20th Century Woman

The Wikipedia definition of “sixes and sevens” contains the words “confusion, disarray, hazard, risk.” All of these apply. I have not posted on this blog for over a month, the longest quiet period since I started writing here just over 6 years ago, and it’s because my life lately has been at sixes and sevens.  I just can’t sort out my thoughts to write anything coherent.

This is the time of year that the island enjoys “drydock”. Our little ferry toots off to Seattle to get inspected, repaired, repainted and generally spruced up. While she’s gone we have a passenger ferry to the mainland but no car ferry

The passenger ferry arriving

. That means finding a parking place at Gooseberry Point on the Indian Reservation so that we have transportation to town and it means schlepping a lot of purchases and other stuff across the water on our backs and shoulders. Smart people go away for the three week drydock period. This year the parking was particularly perilous because the main parking area that we used in past years was off limits to most of us. The county decided not to pay the Indians the yearly rental of $16,000. The Indians then rented it to another group which charges only $1 per day to use it (which sounds good) only you have to rent the parking place for six months. Not worth it for 3 weeks.

We were in a flurry to get my son, Ben, off to Georgia before drydock began. He was caught by the economic downturn, lost his job as a chef and is now changing careers. He is back in school getting his bachelor’s degree and has been out here with us going to the local community college. He wanted to go back to Georgia to be close to his children. We gave him a truck and the little camper we had, but I discovered when we opened it up that it was full of mold from the condensation of winter. So I spent a lot of time combating mold with only partial success. He just made his departure before drydock. I worried about him on his trip all the way to Georgia.

Jerry and I planned to spend drydock at our Condo, since we had to be back and forth to San Juan Island for our legal dispute anyhow. But we found that both of us were homesick for the island after a few days, and I needed to go over to water the garden since there has been no rain for more than a month. We had 3 cars on the mainland: the truck so we could bring an old washer and dryer from Jerry’s house on San Juan and put it in the condo; an old Saturn sedan to leave on the reservation for getting around town, and an old Ford van that my lawyer daughter borrowed because her car broke down.

The Saturn began leaking transmission fluid early in Drydock. Jerry can fix it, but it has to be on the island near his shop to be worked on. That left us with the cumbersome, hulking truck to drive around town. To retrieve the van we would have to go to Whidbey island and drive separate cars back. That’s a 2 hour drive each way. In fact we had to go to Whidbey because depositions about the law suit were arranged at my daughter’s law office. We thought of bringing back the van then.

There were 2 days of depositions. The first day Jerry was on call, but was never needed. He and I roamed Coupville, a little seaside town that is almost unbearably cute, full of souvenir shops and eateries for tourists.

A bed and breakfast in Coupville

Coupville garden

Many churches in Coupville

Overheard tourist in Coupville, "Is that a lake?"

At the end of the day we were too tired and nervous to drive separate cars back to Bellingham.

Jerry resting on Coupville's main street

The next day Jerry was wanted for testimony. I was alone for the morning while he was answering questions, worried that he was being brow beaten by the opposing lawyer. But at lunch he was cheerful and seemed confident. My daughter kept me company for the afternoon, introduced me to her friends and took me to see a favorite judge in chambers. The judge was a pleasant middle-aged lady, immaculately groomed with a desk so tidy that it looked as if nothing ever moved on it. I was grateful for my daughter’s help, but nevertheless at the end of the day I felt emotionally flattened and Jerry and I wanted to drive home together, so again we left the van.

The next law suit related events took place on San Juan Island. We have spent a lot of time crossing water during the past month. At first I took a lot of nautical pictures, but they began to look repetitive after a while.

Recreation for the 1%

Transportation for the rest of us

We made a trip to Friday Harbor on San Juan Island to see our lawyer in preparation for an upcoming hearing, our first court appearance. We took the hulking truck in order to move the washer and dryer, but discovered that we had forgotten to bring the keys to the house they were in. We were tired. We took the truck back to the reservation, parked it next to the disabled Saturn and slunk back to our island.

Next was the actual hearing:another trip to San Juan Island. It was to last 2 days and I had bought 2 new outfits to wear in court and 2 new pairs of shoes. This was essential because I had left my few good clothes in Alaska last fall when we rushed back to Washington to collect Jerry’s brother from the hospital. We had hotel rooms in Friday Harbor, booked for us and for our 2 witnesses from Eastern Washington, each room for 3 days. I was scared to death of the court, the judge, the opposing lawyer, everything connected with the whole thing. Our lawyer took us to see the court room. It looked empty, quiet and normal. It had a dress code posted on the door. The only requirements were to turn off cell phones and not carry a gun. That seemed a lenient code, but Jerry was urged to wear a coat and tie.

The morning of the hearing arrived. We assembled in the courtroom, Jerry and I, our witnesses, and lawyer, and the opposition with witness and lawyer. The clerk looked at her watch: “All rise,” she said. The judge entered. He was lean and distinguished looking with a close cropped salt and pepper beard. “Please be seated,” he said. He explained the purpose of the hearing and said that first some motions would be considered. There followed about a half an hour of lawyer arguments. At the end the whole thing was postponed for three weeks. This meant that I would have to change the tickets that Jerry and I had to go to England.

Later that day we did manage to get the washer and dryer into the truck with the help of our witnesses friends. Then the four of us caught the state ferry and then the passenger ferry and ended the day with a meal on our island at the reopened Beach Store Cafe. It is now run by the Willows, the high end restaurant on Lummi. The food was good. I was glad to be home. Our friends spent the night at our place and set out for Eastern Washington the next day.

