The View

Every window in this house frames a view. Looking out to the back of the house, the picture is of treetops. Right now only a few leaves remain. When we first moved here in October, the leaves were turning gold and orange and a bit of red. When spring arrives in a few months, there will be thick green with occasional blossoms on mimosas, or Kentucky coffee-bean trees. Only the abundance of chattering squirrels promises to be constant.

These trees are tall and old, rooted in a thirty-foot ravine at the back of our property. Friday morning over coffee at my parents’ apartment, my dad and I pondered just what made that deep crevice. We each expressed surprise that there is no creek way down there at the bottom of the cliff - but Steve, the guy we bought the house from, stopped by on Saturday to retrieve some stray mail and he told us that there are several springs down there. When he was a kid, he would sneak off to play down there.

“Are there snakes?” Dave asked.

“Oh yeah, there are some snakes.”

I watched Dave carefully to see if he exhibited any signs of flight. He only replied, “You won’t catch me down there.”

Friday morning, laptop perched on a TV tray in the den, I faced a window on the front of the house that frames the tops of black bare trees across the street – two 50-year old maples, an old oak, and some crape myrtles. The sunrise sky behind them was striped with muted pink, mauve, lavender and blue. The softball field lights stood out, the only modern element in my morning still-life.

And then on Sunday, I hooked up all my computer and printer cables in my studio in the walk-out basement. My desk sits in front of two windows, much the same as it did at the old house – except the windows are now to my right instead of the left. I do not see the well-cultivated stone-edged garden that I never took for granted. No dogwood tree, holly hedge, yellow rose, daylilies, irises, cannas, purple barberries, coneflowers. No tall pines to screen our back yard from the neighbor’s.

I look out on the patio, the back yard, and the edge of the ravine through the nearest window. My view is limited to the treetops through the second window because of the Fedders cooling machine mounted in the window. That thing comes out very shortly… and it won’t go back in, either.

We brought the birdfeeders to the new house before we moved in. We wanted to “get established” with the local feathers and gain a reputation among their friends as a good place to gather. We’re hosting more chickadees than any other variety, although I do note an occasional yellow finch on the black thistle seed. I’ve seen a cardinal every morning in the brush below the trees, but the larger birds seem to have what they need in the old trees. Or maybe they’re just waiting for a travel report from the chickadees.

Saturday Dad tilled a piece of ground in the far corner of the back yard. “Just a place to put a few things and keep them alive over winter,” I said. “I’ll re-plant them in the spring.” I must get over to the old house to divide perennials and uproot a few small roses. I just don’t know where I want them yet.

“Well, I’ve decided where I want my garden if it’s okay with you,” Dad said. “I’d like to make some raised beds along that bank. I bet there’s some good soil there.”

Dave said he worries that I’ll take up with the studio so much that he’ll not see me too much and that we’ll become estranged in this new arrangement.

“I don’t think so,” I told him. “I think I’ll actually be able to separate work and home a little better.”

We’ll see. I guess it all depends on your view. I know I can’t wait to see the view from my desk come spring.
***

The Tree and Hallowe'en

Seems like every house on Millerwood Drive has a maple tree in the front yard, some more than one. We just have one, but what a spectacular one it is. Last night Dave told me that two or three people have stopped to take pictures of “The Tree.”
I wanted my picture when The Tree was completely full of that gold and orange-to-red but I was about two days late. I couldn’t find the camera – imagine that – and someone on Facebook had to remind me that I have a telephone. Now, the telephone is only a week old and I don’t know how to operate it but I did finally take pictures of The Tree. I imagine that picture will grace our Christmas letter this year.

When I first saw The Tree, I didn’t think about autumn color; I was planning for rope swings with wooden slat bottoms, for Jameson and Carly to beg for pushes until their own legs are long enough, and their muscles big enough, to push off. I imagined a garden between The Tree and the house with a path and comfortable chairs and benches for Mama and Daddy and Grammy and Dave and GrandmaMA and GrandpaPA and all those friends who will pass in and out of this home.

