A birthday wish: more dullness, less drama

Would a grown man feel silly carrying a Happy Birthday balloon around a hospital all morning long? If he did, he didn't admit it. 

Yes, my son celebrated his birthday with chemotherapy--not exactly the top item on his wish list but he'll take it. Hospital staff gave him a birthday balloon at his first appointment, and everywhere he went for the rest of the day total strangers smiled and wished him a happy birthday. 

We had a little time to kill in Columbus afterward so I drove us up to Belle's Bread, a Japanese-owned French bakery known for its curry donuts. I bought some baked goods to take home and then my son wandered into the nearby Asian market and looked with longing at the sushi selection, knowing that raw fish is not a good choice for a guy with a compromised immune system. I remember the first time I ate sushi again after finishing six months of cancer treatment. There's nothing better than that long-delayed first bite--but it'll be a while before he tastes it. 

He stayed the night in Columbus so he can get more chemo today, so I was a long way down the highway before the big event: our daughter and son-in-law drove to Columbus to take our son out to dinner with his nieces and nephew. Chemo can make things taste horrible, dull the appetite, make swallowing painful, and even inspire vomiting, but this time he was able to enjoy a meal without too much drama.  

It wasn't a normal birthday but this hasn't been a normal year. My mother used to insist that normal is just a setting on your dryer, but after four full months of cancer treatments, we're really hoping that next year's birthday will involve more fun and less drama, more cake and fewer needles and nasty chemicals that make swallowing painful. Maybe it could even be a little, dare we say it, dull. Enough with the drama already! (But a few balloons wouldn't hurt.) 

From bird-watching to word-watching.

So how was your holiday, I asked, and my colleague shrugged. I missed the library, she said. I need to be here to write.

Writing during summer break? What a concept. Writing Wednesdays begin tomorrow but meanwhile I've been too distracted to do any serious writing. Time to construct a list of summer priorities! But that feels too much like work. Maybe tomorrow.

Today I'm holding on to the last vestiges of joy from my weekend with the grandkids. I'm recalling how they infuse every moment with energy, how they play the piano with verve and invent silly games and put together Lego blocks in unconventional ways. The youngest showed me how her colorful Lego shark could swallow a swimmer and poop him out the other end. When she and her brother couldn't recall the theme to Jaws, they hummed the Pink Panther theme instead. 

I loved taking the oldest grandkid to riding lessons and seeing that petite person take a great big horse through its paces with confidence and skill. Where did she get that? From her mother, no doubt. Big animals make me nervous.

But that didn't stop me from trying to visit some bison on the drive home. I'd read about the bison herd at the new visitor center at Jesse Owens State Park, which isn't really on the way to anywhere but I didn't mind taking the scenic route down twisty country roads. 

Finally I turned in at the sign pointing to the parking area. I had to haul my wonky knee up multiple flights of steps, through a steep green area that will one day be a pollinator habitat, up to the top of a hill where the Visitor Center sat, and the first thing I saw was another lot where I could have parked to avoid the many steps. 

Today my knee is absolutely screaming, but at least I got to see the place where the herd of bison would have been if they'd been out. We've had rain. The lower part of the bison habitat was flooded. The bison were locked safely away from the mess, so I just enjoyed the view. Saw some killdeer. Heard some orioles. Dashed down the steps as fast as I could to avoid the sudden rain.

On Sunday I'd had lunch with an old friend and stopped by the heron rookery in Cuyahoga Valley National Park, where an idling tourist bus made the place sound and smell like a busy factory floor. When the bus finally left, it was as if someone had opened a door to birdsong. Herons were feeding chicks in many of the nests, but thick foliage obscured the view. So imagine how delighted I was today to stop on the bridge at the end of my driveway and see a great blue heron standing in my own little creek.

Good to get away, nice to be home, but soon I'll need to switch from birdwatching to word-watching. Summer break is here--so it's time for summer writing. Tomorrow.

  

At the heron rookery

 

Yellow warbler looking sweet

Oriole

Tree swallow looking sassy

Tag-team parenting, in and out of the rookery

A great blue heron soared toward a sycamore tree and landed near one of many massive nests. It poked and prodded its partner on the nest, which rose up, shook itself off, plodded out onto a limb as if to take stock of the wider world, and soared off as the returning partner settled onto the nest. Tag-team parenting: as good a way as any to get it done.

