getaway

I've often tried to imagine the perfect trip for mindful relaxation. One where worry fades, where beauty abounds, where there is a right amount of a quiet, sensual indulgence, with opportunities to read, write, walk, eat and maybe swim. Different enough from my everyday that it would open my eyes to something new. Oh, and no car required. Wake up with excitement, go to sleep deeply satisfied. Only to be repeated the next day and the day after. I've never found a summer, fall or winter destination that I call comforting in this way. My special place for forever. To be revisited again and again (if time and money permit), because it is that good! 

But I keep trying. And maybe it doesn't exist. I visit a new place, I like it, sometimes I come back one more time, but at the end of that stay I know I wont be returning. I'll look for something new. I like it, love it even, but I prefer to keep looking. Maybe my eyes weren't opened enough, maybe the walks weren't in nature, or maybe they didn't feel safe (no more solo hikes scaling summits for me!). Too much traffic (human or automotive), too hard to find interesting local food, too hard to get to (that is a big one!) -- I mean, all fussy disqualifiers to be sure, but enough to push me to keep on searching. 

I came up with a place for this October. I knew, even before realizing that my mother was dying, that the summer and early fall would be packed and rather frantic and that the winter would be long (it always is). So I booked this getaway, for this week. And I have high hopes for it!

And while I'm on the subject of fall getaways -- of the distant kind, not just a drive somewhere to observe fall colors -- I might add that I am not the only one who thinks October and November are great travel/escape months (notably without children, because that's a different kind of trip). Yesterday, at the hospital, when I mentioned I was about to leave, word spread in the ER room ("she's going away tomorrow!") and at least three different staff members came in and told me about their forthcoming escapes. Also to new places, far away. "I need a break" was a recurrent theme.

Still on the subject of travel planning, I want to mention again the book I read a couple of weeks ago -- Airplane Mode by Habib. I liked it, but there definitely was a theme to it and that theme bothered me, not because I disagreed with it, but because she was relentless with it and it adds one more stone to throw in with all the others that aim to sink a person's urge to travel. Habib asks us to open our eyes to the fact that travel for pleasure is full of colonial assumptions and premises and it dehumanizes the communities, cities, villages that we visit, putting them on display for the greedy eyes of the so called observer who then proceeds to comment from his or her distant, definitely privileged, and presumably superior position. That's the theme. Again, I don't necessarily disagree, especially with the historical origins of pleasure travel and especially to Europe (think: English upper class trips as a coming of age rite of passage). But of course, isn't everything we do and especially for pleasure, traceable to a history that we dont support or embrace? And is the alternative to lock the gate in your own back yard (should you have one, which, well, would be a privilege right then and there) and never step out? Never try to open your eyes to a different world? Or, should we travel, but realize too at every step that we are not only messing with the planet (airplanes), but with everyone whom we encounter en route? Does it become, therefore, a miserable, pointless, consumeristic and entirely selfish experience? A place to park our cash for our own pleasure?

This I do not agree with. 

There were times that I traveled on the cheap. In the worst seats of the worst flights, staying at the most basic b&b's, spending as little as possible on goods and services. (These, by the way, are the tourists that many locals find especially distasteful, particularly now, when you can go really on the cheap by foregoing hotels and packing into airbnb rooms. (I did that! Many, many times!) Now, as I realize that my travel years are very limited (if I can't lift that suitcase up into the overhead, maybe I should just stay home...), I spend my savings more intentionally and I take great pleasure in finding a beautiful room. Not luxurious, just beautiful. So does that make me a better traveler, because I'm boosting local economies? 

It's way more complicated than that. 

But, though I think about these topics incessantly, I am no longer defensive about my need to explore unfamiliar and beautiful communities. (And what I would call beautiful is not just an assessment of the physical qualities of a landscape. Beauty, too, is complicated!) I do love to immerse myself in them, to watch small daily rituals of people who would rightly consider me to a stranger in their midst. And I do want to show them that I've made the effort to speak a bit of their language. That I am happy to be there. That I am in awe, that I admire and learn. 

So, add that to my list of imperatives for travel!

*     *     *

The day is cooler. October weather! Windy, but still sunny.

Morning images: the crab apple is now abundantly speckled with red apples -- food for the bird population here, come winter.

Who does not love these purple fall asters!

