We Were Set to Fly to Maui Today, But...

We were set to fly to Maui today for a nine-day vacation, our first in a year. Our second vacation in retirement. But coronavirus happened. 

We rented a one-bedroom condo with a balcony overlooking Kaanapali Beach (see photo) and a fully-equipped kitchen. We dreamed of enjoying fresh pineapple each morning on that balcony, with fragrant Kona coffee for me. 

Nine days of sipping tropical drinks, chasing waterfalls and pristine beaches, a round of golf for Ron, reading time for me, and soaking in soul-deep relaxation. 

It's OK, though. We'll rebook for later this year, probably to replace the two-week Panama Canal cruise we planned for October as early celebration of our 30th wedding anniversary. Post-coronavirus, that cruise seems a touch too scary for us, at least in 2020.

We're OK during the pandemic if we leave the house now and then. We took a three-hour drive yesterday around Reno, to drop off boxes at the Goodwill (bless those workers!) , to check-up on family property for sale, to the market (for tamale pie makings, pasta, Cheddar cheese, more apples), and gloriously, for a bite of fast food. 

It was lovely to feel fresh air, to watch cottony clouds under blue skies, to savor the lazy hum-drum of neighborhood life.   

Truth is my semi-retirement life has changed only about, say, 25% by shelter-in-place mandates.  I already write and research from my home office at my own pace (and have done so for 20 years), and after 44 years as a career engineer, Ron is pleased to putter at home, particularly on his budding "man cave."

I miss the new friendships I was building, especially at two book clubs, after our move to Reno in July 2019. I miss sojourning at my new favorite places... the Nevada Museum of Art, the South Valleys branch of the Washoe County Library system, Trinity Episcopal Cathedral. And I miss discovering the Reno restaurant scene. 

But still, Ron and I are blessed. Blessed to have each other during this public health crisis. Blessed with a comfortable home, plenty to eat, online connections to our loved ones. Blessed with imagination and creativity, energy and decent health. 

To hopefully stay healthy, we're leaving the house only once or twice a week. Eating healthy, including lots of fruits and veggies. Avoiding most broadcast news. Catching plenty of sleep. Engaging in something that makes us happy, which for Ron is listening to music, and for me, reading. Washing our hands constantly, and gargling daily with salty lukewarm water. 

Good habits we'll keep after this pandemic is a fading memory, except for the "getting out" part. We're itching to take some road trips, to Yellowstone and Glacier National Park. To Powell's  and the public rose garden in Portland, Oregon. Maybe to beautiful Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico. We road-trip together as well as any couple ever.

We're blessed and content sheltering in place. "I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances." --- Philippians 4:11. I wish I could claim that sort of perfect patience. Alas, at best, Ron and I are works-in--progress. 

In the meantime, It's OK we aren't landing in Maui by noon today, and reclining on that beach-front balcony by 3 pm. . We'll vacation there later this year. Maybe July or August. God willing.

Dad Visited Me Last Night

My father came to me last night in a dream, the first time he's appeared in my dreams since he passed away at age 89 in March 2016.   Maybe the first time he's ever appeared in my dreams.

He looked older than this. Maybe 50 years old, healthy, casual, and serene, before time took its usual toll.  He was dressed in neat slacks and a button-up shirt, short-sleeved. He looked normal. He acted normally, too... quiet, not shy, doing not talking. 

So normal, I wasn't surprised to see him. At least, not until I awoke, thought about my dream, and realized I saw and felt Dad. 

He silently, handed me a pile of three or four boxes. I knew the top, rectangular box held a picnic lunch. 

The boxes underneath were flatter, wider, but not nearly as deep. I think the other boxes contained documents and information Dad thought I needed. Thinks I need. 

I fell asleep with a half-dissolved throat lozenge in my mouth. He motioned for me to take it out. I woke up, and without thought or feeling, obeyed him. Of course. 

And he was gone. I feel peace from his visit. A new peace, as I never deeply mourned his death as I did when my Mother passed away, ten days later. 

The connection between me and Dad was as much intellectual as emotional. When he was dying, he asked me to send him newspapers. We talked current events and economics and politicians. We watched the moon landing together in 1969. 