I thought we'd reached the empty nest era in our house but my husband and I have been doing some tag-team parenting of our own, taking turns dealing with our son's health problems so that we can maintain some semblance of ordinary life. He's home from the hospital once again and rejoicing in the news that the tumor has shrunk to nearly nothing, but he still needs help getting to treatments and tests and we need to be alert in case he takes a turn for the worse, as he did last week. 

Today it was my turn to soar off into the distance to see my daughter's choir concert. Two hours driving, 90 minutes of music, and two more hours driving back--but worth every minute on the road, just to fill my senses with beauty in the company of my grandkids. 

An added bonus: the performance space was five minutes away from my favorite heron rookery. Family, music, beauty, birds--food for my soul to sustain me through a busy week. 

Friday poetry challenge: Cancer-crostic

Evidence that I'm feeling more at home in my temporary digs: yesterday I drove from the hospital to our rental unit without turning on my GPS app, and then I cooked a real supper--pork tenderloin roasted with potatoes, carrots, onions, garlic, and herbs. A week ago I was having trouble ordering fast food at the drive-through, but yesterday I acted almost like a person with a full complement of functioning brain cells.

Evidence that I'm still a bit of a basket case: I lost my car in the parking garage. I loathe parking garages as a rule because those low ceilings feel claustrophobic and the long lines of cars weaving this way and that make me nervous--and also because I've never forgotten the trauma of slamming my car into a column in a parking garage decades ago--but I thought I'd pretty much mastered this garage. Every morning I make a mental note of where I've parked, and most afternoons I walk straight to my car. 

But not yesterday. 

I stood facing an empty spot on Level 5 and wondered why my car wasn't there, and the thought of walking all the way back to the pedestrian bridge to search for my license plate at the "Find My Car" kiosk filled me with gloom. I stood and thought and thought some more and then, on a hunch, I went one floor down and found my car at that identical spot on Level 4.

Well, at least I found it. Cherish small victories.

In trying times it's helpful to focus on little things that make me feel normal, ish. Folding laundry and putting it away in drawers instead of living out of a suitcase--normal. Cooking a simple supper instead of grabbing a can of soup or a bag of fast food--normal. Driving from Point A to Point B without requiring a robot voice to tell me where to turn--normal. Greeting the neighbor and her three-year-old daughter by name--normal.

But at the same time too many parts of these days feel hopelessly abnormal. It's not right for my son's body to be treated like a pincushion, for instance. They still haven't figured out where to put a new central line so he has IV needles installed in both arms for various purposes, and the nurses keep coming in to suck out whole tubes of blood for testing. It's not right that my big strong young man sometimes lacks the strength to hold up his head, thanks to all the poison they're pumping through those IV's to shrink the tumor. He ought to be working instead of wrestling with insurance companies and filling out short-term disability forms. Everything about this situation is wrong wrong wrong. 

But it's also temporary, an unexpected aberration from the usual course of things. I look on my own experience with cancer 17 years ago and from this distance it seems like a mere blip. I told my son that once the chemo made me so sleepy that I fell asleep sitting up while holding a whole mug of tea, with disastrous consequences for the tea, and I remind him (and myself) that this too shall pass. We'll deal with whatever comes after, but for now, we're spending some down-time in this liminal realm while holding tightly to every little scrap of normality that comes our way.

When life gets tough, the alphabet never disappoints, so let's try an acrostic poem today:

N is for normal(ish), nothing quite new; 
O's an ongoing oncology zoo.
R sends reminders of roadways and routes; 
M makes a mess of my mind, and it moots 
All we aspired to accomplish apace.  
L is lymphoma in liminal space.

Nothing's quite normal, but it could be worse:
The human condition. And thus ends my verse.

Now it's your turn: wave the alphabet like a wand to create abracadabra acrostics.

Exploring the angles

This time of year I would normally go tromping in the woods to take photos of pawpaw blossoms, buckeye buds, and spring ephemerals, but instead I'm spending too much time indoors and noticing intersections of interesting shapes. One of these days I'll see trilliums again, but for now it's all about the angles.

From my son's window, I see the OSU library where I did research 30 years ago

Reflections and distortions

Columbus sunrise

Going places

Weather and elevators and worst-case scenarios

Yesterday at The James--and everyone calls it The James because the full name is a bit unwieldy--The Arthur G. James Cancer Center. Who wants to say cancer all day long, and who is this James dude anyway? I looked him up: Arthur G. James spent 35 years raising money to fund a cancer hospital at The Ohio State University and was surprised when his name was plastered all over the front of the building. He was a small-town Ohio kid who eventually served as president of the American Cancer Society and, in 1987, was inducted into Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans. Local boy makes good, and it's a good thing he did because now his hospital is in charge of my son's health.

