“my process is different than his,” she said. i had to laugh. yes…yes…that is the truth.
the getting-ready-to-leave process is most definitely different man-to-woman, at least in my experience and the experience of my dear girlfriend.
they-who-shall-remain-nameless are ready to go. they’ve chosen their shoes, their coat, their hat if it is cold, their gloves, their scarves or neck gaiter or buff – whatever – and they are ready. meanwhile, we-the-other-person-in-the-equation are doing just-one-more-thing, turning off lights, turning on lights, closing the blinds, opening the blinds, filling the dogdish with water, getting tissues for our pocket or purse, grabbing a water bottle and a larabar justincase, as well as sorting through shoes and hats, scarves and gloves or mittens, choosing between a purse or a backpack. the decisions are not as – er – straightforward nor as quickly quick, particularly if we are multi-tasking…not to mention that we are proud putterers. but – at least here – and i know there, too – we eventually meet at the back door, kiss the dog goodbye and actually leave the house.
so “ready in the flashiest of flashes” in the department store jewelry department scene of love actually cracks me up, every single time. as the incomparable salesperson rufus fusses over gift-wrapping a necklace, the purchaser chomps at the bit to go (no plot-spoiler here) – yet rufus continues to wrap – tissue paper, a box, another bauble, yet another layer, a cellophane bag, more froufrou, eucalyptus, a cinnamon stick, another box. it is most definitely funny – “mr. bean” just being utterly charming to start with – all while the giftbuyer shifts from one foot to the other. and…in an unrelated though pertinent point, i can relate to the layered gift wrapping – i love to find ways to wrap things that might best showcase the item.
i think that d has gotten used to my unflashiest-of-flashes – yet thoroughly charming, i’m sure – exits. he usually says something like, “we’re not in a rush” or “take your time” to assuage my tendency to start feeling guilty about the everpresent one-more-thing-to-do and he also knows that being rushed makes me a tad bit cranky (“tad bit” is fluid and deliberately amorphous….) so it is definitely a self-preservation thing.
and so he is careful not to shift from one foot to the other. he is careful to not say, “ready to go??” (especially with many question marks). he is careful to find something to do – with his coat and hat and gloves and buff on – while he waits. he is careful to move in slowwwwest motion heading to the back door.
for we here – at least one of us – is not ready in the flashiest of flashes.
prior to going up-north i had only been on a pontoon boat once – in the carolina mountains with a black lab who loved to swim and a tiny little life-vested girl who equally loved the water and who spent time rafting alongside. our little boy had not yet even joined us, so it was a long time ago and the memory, although faded in detail, is clearly peaceful and beautiful. gloriously great fun.
the pontoon of up-north means laughter and snacks, old-fashioneds and slow cruising around the connecting lakes. it means conversation and story-telling, the search for loons, and the art of spontaneous plan-making.
we haven’t solved all of earth’s mysteries onboard, nor have we come up with a design for world peace, but we have found solutions to less pressing problems, offered and heard advice, dreamed a bit.
there is nothing quite like a pontoon boat to remind you of the power of community. and, more than once on that pontoon boat a few weeks ago, i looked around and gave abundant thanks for the others on the boat. snugged into comfy seats, sun on our faces, a summer breeze blowing, we are in a cove of deep friendship, people who can count on us and upon whom we can depend.
moments like these lend themselves to carrying a kind of a pontoon boat philosophy of life everywhere…a place of inclusion, of generosity, of comfort, a place of openness and caring. a place to share some time, to float ideas, to listen, to feel heard, to have raucous fun, to be quiet. a gentler ride through life, with people around you who will be there when the seas are rougher, when you need a little help with forward momentum, when their support is like oars in a rowboat.
we are fortunate – when we can give over to the pontoon boat. we are fortunate – life presents us with people with whom we can ride along together. we are fortunate – we are reminded of the sheer gift of community. we are fortunate – and we take time to be grateful.
