A Place to Get Mail

I remember that late July morning, back in the days when my daily walk would take me down the quarter mile driveway, past our “up front” neighbor Sherry’s place with all her interesting and exotic chickens and a quail or two and out into the then-gravel two lane road (now asphalt, with yellow lines, even!). Once in a while, Sherry’s rooster would take a swipe at me, flying low with his spurs in the attack position and I’d use my walking stick to (gently, I assure you) send him on his way. It livened things up in those first few minutes of the walk when you’re trying to get your heart rate elevated, and I suspect the rooster thought it great fun to watch me continue down the slope of the driveway, head bowed and looking humble (I humored him). Character-building for both of us and a reminder that I really didn’t live in the suburbs anymore.

It was a Sunday, that summer morning in July, pleasantly cool and just before sunrise when the woods and sky are still deciding whether to give up their secrets. I was keeping an eye out for the kingfisher who usually perched on the electric wires that stretched across the creek when I noticed our mailbox, wooden post and all, smoldering in the grass on the other side of the road. Pulled clean out if the ground and set aflame by Someone in the wee and mischievous hours of the night, probably on a dare or part of some rural rite of passage for being the new kid in school. As I examined the remains of our mail, scattered and burnt on the edges (no great loss, truly. Just postcards from local logging companies promising to make us rich if we’d let them harvest the straightest of our lovely grooved-bark black walnuts. A hard “no” on our side of the offer), I pushed at the charred and still smoking post with my toe, turning it over in the dewy thick grass. This prank was no small feat and probably took more than a few minutes, with the perpetrators no doubt keeping one eye on the darkened windows of our street-side neighbors whose homes were in full view of the road’s traffic and activity. Would anyone hear the grunting and giggling group as they wrestled a 4x4x6 post from the ground? We older folks all slept through it, apparently, adding another task on Patrick’s to-do list that week.

A couple of years before this episode, we experienced our first snowplow vs. mailbox meet-up, glad for the clear path to our daily commute but wishing the driver had steered about six inches to his left, sparing our only connection to creditors and relatives sending birthday wishes from afar. We showed up at the local post office in Homer next morning to rent a safer place to receive our mail and as the postmistress handed over the keys, we felt as if we’d settled one more inch into our rural life. I didn’t know anyone in the suburbs or city who had a post office box and if any letter had such an address in the upper lefthand corner of the envelope, I would have thought it suspect. I had a locked mailbox on campus in college at the student center where we also took our meals and danced at the fall homecoming event, but that was different somehow. The cashier at the bookstore doubled as postmistress, commenting warmly how much our parents must miss us, to send us such regular missives and packages. But real people, grown-up people, the ones who paid bills and had mortgages also had metal repositories nailed to the clapboard of their homes or drilled into the mortar between the bricks. A PO box was a symbol of being untethered, unfettered and not quite belonging to any community.

Fortunately, the Homer postmistress, Ruth, who discharged her duties at that small office just a mile up the road from us, was friendly and welcoming, giving us bits of background about our new rural neighborhood each time we stopped by to drop off or pick up. Before long, we were sharing more than just bits about our own lives and exchanging views on current events and local happenings. One summer, I asked her to help me sew a jacket from scratch and I remember how she talked me through each step instead of doing it for me. I respected that. And I still have the jacket.

So here we are, eighteen years into sending and receiving our mail at an office I could walk to (it’s that close if I’m up for it), and we come to find out that this sweet little hub of local news and communication commerce is marked for closure by the Powers That Be in a couple of weeks. I’ve rented a new box at the slightly larger post office serving the small town four miles east of us, filled out the requisite forwarding order postcard and now it’s dawning on both of us just how many folks we’ll need to notify of our new address. Banks, healthcare providers, magazine subscriptions, Amazon delivery… Smart, then, that the USPS thought this through before we did, making the forwarding order on any mail good for a year unless otherwise noted by the requestor. It’ll take me that long to remember who all we get mail from and how to track them down. Since the current office in Homer is still open, this change doesn’t feel real. We’ve started to receive mail at the new location but it feels temporary and a little reckless, like a sleepover at a new friend’s house. I wonder if I’ll stop by the old one after work one day with my keys in hand and reach for the door, finding it locked and then remembering our letters don’t live there anymore.

