on this day

He can ignore my advice on most anything I have to offer, but he cannot ignore it when I tell him he has a mole on his back. He can’t see it, but I can. Go to the doctor, I tell him.

He (almost) never listens to that advice.

But, yesterday, I had my moles checked and some promptly removed and I tell him that this is part of being of advanced age. You do this kind of thing. You cannot avoid it.

I’ll go to my old dermatologist, if he’s still around. I liked him.

When did you last see him?
Long long time ago. And he was already old then.

Ed’s banking on the guy being retired. Or worse. But an Internet search reveals that the doc is still there! At age 84, accepting new patients!

So off he goes and I tell him I saved his life and he scoffs and tells me that he acquiesced to the visit to make me happy. Some beloveds get flowers and candy, I get my guy to go have a mole removed. 

Can you imagine, Ed marvels, he doesn’t have a computer in his office. Just a typewriter.  

Electric? I ask. And is he married? Ed looks at me in wonderment that I should still ask questions for which I know he would not have an answer. (We do that to each other.)

In the meantime, I am done grading for two out of my three courses, but that’s not saying much because the third has the largest number of students and they’re of a generation that’s become demonically speedy with typing because the number of pages submitted has swelled over the years. No matter. I start in on this third course. If I work awfully hard, I’ll be done by the end of the month.

But I need breaks. You can’t read essays without interruption. Pages blur and run together and you confuse one person’s mistake with another’s brilliance and so you have to refresh yourself. I do so by once again attacking the raspberry patch.

That patch is so overgrown right now that the weeds exceed in height the raspberry canes. And I mean the really tall, unclipped raspberry canes. I’ve already devoted some days to pruning and clipping (and I've hardly made a dent), but today I make one huge effort at getting the weeds on one side – the side of the path leading to the sheep shed – under control so that a person could, for example, walk there without being attacked.

But in the process, I am, in fact, attacked. Whatever prickly stuff inhabits that patch is now fighting (and winning) the battle against my invasion and I am left with some horrible rash up and down my arms, a rash that alternates between an itch and a tingle – none of it very pleasant.

I say to Ed -- I saved your raspberries and ruined my arms in the process.

It’ll pass, he tells me without much concern.

Of course, everything passes. By definition, life passes, rashes disappear, skin wrinkles, raspberry canes suffocate and boyfriends get spots for you to see and point out.

The sun is so bright, so very bright and when I go on my bike to Paul’s to meet Ed there, I have this complete sense of joy in riding against the May breeze, even though I’m past the wistful years when sunshine was only a friend, a soothing pal, to love and trust and hold sacred.

Life can’t be perfect. Not for more than a short stretch, here and there.

At least that’s what I’m told.

a light at the end of the path

[A note to those who commented on the unusual – indeed, perhaps one and only – blog photo of Ed and me. In the past, many have tried to take a picture of the two of us, but Ed rarely behaves for such stuff. The absurd results were never worth posting. This time he let me proceed, with the camera, supported by woodchips, leaning clumsily on the hood of an old car, set to shoot with the self-timer. We had a hard time keeping the ridiculously abundant pear tree branches that overhang our parking space out of the photo. So, in many many ways, it is a once in a blue moon shot.]

Well now, these weeks are going to be a challenge. The weather is spectacular, the work is now ever before me, I’m tentatively agreeing to provide assistance with a court case, and my garden needs watering.

Can it be more complicated than that?

Let me talk about four photos that I took today. The first was not from here at all, but, instead, taken just before a meeting I had downtown with a student. After parking good old Rosie in some tight space where many would think she does not belong (they would be wrong to think that), I looked up and caught my breath at the loveliness of this:

...and I thought to myself – is there such a thing as an indifferent spring garden?

In the evening I water the farmette beds (rain? What rain? Is there ever rain?), reversing the order of operations, just because that is the most exciting thing I can do with this terribly long (but not unpleasant) task. As I tote the watering can to the bed by the driveway, I note that Ed is pounding in the fourth (constructed by him) solar-lit lamp post into the driveway. Later, at night, we walk out to admire the beams of light. Why do you suppose they’re star-like? Ed asks. He doesn’t really expect an answer. I make do in life without knowing the answers to answerable questions even as I worry about those without obvious replies.

And so the second photo is from the dark night -- made lighter by our trail of tiny lamps.

Finally, I have to describe another significant event from this day: for over a week now Ed has been (more or less) gently pointing out that the rhubarb is out of control. It spills onto the path to the farmhouse door (I did not plant it there!) and I haven’t a clue as to what should become of it. I still have bags of frozen chopped stalks from last year.

To move things toward some kind of a resolution, two days ago I finally trimmed the plant back. Somewhat. And today, I decided to improvise and bake things up in my own bizarre rendition of a fresh rhubarb/last year’s frozen raspberry French tart.