There’s shade there and that will be a difference from most of my gardening on Beech Tree Lane. I will fill in the slope with trailing groundcover, plant soft shrubbery for keeps and white impatiens in the spring. Rocks – there will be flat rocks to walk on and tables to rest a cool drink on. And all that will be “home.”

We only had nine trick-or-treaters and two of those were Jameson and Carly at four pm; they were on their way to their Granny’s house in Lebanon. Jameson was Dracula. His hair was spiked in the middle and he sported the traditional red and black cape, brocade cummerbund, black pants – and hot pink teeth. Carly was Wonder Woman; we tried to think of things that Wonder Woman said on the TV show, but none of us remembered. “Trick or treat,” Carly offered the logical saying for this particular Wonder Woman. My choices of candy were a hit because I had one bag of “Body Parts.” Ewwwwwwwww.

With so few interruptions, Dave and I had time for a grilled steak dinner – and we ate on the dining room table! Woo-hoooooo! Guess you might guess that tremendous progress was made here this week.

“Want a glass of wine?” I offered when Wilma arrived on Friday afternoon. I was in the rocker on the porch for a break, boxes of saved packing material all around me. “I’m just taking a short break. Let’s find you a chair.” We sat and visited – and that is as helpful as the unpacking of boxes. I laid out what I imagined to be our game plan for the afternoon and then took her on “the tour.”

My friend Wilma is a pistol when it comes to work. She launched into the boxes in the piano room and the living room and by dinner (a lovely mushroom sauce chicken, fresh asparagus, and brown rice – isn’t Crock Pot cooking wonderful?), she had filled the music book shelves and emptied every loose box in the front of the house. While she emptied and arranged, I repacked special glassware for safekeeping until that dining room is re-painted.

After dinner, Dave retired to the bedroom to unpack more boxes, so we visited some more. We planned for next undertakings. We talked Beck plan – Wilma is my coach for this new lifestyle change to lose pounds. We talked psychology. We moved furniture in our minds and agreed on uses of space. We let our wine and food wear off. We allowed ourselves to be happy in those moments.
***

If you want a picture of The Tree, you’ll have to come soon. There’s already a golden carpet on the street, the driveway, and half the front yard – It’s a big tree! Just as we are shedding boxes and packing materials and settling into our new home, and just as I am shedding pounds to make a place for new growth in other places in my life, The Tree is shedding what it doesn’t need. It is making room and space for the next season, the next inevitable budding event.

Come next year to see The Tree. And, next Hallowe’en, bring your little goblins to Trick-or-Treat our always changing family compound.
***

Thursday, October 29, 2009
Today is Billy Lee Sullivan’s 60th birthday. Billy Lee and I were sweethearts from fifth grade through our freshman year, even though my family had moved to California after sixth grade. Many years later, after Jerry and I had moved back to Tennessee (Jade was a year old), Billy and I reconnected and I have maintained a friendship with him and his wife for now over thirty years, attending birth events of all three of their daughters and the funeral of his mom, Opie, from bone cancer. Happy birthday, old red-headed friend!

I am writing on a TV tray in the den, my coffee rested below it on one of the children’s chairs. The table to the children’s set is perched high on boxes in the garage and I just figure we’ll let it rest where it is until some more organization magically occurs. See, that’s the trouble… there is no magic to this mess, only tedious work. I keep trying to estimate how long it is going to take us to be “all set up.” I’ve given the projection of 150 days, based on eliminating two boxes per day, following my sight-count of 300 boxes.

Two boxes a day may seem conservative, maybe even lazy, but you see, I have to account for time-outs for corrections (the whole dining room is to be repainted) and finishing up the punch list (let’s see – hang new fixture in dining room, carpet stairwell landing, install new light fixtures in stairwell, repaint a wall in the hallway, resurface and paint the ceilings in the master suite and adjoining bathroom). Two of those items require moving furniture in those rooms. In fact, there is a pie safe that contains its own set of breakables that cannot be filled until the dining room is painted. That means that any boxes of those items will have to be repacked until the aforementioned painting event is concluded. Which leads me to some information I ought to tell about “the boxes…”

The boxes have their own problems. 1. Some of the boxes are rickety, soft, and wampus. That’s because they are used boxes. I don’t object to using used boxes, but there is a certain point at which said boxes might be at “end-stage.” I can envision some of them as re-fashioned comforters on a cold night. 2. Some of the boxes are too heavy for me to move by myself – and they are stacked! 3. Some of the boxes contain items from more than one source. That means I have to unpack every box to make sure there isn’t something in there that I really need right now.
Now, all of the above properties of the boxes, combined, dictate that, whenever I am dealing with inherited and gifted glassware, I have to unpack it and re-pack it in smaller boxes for some future date when I can safely place it in cabinets, shelves, or pie safes. (I wonder why that wouldn’t be “saves?”) And that leads me to the cabinets and shelves.