I think I know what's in the other boxes. His ancestral info that he avoided like poison during his lifetime. ("You never know what you'll find."  But I firmly believe he knew exactly what he would find.) Family info that stunned me when I researched it after he passed, but dropped when we moved last year.  

Seems like I need to get back to it. 

Dancing in the Rain with Joy and Persistence

"Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass. It's about learning to dance in the rain."

My family lamented the storm.  A lot.  My parents were worriers.  About money, foremost.  But about... well, everything that might happen. 

About car accidents. Ironically, about both illnesses and doctors. About what other people thought of us. About what we thought of them. About succeeding. About not succeeding. About succeeding too much. 

My mother worried incessantly about our Christmas tree catching fire. About concussions at ice-skating birthday parties. That we didn't eat enough cottage cheese. (Seriously. Ask my sister...) Ours was a fearful home, likely borne of my parents' Depression-era upbringings in poor farming families. Unfettered joy was not a "thing" our cautious home.

Until I read the mantra (above) a few years ago, about not waiting for the storm to pass, it never occurred to me to dance in the rain, rather than slogging out the storm before moving forward in joy under perfect skies. 

Today is one of those joyful days, where I witnessed the fruition of dancing in the rain for years without assurances of anything. I pushed ahead in faith to do the right things without waiting for perfect conditions. And I followed my heart's callings, never pondering where they might lead.  Never imagining they might lead to anything at all. 

Then today....

I learned from blood test results that my health has improved substantially over the past year, largely due to more thoughtful food choices.  

After four years of blogging nearly 400 recipes at my pet-project, Lost American Recipes site, I received an inquiry today from Smithsonian Books... yes, THE Smithsonian... about my project as a whole, and asking if I would include material from one of their books at my site.  

After years of me studying our local political scene, the campaign manager of a leading Democratic contender to replace Congressman Ed Royce in upcoming November elections privately emailed to ask me to meet her candidate at a meet-and-greet or one-on-one.  Anytime. Soon. Asking what I need to know. And to please consider endorsing him. 

In all three situations, I sowed seeds by doing the hard work. I moved forward, ignoring naysayers, avoiding toxic influences, and sidestepping storms. I didn't worry, or commiserate, or frankly, anticipate specific results of any sort. 

I moved forward in faith and joy, with persistence and confidence rather than fearing life. Or car accidents, or burning Christmas trees, or doctors, or ice skating concussions, or succeeding or failing. (I do still fear cottage cheese. I detest it to this very day...) 

I learned to dance in the rain, rather than wasting life waiting for the storm to pass.  And after the rain, my fields of endeavor are bearing unexpected blossoms. 

I feel grateful. 

The Tyranny of Hallmark Christmas Movies

For decades, I believed my family's Christmas celebrations should be, feel, and look like Hallmark holiday movies, although I'd never actually watched one of Hallmark's pretty fantasy films until the last few weeks. 

You know... those gently paced films featuring stately Christmas trees twinkling with tiny white lights and shiny, traditional ornaments. With cozy yet spacious, tasteful homes generously furnished in warm tones. Set in adorable snowy towns with cute, local shops and friendly shopkeepers, and nary a Big Box retailer in sight. 

Movies that invariably include homey activities done together... cookie baking, parade planning, float decorating, gingerbread house building, making angels in freshly-fallen white snow. Tree decorating seems part of every Hallmark Christmas movie, as if the tree was the sacred center of a retail-based, rather than religious-based, holiday.

Movies in which people save all manner of things. Save Santa. Save belief in Santa. Save a beloved Christmas store. Save a charming cottage. Save a Christmas celebration. Save dogs, cats, or horses. Save a small theater or church pageant. Save small town history.  Save the town gazebo. Save the Christmas spirit. Save a woman from time travel. Save love, most of all. 

In Hallmark Christmas movies, people are attractive and immaculately groomed. They wear lovely but never edgy clothes. Certainly no tattoos, no stray piercings, no blue-streaked tresses. They behave with patience, kindness, and impeccable manners. They smile a lot. They speak in dulcet tones and slow cadences, even when calmly disagreeing over tiffs that will be resolved, usually with a kiss, in two hours. 