Shockingly, it is quite tasty.

The tall iris blooms, the tight bundles of dianthus, the burst of golden coreopsis, the fast paced mint, the chives, the rhubarb -- they take away attention from the ravaged-by-wild-beast  (or bird, or likely both beast and bird) strawberries. You have to focus on the success stories in your yard...

...and not mind the sacrificed handful that nature has claimed for its own uses.

people

Hey! It’s Sunday morning! I say this with energy, as if something important is about to happen.

I thought you’d given up on weekly cleanings...

I have. It’s been two weeks since we vacuumed.

That’s an obvious prod on my part.

I can’t say that Ed doesn’t help around the farmhouse. He spends a good part of each day either fixing something, or tending to some portion of the land. (Since most tools here are of the aging kind, they often need a repair. And the land is one constant plea for help.)

But the idea of cleaning the house on a regular basis? That’s a source of amusement for him. Meaning, he’s amused that I insist on devoting that much time to it.

It’s another one of those very warm days and we hurry, so that we can get to the outside work before the heat settles in for an afternoon of pea-soup air. Well, hurry is perhaps the wrong word. I left "hurry" behind on campus. At the farmette, our pace is either "slow" or "with interruptions."

We’re focused on the (dirt) driveway today. People have a hard time backing out of it, especially in the dark, especially in the winter. Ed came across little solar-powered lamps at Target and we picked up a half dozen to line the road. Mind you, these are not expensive gizmos (retail price of each: $2; we, too, were surprised). Ed thought to attach them to tall wooden posts and now we have the task of pounding the posts into the packed dirt road.

Ed does the pounding.

Too suburban? He asks after putting in the third lamp.

No! Solid and cool!

In the late afternoon, Ed and I ride into town (on his motorbike; Rosie can't support two people) for the celebration of my friend’s graduation. My friend did the complicated and difficult task of retraining while attending to kids, work, passions, you name it, she did it. Ed doesn’t usually step out of the house for social endeavors, but for this, we’re both on board.

Congrats, friend!

the graduate

At this most wonderfully event, I run into a person I knew very many years ago. We had kids the same age. She was utterly angelic toward mine in years when it all seemed so complicated and work and kids and kids and life just weren’t fitting together so perfectly. Her husband was my kids' doctor and I had the habit of saying (truthfully) that one big reason why I would never consider leaving Madison is because I cannot imagine ever finding a pediatrician as good as him.

Funny how when you get older all these stories come back. Vivid now, as if no time had passed, as if you still had kids in the preschool playground and the future for them, for you was one great blank page, without the dense script of lived years filling it all in...

My daughter and her fiancée are at the farmhouse for dinner. And for the first time, it is warm enough to do a comfortable Sunday night meal out on the porch.

Eventually they leave and I am about to slide behind my laptop screen, when Ed says – let’s play tennis.

And we do play, and it’s a beautiful night and my game is predictably funny and awful all at the same time, and his game is just slightly timid and I can't help but feel the laughter coming to the surface again -- the giddiness after a good meal and from the good companionship that is ours.

That old phrase Ed and I used to love to pull out? The one about us having nothing in common? It doesn’t ring true anymore.


 


... especially not now and especially not at the farmhouse. Cleaned up and spiffy and vacuumed for the week(s) ahead.

like summer, only not really

Near 90 today. Hot, deliciously hot air, so that the windows stay open all night, fully open. In the morning, there’s not a doubt that breakfast belongs on the porch.

Ed, are you ready (for your cereal and fruit)?

No, gotta work, it’ll be hot... gotta shovel the chips...

 

But within minutes, he’s on the porch with me. No one can resist cereal and fruits and the gentle rock of a wrought iron chair..

I go to the market with my daughter. It’s crowded – extremely so. Graduation weekend means that thousands of graduating Wisconsin students are looking for things to do with their parents, aunts, uncles. The market! You have to see the market!

Yep, they were all there.To admire, to taste.

In the afternoon, I grade.

Well, for a while. There are hours of woodchip shoveling too, in the hot hot air of a day that is still a month short of the real summer season.

And maybe because the flower beds are looking so good and so he wants to lend his support to the project, or maybe because they don’t look good enough and so he wants to improve them, or maybe he wants to distract me from the incredible damage done to the strawberries by the chipmunks – for whatever reason, Ed offers to go with me to pick up five daylilies from the Flower Factory. Probably our last trip there this year. After spring planting, gardening becomes all about maintenance. 

Ah, the Flower Factory... The place that has grown in leaps and bounds in marketing perennials -- at the same time that I have grown from being mildly intrigued by planting them to being fully dazzled by their various quirks and permutations.  Of course, part of the joy of visiting the place is in seeing what's growing in their own gardens.