This kitchen I’m cavorting in these days is compact. I love it – but it’s forced me to make choices about what to keep, what to throw away, what to relegate to the studio kitchen. (Oh yeah, there is a studio kitchen.) The studio kitchen has very little cabinetry, but I’ve fashioned a rather snazzy food and butler’s pantry in a nook with the freezer and refrigerator down there. Snap-together PVC shelves from Wal-Mart are high on my list of most useful modern inventions. And then, there are the items that must be kept in a different place than they were at the old house and I must find the “different place” at the new house. Yesterday, a victory…

My daughter-in-law Vicky came over to help. I told her I needed her to help me think more than anything else. “For instance,” I said, “What shall I tackle next? The contractors are coming today to finish the punch list and to get the dishwasher going.“ (We had no power to the dishwasher, for some reason.) What I should have said was that the contractors were supposed to come… because they didn’t. But I’m glad Vicky and I acted as if they were coming!

“Here, look at this armoire.” I opened the doors to the entertainment case that Dave and I had bought and painted the first week we were married. “I’m wondering – since we have the TV on the wall in here, don’t you think I could make the top of this thing a wine and liquor cabinet?”

“Oh yeah – now that is a great idea! You could add some shelves and even get some of those wire racks that hold stemware. What a great idea.” It was just what I needed to hear.

“Well, then, maybe we should just go to Lowe’s. Maybe we could measure for blinds here in the den and downstairs in the studio and go get some shelves cut and all that. How long are you here for?”

“Don’t have another thing planned until I have to pick up Carly at two. Probably need to leave here by 1:30. Let’s go.”

We found faux wood blinds to order – with red strips to cover the string holes. We found planks of wood and had them cut to 31 ½ inches. We found brackets and wire racks for hanging wineglasses by their bottoms. We found lunch at La Terraza. What did we care that the contractors did not come to get power to the dishwasher or finish the punch list? I was being nurtured and nourished, and Vicky was nurturing and nourishing.

“Where have you been?” Dave was only slightly demanding.

“We went shopping!” Vicky answered for me. “Wait until you see the blinds we’ve got for you!”

“I love that girl,” I told Dave, as she scooted out of the driveway toward the pre-school.
***
I unpacked one large dish barrel and filled three smaller boxes and labeled them “Pie Safe Pie Safe Pie Safe Pie Safe Pie Safe.”

“You’re just worn out, aren’t you?” I asked Dave. He was in his recliner with his eyes closed.

“I didn’t sleep much last night. I’m worn out. What are we doing for dinner?”

“Well, you’re eating the leftovers of my lunch fajitas – and there’s a lot of it – and I’m going to have some leftover ham. I’m cooking some spinach in the microwave.”

“That sounds good.” My, our standards have fallen a bit lately.

“Those guys aren’t coming today, are they?”

“Well, if they do, I bet it will be seven or eight tonight.”

“Nope, dammit,” I said. “Not gonna do it. This is ridiculous.”

“We have to get them when we can get them. Neil has another job.”

“Well, shit. You’re exhausted and I’ve been up since 3:30. I can’t do it.”

“Okayyyyyy,” he said.

I was in my jammies about 7:30. The phone rang at 8. “Yep – come on,” Dave said.
***
This morning I crawled in bed with Dave about 6:30.

“I ran the dishwasher,” he said.

“Was it just Neil?”

“Yep.”

“How long was he here?”

“I think he finished up about 10:45 and we drank a beer.”

“Did he get Mom and Dad’s hooked up?”

“Yep. All of them.”

