Ed had to go off earlier than we had expected. So if I am to display breakfast photos, they'll be of the solitary kind. Like this:





I did a lot of house cleaning today. My little one is coming up from Chicago and as usual, I want to have the freshest finest farmhouse ready for her (and her fiance). Ed tells me -- she's already seen it clean. Why impress her again and again? I shoo him away. What does he know.

I do wish I could offer more of a spring palate for her, for all of us this weekend. Driving home from work, I saw the usual: brown on brown.





I stop at our local garden center (where they're hiding all annuals until some meteorological miracle happens and we cut out the cold already). I pick up my beloved summer alyssum for the pots (and more pansies and dianthus and trailing pelargonium,  and even, in a moment of optimism, potted lavender). To be planted when the gods are willing.





At home, meaning in the very clean farmhouse, I am just throwing foods together.





My mind is on the next two days. A deliciously protracted celebration of a birthday, of daughters, of life as I know it now.

Ed has been less insistent on repeating, as he did in the the first years we were together -- everyday is your birthday. Maybe he has figured out that everyday is not like a birthday and besides, my fixation on a birthday -- his, my daughters', my own -- is actually so very innocent. And so joyful.

There is very little harm in birthday joy.

let's focus on what's inside

The rain just will not let up. I wouldn't mind too much if in fact April showers brought out May flowers, but I tell you, the crocuses are sagging under the weight of all that wetness and even the yet to show their buds daffodils are looking like they've had enough moisture to last them a season. No, a couple of seasons. Streams are flooding, fields are burdened -- hey, are we officially over the drought yet?

So on this wet day, let's stay indoors, shall we? One quick look at the farmhouse outside and you'll understand why (though please do note that the daffodils and lilies are trying very hard, against all odds to make their presence felt).





Alright. So, breakfast. Picture an intimate table for two. In the glow of the warm lamp. You need the lamp. Too gloomy otherwise.





Ed comes down. We share a few minutes of wonderfulness.





After? Well, nothing worth mentioning here. A very long teaching day, followed by my weekly shopping trips to Whole Foods and Trader Joe's. But not to despair -- each store had tremendous flower deals. And so at home, I could make the indoor spaces shine. With this.





And this.





And this.





And that's a good thing, because I have very important guests this weekend. More on that later. For now, I'll leave you with a supper of left over chili. And one of those crazy salads that has everything imaginable in it. Our kind of meal. While the winds howl outside.

meals

You want to go out tonight?
This from Ed. He rarely asks and when he does, I rarely say yes. But today he asked and I said yes. True, it's a cold day and I do have a lot of work before me today and tomorrow, but I want that evening out so very much -- that time when we sit at the counter of a bar, eat mussels and french fries and occasionally (but not too frequently) comment about the state of our lives.





Because the weather has been so un-spring like and because of the various sniffles passing through the farmhouse, we haven't done much of our outdoor routines this year. We hide behind computer screens and we keep odd sleeping hours. Sometimes they overlap, oftentimes they do not.

But there are always the meals.

The breakfasts...





...the dinners. Sometimes lunches, or pickles at Paul's, or anytime anywhere, when food seems right and we seem ready for it. But dinners stand out because they are, after all, longest and if by chance we eat that meal out, it always becomes, therefore, important.

After dinner out, evening routines set in. We lose ourselves behind computer screens again and if I look up to see if perhaps there is some sweet little flick on TV (it's rare for either of us to think of TV as providing entertainment), I'm likely to see instead a scientific expose on the working of a machine lever or a pig gut. (Ed will turn on a science show whenever he thinks I'm not really paying attention.)

The rain continues. We hear it against the roof upstairs. A lovely sound. Especially if we're indoors with a quilt pulled high up against the chin.

today

I look at the sky, the setting sun and I think -- why must it be that luck (and the presence or absence of it)  figures so prominently in people's lives?


On the upside, I am not the only one that has had her share of good luck. But when luck fails, those of us who are on the side of fortune do recoil. How could it be...

The day, here in the Midwest, is lovely. Something to take note of. Sunshine. Not exactly warm, but warm enough.





...For breakfast in the sun room.





Weather-wise, flower-wise -- there's progress. Real progress.











But I cannot fully take it in. It's a tough working day, full of distractions -- good and bad. At the end of the day, I point Rosie toward the farmhouse and the work day fades, the world fades, all fades except for this wonderful moment of quiet and sunshine and the two guys coming up the walkway...






...for a dinner of chili, made from last year's garden tomatoes.

muskrat and love

Sometime late on a weekend night, my little one called me to let me know that she and her guy were engaged.