So anyway: yesterday we were sitting in the Terrace Cafe on the second flood and watching through the windows as workers in parkas stacked up chairs and tables to take them to safety in advance of an impending winter storm, and I was suddenly thankful for people who see a storm coming and know how to prepare for the worst.

Today's weather is not the worst I've experienced but it was strange to see snow blowing on magnolia blossoms and painful to feel the bitterly cold wind whistling through the parking garage. The view from my son's 18th-story room has veered sharply all day between sunshine and snow, sometimes both at the same time.

And speaking of worst-case scenarios, you know you've entered an alternate reality when the doctors tell you lymphoma is the best-case scenario. We're still awaiting results of tests, but everyone is thrilled to be leaning toward lymphoma because it can be treated, and while the treatment isn't fun, it can be quick and effective.

Nobody's naming the worst-case scenario, and who can blame them?

Tests continue at their own peculiar pace, hours of blank nothingness and then suddenly the room is full of people who need something right now. Lots of waiting and boredom tinged with terror. No one is sleeping well. 

I've been distracting myself with a book, Still Life by Sarah Winman, which is simultaneously a paean to impermanence and a celebration of the joys of human connection. But now the book is done and I need another, or maybe a magazine full of frivolous and unmemorable articles, because otherwise I will be forced to read the academic journal article I so foolishly agreed to review last week when the topic seemed fascinating.

I had to leave the nothing-happening room on the 18th floor and take a walk for a while, ostensibly to scope out a good quiet location where I can teach my class via Zoom tomorrow morning. Helpful colleagues covered my class yesterday, but my students have an exam on Friday so I'd like to make sure they're ready to roll. Besides, this is my final opportunity to teach Faulkner's "Barn Burning" and I wouldn't miss it for the world. 

The sky was clear and blue when I left the 18th floor but by the time I got down to 2 the entire outdoors had disappeared within a solid block of gray and snow was blowing in every direction. The elevator took the scenic route, stopping at least half a dozen times on the way down, which sparked a few light comments from passengers. Mostly people don't look too closely at each other in the elevators for fear of bumping up against a raw nerve. The elevator descends with a muted whoosh that whispers cancer cancer cancer cancer.

On the second floor I walked around a bit and grinned again on seeing the Chlapaty Terrace, which transported me back to my campus office just upstairs from the Chlapaty Cafe. The dude gets around, or I guess his money does.

Everywhere at The James I see scarlet and gray colors and buckeye motifs representing The Ohio State University, and it's possible to sit down and take a selfie alongside a statue of Brutus the Buckeye. Eventually I may give it a try.  

Today, though, I sat near a window where a sudden ray of sun warmed my legs. Blue sky again, and a pair of Canada geese flying low just above the level of the traffic lights outside, looking out of place in the city. Of course the Olentangy River is just a few blocks away so the presence of waterfowl shouldn't be surprising, but for a moment I hope I'll flying through this city just as quickly as those geese.

But soon I have to go back up to 18 to see what's happening, or not happening, as the case may be. I'll look out the window and marvel at the blowing snow, thankful for the people ready to cope with every possibly scenario. I'm hoping for the best-case scenario but if the weather shifts, I trust that Arthur's people will know what to do.

Stuck in a time tunnel

Yesterday when I went through security at the James Cancer Center, the scanner detected the shape of a weapon in my purse. Today I left the "weapon" behind. Who knew a glasses case could be so dangerous?

The friendly person at the desk had to issue my official visitor badge, which required taking a photo at a time of day when my face wasn't quite ready for prime time. I wasn't sufficiently caffeinated and I haven't slept much since Saturday, which was how many days ago? Hospital time is fluid; sometimes it passes very quickly and sometimes it seems to stop.

They moved my son to a different room at 3 a.m., which explains why he hasn't slept much lately either. The biopsy either will or won't take place today and we either will or won't learn what's what with the tumor in his chest. Meanwhile, life goes on--slowly, and then quickly. Who knows which way the clock will turn next? All we can do is wait and see.

Danger, danger!

Yeah boy I'm happy to be here.