“Did he mention hanging that light in the dining room?”

“Nope. I don’t think he knew he was supposed to do that.”

“Okay. I’ll call Johnny today and see what he plans to do about the rest.”

“You want to sleep some more?”

“Yeah, give me a couple of hours, okay?”

“Sure. I’ll go down to the den and be quiet. I’ve got some writing to get out of the way.”

I’ll be sure to tell more about the reasons for the “two box a day” calculation. It’s not just the boxes, alternate use of space and furnishings, contractor delays. There’s life that goes on, too, and living within every system of our existence. There’s family – kids, grandkids and parents, church, old friends/new friends and their journeys… Life and living goes on.

The glasses and silverware were absolutely sparkling when I opened the dishwasher door.

Soon it's gonna rain....

I am writing on the porch at the new house. The movers came Thursday, the 15th. And the next day, Friday. And they came again yesterday, the 21st. They pronounced a completion of the project. I've been gathering up the remains at the old house today. We still haven't picked up the stragglers from the attic, the deck, the patio, the garage. But the painter is there, making all nice for the next folks to live at 1073 Beech Tree Lane.

Over at Millerwood Drive, there are boxes everywhere. Most of them are actually somewhere where they don't belong. We chip away at the job, unpacking a few boxes until backs, knees, and a bit of asthma protest enough that we call it a day. I'm tempted to get whiny about this whole process.

I called it a day about four o'clock this afternoon. I soaked in a warm tub, put on my jammies and headed for the porch. Ahhhhhhhhhhh, so now I see one of the benefits of the new place. It's going to rain soon - I can feel it. And I am in my favorite rocker on the porch, laptop in my lap on a pillow. Our deck was uncovered at the old place, so I never sat out in the rain.

Ever so often, I go lean over the rail to look at the porch we put on the attached apartment for Mom and Dad. We are anxious to have them here so close and we're making all things ready for their move-in date of November 4th. Their apartment attaches to our house via what Dave calls a skybridge. I imagine Murphy, our black and white Shi-tzu, running over to say "Good morning." I can almost hear the grandkids squealing on their way to visit GrandmaMA and GrandpaPA.

Time to stop whining about all the work. Change is always difficult, but my change is tiny compared to my parents' leaving the family farm and the big old famrhouse that my dad built, stick by stick by stick, all from salvaged materials.

I smell the rain, hear some fat drops on the driveway. Murphy and I will stay out here a while, breathing in the freshness, feeling the cool. The boxes will wait. There shall be showers of blessing...

Moving....Day 7

I'm already at that point where there's a certain amount of joy over a broken glass...it means I don't have to find a place to put it! We have more total space at this new "house" (hereinafter referred to as "compound") than at Beech Tree Lane, but it's all in such different places. NONE of the additional square footage is in the kitchen cabinets - in either of the THREE kitchens.

Well, actually, the kitchen in the "apartment" doesn't count because Mom and Dad will fill those cabinets on November 4. But there is a full kitchen in my new digs in the efficiency apartment (to be called "the studio") in the walkout basement. I get six hundred square feet of office, kitchen, bath and laundry room. How did I wind up with the laundry room, anyway? But about that kitchen down there...

There's only one small cabinet, but there's this nook where bunches of shelves can hold the overflow from the upstairs kitchen. Here's my strategy: whatever won't fit in the upstairs kitchen, I'll take to the studio kitchen shelves. Mom keeps talking about throwing this big garage sale party in the spring, when we both know what we need here, and what we don't. I figure I'll shelve all these extras until April and then I'll survey the shelves for dust. Whatever has a measurable five months of covering goes in the garage sale!

Jameson and Carly, the two local grand-rugrats, are coming for their first sleep-over Friday night. We'll go down to the studio and I'll pop in some DVD's on heavy equipment, or cooking, or whales - all very popular with J & C. Jameson will watch and provide play-by-play while Carly hands me stuff for the shelves.

This morning I looked out the picture window to the back yard; that's become my first-thing habit already. The porch (or is it a deck?) is finished on Mom and Dad's apartment. I'm imagining Mom watering geraniums and petunias and begonias. I can just see Daddy making a slow but determined descent to his garden.