For the next 2 days and between legal crises and car troubles I have been preoccupied with vegetables: a surfeit of cucumbers and green beans, tomatoes that languished green and often split or rotted, too many zucchini at first and then the plants began to wilt, ants farming aphids on the artichokes. I tried making pickles from the green beans and cucumbers but with only partial success. The dilly beans were not too bad, but I processed them a bit too long (afraid of too short) and Jerry doesn’t like dill. I made refrigerator pickles from the cucumbers and they are quite nice but would be better if they were real pickling cucumbers. I planted some peas and cauliflower to harvest when we get home from England at the end of October.

Next we had a visit from Jerry’s son Pat who is looking for a new job in the Seattle area. He lives in Texas now. Today we are expecting a 4 day visit from my oldest son and his wife. That’s 3 sets of visitors this month.

As I started to write all this last night Jerry was under the house fixing a plumbing leak. He finally emerged, covered with cobwebs and fiberglass from fallen insulation, soaking wet and muddy. He said rats had bitten into the plastic hot water pipe. They do that because it’s warm and they like the warmth. I piled his awful clothes into the washer and he proceeded to the shower. His nice pocket watch that I gave him for Christmas 2 years ago got washed. Alas.

So these are the confusions, the disarray, the hazard and risk that have kept me from my web friends for the past month. On Tuesday Jerry and I depart for an adventure with my British daughter on her boat from Oxford to London. I’ll be sure to post about that. Lots of love to all.

Last light

Jerry and I walked to Earl’s memorial: down Granger way and around the corner to Earl and Donna’s yard. The street in front of their house was blocked to through traffic; cars were being parked in the cow pasture next to the house. About 150 folding chairs were set up on the lawn in front of the house looking across the street, across the blue water of Hale Passage to the Indian Reservation and the mainland beyond. The weather was beautiful — sunny, breezy and warm. In the distant east the mountains were obscured by banks of dark and bright clouds.

As we arrived a military honor guard — a marching group of elderly men in uniform with flags, a bugler and drummer — had just begun their ceremony.  While we were finding seats the guards fired a salute which made me gasp and jump. The honor guard proceeded with parading colors and the flag folding. The flag was presented to Donna. Then the bugler played taps. When they fired their second salute I was prepared so I didn’t jump. There were speeches and hymns and psalms and prayers.

The preacher, a smiling, plump lady, told the story of Earl’s life. Earl was born almost 89 years ago on this small island, the youngest of 11 children. The island was his whole world until the first time he set foot on the mainland when he was 6 years old. He saw a lot of history in his life. At 16 he lied about his age and joined the military to fight in WW II. He fought first in the Pacific theater where he was wounded on Guadalcanal. He spent 18 months recovering in a military hospital and then was sent to Europe and was wounded once again in the Battle of the Bulge. When he came home to Lummi Island he met and married Donna and they had 4 children, 3 boys and a girl. Earl and his brother built roads on the island, developed property, raised cattle, farmed. Earl was chief engineer on the ferry, and was one of the first drivers of the Whatcom Chief, our sturdy little ferry of today. Donna drove the school bus. They worked together, laughed and loved for more than 50 years. They were famous for their warm hospitality and for being generous and charitable to their neighbors.

Some people on this island guard their beaches ferociously and threaten to call the sheriff if someone walks on their beach. Once I said to Donna, I guess I should find out exactly where my beach begins [I have a partial title to some tide lands] and yours ends so I won’t trespass on your beach. Oh, she replied, Earl and I love to see people on our beach.

John Granger, one of Earl and Donna’s sons and our neighbor on Granger Way, began speaking about Earl’s last days. Even at first his voice was choked, but suddenly he stopped and said, “Here comes the ferry.” Then he couldn’t speak for a moment. The ferry with its flags flying in the brisk wind, made a pass in front of Earl and Donna’s yard and gave a 3 toot salute of its horn. Everyone waved as it turned and chugged back to the dock. There were few dry eyes among the guests.

John spoke of his father’s last days. About how one morning Donna stood by the hospital bed set up in the living room so Earl could look out at “his mountain” — Mount Baker. He opened his eyes and looked up at Donna: “You’re a good looking woman,” he said. “You’re having delusions again, Earl,” she replied. Another day she asked how he was feeling. “Horney,” he replied.

Earl was a free spirit, and sometimes his island rules were different from mainland rules. Sometimes he was sought by the game wardens. (There are too many deer on the island anyhow.) When I first moved here Earl, with his backhoe, maintained the ditches along the road for the county. One day I was suddenly lacking phone service. I saw the truck from the telephone company outside installing a new green telephone utility pedestal and I asked what had happened. He said Earl’s backhoe had knocked it over. I said oh dear. The telephone man shrugged. He does it all the time, he said; once he took out 3 in one day.

Many stories were told at the memorial. It was well managed; most of the stories were short and funny, some were touching.

Once when Donna was driving the ancient school bus, fortunately without children in it, the bus lost its brakes just as it was approaching the docked ferry with Earl at the helm. The bus careened  down the ramp and came to a stop just about in the middle of the passenger cabin. Earl came down and said, “Donna, you know how to drive, and you know how to swim. If you’d steered that thing into the water we could have had a fine new bus!”

It was sometime last winter that I heard Earl had metastasized cancer. Nevertheless Jerry and I still saw him, month after month, out on his backhoe, or sawing firewood with his chain saw, or mowing the grass on his riding mower. But his last days were filled with pain. John Granger told us that three weeks before he died he was starting a piece of equipment when pulling the starter cord caused one of his vertebrae to crumble. After that he was confined to bed with morphine to control the pain.

Donna and Earl were a striking couple, even in old age — Donna, almost 6 feet tall and Earl a bit taller. A theme of the stories at the memorial was their lifelong devotion.  They  sustained each other through the worst of life’s troubles — the death of one son in his prime and the paralyzing accident of another in his youth. They lived together, loved and laughed together into their old age and in that they were lucky. Many people find they must live those difficult years alone.

