Posts Tagged ‘family’
Having Enough
The spring growth of grass has already become more than the horses can keep up with in their never-ending urge to graze. Those days when we need to confine them to the paddocks are hard to watch as they crane their necks reaching under the wood fence for any morsels of new growth. They could never get enough. Since the gates to the fields have been open for a couple of weeks, they now have more than enough.
The nutrition feed we serve, which they compete with each other to gobble up all winter, suddenly holds less value. The first time I arrived to pick up the pans and found them still holding food was a big surprise.
The other day, the two chestnuts were so exhausted after eating only half of the serving of feed in their pans, they walked down the slope and laid down for a rest.
That’s the first time I’ve ever seen them leave food for a nap.
It was just a short rest and then they were up to wander out into the field for green grass again.
I figured out a way to work around the problem of the ground being too wet to mow yesterday by cranking up the power trimmer and cleaning up around the edges. That always makes the place look like someone actually lives here instead of the barn and hay shed looking like abandoned buildings.
Cyndie’s mom came for an overnight visit for Mother’s Day weekend and we dined out last night at our local supper club restaurant, Shady Grove, before settling in at home to watch the new Michael J. Fox documentary, “Still.” He is one tough guy who is still funny despite the difficulties he has lived through.
This morning, our kids are coming over to continue the Mother’s Day festivities with a waffle brunch.
What a rich blessing of a loving family and more than enough food. I am holding all the moms I know in my thoughts this weekend, sending love to you and the families you raised.
Love. Here’s hoping everyone is having enough.
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Messy Mistake
There is a reason I turn off the electric fence when I mow. Yesterday, I demonstrated precisely what that reason is. When we walked around the back pasture in the morning, the ground was so saturated it was obvious I wouldn’t be able to mow along the fence line there. With more rain expected in the morning, I figured I wouldn’t be cutting grass anywhere, despite it growing so fast lately it needs to be mowed every couple of days.
That rain never fell. By lunchtime, it was starting to get sunny out so I figured I better do some mowing. It was mesmerizing. The new battery-powered zero-turn was making great progress with plenty of juice to spare. I headed out around the back pasture without thinking. That was a mistake.
By the time I was reminded of the saturated ground, I couldn’t turn out of it. I wasn’t able to back up and got stuck against the wire fence. To extricate the mower I needed to get some boards and a jack from the shop. I lifted up the front so I could point the wheels away from the fence and set them down on top of the boards. That almost worked but the rear wheels were still stuck spinning in their own divots.
Another trip back to the shop for more boards to shove beneath the rear wheels got me away from the fence and free to spin my way along until I reached dryer ground. I came back later with a push mower and finished cutting that section by hand.
The biggest victory of the day was that I didn’t beat myself up over getting into the mess in the first place.
I am loving my new mower but I have a long way to go toward controlling it well enough to stay out of trouble and stop making skid marks when I turn around on slopes. If the ground would get a chance to dry out, that might help. So, maybe July?
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Just in case anyone was wondering, today is my sister, Mary’s birthday.
Happy Birthday, Marebare! 🙂
[It being her birthday has nothing to do with Messy or a Mistake. That was all on me.]
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Relatively Damp
Am I prone to understatement? Not always. Sometimes I go to the other extreme. My natural inclination is to be contrarian, so instead of titling this post, “Soaking !#@$ Wet,” I settled on a genteel descriptor for current conditions. The ground around here is actually wetter than an entirely saturated sponge this morning.
I’m sure the trees are soaking this up with glee. Buds are sprouting from every stem and branch and noticeably increasing the hues of green emerging by the day.
Yesterday’s World Labyrinth Day event brought ten visitors to Wintervale, six of whom are family, four friends, plus a small dog. After some stutter-starts at the meeting of dogs, Asher settled into a wonderful acceptance of all the activity, people, and the one pet unfamiliar to him in his new home. All signs continue to hint that we will find success soon in Asher developing into the pet we are hoping he will become for us.
