While napping yesterday afternoon, I dreamed that while talking with Mom in her kitchen, I mentioned missing being able to write letters to Grammy and how I always ache when I see pink things in the stores that look like something she'd love. "You can write to her or send her anything you want," Mom responded, clearly puzzled. "She loves hearing from you." It didn't feel at all like a dream, our interaction and the setting were so realistic. I goggled at her a few moments before telling her I didn't understand. What was wrong with Mom neurologically now, I wondered, just as I would in real life, that she didn't remember that her own mother has died? She looked back at me with what was probably an expression identical to mine until I finally explained, "Mom--Grammy died. Or. . .I thought she died. . . ?" She looked both pained to hear me say that and relieved to understand finally why I had been so baffled. I spelled out for her that I had thought--wrongly, it was turning out--that Grammy had died last January, we had all gone to her service in New York, and I had even spoken at it. I told her I could share more details but that I didn't want to hurt her. She said, sounding just how she would in real life, that it hurt her more to find out that I had thought Grammy had been gone going on two years and that I hadn't been in touch with her in all that time. None of it even happened, I realized, a thrill of horror and gratitude sweeping over me: Grammy is still alive! Sommer's cousin isn't on a ventilator post-Covid! Stuffed is still here with us! Mikes' mom didn't have a stroke! It was all a dream!All the other losses of 2020 and 2021 were just bad dreams! I started to cry from the incredible relief of it, and I woke up then for real, and really in tears. Mom called a couple hours later to tell me that one of my cousins has a brain tumor. January 2020-onward: And so it goes.
I pray and rest and appreciate beauty and keep in touch and listen to music and walk and work and cook good food and try to write and try to read, but life has felt more rough-patch-ish than not for so very long now--and for so many of us. I told Mike the other day that although I don't feel like I can focus enough to write very well the past couple years and can't concentrate long enough to read as voraciously as I did before either, I need to keep trying. It will be creativity that saves me this time, just as it has so many times before. Bear with me, then, as I try to find the words to tell the stories. It's been a long hard slog that has almost muted me, but I will keep trying.
'A weekend admiring Lake Erie, some beautiful walks in my favorite season, watching The Blair Witch Project and A Star Is Born at local theaters, pumpkin cupcakes and a pumpkin-cream cheese roll, a visit with Mike's mom, multiple Monarch butterfly sightings, Stuffed curled up beside the radiator, World Series playoffs, catching up on "This Is Us" and "Better Call Saul," more work on my 1980s memoir, a camel-color cardigan with cream cuffs, "Mud Mask" color nail polish, a coworker who just earned a well-deserved new position, a rainbow, reading Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13, and discovering that pink pumpkins exist.
Thanks to my mom, Saturday was a free night at an Erie hotel to enjoy the fall color around the lake. 'Rain and lightning the whole way back to Pittsburgh last night, but Saturday was gorgeous. The foliage was mostly yellow by the shore but more colorful farther into the woods. It was all beautiful--and a sweet break from routine after an exhausting week.
And to marvel at when the world is soon covered in the grays, blues, and whites of winter, a video of the color around some of the swamps and ponds throughout the park: Ah, fall! ♥
Mike and I returned from our anniversary weekend away last night: A day and night in Erie, PA and a day and night at his parents' home. Perfect little getaway for us right now. A month has passed since Mike's dad died, and the sounds of the seagulls and the tides were balms for the soul Friday.
Ice-cold water--some snow was still mounded under the shade of trees--but restorative for us, nonetheless.
I didn't notice until I uploaded the photo below from my camera that the word "Hope" is clearly written in the sand here.
Mike said he had noticed at the time that there was something drawn in the sand, but he hadn't paid any real attention to it. Hope, I tell you! That's at least as sweet as all my found hearts.
The last time I'd visited Lake Erie, I was about thirteen years old. The beach and woods bordering it are just as I remember.
This time, though, instead of making the trip with my dad's older sisters, I was with my husband--
--and instead of spending a humid summer day giggling as my aunts teased me about having crushes on lifeguards, I was using my husband as a windbreak as I huddled for warmth against him on a log. It was really too chilly for bare legs and bare feet, but that's what beaches are for, and the comfort of sand and waves against my skin was worth every second of mind-numbing FREEZING COLD. :)
Ducks--Mike's favorite--and seagulls paddled before us, and to hear the gulls later outside our hotel room too was just bliss to me. ♥ Although we were only staying for a night, we allowed ourselves the one-bedroom hotel suite that offered balconies and a rare-to-us bit of luxury. I figured we deserved to treat ourselves a bit, and so we did.