We make the trip on the motorbike on a very windy day. Windy rides are always an adventure and especially when you’re trying to tote five daylilies in the milk cart behind you. We manage. Just barely.

And then evening comes and it is time to water. I pick our first radish...

 ...and lots and lots of rhubarb and then I move through the pattern I've developed for my watering ritual and I have to say, nothing, nothing is more satisfying than standing with a hose on a hot “summer” evening, thinking of little more than how pretty drops of moisture look on emerging flowers.

onwards upwards

This is the right way to end a school year: faces of students appear, one after another – graduating. Once just starting, now at the end of it. Faces, faces, with parents, lovers, friends, mostly happy faces, hiding worries. Not today, no, today celebrates the accomplishments, the graduation, the future lawyers, those who’ll help you when some grave injustice befalls you. (You forgot that that’s what lawyers do? I’m here to remind you!)

I am up early, but not early enough. Ed says (as he comes back up after letting Isis, the restless one, out) – beautiful morning. I say – oh, maybe it’s time to take a look at a sunrise over Lake Waubesa! Just two miles east of us, a fast scoot on old Rosie. Except I forget that it’s May and in May you need to be up and away before 6 to catch a sunrise.

But, it is indeed a beautiful morning. Early morning always looks good in the "old orchard" of the farmette.

Eventually Ed goes off for his Friday meetings and I get on Mr. Red, peddling to the Monona Terrace for the Law School graduation.

And, as it is a special day, I can, while biking, look up and see a doe prance off, even at noon – a rare time for deer to prance in front of you.

So, they’re off, those wonderful wonderful students of ours – past the little kid stage...



 



...past the first year at law school stage, they are almost there, almost part of the world of balancing work and family or no family, or work and friends, or something, something to keep them grounded or maybe the proper word should be 'afloat.'

One of the graduation speakers, no, sorry, two of the graduation speakers talk in one way or another about the need for that balance. Ah, yes. If only the employers were listening and taking notes!

Me, I’d like to say that I’m with you, those who would love 1. a  job and 2. one with balance. We will rise above the clamor that pushes the young professionals to do nothing but work, we will stand united, we will reject the pressure to give our souls to the workplace! (That would be my own revolutionary call.)

Or maybe they, the young professionals, already know and fight for what it is that matters?

For now, these weighty thoughts are dispersed, floating somewhere, but not here, not in the giddy hallways and ballrooms...


 
the faculty gather


... where graduates pass through and have photos taken, in hot black robes, on a hot May afternoon in Madison.

the student commencement speakers

Congratulations sweet students – adults when you came, but so much stronger today, after the toil of it all, so much stronger and – I do believe this – wiser and, I hope, happier.

just say no

It’s not easy for me to say “no” to opportunity. Maybe it's because I’m an immigrant – one who came here alone, focused on taking chances and risky steps.

Two ideas percolated in recent days and today I had to give some kind of an answer.

The first had to do with a legal issue. Should I work on it? If it succeeds, it may be financially rewarding. Or not. Ed tells me most large gains grow out of chancy investments of time. And yet, wont I feel hugely frustrated if, after several years' work, nothing comes of it? Just say no, my internal voice shouts at me, just say no! But my immigrant’s brain can’t just say no. And so I sit on the fence. One more day – I tell the party who is asking for my input. Just give me one more day to think about it.

The second idea has to do with the writer’s shed. You remember the writer’s shed? Years ago, before we came to an agreement about the farmhouse, Ed put great efforts into constructing the writer's shed -- a place where I could write, sleep, stay for a day, or two, or three...

We tore down the structure that once stood there and, with the help of Amos, the shed builder, put in the structure that stands there now. But we never finished it. I agreed to move into the farmhouse instead. The writer's shed stands incomplete. A shell of what was once to be.

And that’s a shame. Recently, we've tossed around the idea that we should put in the floor, the little kitchen, the shower, toilet. And then we should rent it! Not year round, but occasionally! A real money maker!

And yet...

So many times we’ve rented rooms in private homes and looked at each other to say – who would want to do this? Who would want to cater to the needs of grouchy travelers? Who would want to listen to complaints about bad TV reception or an overabundant mosquito population?

But, but, we could rent it just to special, preapproved people! I tell Ed.

One more house to maintain...

We could meet interesting folks!
*You* could meet interesting people. People who would complain about the grouch on the premises. Me. Besides, do you really want to lose your privacy?
I smile. I wrote about my colonoscopy on Ocean. What privacy could he possibly be referring to?

Just say no, just say no...

I will, I will, but why is it that I am regretting saying no? In both cases?

We bike to Paul’s café. We pass Lee, tending the fields south of us. When are you planting in our quarter acre?

I have planted! Beans and cucumbers. And my sister will plant some more!