Jerry and I didn’t have the good fortune to spend our whole life together as Earl and  Donna did, but we are lucky to have each other now. When one of us wakes in the night with a scary pain — chest (heart attack?) or headache (stroke?) or begins to notice the failure of a body part– arthritis, a touch of incontinence, a need to get up in the night to pee too frequently, digestive malfunction — it’s comforting to be together, to love and be loved, to understand how the other feels because we’re both in these last years. Even at 80 It’s good to go to bed at night with another person whose body I love to touch. When I get undressed for bed at night and my husband looks at my naked 80 year old body and says softly, “You look nice,” I know what a fortunate woman I am. I am sad for my friends who are alone in their last years.

Of course, one of us will die before the other. One of us will spend some time alone, as Donna now must do. My friend Tammy, who takes care of many of the old people on the island, was helping care for Earl and Donna through his last illness. Tammy told me a story she didn’t tell at the memorial. One day last spring Earl went outside and picked a big bunch of flowers — Tammy thinks perhaps peonies since it was that time of year. He brought them in and gave them to Donna.

“Sorry,” he said.

Some uninvited but welcome visitors with the artichokes

The middle of August and things are changing on the island. We barely had a summer this year and it’s already rolling on to fall.

John and Betsy sold their house and are moving to Texas. John is my second cousin. His father was my father’s first cousin, but I didn’t know him or even know of his existence until I came to the island. One day,12 years ago, when I was visiting my ex in Bellingham he told me there was a new guy at his tennis club named John Fincke. I said if it was spelled with a cke I must be related to him — it’s an unusual spelling of the name.

Although John lived on the island it was almost another year before I met him. It was on the morning of 9/11 at the ferry dock. I had come down to take the passenger ferry (it was the period of dry dock with no car ferry); a man came up to me and said, excitedly, “Have you heard the news?” Since I have no TV and had been in too much of a hurry that morning to turn on the radio I had heard nothing. The man then told me all the details of the 9/11 attacks. We sat together on the ferry on the trip over and talked about the astonishing events and what might happen next. We were so engrossed in the news that we didn’t exchange names as one usually does when becoming acquainted on the ferry. My ex met me on the other side to take me to lunch and introduced us.

John and I became good friends. He often took me out on his boat to go crabbing or just cruise. Sometimes Betsy came too, but she had significant health problems and so often needed to stay quiet. Sometimes I went to concerts with him to use the ticket when Betsy wasn’t well enough to go. One evening we went out in his little outboard motor boat to clandestinely pull up his illegal crab pot (crab season was over).  It was a beautiful calm evening; the sun was setting in the west and the moon rising in the east and I was scared the whole time that the coast guard would catch us. The penalties for crab fishing out of season are substantial. I thought John was very audacious, but I didn’t really approve and felt a bit guilty about participating. But I admit that I enjoyed adventure. There were no crabs in the pot.

That was 10 years ago. Now John and Betsy need to be near their son who is a doctor in Texas. They both have health issues. Their house has been sold to a doctor and a lawyer who will use it as a summer place. The island is going that way.

Last night Earl died: Earl Granger, the island patriarch about whom I wrote  in my last post. He was 90. Donna, his wife, is still with us, but she needs lots of help. Her sister, Irene, lives next door and she is now blind. I used to see Irene and chat with her as she walked her 2 dogs up Granger way. First one dog died, then the other. Irene doesn’t walk these days.

As Jerry and I walk in the evenings with the poodles we see flocks of little birds, gathering for their journey south. The blackberries are ripening. I tried to pick some thimble-berries, but I found it difficult to get much quantity. When they are ripe they fall apart as you touch them.

Thimble-berries ripen gradually

They were an important food source for the Indians before the European invasion, but Indians must have had thimble-berry picking skills that I lack. I plan to get some blackberries to combine with the salmon-berries I collected earlier in the season. The cilantro has become flowers and coriander seeds.

Cilantro -- coriander

Peas are finished.  This year, for the first time, there are pears on the pear tree given to me by Lawyer Daughter.

My pears

There’s a scattering of alder leaves on the lawns and roads. The ferns are huge and the woods are the deep green of late summer.

Laundry dries in the sun

Tammy’s chickens are still laying their enormous eggs and we often have them for breakfast. Earlier this summer a big old white hen began to lay little eggs and her eggs got smaller and smaller over the summer. Then she stopped laying altogether. Tammy says that’s chicken menopause. I save carrot tops and pea pods for Tammy’s menagerie. She says the guinea pig gets first choice, then the rabbits.

Tammy's guinea pig

The chickens in my new header are Tammy’s. As the days get shorter they’ll slow production and we will have to wait for spring to get fresh island eggs.

Tammy's chickens

Friends of Russ and Cathy are staying in our rental and on Friday the 6 of us plan to grill a sockeye salmon on our deck. Russ and Cathy got one from the reef netters out in Legoe Bay. This years’ catch was poor. Last year’s was huge. I’ll add carrots and cucumbers from my garden — and perhaps beans and zucchini if they are ready.

My carrots

My cucumbers

Seasons change, generations change, there’s a regular ebb and flow in life, sometimes calm and regular, sometimes sudden and scary. But it’s always fascinating to watch, even within the limited landscape of a tiny island.

Hydrangias

The weather has been strange this summer. In July cold fogs came down in streamers of chilling mist, and between were sudden shots of hot sun. The ferry fog horn would sound most of the morning and the island felt eerily isolated.