Trusting the Team to fix a massive mess

My eyes lit up when the nurse said helicopter--a horribly inappropriate response, I realize. This was serious business! My son was sick! We'd been in the emergency room for hours awaiting word on the next step! Some toxic combination of boredom, stress, nervousness, and fear had turned my brain to mush, so when the nurse came in and said they'd be transporting my son to Columbus by helicopter, my first response was: neat!

My son says the helicopter ride was interesting but uncomfortable, and the discomfort has not decreased. He's a big guy, just a bit too tall for the gurney in the helicopter and the bed in the ICU. He hasn't eaten for close to 24 hours just in case they get a chance to do a biopsy today. And he's not allowed to lie flat because the gigantic tumor in his chest presses against his heart and restricts his airways, a situation that could turn deadly very quickly.

And in fact it's a wonder that it hasn't already. The mass in his chest was initially discovered last November, but the biopsy has been delayed by an insurance company that kept rejecting the need for a PET scan. He'd had some shortness of breath and pain while skiing in Banff last week and more after he got home. Yesterday it got to be too much so he went to the emergency room, where they found that the mass has nearly doubled in size (!) and needs to be biopsied and treated, like, yesterday.

For years he's been a healthy guy whose medical needs were easily met by the local Quick-Care, but now that he's a patient at a world-class cancer hospital, he has a Team, and right now the Team is talking about how they're going to do a biopsy on the tumor in his chest if he can't safely lie flat. They're a smart Team--they'll figure it out. 

I drove up early this morning after not much sleep and now, in between visits by various members of the Team, I'm trying to make myself useful. I'm texting with colleagues to figure out how to cover my class--can't afford to fall behind with an exam coming up Friday. I'm chasing down tissues and a phone charger for my son. I'm offering helpful tidbits from my time in cancer treatment--just now, for instance, I told him that patients leave behind dignity at the hospital door, and if he doesn't believe it, he can just look at the sunny yellow non-slip socks that aren't quite big enoug hfor those size-15 feet. 

Such a big strong guy looks weak and wrong in a hospital gown, but he's in the right place to get the help he needs. If he hadn't gone to the ER yesterday, this could have turned tragic very quickly. Now we sit and wait and listen to the Team and at some point we'll have a diagnosis and a treatment plan and a path toward a future that may or may not include helicopters. My main job right now is to remain calm. It's a tough job, but someone's got to do it.

Signs and wonders

I looked at the dead bird at my feet and wondered whether it might be an omen.

I'd noticed the bird yesterday morning, a lively little house finch flitting around the feeders, its brilliant red head providing a flash of color on a bleak gray day. We get more purple finches here than house finches hereabouts and I was so excited to see this one that I took a (very bad) photo with my phone to send to my daughter. And then this morning I walked out to my car--reluctantly, because I did not at all relish heading back to work after winter break--and there on the driveway right next to my car door was a dead house finch. Frozen solid, with no sign of injury.

An omen!?

Ridiculous, of course, but there I was making my first visit back to campus in weeks (though it feels more like months) at the start of a new semester in a new year that also happens to be my final year of teaching before retirement, and I was looking for some reason to feel positive about all the annoying tasks I had to tackle today. Instead, nature delivered a dead bird. If I had one of the seers from Homer's Odyssey on hand maybe he could have told me what the bird portends, but those guys were mostly interested in interpreting auspicious actions of eagles. Would they even notice a tiny house finch dropping dead in my driveway?

As it happens, I saw eagles yesterday, a pair of them flying overhead near the Muskingum River. I had to crane my neck to see them and the only reason I could do that was that my son was driving my car, taking three of us to Columbus to meet up with five other members of the family for a Columbus Blue Jackets hockey game. This is the second year my son has treated us all to a hockey game as a Christmas gift, and this time he even took us all out to eat afterward--and did all the driving, two hours each way. I don't know if seeing eagles flying just overhead constitutes a sign of anything specific, but I'd say that having a son willing to provide such an excellent experience is a sign that he knows what makes a great family gift. (I was going to say it's a sign that he was raised right, but that feels just a tad self-serving.)

What a difference a day makes: hockey and eagles yesterday, work and a dead finch today. Work was hard but I did what I needed to do and I even got excited about meeting with a colleague to put together what promises to be a really fun presentation. I hope I'll have more eagle days coming up but I guess I can deal with the other kind as well. Maybe a dead bird in my driveway is just a dead bird in my driveway. 

Eagles overhead, though--that's another kind of wonder entirely.

