St. Louis Zoo

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After our visit to the Jewel Box, we spent the rest of the day at the St. Louis Zoo. We parked in the south parking lot and noticed the animal sculptures as we made our way to the bridge that leads to the zoo entrance.

The giant tortoises were out and the smallest one was moving about. I noticed one of the larger ones had a hole in its shell; was this tortoise shot at some point in its long life?

The Reptile House was one of our early stops beginning a big loop around the zoo (starting up hill first). The lizard peeking out of a tree in its habitat was one of my favorites.

At one of our first breaks, there were large catalpa trees with the long seed pods still green. It was good to see healthy catalpa trees again; my maternal grandparents had catalpas around their home and business in the 1960s --- seeing the trees triggered fond memories.

The Flight Cage is the oldest part of the zoo; it was built for the 1904 World’s Fair. There were quite a few birds in the large mesh-enclosed area.

One of my favorites was a wood duck. Was the eye injured or is that just the way a wood duck eye looks when it is closed/half open?

Leaving the flight cage – there are mosaics of natural areas.

Cranes were in habitats with other animals. I enjoyed getting different views of the one bird as it was feeding.

In the big apes area, my camera’s zoom managed to get a gorilla in the back of the habitat…looking serious and scratching his brow.

Flamingos and other water birds enjoy lakes with islands at the zoo…visible but able to get further away from noisy crowds. The pelicans are rescued birds (i.e. are birds that have a significant enough injury that they couldn’t survive in the wild).

I enjoyed the ways the zoo uses nature themes in their structures….and that they have solar panels too!

There is a carousel. It looked to be well-maintained but not busy when we were there (hence the pictures).

Of course – there is also ‘wildlife’ in the zoo that just finds the zoo a good place to be!

We enjoyed the people watching as much as the animals at the zoo. Some children obviously were locals familiar with the zoo and enthusiastically making their way to their favorite exhibits…couples with babies in strollers (with visions of the time their child would be old enough to make requests)…families clearly on vacation…older people – sometimes with grandchildren, sometimes as couples or small groups using the zoo as an interesting (and safe) place to walk.

It was a hot day and by about 3 PM we were ready for a cool down. We retreated to our hotel for a few hours before walking to a Lebanese restaurant for an early dinner. It was a day well spent.

Cataract Surgery

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Cataract assessment has been a part of my annual eye checkup for the past few years. I always wonder if it is a positive thing to still have eyes correctable to 20/20 since when cataracts make that correction impossible, cataract surgery will likely provide years of good vision without glasses – as boon since glasses (or contacts) have been part of my life since third grade.

This May and June my younger sister is getting cataract surgery and I am providing taxi service for her surgery and immediate follow-up during my monthly weeks in Carrollton, TX. It’s been a good learning experience. She arranged for her surgeries to be first thing in the morning. She felt well enough for breakfast after the first surgery – even though she was feeling disoriented with a big eye patch and no correction of any kind on the eye that was uncovered. During the follow up appointment, she had her glasses modified – the lens removed from the side that had the surgery – so that she could see better. On the side that had the surgery, her distance vision was 20/15 but her eye was still healing. She still has restrictions on how she slept (not on the side where the surgery was done) and lifting (nothing over 10 pounds); the instructions were clear. So many people get this surgery that the process is very well defined!

For me – there were lessons learned for when it’s time for my cataract surgery. It’s a consuming process since it is done in 2 surgeries (with some time between). It is awkward with changing sight between the first surgery until the healing of the second eye (and maybe prolonged depending on the type of intraocular lens is used…the light adjustable ones are adjusted after the second surgery).

I’m glad I volunteered to help my sister during the process…and learned from the experience!

Maria Martinez (potter) in 1925

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The first picture in Carl E. Guthe’s  Pueblo Pottery Making - a study at the village of San Ildefonso published in 1925 is one of Maria Montoya Martinez that is widely used elsewhere (including in the Wikipedia entry for her). 1925 was before she started making her black ware pottery that survives in many museums. I recognized her name when I first started browsing the book; it was one of those times I appreciated Wikipedia and Google search to learn more about her before I continued browsing. I celebrated finding Guthe’s books on Internet Archive and the myriad pictures that documented the situation in 1925…the state of the art then, before she was producing black ware pottery.