the loons watched us and then, after a few seconds of study, they determined we were simply co-existing with them. they paddled away, riding our rippling wake.
we drove home with the heat blasting and the windows open. all 263 miles.
we drove slower than usual – cruise control on – smiling at everyone who passed us as we toodled along in the right lane.
we stopped every hour.
each time, we raised the hood, set a timer, stretched our legs. we readied the old beach towel and the funnel, got out the big jug of coolant and waited till it was safe to open the radiator cap.
and littlebabyscion – with whom i had had a few conversations prior to getting on the road – hung in there.
each time we opened the radiator cap to reveal that the coolant level had not changed. the red coolant light – which had intermittently flashed at us numerous times on the way up north – causing great distress – never flashed at us on the the way home.
when we got off the interstate for the last eleven miles or so, i turned off the heat. and LBS dutifully and safely got us home. no flashing lights on the dashboard. no drop in the level of coolant in the radiator.
so it’s all a bit of a mystery – this curious and first-time problem – the flashing light, the seriously depleted coolant on our way up. i have a few theories and, frankly, i’m hoping they are correct, that our brilliant mechanic will concur. that would mean that nothing is really horribly wrong with LBS. and that would mean we can continue our journey together. 276,000 miles and beyond.
we – david and i – were seriously serious about staying in the calm-zone as we dealt with this car issue while on a little time away and, mostly, while driving home. though i, initially, was pretty upset about the potential problem that this could represent, my conversations with LBS were fervent and d and i were determined to stay in the zen-zone all the way home. taking the over-the-phone advice of our mechanic, knowing that our dear friends were not-too-far behind us and that 20 was waiting at home with dinner and ready to help in any way were all sources of infinite reassurance. that kind of support gives one confidence to keep going, to not immerse in worry, to just trust it all.
it’s been a long, long time since i have driven on an interstate with the windows wide open. it’s a noisy place. and yet, the kwik-trip, the fox river park, the giant truck stop all provided us with quieter places to stop, places to wait it out, places to be celebratory each time we opened LBS’ radiator cap and then packed it all back up and drove on for the next hour.
this was an in-the-lull lesson for us. any moments of upset were not helpful. instead, staying focused on the things we could do, the help we had been offered, the steadiness of this little xb – these all gave us the ability to stay in the moment and not lose the lull.
i’m not positive we would have passed the lull-test alone. we are infinitely grateful to have not felt alone. that is the power of community for each of us – this abundance of support. when we wouldn’t have normally asked for help, it was there anyway. we just need to remember it’s right there. for the little things and the big things.
my niece sent me a text. it was a video of her turning her heat down to 60° and saying, “i…am becoming you.” yup. we are not – well, i am not – a toasty-warm-house person. now, don’t get me wrong. i do love to be cozy. but not toooo toasty. and radiators – as in our old house – retain their heat for a long time so you have to be a teeny bit cautious about how high you put the thermostat…the temperature in the house won’t go down for a while with those radiators radiating – their job in life.
regardless, we just layer up here. with energy costs as they are, we are more likely to have on baselayers (even inside) with thermals and vests. and at night – that window is always a wee bit cracked. there is nothing like sleeping with a little cold fresh air.
but, that’s not really what i was going to talk about. “warmth looks good on you” from stio – a very cool company based in jackson, wyoming – is on page 58 of the “deep winter 2024” catalog. and, despite all the exceptional gear this company sells, the inordinately courageous influencers, the gorgeous photography, it made me stop and consider it from – yes – another point of view.
warmth looks good on you.
approachable, open, inclusive, inquisitive, embracing, warmth does look good. it looks like a conversation waiting to happen. it looks like a friendship on the cusp. it looks like generosity of spirit and compassion. it looks like community. like support. like loving one another.
it has been in the most likely and the least likely of situations i have made new and dear friends over the years. in classes. at a job. in the ‘hood. in a studio. at kids’ soccer games, baseball games, cross-country meets, tennis matches, colleges. after a concert. on the wood floor in the hallway of a ballet class. in an airport car rental line. in the fitting rooms of a white house black market store. on a trail. online. i can’t imagine life without these people. and yet, had i or they not been open – had there not been a bit of warmth exchanged between us – we would have missed. and the possibility of friendship, the chance of a relationship would have glanced off. and, for me, that would have taken away from my being better for knowing or having known them.
it’s kind of a cold world out there. it’s not that hard to layer up.
warmth looks good on you.
it’s as simple as a decision.
