Posts Tagged ‘siblings’
Horses Munching
And another thing. I loathe that it’s Russia that has played such a significant role in the collapse of our democracy through its command over our Kleptocrat-in-Chief, using kompromat, disinformation campaigns, cyberattacks, and social media manipulation to sow discord among the American public.
Even more, I am miserable over the fact that so many were gullible enough to be duped by it all and/or so racist as to support all the despicable things that have occurred in the time since you-know-who first rallied the MAGA hordes.
And that’s all I’m going to say about that.
For much of my life, I have been aware of being triggered by the sound of someone eating in an otherwise silent environment. My body responds with an incredible blast of intolerance that can be a challenge to control. Misophonia is the term for the disorder. (Siblings: remember how our sister Linda reacted to teeth scraping on our forks?) Anyway, in a curious contrast, the sound of our horses eating is almost magical in the way it soothes me. How does that work?
Listening to them all munching away is one of my favorite experiences. I captured a shot of each of them last night.
I had to include the shot of Mix looking to see what the heck I was up to before she went back to eating because it makes me smile. Maybe she was asking me why she was the last one to be photographed. Can you hear them in your minds, happily chomping away?
These photos give you a good view of how our “placemats” serve to keep their spillage up off the dust and dirt for smacking up after the buckets are empty. Mia is eating some of what she drops in the snow. She tends to step out and scan the surroundings while chewing.
The other day, while they were eating and I was still scooping up manure around them, I noticed Mia had planted one of her back feet on top of a pile. I scraped up everything around that one hoof and kept watching for her to change her stance so I could scoop up that last bit she mashed.
Every time she turned to look away as she chewed, she only moved her front feet. I’d never paid that close of attention to her feet for that long before, so this was surprising to me. I bet she did that about ten times while I was cleaning the rest of the immediate area. It wasn’t until she finished eating and walked away that she finally picked up that back foot.
I’m pretty certain there is a high probability she was just messing with me.
.
.
Hays Gang
We got the gang back together again yesterday for a little face-to-face catching up. The five surviving Hays siblings are successful in gathering all in one place every 18 months or so, and we try to capture photographic evidence that it truly happened. This time, we met at Elliott’s house in Richfield, which is mostly central to our distribution of homes to the north, south, and east of there.
It’s mind-boggling to fathom how much life experience has occurred since the time when we would have all lived under the same roof. It would have been in the farmhouse at Intervale Ranch on the border of Eden Prairie and Edina.
At a gathering we achieved in January of 2020, one of our group shots included what has become a meme where Elliott turns his back to the camera. Somewhere, I know there is a shot where he did that at the house Cyndie and I owned in Eden Prairie, but Cyndie’s quick search found this one from 2020:
Here is how we looked yesterday…
It makes us laugh every time.
I LOVE my siblings!
.
.
Almost Healthy
The splitting headache is no longer splitting, and her vital signs have returned to normal. Cyndie seems back to reasonably functional. She helped with horse chores and has taken Asher for a couple of walks in addition to a trip to the Post Office as Santa’s little helper. Goodies are in the mail, and the neighbors will find a bag of holiday cheer has been dropped at their doors.
At this stage of holiday preparations, it’s hard to tell that Cyndie was off her game at all.
In support of all her Elf-ish energy, I have been mining the far reaches of our Apple Music offerings to find appropriate holiday sounds. The first few notes of an Andy Williams Christmas album instantly transported me to a big old farmhouse on the border of Edina and Eden Prairie, MN, and the 5-year-old me arose from within my depths with visions of leaded tinsel being draped across branches from outstretched arms of a person standing on a folding ladder above me.
The result of that surge of nostalgia left me feeling lonesome for the clamor and banter of my siblings buzzing around me.
The branches of that family tree have sixty years of growth that have spread us out beyond the conveniences of frequent contact.
That 5-year-old me would only have his father around for 17 more years. I will always remember the time he almost convinced me that he had heard something on the roof in the minutes just before I showed my face one Christmas morning. I was old enough to know better, but I’d never experienced my dad putting on such a believable act before and was gobsmacked by it.
