In Praise of Porches

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I am alone, sitting on my screened-in porch perched high above a valley full of horses. I am bundled up to a fare-thee-well against the too-chilly 45-degree weather and there is a soft, chilly rain. But I am not deterred. I have my supplies: my heating pad, a faux fur blanket wrapped around me and tucked in around my legs, a steaming cup of coffee, a bergamot-scented candle burning by my side, a journal, and a good pen. I am trying to squeeze in just a few more days of bearable weather in my favorite spot, overlooking the foothills of the ancient Appalachian mountains in the distance. 

Ah, the screened porch. I am outside, but covered, not bothered by any flying insects. I am inside, but with fresh air, beautiful views, and secluded privacy. I cherish this porch.

When we were planning this house, I entertained having a wrap-around country porch because I often admire big old houses with wide open front porches. An open front porch is like a wide-open smile, a welcoming beacon, an invitation to stop, come up, have a visit. But the more I thought about it, I decided that while we’d have an open deck, I still needed a screened porch because it emits a different kind of energy: it’s private, a refuge, a sanctuary. A screened porch is like a smile with the eyes, the smile a secret garden might give. It, too, is welcoming – I have welcomed many to mine over the years. But unlike an open-air porch, a screened porch is an ensconcement, an enclave. In planning this house, I took inspiration from the book, The Not So Big House, by architect Sarah Susanka, who extols the benefits of having a screened porch room. Having an away spot, removed from the daily shuffle of a busy home, she says, is a thing to treasure. The fact that it is only available for some of the year in northern climes makes it all the more special.

Our previous family home had a lovely backyard screened porch, a step down outside of the family room, nestled behind some bushes. In the twenty-five years we lived there, I took refuge there many times. When my youngest daughter was a newborn, she and I would lie on the couch out there and I would breastfeed her, listening to the sounds of the mourning doves coo-cooing at sunrise and the crickets coming alive every evening. Over the years, I would escape out there to take phone calls away from the busy thrumming of activity inside the house walls. During the pandemic of 2020 we hosted out-of-town cousins from Chicago there, all bundled against the winter cold as we huddled, sitting on chilly cast iron furniture around a too-small space heater that emitted a tiny halo of heat that none of us could really feel. But we were all warmed by the presence of each other, tucked in out there, together.

The screened porch is the ultimate compromise. They're outside, but safely covered from the elements. They’re inside, but free, unencumbered by the formality of a living room. And just like our outdoor shower makes the mundane task of cleaning oneself a joyful, somewhat naughty endeavor, the screened porch makes everyday tasks like reading, working, or journaling way more fun, special, and relaxing.

When we finally did build that screened porch onto our farmhouse, it was really an homage to my mother, who had died only about eight months before. Growing up, my father’s happy place was his brick patio in the backyard, surrounded by begonias, petunias, and family. But my mom was never fully happy out there. Every stinging or biting insect of the season would be drawn to her sweet, pale, Irish skin and feast on her. She would spend most cocktail hours swatting and swearing at the bugs that only she could feel and no one could see. She looked like a crazed airport traffic controller on a tarmac, waving and flapping her arms every which way, fighting them off. She would flee to the safety of the indoors, weepy with indignation, feeling persecuted, sure that my father could be doing something to help her.

One year, he finally did just that, after Mother Nature sent the Blizzard of 1978 upon northeast Ohio. An enormous elm tree fell on the house during that storm, sending a huge branch through the roof of the family room. In repairing the damage, my mother saw an opportunity; there was an unused cement patio outside the sliding doors, near the damaged roof, a perfect spot upon which to build a screened porch. Taking advantage of contractors in the house anyways, she set to work designing the porch of her dreams. It had to be large enough to accommodate a good-sized crowd, but still be cozy. It would have a view of my dad’s shady, manicured yard, but the entrance would be from the family room, with no door to the backyard from the porch. That way, the adults could observe the grandchildren, but it would be difficult for the kids to enter from the yard and get in our way (free range parenting at its finest). There would be no zooming through her quiet refuge. And there would be no screen door to slam, a sound that she could not bear. (For a woman who lived her life in the center of constant chaos, that sound simply unglued her).

She got her porch right around Mother’s Day that year and it quickly became a popular space for seasonal visiting. Often, I would find my mom out there when I would come home from school. She would be on a glider with the late afternoon sunshine streaming in from the side, a baby grandchild blissfully tucked in between her pillowy arms and generous bosom. They would rock back and forth, like a middle-aged Madonna with child. And nary a bug was around to disrupt her reverie. I would drop my backpack, grab some Fig Newton cookies, and pour a cup of tea to join her. Finally, she had her happy place.

Thinking of my mom and her porch now, I see that it has stopped raining outside and the sun is shining on the autumn leaves, giving them a fresh radiance. My mom would love this porch, for its views of the valley, and horses (she adored the strength and grace of horses). It is elevated, right next to an enormous poplar tree, making it feel like a tree house or a sky box. I think of her every time I set myself up in my corner out here, my happy place. 

Porch days are dwindling, in spite of blankets, heating pads, and hot coffee. But I will eke out as much time as I can, as I seek the sanctuary out here, removing myself from the news feeds and political mayhem beyond these screens. In this time of division, it is nice to sit in a place of perfect compromise: it is not all of anything, all inside or all outside. And yet, it pleases all.

Farrier Day and Ancestral Musings

I am walking through our farm and come upon a visitor in one of our barns: the farrier. A farrier is essentially a blacksmith who specializes in customizing shoes for horses, as well as caring for and grooming their hooves. He’s kind of a blacksmith with beauty school training. Farrier day is a big day at Winterwood Farm; the horses get their hooves trimmed, buffed and polished and perhaps shoed or un-shoed. Watching the farrier at work (from a safe distance) is a humbling example of me marveling at yet another thing about which I didn’t know much. This attentive gentleman, clad in a dark t-shirt, jeans with leather chaps to protect his legs, and solid, worn-in work boots, works his trade with strong, muscular arms. Normally frisky horses stand quiet and mostly compliant for him, resisting their urge to be antsy and run away. They settle in to enjoy a few moments of pampering under the capable, steady hand of the farrier.