This lily is always the first to bloom and the last to throw out a flower. Happy October, dear one!

Breakfast -- we were to eat together. A little cool for the porch, but doable. And then, just as I was making the coffee, Ed got a work call. So, just me.

He compensated by finding the time to go for a walk. To our favorite county park. Stunning grasses, gorgeous blue skies...

And then it's time for me to leave.

*     *     *

I'm at the airport, waiting for my flight to Atlanta. From there, I fly to Paris. You might ask -- isn't Paris my perfect escape? I surely go there often enough, always returning to a hotel I love (the Baume in the 6th). 

Paris is not, for me, a place to exhale and regain my balance. I'm not tied to any agenda in that city, but I do feel compelled to take advantage of all that I love there. For instance, sitting in my Parisian hotel room all day with a book in hand, should I feel like reading, would seem a waste. And Paris does come with city stresses. People and cars. It's not noisy in the block where I stay, but it is ensconced within an urban landscape. Many people would want to escape to an urban landscape, but I need something gentler to float with. Not wild, but also not too civilized. 

Still, Paris is the only city that I truly do love and it is my first stop on this journey. If all goes well, I'll next be writing from Paris.

with love...

September ends thus

What a uniquely interesting month! (Is that the best that I can do in summary?) So much movement in my family, without anyone taking trips or going places! (So what movement am I seeing? The passing of the generational torch to the oldest woman on the ship? Okay, I'll take it!) So much that simmered in the background suddenly percolating to the surface! (What, you think that's done now that the calendar page is about to be flipped to October?) And let's not neglect this: so much sunshine! And relief. And love.

What a month.

And September will not let me forget its specialness even on this last day of the month: it's sunny once again. I feel some guilt in writing this: we have the most perfect weather day before us. Warm still. I'm back to shorts! We eat breakfast on the porch! 

 

 

But, there is that smell of Fall. Seasons don't pause their steady trudge to the next one. They merely allow you time to prepare for what's to come.

It was to be a straightforward day: get a flu shot, water the tubs, pick up kids. But then Ed added a layer of complexity to it by suggesting we bike to the pharmacy. That's at least a half hour ride each way. Pretty!

But it takes time. In fact, the whole excursion takes time. Back by the lunch hour, with time only to quickly douse the tubs. And now I head out to school. Both kids today.

 

(does not like the change in schedules...)

 

 

 

(a tired boy...)

 

And this too is complicated because I have the both of them, even though only the one of them has ballet toward evening, so there has to be a parent-child swap of responsibility somewhere in the next three or four hours. All this to say that by the time all kid stuff is behind me and I turn to go home from the ballet drop off, it is very very late.

And why should it matter? End of month, beautiful weather, kids are well, all is as it should be. Except that I'm leaving tomorrow and I have done nothing to prepare for a trip. Suitcase unpacked, thoughts still on everyone and everything but the trip.

And, I have a headache. Not your normal one, but a weird one. And I can't really hear that well. Huh? Someone want to tell me why?

So I don't go straight home. I stop by the local hospital. I have one question only -- did I just have a stroke? But you can't just walk in and ask that when you're 71 and have a history of brain bleeds and who knows what else. They want to do a full work up. On Monday eve. Have you ever been in an urban hospital on a Monday eve? It's their busiest day. People dont attend to troubling illnesses on the weekend. They wait until Monday. And then the place is flooded. 

I find out very quickly that I did not have a stroke. But it takes a very, very long time before they are fully satisfied that nothing else is unraveling in my head. And all the time, I am being the pill patient who asks again and again  -- can I go home now please? I probably just had some stress stuff going on. Cant I go home? I promise I wont die in the next two hours!

Eventually tests are done, results come in, and everyone is fully satisfied, and I go home. 

I had wanted to cook soup for Ed's week alone. In the end, I stole one of his hard boiled eggs and made a salad for the both of us. We ate that for dinner very close to midnight.

My flight out is coming up. And still, I did nothing to prepare for it.

And that's okay! What's October for anyway if not to demand a fresh breath, a new perspective, without preparation, without angst or stress of any sort. I'll plunge right into it! Tomorrow.

younger family, young family

A day of bookmarks. I'm sandwiched in there, comfortably ensconced in the wrap of family love. But, too, there are lingering emotions in some of us, and I'm aware of those as well. Family milestones often are like that, no? Lots to sift through, lots to still understand.