Sneer as you might at the cheesy dialogue, formulaic feel-good stories, white-bread actors, and impossible plots. Reality is that Hallmark's Christmas movie kingdom is a wildly-profitable smash hit, with 85 million viewers just in November and December 2017. 

"The Hallmark Channel was the No. 1 cable network among women ages 25 to 54 in the fourth quarter of 2016, and its ratings have seen even more growth in 2017," per the Washington Post. The Washington Post column, penned by comedian Cassie Belek, continues:

"While other cable networks have been losing viewers, the Hallmark Channel has been a success story. Theories of the ratings spike range from viewers seeking an escape from the daily fresh hells of 2017 to viewers seeking to embrace the 'traditional values' of a country made great again...

"I am the first to admit that Hallmark Christmas movies are flawed...  I love these movies filled with fake snow, small towns, Folgers coffee cans, dead moms, Taylor Townsend from 'The O.C.' and that one cafe that they keep using in multiple movies without changing the name...

"As divisive as 2017 has been, my female friends and family of all races and political beliefs have been talking about and watching Hallmark Christmas movies more than ever...  

"... women need a little Christmas in 2017. We need 90 minutes to sit down with the people we care about and watch characters love, cry, learn, forgive and get into snowball fights while living in beautiful homes they can’t afford and building elaborate gingerbread houses in impossible amounts of time."

Count me in as one who  is "seeking an escape from the daily fresh hells of 2017."  I can scarcely bear to hear political headlines, especially during this holiday season. And I can't fathom watching programs depicting death, violence, cruelty, broken relationships, or general ugliness.  Life in 2017 is packed with darkness. I don't hunger for darkness in escapist doses of culture.

I thirst for beauty in my entertainment. For charm and possibly cleverness. For loveliness. For positive thinking, and for altruism. For saving things, all for good, if often local or small, causes.  I yearn to sleep well at night, placated with visions of happy people, happy lives, a peaceful world.  My version of sugarplum fairies dancing in my head, I guess. 

Where's the tyranny of Hallmark Christmas movies?  

So where's the tyranny of Hallmark Christmas movies?  The impossible standards set by Hallmark's film fantasies.  Like comparing ourselves to young, lithe Vogue magazine models, almost none of us can emulate the sheer perfection of Hallmark's glossy holiday dreams.

The tyranny is that for decades, thanks to my mother's impossible standards, I believed my family's Christmas celebrations should be, feel, and look like Hallmark holiday movies, although I'd never watched one of Hallmark's films until the last few weeks. 

Now, Hallmark Christmas movies actively reinforce my sense of holiday inferiority. Of not doing enough, not being enough. not giving enough, not having enough.  Of my family not being happy enough.  Of my home not being warm or lavish enough. Of our gifts not being thoughtful enough. Of our celebrations and rituals not being festive enough.  

Of our Christmas decor not being pretty or elaborate enough. (At commercial breaks, Hallmark sells trees, wreaths, decorations, and ornaments so you can duplicate the look of their movies. And spend money to feed your fantasies. See their Shop the Look of Christmas website.) 

This year, my family of 9 (7 adults, 2 grandchildren) enjoyed a sublime Christmas Day at our home, blessed with a delicious feast, piles of thoughtful presents, and plenty of love. 

But over the course of our 4 days of festivities (movies, a round of golf, dinners out, football watching, cookie munching, gift wrapping), our Christmas was also messy and imperfect. None of us behaved with consistent patience, kindness, and impeccable manners. No one spoke in dulcet tones and slow cadences. 

There was a meltdown one evening by one who feels strangled by holiday relentlessness. There was an hour of boorish behavior by one who feels left out of family intimacies. There was disappointment by one who felt childish jealousy of another's presents. Three days after Christmas, our home remains brightly littered with wrapping paper, ribbons, and boxes. 

We are grateful for a long Christmas weekend as an imperfect, divinely human family. But we didn't measure up to Hallmark's picturesque high-bar for what Christmas celebrations "should be."

And I, a fool who unconsciously aspires to perfection in most things, felt twinges of remorse and pain over the challenging small moments with my loved ones. I am wrong. Hallmark is partially the culprit for my shallow guilt.  