*****
*stocking face created by my sister waaaay back in the day
if you asked me what word best describes our up-north trips, it would be laughter. pontoon boatrides and utv drives, hikes in the woods and lots and lots of food and drink and snacks, and it is still laughter.
there is nothing – truly, absolutely nothing – like being with other people who are in the same – ummm – age bracket you are in.
i remember my sweet momma and poppo gathered around their pool in florida with multiple other couples. yadayadayada they’d go on and on about their trials and travails. i was stunned back then by the ordinariness of their conversations, by the chapter of life.
but i tell ya, they had nothing on the up-north gang. we will literally talk about ANYthing. any sordid detail, any grimy description, any mighty middle-age challenge, any blahblah that floats into our brains. we share life, we tell stories, we compare notes, we make suggestions, we google and sort and — yes, laugh.
the other day we took a walk in our neighborhood and met up with a couple friends walking the other way. after the initial hellos and whatchabeendoins, we took the fast track to a fascinating conversation about – drumroll, please – medicare. never would i have ever thought we would have stood on the sidewalk chit-chatting about medicare plans, but there we were – for a long time – the waves crashing on the shore next to us – comparing and contrasting information about supplemental plans and advantage plans. thrilling, eh?
it actually was. thrilling, that is.
because everyone needs to be surrounded by people who “get it”, who “get” where you are in life, “get” the tribulations, “get” the worries and the stuff you have to figure out, “get” the aches and pains and physical morphing that seems to be happening to us. together we can do this.
with plates spinning, spinning, spinning – all up in the air at once – women carry on, living in many parallel planes, doing life. i had an email conversation with a young woman yesterday who has a 15 year old, a 5 year old and a 1 year old. she was taking them to school – high school, elementary school, daycare – meeting many distinctly different needs, not to mention her own getting-ready and go-to-work necessities. she wrote that by the time she gets them all where they are supposed to be – first thing in the morning – she is already exhausted. she also wrote that she requires little sleep.
i remember writing albums and talking to retail outlets and concert venues and packing boxes of cds and practicing and doing laundry and reading golden books on the rug and playing barbies or matchbox cars and making grilled cheese sandwiches and grocery shopping and planning birthday parties and holiday shopping and overseeing homework and whipping up paper mache and washing the floor and running children to lessons or soccer or baseball or cross country or ballet and….
d is singularly focused. he pokes fun at me being “circular”. uh-huh. it’s called multi-tasking, my dear.
it would not surprise me in the least to leave him drawing at his drafting table for several hours and to come back to find him still there with little to no awareness that i had left. it must be a guy thing.
“i won the lottery,” i tease him, this artist poised over his work. “the big one. zillions.”
it’s a no-win. the classic rock-and-a-hard-place. a lose-lose. a pickle. a crunch. a conundrum. a double-bind. a dilemma.
yup. there is no truly right response here for that man.
i have learned to preface things i talk about – for instance, “i just want to tell you this. i want to go on and on. i want to _________ (choose: rant/think/ponder/ruminate) aloud. please do not try to solve this. please just listen.”
but sometimes, yes, indeedy, sometimes i just talk. with no preface. and then, in the way of conversation, especially in the middle of the night pillow-talking, he talks after i talk. and – whammo! – that’s where he makes his mistake.
roller-coaster-soap-opera-never-a-dull-moment-ever-changing life gifts us with people along the way.