This is all worth it.

Surprise.

In fourteen hundred and ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue…. He sailed and he sailed and he sailed and he sailed – And he found this place for me and you!
I woke up at 3 am singing this song. I imagine old Columbus and his merry mates were pretty surprised to find that what they thought was going to be China turned out to be somewhere close to Nassau – or did they ever know?
Normally, Columbus Day wouldn’t make that big an impression on me, but I’ve been planning, for several months, to be in Fulton, KY on Columbus Day to rescue Mom and Dad from the train. (They've been to Reno to visit my brother for a whole month!) But Saturday Mom called to say, “We’re stopped dead in our tracks – hahahhahahahhaha” in Greeley, Colorado and it took almost five hours to repair the tracks from something or the other. Surprise - they arrived in Chicago last night too late to make the connection to Fulton. I’ll go to Kentucky tomorrow morning instead of today.
After breakfast, I set a timer and started cleaning out the front closet; you know, the one that extends w-a-y back under that stairwell. I was surprised that I was not surprised; I didn’t find one thing in there that I didn’t know was there. Now, given the general status of every storage area in this too-large house, that may be akin to a miracle.
I was surprised by how long it took me to go through that closet. I thought forty minutes would get it. Then I added twenty more. It finally took me an hour and a half to find, organize, and return the contents to the closet.
Then it was off to the new house to unload our pickup truck. Dave and the boys had filled it with junk from under the deck and the Capuccino Brothers (that’s what we call our contractors – C’mon, I met them at Starbucks) just hauled in a dumpster to the new property. Truck unloaded and the rescue of several terra cotta pots and sauces complete, I opened the basement door to check on the leveling of the floor.
Nothing. Nada. Just like I left it on Friday. Yikes, I said to myself. Actually, I said “yikes” without even a capital Y; I’ve surprised myself with my ability to respond calmly to these little up-enders. The carpet guys will be here tomorrow morning at 8, I reminded the air. So then my calm left and I said all manner of words except “yikes” and they all had capital letters.
“Are you going to call Johnny?” Dave interrupted my cursing.
“Yes, but I need to wait. I’ll call him after my pedicure.”
Why, you ask, is a pedicure even a second thought during this season of household purging, moving, and rooting around, not to mention the trips to Kentucky and the attention to the new eating program? Well, it’s like this: a chunk of my big toenail tore off and it looked ugly and felt even worse. My hands are dry and crackly. And, besides that, Lan Nguyen always makes me feel better.
Dolce Nail was full, but she was waiting for me at the front door. “You come in and I help you. You caught me at a good time today. You pick out color.” I grabbed the lightest pink I could find on the carousel shelf and held it out to her.
“You want light color? Why you want light today? How about this?” She showed me the brightest, darkest fuchsia in the new OPI colors. “It’s new color.”
“This toenail, Lan.” I pointed to my right foot. “Don’t you think I should use light so it doesn’t show so much?”
“It’s okay.”
“Light?”
“Yeah, if you want light. You don’t like this?” The fuchsia again.
“You want me to get dark, don’t you?”
“Well, you need be happy, Diana.”
“So – the light pink.”
“This make you happier.” She showed me the fuchsia again in her palm. She’s going to win this one, and I am not surprised.
“Okay, okay,” I said, and then I picked up a deep cherry. “This one – it looks like my new kitchen.”
“Oh yeah, you gonna like this. Come – sit in chair.”
Lan brought me a glass of wine and insisted that I lie back. I don’t like to lie back but I obeyed. She promised me that, even though she would be speaking Vietnamese to everyone around her, none of it would be about me, or even anything I wanted to hear. (Isn’t that what we worry about?)
When she answered the phone in the middle of scrubbing my heels, her face lit up and I heard “Miss Diana” in a torrent of other words.
“Is that Hyung?” I sat up. “Tell him hello for me.”
“You tell him,” she said and handed me the phone.
“This is nice surprise. I have not seen you for a long time,” he said. “Every time I am in town, you don’t come.” He pauses. “But I’m so happy you are there and you still support my business.”
“I wouldn’t ever leave Lan, Hyung. Are you in New Orleans?”
“Yes, and I will be in Nashville next on October 23 – that weekend. I bet you don’t need to come on October 23.”
I will make a point of having a manicure that weekend just to surprise Lan’s long-distance husband, who I’ve come to love as much as I love her.
“You go out to dinner tonight?” Lan asked.
“No, I’d have to clean up and I don’t have that kind of energy,” I answered.
Tell me what she says, Lan asks her employee at the next footbath.
”Ahhhhhh,” Lan tells me with understanding. “So you want another glass of wine?”
“No, thanks. I’d have to spend the night with you if I had another glass of wine.”
Tell me what she says, again.
“That would be fine. My mother - she could cook for you.”
***
I called Dave at 4 pm, just driving out of the parking lot in Nolensville. “I’m on my way. Did you put the turkey in?”
“Yep – she’s cooking.” (I suppose he said "she" because it's really not a whole turkey - it's a turkey breast.)
“Okay, I have some instant dressing and we have a can of green beans.”
“Did you call Johnny?”
“Just did. He pretty much told me off.”
“Really? You mean, he was ugly to you?”
“No, I think he wanted to be mean but he was restraining himself. He just said this is his deadline. ‘You have your deadlines and I have mine – You worry about your deadlines and I’ll worry about mine.’”
“So, do you think he’ll be done by tomorrow morning?”
“Don’t know. We’ll just have to wait until the carpet guys get there.”
***
The turkey breast, Stove Top, and green beans were wonderful but I had no seconds. Dave cleared the table and put the dishes in the dishwasher. The remaining turkey breast needed to cool before we refrigerated it. Mom called to say that they would not know for sure when they would be in Fulton until they got to Chicago – about 8 p.m. our time – and that she would call as soon as they let her know the plans. There was some possibility that a bus would take them to Fulton.
Dave and I agreed that I would go to bed early in case I still had to drive to Kentucky. Mom would call and, if necessary, Dave would set my alarm for 4 am. At 1 a.m. I sat up in bed and looked to see if the alarm was set. It wasn’t.
It was a day of small – or maybe not so small – victories. Front closet done. Big crafts closet upstairs half done. Hands and feet so much better. “Home-cooked” meal enjoyed. I stayed within my alotted calories – and did not take even one little pinch of that scrumptious turkey breast when I put it in a plastic bag and stowed it in the frig. Surprise.