Winter snooze-fest

As my prosthetic memory insists on reminding me, one year ago today I was on Tybee Island, Georgia, in the presence of egrets and skimmers and sunshine and seafood, and two years ago today I was doing about the same on Cedar Key, Florida. But winter break is not all sunshine and shorelines: 17 years ago today I'd just arrived in San Francisco for the MLA convention three time zones away from home, where my paper was scheduled so late in the day that I felt like I was sleep-walking through the whole presentation. Was it a brilliant paper? You'd have to ask the half-dozen listeners who bothered to show up. 

This year I'm at home for the holidays, being entertained by the photos sent daily by friends who are enjoying a cruise to Antarctica. Kayaking amongst whales and penguins and beautiful sunshine looks fabulous, but I am not the least bit envious of their good fortune because I know I could never take such a trip, thanks to a tendency toward severe seasickness. It's hard to watch whales through a constant scrim of vomit. (Trust me--I've tried!)

Yesterday I took my car out of the driveway for the first time since Sunday for a trip to the grocery store. That's about the extent of the excitement going on in my life right now. Not that I'm complaining: I received a pile of great books for Christmas plus a couple of beautiful jigsaw puzzles and I have some low-stakes administrative tasks I need to tackle, so I'm not going to say the days are just packed but I'll admit that they're not without incident. The incidents just don't make for interesting reading.

So I'm grateful for a gift my daughter gave me, a gift that shows how well she knows me. It never would have occurred to me to seek out a rack of Scrabble tiles spelling out THANKFUL, but when I unwrapped it on Christmas, it was exactly what I needed, a reminder of h0w much I have to be thankful for right here at home: word games, family, puzzles, chickens, so much more.

But still: would a little sunshine be too much to ask? 

Father and son working on a puzzle

Angelic voices, eclectic spaces

Two holiday concerts one week apart:

Last week I enjoyed Handel's Messiah sung by a heavenly host of singers, including my husband, accompanied by orchestra and harpsichord in the historic Basilica of St. Mary of the Assumption, an ornately decorated worship space where hundreds of listeners sat on rows of pews surrounded by statuary, stained glass, imported marble, and angels, lots of angels, including cherubs hovering around the ascending Mary up front and, above our heads, a phalanx of carved angels holding torches on their heads.

Yesterday we watched five women (including our daughter) singing Christmas music in close harmony, without accompaniment, in Cuyahoga Falls at the historic Jenks Building, in a converted garage where a spattering of observers who had braved the horrible weather sat on mismatched chairs surrounded by decor I can only describe as eclectic: an industrial-size coffee roaster on one side of the performance space and a canoe hanging from the ceiling on the other, plus piles of used books and vinyl records, unusual light fixtures and barking dogs sculpted from scrap metal and fish trophies and framed covers of Time magazine featuring Kennedys and a drill bit the size of my oldest grandkid and an anvil and a small statue of a man playing saxophone and, above our heads, a bust of a man wearing on his head not torches but what looked like a small satellite dish.

During the final leg of our two-hour drive to yesterday's concert, the weather was awful enough to prompt me to ask out loud, "Is it worth killing ourselves in a snowstorm just to get to this concert?"

Reader: it was. Spending a couple of hours surrounded by music so lovely it makes me smile clear down to the soles of my feet is worth any effort, whether it's Handel in the basilica or "The Holly and the Ivy" in the garage.

I rarely carry much cash but, thanks to an unusual series of events, last week I ended up with a fifty-dollar bill and a twenty in my wallet, and after the Messiah performance I decided I would put my hand in my purse and pull out a bill blindly to put it into the plate, and then yesterday the other bill went into the tip jar. I'd do it again in a heartbeat. You can't buy holiday cheer, but those experiences were worth every penny.

Voices of angels.

Coffee roaster the size of a locomotive

The singers in the family

Not a clue. Seriously, I've got nothing.

Snoopy in his Sopwith Camel?

Sn

Junkyard dogs

"To be thankful for just the one day"

Just after sunrise on a cold fall day, my oldest grandkid is down in the meadow helping Grampa with the chickens--but if you'd asked me sixteen years ago whether any part of that sentence would ever describe my life, I'd have laughed myself silly.

Grandkids in my house, chickens in my meadow, four pies in my kitchen--all made by my adorable daughter sleeping (with her husband) in her old bedroom. Later our son will arrive, the capable man who supplied the turkey that's been smoking out back all night long. He'll get to do Fun Uncle duties as we all pitch in to put together today's feast. At some point we'll all take a walk and I'll bet Grampa will ask the kids whether they want to help him pull beets. They'll be delighted. They love to get their hands dirty in the garden.