I watch him toil away, blithely whittling at the hoof in his hand, busily shaving off the excess with precision. He is as meticulous and efficient as a mechanic, an artist, or a carpenter. Observing him, it occurs to me that my mom’s father was a blacksmith. I don’t remember him, as I was only three when he passed. But my mother always claimed that she had her father’s hands, “peasant hands,” because they were broad and strong like his. My mother built a life with those hands, changed thousands of diapers, nursed nine babies, set tables, and washed and folded more clothes and bedding than a hotel laundry room. Her broad, strong father, Johnny Colleran, made a life from his hands, too, built a family, tried to make his way as the son of Irish immigrants. They say he was “black Irish” with his shock of dark hair and dark brown eyes. He wasn’t a tall man, reportedly swarthy, short and stocky. 

I begin musing. Where did Johnny do this blacksmithing? Surely in a dark alley somewhere, hot and sweaty. He was reportedly a restless, creative soul, so he was probably making connections, networking, looking for a way up and out of those hot, arduous conditions. I think of him, toiling away in frustration of the then-prejudice against the Irish immigrants, who “need not apply” for the meager jobs that were available in those stark days.

As the family story goes, Johnny used his skills to forge the first ever bumper for the newfangled invention, the automobile. Perhaps he saw horseless carriages puttering down the streets of Cleveland and saw one ram into another. Perhaps both were damaged and he thought, “well that could be prevented,” and went back to his blacksmith shop to work on a solution.

Family lore says his invention was stolen from his locker at work and whoever stole it went on to make lots of money on his idea. Was this story true? Did Johnny Colleran really toil away with those sizeable mitts, banging on metal for weeks or months and actually invent the first bumper? Who knows …

The way I hear it, Johnny was full of stories, like the time as a young man he was working as a longshoreman on The Great Lakes. When the ship came to port in Cleveland, he was nowhere to be found, so everyone assumed he was swept away in the storm that kicked up while they were on the water. All his friends and family were bereft at his passing, stricken with grief as they had a proper Irish wake and funeral for poor Johnny, tragically lost out on the water. But it turned out he wasn’t lost at all; he had just fallen asleep down in the bowels of the boat and, upon waking and seeing the crew had left, went on his merry way. He said that he was as startled as everyone else when he happened upon his own funeral. This story sounds suspiciously like Mark Twain’s story of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn’s disappearance and subsequent attendance of their own funerals. But you know what they say: “Don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story.” 

One story that has never been fully explained to me is why and when Johnny Colleran changed his name to Johnny Collins. Was it an homage to Michael Collins, the Irish revolutionary hero? Some say he was running for a union office and that Johnny Collins was just easier to remember. Maybe. Or perhaps he just wanted to glow up his image, but changing “Colleran” to “Collins” certainly didn’t do a good job camouflaging his Irish identity.

Johnny also played the fiddle. That story says that he met and wooed his wife, an Irish immigrant named Catherine Joan O’Malley, playing that fiddle with his meat hook hands. “Kitty” was whisked off her feet by his music one night. It all sounds like a scene from the movie, Brooklyn. I imagine their meeting ...

She is a dark-haired Irish immigrant, a beauty with a fine nose and sparkly blue eyes. She is excited to be in America, but lonely, having left her family of 10 siblings and her beloved mother behind in the extreme poverty of Ireland at the time. He is a fiddler, playing his weekly gig at the Irish American Club, a dimly lit, loud, smokey place. His big, blacksmith hands, grimy with the work of the day, fly over the fiddle, tucked under his chin as he looks out over the dance floor and spots young Kitty. She is dressed in blue, doing reels with her newfound friends, made while working at the hotel downtown. They were eager to hire Irish women there because they were pretty, spoke English, and were eager to work.

Johnny watches her fix her hair that had fallen down a bit in the back from dancing. “Look how delicate her hands are,” he thinks. “Not rough and grimy like mine, but gentle, refined ... yet strong. Who is she?”

The band takes a break and he dashes into the bathroom backstage to splash water on his face. He looks at himself in the dusky, poorly-lit mirror. “Don’t screw this up, Johnny Boy,” he whispers to himself, drying his face with a dirty towel nearby. He walks out of the bathroom and heads straight for the bar for a pint. And there she is, just nearby, laughing and talking with other young women. Her face is creamy white and he notices her eyes are the lightest blue he’s ever seen. Grabbing his pint and swallowing hard, he approaches her. “You’re quite a dancer,” he says, his brown eyes grinning over his pint. “You’re quite a fiddler, aren’t ya?” she shoots right back. Not as demure as he had expected her to be. “I’m Johnny,” he says, wiping the sweat from his right hand onto his shabby pant leg and then extending it out to her.

“You’re American,” she says with surprise. “I am,” he replies. “My parents are from Sligo. Mayo.” “I’m from Mayo ... me and the rest of the gang in here,” she laughs. “Curran. I just arrived here a month ago.” “And?” Johnny says, tipping his pint to wet his now-dry mouth. She is speaking to him and he is both thrilled and terrified. “And, sure it’s grand here. I miss me ma terrible, but it’s good. Making some good money at the hotel down the way. Working in the kitchen, don’t ya know,” she says with a flourish, taming a few wild strands of her smooth, inky hair.

“So, you can cook, eh?” he laughed. “Beautiful. Smart. And she can cook. Jackpot,” he thinks. “Well, I’m learning, to be sure. Never seen a pineapple in me life, and now I’m making something called pineapple upside down cake,” she laughs. “Did you ever hear of such a thing?”