1925 was during the time when much of the culture of the Pueblos was fading….the challenges of people trying to survive in the world. Fortunately, Maria learned pottery skills from her aunt… a “learning by seeing” beginning in her pre-teens. She, with the collaboration of her family members, continued to experiment and produce pottery throughout her long life (she lived until 1980) and taught others the same way she had learned. She helped establish pottery of the Southwest as an art form we recognize today.

Surprisingly, Guthe’s biography (archived from the University of Michigan Museum of Anthropological Archaeology) does not mention this book at all. His work establishing collections and institutions overshadows this book!

The Whole Orange

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I’ve enjoyed oranges all my life….sometimes cutting them in slices…sometimes in wedges. In recent years, I cut them in wedges so that after I eat the pulp, the peels fit nicely into the food processor.

Once the peel is chopped up, I let it dry on a plate to be used in cooking…or in hot tea.

It feels good to use the whole orange….getting all the nutrition from the fruit! I have some recipes that use the whole fruit as well; my favorite is cranberry orange relish that I make any time I see fresh cranberries in the produce section (usually November and December).

My mother reminisced that oranges were special treats of the holidays when she was child, and her mother often candied the peel. Every time I use the whole orange, I feel an affinity with my maternal grandmother…good vibes through the years!

Memorable Events of 2022

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2022 has been a year with more memorable events than most years.

My health. For most of the year, from the surgery at the beginning of the year until early fall, my health seemed to be sputtering; it was the longest period of my life to be uncertain that my health was good to excellent. Fortunately, it seems that I have recovered and am back to feeling as healthy as in recent years. Every other time I was concerned about my health was much shorter in duration: the month before and after pregnancy in 1989 and the month after a surgery in 2006.

Pets and family. 3 kittens…oh my! They are getting a little older now but still quite capable of causing havoc. The last time we had a kitten around was in 1985. The first baby in over 20 years has arrived in my extended family…and he adds a whole new dynamic to family gatherings. The milestone 70th anniversary of my parents adds to the list of memorable events in this category.

Home and Travel. Moving from Maryland to Missouri was a big undertaking and we’ll probably look back years from now, seeing it as a pivot point in our lives just as the move from Texas to the east coast In 1983 turned out to be. On a smaller scale, the week in London, Ontario was memorable for time spent in another country (the longest since my trip to Mexico City in 1966 when I was in elementary school) and the amount of time I was on my own in a new place.

Changes in the world. Queen Elizabeth II’s death is on my list this year because she was queen for my whole life…a constant in the world that I consciously knew would not last but that I will miss. The other change is one that reversed something that was constant for my entire adult life and increased my confidence that I would receive the care I needed when my husband and I decided to have a child (which we did successfully and without complications); when Roe v Wade was overturned, I became anxious that younger women will not have access to the same level of care that I did.

I am hoping that 2023 will be a little less memorable!

Ten Little Celebrations – December 2022

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Ten little…and big…celebrations for December 2022. The big ones include:

A 70th wedding anniversary. That’s a lot of years for a relationship to thrive….and for both to still be healthy enough to enjoy life and the celebration!

Winter holiday. They happen every year, but it doesn’t reduce the joy of the virtually back-to-back family celebrations that flow into January: a birthday, an anniversary, Christmas, New Years and then another big anniversary. I’m celebrating now and savoring the anticipation of more still to come!

And then there are the little celebrations that are more like the other months of the year:

Finding puzzles. When I first started looking for puzzles, I didn’t find any that I likes and then I found 2 at a thrift store and another 4 at a pharmacy….and celebrated the finds!

Gardens Aglow at Mizumoto Japanese Stroll Garden. Celebrating a walk-through holiday light display in Springfield MO. If we hadn’t found it, I would be missing the Brookside Gardens lights in Maryland.

Getting the wreath on the door. The kittens prolonged the time it took to get our house decorated this year (some trial and error with how they would respond). The wreath was one of the last things we did…and I celebrated that the decorating was done!

Getting to stay home on a rainy day. Celebrating that I can usually rearrange plans to avoid getting out on a cold, rainy day!

