so the end of the day is not a good time for me to have a profoundly meaningful planning-goals-and-plotting conversation.
i have found that it has been necessary for me to learn sensitive ways to say a resounding “no!”. not wanting to totally shut him-who-shall-remain-nameless down, still wanting to honor (at a later date and time to be announced) his desire for discussion, and understanding the need for review and reflection and visioning and all that stuff, i try valiantly to gently re-direct, delicately postpone, waggle carrots of tangent.
it’s all about balancing – relationship – isn’t it? i’m feelin’ quiet and he’s about to launch into profundity. he’s feelin’ silently meditative and i’m chattering boisterously with the accent on verbose.
it’s under construction; they are restoring it, this beautiful art-deco historic building, finished in 1940. the southport beachhouse “used recycled materials to cut costs. this way, rather than paying for new materials, the city paid workers to tear down condemned buildings as well as build new ones. the beach house uses luxurious slate, stone and marble materials salvaged from the old kenosha post office, which would have been otherwise unaffordable.” part of the new deal and roosevelt’s wpa (works progress administration) it is a gorgeous structure on the shore of lake michigan and the place we had our reception six years ago, a bonfire on the beach to end a stunning day.
in the middle of the beginning of covid – last year – i read an article about a new york couple’s ingenious solution to the inability to go to restaurants or pubs or gather with others, instead to isolate and social distance. i saved it and thought it was something worth pursuing.
this year, after a lot of research and a couple false starts sent back, i found a lightweight (mostly plastic) folding table and lightweight (mostly plastic) folding stools. i showed them to david and said, “let’s have pop-up dinners!”. small enough to be kept in littlebabyscion or big red, it’s an intention that begs spontaneity.
our first pop-up was this past sunday after our trip to the orchard.
we carried the table and stools and the picnic basket, the one from my sweet momma and poppo, onto the beach and found a spot in front of the scaffolds on the cement by the building, lit our candle-in-a-jelly-jar, set out our plates and cloth napkins and cheese and crackers and olives, our metal stemware. easy.
i imagine this fall, and even winter, will bring many pop-up dinners and happy hours. i can already list the places at which i’d love to pop up. snowpants and mittens won’t deter us. we’ll carry blankets, maybe thermoses of warm soup.
it was a little chilly at the beachhouse on sunday. the breeze was picking up. i picked up my phone and turned on the one piece of music i have saved to it. cherish the ladies began playing if ever you were mine and i watched david rise off his stool. he came over to me, held out his hand and invited me to dance.
as the sun began to dip below the horizon and the colors in the sky began to rise above the lake, on a honeycrisp apple kind of day, we danced on the sandy beach, scaffolding and a smiling cream city brick beachhouse our backdrop, a pop-up dinner waiting.
we watched ‘the wedding planner‘ the night before we left for milwaukee to officiate a wedding. sweet and predictable, it was exactly what we needed friday night as we headed into a weekend that would spell bliss for a young couple.
this morning i read that pete and chasten are parents. there is a photo of them with two babies, newborns, a girl and a boy. the article made me cry for them. they are in their bliss.
in just this last week our dear friends welcomed a second grandchild and a daughter-in-law. their family grows, love begets love – love is just that – love – and they are blissful.
we danced last night at the outdoor patio reception and i was reminded of my weddings. both times filled with love and anticipation and the simple-profound complexity of the moment and the moments to come. no guarantees, no instruction books, no wisdom-of-the-universe or sage advice granted with the words “i do”. just love. both times bliss.
love is just love. we muddle through the highs and lows, the mistakes and grace, the celebrations and regrets. and love is still just love. pure and ridiculously complicated, our hearts swell as we love, love more and love again: partners and babies and added family members and dear friends. for seasons, for forevers, we punt our way through life and love, trying as we wake, trying harder the next day. moments rich with hearts flawed by humanness, hearts stirred by emotions too intense and too gossamer to grasp.
i think it all really boils down to this. all of it. no boundaries, no definitions, no exclusions. fragile and yet ever-powerful, ethereal and sustaining, love is really just love. it’s that easy. it’s that intricate. it’s tangly and it’s linear.
massimo actually spoke a few more words in the movie. adoringly and with respect he said, “love can’t always be perfect. love is just love.”
we adore roadtrips. they are excuses for meandering thoughts, quiet appreciation of landscape, coffeehouse exploration, ridiculous amounts of snack foods. we are guilty of eating our way across the country and we have no established rules for that. all bets are off and we have joyfully entered gas station and service area mini-marts nationwide looking for anything and everything that will refill our snack-coffers and amuse our palates. gourmet or down-and-dirty salty chips – it does not matter. the one consistent partner for me, the sidekick – as hershey’s calls it – though, is twizzlers.
twizzlers are age-appropriate no matter your age. happy candy with amazing roadtrip powers, with a presence in every state or country we have traveled, i’m thinking the hershey folks should sponsor us. yes, in their own words, i’d suggest they “chew on it!”
we are each other’s best rant-stoppers. sometimes we can stop it at the gate and sometimes we can just sort of sway the after-effects at the other end of the crescendo. either way, we have found that we are pretty well equipped – specifically balancing for each other – to offer consolation or lighthearted redirection or nudges of positivity or reminders to not get stuck in a maelstrom of yuck. if none of that works, then a midnight bowl of cereal might do the trick.
in the moment it may not be so funny, but, sometimes, looking back on a venting-rant and, always, promises to never-rant-again are pretty doggone hilarious.
there is no question – whatsoever – that i lay awake inthemiddleofthenight waaay more than he does. i ponder and wonder and fret and worry and perseverate and plan and make lists and sigh and re-start the cycle over again. i lose sleep over things that are troubling me and during times of discontent. it is impossible for me to not carry these concerns into sleep – it’s disquieting and, most definitely, interruptive.