Saturday evening, we were greeted at my in-laws' home by their gorgeous-eyed cat--
--and equally striking spring flowers.
A rock wall is a "must" for my dream home and Mike has known this for ages, but it didn't occur to him for the longest time to mention that oops, oh, that's right, his parents have one out in the corner of their backyard. Methinks this is the same lack of attention to detail that made him oops, see that someone had written something in the sand in front of us but not care enough to read it. Gah. :)My mother-in-law's flowers looked heavenly in front of the rocks, making it hard to decide if it was the shore or the cat or the wall that counted as Today's Charming Thing.
The rock wall may have won. ♥
More beauty on my in-laws' back porch--
--and inside their home, an adorable picture of Mr. Mike from a less recent beach trip. :) My all-time favorite photo of him, I think.
And yes, after Anniversary Cupcake Fail, Mike did, indeed, get his Krispy Kreme doughnuts over the weekend. The bee-topped one was mine.
A lovely getaway, and a couple more days off to get caught up here at home. I'm redoing our bathroom and requesting permission from the landlord to paint our bedroom. ("Dare to dream.") And in the next few weeks, we will be visiting both Mike's family and mine, and I will get more interstate driving experience, so as sad as this past month has been, there is more to look forward to on the horizon.
"I think that one must always be in love. To be in love with a person is, of course, ideal, but you can be in love with a flower, a tree, an idea. . . ."
~ Gloria Vanderbilt
"At any given moment, no matter where you are, there are hundreds of things around you that are interesting and worth documenting."
"Love is, above all, the gift of oneself." ~ Jean Anouilh
"Celebrate people who are in your life-- past and present, close by as well as far away. Thank everyone who contributes to your sense of well-being and joy, whether you know them personally or not. Every day, think of all the people who help make your life so rich and rewarding."
~ Alexandra Stoddard
"I'm not expecting to grow flowers in the desert,
But I can live and breathe and see the sun in wintertime."
~ "In a Big Country" by Big Country
"If you are any good at all, you know you can be better."
~ Lindsey Buckingham
"What thou lovest well remains,
the rest is dross ~
What thou lov’st well shall not be reft from thee ~
What thou lov’st well is thy true heritage."
~ Ezra Pound
"Let us make memories carefully of all good things, rejoicing in the wonderful truth that while we are laying up for ourselves the very sweetest and best of happy memories, we are at the same time giving them to others." ~ Laura Ingalls Wilder
"There are things you do because they feel right & they may make no sense & they may make no money & it may be the real reason we are here: to love each other & to eat each other's cooking & say it was good."
~ Brian Andreas
"There is always something left to love. And if you ain't learned that, you ain't learned nothing." ~ Lorraine Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun
"Years ago, my mother used to say to me --she'd say, 'In this world, Elwood, you must be --' She always called me Elwood. 'In this world, Elwood, you must be oh, so smart or oh, so pleasant.' Well, for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant. And you may quote me."
~ Elwood P. Dowd in Mary Chase's play Harvey
"One of the things I learned the hard way was that it doesn't pay to get discouraged. Keeping busy and making optimism a way of life can restore faith in yourself." ~ Lucille Ball
"Until one has loved an animal, a part of one's soul remains unawakened." ~ Anatole France
"A house with Daffodils in it is a house lit up, whether or not the sun be shining outside." ~ A. A. Milne
"When something is too beautiful or too terrible or even too funny for words, then it is time for poetry."
"Keep away from people who belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great, make you feel that you too can become great." ~ Mark Twain ************
"Be not afraid of going slowly. Be afraid of standing still." ~ Chinese proverb
After My First 5K :)
During My First Half Marathon :)
~*~*~*~*~*~*~ * "Is life worth so much trouble?"
* "It depends what one wants in return."
~ Daughter to Student in The Ghost Sonata by August Strindberg ~*~*~*~*~*~*~
"Anyone who ever gave you confidence, you owe them a lot."
~ Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany's, spoken by Holly Golightly
"When we have sampled much and have wandered far and have seen how fleeting and sometimes superficial a lot of the world is, our gratitude grows for the privilege of being part of something we can count on—home and family and the loyalty of loved ones. We come to know what it means to be bound together by duty, by respect, by belonging."
~ Thomas S. Monson
“The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of those depths.
These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern.
Beautiful people do not just happen.”
~ Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, Death: The Final Stage of Growth
“How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in your life you will have been all of these.”
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