I’m sure we’ll get used to the new place over time. Everyone is as kind as can be and our creditors will find us (of that we are certain). We may even get a few birthday cards. But Ruth has long since retired and I don’t know if anyone at the new office knows how to sew.

I guess I could ask.

Abandoning Normal

I took a nap yesterday.

It was a rich, spontaneous and indulgent nap, the late afternoon sun filling the sky with its yellow streamers that slid effortlessly in through the windows. I closed the curtains in the master bedroom, snuggled in next to Patrick and forgot my name for the better part of two hours.

We’re back at the market on Saturdays now, after taking the month of January off (a decision made by the market managers due to some indoor location issues that have now been resolved. A long story I can mention when we meet for coffee sometime). The winter market’s hours are shortened by one on the opening bell side of the schedule, giving vendors the chance to sleep in a bit longer or perhaps pack up product and equipment in the morning rather than in a fatigued Friday night after-work scramble. We take full advantage, leaving the house at 7:00a.m. hauling a more modest inventory and set-up load. Summer hours will come soon enough with an earlier departure time of 6:00a.m., and we don’t grumble about that at all. Year-round, our customers are generous, enthusiastic and eager to see what’s “on the table” as we say in our ads. In case you’re curious, we’re currently testing a new flavor we hope to roll out in June: Raspberry Lemonade. No extract, just pure, fresh lemon zest and juice paired with tart freeze-dried raspberries wrapped around a proprietary blend of oats and other stuff that’s good for you. In the trial runs, folks describe it as almost sippable.

But back to that nap, which Patrick and I chose after discussing other ways to spend our time (making art, cleaning out the upstairs guestroom, laundry. None of those was really a contender). Yesterday’s sharp and gusty winds were busy rearranging the landscape, making the loading and unloading of totes, folding tables, signage and Patrick’s little green wooden stool more physical than it would have been. Heads bowed and hands gloved, we set to it, thankful for the hand truck that holds everything in a tottering but manageable stack as we roll it across the parking lot asphalt and a couple of doorway thresholds into the mall where we all spread out our wares. Since I can’t squeeze in a morning walk on market days, I count this as a workout. Add another four hours of standing to that, plus tear-down and packing up, and you’ve got a hefty fitness routine to rival any of those fancy gym machines that take you nowhere. It’s a wonder we don’t nap every Saturday.

Market Saturday mornings have been woven into our schedules, either summer or winter or both, for going on six years now, with a strange and bumpy interruption during the initial months of pandemic lockdown. In those early days, we’d transport a few orders to the drive-through market set up, not even getting out of our car but handing over the bags to good-natured and hardy market volunteers, who stood in the cold or the rain to close the deal for our customers and everyone else’s. Scaled back, at times meager but always determined, this arrangement worked and eventually evolved into a newly shaped enterprise with all the usual safety protocols in place: masks required, vendors and customers six feet apart, bottles of hand sanitizer on every table. It became the new market Normal and we simply adjusted the straps on our previous expectations. Just like we did with air travel security after the 9/11 attacks. Or the walking paths along the banks of the creek after the first Great Flood we experienced on the land here. Sometimes, even waking up remembering I got a haircut the day before is a change I get to manage, if only because I use less shampoo and cut my time with the blow dryer by two minutes getting ready for work. Since change is the only reliable constant in our existence, from barely noticeable to life-disrupting, aren’t we required to embrace a new “normal” every day?

I do realize the scale of this latest shared pandemic event is different, the impact scarring and indelible for too many in its path. We’re all experimenting with what works to get us through a rough day, to not feel guilty about laughing or detaching ourselves if only for the afternoon. When tomorrow arrives, it will show us new strategies for coping, give us a new problem more tangled than the one we struggled with yesterday, and we’ll dig a little deeper in our toolkits until our hands grasp what we need. It will work or it won’t, and we’ll try something else. The wheel keeps turning.