After all... ours is a wonderful life, albeit laced with bumps and potholes in the road. To quote Jimmy Stewart, "It's a Wonderful Life!"

Roasted Corn and Cucumber Summer Salad

Despite my extensive cookbook collection, both vintage and current, I often create my own dishes based on the contents of our over-filled refrigerator. 

I'm enamored of the lettuce-free salad I concocted for my lunch today. (I'm tired of salad greens lately for no particular reason.) Using organic veggies from this week's CSA produce delivery, my delicious summer salad is also simple.

Roasted Corn and Cucumber Summer Salad

• 1 whole cucumber, peeled and diced into large bites
• 10 to 12 cherry tomatoes, cut in half
• 2 ears of grilled corn, chilled and cut from the cobs
• 2 ounces of jack cheese, cut into bite-sized cubes

Next time, I'll add a quarter cup of chopped red onions, and maybe a small handful of chopped walnuts. The grilled corn ears were leftovers from last night's dinner. 

I tossed this refreshing summer salad with a very small amount of ranch dressing.

Enjoy!  Thanks to my sister, Teri, for inspiring me to eat even more veggies. 

Mourning My Five Favorite Movies on VHS

We recently donated what might be the last functioning TV with a built-in VHS player. Our thirty-something sons both snickered in astonishment that we owned anything electronic that ancient...

Lest you believe we're tech-dinosaurs, it was a rarely used second TV, gathering dust in a corner of our bedroom.  I watched it when using the treadmill.  And perhaps for only 15 or 20 minutes late at night since Jon Stewart departed "The Daily Show."  

We have three other TVs, all flat screens.  A 46" Panasonic in our family room, and two small LG TVs, one in my office and one in the garage/man cave. We replaced the relic with an LG 4K "smart" TV, whatever that might mean.

But what to do with the 32 movies remaining in my VHS collection?  We donated our extensive Disney VHS collection a few years ago when cleaning out Andrea's room.  Obviously, we have no use for movies in VHS format.  

I treasure those movies, though, like I treasure cherished books.  I treasure memories connected to many of these movies.  My dilemma?  Do I replace them with DVDs, thus rebuilding my film library?  I believe firmly in the value of libraries, including film libraries.  Or do I simply keep a list, and watch them on Netflix or Amazon Prime, the two services we use?

Truthfully, I'm torn.  I may collect a few of the films on DVD because I so savor them.  Others, well, maybe not. Among the five movies on VHS I most mourn and may replace are...

"Lawrence of Arabia," released in 1962, starring Peter O'Toole.  The movie that caused me to fall deeply in love with movies.  I vividly recall watching it on a gigantic screen as an 11 year old, swooning at scenes of heroism, gallantry, drama, and gorgeous expanses of blue skies and sparkling desert.  Found out years later, when I attended UCLA film school, that many movie makers, including Steven Spielberg, regard Lawrence as the best film ever made, and seminal to their careers in the film industry.

"Coming Home," released in 1978, starring Jane Fonda and Jon Voight, directed by Hal Ashby.  I detested the Vietnam War, and shed tears of sadness during this movie.  I viscerally understood their pain, their passions, their alienation.  Most gut-wrenching scene: Jon Voight, a Vietnam vet in a wheelchair, tearfully addressing high school students... 

"Reds," released in 1981, starring Warren Beatty and Diane Keaton.  At over three hours, the movie was too long.  In the director Beatty's defense, it was a large-scale epic about Russia's Bolshevik Revolution. Greatest single scene ever filmed of a loving embrace... Beatty and Keaton reunited after years apart.  Their expressions of raw need, vulnerability, relief were searing with heat. The movie tagline was "Not since Gone With The Wind has there been a great romantic epic like it!"

"A River Runs Through It," released in 1992, directed by Robert Redford, and starring Brad Pitt and Tom Skerritt.  Set in Missoula, Montana, the plot follows the two sons of a Presbyterian pastor in the early 1900s.  The narrator reminds me of my beloved grandfather, a forest ranger and later, rancher.  A sentimental, yet tough film about the vagaries of life and passage of time.  The cinematography is breathtaking and the music sweetly haunting.