The day starts like this: with the younger family, in Wauwatosa -- a town that flows out of northwestern Milwaukee. We're at the Homewood Suites and I've been forewarned by Primrose that their morning breakfast is awesome! Sausage, eggs, Fruit Loops, you name it -- there for the taking! Just awesome! So I meet the kids for a light breakfast.

 

And from there we all drive over to the real treat for me and probably for the parents (and the kids, though honestly, they were pretty tickled by the pieces of melon and their handful of yummy Fruit Loops! Totally awesome! ) -- we go to a bakery called Rocket Baby. It's an immensely popular place, but we got an order in when they opened -- monkey bread for me (which as far as I can figure out is a twisted mix of danish and croissant dough, with loads of cinnamon. Like Denmark, getting married to France!).

 

 

 

A beautiful way to start the day!

But we get serious, too. The conventional wisdom is that funerals and memorial services provide closure. I can see that. For the great grandkids, it provides a "the end" to a chapter in their lives -- the ever strange and exciting tale of GGH, as my mother liked to be called once she had great-grandkids (Great Grandma Helen). For the rest of us? We just carry on and continue to try to understand where we are, and how it came to pass that we are who we are.

(hide and seek, Juniper style)

Eventually it is time to go.

(last hugs)

I drive back to the farmette. It's not too far -- less than an hour and a half. Time for music and thoughts that always flow in the smoothest way when the drive is easy and the music is good. I think about how the memorial and scattering were especially meaningful to my daughters -- more so than to anyone else I suppose, because my mom had been, on and off, part of their childhood, without, at the time, imposing on them the baggage of her strong feelings toward the rest of the family. Talk about innocence! My mom ended it abruptly by disappearing first in mild annoyance, and for the second time in true anger, but it's not as if she was the one who burst their bubble of childhood innocence. Yes, she could be a handful, but by the time they recognized that, my girls were focused on their own friends, so it hardly mattered. And then of course, my ex and I split up and my mom's anger became completely irrelevant to them. They were losing something much more important. And so their sharpest memories of her were... good ones. 

As were mine from early on.  I  remember the joy I felt when, in the years I lived with my grandparents in the village, I would know that she was coming by train for a brief visit. I would stare hard at the direction from which she would walk from the train station -- by the river, then turning across the meadow and finally to our small gate. The quietness of the house would disappear and there was a burst of energy as she unpacked foods from the city and my grandma would double up on her cooking, because her daughter had arrived. I begged for this magic person -- my mother -- to take us back to the city with her (a city I did not know at all) and eventually, when I was three and a half and my sister turned five, she relented and we moved to Warsaw, switching to an all day nursery school rather than remaining in the care of my grandparents. Summers were still in the village, but during the school year we became city girls. And, like for my daughters, for me those early years with her were good! I was in awe of this tall woman with the very, very dark hair (she died it black) and bright lipstick. Finally mine, to love, forever. I felt damn lucky.

So, too, did my daughters in the times she baby sat for them. All the grandkids felt loved by her, even though she ceased to participate in their lives directly as they grew older. It didn't matter. Once in a blue moon they talked on the phone. Listen to her not very helpful advice. Yes grandma, sure grandma. Happy Thanksgiving/Christmas/birthday! Good bye!

At home now. With Ed. We need to walk, together, in our favorite local park.

(you hear them often in the fields at this time of the year)

 

 

(is it only Ed and me who love the colors of a drying prairie?)

(a walk in the woods calms a racing mind)

At the farmhouse, I have to start in on dinner, because yes, at the other end of the day, I have the young family over for their regular Sunday farmhouse meal.

(first one to arrive...)

(showing off his love for Fromage d'Affinois)

And still we need time to talk things through, to plug up holes. Closure my foot! It's a process!

It is also surely our last dinner on the porch. Just barely warm enough!

After dinner, a big exhale. Snowdrop returns to the computer to make progress on her school-assigned game. She needs help. Her brothers are fascinated. (All kids appear to love math. Well, maybe Sandpiper just loves looking at any computer for any reason at this point!)