We swing by the local market, too. The last of the perfect asparagus. And spring spinach. And, of course, as every week come spring and summer, Madison’s best baguettes.

Finally -- home.

...Where the iris stands tall, the tomatoes are getting chomped down by the chipmunks, and the lettuce seems too stubby and tastes...like lettuce.

the next phase

 Surely you do not want to hear that I did a clean sweep of three grocery stores today? Is there a story in that? Perhaps not a story, but room for a smile: does anyone else walk away from Woodman's giddy, after loading up a shopping cart with many, many jugs of fruit juice (blueberry-grape-wild cherry -- mmmm! Diluted with sparkling lemon mineral water -- the best!) and many many packs of sparkling lemon mineral water?

And I’m no longer surprised when, at Trader Joe’s, the clerk asks if I make my own trail mix since my cart is full of unsalted pistachios, lightly salted cashew pieces and peanuts. Oh and how could I forget – so many containers of chocolate covered raisins. (The answer is -- I do not.)

I venture out to town so infrequently that I now buy as if for a winter season in North Dakota. Anticipating a powerful snowstorm. That will bury me deep for four months. Without access to unsalted pistachios, chocolate covered raisins and sparkling lemon mineral water.

At the farmette, my focus has...evolved. To grading – but please don’t let me get into the habit of repeating day in and day out for the next two weeks that I’m grading. Know that whatever else I may be doing, I’m also grading. There, I’ve said it.

And what else? Ah, the seasonal job of carrying water to the thirsty plants. Much of it is accomplished by standing still with a pointed hose. But some of it is significantly more taxing. I am reminded of the resentful kids of Monet, the artist. They complained that their childhood was lost to watering his expansive gardens. My plots aren’t one hundredth as vast, but they stretch far and wide so that even multiple extensions to the hose wont do. And so I carry the watering can. Back and forth. To keep the flowers satisfied.

(Sorry, how could I forget: and the fruits and veggies.)

It’s an evening task and one that, honestly -- I sort of like. At least now, in the early stages of the growing season.

Then, tonight, a special return to town – for a Mother’s Day meal at Graze. This is the city trip I’m always happy to make: for a meal with the terrific younger set.

My littlest one is, of course, in Chicago, but in spirit she is there too. And since it's "Mother's Day," I am left to open boxes. (These days, insofar as I am at all decently dressed, it is because they attend to me in this way. What I am wearing for example is, from head to toe, their doing -- from a recent birthday.)

At the end of it all, Rosie transports me home. Past a sun that set over the fields, past deer that always come out when I ride at their hour of play.

A beautiful evening. You could not hope for a better one.

pause

A break. No weeding, planting, watering – none of it today. I cast a half hearted glance at a dead strawberry plant and shrug. What are you gonna do...

There is a breakfast out on the porch...

 

...a poke out to the barn, where Ed cleared out years of debris...

 

...a trip to town – a lovely bike ride, past fields and meadows...

...and hidden barns...

...for a lunch meeting downtown, and then a return to the farmhouse, for another meeting, a most wonderful one, with three of my graduating students...

We sat for a long while on the porch and reviewed the past years – theirs and mine.

When you’re in the business of teaching (an inflated term, I know), you accept the idea that your role is just that of a temporary assistant in the process of moving someone from point A to point B. Sometimes your role is quite small. They sort of know what needs to be done and if left to their own devices, they’d probably figure it out themselves. (I see this in Ed who never studied law, but knows quite a bit of it just because life forced him to tangle with the judicial process and learning about it was preferable to being pushed and pulled in all directions without a clue as to what was happening.)

And still, we’re there to help them ask the important questions. Or at least what we think are the important questions.

And sometimes we’re there because we just love working with young people – people whose minds are still open to numerous possibilities.

I thought about all this as my trio of students lingered over a glass of juice on the farmhouse porch and clouds tumbled above as if ready for a storm but not a big one, not tonight, not now...

And then I cooked dinner for Ed and myself -- a dinner which was just veggies and eggs and I felt a tiny bit nostalgic because this is the way one feels at the end of something, even if that something is as inconsequential in my scheme of things as the end of another academic year.

He said then – let’s go play tennis.

Tennis? I hadn’t played for a couple of years. Last year, my shoulder froze for some inexplicable reason and I could hardly move it to write on the blackboard, let alone play tennis.

Okay!

As the sun moved to its final place at the line of the horizon, we volleyed the ball back and forth, me – clumsily, he – with greater skill. I laughed so hard at myself that my eyes filled with tears and then I laughed some more and you may wonder about tears and laughter and the relationship between the two, but I can assure you, it was a fine evening, down to the last missed opportunity to hit back, do a good serve, gloat at a success that was not to be, not in this lifetime anyway.