"Being There,"  released in 1979, starring Peter Sellers, also directed by Hal Ashby, based on a book by acclaimed writer Jerzy Kosinski.  Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. About a simpleminded man in the right (or wrong) place at the right time.  Everything he knows, he learned from television.  He rises in prominence completely by a series of misunderstandings, and ends as a senior advisor to the President of the United States.  Dear God... I never once imagined this dark satire could come true.

My VHS film collection contained requisite baby-boomer classics, including:

• "The Big Chill," released in 1983
• "The Graduate," released in 1967
• "Annie Hall," released in 1977
• "On Golden Pond," released in 1981
• "The Accidental Tourist," released in 1988
• "Bull Durham," released in 1988

My collection included a few bona fide old-time classics:

• "It Happened One Night"
• "Casablanca"
• "Fritz Lang's Metropolis"
• "Macbeth" starring Orson Welles

I defy anyone reading this to tell me they've also seen these obscure film gems  from my collection:

• "One from the Heart," released in 1982, directed by Francis Ford Coppola, starring Teri Garr, Raul Julia, featuring the bluesy music of Tom Waits.  A film version of an impressionist painting, each frame, each scene was lush with color and abstraction. 
• "They All Laughed," released in 1981, directed by Peter Bogdanovich, a madcap comedy starring John Ritter, Ben Gazzara, Audrey Hepburn. and  Playboy Playmate of the Year Dorothy Stratten in her only film before she was tragically murdered. 
• "Prelude to a Kiss," released in 1992, starring Alec Baldwin and Meg Ryan.  A thoughtful comic treatise on true love, based on a Broadway play. 
• 
  

The Goodwill has been graced with donations of my 32 VHS-format movies.  And they took them, which means someone somewhere still watches movies on VHS players.  I dearly hope they enjoy these magic masterpieces.

As for me, I plan to watch each again.  Soon. 

Of Pizza and Collecting Human Souls: Parenting in 2017

Pizza restaurant talk with my nine-year-old grandson this past weekend. A light, casual conversation...  or so I thought.

Me: So tell me about the videos games you like...

Ian: I really like "Unturned."

Me: What's that about?

Ian: It's a pixelated zombie apocalypse game. (Said with sweet, slight condescension, obviously simplifying his explanation for me).

Me:  What's pixelated? 

Ian:  The picture is in little boxes, Grandma.

Me: Got it!  Uh... what other games do you like? (Asked thinking the next must be more understandable to a baby boomer.  About sports, maybe. Or dogs.) 

Ian: I like "Undertale" a lot.

Me: What's "Undertale" about?

Ian: Well, it's monsters vs. humans.  (Again simplifying for me.)

Me: Monsters vs humans?  How do you play? (Attempting to dig deeper. Show interest. Spark connection.)

Ian: Asgore is the monster. The game is he collects human souls so he can become a god.
(He responds excitedly.)

Me: Uhhhhh... (Stunned pause. Maybe I misheard? What???)

Me:  Hey, your extra-pepperoni pizza is here!  (Relieved... Collecting human souls? This is a game?.) 

Ian: Oh cool! 

Me: How's school? (Safer topic. I have new respect for parenting in 2017. How do they do it?) 

Of Treadmills and Foolishness: Breaking the Family Pattern

Sports and exercise were simply not done by women in my family. Mothers and grandmothers model our first, and lasting, examples of femininity. The idea seemed far-fetched to them that physical activity was important, much less feasible.  Other than leisurely golf, tennis, badminton, or backyard croquet. 

I can't imagine my grandmother ever exercised for her health, and she lived to age 89.  Grandma was a hearty, lifelong farmer's wife, a busy occupation during her era (1897 to 1987), at least until Grandpa retired from small-time farming and beef ranching.

The idea of Grandma on a treadmill is a hilarious vision of cheeriness and her trademark impatience. Bundle of restless energy that she was, I don't recall her sitting except at the meal table.  And then only for 20 minutes before pushing seconds, clearing the table, washing dishes, stoking her prized wood-burning stove. And sitting, absorbed in her favorite TV program, "The Lawrence Welk Program." 