They leave. I'm thinking -- what an intense set of days! But for me at least, they were deeply good days. A little bit raw, a little bit demanding, but on balance -- really good.  I need only look at the photos from today -- morning and evening, and to look at the guy next to me on the couch right now, to understand why. We read about Ashville, we read about the Middle East, we read about the country to the east of Poland... Yeah, we've all been insanely lucky here, in south-central Wisconsin. Insanely lucky. Sigh...

with so much love...

memorial

Not sure what to call it -- a memorial for my mother? A gathering of close ones, on her behalf? Or, as the funeral parlor would have it -- a scattering? Maybe all of the above?

We set aside today for this. Or, part of this day. The two young families, a friend, my ex and his partner. And me of course. Ed stayed home because he's still not past his kidney drama. Besides, I'll be spending the night with the young family up from Chicago. And in fact, he has heard plenty of commemorative thoughts, listened to loads of mom issues that needed to be resolved by me, helped move each time I had to move her, taught her everything she knew about computers, fixed broken this, broken that. Today I told him he should stay home.

My mother repeated many times that she did not want any ceremony once she died. But, she wasn't always trustworthy on these things. She said no when she meant yes. And anyway, I was going to listen to the kids on this one. And they were clear: they want something to commemorate her life. And I honestly think she would have liked what we did today. I think.

It's Saturday and I start the day in my usual way.

I skip the market once again. It's winding down for me. I'm back to picking up most of my produce at the grocery store. 

Breakfast with a very tired Ed. It's not early, it's just that things are dragging him down right now. Let me perk him up with a duo photo. To show off his clean shaven face! And my burnt croissant. Never put a pastry on the upper level of a toaster oven. Live and learn.

By late morning, I pack a small bag and head out toward the lake. Not our local lake. We're meeting up at Harrington Beach State Park. It's by Lake Michigan and yes, thank goodness, the weather is just perfect for this. My mom loved sunshine (in California, it was sunny all the time, she'd remind me every time we had a cloud cover) and considered sunbathing to be virtuous and invigorating. She stuck with it all the way through last summer. Today is one sunny day!

The idea is to do the ceremony in that shore-front park. In her one hundred years of life, I can't really say that my mother developed a special attachment to any particular place. Yes, she liked New York. And she liked living in Berkeley. But neither place tugged at her heart once she moved away. The one place that she did seem somewhat sentimental about was Cross Village -- on the Michigan shores of Lake Michigan. In their later years, her parents ran a guest house for Polish workers there. She would come up often, to help, maybe to play -- I don't really know, she would never admit to playing. But it was a formative moment in her life. She was a young adult, at the cusp of marriage, and at the brink of leaving America to return to Poland. She was afraid of McCarthy and she thought my dad, who was deeply infatuated with her, was quite an interesting prospect. He said come travel with me to Poland to check it out, and so she did. Can't say that she was thrilled with what she found there, but, within a year or two they got married, she got pregnant, her parents followed her back, and so she stayed in Poland. For a while, anyway. I am absolutely sure she would not want to be scattered in Poland, even though her father is somewhere there. (Her mother is splashing around in the Pacific as best as I can figure out.)

Cross Village itself was (is) a nothing spot. It really is just a village -- Ed and I drove up there some fifteen years ago, just to see what it's like. (I wrote about it here.) But it has my grandparents written all over it -- for me, but especially for my mother. And in her last days, all she would talk about was a return to her own mother and father. The shores of Lake Michigan it is then. A scattering of ashes, a memorial.

*     *     *

First stop: Homewood Suites, northwest of Milwaukee. I'll meet the younger family here. It's our overnight and they'll be my chauffeurs for the remainder of the day.

They're here! Last minute getting ready...

We drive to Harrington Beach State Park. It's a beautiful spot with a nice stretch of shoreline and a wooded space hugging the waters. When you step out onto the sandy beach you notice one thing: it is windy today! I mean, like you wouldn't believe! The waves are huge!

But it is sunny. Someone may say -- too windy. I'm going to retort -- but sunny and wildly beautiful!

Everyone arrives. All here. All wanting to be here.

 

 

(cousins)

(all of us; thank you, Carey, for taking this photo)

I read three poems. Szymborska, Oliver, and Anonymous.

The younger family has prepared a song. I Walked With You a Ways.

Snowdrop reads a meaningful passage from a book... 

Sparrow reads a bit of a story that is a hand-down from his great grandma.

My older girl speaks. Memories. Good ones.