In cinematic fashion, Johnny and Kitty married. As the years went by, they slogged through The Great Depression. Eventually, as work dried up for Johnny, Kitty took in boarders to support their four children. The story fades ...

The man in front of me, the farrier, has no idea I have left on this imaginary trip back in time, musing on my grandparents. In the hazy, sepia light of the barn, he continues grinding, then buffing, then polishing each hoof as the stallion stands, waiting it out. Finishing up his equine spa day on our farm, the farrier gives a hoof one last rub of polishing, then packs up his hoof pick, shoe puller, rasp (essentially a honking huge nail file), hammers, and nails like a refrigerator repairman packing up his things after a house call. He’s had a long day of doing this and the fruits of his labor show. As he leaves, the barns are filled with huge horses with twinkly toes. They all seem to stand a little bit taller, more confident as he puts his tools into his truck. 

That farrier is a rare breed these days, not the dime-a-dozen horse farrier or blacksmith from the early 1900’s. It must have been scary for blacksmiths of yore, seeing those horseless carriages increasingly populate the urban streets of America, making their jobs obsolete. And yet, here we are today with this skill still in demand, in a niche way.

Walking away from the barn, I continue to ponder Johnny Collins the Depression-era blacksmith and his beefy arms, his jet-black hair, his charismatic personality, his fiddle. I enter my comfortable farm house to wash my hands before preparing dinner, the sweet, earthy aroma of hay, manure, and horse still clinging to me. The water washes over my small, barely-calloused, sunscreen-covered hands and I stand there at the sink, thinking, “These are not my mother’s hands, nor her father’s.”

My Apple watch buzzes me, congratulating me for taking 10,000 steps.

The Game of Golf

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There is a home movie of me. It is 1968. I am about four years old at the driving range at Oglebay Park in Wheeling, West Virginia. My brothers are there, too, in their goldenrod-colored shorts and tube socks. I am thrashing away at a golf ball, rivulets of sweat running down my bright, apple-red face. My dad, tall, lanky, just starting to develop the paunch that gave him his signature water tower silhouette he was famous for later in life, is maybe 49 or 50 and he is giving me pointers. The air is thick with humidity and, although the 8-millimeter movie has no sound, I can just hear the cicadas singing in the valleys below. Looking at my dad on film I wonder ... when did he take up golf? And why? Surely, he didn’t get started until after World War II. He was the only son of working-class Irish immigrants. How did he find his way to this ridiculous sport?

Jack was a rather serious man, but never took golf too seriously. A member of the Greatest Generation who lived through The Great Depression, World War II, and raising a big family through the Sixties, he realized that golf is a game, not worth getting one’s shorts in a bunch. Perhaps he found that golf is a subtle way of saying, “Life is not all wide fairways and easy greens, my friends.”

Over the years, Jack introduced all nine of his children and even my mother to golf. He never joined a golf club or a league, but each summer would lug the tribe of us down to the hot hollers of West Virginia to golf. He may have found golf was a way to “peek under the hood” of each of us to see what we were all about? He must have known that a day spent golfing with someone gives you a window into someone’s true nature. Is he honest? How patient is he with himself and others? How is her humor? How does she handle the pressure and embarrassment of people watching you give it your all and only move the bloody ball a few feet forward ... if at all? How deep is her vocabulary of swear words (mine is an abyss)?

My dad would take me golfing with him every now and then, complimenting me on my “natural swing.” (It turns out, my swing is a happy accident, benefitting from my spinal curve from scoliosis, but it was dear that he only saw the swing). He was not a verbose man, not one to have deep talks or shower one with praise. But while golfing, the whole afternoon would be filled with gentle encouragements: “That’s the right idea,” “Nice and easy, like sweeping the porch,” “Eyes on the ball, head down,” “Bend those knees, like you’re sitting on a bar stool,” (could there be a more Irish coaching tip?) ... and the inevitable, “That’s enough, pick up and let’s go to the next hole” and “Don’t keep track of your score, it will break your spirit.”

I don’t think Jack even knew his handicap (nor I mine because the whole process feels like an SAT math problem). He consistently golfed 100, which is respectable. Plain old crappy golf takes a long time and to become a good golfer with a low handicap takes a lot of practice = a very, very long time. Golf was low on Jack’s priority list, way, way behind his Big Three: Faith, Family, Work. (I am often suspect of someone with a low handicap, honestly. I mean ... Come on, aren’t you needed somewhere more important than the fairway seven days a week, sir?)

Several years ago, in an effort to better my own golf game, I was convinced to join a women’s league. With my dad’s compliments from childhood ringing in my ears, I went into this league experience feeling rather confident, wearing my snazzy new golf skort and sparkling fresh shoes. “Oh, yes, I’ve been golfing my whole life,” I told the ladies. But what I didn’t realize is that when you’re playing with serious golfers, those who actually keep score – like really keep score (whiffs, flubs and all) – well, my golf score climbed up there. It turns out I am not a good golfer at all.

During one round early on, I was paired with a crabby old bitty of a woman who seemed hell bent on, I don’t know, making me cry? The entire round, she reprimanded me for chatting, for casting my shadow in her lie, (so I guess shadow puppets are a no-no, too?), for taking too long to find my godforsaken ball – so much so that she made me tee it off again. Sure, those are the “actual rules,” but clearly, she was not worried about “breaking my spirit.” She scowled and trudged through her round as if this “game” was a crappy job and I was the new hire, ripe for hazing. The entire round I had that woman on my shoulder like a vulture, sneering at me. The more I worried about her, about my shitty whiffs and flubs, the worse I got. That death march continued for an eternity with me hacking and whacking away, like an old timey prisoner breaking stones, until my arms finally gave out. Yes, that mean ole fuddy duddy did make me cry. She probably went home to her hairless cat, feeling satisfied that she broke another golfer wannabe.

