Squandering, Reconsidered

Saturday night, 8:00p.m.-ish. I’m on the deck (I don’t say “front deck” as we have no back deck providing truth and the promise of symmetry to that sentence) as the sun pushes another day down into a breezy darkness. I was on the couch with the floor fan set at “3” and no sooner settled in to a great read (“One’s Company” by the late Barbara Holland) when a rather loud and admonishing inner voice scolded me into getting up and moving the whole evening wind-down enterprise outside.

I live in the lap of unbridled beauty. No one can see me or our house unless they do some pretty deep trespassing. The wild black raspberries along the driveway are coming on faster than I can pick them and stain my fingers; the cats are lying flat at my feet trying to distribute the coolness of the deck’s planks evenly across their fur-burdened little bodies. In that split-second, it made no sense and bordered on disrespectful to sit inside on a couch with a fan creating a breeze when the real thing was available at no charge just a few steps away. My inner voice is harsh at times, but she tells it like it is.

I’ve been on vacation for just over a week, with another half-week to go, and this stretch of days will certainly not win any awards for Completing A Most Ambitious Project List. Ashamed to admit it, but I sat inside and scrolled aimlessly and much longer than I ever do, watching my screen reports deliver the bad news of my idleness. I expect when I’m back at the office, I’ll feel more than a twinge of guilt and regret for squandering the days I was given. I plunged headfirst into a well of lethargy the likes of which I’ve never known. I’m a doer, not a sitter. It was strange, uncomfortable, and addictive all at once.

Yes, I painted the living room floor as promised and on schedule. That included all the dreaded prep and put-back work that naturally accompanies most painting projects—emptying bookcases of their slightly dusty contents (vowing to downsize, again), moving lighter pieces of furniture into other rooms (turning them into dangerous mazes when I needed to get a coconut water from the fridge or refill the cats’ food dishes), putting slides under the feet of the heavier furniture and pushing it all onto one side, sweeping and scrubbing the floor before applying that first dubious coat (the second coat always makes me feel better, like I made the right decision on color—Bermuda sand from the creative folks at Valspar), all the while keeping the cats exiled to the great outdoors for two days. They’ve just begun talking to me again. I touched everything much more than once, defying that great rule of Efficiency (“touch nothing twice!”) because it was necessary. When Patrick comes home all sunburnt and full of stories from Sundance, I hope he’ll notice how much brighter and unblemished the visible bits of bare floor look, adjacent to a sweet boho throw rug that takes up most of the room’s real estate. Tempted I was at one point to simply paint around that rug, and the chairs and couch and bookcases and blanket chest that serves as our coffee table. But no—I want to be there when it dawns on him that I moved everything by myself. Twice.

I also ventured outside and sang while I hand-pulled and cut down weeds nearly twice my height in the garden. “Honey, I found the garlic"!” I shouted to no one under the unforgiving sun and kept going because there were onions in there somewhere. I’m not ready to talk about the potato bed, but I did harvest the garlic scapes and put a handful in my morning scrambled eggs with a generous toss of sharp white cheddar shreds. And one morning, when it was cool enough, I made granola and a batch of rich and indulgent keto brownies to go with a kick-ass white bean chicken chili (thanking my friend, Marilyn, for the recipe she gave me after we finished a lovely lunch in her shady three-season room). Of course I made too much but Patrick will eat well when he gets home. I also had my teeth cleaned and my hair cut (short enough to gel and spike it and see if I can get away with that look at the office), and showed great restraint on a visit to Costco.

So…about this lethargy and aimless scrolling. I may need to re-evaluate that assessment.

The pace at the office was a solid seven-week relentless and brutal gauntlet before I hit the pause button and sped away in my car to this perpetual 41-acre retreat where everything good and refreshing happens. Numbing screen time rarely makes the to-do list; I was surprised how I allowed it to ensnare me so quickly. I’m no better a human being for viewing all the swimming pool and construction worksite fails that unspool mercilessly without a shred of dignity given to the poor unfortunates who feature unfiltered in these video compilations. I hold fast to that split-second moment when my conscience spoke up and called me out, literally, offering the wiser choice and change of venue, from couch to deck chair and more nourishing views. That decision gives me hope and reassurance that I’m not lost to the world of the shallow and meaningless. I’m just a good soul with some time off wanting to improve my immediate surroundings and eat delicious food. That sort of agenda is bound to bring on a bit of fatigue (see also “exhaustion”, “weariness”, “burnout” and “drained”) when there’s a steady stream (see also “river”, “deluge”, “gully-wash” and “torrent”) of improvement projects demanding all of my energy and attention and a few trips to Lowe’s.