As long as he refrains from putting his nose on the kitchen counter, then his paws, and reaching for an unfinished scone on a plate, or shredding the cover of the pad in his crate, or getting back up on the living room couch again, or failing to recognize we are speaking to him and directing commands his way for compliance.
He appears to be relatively willing to suppress his natural instincts and behave exactly as we desire at all times.
Hah!
Yeah, we got this.
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Meeting Ash
A gray, chilly, rainy day that started out somber ended on a much happier note. Cyndie and I took care of the horses early yesterday and then dressed up and drove off for Fort Snelling National Cemetery to join her family at the memorial service for her uncle, Jon Brolin. It was a first for me. I had driven past the cemetery many times but never been amidst the rows upon rows of repeating identical headstones. That alone is a powerful thing.
In what felt like a scene in a movie, we stood protected from the spitting rain beneath a gazebo roof as veterans performed the rituals of saluting, gunshots, the mournful sound of taps, and the excruciatingly precise folding of the U.S. flag.
“On behalf of a grateful nation…”
Jon was a Marine who served during the Korean War.
After a precious few hours with the family at the reception following the service, Cyndie and I set off on a new adventure. We were going to meet a Shepherd Mix named, Ash who is just over a year old and currently being fostered in Stillwater, MN.
Last week, Cyndie asked me why I didn’t want to get another dog. I think I probably talked for three minutes straight listing all the reasons I could think of against owning a dog again at this time. She listened patiently to everything I said and politely acknowledged all my points. Then she told me, with her voice breaking in grief over her still raw emotions over Delilah’s passing, why she felt the need for the companionship of another loving canine.
In fact, she had found a Shepherd Mix pup that was up for adoption from the rescue organization where we had donated food after Delilah’s death. Ash needed a forever home. Cyndie read me the details about Ash, including a description of him that had been written by the foster mom. There wasn’t a single thing that I found concerning.
At that moment, all of the reasons I had articulated seconds earlier about not having a dog melted away.
I wanted to meet Ash.
We weren’t disappointed. Ash was everything we expected.
I think we can give Ash the home he deserves with the parenting he needs and years of companionship from which we all will benefit.
Since Cyndie had recruited coverage for our horses for the rest of the day, we took advantage of the freedom to have dinner at a Stillwater restaurant after we visited Ash at his foster home. After a quick phone search of options, Cyndie selected MatchStick Restaurant & Spirits. What a treat! Every bite was a delight of fabulous flavors, including the best cedar-plank salmon I ever tasted and the most enjoyable caramelized Brussel sprouts in a Thai peanut sauce.
While we were luxuriating in the pleasures of fantastic food, we pondered the fact that Cyndie noticed a car in front of us on our drive to Fort Snelling with “ASH” on its license plate, after which we found ourselves sprinkling flower petals over the urns of her aunt and uncle’s ashes.
We feel like bringing this endearing pup into our lives is what we are going to do.
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Like Flying
Yesterday felt like I had boarded an airplane and soared to a vacation destination far to our south. For weeks that became months, our region languished with daily high temperatures that repeatedly failed to reach 50°F. The milestone of the first 50° day of the season took so long to occur that when the air finally warmed up, a day or two later, the highs raced right through the 50s into the 60s and 70s.
Only the largest mounds of piled snow from plowing or shoveling remain. Remember that dead pine tree that collected and held onto the last big snowfall we received?
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It doesn’t look nearly as glamorous now. There isn’t a green needle to be found on any of those branches.
Meanwhile, everywhere I turn there is new green growth appearing from the dirt or the ends of branches. I’m feeling pulled in so many directions to get after managing our landscape where possible before it all takes off and grows appendages where I don’t want them to grow.
I feel awful when I am late to prune and end up cutting a limb that a tree or bush has already put precious energy into feeding. I am fascinated by how much is going on inside these plants from the moment sap can flow.
The pine trees were all “Snap, Crackle, & Pop” with pinecones instantly responding to the summery warmth.
Looks like the tree by the shop garage is going to produce a bumper crop this year.