And so, since then, I’ve retreated to golfing mostly with family and a few close friends. When the stakes are low, golfing makes me feel like I’m with my dad, now that he’s gone nearly twenty-five years. It makes me appreciate nature, being outside, just like he did. I love the soft glimmer of the grass in the early morning as I M-F my drive, sending it soaring into another hole’s fairway, n’er to be seen again. I love the long, quiet shadows of late afternoon golf as a hush falls over the green while I putt ... and putt ... and putt again, urging the ball into the hole with a limbo-like dance that only sometimes works. I enjoy taking a close look at the trees surrounding the fairway ... because I spend a lot of time in their dappled shade, bouncing my ball off their strong, stoic trunks or trying to chip my way back to where I’m supposed to be.

I will occasionally golf with my husband, who came to the game only about twenty years ago and now is Sir Golf A Lot. For someone who eschews “the rules” in life in general, he is a strict rule follower in golf, which is a buzz kill, honestly. He does not appreciate my antics on the golf course. No fart noises on the backswing? What’s fun about that?

As I write this, I am unpacking from that annual family vacation where, by some clerical error, I won the annual Women’s Open. I played rounds with my daughters, my sister, my cousin and even a couple of my brothers, which was a treat. When they were adolescents, my brothers were golf hot heads, taking each swing seriously, easily frustrated to the point of throwing clubs into the woods or cracking them over a knee. Watching them swing away ... or hunt and peck for those balls sliced into the “love grass,” they are much more mellow. They have my dad’s same balding pate, sweating in the insufferable West Virginia heat. I think how happy he would be that we are all continuing this tradition of playing golf together. Much like his tradition/torture of gathering us all to do yard work together – an equally time-intensive endeavor, filled with sweat, tears and swearing – this tradition is not really about the golf at all. It’s about just spending a few hours together, taking Jack’s lessons from golf forward into life: keep a sense of humor, enjoy the scenery, don’t keep score, and, when the going gets too rough, pick up and move on.  I mean, it is a game, isn’t it? It’s better than changing a poopy diaper, paying bills, snaking a drain or going to war, for chrissakes. It’s a game. A long, difficult, embarrassing, humbling, enlightening, beautiful, ridiculous game. But with the right people … worth it.

Gifts at the Sea

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I am sitting seaside, people watching, hiding in the shade down at the water’s edge. I am nearing the end of a very long stay at the beach. It’s been an on-again-off-again lonely time. My husband, The Trip Planner, set us up to be “snow birds” this year, so we took the long drive from Ohio to Florida, have taken some side trips here and there, but for the most part have fallen into a quiet rhythm in south Florida. About a month in, though, I was getting antsy. I almost jumped on a plane to go home for a bit. It felt too long away from family, from friends. Too long away from my sweet dog. I have felt guilty being here. And too young to be a “snow bird.” But then it occurred to me, maybe I should just embrace this gift ...  as a retreat of sorts. From the events of the past few years. From Cleveland winter, of course. From “real life.” 

As I watch the pretty young things amble by, I realize that this year marks my 40th reunion year from high school. I am thinking now of Anne Morrow Lindbergh and her book, Gift from the Sea. It was given to me by my friend and I used quotes from it for a speech I was chosen to give at my high school graduation. Thinking about Mrs. Lindbergh now, I chuckle. At the time, I thought she was an old lady, writing about her life in the past tense, but I’ve since found out that she was only 49 years old, in the midst of raising five children. That’s younger than am I now. Re-reading her little book again, I appreciate her words, written so beautifully about life, marriage, raising a family, being a woman in the “modern age” of the 1950s. 

Lindbergh wrote then about the challenges of women in the 20th Century, using philosopher and psychologist, William James’ description “Zerrissenheit” – or "torn-to-pieces-hood.” To combat “being shattered into a thousand pieces,” by trying to be everything to everyone, she writes that women must “consciously encourage those pursuits which oppose the centrifugal forces of today. Quiet time alone, contemplation, prayer, music, a centering line of thought or reading, of study or work.” (This was in 1955, mind you. After a massive World War. After she had had a child abducted and murdered. Her husband was a famous aviator, she was an aviator herself, as well as a poet and writer.) When I think of myself quoting Mrs. Lindbergh as a 17-year-old in 1982, I am embarrassed at how sage I thought I was. Here I am, all these years later, finding her words so relevant in the 21st Century. 

I came upon that graduation speech recently while packing to move. Holding it in my hands, all wrinkled and faded, I remember typing it out on my mother’s massive old typewriter at our huge, round Formica kitchen table. I quoted the book, “I am packing to leave my island. What have I for my efforts, for my ruminations on the beach? What answers or solutions have I found for my life? I have a few shells in my pockets, a few clues, only a few.” I used Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s words as a metaphor for graduation. I wrote, 

“It is time to launch from our island. The shells we’ve collected in our pockets are varied: sharp, spiny, smooth, speckled. If we put any of them to our ears, familiar sounds would surely echo. The home room gossip, the exhausted, slap happy giggles of volleyball practice, the much-too-loud music of dances, the silence backstage before that one big line.” 

Re-reading my words, saying them out loud, I actually still like them. 

Anne Morrow Lindbergh wrote Gift from the Sea while on a retreat on Captiva Island, a sheller’s paradise on Florida’s west coast, before south Florida became chock-a-block full of people and cars. It must have been heavenly back then. Lindbergh spent her time combing the beaches every morning for treasures and inspiration. The seashore I am on is nothing like that. It is a busy, cosmopolitan beach with high rises on the roiling, ever-changing Atlantic east coast of Florida. This is not a shell beach. It is constantly having to be reconstituted with sand that is forever being pulled out by the tides. I am not collecting shells, but treasures are to be found here, as well. 