Hot tea with orange peel. Celebrating a little hint of citrus….and probably the vitamin C as well.

Macro photography at Springfield Conservation Nature Center. Celebrating the beauty of native plants through all the seasons…..particularly close-up.

New glasses. This is my first time to get transition lenses. I am celebrating not needing to juggle my sunglasses on and off on road trips!

The plastic vase works. I was a little skeptical that the flat plastic vases would expand and hold a large bouquet....celebrated when the one I tried worked great! Now I feel more confident giving them as gifts!

A 70th Wedding Anniversary

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My parents have been married 70 years this month. We’re celebrating on a smaller scale than their 50th in keeping with the types of gatherings they enjoy now. We’ll be having mini-celebrations spread over several days around one big meal with most of the immediate family. I’m thinking about various perspectives of their 70 years together.

There are contrasts between their growing up  years and personalities:

  • He was an only child of 1 generation US citizens and didn’t speak English until he started school; she had 8 brothers/sisters and many in her family had been in the US since the Revolutionary War (or before).

  • She was gregarious, he was more introverted. That aspect of their personalities has continued with her doing most of the talking!

  • He grew up on a farm and she grew up in town.

  • She had part time work at the drug store in town while she was in high school; at the same time, he was using farm profits to buy land, cars, and an airplane.

  • Going to Stillwater for college was the farthest she’d been from home; he had made road trips to Tennessee and other places.

But some aspects were similar:

  • They went to small town schools where there was only a small group of students at each grade level (she in northeastern Oklahoma and he in western Oklahoma).

  • Their parents had elementary educations, except for my maternal grandmother who had graduated from high school.

  • They were the first in their families to go to college.

  • They were close to their families and sustained relationships with them after marriage.

They spent their first few years of married life in Oklahoma: Stillwater for my dad to finish college, back to the farm in Willow where my dad had grown up, and then to Muskogee for my dad’s job. The following 67-68 years were in Texas: 15 years in Wichita Falls, 21 years in Dallas, and the rest in Carrollton. There were 7 houses during the Texas years. My mother returned to college and got her first degree when they were living in Wichita Falls…her masters after they moved to Dallas.

They started out their life together with a single income but by the 1970s they were a 2-income family to support their 4 daughters through K-12 and then undergraduate degrees.  They retired in their 60s – enjoying grandchildren and travel and participating in various home improvement/maintenance projects.

They are still living independently (with increasing support from their children and grandchildren) in the house they purchased shortly after they retired.

The whole family is benefiting from their example of aging gracefully together!

Intentions – What will I do different in 2023?

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At the end of 2021, I wrote down 4 intentions – things I wanted to be different in 2022:

  • Releasing myself from some of my daily ‘metrics’

  • Look for the unique

  • Reverting to a cleaner/neater house

  • Moving to life closer to my daughter

The last one was the most finite and the only one to be marked ‘done in 2022.’ The others are continuing. I was least successful in releasing myself from the daily ‘metrics.’ It worked well for me to do a mid-year assessment of my intentions…so I’ll do the same in 2023. My intentions for 2023 are:

Reliably spend a week of each month supporting my parents in their home (Carrollton TX). My sisters and I are determined to keep them as comfortable and independent as possible…honoring their wishes.

Restart volunteering. The pandemic caused a pause in my volunteer activities. At this point, I have tentatively identified where I want to volunteer…am hopeful it will be as rewarding as my previous volunteer gigs.

Update and maintain my yard. Our first summer in Missouri we hired a yard service. In 2023 I will use my (new) electric mower and mow it myself. I will also begin my project to reduce the amount of grass by planting several native bushes (I am thinking Beautyberry, Oakleaf Hydrangea, and maybe Ninebark). I also will start some perennial beds…maybe a ruff of day lilies around the base of maples in the front of the house.

Make some birding/hiking road trips. We were so busy moving in 2022 that we didn’t do the usual ‘vacation’ travel that we did pre-pandemic. We probably won’t do any airplane travel…but our location in the Missouri is a great starting point for road trips. There is a lot of Missouri that is ‘new to us’ too. The Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis will probably be part of one of the road trips.