I’ve decided to give up chasing normal (I thank my friend Rita for giving me that phrase, only she used the word “happy” instead of “normal”. An idea worth exploring, perhaps in a future reflection). I’m putting my heart and what little money I might have on a dogged pursuit of the familiar. It feels like less pressure on my psyche, to look for and find what’s friendly in a given moment, no matter how small or humble, rather than ache through the longing for what used to be however many weeks or years ago that won’t be coming back. I don’t fool myself, imagining a day when we toss our facemasks into the air like giddy college graduates, step into a world where the air we inhale is no longer tainted with COVID droplets and we run toward each other for a solid, full-body embrace. Just being at the winter market indoor location with others is a leap for me, and thanks to that winter storm a couple of weeks ago, the one that thinned out the crowds we usually have on a market day, I felt eased rather than plunged into our return. The smooth cold folding tables felt familiar in my hands as I popped the legs into place, unfurled the tablecloth and unpacked the mason jars filled with samples. Our first customers that day greeted us with cheer and gratitude for braving the elements to help them restock their pantries with Tropical, Maple Pecan and one of our new flavors, Lemon Blueberry Tahini. Their graciousness…more of that “familiar” I’m looking for. And finding.

I’m making note of the familiar that I’ve been carrying around since naps were mandatory for me: steaming oatmeal with apples and cinnamon, a body that does what I ask it to most days, having a soft throw draped over the back of the couch for when it gets chilly, forgiveness, integrity, meditative pauses, creativity, granola and the warmth of Patrick’s hand. In the face of the unexpected, the strange and the unsettling, any of these will take the edge off just for a moment.

I’m living for those moments.

A nap now and then doesn’t hurt either.

Slow Melt

Last Friday’s morning walk was more of a skate over the four inches of ice-crusted snow that remained from the Big Storm a couple weeks ago. My boots barely left a imprint, despite the spiked cleats I’d strapped over the soles to give me some traction insurance against a trip to the ER (for all my maternal Dutch heritage, Hans Brinker I ain’t). I was temporarily taller, walking across this mini tundra, and it was unsettling to come upon familiar trees along the path, their smaller branches now at perfect eye-poking height (especially a sweet little apple tree at the northern mouth of the meadow. I greet her each time I pass by, patting her trunk and whispering words of encouragement). I minded my head and honed my ducking skills as the walk unfolded into an amateur remake of The Matrix. I arrived back at the house intact and fall-free, not a bruise anywhere. A helpful ending to a packed week.

Vacation was simply lovely, my first long one since last June. Oh, I’d take the odd Friday off here and there, but nothing like this stretch of eight workdays with a couple of weekends in between. I was the embodiment of unbridled enthusiasm. Save for a brief bout of Sunday night wistfulness and anticipatory land-and-home separation anxiety, I remained in an emotionally steady place of even-tempered gratefulness as Monday’s morning routine crept closer. Not everyone has a job to go back to, much less one with meaning, purpose and hilarious teammates. I landed in a re-accreditation survey my second day back in the office (Joint Commission, for those of you who know this level of scrutiny) with a review of my department’s operations that afternoon. We passed with flying colors and praise for our success in retaining the majority of our volunteer workforce during the pandemic, and the organization received a preliminary overall rating of 96%.

It was a quiet victory though. In the span of two weeks (while I was on vacation), two of our beloved and veteran volunteers passed away somewhat suddenly, leaving distinct and gaping holes in the tapestry of our team. It was—and still is—surreal to return to the office and see the pile of mail Zane would have couriered to our nearby inpatient unit…the volunteer workroom schedule with Fran’s name on the block of time she filled every other week. Slogging through emails, double-checking our Joint Commission binder for evidence of compliance, handling the daily stream of new volunteer applicants…all distractions for a time until a moment of silence would catch one of us sitting down, just staring unfocused but unable to look away from the empty place at the table. When you’re gone from the workplace for that stretch of time, you expect a few things to be different, but it’s hard to say goodbye to someone when the ground is frozen and you weren’t prepared for the farewell. When did I see Zane last? What did Fran and I talk about the last time I saw her? For both of them, I have the comforting reassurance that laughter was involved. I shall hold onto that.