August has come, the weather has actually become hot; that is, of course, a relative term. By noon the temperature is around 80 and the afternoons stay in the 80’s range. I go out daily to groom my container plants, fighting biology. The plants want to make seed — that is their biological function — to stay alive long enough to reproduce. I want them to keep blooming so I snip off their fading flowers and seed pods; then they frantically bud a few more flowers. In the end I lose. Seed is made and once made the plants die. Next year new flowers will grow, either from seed or from the old stock — or both.

Jerry is now be 80. Diane and Mike had a terrific party for him on the 3rd – the very day he became 80. We were a few good friends who all knew each other well. We ate shrimp and steak and blueberry cake and ice cream and drank a lot of wine and champagne. We laughed a lot. We told stories of our youth, and some of our old age. I’m glad he is now the same age as I. He never lets me forget my 5 months of seniority.

When you are 80 you know that you don’t have many more years to enjoy life and living. You have long since fulfilled your biological imperative. People tell me I don’t look a day over 60. Well, that’s nice, but I see what isn’t immediately apparent to others. Not long ago a large bruise appeared on my inner thigh. I showed it to Jerry. He asked me how it happened. I had no idea. Don’t remember any bumps or bangs. It just came. After a while the bruise faded away. A few days later when I woke up in the morning I looked at my hand and saw that a bruise covered about a third of the back of it. Most of the time I forgot about the bruise on my inner thigh because most of the time it wasn’t visible. The one on my hand I see a hundred times a day. And it reminds me of the disease my aunt Clare died of: an autoimmune disease that destroyed the stem cells in her bone marrow that make platelets (blood clotting particles.) When she died her whole body was covered with bruises.

The other night after our daily walk Jerry told me he felt “sweaty”. I said, well it’s muggy out. He said, no, it wasn’t the weather. It was an “incident”. He took his blood pressure; it was normal. But he has had a heart attack and has 3 stents in his heart. Although he is a person of calm and even disposition, not at all prone to anxiety or sudden bursts of emotion, feeling sweaty or dizzy alarms him.

Sometimes we defy biology and pretend we can do things as we did them when we were young. Jerry finished splitting the fir and the birch that we had Mike take down. Then it had to be stacked in the woodsheds. I help with that job. We stack the wood in the back of the pickup truck, drive it up to the woodshed which is attached to my studio and unload it from the truck to the wood-bins.

Wood-bin in front of the studio

I do most of the stacking except for the logs that are too heavy for me to lift or the bit that is too high up for me to reach. The bin on the patio requires that I unload the wood from the truck into the wheelbarrow and trundle it through the gate to the little shed on the patio, then stack it there.

Patio wood-bin

It took us almost a week to move all that wood, and it seemed that every muscle and joint in my body ached. I won’t be able to do this many more years.

Patterns of cut wood

When we had finished stacking the wood the patio bin was not quite full. Jerry decided to take down a spindly (about 6 inch diameter) alder near the workshop.  It had broken sometime last winter and was leaning against other trees but still partially upright. I came around the side of the building just as the tree was slowly beginning its fall. I saw that was twisting and I quickly got under the eaves of the shop to avoid getting hit. It came crashing faster and faster down through the brush and as it landed I saw Jerry on the ground on his back using many words that I couldn’t use here. I rushed over to him and saw that the tree had taken much of the skin off the top of his head. It was a close call. He now has thick scabs on his bald head, but there was no swelling and not much bruising. The blow was glancing. If it had been a direct hit he could have been seriously injured or killed.

Every day we walk the same route, down Granger Way, along the water in front of the Granger’s house on Nugent (with a view of Mt Baker and Sisters on a clear day), up the hill to Legoe Bay Road, past the fire department, around the corner along the top of Granger Way overlooking Legoe Bay where we can check out the passing ships and ferries and, at this time of the year, the reef netters’ boats out in the bay, then back to our house just past the crest of the hill.

Granger Way used to be named Hilltop Road, but the name was changed to honor the island’s principal residents, the Grangers, a family that owns a lot of land on Lummi Island. The land my house is on was originally owned by the Grangers. Earl Granger is the family patriarch. He is almost 89 and he is dying. Every day we pass in front of his house and wonder whether the time has come. There is a parade of people there, many cars in the driveway. Grangers have come from all over the country — or at least all over the west — to pay their final respects. Three weeks ago we saw Earl out on his riding mower. Two months ago he was still rumbling his backhoe along the road, bucket precariously raised, smiling and waving to Jerry and me and the poodles. But his cancer was getting him and everyone marveled that he was still out and doing.

We have been studying history together. Every night we watch one or two of a long series of lectures on American history by the teaching company and then when we get in bed I read to Jerry from the biography of John Adams by David McCollough. We are learning a great deal about the beginnings of our country and how it developed and grew. And we are learning, as if we didn’t already know, how ephemeral life can be.

Jerry and I both know death is coming in a way that we didn’t when we were young. This morning he tells me he feels a bit jittery and not very energetic. Today, as I finish writing this post, I feel young and fit. It’s morning, my best time of day. By evening, when I am finishing cooking dinner, washing up, feeding the dogs and getting ready for the evening walk I’ll know full well that I am 80 and time is running out.

Life goes on and we feed the birds

Summer is speeding past and what have I done?

Front walk

My bower of flowers is not so lush as usual. The weather has been odd. Some days hot and muggy (we think 75F is hot), many days cold (in the 50’s and 60’s) and wet.  Apparently it’s all because of the jet stream.

Jerry is cutting wood for winter fuel. Mike came by and with his bucket extension truck cut limbs from the big fir near the house.

Mike's tree bucket

Next year we will have to take that dramatic old tree out– it’s too close for safety and is dropping tree debris on the roof. Then Mike felled two big trees, trees that needed to come down as they were too close to Jerry’s workshop. When I see big trees fall I feel a pang of sadness.