Attain and maintain ‘normal’ weight. I am close…but a few pounds too heavy. I’ve got into the normal range during 2022 but didn’t maintain it.

Crocheting Again

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I learned to crochet early on, probably when I was about 10 years old. My grandfather taught me! He didn’t crochet himself, but he read the instructions and taught me the basics. I can remember the setting: on the couch in his living room as my grandmother looked on. It was several years after the accident that had caused one of his legs to be amputated; he wore a prosthesis (primitive by today’s standards). My memories of him before the accident are vague, but I remember his interest, attention, patience, and kindness to me and my sisters all the years afterward. As I’ve started up crocheting again…thinking about how I learned…I realize that I was the only grandchild that he saw all the way to adulthood.

I don’t remember anything I made early on…I picked up crocheting again when I travelled with Up with People my junior year of high school. There was a lot of time on the bus between shows. I made slippers to use for rehearsals (wore them out very quickly), a hat and scarf. The hat and scarf were dark blue to match one of the colors from the tweed coat I wore then. I still have them but haven’t worn them in a long time. I tried on the hat and discovered that the yarn had degraded somewhat…making it less stretchy, too tight to be comfortable.

I made crocheted stars for Christmas tree ornaments in white shortly after I married…and then in red more than a decade later.

In my early thirties and before I had my daughter, there was another burst of crochet activity. I made some yellow dollies. I don’t remember why I chose the color! Around the same time, I was still making my own blouses for work and crocheted ecru or white pieces to sew into the neckline. I remember being very pleased with the results and wish I’d saved the crocheted part when the blouse fabric wore out.

I also made three crocheted scarves in red and green (wore them together for Christmas then separately at other times) and variegated pink with black. I’m not sure when I made them…probably about 20 years ago since I remember wearing them during my career and I’ve been post-career for over a decade.

Now – I am crocheting again. My initial project is to make a series of cotton scarves to keep the sun off the scar on my neck so that I don’t need sunscreen all the time while the scar fades. So far, I have made ecru and black scarves…am working on a white one. Light green and turquoise crochet threads have been purchased! It feels good to be crocheting again and making something that fits my need (cotton, colors, length) exactly.

Another aspect that pleases me about this new crochet project is the wooden bowl that was given to me in the 1970s by a friend I’d known all my life. I hadn’t used it for salads since its finish was damaged, but it is the perfect size and shape to hold the thread and my project….and reminds me of the good experiences I had growing up with her.

Through all the years and projects – crocheting has been an activity that I can do some deep thinking while making an item I need. Maybe that’s why I restart crocheting all over again.

Ten Little Celebrations – November 2022

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Ten little celebrations for November. Some of them weren’t so little: a 91st birthday, a grandnephew, and Thanksgiving. There was a lot of food involved too. Celebrating November foods is probably my favorite lead up to the crescendo in December and then the beginning of a new year.

A mini-pumpkin – perfect for 4 servings. My sister bought small pumpkins for a table centerpiece; we decided to cook one of them for lunch along with meatloaf. The oven was nicely full. I pricked the skin of the pumpkin before I put it in the oven since I was cooking it intact. After about an hour, I took it out of the oven, lifted the stem off, cut it into quarters, and took the seeds out from the center. Everyone sprinkled cinnamon and added butter to melt into the pulp. All that was left at the end of the meal was the skin! Yummy!

Cranberries. I like cranberries in just about everything: stir fry, sauces for meatballs (combined with tomatillo salsa), chopping as an addition to stuffing, sauteed with apples + butter + cinnamon + honey for dessert. I used to make cranberry relish on the stovetop because I enjoyed watching the cranberries pop as they cooked, but I don’t like the relish as much anymore (too sweet) so now I enjoy cranberries pooping in stir fry or when they are sauteed. I celebrate both their flavor and their color!

Getting 141 bulbs planted. It took multiple sessions in the yard…and I celebrated when they were all finally in the ground. I hope most of them survive the squirrels and bloom next spring!

Leaves – raked, blown, shredded. Mowing is adequate for the leaves at our house but not my daughter’s. She has very large trees and the leaves were thick enough to kill grass. She and I spent an afternoon focused on leaves…and celebrated our accomplishment! The weather cool and crisp for a traditional fall activity …. always helps get me in the mood for the beginning of the holiday season.