some of them are in it – with us, as it’s said, for a season. we fill each other’s cups with the companionship of friends or loved ones, but time has a way of placing itself between people and proximity of place or heart push at the ability to spend time. schedules and responsibilities and changes interrupt the flow together and we drift.
some people are in it – with us – for specific reasons. they are colleagues, they are universe-drop-ins who walk alongside as we grow and evolve, in our work, on a walk we have chosen, a trail we have been set upon. they stop at waysides as we travel on and we lose touch.
others are just there. they may be constant companions; they may be in-and-out. but, whenever we wish or they wish, they are there and we are there. they ride the coaster with us, laugh with us, ponder with us, cry with us, get pissed with us, celebrate with us. we share stories, we share the truth, we share disappointments, challenges, impossible summits. it can be weeks, months, years and it is just as easy. they are touchstones in our lives and, likely, always will be. we spend time together and time apart, but they are never far away. they are our posse. and we could not do life without them.
we stopped on the trail and i sat on a bench, pulling off the boots that were making my feet beyond sore. jen offered her socks; she offered her boots. instead of rendering her shoe or sock-less, i used her bandaids. we loaded up my feet with bandaids and i didn’t tie the boots, clomping through a few miles in the snow, curling my toes to keep them from falling off. i whined about it and i apologized for whining about it. and i promised that next week – in our next hike – i would wear different boots. two times hiking in these was enough. we talked about feet most of the way back, for there is not much we won’t discuss – at length. brad yawned through my health insurance rant, but he listened intently anyway. we cheered with dark beer and brandy-old-fashioned-sweets at a neighborhood bar next to the railroad tracks. we made plans and talked about life and the previous week, another episode in the sitcoms and serial drama miniseries of our lives. right there, listening and caring. there.
we’ll have snacks at happy hour – though it will be followed shortly by a huge dinner together. but we all love to eat and the up-north gang does it well. we’ll talk about everything under the sun and we’ll laugh. nothing is off the table as we all age together, listing the things we are concerned about. we are an all-inclusive in-service about all that stuff, comparing notes, making recommendations, giving advice. it’s totally reassuring. we know who to call if – any time of day or night – there is water in the basement or if the tv antenna falls or if we need new tires or a pair of glasses. there. they are right there.
the perch a couple nights ago was done to perfection, as were the potatoes and cabbage slabs. 20 was in his glory; his wheelhouse includes fishhhh (as he says it) and cabbage. we eat together twice a week. every week. we take turns cooking and every meal includes wine and chocolate. he goes way back – 30 years almost – and his presence is a rock for us. through thick and thin he has remained steady. we keep track of the week by our mondays and thursdays together. there.
and there are those people – who can call on the phone from far away or across town – and with whom we can pick up as if no time has passed. we can laugh about the seinfeld episodes of mutual time, we can pine for time spent, we can rue how quickly time has passed. the thing we know – no matter what – is that they – and we – are there. whether we see them or not, no matter if it has been a long while, these people are always part of the very fabric of our lives and they are vital. they remember who we were, how we changed, what we went through. they know the gumption it took to get us to where we are now. they recognize us. they are from our elementary schools, our high schools, our colleges, our first jobs, our professional ladder rungs along the way. they are the people we met on airplanes, while shopping, at tennis tournaments, across the street. they are random and superbly unique and we celebrate meeting them – wherever it was. they are in our mind’s eye standing aside us through it all, whether in person or in spirit. their souls entwine with ours.
and then there are the beloveds. people whose dna is connected to ours in some way, people whose curve-of-face resembles ours, whose expressions we know by heart, without whom we would never be who we are. they are scattered, too, around the world and, though we wish – yearn – to see them often and more often, it is not so. nevertheless, they hold the prime spots in our hearts and are always right there, a breath away. our families.
so many chances to love, to feel love. so much time spent together. so much gratitude on the coaster.
the box arrived on the doorstep and, almost immediately, the text came. “delivered to front porch,” my sister texted, “hooray!!!”.