The fir falls

They are so mighty in life and fall with such a final, thunderous crash. Deer follow Mike’s truck to nibble on the tender top branches.

One of the trees was a majestic fir, we estimated about 50 years old. It will make enough fire wood to keep us warm all winter. I grieved for it, but remembered that I have another fir that I planted about 7 years ago in a spot far enough from any building. The other downed tree was a medium sized birch which has lovely wood. I always think I should do something artistic with the wood. Then I remind myself that I don’t have time to do the artistic things I have already started. And I am rather old to be learning a new craft.

Once down the trees have to be cut up for firewood. Mike and Jerry made fireplace length sections with the chain saw and then Mike offered Jerry his splitter for the huge rounds. Jerry is reluctant to borrow things from others, but Mike insisted. He said, this is Lummi Island and we share things all the time. Then he and Mark delivered the splitter to the fallen tree and Jerry has been splitting logs every day.

Splitter -- a labor saving device

Now there is a big pile of split wood which soon I will stack.

From the fir -- there's more coming

All summer I have worried about many things. The law suite slogs on, costs lots of money nothing much  happens. When something does happen I have an sharp anxiety spike. I worry about my son Ben. He’s doing well in school having returned at age 40 to get a bachelor’s degree. He’s going back to Georgia to be near his children and I know this is best for everyone, but nevertheless I worry.

I read on my Kindle. My British daughter told me she heard on the radio about a novelist, Elizabeth Taylor, whose work is enjoying a revival in England. Taylor had been neglected as a major writer but there is a renewed interest in her work. She has been compared to Jane Austen (wrongly, I think) and Elizabeth Bowen (I agree with that comparison.) First I read Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont and loved it. It is a fine period piece; it evokes the time, 60 years ago, when my grandmother was an old woman. And it gently illuminates the life of old people. I love the way Taylor lets one peek into the minds of almost all her characters so the reader knows what they are thinking as well as what they are saying and doing. I have now read another of her novels called In a Summer Season and am in the middle of a third, A Game of Hide and Seek.

I went with my friend Cathy on the island tour of edible gardens. There’s a great interest these days in growing vegetables at home. The island has a community garden.

Community garden cabbages -- not sure whose they are

I learned a lot; my tomatoes have benefited from what I learned from Nancy Simmerman about removing the lower leaves and all signs of wilt when they first appear. There is a lot more air circulating around in my greenhouse now. I visited Linda and Randy Smith’s garden — an example to inspire, but they live the life of gardening together, something that I can’t do. I have too many other projects and Jerry has no interest in plants.

Smith's onions

The blue things behind the onions are water filled plastic shields around plants that need protection from the capricious weather.

Randy and Linda sponsor meetings about how to collect seeds and all the most modern (organic) horticultural methods. I will confess here that I sometimes resort to miracle grow (sorry, Randy).

The poppies and the sea

These are Randy and Linda’s poppies, but we all have them on the island.

I saw Henry’s place on the northern tip of the island. The lawns are smooth and the vegetable and flower beds manicured. There are paths along the cliffs overlooking the wild rocky beach. There is a huge eagle’s nest in a tall fir. We were told they raised a chick (would you call a young eagle a chick?) this year. Then there was a big neatly stacked wood shed. Henry does all the splitting and stacking himself when he isn’t manicuring his gardens. He is 84. He does have some help with the large vegetable garden. I forgot to bring my camera for that part of the trip.

I finally got to see my absolutely adorable great granddaughter, Allison. She is six months old and a real sweetheart. She is number 2 of 3 (great grandchildren, that is), and there will be a 4th in January or February of next year!

Allison

I have to show you just one more of that sweet baby.

We will try to get to Alaska for a very short visit at the end of August. But there is a lot of work still to do to get Ben off to Georgia.

Things happen in the law suit in September that we must be back here for. Jerry and I are so lucky to have each other to hold on to.

Kinley

From Seattle to Gainsville, Florida is a long day. It’s just about from one corner of the United States to the opposite corner; from the soggy northwest to the sodden southeast. It was raining softly when I left Seattle, it was raining buckets when I arrived in Gainsville. I went to see my daughter and my brand new great granddaughter.

I got up at five in the morning to catch a 7Am ferry, then a 8AM bus to Seatac, a 12:40 PM flight to Atlanta, a 10:30 flight to Gainsville, a taxi ride to the bed and breakfast which arrived at the door of our cottage at about midnight, by which time I had been traveling for 22 hours.

As one travels one deals with a variety of people: bus and taxi drivers, TSA  personnel, airline employees, flight attendants, waiters, shop clerks. In my old age I find it makes a big difference if these people speak pleasantly and cheerfully and try to be helpful. I am not old enough yet to squander money on first class (I may never get to that point), so I expect to be uncomfortable on airplanes, but a kind word along the way mitigates the misery of airplane travel.

The bed and breakfast was the same comfortable two bedroom cottage my lawyer daughter and I stayed in last year for my granddaughter, Sarah’s wedding. This time my other daughter (Kinley’s  grandmother) had checked in that morning from China but she and her husband, exhausted from their long journey, were asleep by the time of my arrival. I was touched that they had left me a bottle of wine, some crackers and brie and the radio playing soft music in my bedroom.

Jerry and I live in a world of middle aged to elderly people. I crossed the country to find myself suddenly immersed in the world of babies, young parents, pregnancy, maternity clothes, breast pumps, diapers, and the multiple financial difficulties that go with that time of life, especially in a recession such as this country is now suffering.

In my long life I have initiated a large family, a family that is now scattered in many parts of the world. The branch I visited in Florida comprises the offspring of my second daughter.