A 91st birthday. Both of my parents are 91 years old as of November. Our family celebrates these milestones…enjoying that we still have them with us.

A grandnephew. Celebrating a baby in our family…the 1st one in over 20 years…adds a another facet to our joy during the holidays.

Walnuts. Not sure why…but walnuts have become a favorite this year. I am celebrating all the ways I’ve found to add them into food I am preparing!

Ritter Springs and Neighborhood Ponds. Celebrating the crisp air outdoors…the color of leaves…the frost on the grass.

Thanksgiving. Celebrating a day to appreciate all the recent events of our lives…a prelude to the family events/gatherings of December.

Leftovers. It’s a treat to have great food in short order… prolongs the celebration. I ate too much on Thanksgiving…did better on the subsequent days and maybe enjoyed the food more.

Unique Aspects of Days – September 2022

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The unique aspects for September….

Queen Elizabeth II died. The event is something that will be memorable about 2022. Her coronation was in the year I was born...she was the only well-known person I can think of that was on the international stage for that long period. Closer to home – her death accompanies the older generation of my family ebbing away. I am fortunate that both my parents are still around.

Making a quick run to Walmart for coffee. My dad makes coffee every morning and had somehow forgotten to tell anyone that there was not enough left in the container to make another pot. If I had not been visiting…they just would not have had any morning coffee that day!

Murmuration of pigeons over the Walmart parking lot. Somehow lots of pigeons were on the Walmart parking lot…and they flew up in a big swirl when they were startled by something (maybe a car?) and they did the usual turning in unison….the undulating ebbs and flows in the air. It seemed like they stayed a loft longer than required to escape danger and I wondered if the birds enjoy the ‘dancing’ in the sky.  

Talking with a man hauling hay at the gas station. I stopped to buy gas at a very large gas station just off the highway and a man with a trailer full of the round bales of hay pulled up on the other side of the pump. We had a short conversation and l learned: he is getting $60/bale rather than $30 he got last year, his fields are Johnson grass and cows like that kind of hay, this haul was from the 3rd mowing.

A upside down truck on the highway. The only time I got on the highway once I was in Carrollton, there was an upside truck on the other side….traffic just beginning to back up. It wasn’t obvious how the accident occurred; the truck was against the dividing wall that kept it from crossing over to the other side of the highway. I came back an hour later and could see that the truck was still there (upside down), but a crane has been brought in….and it was rush hour. Fortunately, I was already at my exit and the backup only slowed me down for about 5 minutes.

Rats. My parents had their house treated for rats. Insulation in the attic was replaced and holes in the eaves were sealed. There is a 10-year warranty. Hopefully this is a truly unique experience.

Grilling when it was windy. We didn’t use our gas grill when it was windy at our Maryland house, but we discovered that the house does a reasonable job of blocking the wind at our Missouri house….another reason to like our new location/house.

Laundered/dried our pillows in our new appliances. We don’t launder pillows frequently…and this was the 1st with our new washer and drier. We discovered that the sensor in the drier thought they were dry when they were dry on the outside…but not on the inside. We had to manually run the drier again….but the process was still faster than with our older appliances.

Bakery bread. I have started looking at the list of ingredients for breads…and buying ones where the ingredients are about the same as for homemade bread. It seems like commercial breads have a long ingredient list. I’m finding that the bakery breads with the shorter list taste great and are easier for me to digest.

A third COVID booster. My husband and I got the 3rd COVID booster along with a flu shot (one in each arm). I had more side effects (sore arm, aches) with this 3rd shot than I did the second…but they only were bothersome for about 24 hours and were completely gone in 48.

Reflecting the world when my grandparents were born

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I recently browsed 12 books by Clifton Johnson in Internet Archive and realized that the years when they were published (1893 to 1915) were just prior and during the years my grandparents were born (1901-1912). My grandparents were born in Oklahoma and Texas; these places were not direct subjects of any of the books, but I thought my grandfather born in 1901 might have walked down a dusty road in Texas kicking up dust…dressed in overalls and a hat…just as pictured in The Farmer’s Boy. I couldn’t tell whether the boy in the picture had shoes or not; my grandfather talked about not wearing shoes when he was a child if it was warm enough because they always fit poorly and there was never enough money to buy new ones that fit. In the picture of “a schoolgirl at home” in Highways and Byways of the South – the bonnet reminds me of the type one of my grandmother’s wore when she was working outdoors for the duration of her long life.  