I like to think he was rewarded by the innocent astonishment that must have shown on my face.
Much less astonishment came over me when I stumbled upon news of a school shooting recently in Wisconsin. That innocence is long gone.
Looking at our trees, I was grateful they don’t need to know such things happen. Same with the horses. Then, I realized how attuned trees and horses are to the universe, which means they probably sense each and every atrocity through the connectedness of all things.
They keep calm and carry on their existence, and so should we. I’ll pretend we are almost healthy.
And now I miss the innocence of my 5-year-old self more than ever.
.
.
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?
****************
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.]
.
.
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!
.
.
Friendly Family
That was fun! Just hanging with my brothers and sisters for an afternoon after not being altogether for three years.
I feel so lucky to have siblings who all get along and seamlessly enjoy time together regardless of how many months might pass between visits. Yesterday included plenty of laughs over memories of our shared childhood experiences, including some details we don’t all agree on. Honestly, one thing that I’m becoming more certain about as I age is that I am not certain about any precise details conjured in my memories.
No matter how clear my memory of past events seems, it is only fair to qualify them as my vague recollections.
With some luck, the date we picked for a summer weekend gathering will work for all our extended families and we can have a larger span of time together for sharing stories. The hours we were together yesterday only scratched the surface of catching up with each person.
In the same way that time seems to fly by when you are having fun, it also can sail away from you when you aren’t paying attention. In a blink, years can pass between sibling get-togethers. Throw in a pandemic to wipe out another big chunk of time and it makes it hard to remember the last gathering.
That’s too long between visits for a family that is so much fun to be around. Here’s hoping we can work on improving that in the future.
.
.
Siblings Again
Cyndie and I are driving up to North Branch, Minnesota, today for a planned gathering of my Hays siblings. There were a couple of farther-reaching Hays relation reunions that were canceled by the pandemic and I don’t believe the five of us have been in the same place at the same time since January 2020. Yesterday, I scoured the photo archives of my blog for a record of our gatherings throughout the last decade for comparison, and hopefully, to coerce us to get an up-to-date portrait while we are together today.
In my search, I came across some shots from when we were kids that I’ll insert to start this gallery.
abt. 1960: Judy holding me, Elliott, Mary, Linda (1952-1997)
abt 1961: Judy, Mary, John, Elliott, Linda (1952-1997) holding David
with Mom, abt. late 1990s – early 2000s in Eden Prairie
Brothers, maybe?
abt 2009: Wasn’t everybody, but close.
Winter 2014, Beldenville.
Summer 2017, Richfield.
Summer 2018, Richfield.
Winter 2020, North Branch
We don’t tend to choreograph our positioning with any regularity, do we? It will keep you guessing who each person is.
.
.
Powerful Hug
It was in a dream, but not all dreams are equal. It was a physical hug that my brain perceived as a more tactile reality than any dream I’d ever experienced. Sometimes, dreams feel so real that waking from them results in a confusing reconciliation of the conscious world from the dream world.
“Did that just happen?”
“Where am I? What day is it?”
It was the kind of dream where my next reaction was that I needed to talk about it as soon as possible before it was gone; before I couldn’t remember it anymore.
Shouting, “Cyndie!?”
My first perception was that it started with my seeing a photograph of a youngster and older siblings sitting on the railing outside the back door of our Cedar Ridge Road house in Eden Prairie where my family lived in the 1970s. That was a railing that would not have actually supported us in the way depicted in this dreamed photograph.
I strained to clarify whether the kid was me or my little brother. The kid had just been given a fresh haircut and it appeared to be a bizarre customization of a mohawk. The front hairline –multiple steps of a hairline, actually– (how dream-typically unreal) was visible where it had been buzzed like a sheered sheep.
When trying to intensify my observance of the kids’ face, it morphed to defy clarification, so I decided it was my brother since I don’t recall ever getting a haircut like that one.
I looked up from the photo to pass it around to my siblings in the room, hoping someone else would be able to provide clarity and found myself looking into the face of my sister, Linda, who I haven’t seen in real life since she died back in 1997. What a shock!