So much to be thankful for! I never could have predicted these particular circumstances, but it's funny how the normal course of life produces unexpected blessings: family, turkey, chutney, pie, chickens, gardens, pumpkins, beets--the list goes on. Sixteen years ago this week I survived my final round of chemotherapy, the last leg of a journey that left me wondering whether I'd survive long enough to have grandchildren, and now look at this.

There's a moment in Charles Frazier's novel Cold Mountain when Ruby, the backwoods girl who knows little of the wider world but nevertheless possesses depths of wisdom, expresses some contempt for the Union cause in the Civil War because they had "invented a holiday called Thanksgiving, which Ruby had only recently got news of, but from what she gathered the features to be, she found it to contain the mark of a tainted culture. To be thankful for just the one day."

In a few minutes I'll need to get into the kitchen and put together the dough for the pumpkin yeast rolls so it can start rising, but first, while the turkey smokes and the family sleeps and the husband and grandkid are tending the chickens, I want to sit in the quiet house and be thankful--but not for just the one day. 

All in a day's work

Not that anyone asked, but:

Q: How many weeds did the kiddos pull from the brick walkway in front of our house yesterday morning?
A: Uncounted, but enough to make it unnecessary to weed-whack the walkway.

Q: How many rocks did the kiddos pile up to build a set of dams across our creek?
A: More than I could count, some of them heavy enough to require cooperative lifting.

Q: How many kiddos were reading Calvin and Hobbes books on the sofa at the same time?
A: Three. By the end of the week, all the kids will have read all the books. 

Q: How many rivers did I cross with the kiddos yesterday?
A: Three: The Muskingum, by boat, twice; the Ohio, by car and sternwheel boat, multiple times; the Little Muskingum, by foot, once. 

Q: What was the kiddos' favorite part of the boat tour on the Valley Gem?
A: Standing in front of the turning sternwheel and getting thoroughly soaked by the spray.

Q: How many local historical/natural/cultural experiences did we manage to squeeze into our three spare hours in the Marietta area between the boat tour and the snake-related event?
A: Viewed the Start West monument carved in 1938 by Gutzon Borglum; visited three Indian mounds and climbed the tallest one; bought goat milk hand lotion sourced from local goats at a store owned by my former colleague; ate fast food at Wendy's; walked across the newly renovated Hills covered bridge over the Little Muskingum River; got a little lost driving through part of the Wayne National Forest; caught sight of a bald eagle perched on a tree next to the Ohio River near Newell's Run (but did not get good photos because I dropped my camera at The Wilds last week and destroyed my telephoto lens); hiked a short trail on Middle Island in the Ohio River.

Q: How many snakes did the kiddos pet at the All About Snakes event at the Ohio River Islands National Wildlife Refuge welcome center?
A: Three, multiple times. The event was so well attended that people were forced to park in inappropriate places and sit packed like sardines on sofas or criss-cross-applesauce on the floor, but those who were patient enough to wait for the crowd to thin out had the thrill of touching the three snakes over and over and over again and peering at a six-day-old milk snake.

Q: How exhausted was everyone after such a long, hot, and eventful day?
A: Sorry, what was the question? Just nodded off for a moment...

Things I had forgotten about having a house full of kids

None of this should be a surprise, I tell myself. We raised our own children and fostered a bunch of other children while going to grad school and holding down jobs and staying mostly sane, so nothing I'm seeing this week should surprise me.

And yet: I can't believe how quickly that loaf of bread disappeared, and didn't we just buy a gallon of milk? Where did all the sweet corn go? Why does the refrigerator look as if it's been attacked by ravenous beasts instead of three small and (mostly) harmless children?

Why are there no forks in the drawer? How can the dishwasher be full again so soon?

How many socks can six little legs wear? Are the dirty socks multiplying in the laundry basket?

Why does my front yard look like it's sprouting colorful fungi in the shape of wet boots? 

Am I seriously going to have to buy another jar of peanut butter? 

Do I have to think about cooking again today? Didn't I just cook yesterday? Where did all the leftovers go?

Finally, some peace and quiet when my son takes his nieces and nephew to play Putt-Putt and go to the pool--but who's this on the phone? One of the kids is sick? And I need to drive to town to pick her up so the others can have more fun? I mean, what was I going to do with my peace and quiet anyway?