It's so interesting how someone's happiness can become your happiness so quickly! I love my girls more than earth itself and I sit here now and marvel how enormously lucky I am to have them partner up with men who are so fantastically, wonderfully good for them.

So there'll be a wedding ahead. In a year or so. And in the meantime there's the joy of sitting back and reveling in the sweetness of life -- their life and therefore (or in addition to) my life.


Now mind you, that's the big picture. If I am to consider the minutia of this day, I'd say that it was too deceptive! The morning is delightful, sunny, promising.






Farmer Lee's sister is back, surveying the field toward the rear of the farmette, assessing the work ahead.





We ask her if she would want more land to cultivate. We're fairly sure she understood the question. We think she said yes. Since Ed and I have chopped down the honeysuckle out back, more of the land can be used for cultivation.

The weather is so fine that I take Rosie to work again. But as I ride along, I think -- this is so lazy on my part. If I ride Rosie, I hardly move at all. And so I decide to park her just outside of the city proper and walk the remaining 40 minutes to campus.

Good idea! -- I tell myself. It's pretty along the lake.


 


I spot the wildlife (an otter), I admire the view over the rippling waters.





Fine. Okay. But somewhere in the course of the afternoon, the weather changes. By the time I leave my office, it's raining. Really raining. So now I have a forty minute walk in the pounding rain and then I have a wet Rosie waiting for me -- with the helmet dangling from her seat in such a perfect way as to catch all the rain.

I strap on the soaked helmet over strands of wet hair. The rain is relentless as I navigate Rosie carefully around the puddles. But it's okay! These are spring showers, right? We can expect April rain! And besides, somewhere in Chicago, there's one happy couple thinking, scheming about the future. Rain? How inconsequential! How utterly, in the scheme of things, trivial.


Late at night, Ed and I take a walk along the country roads that spin to the east of the farmette. It's cool and neither of us has much stamina and yet, spring tugs at us. Or maybe the events of the day, the good, the difficult -- all tug at us.

Spring is the beautiful season. Ah, were it to be so full of love always! For everyone.

Sunday

When Ed sneezes the whole house shakes. Since one sneeze is always followed by the next and then another, You could say that teh house was subject to multiple vibrations today.

Well good. We could use a shake up. And please, can we get rid of these morning weather surprises? Like this one?









At breakfast, we eat in the front room. Ed comes wrapped in a quilt. That tells me a lot about the state of his sinuses.











I go off to yoga. I'm back into it! My world feels good again. A routine is setting in.

At home, more crocuses are emerging.


 


The temps are inching up a bit today and so I do the brave thing of buying pansies. Pansies can take anything. pansies add the first batch of potted color. Pansies are beautiful.















You may find the landscape quite bleak still. Maybe you think that last year's lilacs were a better deal for the middle of April. Let me assure you, today felt grand. Sure, Ed is sneezing his life away, the flowers are shivering against the wind, but life is so full of promise right now that all's forgiven.

My daughter and her husband come for dinner. Ed sneezes a hardy welcome. Were you here, you'd smile and smile.

back again

Back to a regular weekend. Back to streaks of sunshine...





...back to yoga.

Nearly a month had passed. Here I am again, asking myself if I can be so yoga committed given... the state of existence.


I email back and forth with my sister in Sweden. In my mind, I am where I was the day I found my father had died. Nothing has shifted for me. I still think of him and Warsaw in one breath. When will I go back to it all? When? I wish I could take those steps soon. I do everything in life quickly. I don't wait, I don't hold back. Still, everything about him is (and has been, for decades now) out of my hands. He'd laugh at that. Or would he?

And if I go back for him now, this season, this year, is there any reason to go back after? This is, to me, the great imponderable.


In the meantime, the cold spell in Madison continues.


 


I talk to my mom. I wonder if I should be in California in the near future? I know it's been only a month, but it seems eons ago.


In the late afternoon Ed and I go to Menards -- a local home improvement store. We look at discounted planters for the pathway leading to the farmhouse. We examine them this way, that way. Yes, they'll do. Not too long ago, I would have insisted on clay pots that conjure up images of crumbling Italian villas in the northern regions of that country. But now, I just want containers that'll hold flowers.

In the evening I roast veggies, toss salads and scramble eggs.


 


It's our thrown together supper of foods -- only I make too much of everything. Ed looks at me curiously but I have no answers. There are foods, there is a stove, so I cook.

After, I listen to Bruch (and Beethoven and, well, Chopin). Music of this sort never answer questions for me but it opens up the airways and allows me to think. And that, I suppose, is a good thing.