Since it felt like a vacation destination, I only did about a half-day of tree trimming and trail clean-up before moving all the outdoor furniture back onto the deck for lounging under the warm solar rays. With my eyes closed, there was a moment when I almost thought I was in Puerto Rico. Then I realized it was just Cyndie calling via FaceTime video.
Today, Cyndie and Elysa are scheduled to fly home. I look forward to seeing if island living was good for Cyndie’s ankle rehabilitation. Walking on sand could be an exercise that helps her adapt to walking on the uneven turf of our yard and trails.
I’m mentally prepared for news of good progress or lack thereof, either way. It will be grand to have her back home where she can enjoy a vacation from her vacation with her family and Carlos’ family in Puerto Rico.
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Visible Differences
Yesterday, Cyndie sent me a photo of the colorful energy in Puerto Rico where she and Elysa are celebrating Carlos reaching a birthday numbered somewhere between 65 and 85 years (I wouldn’t dare reveal that it might be ten years away from both of those numbers).
I responded to her text with a photo of my own.
Compare and contrast our respective scenery and company.
I’ll say this much, I’ve got the bluer sky. 🙂
In addition to the smiling faces of Barry and Carlos captured above, they are joined by their mom, Marie, and brother, Steve.
Looks like they are having a pretty good time, eh?
The visible differences between our worlds right now are a function of the invisible contrasts in our personalities. I am thrilled that Cyndie was able to take this trip to a faraway place to be with family. I am also thrilled that I didn’t have to figure out what to pack or deal with air travel and ground transportation. I am thrilled to be home alone for a week with all the comfort and conveniences that go along with that.
I have survived the hassles of traveling to incredible adventures during my life but in general, my preference leans very heavily toward being in my home spaces as much as possible. I am very grateful and incredibly lucky for the number of times Cyndie has been willing to fulfill her wanderlust without me.
Be it ever so [or not so] humble…
My pathway to the barn on Wednesday morning was a slippery block of leaf-pocked ice where I had compacted the snow with repeated trips back and forth throughout the snow season.
That won’t last very many more days. Then it becomes a path of slippery leaves over soft mud until the frost completely leaves the ground and things begin to dry out. That’s when the mind of this home-body begins to think about pumping fresh air into his bicycle tires and going out for a roll on local roadways.
There is no waiting in line at the TSA to go on a bike ride.
Here’s hoping the clouds don’t linger long over Puerto Rico!
¡Feliz Cumpleaños, Carlos!
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Branch Removal
The weather was pleasant yesterday and enough snow had melted at the top of the driveway that I was able to cut up the branches of the big limb that came down in the last storm. That meant I needed to fire up the chainsaw that hasn’t seen any action in months. It was a little reluctant to start which involved enough pulling that I required a break to catch my breath but the second effort was the charm.
I cut up the fallen limb to three different levels: logs to split for firewood, branch trunks 4″ or less saved for the chipper, and branch tops to pile along our north property border. I trimmed the broken stump back to the main trunk of the tree and held it up for Cyndie like it was a trophy.
Looking at the tree after I was done, the overall shape seems pretty healthy. It’s as if this limb deserved to be removed for the overall benefit of the tree. That’s the way I’m going to frame it from now on, anyway.
Today, Cyndie departs to Puerto Rico for a week with our daughter to celebrate a milestone birthday this year for Carlos. I will go on a John diet for a week. The meals I prepare for myself are a lot simpler than the feasts Cyndie serves.
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Additional Detail
We enjoyed the day after Cyndie’s performance with a sigh of relief over her having accomplished the feat she had devoted so much time and energy to.
With the time-limited storytelling out of the way, I’d like to add a little behind-the-scenes context to the drama of that moment when the wedding cake crashed to the floor. Yeah, she wanted to scream. Consider these added tidbits…
- Cyndie had taken a full day off from work to bake the cakes on the Friday before the wedding. She hadn’t planned on having a distressing day at work on that Thursday triggering a decision to seek an immediate change of employment. That decision was linked to an opportunity with an application deadline of 9 a.m. Friday morning. Cyndie started her day at 4 a.m. to update her curriculum vitae and compose a cover letter by 8 o’clock for a courier to deliver in the nick of time.