Wonder: The ocean is a wondrous place, full of beauty, and mystery. From our seaside perch, I have seen schools of fish, manta rays, sting rays, manatees, and sharks. It is fun to watch people experience the ocean – either once again, or for the first time. When my youngest daughter first saw the ocean at nine months old, she stared out at it and just muttered, “Big water.” Some first timers are timid, tip-toeing into the water, trying to levitate over it even as they move into it, arms rising up, up, up as they tepidly submerse by inches. Others, like my husband, the Merman, go all in immediately, plunging under the waves to get the shock over with. Those new to the ocean can get overwhelmed by its mystery. “Eek! Something touched me!” I hear every now and then. “What was that?!” For those of us who scuba dive, we know there are plenty of things under the surface. Generally, they are not interested in clumsy, fleshy humans splashing in the shallows. But yes, fish live in the ocean.

Perspective: Like looking up into the night sky as a kid, looking out over the ocean gives me perspective on life – especially first thing in the morning or in the quiet, long shadows of late afternoon, when all the sun worshipers have gone. It is a cliché, but my problems, troubles, worries all seem smaller, impermanent, ephemeral next to the grandeur of the mighty Atlantic. I imagine all that she’s seen over her millions of years and realize that no matter what my own issue or worry, like the tide, “this too shall pass.” Glaciers, hurricanes, still water, rip tides ... nothing lasts forever. It all keeps moving. Forever.

Joy: There is a vast current of humanity flowing through this area, like a jet stream: Cuban, South American, Puerto Rican, Orthodox Jews, Hasidic Jews, Quebecois … me. No matter their age, race, religion, self- identification, I have seen that humans who come to the beach find joy here, either in the time together, the solace of a good book and a quiet lounge chair, or just laying, exposed to the sun, drinking in all that Vitamin D. When my oldest daughter first saw the ocean at about nine months old, I literally had to restrain her from going all in, head first. She was thrilled by it. As I walk down the beach now, I see children squealing as the waves chase them, like sandpipers, back and forth, the water licking their heels. Others dig away at the sand, their chubby little hands fervently working to form it into a mound, a castle, a moat, thrilling at their own ingenuity. “I have discovered this thing! Sand castles!” 

Calm: It’s hard to be agitated at the beach. I think it’s the negative ions wafting from the water, soothing humans’ spirits. I see a grandmother walking quietly, holding hands with her granddaughter, both taking in the calm. I remember doing the same thing with my middle daughter while I was pregnant with my youngest. I was so nervous about this little person who was no longer going to be the baby. “Is she ready for this?”I thought. “Am I?” I remember the water shush, shush, shushing on the sand that day, as it is now, sounding like Mother Earth quieting an agitated baby. “Shhhh ... There there, now. All is well.”

Butt Cheeks: So many butt cheeks. My seaside research shows that, while the string bikini thong bathing suits are fading in popularity, the beach fashion de jour is now the “cheeky” bikini bottom. The tiny V on the butt reveals, in a perfect body, firm little butt cheeks that one could bounce a quarter off. Young and older gals alike parade the beach in the “cheekies.” I marvel at the bravery or don’t-give-a-crap mentality of some older gals. There they are, letting it literally all hang out. My 17-year-old self might snigger at those fleshy, jiggly bodies. But now, I tip my large sun hat to them. “Good on ya, madam,” I say to myself. “Gotta love that body positivity.”

Boobies: They are birds. My husband, the Bird Man, pointed these birds out to me that look like compact seagulls, but are divers and swimmers. It is interesting to watch them search for, find and capture their prey. Beautiful, efficient, stealthy. He’s clearly fascinated, too. Every afternoon he grabs his sunglasses, large brimmed hat, and cooler and heads out to the beach, mumbling, “Gotta keep an eye on those boobies.”

I’m sure he is talking about the birds ... 

Right?

Moving On

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Time to fly

Several weeks ago, I was enjoying one more swim at summer’s end in our farm pool. The air had started to hold the crisp scent of autumn and as I swam back and forth, I kept my eyes on a bluebird family fervently fussing with their nest. Mrs. Bluebird was feeding a late summer brood of hatchlings. “Impressive,” I thought. “You’re heading south soon and here you are squeezing in one more nest of offspring.” It got me thinking of how effortlessly birds up and move, north to south and back again, year in, year out. “This bluebird family better hurry up,” I thought. “Trees are starting to turn color. Winter is coming ...” 

I too have a deadline looming on my calendar ... and it’s creeping closer. I am in the midst of a move out of my home of 24 years, a house in the middle of an enchanted neighborhood. The home where I raised my family. The home I made my own, little by little, until it had my fingerprints all over every room, metaphorically and literally. A home with a lifetime of memories, blessings, good times, tough times. It is not a tragic move, not one of necessity or loss, though we are moving into the house of my husband’s parents who both passed away over the past two years. It is a move of choice, of opportunity, of thinking forward, moving into a home in which we can “age in place.” We are moving from one beautiful home to another beautiful home. Around the corner, no less. We are blessed.

But I hate moving. The emotion, the upheaval, the chaos ... I look at my bird friends and wonder, “Do you have stacks of boxes, packing tape and sharpies in there? Do you have TO DO lists on Post Its? Are you purging before your big move? Or are you just going to, you know, wing it?” 

I am having a hard time with the purging because I am a sentimental sot. My writing table faces a painting of my childhood home at 21500 Erie Road. Gazing at it that painting every morning, I smell my dad’s Dial soap aroma, hear my mom’s calloused feet shuffling on the kitchen linoleum floors, taste the burnt chicken from backyard grill, smell the mineral scent of water from the garden hose. I still dream of that house.