Yet, without formal exercise, Grandma remained mobile and lived nine decades with nary a trace of heart disease or cancer, although those last few years were spent in a fog of what we then called senility.   

As a young girl, my outdoorsy mother camped summers in nearby Sequoia and Kings' Canyon Parks, bonded with the family dogs, and rode her beloved horse Dolly everywhere. 

Mother's 1948 community college yearbook featured four full pages devoted to "Girl's Sports," including archery, badminton, volleyball, square dancing, jumping jacks, and lots of tennis. Oddly, she was in none of those photos.

As an adult, my mother never exercised for health, and paid a terrible price of arthritic pain, inflammation, and immobility later in life.  For 15 years, she didn't walk more than a dozen yards at a time, and rarely ventured outside. But still, she lived to age 86, also without a trace of heart disease or cancer.   

My sister exercises and exercises and exercises. Teri walks. A lot.  She walks for miles every possible day, usually on beautiful southern Oregon beaches. She ponders as she walks. She finds peace of mind when walking. But mainly, my sister, a nurse for 30-plus years, walks and hikes for good health.  

Since childhood, I've been a reluctant exerciser. As an exasperating teenager, I would rather be in my room, my head in a book or listening to music. In junior high, Mother pushed me into tennis and archery in summers to get me out of the house. 

I detested P.E., and was mortified when I once fainted while running the high school track.  During my senior year of high school, Mother did what I thought finally qualified her as very cool: she often called me in sick for first-period P.E., and made excuses why I would be well by second period English.  She didn't see the point of exercise or sports for a 17 year old girl. Neither did I. 

Today, though, osteoarthritic pain and stiffness threaten the richness of my life.  Exactly like my mother at sixtysomething. 

Seems our tricked-out recumbent bike has harmed my right hip more than helped over the last two years, so we dumped it last month. But not exercising yields unpleasant results for me... stiffness, pain, inflammation. 

I took a bold (for my family) step recently to do things differently. To break the mold. I bought a treadmill.  And I'm using it. Daily. Comfortably, to my surprise...  

Grandma would be bewildered at our foolishness.  Why do we sit so much today?  When would we find time to to "exercise," when meals need to be created, crops grown, produce canned, farm animals tended, people cared for, laundry done, socks mended, letters to loved ones written? I can hear her: "For heaven's sake, why would you need a machine to walk?" 

Mother would be stubborn.  Two years before she passed, she lamented that had she known more about nutrition and health, she wouldn't have "ended up like this."   Which was utter nonsense. About health, she was hard-headed as an annoyed mule. Unteachable. Pain was pain, and it meant to her that you slow down, not bear down. 


Mother wanted better for me, though.  She beseeched me to handle my health differently then her. She told me, with urgency, innumerable times in those last years.  My sister is proud and supportive, but understandably skeptical. 

Why exercise?  Family genetics aren't everything, of course, and neither my sister or I are particularly predisposed to cancer or heart disease.  But I don't plan to sit for the next 15 years. I don't choose to live in pained isolation or dwell in pain. I choose to follow my sister's good example. 

I also committed to a treadmill to demonstrate to myself that I remain teachable.  I want better for my life, family patterns be damned.  God willing.  

(Note - First two photos were taken from "The Tiger" yearbook of Reedley College in Reedley, California, 1948, my parents' alma mater.)

My Shared Pain: No One Wants Family Heirlooms Anymore

I have a plethora of pretty things from my mother that no one wants. I'm paralyzed with procrastination... too pained to donate fragile, lovely homewares cherished by my mother, yet burdened with dust-catching items I rarely, if ever, use.   

Seems I'm not alone in feeling discouraged that our adult children are uninterested in enjoying, then passing finely crafted family heirlooms down to their children.  

The Greatest Generation, raised in scarcity during the Depression, treasured stuff. The generations before them collected stuff for use or as mementos of distant or deceased family or ancestral lands.

Last month, Next Avenue, a PBS newsletter for those over-50, published its most popular article ever, "Sorry, Nobody Wants Your Parents' Stuff."