A Honda motor and 24 duck decoys

This morning the phone started ringing five minutes after Dave posted his outboard motor and his duck decoys on CraigsList. These are the same decoys and motor that have resided in the garage for twelve-plus years. Within thirty minutes, we knew that he had under-priced the motor because we got one call per minute. The duck decoys took a little more time; they sold within an hour.

Dave's comment: "Now, see, if you'd let me advertise these things ten years ago like I wanted to...." Yeah. You know, that didn't bother me too much, even though I've asked at least once every season, "When are you going to get rid of that stuff?"

No, what bothers me is this: About a month ago, I listed a beautiful deep-green cut velvet sofa with matching lamps and twenty-five collector's teapots. One responder wanted to know if I would trade the couch for two tan chairs that needed upholstery. Another wanted to know if I could deliver it fifty miles away. About the teapots - Well, actually, no one even asked about the teapots.

This whole situation struck me much the same as the disparity between the pay for teachers vs. Titans and I went on a sudden rant. The successful sale of hunting and fishing equipment vs. lovely household furnishings must be all about what men want. Who puts the energy - and funds - into sports? Men. Who puts the energy into elementary school? Mamas. Who buys the school clothes? Mamas. And everybody knows that men make more money than mamas.

I'm keeping the green sofa. The teapots are going to ThriftSmart.

Home, home, home...blessed home.

My Uncle Morgan was in a skilled nursing facility for the last twenty-one days of his life. He was a jolly old soul and it did not take Uncle Morgan long to say that Quality Care was the best place for him at the time, considering his needs brought on by cancer - the tubes, the medications, the blood transfusions, the frequent jaunts to the hospital.