Since that Big Storm dumped over six inches on our chilly corner of central Ohio, temperatures have swung between melting and freezing, leaving our driveway a splendidly treacherous ice rink that’s shrinking daily in barely noticeable increments. Main roads are clear, thank heavens, but stories of impassable sidewalks and driveways continue to pepper our between-meetings conversations at work. I think grief is like that sometimes. We move between extremes in a context of contrasts, searching for that leveled-off place that appears now and then. There’s still work to do, relationships to nurture and walks to take; we navigate the terrain as best we can, relying on our shared memories to provide some much-needed traction as our feet traverse the icy patches. Tumble we will, and perhaps even sprain something, but we’ll get back up and point our hearts toward the next season on deck. Fran and Zane did that, in the small slice of their lives I was privileged to share.

When I make the bed in the morning’s darkness after Patrick has left the house, I watch out the upstairs window to see that he crosses the bridge without sliding off into the half-frozen waters below, and I keep watching as he navigates the hill before his taillights disappear into the rest of his commute.

Somewhere, in the meadow, is a tree, dreaming of summer’s apples.

A Fool in Winter

Ice is falling from the sky, little shards and pellets of car-glazing misery that I’ll have to contend with eventually. Much as we love the unobstructed view from the porch as it gently rolls to a stop at the entrance to the old old goat barn, I’d be willing to give that up right now to see the hulking side of a well-constructed garage.

Off work all last week and no plans to head down the driveway to anywhere (‘cept the post office to mail copies of the new book to kind readers), news of the approaching historic winter storm landed with a soft flummmp even as I imagined the work of clearing windshields with naught but a 6” scraper and my own determined elbow grease (the viscosity of which would no doubt be thickened by the predicted -10 windchill). Just knowing I wouldn’t be making the daily commute to work kept my already steady blood pressure at soothingly normal levels. We filled some gallon jugs with water for flushing the toilet in case the power went out, checked the fuel in the kerosene heater and finished up two loads of laundry. I even made a couple batches of granola for Saturday’s indoor market so we wouldn’t be caught short on the new cranberry orange pecan flavor making its debut. I was the poster child for disaster preparedness.

I’m also a hopeless romantic when it comes to seeing the trees dressed in a thin coat of sheer crystal, their branches clacking softly against each other as the wind pushes through them. If we really do get the seven inches of snow they’re forecasting after the sleet has had its say (sometime between late Thursday afternoon and Friday evening), I’ll be a happy soul, lost in the white drifts that will most likely seal the backdoor shut until April. I don’t mind walking the extra steps around the house to empty the kitchen compost buckets. With the birdfeeders on the way, I can linger outside refilling them and watch from the front deck as the sparrows and mourning doves jockey for position on the one that looks like a vintage porch swing.

So mid-morning on Thursday, with ice falling from the skies, I suited up in enough layers to keep me warm yet still allow me to move my arms, grasped the foam-covered handle of that humble 6” scraping tool and got to work on the truck and the smaller Hyundai Kona. With the heaters going full blast in each of them, I was able to clear the side windows and windshields in less than twenty minutes. I felt purposeful and sturdy while jackhammering my arms and wrists against the stubborn accumulation of ice (I’d be regretting that in the morning, I can tell you. Raise a glass to Advil) but filled with the satisfaction that I was making Friday’s snow-brushing chore that much easier.

Too bad the sleet didn’t have the same timeline or agenda.

Within three hours, both vehicles were encrusted again, and my muscles made it clear there would be no round two against the elements. I consoled myself that at least the new layer of ice wouldn’t be as thick as it could have been. Plus, the birds were happy and the compost buckets empty. Hey—a win is a win.

Against a backdrop of greys and browns standing patiently in the thickness of white at their feet, I surrendered to the power of a winter storm, accepted defeat most graciously and headed inside where Patrick (also off work thanks to his employer’s good judgment) had set up one of the folding market tables in the living room. On the warmer side of winter’s stunning snow-covered vistas, we put our hands to art, making beads from thin strips of magazine pages, rolling some of them in paint and setting them to dry on toothpicks stuck into a block of styrofoam as white as the snow on the front porch.