Category: Family

Disappointments and Silver Linings

Each year in the late summer, early fall, I attend a fiber retreat. One of the ladies I met at the one I had attended for several years decided to organize one that some of her fiber friends nearer to their home might attend and I started going to that one. The first one I attended was at Roan Mountain, TN and went there for several years. Last year the event moved to a better overall venue at Black Mountain, NC. This event is a highlight of my year, usually the first event of the season at which I also vend in addition to being a participant. I had decided that this would probably be the swan song of me vending at events. This year the event was going to return to Black Mountain and was moved a bit earlier to try to avoid some of the school and church groups that attend events at the same facility. That meant that I would have left home yesterday for the event, yesterday was hubby’s birthday. He was okay with that. The plan was for me to make his favorite meal, a homemade Mexican feast the evening before, kiss him goodbye around lunchtime yesterday and head southwest for the weekend. Like so many other events, this one was wisely cancelled. It was a disappointment, but it meant I would be home for hubby’s birthday.

Because of very limited being in public, I didn’t get him a card, but I had ordered a new T shirt on the internet and it came in time to hide away until yesterday morning. We went and got carry out lunch at his favorite burger place and the Mexican feast was prepared last night instead. We are at an age where the years are ripping by and are pretty indifferent to celebrating, but it was nice that he got messages from all three kids and several grandkids yesterday in the form of texts and calls.

The repairs are completed on the Big Bad Harley, but it is too rainy today to drive to the city and have him ride it home. But since I’m not away after all, we can drive over tomorrow.

To each disappointment there is a silver lining. I am grateful we have each other and have stayed healthy so far.

Keeping Busy

As event after event have been cancelled for this year, I must keep busy.

All of the fiber festivals have been cancelled, some are trying virtual; the Agricultural Fair in our Village, the huge street fair in Blacksburg, the retreat that I love to attend, the trips to visit our kids and to the vacation spot of my youth, have all had to not be held this year for the health and safety of the proprietors, vendors, and the participants.

Added to this, the weather has not be typical. I am generally not mowing grass this time of year, or only doing so rarely, but it has rained and rained some more and in a week’s time the grass gets so tall and so thick that the riding mower has trouble getting through it. Last evening, after a dry day, the front and part of the east side yard were mowed and it was as tall as if I hadn’t mowed just a week ago. I will try to finish today once the dew and fog burn off. The rain has made this a cucumber, pepper, and basil year, but the tomatoes are not doing very well. My single leader up a tall pole idea was good, but they are too close together, shading each other and being shaded by the asparagus ferny tops. We will get enough for pizza sauce, maybe one more big pot of tomato sauce, but not the quantity of years past. The refrigerator and shelves are full of pickles. Two more baskets of basil are drying, one already dry and jarred for winter.

The oregano was pruned and put in a basket to dry and the plant moved from the half barrel to the herb bed in the new walled garden while the soil was still damp.

Enough tomatillos were picked today to give me the quantity needed to make a batch of simmer sauce and since about a half dozen more jalapenos were clipped, it will be the spicy version. That will be made later today as dinner prep is easy tonight.

The summer reading has been mostly Appalachian fiction, some of it historical fiction, and a book recommended on the spindle group in a conversation.

When not cooking, gardening, or reading, I continue to spin on the Jenkins Turkish spindles. I find the process soothing and calming and can spin anywhere; in my stressless chair, on a porch, in the car, in the kitchen while waiting for the next step in the cooking process.

I guess I will have to find a use for all the yarn I have created since I won’t have Holiday markets to vend in this year. Many of the yarns are in my Etsy shop, but it isn’t seeing much activity during this time either.

At times I stay busy, at times I get low and cry over the losses, especially not being able to visit with our children and grandchildren. We are ever so grateful to Son 2 and his family for reaching out and making a stop near enough for us to meet our youngest grandson, even though it was masked and socially distanced. I know we aren’t alone in this, but that doesn’t make it any easier to accept.

Rememberances

Today would have been my Dad’s 97th birthday. A man who believed our world could address peace, he would be horrified at our current world state. As a young cadet at the University that is now Virginia Tech, a cadet by requirement then, he was called from school with his classmates to serve in Europe in WWII. Upon his return to college after the war, as a veteran, not having to be in the Cadet Corp, he met and married my Mom, lived on campus in an Airstream trailer park set up for returning vets who married. It was there that I came into their lives a month before he was to graduate. Class of 1943, actual graduation date, December 1947.

As an adolescent, my family joined my uncle and his family at an Conference Center in the mountains off the Shenandoah Valley and it started an annual pilgrimage to Shrine Mont until the year he passed from our lives at the age of 92. That trip often fell on the week of his birthday or the week following as it was always the first full week of August. Many birthday parties were held there with family and friends that gathered for a week each year. The August after his death, we as a family gathered again, toasted his life and the lives of the other’s from his generation that had gathered with us, all gone by then and we left his ashes in those mountains that he loved to hike.

The remaining children of that generation, when possible, continued the tradition and our children joining us at times. Baptisms, weddings, and memorials have been held in the outdoor stone chapel.

Not this year. The facility is operating on a limited scale, using only cottages with kitchens, families who can’t travel or visit for fear of passing or catching the pandemic virus are not able to join together this year. The 8 bedroom log cottage we shared not used because it doesn’t have a kitchen.

He stood proudly on those steps with his children, children in law, grandchildren, grandchildren in law, nieces and nephews. The last patriarch of that crew. We are much older now, but that is the last group photo I have from there and try as I might, I can’t place the year, maybe his 80th birthday so 17 years ago. A few of those people are gone, a lot more added. My stepmom is the Matriarch by marriage, I guess I am by birth, now only 7 years younger than he was in that picture.

I miss his wisdom, his wit, his corny jokes, his gentle, loving spirit. May he live on in all who loved him and all he loved.