- Then, she started baking cakes for the planned 12-hour project. Random interruptions pushed that allotted time to nearly 18 hours. Somewhere in there, our daughter, Elysa came home feeling unwell and I crashed with her in our bedroom. When Cyndie came up to sleep, she found Elysa in our bed so she moved to Elysa’s room instead. A short time later, after midnight, our phone rings and Julian answers. His young cousin is sick and wants to talk to Cyndie.
- Julian comes into our room looking for his mom and is totally confused about not finding her there. We get the phone to Cyndie in Elysa’s room and find out her brother’s kids are being watched by a grandparent with limited English skills while the parents are traveling. The boy is suffering a terrible bout of flu and asks if Cyndie would come over because grandpa’s only solution is to go to the hospital.
- Cyndie drives over and is basically up the rest of the night assisting with bouts of vomiting.
- She finally makes it home early on Saturday morning to thoroughly shower any and all sickness off her before preparing to depart with cakes for the wedding venue.
She had reasons to scream before she even started assembling the wedding cake that day.
Only a few people enjoying Cyndie’s storytelling at The Moth slam on Wednesday night knew the full detail of how stressful that dramatic disaster really was for our hero.
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Cyndie’s Story
Two weeks ago, I wrote about us attending a Moth story slam in advance of Cyndie’s plan to submit her name for an opportunity to tell her wedding cake story at the Amsterdam Bar & Hall in St. Paul. For those of you who weren’t able to hear her tell it in person last night, she has allowed me to post a written version for you.
Cyndie’s name was selected tenth –the last slot, out of twenty that had signed up for the chance.
Imagine Cyndie walking up on stage, standing under the lights in front of a microphone, and addressing a packed house. She is allowed only 5 minutes…
When my niece got engaged, she asked her mother to sew her wedding dress, and her grandma to knit a shawl and asked if I would bake a simple wedding cake. Thrilled, I said yes immediately… even though I’d never made a wedding cake before. Friends expressed concern over the huge responsibility I’d taken on given my lack of experience with wedding cakes. But I love to bake and was inspired by my niece’s invitation. I embraced this cake-baking opportunity with equal measures of optimism and naiveté.
That year, I baked dozens of practice cakes to test out on family and friends. I was blamed for inches added to waistlines and my reputation for baking in excess soared to new heights. It took me about 40 hours to mold sugar paste into candied pearls and colorful, edible flowers. With all that practice, my confidence grew and so did the cake. What started as a simple wedding cake had become a five-tier, white chocolate, lemon-raspberry layered masterpiece, stuffed with extra love.
Days before the wedding, my friend asked me how I planned to transport the cakes to the venue. I’d been so focused on baking, I hadn’t given it a thought. I quickly discovered that my mustang convertible with bucket seats is NOT the car for the job. My friend bails me out by loaning me her practical 4-door sedan as long as I drive and relieve her of any responsibility for the safe delivery of the cakes.
On the big day, I load up the car with boxes of cakes, buckets of extra frosting, edible decorations, and fresh flowers. I’m so nervous about transporting the cakes that I drive like a Sunday driver, on a Saturday! Thankfully, all the cakes arrive intact.
I carry the boxes of cakes like they are newborn babies and begin to carefully assemble the tiers of cake with the stands and pillars. I’m so meticulous about frosting and decorating each level to perfection that it takes me 2.5 hours just to finish the first four tiers. But I’m happy- already the cake is nearly 3 feet high and it looks as stunning as I’d hoped it would be.
As I reach to place the final tier, I hear a loud snap and then another one, as the pillars give way under the weight of the cake, and, in horror, I watch the cake topple over and crash onto the floor. A busboy says, “You are so [effed]” as he and the wait staff all run for cover in the kitchen. I can barely breathe but I manage to warn my friend, “DO. NOT. SAY. A THING.” She doesn’t and takes cover behind the bar.