Johnson used both drawings and photographs to illustrate his books. The majority on this list are travel type books…but there are some fairy tale books too! According to the Wikipedia entry about him, he treated photographic prints as a “rough draft” – a challenging decision in pre-Photoshop days! He lived most of his life in the northeast of the US but travelled broadly…recording what he saw.

The Oak-Tree Fairy Book

The Farmer's Boy

New England and Its Neighbors

Highways and Byways of California

The New England Country

Highways and Byways of the Great Lakes

Highways and Byways of the Rocky Mountains

The Country School in New England

The book of country clouds and sunshine

Highways and Byways of the South

The Land of Heather

A book of fairy-tale bears; selections from favorite folk-lore stories

 

Enjoy the sample images (one from each book)!

Ten Little Celebrations – July 2022

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Like June, July was a high stress month because of our move to Missouri - but with much to celebrate.

Family holiday gathering. The 4th of July was our first ‘holiday’ celebrated in Missouri…having my daughter and son-in-law over for veggies with hummus, steak, corn-on-the-cob, and watermelon.

An easy drive home…and being home again. The drive to Maryland and back was long…but once back in Missouri we celebrated only having one house again…and clearly it was ‘home.’

Dragonfly posing for pictures in our back yard. We seem to have more dragonflies around our yard in Missouri and I celebrate every time I manage to photograph one. The closer location to a pond might be why we are seeing them more frequently.

Being indoors during the hot part of the day. Every day that gets above 100 degrees is one I celebrate being indoors! We’ve had quite a few hot days this July – more in Texas than Missouri.

Getting boxes cleared from the garage. Once the pile gets annoying we make a trip to the recycle center – celebrating that it is convenient and that the garage is clear…until the boxes pile up again.

Springfield Botanical Garden. This is probably my favorite place for a walk in Springfield. It is a place I want to see again and again…through the seasons…finding a little celebration every time.

Little fixes completed. There were some little fixes identified when our Missouri house was inspected. I celebrated when they were completeed – particularly the one in the basement bathroom (since my office is also in the basement).

Josey Ranch green heron and ducklings. I only walked around the place once because it was so hot while I was in Texas…but celebrated the birds that I saw there (blog post coming soon).

Getting car inspected/registered…and MO driver’s liscense. It has been a very long time since I moved to a new state and I anticipated a lot of red tape. I was relieved when we managed to get the cars registered, our driver’s liscense….and register to vote…celebrated when they were all done…and glad that the process was not as difficult as I thought it might be.

Establishing the compost circle. I celebrated finding edging that was high enough to make a circle  to hold the small amount of compostable material I have from my kitchen….just in time to start it off with watermelon rind!

Ten Little Celebrations – May 2022

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May was a month of preparation to move…but there were plenty of little celebrations along the way.

12 boxes packed in one day. In April I had a few days that I got to 20 boxes…but that included some that all I had to do was tape (i.e. they were already packed). Doing a good job packing a box takes some thought…and gets harder after there are fewer items left to go in boxes. I celebrated that I managed a 12-box day!

Another load to the landfill/recycle center. Every time we take a load, I celebrate that we have a little less to move!

Getting the pile out for curbside pickup. It was a significant effort – requiring the wheelbarrow to get the heavier items up the hill. But we did it – more easily than I anticipated!

Getting the pile out for curbside pickup. It was a significant effort – requiring the wheelbarrow to get the heavier items up the hill. But we did it – more easily than I anticipated!

Finding boxes to pack larger items. I am packing larger items now…that are generally light weight too. I like the Home Depot’s ‘large’ boxes and celebrate how many odd items they hold gracefully.

Drawing down refrigerator items. I’ve been trying to eat things from the freezer/refrig so that I don’t have to move them. So far so good. The refrigerator is not entirely empty, but we’ll have less to move in an ice chest when we move. Celebrating that my strategy is working!