Her first grandchild

Sarah is the oldest at 29. She and her husband, Malik, are struggling financially and she is pregnant. He had a good job at the University but because of budget cuts he was laid off and had to take a much lower paid job. She works at a day care, a job she loves passionately, but it doesn’t pay much. She told me about projects she does with her class of 1 year olds based on stories she reads to them. One of the stories she mentioned was the Story of Ping. That is a book (published in 1933) that was read to me as a child; there is a continuity in life. Sarah and Malik share a love for theater. They met volunteering for community theater, and Sarah plans to finish her BA majoring in theater.

Sarah’s  younger brother, Nicky, is Kinley’s father. Nicky is barely grown up himself, and he has had some difficult times in his short life. His teen years were a hard hill to climb, but he has matured astonishingly and at 20, has a good job, a lovely, smart fiancee and a new baby girl. He is planning to go to college next year to study mechanical engineering.

Mother, father, grandmother and Kinley

Katy, the middle child, was not there while I was visiting and I was sad not to see her. I took Katy to China with me last year. She and I like to travel together. She is in the Peace Corps now in the Dominican Republic. She came to Gainsville for a couple of days just for Kinley’s birth but had to get back quickly to her job.

The birth was a group event.  Twelve or 13 people were present, Kinley’s mother, Amanda,  told me . They were: Amanda, Nicky, Nicky’s father, Joe (the baby’s grandfather; he stayed in the hallway
outside), Amanda’s sister, her father, her best friend, Sarah, 3 nurses, a doctor, and Katy. Katy had her computer with her and she swooped around the room with its camera positioned so that grandmother Clare, Nicky’s mother, could watch the birth of her first grandchild (via Skype) in China!

By the time of my visit the baby was 3 weeks old. I wanted to coincide with Clare’s visit because I hadn’t seen her since last year in China. I worry about her health. She has difficult and serious health problems, one of which she recently developed — a stroke around the optic nerve. It is completely repaired now, but her vision in one eye is affected. However, she looked well and youthful and she and her husband, Jason, are on a diet to lose weight.

We had a good visit though it was short and crowded with children, the baby, meals to cook, shopping expeditions to the mall for maternity clothes for Sarah and baby equipment for Amanda and Nicky. I tried to help when I could, and I walked with the baby in the evening fussy time outside. That used to work with my youngest (my only summer baby.)

Great grandmother walking the baby

Nicky was particularly keen to get a breast pump so that he could be able to feed his baby. Amanda will go back to work as an ex-ray technician in August, so they will need the pump then. How different and complex the world of babies is from when I was in production. Then the modern convenience was diaper service — bundles of clean cloth diapers were delivered weekly and buckets of dirty ones spirited away. But Kinley has disposable diapers and, at the age of 3 weeks, is said to prefer a particular brand.

I have been home a week now, in my cool familiar world. I have watched lectures on American history with Jerry in the evenings, played Mah Jongg with the neighborhood ladies, walked with the poodles and tended my garden. I am thankful for menopause.

The first day of summer has come. The temperature outside this morning was 49 (brrr). It has been raining most of the month, but this morning dawned with the sun. Some of the island’s elderly ladies slept out on the beach in sleeping bags to see the solstice sunrise. I know this because they requested permission to sleep on a section of beach that I partly own. I wonder whether they felt the spiritual uplift of the solstice dawn (at 4:30) was worth the chance of chattering teeth. I got up to pee at 4:45 (on the beach these physical needs could dampen the magic the cosmic event). I noted that the sun had risen and then went back to bed with my warm and sleepy husband.

Things grow even when it rains a lot. May was sunnier than usual, so even with the cold of June life on the island has flourished. I have less bloom than last year, and the rain causes big flowers to flop over or turn to mush. Still, I have some lovelies to show.

the first rose of summer

lilies

Some flowers arrive of their own accord and I let them stay. They are weeds, in a way, but pretty ones, so that really removes them from the weed status of a plant growing where you don’t want it.

foxgloves in a good place

feverfew

And the veggies are coming along well.

the first cauliflower of summer

Peas already

In the greenhouse tomatoes are looking like a veritable jungle.

tomatoes on the way (and hot peppers, too)

Wild flora and fauna prosper too. I picked some salmonberries from the bushes that grow wild on my property.

salmonberries

I froze them and I am going to combine them with thimbleberries when they ripen in a few weeks and make jam. To do this all you need is sugar because there is so much pectin in the thimbleberries.

The dozens of starlings that gobble suet at my feeders have had hundreds of offspring — which are uglier even than their parents — and the offspring pursue the parents relentlessly demanding to be fed. There is a pair of chipmunks that live under the bush over Zute’s (dear old dog) and Heloise’s (dear old cat) graves. Deer and rabbits are everywhere.

An orphaned deer has been befriended by some families down by Legoe Bay. It has become quite tame as can be seen in this video Dangerous buck on Lummi Island. The young buck is entirely unafraid of people and dogs. It’s gentle play with the golden retriever shows how varied the complex mental makeup of mammals is. Both deer and dog, through the process of human intervention, have lost their usual adversarial relationship. The dog, fully domesticated, will stay tame, the deer, a buck, will revert to wild when the hormones of mating begin to flow. Then it may become dangerous and I have been told that if the game authorities learn of it they will come out to the island and shoot it. I hope not. I hope the Bambi will slip back into the forest and find his love or loves and keep out of the way of dogs.

Life is the real mystery of the universe. It persists, it clings, it grabs every opportunity, every nook and cranny. I fight the weeds, but they win every time. That’s life.

in every nook and cranny

In the meantime, that DNA of mine that I have spoken of before, has migrated again into a new person, a great granddaughter born in Gainsville, Florida. I am going to meet her this weekend.