We end with a song that is possibly the only one we all associate with my mother. She sang it to me, she sang it to my kids. Is it a little wistful? Or maybe it speaks of a resignation... I sing the first verse, each daughter sings one after, we all join in on the chorus. que sera, sera, whatever will be, will be... (Did you know it was written for a Hitchcock movie? Doris Day sang it in The Man Who Knew Too Much. 1956.)

The wind is so strong! But we scatter ashes, mindfully, not so that they blow back straight at us. We take turns...

My mother belongs to the earth, the water, the sun, stardust. And to our collective past. We are here because she was once here.

*     *     *

We eat dinner at the Twisted Willow Restaurant in Port Washington -- a town that hugs the shores of the lake. It once was a vital commercial outpost. These days it relies more on tourism and nearby Milwaukee to stay afloat, and indeed, to prosper.

Dinner is lovely. Albums from my mother's early years are passed around. The kids play, the adults talk.

And afterwards, we linger still, on the "village green," where the cousins romp and we adults stay a bit more somber. Carey, our family friend shares his recollections of my mother. We listen, nod, understand.

How those five young ones love this moment of utter closeness, out there on the village green of Port Washington...

And then its time for goodbyes. 

I ride over to Wauwatosa with the younger family. They play music, the girls sing along. Dolly Parton, other songs too. And I remember one family car trip from my teen years: my mother, my father, my sister and me. It was raining hard on this particular day and my father was trying to push forward anyway. In the back seat, my sister and I sang songs we'd learned around Polish campfires with our friends. We harmonized some. One song. Another. And another.

Later, in a rare show of gratitude, my mom thanked us. These weren't the best years for her, for my father. They weren't getting along much anymore and the years were pot-marked with silences and recriminations. But on this one car ride we, our songs, put a smile on her face. I felt I had on that day made her happy.

Friday

One more day of steady work outside. The parking lot bed is a mess. Weeds, an excessive spread of phloxes, the encroaching hydrangea, and did I mention weeds? A cleanup is in order. Sigh... a cleanup is always in order. Everywhere. House, yard, yard, house. You have to turn a blind eye to most of it or else all your time will be sucked up by cleaning, straightening, clipping, scrubbing, brushing, dusting, digging...

The morning is cool, but once again, with a promise of a pretty day. Kind of incredible, considering the weather chaos in the south.

I pick up bakery treats downtown. Stocking up, now that we have an easy reheat system going!

 

 

 

Breakfast. Cinnamon rolls, fruits, flowers from the market. Ed needs a beard trim: add that to my list of cleanups!

Now to work. Dig, pull, move Lost Lilies. Again. And again. 

I ask Ed for help in cleaning out a pathway. And in loading a cart full of chips. And still I use up the whole morning, all those hours until it's time for me to get the kids. Dig, pull, move Lost Lilies. Chip. 

Ed says -- you must like doing this. He knows he's going to get a "yes and no" answer out of me. I like the results, I like some of the work, and I think all of it is good for me.  I love the satisfaction of getting a job done. I don't like doing a half-assed job and knowing that I left too much behind. 

He continues -- picking out flowers and hotel rooms for your trips, yep, your favorite tasks.

Alright, mr. smartie pants. Not exactly my favorite tasks... But he is right: I can lose myself in this work and completely let go of the feeling of time passing. The clock becomes irrelevant. The focus is on imagining how a flower will look come spring, or how I will feel waking up in that room, far away from home, far away from a to-do list. Far away. It's all very satisfying!

 

The kids are in good spirits.

 

 

Call it end of the week joy!

And toward the end of the afternoon, after I drop them off, I return to the flower fields, finishing off a few of them before the light fades.

I notice that I work in circles. I began the cleaning operations in the fields closest to the farmhouse door and slowly I expanded my reach. This Fall, I've done everything but the fields by the sheep shed and the field by the road. Somehow you always want order closest to your home and you're more comfortable with chaos the farther you step away from your little nest. There are pockets of total chaos in the farmette lands -- behind the writers shed, in the far corners of the property. We don't really mind that. Order can be stifling and of course the animals, the insects -- they thrive in the thickets, not the neatly weeded spaces. 

Still, I'm glad I worked hard to tidy the flowers fields this year. It will be much easier to attend to them in spring. That's the hope!

with love...