Reaching out in disbelief, I touched her and found she was actually there and discovering that, embraced her in a bearhug of a hug, crying emotionally over the experience of having her in my arms once again.
In my real life of late, I am not aware of any particular triggers that would have refreshed memories of Linda in my mind, so this visit felt extremely out of the blue.
As amazing as that part of the dream was, it became additionally intriguing with the following.
After that powerful hug, the “dream me” moved into another room to process the experience and in that space, two figures moved past me to walk through a door to outside the house. It was Cyndie’s deceased father, Fred, and a young version of her living brother, Steve.
As he passed by me, I told Fred that I had just experienced being able to physically hug my dead sister, Linda, and he acknowledged my words with something of a knowing smirk as he continued on out the door. In my thoughts, I marveled that he knew exactly what was going on, while I was grappling with the unbelievable amazement I was experiencing.
That hug was a powerful and priceless experience with a loved one who has passed away.
The whole dream was almost too deep for me to decipher. It started in my unconscious and, beyond sharing it here, I am happy to let it continue to simmer and steep in my unconscious for me to absorb with time.
Feeling a lot of love this morning for loved ones who have passed during my lifetime.
.
.
Dancing Cranes
Cyndie is home again! She received a wonderful greeting from Delilah, got ignored by Pequenita, adored by me, and most surprising of all, warmly loved by all the horses. She said they were all behaving like the four Arabians we used to have, showing that same desire to receive attention from her.
On Friday morning, she was cleaning the waterer and heard the sound of horses snoring.
We can’t remember the last time we saw them lay down for naps while either of us was around. The serenity didn’t last for long, though.
Two sandhill cranes made an appearance in the hayfield. The trumpeting vibrato trills of sandhill cranes have been reverberating for weeks from a dry creek bed beyond our trees in a neighboring field. Yesterday, they showed up in plain sight and grabbed the attention of the horses.
Cyndie recorded from a vantage point where she could capture both the horses and the two posturing, squawking cranes. Wait for their hopping around toward the end…
.
.
Today, we host a gathering of some of my family. Siblings and kid cousins will be here for a long-overdue get-together.
We will probably remind the horses of the sandhill cranes, but without the dancing.
.
.
Aerial History
With much appreciation to my son, Julian, for his pointer to a precious University of Minnesota online historical aerial photograph resource he stumbled onto yesterday, I dedicate today’s post to my siblings and cousins who will most likely enjoy this more than anyone else.
I immediately searched for images from my old Eden Prairie homes. I started looking at our house on Cedar Ridge Road, but the big fun was exploring views of Intervale Ranch on old County Road 18.
Check out the place in 1960:
I have cropped this to include Fullerton’s and McCartney’s houses for reference, and the gravel pit across from the driveway of our house.
You can clearly see the center circle of our driveway, the tennis court, the barns, and the house on the hill that was the Superintendent’s quarters where the family first lived while our grandparents were in the main house.
Just seven years later, it looked like this:
Look how much bigger the gravel pit is. You can see the divided highway that formed the barrier between us and Braemar Park. I’m pretty certain that the final excavation of the surroundings was already underway, based on the pathway cleared between the outer barn and the highway.
Here is a closer zoom focusing on Intervale:
Can you find the chestnut tree?
And finally, here is a wider pan to show more of the surroundings:
This gives the added reference of 494 in the bottom of the frame, much of the golf course, and –with the stark white roof– the Braemar hockey rink.
You can also see the rest of the expanded gravel pit.
Remember how hilly it was around there? From the satellite view, it is really hard to get a sense of those dramatic features. I believe we have photos of the construction of the north/south divided highway that was County 18 at the time that are dated 1962. I find it interesting to consider the changes that happened in the seven years between these images.
Cyndie and I have been at Wintervale for seven years now. In October it will reach eight. Luckily, I’ve already been collecting the overhead satellite views of this property.
Hopefully, there won’t be any divided highway installations coming into the pictures in our lifetimes.
.
.
Relative Something 