I will always come off a long vacation wishing I did more, didn’t sit around doing the unvirtuous “nothing”, regretting some of my choices. The saving grace is that on that first day back at the office, I’ll get to return to the place where this vacation happened, always and forever known as “home”, and it will still be as refreshing a retreat as if I didn’t need to go back to work at all. I’ve frozen most of the white bean chicken chili and I can always make another pan of those brownies. In the unscheduled and meeting-free days that remain, I will linger, savor and cherish without passing judgment on all that has been placed at my feet and in my hands to enjoy.

Even those 8 Sweet & Savory Tortilla Wrap Hacks.

A Reluctant and Wistful Solitude

It’s not even 9:30 in the morning yet, and I’m making quick work of some horseradish pickles I bought from The Crazy Cucumber stand at the market yesterday. Not a choice I’d make on a weekday before heading to work but guess what? I’m on vacation for the next twelve days and last I checked my driver’s license, I’m old enough to own such a decision and all of its consequences. The cats, in various yoga-like grooming poses on the living room floor, couldn’t care less.

With Patrick away at Sundance, I’m more than left to my own devices, from food choices to what time I go to bed. Save for a precisely three exceptions (the two times I went with him and last year’s pandemic lockdown, when nobody went), we’ve had this arrangement on or around the summer solstice for going on fifteen years—him on his way to South Dakota and me at home minding the feathered and furry children, plus a few modest home renovation projects up my sleeve (he only knew about one of them one year—the kitchen remodel. I was at the mercy of the contractors’ schedule and they arrived the day Patrick was leaving. It was hard to ignore the dining room table on its side in the living room and the bathroom unplugged empty fridge on slides heading in the same direction. He made his exit rather hastily that summer). This year is no different. I’m prepping to paint the living room floor, one half at a time, and hoping to put the rest of the garden in after a cool and wet spring delayed planting everything but the onions and potatoes. It’s honest and enjoyable work, but…it’s lonely. After this past year living in such close and constant proximity, there’s a hole in the house’s rhythm and ether that only he can fill. I hear the kitchen clock softly ticking the hours around its face, but otherwise, it’s a thick sort of quiet, the kind that can make your ears ring if you listen too long.

In my mid-twenties as a campus minister, I made the youth retreat circuit giving talks about the virtues and benefits of the single lifestyle. At the time, I was six years fully into it, living in a Tudor-style townhome with beautiful leaded crisscross lattice windows just north of the local university. I was a block away from the paved trail that ran parallel to the river and logged twenty-five miles most mornings on my bike. On Fridays I’d come home, shower and make bread in the tiny kitchen, eating buttered slices while they were still warm from the cutting board. I even enjoyed paying my bills, remembering the good advice Dad gave me, “Pay yourself first, then your creditors.” Visitors were welcome, of course, but I felt no need to add a Permanent Roommate to the lease; I relished my independence and protected it fiercely. I also tested my vocal range on Barbara Streisand’s Broadway music with no one to critique it, cleaned up after myself rather easily and managed with candles when the power went out. At the end of a busy and peopled workday, I came home to four walls and two floors that held a healing silence; I unfolded myself into it with deep gratitude.

Meeting Patrick quickly evaporated the content of my youth retreat talk subject matter, replacing it with the virtues and benefits of having a wholly compatible life partner. A kindred soul who shared and outstripped my love for cooking, fresh ears for new stories and ideas, a trusted companion who received my vulnerability with grace and kindness, and a cheering section like no other for my humble accomplishments because he also had a front row seat to the stumbles and scrapes it took to get me there. I have no regrets. But on these longer stretches without him nearby, the ghosts of my singlehood start whispering in my ear and I take to listening carefully, remembering how I came to enjoy my own company. It’s a valuable lesson that some folks I know wished they’d learned, instead of going from being their parents’ child to someone’s spouse without a pause in between for some helpful self-reckoning. One’s own identity is a road map with many pins, marking the moments where innocence intersected with insights. To know and appreciate the gift of your own tears with no one but you to wipe them away, or the experience of total contentment with all that you’ve placed consciously and deliberately in your life, from the wide two-slice toaster and the missionary-style yard sale-acquired living room furniture to the friendships that you nurture with love and curiosity…such hard-won and thoughtful milestones are the substantive dowry we bring to a healthy relationship whose sentences end with “forever” and “always”.

