Ashes to ashes

Marvin Windows and Doors must be really busy. They have called up their temporary workers in the spring--something they haven't done for several years. So my husband is heading off to work again on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons. He was working ten hour shifts in the fall. He's cut those down to eight hours and I'm happy about that. When you don't get home until nearly 3 a.m., it's almost morning by the time you get to sleep. I take over some of his chores when he's working, with Sadie and Bear's assistance. We feed and water the goat and the chickens in the morning, and we shut them up in the evening. And we try to keep a fire going in the old wood boiler. My husband and I have differences of opinion on how to tend the boiler. I have the instruction manual on my side. It says, plain as day, "Rake the ashes forward each day and shovel them out frequently." My husband's version--rake the ashes forward and shovel them out if you can no longer squeeze any wood in. Once a year is probably enough. He told me recently that he takes a little out each day. Hah--a teaspoon maybe. I shovelled in a cloud dust quite awhile this morning. There were even chunks of unburned logs buried in those ashes. I was very worried that my fire would go out completely whilst I was doing this. [It's so humiliating to have to confess that it went out on your watch, especially if you've been self righteous about methods and especially if you can't get it going again by yourself.] When I smuggly announced that I had done the shovelling out this morning, I saw a very sly little grin. My husband probably won't have to do it at all this year.

Retirement

The day after I posted those last few blogs, I got busy and cleaned up the house. I don't want to live like a pig after all. I'm thinking that I'm actually lucky that I have some work left to do. My sister called me recently and told me that her husband's retirement, which had been scheduled for this summer, suddenly happened NOW. They had looked for a house in Aiken, South Carolina and immediately found one that they really liked. Then they had a chance to sell their current home quickly, and suddenly it was all done. She's really excited about it all. She mentioned that she had read some of my blogs and that, "It sounds like you two have so much fun up there." The thought that quickly crossed my mind was, "Gee, I hope I didn't mislead her." My husband and I do have a lot of fun up here and I think we have become closer than we have ever been during this last decade. And yet,... I had a group of friends in the town where we formerly lived. We went to Bible class and Altar Guild together and almost every month went out to eat to celebrate each other's birthdays. One of the friends worked in her husband's office. When they both retired, she carried on so about it that the rest of us got thoroughly fed up with her. Now I think I understand better. I didn't actually retire from anything, but sharing my husband's retirement was a much more difficult transition than I had expected. For a long time it seemed to me that all the people in Northwest Minnesota were busy living their lives except for the two of us. We were just standing by and watching. Once, after a concert we had attended, a woman came up to us and said, "I don't think I've seen you before. I don't know who you are." My husband replied, "That's all right. We don't really know who we are anymore either." We had lost our identity and didn't know how or where to find a new one. It's often an empty feeling, a purposeless seeming process. On other days, I feel so unbelievably lucky to be living exactly the life I've wanted to. The purpose is to start winding down, I guess. Ambiguity.

Cooking

I ordered a little bulletin entitled "Cooking with potatoes" along with some of this years seeds from my Pinetree Garden Seeds catalog. I read through it this morning. I had a strong impression that the woman who wrote it is a natural cook. She mixes beets and chard and mushrooms, onions and leeks and garlic, tomatoes and cheeses and hazelnut oils, and all kinds of herbs into her potatoes with a light-hearted flip. She speaks of stirring and chopping with a wooden spoon and you can picture her doing it with one hand on her hip while chatting with guests. I think of myself as a cook. I had five children and a husband and made them all something to eat every day for many years. But not light-heartedly. I must walk back and forth to the counter to check the recipe and agonize over the decisions involved. For a few minutes while reading the bulletin I wished I were a natural cook. Now I just wish I HAD such a cook. Yes, if I could have just one servant it would be a cook.

Housecleaning

After almost fifty years, I'm sick of it. More and more I'm letting it slide. I resent all the days I've thought of doing something creative and ended up dusting or scrubbing instead. My time is limited, since it seems that I must spend much of the morning reading and observing nature through my front windows. We are never unique or alone. I came across a little haiku written by Issa who lived in Japan two hundred years ago. "Spider/do not worry/I keep house casually." According to a biography found by Google, "Issa's poems have given consolation to generations of readers."

Greetings via Google

Yesterday morning I decided to start working on the Sunday morning New York Times crossword puzzle. After I had made my initial run-through, I circled all the clues I thought Google could help me with and came to my trusty computer. At the very top of the first web site that I clicked on were these words, "Welcome to all of you who are looking for 'political pundit Myers!'" It turned out to be the wrong web site to find DeeDee's name, but I had had a friendly, unexpected greeting from strangers. When I told my husband about it, he had the answer I needed. He's an expert on political pundits. I should have asked him in the first place.

Tenuous connections

Speaking of reading on the beach. Have you ever checked out a library book and found sand between its pages or trapped along its edge by its plastic library jacket? For some reason I love it when stuff like that happens. Who was this person? What beach? Did they read or maybe just let the book lie in the sand? I wonder, but I don't really want to know. Knowing would break the spell. I like bookmarks. I have several little piles of them in my house. But they rarely seem to be in the right place at the right time. Other people must have the same problem. Library books often have pictures, grocery lists, match book covers, receipts, even personal letters in them. Once I even found a long dark hair carefully placed mid book. This triangle of author, and me, and the person who had the book before me always fascinates. Sometimes a church bulletin will ask the question, "Do you want to be a part or apart?" For me this is a weighty question, not easily answered. I once went through a long, strong Emily Dickinson/Virginia Woolf period. I became enchanted with the idea that we were three soul mates who just missed each other on this planet earth. Emily Dickinson died in May 1886. Virginia Woolf was only four years old then. She died in March of 1941. I wasn't born until the following July. If they had known me, would they have seen me as a dolt who barely grasped what they were trying to say? Well now, we'll never know, will we? Apart is definitely safer.

Reading on the beach

Our snow had started to melt. Temperatures were in the thirties. Huge chunks of snow-covered ice slid off our metal roof. The sound of it is always startling. Several new snowfalls have been heavy, wet, spring snows. But this week we've fallen back towards winter again. Our nights are below zero and our days can't quite make it to twenty degrees. Yesterday we had several snow showers. The big flakes drifted down dry and light like winter snow. And yet I know that winter will have to give up soon. The sun is higher and much stronger. The light is different and lasts longer. The icicles drip and grow longer and longer even on the cold days. I've been reading a book about Shakespeare while I'm sitting here in front of our big windows waiting for spring. Yesterday I came to a chapter about "The Merchant of Venice." Twenty five years ago, I took a University of Wisconsin course by mail on Shakespeare's plays. "The Merchant of Venice" came up as an assignment just as our family was ready to leave for vacation. We had a favorite campsite at a small lake in northern Wisconsin. We weren't a family who went camping just for its own sake. Usually we were on our way to somewhere, camping in a new place each night. But this particular campsite must have had happy memories attached to it. I remember seeking it out, returning to it several years in a row. I've read so many books in my sixty five years. I'm lucky if I can remember the plot and the characters. Seldom do I know where I did the reading. But any thought of "The Merchant of Venice" brings back the short, shady walk to the beach, the warm sand, the sun on my shoulders, my children near-by.