The home we are leaving is beautiful, built with love and care by its original owners. It is house that is reportedly a replica of an historic home in Maine. Yes, her triple track windows are inefficient and troublesome. And her basement ceiling is low and weird. And her master bedroom and bathroom are smallish and have lousy storage. But her woodwork and her bones ... they sing when you walk in her doors. A quiet, lovely song. Hello, come on in. Walking through my home of 24 years ... my beautiful, imperfect home, one notices its lovely details, its solid sense of roots, of permanence. The new owner will change a lot, I’m sure, as I did. Will they blow out the porch to make a great room? Will they change the wood floor stain to a darker one, paint those kitchen cabinets, as I was going to? Will they gut the basement rec room? Will they love and appreciate this home as much as we did? Yes, they will. They are anxious to get in and start their lives.

But I don’t have time for musings. Purge. Pack. Move. Unpack. Purge some more. Put away ... the process is daunting. Do I hang onto those 80’s tapes? DVD’s? CD’s? VHS? “Screw it,” I think. I throw them all into a box to move them and decide later. I continue packing, organizing boxes, setting things aside for my daughters, for giveaways, for garbage. Labeling things so they have a place to land on the other side of this chaos. 

What will my girls remember from our house? The creaky step halfway up the stairs? Arguments at dinnertime? Tiptoeing down the stairs on Christmas morning? Stomping up the stairs and slamming doors? That wonky brick step outside the mudroom that keeps coming loose? The many dinner parties with family and friends? Hopefully they will remember music, laughter, support, love. 

Change is hard.

Moving on ... Our new home is a home of beauty, calm, comfort and legacy. I am saying goodbye to the past, but am also stepping into the past, into a different house full of memories. My husband’s parents were in that house for thirty years. Emptying out my in-law’s house, I am struck by the triviality of the stuff we all accumulate through a life. They had lovely things -- the figurines, the furniture, the candlesticks, etc. But when a life is all over, it’s all just left for someone to go through, pass around, give away. The things we carry ... evidence of a life lived. I am floating from my own memories to my husband’s memories, through my in-law’s memories. Looking forward and backward at the same time is giving me emotional whiplash. I keep humming to myself Joni Mitchell, “We go round and round and round in the circle game.” I lay down on the floor of the foyer and cry with gratitude, loss, exhaustion and back pain. I am thankful for the history in the new/old house, I hear my father-in-law’s chuckle as I hold his back scratcher, my mother-in-law’s nervous humming while emptying out her kitchen drawers. I am remembering our Christmases, Independence Days, birthdays, a wedding in the yard. I am thankful for the future we will build there. The house will be different, yes, but as my oldest daughter reminded me, “we will still be us.” Of course we will.

They say one should move every six years or so just to force oneself to get rid of stuff. I have friends who have moved several times. Some who have moved from city to city so often they are unfazed, they are pros at this. The thought of that much moving pains me. As I am in the midst of that process, I am trying to find the minimalist deep inside of me ... she’s here somewhere, under a pile of my old tap shoes and Manta Reef t-shirt from 1992. I am getting rid of kids’ art projects from 20 years ago, books about how to raise children not to be sociopaths, cookbooks never opened but purchased for their culinary porn photos. I grab the cargo pants that I delay giving away because they may come back in style and anyways, they do make my butt look good. But it is all so overwhelming. Family photos, memorabilia from travels ... I vow to never purchase anything ever again.  

I pack away my mom’s spatula with the burn mark on the handle, the china set from our wedding (all fourteen place settings). The teacups from a grandmother I never knew. My mom’s cheap floral china coffee cup and saucer and think, “What will my own daughters do with our lifetime of stuff? Give it away to strangers to live a new life? Give it to their own children? What will be the thing they hold onto from our life together?” One never knows ... it’s usually the little inconsequential stuff that holds the most meaning, which is why I lovingly pack my mom’s mangled salt shaker that fell down the disposal during the flurry of a post dinner cleanup sometime in the 1970’s ... more than once. It reminds me of the comforting chaos of her kitchen.

I stop at the door of my old house, running my hands over the hashmarks on the doorway marking everyone’s growth milestones, and think of the past purge/pack marathon. We made the deadline, but it wasn’t pretty. Near the end, I just started throwing crap – sentimental and otherwise – into moving boxes. More and more boxes were labeled “Mary’s Misc. Stuff”. Who the hell knows what I will unpack from those boxes? It will be a ridiculous surprise of familiar flotsam. The pink high top Chuck Taylor sneakers from the bar basketball team I was on in the late ‘80’s or the billowy scarf collection that makes it seem like I am secretly a gypsy or a Stevie Nicks impersonator. It’s all so ridiculous.

Closing the door behind me, I drive around sobbing, thinking, remembering. It is a loss. It is a gain. I find myself driving past my childhood home, thinking to myself, “Who would I be if I had grown up somewhere else? Who would my own family be had we lived in a different house, a different neighborhood for the past 24 years? Who will I be in this new house?” I snap out of my melancholy and think of All. Those. Boxes ... “Who would I be without these trappings, all this stuff I just packed up?” These things are the pebbles I put in my pockets as I’ve made my way through life. I don’t want to attach myself to them too much, but yes, but they do hold meaning and memories. That mangled salt shaker is a family jewel to me. But I doubt any of my daughters will want it. 

After we moved out, our new house wasn’t ready so we took refuge back at the farm for a few weeks. I checked in on my bluebird family and found they had moved on. I took down their birdhouse and cleaned it out ... nothing was left but twigs and feathery fluff. 

I hope they’re happy in their new place. I know I will be. 

I gaze at the cleared-out birdhouse in my hand and think, “I need to buy a couple of these for the new house.”

And so, it begins ...