Of course I want Patrick to come back home. He is that and more to me. But there’s an inviting sort of reimagining of myself that the next twelve days offers. I’m guided by a loosely-ordered agenda that doesn’t bump into his (or those at work), and the freedom of that is both delicious and intimidating. I’m not alone but there are precious few human influences on even the simplest of choices I make. The weather will be a primary framework determining how I arrange my day’s activities, and I’m glad to be back in touch with her again around the clock. It means figuring things out by myself, thinking it through and moving forward, even in a direction that I know Patrick wouldn’t take (if he just read that sentence somewhere between here and Sundance grounds, I’m sure he’s a worried sort of curious). Late Friday afternoon, I was sitting on a new curb-gleaned wooden glider that we set up on the other side of the mulberry sapling circle, facing the meadow, and as I kept one bare foot on the grass, I mused that Patrick’s own feet had touched nothing but the gas and break pedals for the past six hours. No grand conclusion from that image, just the tender acknowledgement that he fills my mind and heart so effortlessly and in the simplest ways. I’m sure there will be others as this vacation unpacks itself. I’ll hear his voice in my ear as I’m painting the living room floor, weeding the garden, making a batch of brown rice (he insists my methodology is all wrong; I remind him I lived just fine on the food I prepared for myself before I met him. He counters with “just barely”, we smile and get about the rest of our married life).

Patrick left Friday morning and it’s only Sunday. I worked the farmer’s market for the first time yesterday without him, in the rain and wind, with my stalwart and cheerful niece Andi to help keep the bags dry and the canopy from flying off in the wind. I napped off and on when I got back home, strolled about the front yard plucking mulberries from the lower branches of the trees and listening to one of the neighbors firing their automatic rifle until well past sundown. I felt strong and independent, calm and capable. Still do. I’m slowly deconstructing the living room, emptying it of most everything but the big pieces. And while I can’t put a firm timeline on this, I expect the novelty of being on my own will begin to wane about halfway through painting the other side of the floor and after I’ve eaten my fifth veggie burger because they’re easy to fry up in the only skillet I’ll be using for a while. I’ll wonder what he’s doing, if he’s staying hydrated in the scorching South Dakota heat they’re expecting for all of ceremony, and start planning his welcome home dinner (no rice. He trusts me with spaghetti and meatballs, though), eager to hear the new stories he’s collected across the miles.

A warm breeze blows the white window sheer across the end table and it’s load of thriving houseplants. For the next twelve days, it’s jut me and forty-one acres of rediscovery, a reassuring pulse that carries everything I love to a heart that carries it gladly. I shall make the most and the best of this sweet and welcome gift until I hear the familiar sound of tires crunching in the driveway.

I can’t lose.

Decisions, Decisions

Where the old blue spruce once towered and lorded over the front yard, a stand of exactly thirty-two mulberry saplings have gathered, reverently circling the 7-foot section of pine stump that still lies in repose after we were forced to cut it down to keep its diseased and brittle self from blowing over onto the house. From the upstairs bedroom window where once I saw the long grey-green needles of a pine, there are shiny bright green leaves on slender branches dripping with berries. If Patrick weren’t cutting the acreage right now, I’d ask him to shake those branches while I lay on the ground in their shade with my mouth open.

But the grass needs cut before the rains come again this afternoon, before the next four days swallow him up in preparation to travel west for Sundance (the ceremony, not the film festival), leaving me to figure out a way eat mulberries warm and ripe from their lofty leafy perches with a minimum of effort. When I’m walking tomorrow morning at just-before-dawn, I’ll send my thanks across the fields and through the bedroom window where I know he’ll still be sleeping, grateful for his ability not to give into his bride’s every whim.