Reports PBS:

"This post about a heartbreaking, pervasive problem struck a minor chord in a major way: It was the most viewed article in Next Avenue’s history, garnering more than 1.5 million views, 32,000 Facebook shares and 5,500 comments, and was printed over 3,100 times."

Comments to the Next Avenue blog post fell into five categories:

• "I so relate"
• "This is so sad and difficult"
• "I feel guilty about what I had to do"
• I won't let this happen to my kids"
• "You're wrong. People want these possessions." 

Here's a few of the comments that touched a heartbroken nerve in me... 

"My children have already told me they don’t want any of our antiques because they don’t care for ‘brown furniture.’ Drives me crazy that they prefer cheap furniture made of pressed sawdust and glue, but what’s a mom to do?"

"My mother was a serious collector of imported English Victorian antique furniture and spent her weekends throughout my life polishing it to an inch of its life … I cried when her table and chairs were loaded onto a trailer- I hated them but I loved them as well!"

"It’s a good thing our deceased loved ones can’t see what’s happening to their prized possessions. Many of them struggled through financial woes and 'made do' during hard times. To see their things pitched and tossed would be heartbreaking for them."

"My mother… always preached to me the 'value' of this or that…. Well, I’ve learned that nothing is worth anything if no one wants it... I couldn’t even find buyers for her genuine gold and gem stone jewelry and had to liquidate it for pennies at one of those 'we buy gold' places. I still have a storage unit full of stuff 20 years after her death because in her memory I can’t bring myself to just give it away."

One particular comment rings painfully true... " My mother made me promise to never get rid of certain items so now they sit in the basement because I would feel guilty selling or giving them away."  

You see, months before she passed away in April 2016, I told Mother that I have her 68-year-old white satin wedding dress.  And I asked her, my unsentimental mother stricken with Alzheimer's, what she wanted me to do with it.   She paused for a long moment, then slowly responded, "Keep it.  Please keep it." 

I'll likely keep my mother's crumpled wedding dress until the day I die. She considered her 1948 wedding day to be the best day of her 86-year-long life, and she asked me to keep it.  I can't bear to give it away to strangers. I could have her dress made into charming decorative pillows for my two daughters, niece, and granddaughter.  But sadly, I don't think they care that I long for them to value something of my mother... It's just more stuff that doesn't match their taste. 

Among other family heirlooms gathering dust in our cupboards and two china cabinets:  two punch bowls, one crystal with 18 matching handled punch glasses and two crystal punch ladles. A demitasse set of eight porcelain cups and saucers, hand-painted with Audubon-like birds. English and French bone china teacups and saucers. Tiny wine glasses.  Some cool 1950s pyrex and melmac bowls. Plus an exquisitely embellished linen tablecloth gifted to me 40 years ago by my maternal grandmother. And much more. 

Two distinct types of parting thoughts were reflected among comments to the Next Avenue post:

Despair... "In the future there will be no personal history … only ‘in the moment’ … no graves, no personal letters, no hard copies of long-lasting photographs, no heirlooms …. no footprints in the sand." 

Laissez-faire... "Personally when I die if someone enjoys something of mine great but it’s not me!! Do whatever you want with my stuff after I die, but keep a good memory of me in your heart!!"   

... and "It doesn’t bother me that my girls are not interested in our stuff. It’s just stuff, really."

I'm working on the latter.  And looking for a seamstress to make heirloom pillows from Mother's wedding dress, including a special pillow for me. 

Golden State Woman: Focused, Not Crazy Anymore

My longtime personal blog has new life!  

A new name, new look, and new excitement, as I (finally!) embrace my new phase of life... 65 and never happier or more free.

I will still be blogging about the usuals:  faith, family, food, books, travel, the great, green outdoors, and whatever catches my fancy.  

Welcome, friends. to GoldenStateWoman.com, formerly TheCrazyWoman.com.  I feel focused, not crazy anymore. 

Of Pumpkin Spice Lattes and NFL Football

I savor the small rituals of each season, but especially of my favorite, autumn.  