The day we arrived at Quality Care, he was a bit delirious, the aftermath of a kidney infection - but he made a firm statement: "My goal is to go home." About three months later, he told me that he just wanted "to get out of this world, but," he said, "Have you noticed that all these old people here just want to go home?" (Uncle Morgan was almost ninety, so his pronouncement of age on the rest of the residents was not lost on me.)

We all want to go home. When I was in Boston, I wanted to go home. Now I've been in Savannah for just three days, and I wanted to come home the first day there. Savannah is a beautiful city, rich in arts, seafood, and a culture of its own - but I wanted to be home.

Home is where everything is happening. Dave stayed home, and I always miss him when either of us is absent from the home fires. "Moving" is at home; we're moving from one home to another and the contracts are readying the "new" place. Most of all, my soul is at home in Tennessee. My thoughts come more clearly here. My writing flows. My desk - and my bed - feel right-er.

About a year before he died, Uncle Morgan began to talk of a different home; he was ready to move but he, like all the rest, wanted to go home. He even chided those who had made the trip from earthly house to Father's Mansion: "Here I've laid in this bed for over a year, and all Bill had to do was fall over and die!"

We will all go Home, and for now, this place, this time, this room, this husband, even this Shih-tzu - they give me a glimpse of what Home will mean.

It's where Everything happens.

I wanna go home!

I don't have anything against the Radisson as a hotel - I just don't like most hotels.

This morning we're meeting our friends later than usual, 9 am. Then we're off to the north section of town, the Italian St. Anthony's Festival! Now, I'm set for some fun there.

But I was up early - really early. I can't seem to find my "sleep number" on the Sleep Number bed. Couldn't turn on the TV and couldn't turn on a light to read, so I just plopped down in front of the laptop at the desk and turned down the brightness on the screen. It was so quiet in here that I heard my other neighbors:
1. Somebody else was unhappy about the bed; whoever it was tried three times to get that number right. 2. Bathroom duties. I wonder if that somebody drank too much water before bedtime; it went on and on. 3. Flush. 4. Back to finding the number. 5. Back to the bathroom. This time, I wondered if this person ate too much fiber yesterday. 6. Flush. 7. Yawn - big yawn, and stretch. I did - I heard it. 8. Opening the drapes - and then the sliding doors to the balcony. (My curiosity got the best of me. I opened our balcony doors and stuck my head out. Yikes, there he was, on the balcony - in his skivvies! I ducked inside; I mean, I have on jammies but they're not that attractive.)

I sat back down at the desk, thinking maybe, since "he" was out on the balcony catching the morning air, that I would be released from participation in a stranger's morning routine. So now...where is all that flushing coming from? And now who's pumping up that Sleep Number bed?

Boston Today

What were the chances that Ted Kennedy would die while we were in Boston? We are - in Boston, and he did - die. Today is the funeral and everybody who is somebody is in Boston, including the President.

We're staying over in the Theatre District, a couple of MTA changes from the JFK Library and several miles from Mission Hill, where the mass will be said this morning. But anyone can feel the grief, the pride, the celebration of life for the last Kennedy "grownup." Every TV involves the watcher in these special events, especially to warn away the non-dignitaries from the celebratory sites.

Bostonians are friendly and talkative. Dave and I noticed that the first time we visited the city in 2006 and we talked about it when we got home. We decided that it must have been a happy time for Boston for some reason and we just happened to enjoy the good mood. Nope - they still outdo Southerners for hospitality and helpfulness; they volunteer directions and restaurant recommendations. And they speak objectively about their politics.

Yesterday, a former teacher and tour guide overheard us at the Starbucks on the corner across from the hotel. We had decided to pick up a car at the airport and drive to Maine for the day.

"Well," she said, "Let me tell you how to get to the airport." And then she added, "I'm going out to the Library - my ninety-year-old woman wants to sign the book for Teddy." She further told us that not everyone in Boston loved Kennedy so much; he lost a lot of blue collar support, she said.

From the six-deep line of people on the streets as the hearse went by, we couldn't imagine that there was a Bostonian anywhere around that didn't consider Teddy Kennedy a favorite son.