We begin and end our days in a swirling wave-pool of options, most of which we barely register as we move about our morning ablutions and nightly rituals. Of course I could consciously choose to leave the chickens locked up or not hang the laundry I tossed in the washer before I headed out the mudroom door this morning with my walking sticks held firmly in leather-gloved hands. But those choices would force others upon me later (reviving hungry and thirsty chickens fainting in this heat, musty-smelling shirts and shorts if left in a damp heap in the brown plastic laundry basket that fits nicely on my left hip), and I rather not clean up after my foolish self that way, so—laundry on the line and our sweet egg layers pecking the ground where I lovingly tossed their breakfast scoop of grain. If all goes smoothly until sundown, I’ll need only shoo them back into the coop and secure the door against the wily raccoons and that beautiful red fox I’ve seen sniffing around here lately. The gorgeous hot sun dried our bedsheets about seven minutes after I secured them with clothespins; it’ll be easy to gather them in before those gray clouds make good on their threat to drench us and make the grass clippings smell even sweeter. In fact, I think I’ll do that right now.

(Just stepping outside presented me with even more possibilities after taking down the laundry: use the newly-sharpened lopers to trim the burdock growing taller than the compost tumbler, and oh, look at that mulberry tree standing guard over the garlic. I’ll go back to the house to get a berry basket. Wait, there’s a web of bagworms on one of the branches, better cut that off and toss it waaaay out into the field. Now, where was I? Oh, right. Weeds under the compost tumbler and topping off the berry basket with another handful. Yep, you can eat the tiny green stems. Wait—wasn’t I writing something half an hour ago?).

Back inside, in the cool of the air-conditioned living room (window unit purchased from Sears for darn near nothing about nine years ago), I can hear the rumble of the lawnmower fading and I imagine Patrick heading through the meadow to the paths by the woods. Just steps away from the couch, in the downstairs guestroom/studio, my worktable is active with all the raw materials and supplies I need to make about forty blank hand-stitched journals. I prepped the covers until it got too stuffy in there to work and the sweat was rolling down my back. I could take a shower but it’s mid-day, on the weekend. I don’t have to be anywhere, so a spoonful of almond butter and a fresh glass of water is the better choice.

See what I mean? I realize I’m presenting as someone with more than a slight touch of attention deficit, but I’d challenge anyone to live here and not be pulled in all seven directions plus a few more, to tend to the unfinished business that is our land-based existence. Ain’t no medication that can calm that energy down and I wouldn’t want to take it anyway. I need every ounce I can get just to keep the weeds from creeping across the threshold to claim us as we slumber. When we signed the paperwork at the closing all those years ago, we had no idea what we were in for as the birthdays celebrated here pushed us toward sixty. For a flutter of a moment, I wonder if such clarity would have given us pause to reconsider. As I look at the two pints of mulberries on the counter, rich and juicy and waiting for the yogurt and maple syrup that will join them for breakfast tomorrow, the answer is a solid “no”.

We are humbled to our knees and excitedly brought to our feet in equal measure by the choices stretched out before us each day, each minute here. And mixed in there somewhere is a handful of anticipatory regret that we’ll be buried before we can get it all done. We know we’re going to leave a legacy that includes some pretty nice antique furniture and about seventeen acres of brambles that need to be tamed. But hopefully by then, the sycamores taking over the fields will throw off enough shade to keep the thorny population in check. We’ll maintain the paths as long as we can so future walkers can breathe in those first dewy hours of a new spring day like we do, and watch their breaths turn to frost in our lovely and wild winters.

Until then, it’s the options right in front of us that need our attention and so they shall have it. I’ll sew together a few signatures to fill the journal covers waiting patiently on the work table, and sweep the grass cuttings from the front porch before tucking in the girls and gathering the day’s eggs. Roasted rather than boiled potatoes sound a fine accompaniment to tonight’s chicken pot pie.

Patrick just came in and asked if I’d like to go out for ice cream later, a reward for all of our hard work this weekend.

I guess the journals will have to wait.