As I write these words, I'm sipping my first Starbucks pumpkin spice latte of the year while watching the first Thursday night NFL game of the season,  the Denver Broncos v. Carolina Panthers.    
My fall calendar lights up again with activities next week after a long summer sojourn... Living Vine bible study and small groups, Homework House volunteering to neighborhood kids, two book clubs.  

Our kitchen is brimming with fall organic produce for heartier meals... tomatoes, eggplants, zucchini, carrots, potatoes, sweet bell peppers, onions, herbs, and early apples.  

My writing calendar is full, too, with an active book project, blogs, and an inspiring conference in San Luis Obispo in a few weeks. 

And today is my beloved son's birthday.  

I feel blessed and deeply grateful for a fresh, creative start to a new, different season in my life. 

Welcome, fall!  I've been waiting for your warm glories... 

Facebook Victorian-Style, Circa 1881

I've long been charmed by American culture around the turn of the 20th century, from about 1880 to 1920.  Little charms me more than this Autograph Book of my maternal great-grandmother, Jessie Belle Gibson Hutchison (1862 - 1952).

Autograph books were a fad in Victorian-era America, from about 1850 through the 1880s. Until replaced by yearbooks. Telephones. The internet.  And Facebook... 

Per Wikipedia, autograph books originated in Europe in the Middle Ages to record family genealogy, and among college students. "Traditionally they were exchanged among friends, colleagues, and classmates to fill with poems, drawings, personal messages, small pieces of verse, and other mementos. Their modern derivations include yearbooks, friendship books, and guest books."

In fact, Princeton University archives house a collection of "219 autograph books from 192 members of classes between 1825 and 1884. The books were used to collect not only the autographs of classmates, but also good wishes, bits of favorite verse, letters of farewell, or reminiscences of shared events during undergraduate years."

I appreciate my great-grandmother's Autograph Book for the extraordinary genealogy record she later, at age 71, listed in it in 1933.  

But even more, I'm charmed by the eloquent, sweet, serious, clever, often funny autographs collected in the early 1880s from family and friends by 19-year-old Jessie Gibson of farming community Sigel, Kansas. 

And it strikes me how much civility and graciousness Americans have lost in the last 150 years, from Victorian-era autographs books to Facebook today. 

For your enjoyment, a small sampling...

"Take this, it is a gift of love

That seeks thy good alone.

Keep it for the writer's sake,

And read it for thine own.

Your friend,

Laura M. Flagg, April 17, 1883"

"Our lives are albums written through

Of good or ill, of false or true

And as the angels turn the page of our year

Oh may they greet the good with smiles

And blow the ill with tear.

Is the wish of your friend...

Eva Cade, September 8, 1881

Lawrence, Kansas"

"Forget me not is all I wish,

And if it proves too hard a task,

Forget me.

As ever your friend,

Hattie Frazier, November 10, 1883

Alfred, Kansas"

"Oh believe me dear Cousin Jessie when I say that through life, 

my best wishes shall be for Thy happiness, and

a pure desire that we may spend eternity happily together

in the presence of our Heavenly Father.

Adda C. Petefish, October 20, 1881

Belvoir, Kansas"

"When you stand before the tub

Think of me before you rub

And if the water is too hot

Cool it, and forget me not.

Effie Hutchison, October 27, 1883"

"Miss Jessie,

Youth is life's bright morning

Age is coming on.

Watch and pray and labor

Youth will soon be gone.

'Hope'

Why do we hope? Disappointment will fret us

And laugh at our dreams ere our wakings begun.

Why look to the future? That will not forget us

If something is lost, there is more to be won.

Yours Truly,

James F. Morris, October 28, 1881

Richland, Kansas"

And from Jessie's future husband, my great-grandfather, Charles Hutchison (1858 to 1941) , who she married in 1884...

"Tis hard to part with those we love

Tis hard to part tis true

Tis not as hard to part with some

As tis to part with you.

Charley Hutchison, October 1883"

Charming, indeed.  I mourn the graciousness and innocence of those pre-Facebook days.

(In the photo, from left are Charles Hutchison (1858-1941), son Alpha (1884-1962), daughter Marie, my grandmother (1897-1987), daughter Gertrude (1886-1962), Jessie Gibson Hutchison (1862-1952), daughter Clara (1888-1975).)