I can’t believe I have just ruined my niece’s wedding day. This is exactly what my friends had warned me about. I can hear all the “I told you so’s” and the “what were you thinking’s” and see the evidence of not being enough piled high on top of the inglorious mess. I want to scream but I can’t because the only thing separating the wedding chapel from the reception hall is a thin, moveable partition.
Then the organist begins to play, “Here Comes the Bride.” I AM SO [EFFed]! My friend appears next to me with a shot of whiskey she’d stolen from the bar. I don’t drink whiskey, but on this day, I did. She asked, “What are you going to do?”
I have two choices- I can succumb to the despair of this epic fail or I have to rise up and fight with all the love in my heart to make the simple cake my niece had asked for. The fight is on. Baking in excess is now my saving grace. I have enough backup cakes. The groom’s cake is still intact and I can use fresh flowers to decorate so I kick my inner critic to the curb and ask for help.
The busboy –yeah, that one!– comes to my aid and scoops up the four-tier disaster on the floor, a waiter brings a fresh tablecloth and my friend fearlessly rips open the boxes and hands me back-up cakes as fast as I can frost & decorate them. I have to finish Wedding Cake 2.0 by the time the ceremony ends in less than 20 minutes.
I finish the second cake just in time to see the mother-of-the-bride walk into the reception hall, look at the cake, and, burst into tears. She says, “I didn’t cry at all during the ceremony but when I saw the cake… It’s so beautiful.” And it really was!
Sometimes, even I have a hard time believing the miracle that happened that day. But the radiant look on my niece’s face when she thanked me for baking her wedding cake helps me remember that anything is possible when I let love lead the way.
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Out of the ten storytellers, Cyndie’s performance earned a second place score from the judges, losing out by half a point to a tale that included both a tornado and nudity. The evening was a smashing (pun intended) success and made all the sweeter by the support of family and friends who showed up to cheer her on.
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Writing Words
Relative Something is a blog. The word blog is short for weblog, as in, world wide web + log [regular record of incidents]. Blogs are written in an informal conversational style. I write about my experiences like I would describe them if we were just hanging out, minus the pauses when I can’t think of the word I want to use. A thesaurus is my friend.
It would embarrass me greatly if the frequency of my error in using a word were prominently displayed on my posts. I am forever grateful for the intuition to double-check a dictionary and thesaurus. I don’t write exactly like I talk but I do write the way thoughts and ideas come into my head. Another thing I am forever grateful for is the dialogue I was surrounded by growing up. My vocabulary came from hearing the words my mom and dad used while WCCO radio and television broadcasts ran as a background soundtrack.
It is not rare that a sentence will come into my head with a word that I don’t recognize as coming from my own common usage but feels connected to something my mother would say.
Yesterday, as I steeled myself against a biting wind chill, I caught myself doing the classic “air whistle” that is an obvious habit my mom displayed. I have tried to grow out of that natural tendency, with little success beyond increased awareness of occasions when I am doing it. At the same time, it’s a habit that always draws memories of my mom from deep in my soul and brings a feeling of pride over being one of her kids.
Why would I try to get myself to stop this behavior? Maybe it’s a remnant of the urge to grow up and become my own person.
I am unabashedly a product of my upbringing and my ancestral heritage but I have the desire to grow well beyond simply being like my parents. Striving to be healthier in mind, body, and spirit has helped me to interrupt a pattern of familial depression and the use of alcohol as (an ineffective –even detrimental) treatment.
I don’t have a memory of my parents writing poetry but I have read the poems of another of my ancestral relatives. My inclination is to assemble words in a rhythmic pattern that appeals to my senses. That often drives the selection of a word more than the meaning of the word itself. When the collection of words is stacked up, the variety of possible intentions often surprises me. I don’t always know what the poems are saying about me but I have learned that readers often come to their own conclusions.
Helping Cyndie to shape and reshape a story she hopes to tell in a week and a half has been a fun experience for me. It is blurring the differences between verbal stories and written chronicles. Either way, readers or listeners are forming their own interpretations in their minds, conjuring mental images and feeling whatever emotions the words inspire.
I have a feeling her project could help me to become a better writer of stories about the experiences of *this* John W. Hays.
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