Moving

Dave and I are going to move. Not far away but to somewhere completely different from the upper-middle affluence of Brentwood. We’ve been in dialogue for some time with my 80-year-old parents. It’s time for them to leave the farm; there will come a time shortly when they will no longer be able to drive themselves around Chestnut Mound, Dillard’s Creek and Dickens Hollow (say “holler” and you’ll talk like the rest of us…).
Dad retired from the Granville United Methodist Church on Father’s Day this year – but he didn’t quit work. He had already contracted as a substitute teacher at the high school in Carthage. Mom, on the other hand, maintains her position as a bookkeeper at D. T. McCall’s and works four and a half days per week.
So we thought we had some time to look around; we thought we could “stage” this two-story, steep-staired Brentwood home and get it on the market, oh, maybe February. We even rented a storage unit and started moving “extras” out of the house. (You know, of course, “staging” means you have to have an almost empty house save for a few items to show that someone could live in it: I don’t get it, but I’ll do it.)
And when Cry-Leike put the sign in the front yard, we’d start looking for a new home where none of us had to haul creaky bones up a set of steps to bed and where Grandmama and Grandpapa would be “separate but accessible.” We talked about buying a house with enough land to develop a good-sized modular home in the back, maybe even enclose a passageway. None of us wanted to be under any foot, no matter whatever size socks or age of whichever feet. We did not talk too much about finding the new home first, before Mom and Dad quit work, before Di and Dave might sell the house.
God is such a trickster… I mean, “Trickster.” With Her usual supply of surprise, She laid a house in the path in front of us when we got lost on the way home from ThriftSmart. No kidding. My goddaughter, Andie, and I took donations to this ecumenically-run church shop. Andie being home from Ithaca College without a job, she was more than willing to work a few hours a week for us packing up and sorting books, pictures, and the good crystal.
When we left ThriftSmart, both ends of Nolensville Road were blocked by street repairs so we took a turn up Northcrest, a street I’d never driven. After wandering and backtracking and seeing a familiar landmark at the end of one street, we were on our way home when Andie said, “Dinanah, I think I saw a house for sale back there – with an apartment.”
“Really?” I asked. I hadn’t seen it. “Maybe we should turn around and check it out.”
“So where’s the apartment?” I asked.
“There, over that garage.”
How could I have missed it? Huge. It was huge. The house was pretty, but the landscaping unloved and lonely. The sign said nothing about an apartment.
“Maybe the apartment isn’t for sale,” I said. “Let’s just write down this realtor’s number and I’ll call her tonight.”

Awake all night?

If you were, you should have called me and we could have hung out together. Actually, I woke up about 1:30, my mind awhirl about our new home, what I have to do before the women's convention (Savannah - September 15-21), then "eegads - we're going to Boston before that!" (August 24), and my dad's 80th birthday celebration on September 12 at the family reunion.

What do I give my sweet, sweet daddy for his birthday? Books are always good, but I don't have a title in mind right now. He likes clothes, but he doesn't use many. Tools? I don't think so - We're trying to slow him down.

So what kept you awake? Something you did... or something you didn't do? I almost always opt for that second condition - Seems safer. But here's a quote to remember for the sleepless guilty - and the guilty sleepless: When we are tired, we are attacked by ideas we conquered long ago. Friedrich Nietzsche.

Smart guy, that Nietzsche.

Beginnings...

It's a way to force writing every day. It's a plan to empty my mind of what needs to be gone, or out there, or just "said." I'm about to make myself a promise - never to write when I've had more than one glass of wine. It's hard to tell if my opinion is as worthy after twelve ounces of pinot grigio as it is on iced tea or green-label coffee.

About tea - I don't like sweet tea. I'm a real Southerner, but I prefer unsweetened with the occasional packet of Splenda. In order to redeem myself, I feel I must say that I love turnip greens, fried chicken, and dried beans of any kind. My husband Dave and I have good friends in the Santa Cruz hills who have ordained a motto: Whenever we get together with the Revells, there's going to be some pig involved. (They're speaking of pork - and I confess, I love any kind of pig on a platter.)

What will I tell you about? Here's a list: thoughts on faith, reading recommendations - both spiritual and otherwise, grandchildren, my writing, moving two households into one (my parents are moving with us...), music. Maybe I'm ADD; so many topics run through my mind.

I hope you become a friend.