Reservations made for the trip to close on the house in Missouri. I’m celebrating that the further along we get…the more we do toward moving…the more ‘real’ it becomes. There will be a big celebration once we close but the steps leading to that milestone are worth celebrating too!

Birth of my niece’s child…the first of the next generation of our family. Celebrating the birth of child…mixed with relief that all is well with the mother and child.

A phoebe in the backyard in the morning (on almost every morning). The bird has become a normal early morning sound for me…not loud enough to be an alarm clock…but reminds me to celebrate the new day.

A timely appointment to get a crown on a broken molar. I was worried that my mouth would become painful before I could get an appointment with my dentist…but it happened quickly…and 2 hours later I went home with a temporary crown! I’m also celebrating that it is (so far) my best experience ever getting a crown.

A fox in the backyard…passing through. I happened to look out my office window to see a fox stop by the base of our feeder in the back yard….and then continue its way into the forest. It was transitioning from winter to summer coat. Celebrating that there is wildlife in our forest…and sometimes we get to see it in our backyard.

Irises

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The iris buds are enlarging, and one opened overnight. I cut the stem to bring it inside – early enough in the morning that the water droplets from the rain overnight had not dried. I brushed a spider from the flower as I walked back up the hill at the side of the house.

The rhizomes are from my parents’ garden more than a decade ago. Only one color has survived. There are more in the chaos garden than in front flowerbed.

In the front flowerbed there are plants that don’t produce flowers every year…only leaves.  This year there is only one with buds.

I am still trying to decide whether I will dig up any to take to my new house. Now – I’m leaning toward leaving them all with the house.

A New Family Member

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Adding to the overall drama of the month….

My niece had her baby! It was a milestone in our family – the first great-grandchild for my parents. One of my sisters became a grandmother. I became a great aunt as did my two other sisters. There has been a flurry in recent weeks to get pertussis vaccinations to safely visit the newborn. I was far from the event – in Maryland rather than Texas – but my sister provided enough texts for me to feel included. And I’ll get a pertussis shot in preparation for seeing the baby sometime in June.

The event was a good prompt to think about motherhood…how it has changed since my sister and I had children….how it has stayed the same. The basics are the same. Now there is more concern for the impacts of pollutants from the environment and potential COVID-19 infection on the developing fetus and newborn. The political climate that could impact care during pregnancy and delivery has degraded overtime and got much worse very recently. Still – the birth of a healthy baby is a time of hope for the future…a motivation for the adults of the family to lean into the actions necessary to enable this new family member opportunities on par with those we had…or better.

30 years ago – May 1992

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The highlight of May 1992 was the birth of my second niece. My daughter and I were in Dallas within a few weeks of her birth. It was a learning experience for my daughter who was very interested in babies at her daycare but had never seen one as young as her cousin. We all noticed the baby’s REM sleep when she was positioned in her carrier in the middle of the large dining table while my sister’s daycare swirled around the kitchen and den.

There were more mundane events too: doing the family grocery shopping every week together, my husband traveling for work using a back brace to make the longer plane trips tolerable, me with an ear infection after catching my daughter’s cold (she was outgrowing her tendency to get ear infections), my daughter trying to figure out the difference between ‘an accident’ and ‘on purpose,’ and a sister discovering that her new house had bearded iris in one of the flower beds.

As I read back through my notes of the time, I realized that it’s easy to remember the high points of out lives without them but not the details of how much energy keeping up with a 2.5-year-old took. Just reading a list I made of what we did on one Saturday was a potent reminder of how exhausting it was.

30 years ago – March 1992

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What was happening in my life 30 years ago (March 1992)?

As I look back through my notes from the time – I saw several items that are still part of our lives:

  • A Nordic Track. It was new then and I was using it daily. It is still down in our basement, but it’s been a long time since we used it last; it will be jettisoned before we move.

  • Curbside recycling was new, and I was already thinking about how to reduce trash…doing a small amount of composting. Now all the recycling goes into one bin and more things are accepted; it is not as clear that all the items avoid the landfill though.