on the other hand, it takes david about six seconds to fall asleep and – perish the thought – stay asleep. there is little to no tossing, turning, blankets-on-ing-blankets-off-ing, staring-at-the-ceiling, looking-at-the-clock. somehow it is possible for him to empty-his-mind-of-all-troubles and just sleep.
middle age is called that because it is the middle of aging. with that comes a bundle of surprises that seem to arrive overnight. suddenly, new wrinkles. suddenly, crepey skin. suddenly, age spots and creeping-on lovehandles. suddenly, menopausal insomnia, achier joints, keeping track of rest areas on the way to everywhere. suddenly, jowls. it’s like a piñata that is slowly letting out candy, treats to relish with this person you are aging with.
we have decided that we simply cannot pine for what our bodies were like or could do back before we knew each other. now is now and we are lucky to have that. and so, we will celebrate the laughlines and the readers and changing bodies and funny long errant eyebrows. we’ll roll with the surprises as they arrive, with gratitude, laughing as much as we can, and we’ll stay right here in the middle of this aging thing – together.
we have sat at this table countless times now. it’s the table at which duke and eileen sat for decades of their marriage, sipping coffee, listening to the radio, reading the paper. there have been infinite conversations at this table, much laughter, maybe even an argument or two. this table, clothed in worn, yet sturdy, has seen many meals and some good life.
two days ago i spent some significant time at this table with 20, duke and eileen’s son. we helped him when it was time to clean out their house; duke had moved on to a different dimension and eileen was moving into assisted living. he asked us to put the old table into big red and take it as a donation to one of the resale shops in town. we brought it to st. vincent de paul and they refused it. the guy at the furniture donation door said that it showed wear on the top and that it wasn’t acceptable under their guidelines. we didn’t have time to take it elsewhere so we left it in the back of big red, for a very long time, waiting for another day to donate it somewhere.
looking out onto our deck and backyard, our sunroom is one of our favorite rooms. we stood in the sunroom one day in the early pandemic and did some re-imagining. an old door horizontal on a couple horses spanned the length on the east side of the room and an antique drafting table was smack in the center looking out back. we moved the drafting table upstairs to the office. and stood there, pondering. we thought it might be nice to have a table in front of the window, perhaps one we could sit at with coffee or lunch. we went downstairs into the storage room looking for perhaps another old door, a surface we could use. we couldn’t find just what we wanted, so we thought that we might go look for a table somewhere. it was one of those forehead-smacking-moments when we remembered we had such a table in the back of big red. we unloaded it and the duke-and-eileen table had itself a new home.
we have written at this table. david has drawn cartoons and sketched sketches at this table. i have laid out, added font, finessed, colorized, photoshopped at this table. we have created at this table. it is the easel in our sunroom, a room we adore. amid happy lights, succulents and plants with names like KC, snakeinthegrass, leticia, ralph surround us. the gentle sound of a tiny fountain is soothing and the whir of the small wine-fridge-from-the-boy reminds us not to forget snack-time-happy-hour. we can see the birds at the feeder and know that magic is sunning on a rock in the pond. this table is happy and we are happy the secondhand store turned it away.
so on tuesday, 20 and i sat working on some things he needed to get done. a couple of times he said, “wow. we are sitting at the table duke and eileen sat at all those years…” yes. that’s how we feel each day.
the specific history of this table is a mystery, for we will never know the love expressed at this table, never know the decisions made at this table, never know the tears shed at this table. we just know that it has comforted us through this whole time of pandemic.
like duke and eileen, we have sipped coffee at it, listened to music, read news apps. we have had conversations and much laughter and have argued at this table. this table continues to wear, continues to age, continues to be a place of many meals, and continues to see some good life.
coffee was a recurring theme in our early days. it does not have as big a spotlight role these days, sharing the limelight with wine and lets-try-to-drink-more-water. but back in the day of our writing-back-and-forth-and-back-and-forth it was a super star and you could see how often our bucks were spent on it in photographs taken of coffee cups around the country to send each other. (which literally gives me pause for thought, wondering if that is how starbucks got its name….)
these days? it is more of a guiding light, illuminating the mornings-after-little-to-no-sleep, the balm to heal insomnia, the salve of achier joints, the massage of slower starts. though it is not the only star smack-dab in our beverage list, it is a lifesaver. and there are some days when there simply is not enough of it.
“as estrogen declines in perimenopause and menopause, appetite ramps up. … hormone weirdness can impact your sleep (night sweats, for example). insufficient sleep can further elevate sensations of hunger.” (gennev.com)
and this additional news:
“the decline of sleep-promoting hormones including estrogen and progesterone is one big reason for disrupted sleep. and the other symptoms of menopause—from mood swings and anxiety to night sweats—also contribute to sleep problems for women. production of another critical hormone for sleep—melatonin—also decreases with age, which can compound sleep problems for women during menopause and beyond.” (psychology today, m.j. breus, phd)
shocking, isn’t it? it makes you want to sign up, doesn’t it? huh?huh?
as one who is smack-dab in the middle of this estrogen/progesterone/post-peri-full-blown-meno fun, i know i am not alone. there is nothing like lying awake in the wee of the night, filled with swirling angst-filled thoughts and lists and no shut-eye, listening to david gently snoring and dogdog running in his sleep, blanket on-blanket off-blanket on, grateful-for-each-moment-crabby-as-all-get-out, melatonin-deprived and starving. i can’t count the vast number of bananas and bowls of cereal we have eaten smack-dab in the middle of the night.
“levels of the hunger-stimulating hormone ghrelin increase, a reason why many women find themselves frequently hungry during this phase.” (psychology today, m.j. breus, phd)
reverse threading 