Our children are rarely in the area on special occasions. Let me clarify that. If something were REALLY special, we’d be together at some point, but Father’s Day is not one of those days. One daughter lives 800 miles away, and the other 3,000. Also, pertinent to the story is John’s love of greeting cards. Buying a card is the first thing he thinks of. I’m on the opposite end of the scale. I’m hardly ever at a loss for words, and, miser that I am, I hate to spend money on something I can do myself.
I realized on Sunday morning that I had done nothing to mark this day. When John came in the room, I said, “I’m sorry I didn’t get you anything for Father’s Day.”
Before I could get breath for another sentence, he said, “I’m not your father.”
“Well, yes, but….”
It took me a minute to recover, but I continued, “You often get me something for Mother’s Day. I’ll tell you what. On the way home from church, let’s stop in Dollar General. They have a great card selection. I’ll find the card I think is suitable. You’ll read it, and we can put it back on the shelf and leave.”
He burst out laughing, so I figured I gave him a bit of pleasure on the day.
The day after Amy moved, we were taken out for lunch by North Carolina friends who were here for a conference in Lake Junaluska. It’s a wonder we were able to eat, because we talked non-stop. There is always so much to catch up on.
Rus and Elizabeth had a time constraint, but we didn’t. John offered to drive David and me on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Both rhododendron and mountain laurel were blooming. This is the first year we’ve been up there at prime time, and it was glorious.
While standing at the creek, John turned to see a bird that was clicking as it flew under the bridge. I recognized the clicking sound as that of a kingfisher, and I saw it quickly enough to identify it by sight, as well. I used to see them occasionally on Long Island. This was a first here.
Our new neighbors were very busy the first two days. Several friends helped them carry things into the house, so we stayed out of the way. We finally caught them outside to welcome them to the neighborhood. Hopefully we can soon get a photo of them so that you can see them, too. Their names are Dawn and Jeff. I hadn’t thought about it before, but it’s great that we don’t have any duplicate names on the street. It seems everywhere you go, there are multiple Johns and Davids.
An afternoon thunderstorm joined the sun to give us a rainbow in the backyard. The photo doesn’t show it clearly, but the end appeared to be glowing behind the trees at the edge of the pasture. I’m sure that is the closest I’ve ever been to the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. When I looked at the photo again, I was aghast that the rainbow appeared to hover over the wicked wisteria as if blessing it. No! Please don’t encourage that greedy plant!
We saw much of Amy’s move from our front porch. It became tense as we watched heavy thunderclouds approach. The movers shoved items sitting on the drive into the truck at the last minute before the heavens opened. What a deluge!
Minutes from a thunderstorm
We thought the move was finished at this end until Amy told us they needed another truck. They had miscalculated, despite Amy’s asking if everything was going to fit in one medium-sized van. The finish was postponed until the following day.
As planned, Amy and her sister Susan, came to our house. We were with them when Amy got a peculiar computer-generated telephone message from her agent. The closing was canceled due to lack of interest. What???? They didn’t need that at the end of a long day when the closing was supposed to be in 15 hours. It turned out to be a mistake, but mistakes can zap what little ooph you have left.
We had dinner, and this time I did remember one of Amy’s statements that had us laughing.
Susan said kindly, “I hope you are going to sleep like a baby tonight.”
Amy replied, “What? Sleep two hours and wake up wet????”
After the meal, we had a little celebration. It was our 52nd wedding anniversary, marked by a chocolate cake which we five demolished in one sitting.
David took a shot of the movers and the stayers at my request. I hadn’t wanted to aim the camera at Amy while she was in the middle of moving on an oppressively hot and humid day. We all look fairly compliant.
Amy and Susan with us
We sat on the front porch waiting for dark. Amy said she couldn’t sleep until it was dark, and Susan pointed out that it would take a while. This day was not far from the longest day of the year. The thunderstorm had cleared the air and lowered the temperature, so it was a pleasant wait.
We said our goodbyes after breakfast. Susan supervised the movers while Amy went to the closing. When everyone had gone, David and I went to Amy’s stream while it still belonged to her. He waded up and down, choosing a rock to send back to a friend who is collecting one rock from every state.