  • My husband and I had created separate offices because both of us had started doing some work at home (we had progressed from a 1 PC family to 2 PCs!). In 1992, floppy disks were the primary mode of data transfer for us – no internet connection or World Wide Web yet.  We were both using email from our employers (dial up connection). The work that we did at home was totally on the PCs (presentation development, document development). Toward the end of the month, we were talking about getting a laser printer. We still have two offices - each have multiple (and more functional) devices and a lot of what we do is network enabled.

  • In a manager training, I became aware that there was a growing problem with employees using swear words/foul language…and that the younger employees were more OK with it than the older ones. The company was concerned that it was a growing issue…and thus the training. My personal thought was to stick to civil language…and was uncomfortable when foul language was used.  I’m still that way; the coarse language (that seems to have entered the mainstream in the past 5 years) is stressful and I find myself looking at ways to stay informed…but not hear the language being used.

  • And the miniature daffodils planted in our yard by my mother-in-law before she died were coming up. I dug up some of the bulbs before we moved to our present house to take with us…planted them in a front flower bed…and they are coming up again this spring.

There was a lot going on with our family. Our 2-year-old daughter’s favorite phrase was “I don’t want to.” She had finally made the transition from her crib to a twin sized bed, and she enjoyed a kite festival at the Washington Monument. My husband finally got a diagnosis of why his back had been so painful for over a decade (and some exercises that began to help). My 80-year-old grandmother was cooking huge meals for the birthdays in March (that I missed since I was in Maryland rather than Texas…which probably was a good thing with my need to lose weight)! Both of my parents were still working. One of my sisters was pregnant with her second child, another was enjoying her ceramic hobby, and the youngest was surviving a breakup with her boyfriend.  

Overall – March 1992 was a month at home…busy but not as overwhelming as the months before or after!

30 years ago – February 1992

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30 years ago – in February 1992 – it was a big month for milestones.

My paternal grandmother celebrated her 80th birthday. My mother had arranged a week-long celebration with various relatives appearing throughout the week, my daughter and I were there for the duration. My daughter had done enough airplane travel in her 2.5 years that getting from Maryland to Texas was uneventful, but the week was full of new experiences and lots of desserts; she and her cousin of similar age (the two great-grandchildren) were a pleasant distraction even when they were overly excited!  We stayed with one of my sisters for several nights because my parent’s house was needed for other relatives on those nights and my daughter discovered the fun of bunk beds (when we got home, she told her dad that she wanted bunk beds in her room). One of the enduring gifts from that birthday was a pink rose bush that a nephew and his wife brought; it is blooming profusely (in season…picture from last fall) beside my parent’s garage always reminding us of my grandmother and the couple that purchased it.

Another milestone was my daughter being accepted into the Montessori School I had selected as my first choice for her in the fall. It turned out to be a very positive experience for her over the next 3 years of pre-school and kindergarten…and was the last educational decision I made for her without her input!

Our grand piano was delivered in February 1992. It has been the largest part of our living room furniture since then! I took some pictures of it recently. Only the nicks in the legs from the vacuum cleaner give an indication of its age. It’s had an annual visit from the same piano tuner for almost the entire time!

Overlaid on those milestones – my daughter had a terrible cold and ear infection after we returned from Texas! Between our daughter and 2 careers there were frequent unexpected events; it was often a challenge to not feel overwhelmed – but there were always times to savor along the way too.

30 Years Ago – January 1992

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The January of 30 years ago was a lull – between a hectic holiday and anticipated travel with a 2-year-old in February. We enjoyed indoor family projects at home. The most unique one involved a sturdy box that I had saved from immediate recycling at work when some equipment arrived in it. The box barely fit into  my car; it was an excellent size for my daughter to make into a playhouse. My husband cut a door in the side and I put blobs of finger paint on the top and sides for her to decorate it. It was too cold to do it outside, so the painting was a kitchen project with newspapers on the floor. She was already very disciplined…the paint was used on her box house and not other walls (or floors or cabinets).

She was still small enough to use the kitchen sink as a bath….a very neat cleanup for her house painting project. She probably spent more time in the sink bath than the box painting!

I don’t remember her doing much with the box after she painted it. It was in her room for the next few months…and then recycled.