The Selfless

Just took a batch of Thai granola from the oven, its warm red curry breath filling the kitchen with an unexpectedly pleasing aroma. We’re branching out in the business, stretching just enough to put a toe into flavor palettes that teeter on the line of sweet and savory. With touches of olive oil, coconut and just enough maple syrup to offset the sriracha tones, I think we may have a new hit on our hands.

I should write for the Wine Spectator, yes? If only I knew as much about wine as I think I do about granola. I’ll keep my day job for now.

Speaking of which, I’m looking down the barrel of a tightly scheduled week and feeling rather up to the challenge of keeping all the plates spinning atop their wobbly sticks. Back-to-back meetings and appointments in a healthcare setting don’t allow for the unexpected crisis for which everything else must be set aside. As planful as I try to be (and humbly, succeed most of the time), there’s no wiggle room in the coming five days; even lunch will be at my desk or on the fly and I’ll be pulling into our long driveway past dinnertime at least two nights this week. We’ll see how ragged my self-care practice looks by Wednesday.

But when I take a closer look at the details of those meetings, I back away from the edge of anticipatory calendar frenzy and consider the nature of my work. For nearly all of my forty-plus hours this week, I’ll be meeting with people who want to do something for someone other than themselves, hearing their stories that answer the question “What draws you to want to work in a hospice setting with people who are both living and dying?” We’ve had a flood of applicants these past couple of months, most of them pre-med students from a couple of area universities with whom we have built strong partnerships. It’s hard not to listen to their fresh and eager explanations about why this kind of volunteer work means so much to them without wondering if one of them will be taking care of me in my dotage, delivering my diagnosis or outlining my final treatment plan. Their sincerity is almost too much to witness against a backdrop of headlines that would try to convince us that nothing good is happening in the world. I have strong evidence to the contrary as I look into the eyes of healthcare’s future guardians.

I did some math and can claim thirty-nine years in the field of volunteer resources management thus far (twelve of those in hospice), which adds up to thousands of interviews, thousands of connections between those who need and those who have. I stand in the middle, directing the traffic of selflessness toward the steady flow of humanity humbled by circumstance, a few miscalculated choices or just rotten luck. My colleagues and I in a hospice setting get to see people at their best alongside those at their worst and the gift of transformation that only volunteer service can set in motion. It’s my job and my joy to responsibly bring them through the halls of onboarding requirements and then quickly get out of their way, watching them tend to the final touches of a life well-lived, a bucket list not quite finished and the hard but necessary work of goodbyes. For no pay, these teammates of ours enter the rooms of regret and wistfulness, celebration and relief with equal respect and their undivided attention. In the end, that’s really the best gift anyone can give.

And it doesn’t stop at the bedside. They make gowns and neck pillows, sell hot dogs to patrons at our golf outing, snapping their foursome photos to hang on the company’s philanthropy wall back at the corporate office. They draft sympathy cards for clinical team members to sign and send to family members, and look at far too many spreadsheets to make sure the data they entered into them are correct. They fold letters into thirds and slide them into envelopes addressed to aunts and friends and coworkers who made a donation in memory of a loved one. They sit in a circle with 6-year-olds at a weeklong grief camp helping them glue photos of their grandmothers or siblings or parents to a cardstock cutout angel and send kites with handwritten messages of love soaring to the skies. They submit their timesheets with grace and gratitude for the chance to serve, to ease a burden and lift a heart.

I’ve encountered quite a wide and colorful swath of human nature these past four decades and there are no signs of it slowing down. Respect and a solid code of ethics will continue to keep the specifics carefully wrapped in confidentiality but rest assured, there are far more good souls doing good works than those seeking to sabotage the whole enterprise. I see them every day, the light in their determined eyes and the callouses on their unflinchingly gentle hands. Not afraid of hard work, they are comfortable in the awkward silence of questions that have no answers; they offer up smiles that will convince you hospitality is not a lost art but alive and well on the 12-bed unit where a wife squeezes her husband’s hand for the last time, bringing fifty-nine years of marriage to a close. They sit with her in the visitors’ lounge while the aides bathe his body and comb his hair. On their shoulders and in their hands, the future of healthcare is secure.

I’ll be tired by Friday. But if I’m given all the days in between this writing and then, it will be a rich and rewarded kind of tired.

It’s just the company I keep.