So life is a little nutty right now but I can't complain. The grandkids are doing a great job helping keep the chaos at a dull roar--folding their own laundry, matching their own socks, fetching their own boots out of the front yard--and they're bringing lots of fun and energy into the house. We've gone on a creek hike and colored pictures and blown bubbles and we've just finished decorating a cake with fresh spring berries, and every day we get to see wonderful photos from their parents' journeys in Italy.

But also I'm delighted that the creek is low with no chance of flooding out Grandma and Grampa Camp. So even as we're horrified at the news of flash floods washing away children in Texas, we hold our grandkids close and pray for the families still wondering whether they'll see their children again.

In for some wild times

July! Academic summer is half over, but Grandma and Grampa Camp has just begun. My daughter and son-in-law will be making beautiful music in Italy for the next two weeks, so I went to fetch the grandkids and bring them here. My son has come back from South Africa with photos and fun gifts, so he'll be here to play the role of Fun Uncle while the grandkids are here.

Already they've helped me shop for groceries, examined the garden, thrown rocks in the creek, and met the chicken. (Marauding raccoons reduced the chicken population to one, but the chicken run has been thoroughly reinforced and the raccoon population has been significantly reduced. At some point there will be more chickens.) Now the little imps are doing crafts while wearing the adorable Springbok rugby jerseys their uncle brought back from South Africa. 

Day One of Grandma and Grampa Camp will soon be in the books and so far we've all survived. Tomorrow we're off to The Wilds to see some wildlife and then who knows what might happen? We're in for wild times...while I try very hard not to hear the clock ticking down toward the start of the fall semester. 

Fun watching the kids pursue their interests.

 

In the way-back on the way back

One of the grandkids asked me this weekend how old I am and another immediately objected that it's rude to ask old people how old they are, which didn't help, but finally I told the questioner the year I was born so he could do the math, something I have to do every time I'm asked about my age or my kids' ages or how many years I've been married because who keeps those numbers constantly at top of mind? I could see the wheels spinning in the grandkid's head but even a math whiz gets something wrong once in a while, which is why we all laughed at the first guess--43--which is just a few years older than my oldest kid and that kind of math doesn't work unless you're a Tribble, born pregnant. Then the grandkid got confused and said, "Wait, did you say 1861?"

Well I feel about 164 this morning after driving two hours to get to campus in time for my morning class. As much as I love a road trip, driving that far takes a little something out of me, which is why when I got to campus I decided to park in a two-hour spot and risk the $20 ticket, because who wants to drive around in circles looking for a parking space after being on the road all morning? Parking enforcement is notoriously inconsistent locally, so maybe I'll go outside at the end of a very long meeting-filled day and find a windshield covered in pollen but no sign of a ticket at all.

I'm tempted to go outside right now just to get warm before my next class. For reasons no one can explain, my little corner of the building feels like a meat locker today, while my classroom on the other end of the building remains in tropical rain-forest mode. If I step out into the bright sunshine in my dark sweater, I'll be toasty in an instant, plus I'd get a chance to check on the progress of the peonies just down the mall. 

As I walk toward the peonies I'll think of a line from my daughter's choir concert last night, where they sang a setting of some Wendell Berry poems, including this, from "Sabbaths":

There is a day
when the road neither
comes nor goes, and the way
is not a way but a place.

"The way is not a way but a place."

I'll have to keep thinking about that one for a while. The music was so beautiful, the setting so serene, the poetry so profound, that I felt transported beyond the present, moving far along a path that brought me back to myself refreshed, something Artificial Intelligence will never accomplish. I hope.

My journey home was much less poetic but my trusty red car safely delivered me into the place where I pursue my way--toward what, I don't know. Happy to be here nevertheless.

Birds, bugs, and beauty

I don't know which is better: hearing my youngest grandkid tell me she's "allergic to bad grammar," watching the middle grandkid holding giant creepy-looking insects in his bare hands, seeing the oldest grandkid win a prize for an Earth Day coloring contest, or hearing all of them correctly identify wildflowers--and ask about the ones they don't recognize yet.

Spring ephemerals are already fading at our house, but two hours north I saw a whole new collection of wildflowers, including squirrel corn, jack-in-the-pulpit, and four species of trillium. After a many-meeting-marathon kind of week, it feels really good to go outside and touch grass--or bugs or birds or trilliums, as the case may be.