David in Amy’s stream
Logan joined us, eager for anything to allay his boredom on the second day of summer vacation. I took a quick shot as the guys moved from Amy’s land to ours. Starting now, the place belongs to Dawn and Jeff. I’ll introduce you as soon as we’ve met them ourselves.
When John packed away the Christmas decorations in January, our three wise men were missing. I wrote about it (click here to read), and we continued to look for them in all kinds of crazy places. We knew that if we found them, it would take us by surprise.
John opened a drawer in the credenza looking for candles. Lo and behold, there they were! All three were tucked neatly beside the candles.
He had no memory of putting them there. He began to wonder if he had stowed them himself, planning to take them out on Epiphany. Well, this year there was no star in the East shining in that dark place. Our Messianic heralds were mute and still. I find it amusing that the whole time we were looking for them, they were a couple of inches below their allotted place. In the photo, John’s hand is about where they should have been kneeling before the Christ Child.
It may be my imagination, but they seemed to be a bit shrunken. I set them on the table that was decorated for Flag Day, hoping they would perk up and stretch a bit. Surely they are enjoying this out-of-season holiday, considering they would normally be packed in the stifling attic!
Many weddings are alike. The bride wears a long white dress, and there is special music. Groomsmen appear much more formal than in everyday life, and if the women are lucky, they can wear their gowns for other occasions. There are a few tears sprinkled over smiling faces. Somewhere in the congregation is a person who pulls everything together and manages to smooth over any irregularities. The solemn ceremony is followed by a terribly noisy gathering where a white cake is cut by the newlyweds and smeared over each other’s faces. Did I get everything?
What sets every wedding apart are the individuals who play the roles. We met our bride and groom at a funeral last year, the groom being the son of John’s first cousin. The attendants related to the groom were familiar to us, and we were pleased to meet other relatives and friends of the couple.
The toy camera, being tiny and discreet, took photos during the ceremony and two after it.
Others taken afterward were a bit beyond Toy’s abilities, but valued despite their flaws.
I went back and found a photo taken of John’s cousin Harold at our rehearsal dinner. Harold was the ten-year-old in this picture taken 52 years ago. The current picture of John and Harold was taken during the recent reception. He aged quite well, don’t you agree?
The hotel did not have free breakfast, so we went to the Waffle House around the corner. I had the best seat in the place where I could watch the staff working. What a beehive of activity! The wait staff almost ran, rushing from table to a point where they shouted orders at the cooks. At least three cooks stood at their stations, slinging food about efficiently. Their feet hardly moved. The man I could see best was the one who continuously cooked waffles, made toast, and buttered it. The next man cooked eggs and bacon, lifting a heavy bacon press from time to time to remove cooked slices. I have no idea how they remembered what to put on the plates. Grits were added last by the waitress. She used a dipper to plop a pool of grits on the side. I was amused, too, by the menu listing city ham. City ham? What was that? Then it came to me. We were in the South where country ham is often a salty choice. This made you think about the specific kind of ham you were going to get. At the edge of the dining area, the waitresses scraped the scraps into a garbage can. There was no room or time for a bus boy to operate.
John saw another quiet drama at the door. A couple came in, spoke to a waitress, and went back out. She handed them mugs of coffee outside the door, where they smoked cigarettes and sipped coffee until a table was ready. He didn’t think that would happen in the North.
I love eating slowly, savoring every bite. That was hard to do with the wait staff whizzing by and shouting orders, the cooks slinging food, and the line at the door growing longer by the minute. Our seats had no chance to cool before a foursome was sitting down to order. I couldn’t think of digesting my food until we were out of sight of that whirl wind.
How would you peg this establishment? The food was fast in a sit-down environment. Would its genre be fast down food?
We used to hear people talk about the generation gap all the time, but I don’t remember hearing it lately. Going to a wedding rehearsal dinner brought it all back. We were the oldest ones there – third tier generation, I’d guess. John’s cousin, father of the groom, was almost one step below, and the young people were just a bit older than our grandchildren.
The first thing that hit me was height. Those young people were tall! Of course, John and I have shrunk an inch or so, exacerbating the difference. They were tall and thin. The women wore beautiful short dresses with flared skirts. No one my age could have gotten away with that.