Like Riding a Bike

I am cycling in the balmy air of south Florida with my besties, my oldest friends in the whole wide world. A couple of months ago, my husband, The Man with the Plan, and I stuffed facemasks, Purell, and rubber gloves into our bags and drove south to Florida to hide out at my in-law’s property. At the last minute, we strapped our bikes to the back of the car, too. It’s not like we are avid cyclists, but something about riding a bike in the warm air just sounded like a good idea.  

We rediscovered cycling a few years ago, when we found the B&O Trail that weaves through Richland County, close to our farm. The bike path winds over bridges, through corn fields, past barns…. It offers charming views of beautiful pockets of Ohio off the beaten path of highway travel. Peddling through the sleepy Ohio countryside always makes me think back to when I was twenty-five and driving through Austrian wine country with these same friends. As we sat under a vine-covered pergola on a summer afternoon we realized that some of the visitors were passing through on bikes. A bike tour through wine country? The coolest. We vowed to get back there on bikes someday. 

We are not in Austrian wine country now, but we are together. Cycling in Miami, is a world tour in itself: Spanish, Yiddish, Portuguese, Russian are all heard on the beachside path ... I pedal on, “Ring, ring! Excuse me! ¡Con permiso!” The other cyclists, the roller bladers, the skateboarders ... they all zoom past us. They are hares to us tortoises and offer us a light breeze in their wake. We chuckle at the skateboarder with the floppy dog in a papoose on his chest, its face peeking out contentedly.  We peek in on the babies in strollers with their nannies or their Abuelas cooing at them as they push their way down the path.

Pedaling alongside my friends feels just like it did when we were kids together. Riding around town with friends on bikes ... a hallmark of growing up. I recall the freedom of having wheels to get around town back then with these same gals: the tennis courts for sloppy games that were more laughing than sport, the drug store to check out the latest scent of Bonne Bell Lip Smackers, pedaling backwards on a speed bike while staying in place, or blithely navigating the streets, sitting upright, hands-free. The panic, late at night, frantically riding my ten speed through the dark suburban streets, the whir from the dorky headlight my mom made me buy, trying to get home before my curfew, guided by the dim cone of light before me.

My pals and I are meandering our way along the beach, chatting and laughing, sharing stories the whole way about our respective families, our jobs, our hopes for the future.  There goes the Tour de France set, all geared up in tight Spandex, huffing and puffing. Ride on, fellas. For me, cycling is more about taking in the scenery, carrying things in a little basket, using a tiny bell. It’s exercise, a journey, transportation and voyeurism all rolled into one. Unlike walking or, God help me, running, when I am cycling, I can breeze by folks just long enough to pick up fragments of their conversations and imagine their lives.  

As I weave my way through the beach crowd with these longtime friends, it occurs to me that cycling is a great metaphor for life. Pedal, pedal, glide ... pedal, pedal, glide ... When the going gets tough, gear down, take a breath and coast. That’s actually my favorite part of cycling -- the ability to stop working while you keep moving. To just cruise. When spinning classes started to be all the rage, I was immediately turned off. “You mean it’s nonstop pedaling? We can’t coast?” I thought. “Well, where’s the fun in that?” That, and the fact that everyone seems to be yelling all the time. It’s like watching The View on a bike. No thanks. 

I gaze down the bike path, remembering a trip I took just before the world stood still. I visited Rome with another group of friends and we signed up for a bike tour of the Seven Hills of Rome on “e-bikes”. The bikes looked like clunky normal bikes, but packed an electric punch that effortlessly zoomed us up the hills. I felt like Wonder Woman - flying up the hills like a pro, not needing to stop to push my bike, or even to grunt my way to the top. It was terrific, freeing, empowering and just what my jet-lagged legs needed after a wine-soaked luncheon on the Piazza Navona. My girlfriend who organized that tour absolutely fell in love with the e-bike concept and vowed to purchase such a bike when we returned to our flat Ohio streets. I rendezvoused with her on the west coast of Florida during my stay, and sure enough, she wheeled out her shiny new e-bikes, complete with the padded pants, the donut design bike bell, the basket, and the water bottle holder. We peddled past manicured golf courses and pristine lawns, through a nature preserve with alligators, snowy egrets and herons. A world away from Rome or even the multicultural Babel of Miami Beach, but it was so great to be cycling once again with my good friend. We’ve covered a lot of ground since that bike tour of Rome last year. Who knew then that the road would get so rough? 

Pedal, pedal, glide ... 

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Back on Miami Beach, my childhood friends and I are now sitting in the shade at a too-crowded hotel patio and it feels like high school again. We are sitting away from the cool kids who are making bad choices in the swimming pools and bars nearby. I tug at my shorts as I try to get feeling back in my ... er ... root chakra. (My e-bike friend had the right idea with those padded shorts). We raise a toast to each other, to life, to warm weather, to riding on. We’ve collectively gotten through a lot together, these friends and I:  marriage, divorce, illness, childbirth, raising toddlers, burying parents, raising teenagers, nursing ailing siblings, bad haircuts, shopping together, laughter, tears, secrets shared, stories upon stories upon stories. 

 Pedal, pedal, glide ... 

I tip back the icy cocktail and send up a sincere, boozy prayer of thanksgiving for my friends from different stages of life. I am so grateful for good friends, their easy comfort, their ability to smoothly change gears from silly to serious without a glitch. The kinds of friends that you don’t see in forever and when you do, you hop on board, get comfortable and enjoy the ride.

Just like riding a bike.

Trees

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They say only an optimist plants a tree.

Four years ago, my husband, Johnny Appleseed, got a wild hair and decided to plant not one, but 150 fruit trees at our farm. Or rather, he hired a nice Mennonite family to plant them. We knew exactly nothing about fruit trees, but there they stand, dotting a hillside in mid-Ohio. We planted 25 peach trees, 25 cherry trees and 10 each of 10 varieties of apples. Two peach trees made it through the first winter, six cherry trees. But so far, all of those apple trees are hanging in there. 