We went to get some things from Bert’s house at Roch Harbor. It was, as always, a long day, starting at 6:40 am for the 7 o’clock ferry from our island then the hour drive to Anacrotes, then the hour and a half ferry to Friday Harbor, then a long conference with lawyers and then the half hour drive to Bert’s place. The poodles in the back seat were longing to get out of the car and run and pee.

Because Friday Harbor exists for tourists there is no good place to eat. We had a bad lunch (bowl of soup each and a beer for Jerry — $20) at an eatery where the service was slow and we were pressed for time to catch the 4:15 ferry back to Anacortes. We ate dinner on the way home at the Out Back Steak House in Burlington. There service was also slow and the food was poor. Since I had thought in the past that the food there was eatable (if not wonderful) later I Googled the business to find out what had changed. I learned that it is being saved from failure (or not) by Bain Capital. We caught the 9 pm ferry back to the island.

It is sad to go through Bert’s things. His house is dark and dirty and most of his stuff is junky. Everything he owned he bought cheap. Mostly he got his possessions at yard sales. We wanted to take away  stacks of old vinyl records because our friends Russ and Cathy are interested in them and I wanted to save Jerry’s mother’s lovely old treadle Singer Sewing machine.

Helen's Singer sewing maching

Jerry told me that she made clothes for him and Bert when they were children. While we were there we found many old photos of Bert’s, almost all pictures of buildings he built (in progress and completed), airplanes and other equipment. A few pictures of cows and a few pictures of Bert himself. He did not take pictures of people but there were some old family pictures and a few letters.

Bert and Jerry

There was a birthday card from his mother (she died about 20 years ago) with a 20 dollar bill still in it. There was a box with ammunition and another box with some loose bullets. Jerry showed me one bullet — a hollow point — of the same caliber that Bert killed himself with.

My friend Tammy who cleans my house for me every other Saturday left 2 demi-tasse cups in the sink last Saturday. I was puzzled because we hadn’t used them for many months (perhaps years). Then I got the point; it was a hint. The shelf they were on was full of dusty things and some silver items that needed to be polished, so yesterday, as a sort of delaying tactic to avoid tasks I didn’t feel like doing (laundry, etc) I polished a bit of silver.

There was a little set of silver cordial stems.

Silver cordials

They came from my aunt’s house in Andover, the house I grew up in. They have the initial R on them. Nobody knows who R was. A forgotten ancestor, long dead. Then there were 2 silver plated serving dishes that belonged to my great grandmother. The silver is wearing off in some places, but when I investigated having them re-plated I was told doing that would ruin their antique value.

silver serving dishes with covers

I didn’t know my great grandmother. The dishes came to me through my father’s mother, an elegant lady who taught me many things when I was a child. She taught me table manners. She told me that it was most important to be polite to one’s servants. She lived a different kind of life in a different time from mine. I only had servants once in my life during the brief months (50 years ago) that I lived in Burma.

Another item I polished was a silver plated toast rack. I bought that toast rack myself when I was 14 years old in New Zealand. I had never seen a toast rack before I went to New Zealand and I thought it a strange exotic object. The first one I saw was in my grandmother’s house in Auckland. One morning I said to my grandmother, “Doesn’t your toast get cold in that thing?” She looked at me, puzzled, and asked “Well, how do you cool your toast?”

toast rack

I have never actually put toast in that toast rack. Jerry and I don’t use delicate china cups and silver things at breakfast, and anyhow the toast would get cold in the rack. It remains a reminder of an unexplained impulse of my youth.

My New Zealand grandmother (who was an immigrant to New Zealand from England) was not sophisticated and elegant like my father’s mother but in many ways, some small, some more significant, she too lived a different life in a different time. Supermarkets did not exist at that time in New Zealand and my grandmother did all her grocery shopping at small shops that sold one kind of thing: the butcher, the green grocer, the baker, etc. She told my mother that she passed up the nearest green grocer to go several blocks farther because the closer green grocer was Indian. The house she lived in was just below One Tree Hill. (One Tree Hill no longer has even one tree on it because an angry Maori chopped the tree down as some sort of protest.) The house had an indoor bathtub but the toilet was in an outhouse in the back yard reached by a wooden walkway from the house.There was a high fence along the walkway and my grandmother had a line above the fence which she kept hung with tea towels and other bits of cloth to block the view from the next garden. She said she didn’t want the man next door to know when she went to the toilet.

When Jerry unpacked the truck from our trip to Bert’s house he put the records and his mother’s sewing machine in the studio where stacks of my old photographs are stored. While he was looking at Bert’s vinyl records I started looking through my own old photos. There was a picture of my father as a teen age lad taken in 1920.

My father, Julian Wadleigh, at 17

There were pictures of me in art school when I was in my early 50’s. How young I looked. And there were pictures of Ben’s wedding. Ben, my youngest son who becomes 40 tomorrow, is now getting divorced. The whole family, 4 generations, was at his wedding. My then husband, Hugh now dead, my mother (she died six years ago) alive, dancing with my daughter,

At Ben's wedding

the bride radiant and slim (she is now obese). The scene was full of life and love. Many of the participants are now estranged. The children are grown. I put the pictures aside, buried my face in Jerry’s shirt front, and began to weep, softly at first, then sobbing. He held me quietly. After a while I stopped, washed my face and watered the flowers.

All this stuff we keep — objects, pictures, old letters — stuff stuffed with memories. It can make you wonder and weep. It can fool you into thinking things were better in the past.

Yes, that’s the worst thing about stress. I bore myself and I think I am boring others. I cannot blog about the lawsuit that Jerry and I are involved in but I can talk about the stress it causes, and thus bore myself and my readers.

Stress makes me feel physically ill. I get a tight feeling in my chest and my legs and knees seem weak and shaky.  For a time I was getting headaches, but these seem to have passed.