this was not a small box. this box had 17 avocados in it. and not 17 measly avocados you purchase at the local wisconsin grocery store. 17 that were grown lovingly on a tree in florida, some of which weigh over a pound. a pound!
beautiful golden-green on the inside, they arrived on a difficult day and were a welcome sight from my big sister. yes, ken’s words – “life’s vicissitudes” were wreaking a bit o’ havoc and my big sister’s avocados were a balm, like his big brother’s reassurances and caring and teasing on the phone later that week.
we don’t live close to either of those siblings. one lives in florida, with a beautiful home and pool in front of a lush swamp and lake and one lives in colorado in a lovely neighborhood with stunning peonies and a view of the front range. we don’t get to see them often. but they have a way of showing up. and, for that, we are grateful.
in this world today with broad radiuses of residence instead of the close-by of years past, it’s not easy to stay engaged with those you love. you wish to spend more time with them – the ordinary kind of moments – to see what life is like, to step a tiny bit into their shoes or at least have a window into their day-to-day. it’s hard to hear of other families and easy sunday dinners, errands with elderly parents, adventures with grown children. i’ve pined more than once to go browse at target with my daughter or have a pedicure with my sister or watch my niece hold and play with her toddler-boy or view a hallmark-extravaganza with my other niece or, even harder, coffeesit once again with my sweet momma. i’ve thought about all the time i spent at tennis courts or in baseball fields with my son and wished to again watch from the sidelines as he bats and runs and fields or lobs tennis balls over the net. i’ve thought about preparation for fall and pumpkins and apple pies and corn mazes. i’ve thought about the famous calzones made in my sister-in-law’s colorado kitchen, the sweet niece who would sip red wine with me and taking a walk around the lake with david’s momma. and then, the chance to see all the rest…our families, friends, newly-found cousins, wider concentric circles still connected but a little further out.
these years have taken a toll. though we have traveled a little bit, it’s not like pre-pandemic. and there is so much to miss when wisconsin is not where everyone is, so much yearning. i know Making Time for others is important and, with work and budget and covid restraints, we try the-best-we-can to do whatever-we-can. it doesn’t eliminate the missing.
in looking for a word to describe him, i stumbled across “erudite”. now, this isn’t in my normal vocabulary…i would have said “cerebral” or “in his head”…but “erudite” (syn: learned, scholarly, well-educated, knowledgeable, well-read, well-versed, well-informed, cultivated, civilized, intellectual) fits. yup. yup.
an early morning this week, as he was drinking his coffee, he was staring into space. i asked him what he was thinking about and he told me that it was “a deep rabbit hole” and went on to recount a bit of a book he had read about how our society had been built on henry ford’s assembly line innovation and how that applied to today and our country and the work he is doing and…
it was not quite 6am. pillow talk.
i knew i was wide-eyed, but it wasn’t – necessarily – with fascination.
he asked what i was thinking about as i sipped my -thankgoodnessforit- bold black coffee. i said, “cleaning the bathroom before the plumber gets here.”
he brought his synopsis of the book-bit to a close, postulating a few questions about society in these times.
i said, “i’m gonna swiffer too.”
6am.
though we get there from slightly different places, we usually arrive together. my ever-threading-heart and list-making-practical-feet-on-the-ground self arrives, swiffer and camera and pad and pencil in hand and his heady-thinker-visionaryish-philosophical self gets there, abstruse questions and positivities in tow.
it shows that yes…there are no simple answers, really. there are complex questions. and many ways to get to the answers. oftentimes, well, people in relationship get there differently.
i always want to bring home the zen from a trip. i want to wrap in it, the images from the adventures, the feelings it all gave me and not let it go. i want to evade the stresses that tend to consume all of us.
do i really think that is entirely possible? no. not entirely. life is life and it’s the whole kit-n-kaboodle. i just wanna know that we’re both holding onto that zen, keeping it close at hand. i don’t reeeeally wanna hear about our toolbox of potentiality.
reverse threading 