Hair color was another difference. I think there were two women in the whole room with long dark hair, lustrous hair. I was the only one in full, natural gray. There was one man with naturally blond hair. The rest of the men were dark or graying.
The older two sets mingled well. Most of us had never met each other before. I loved watching the exuberance of the post-college group. They knew each other well, had a recent shared history, and teased each other constantly. They focused on celebrating the marriage of dear friends. The closeness will be challenged now, with various ones moving out of the area. We found out that our bride and groom will be moving to Florida after the honeymoon. They will keep up better than our generation, but distance will change their closeness.
Everyone was offered the same food and drink. I think young people ate less and drank more. The glaring difference was coffee. There was none! Coffee was always the obligatory quiet end to dinner for us. It was certainly not important to twenty-somethings. We got senior coffees at MacDonalds to take back to our quiet hotel room.
Grandson David was talking about quartz in front of neighbor Amy, and she told him she had a big rock he should see. This was quartz on steroids. She offered it to us, saying it would look good in our garden. You see, Amy has a vested interest in our garden. She and Ron lived at the end of the street several years before the first owners moved a modular house next door. Amy and neighbor Shawn shared cuttings and plants with the owners of our house, and that is why our garden looks as good as it does now. Amy also knew I needed lots of guidance. I was a pre-novice, totally disinterested gardener two years ago.
David loved the small boulder, and his enthusiasm motivated John to accept Amy’s offer. We brought tools to Amy’s yard, meeting her on her mower. The most useful thing I did was to stand on the shovel that had pried the rock up while the men hoisted it onto the hand truck.
Referring to the camera, John said, “Put that thing down and come here!”
The fellows pulled that heavy, heavy load up a grassy slope and attached it to the mower. Amy drove it to our house.
While I tried to decide where it should be placed, they made the decision to offload it at the only spot the mower could get to. Wise move. We may shift it a few inches, but it won’t go far.
What a struggle it had been! I now have a very healthy respect for prehistoric people who moved enormous bluestones to Stonehenge. I asked everyone to pose for a victory photo.
Amy also gave us a bench for the pergola. One more trip with the mower, and the bench joined Amy’s birdbath under the wicked wisteria. The scene is deceptively peaceful, don’t you think?
When we moved almost two years ago, I had no intention of working outside. I’d been married for 50 years and never had to tend a garden. The problem was, we ate most of our meals on the screened porch overlooking the previous owner’s flower garden. It wasn’t too bad the first summer, but the next season it was a mess. I had to look at it, sometimes three times a day. I was told all I had to do was to keep the weeds down, but how would I know what was weed and what wasn’t? They don’t come out of the ground with tags saying, “Pull me.”
I began going out there, discarding what I thought looked ragged. I had the loyal support of three master gardeners, two of them right next door. If they had a mission of making me into a gardener, they had an uphill fight. I doubt I’ll ever consider myself a real garden woman, but I’m beginning to wonder. We had been away from home for six days. Within one hour of unpacking the car, I found myself in the garden dead-heading the roses and looking hopefully to see if any of the seeds I’d planted had sprouted. Sounds like the gardening disease had gotten me. Further, I was inordinately pleased to see leaves identifiable as four-o’clocks and nasturtiums. It’s too late to return to my former state, isn’t it?
I dream almost every time I sleep, and I’m still wondering who is in charge of my dreams. I couldn’t come up with these things in my wildest imagination. The one I woke with this time involved music. Someone insisted I stand with the choir and help them sing a piece I’d never seen before. Luckily, we were at the back, and no one was watching us. I looked around desperately for the music. When I spotted it, I hissed, “It’s too high.”
That would lead you to believe the music was out of my range, that it was too high for me to sing comfortably. No, that wasn’t the problem. The sheet music was dangling about 15 feet above our heads. I could barely see that it was music, much less see my notes.
My name is Suki, my human is a writer, and this is about my world. The world according to Suki The Cat. My humans smell funny, look weird, and I can't understand a thing they say, but they feed me, so hey, what are you gonna do?
Mehrling Muse 