We have spent a quiet week — our lawyer is on vacation.  I thought I was getting over the anxiety. But Monday was a bad day and I felt ill all day. On Tuesday we went to town — a distraction. The New York Times and shopping helped. I dislike shopping but it forces me stop dwelling on how I feel. It rained for a few days which was an impediment to gardening. I like to get out in the garden and do some kind of strenuous work — dig, weed, rake — as Jerry says, just be among my plants and flowers. Strenuous exercise relieves stress by releasing endorphins in the body.

The sun came out and I worked like crazy in the garden. I washed clothes and hung them on the line in the sun. Sunlight is good for stress.

We had tenants in our little rental this weekend. A young man with two little boys, 7 and 9. The father was fit and muscular with a shaved head and a lot of tattoos. They all went around on bikes for a while, then the kids biked and the father jogged behind them. Suddenly yesterday another car arrived and there was a second young man, almost identical to the first, shaved head and all. I never got a close look at the second one, but from a distance they looked just alike. The weather was good and I think they all had fun. I enjoyed what little I saw of them and did some thinking about the modern family. It’s looking out the window of my own life at a rainbow of variety.

I look out the window over my desk as I write. There are lots of birds at my feeder

Evening grosbeaks

House finch

American goldfinches and others

What kind of dove is this?

. Starlings are bringing their children. They are such ugly birds, and their children are squawky and demanding. Sometimes a big fat baby just sits in the feeder and waits for a parent to come and shove food down its beak. Starlings try to scare off the other birds and usually succeed but I watched repeated encounters between a downy woodpecker and starlings that tried to drive him away from the suet feeder. The downy won every time and had his fill of suet before he flew away. Even the bird world is full of drama.

Downey woodpecker and starling competing for suet

Another starling vanquished

Now spring morphs into summer. Daffodils are all gone, lilacs are fading, big red oriental poppies about to bloom. Purple irises, sometimes called flags, are out and the yellow-green ladies mantle is spreading everywhere. We have had two meals of greens that I grew in barrels and tomatoes are planted in the greenhouse. It will be a long time before we have any tomatoes. Jerry has to mow the grass at least once a week.

Legal activity resumes next week. I dread it.

Lawyer daughter and I went to see Aida in Vancouver.  We had a nice time together and the opera was good but not great. The presentation was traditional, the singing was good, the chorus was excellent. The tenor needed to spend more time at the gym. He didn’t have the physique of a war hero. The audience at intermission was almost as good a show as the performance. All ages were dressed in all sorts of stunningly peculiar get ups. There was lace and chiffon, leather and spandex, silk and fringe, beads, jewels, zippers, hip boots, spike heals, jeans and work shirts, head scarfs, berets and spiked hair. Lawyer daughter and I both wore black. I had bought box seats and we had a great view of both stage and audience. And we could see into the orchestra pit.

I tried to take some pictures of some of the more astonishing outfits, but the light was low, the flash delayed and I didn’t want to be too obvious about it. In the end this is all I got.

Dressed for the opera

And this:

Waiting for a drink

There was an art exhibit in the lobbies. I am in favor of experimentation in art, but I like it to have some attribute other than weirdness. I didn’t see anyone looking at it: felt constructions, mostly small in black, white or brown. I took a picture of one piece which at first I thought was an old coat someone had tossed down. That was a possibility considering some of the costumes of the patrons.

Sculpture in felt

Before the performance we ate dinner at a small French cafe. The food was only fair but I enjoyed chatting with the waiter, a New Zealander who came from the same small city, Pukekohe, where Jerry and I stay with my cousin.

Lawyer daughter likes to sleep in, so the next morning before leaving for home I took a walk in the rain to a coffee shop a couple of blocks from our hotel. A friendly lady in the shop gave me her newspaper, saying it was her way or recycling. I read a bit of it and thought it had a definitely right wing slant.

The week has not been easy. The law suit over Bert’s will continues. Bert’s estate is very complicated and Jerry spends lots of time filling out forms, and setting up estate accounts that may, in the end, have to be turned over to someone else.

I decided to clip the dogs to save the expense of the groomer and noticed that one of Fluffy’s testicles was enlarged and an odd shape. I took him to the vet and had him neutered. He has testicular cancer. Perhaps we got it in time; only time will tell.The vet said his teeth needed attention as well, and so while he was under anesthetic he had 7 teeth pulled out.  He was away over night in the veterinary hospital in town and Daisy was unusually subdued while he was absent. When our nice island vet, Bill, delivered him home to us yesterday Daisy wiggled and squeaked with pleasure. Noses touched, tails wagged and they are again inseparable. Fluffy has antibiotics and pain-killers every day for a while, and he has so few teeth left that he will have to eat soft food for the rest of his life. Poor doggy. But he is as cheerful as ever, full of energy.

Often it’s the small things in life that give pleasure. This week it was a small bird. For the first time I have had western tanagers at my feeder. What pretty little things they are.

Western Tanager

I saw a number of males, but only one female. Perhaps they are very shy, or perhaps they migrate separately.

Female Western Tanager

Speaking of birds at the feeder, last week I had an unusual visitor. Here he/she is: I think it’s a pygmy owl.

Pygmy Owl

Of course, it wasn’t interested in what the feeder had to offer. Perhaps it was searching for the chipmunk that is sometimes under the feeder. After a while it flew over to the fence.

Pygmy Owl?

And finally, while I am counting blessings, the garden is, I guess, a blessing. It requires a lot of physical work — probably good for an old woman and an old man — but we sat outside in it for the first evening of 2012 with our wine and listened to the news on the radio. The woods were full of birdsong. And there were flowers.

Delphinium and snapdragons