 For the past four years, I occasionally drive our four-wheeler by the orchard and give all the trees a pep talk: “You’re doing great! Keep up the good work!” It must be working, because this past month, for the first time in four years, we have apples. They’re not pretty, but there they are, hanging like imperfect jewels from the leafy branches. Honestly, it’s thrilling to behold. I’ll have to keep up the pep talks. And start looking up apple recipes.

While I am learning about fruit trees, I have always admired trees in general. After all, I am from Northeast Ohio, known as The Forest City for all the trees in this area. Every morning as I journal, I observe the trees out my window or on my porch, swaying, shimmering, tickling the air with their leaves. On the farm, our porch juts out right next to an enormous poplar tree, giving the room the feel of a treehouse. One of my favorite sounds in the world is the sound of a breeze through the leaves of that tree.

My real home is in a little town, about 20 minutes west of Cleveland, that is home to thousands of gigantic oak trees, one of which stands proudly in my back yard. This tree is probably 300 years old. I gaze up at her, towering above all the other trees around us and wonder what she has lived through. I imagine her as she grew up in a thick forest, full of native American tribes running past her, hunting and fishing on the southern shores of Lake Erie. She saw the white Europeans move in, pushing the natives out, claiming the land as their own. She saw species of animals that are now extinct or no longer thrive in this area: bears, wolves, large cats. She has seen the American Revolution and the Civil War pass by her branches and as she grew taller, and eventually shaded generations of families under her branches. 

As she pushed her roots down, down, down into the clay earth and stretched herself up, up, up to the sky, eagles soared above her canopy. They vanished from this area for a while, the water being tainted with toxic DDT, but then returned when that practice stopped and now she sees them again, soaring, gliding up and down the great Lake Erie shoreline. 

She saw farmers move in, divide up the land beneath her and plant orchards around her base. Our neighborhood used to be an orchard. She stood tall, like a sentry, peaking over the trees around her to catch a glimpse of the mighty lake to the north, the sun rising over it every morning to the east, setting over it to the west in the summer. To the south, she could see the rolling hills of forested land, pushed in front of the glaciers before they receded and left the Great Lakes in their wake. 

Our oak saw the city folk march westward, out of the dense, dirty city core during the Industrial Revolution, escaping to the fresh, breezy shoreline to relax, spread out, dip their toes in the water. The people built summer get-away cottages along the lakeshore and eventually permanent homes beneath her boughs. White colonial style homes, brimming with post World War II families, spread out around her with kickballs, firefly hunts and backyard grilling smoke wisping up into her ever-expanding limbs. 

If I were to be a tree, what would I be?

If I were to be a tree, what would I be?

I remember the time when an Amish family came to build a shed in our back yard and, upon finishing, ended up standing around our tree, arms akimbo, craning their necks upward to admire her now expansive 200-foot height. Straight, true, magnificent. They even measured her base, some 30 feet around. The father removed his hat, brushed the dirt off it and shook his head, “That’s a mighty fine tree you’ve got there. If she ever gets sick, I would sell your house, because it’s going to be a fortune to take her down.”

If I were to be a tree, what would I be? While I adore our massive oak, I gotta say, those brown leaves in the autumn are drab, unimpressive. I’d rather be a radiant maple with bright red leaves, pulsing with sexy, tasty syrup. Or perhaps a dramatic weeping willow with my hair flung over my eyes like a gothic princess. Or maybe an aspen, with shimmering, dancing leaves. Back on the farm, walking amongst all those apple trees, I remember the book The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein – and realize that, as a mother, I’m an apple tree. “Come Boy, come climb up my trunk and swing from my branches and be happy.” Not sexy or dramatic, but it fits.

I look across the orchard, at the bejeweled trees. It’s odd to think about someone, maybe a grandchild, a great grandchild or a complete future stranger, looking out over these trees in fifty years, wondering, “Who planted these trees here? Why? What was their life like way back then ... wasn’t that during the pandemic of 2020?” Perhaps then one will turn to the other and say, “You know, they say only an optimist plants a tree.”

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Rolling on the River

The summer of 2020 is waning. This season, with its pandemic stress and extraordinary anxieties, has pushed us all out into nature like never before, hiking, picnicking, camping and such. Our farm property in mid-Ohio is close to one of the area’s most beautiful and popular refuges, Mohican State Park. It boasts gorgeous stands of towering pine trees, stretches of hiking and horseback riding trails and miles of winding creeks and rivers, the most popular of which is the Black Fork River, home to Mohican Adventures in Loudonville, Ohio.

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Several years ago, during one of our first summers with the farm in our lives, my husband, Daniel Boone and I booked a river rafting adventure. This is a spot popular for school and scouting field trips.  I had not been there since a 3.2 beer-soaked afternoon in high school back in 1982; I was excited to go back. Our youngest daughter, Merriweather, came with us - under duress. Her high school classmates who were supposed to come out to the farm for the weekend cancelled on her at the last minute and we forced her to accompany us anyway because, you know, we are awful parents.

“This will be fun!” I cajoled her as I packed our things. “It’s a nice hot day, and the river will be quiet and cool. It will be so relaxing to be out in nature.”

I just didn’t count on all the people who were thinking the same thing.

The canoe livery was a bustling place that smelled like a water ride at an amusement park and was populated with the same caliber of large-ish, t-shirted, sweaty patrons. These were in the days before Covid concerns, so we pushed our way into the crowd, trying on life jackets that smelled like dirty jockstraps, and plunked ourselves into the mud-smeared canoes. “See! Isn’t this fun?” I cooed. Silence from Merriweather.

 As we pushed out into the river, the slow current pulled us in. Boats full of young families and rowdy teenagers surrounded us, so we paddled away to find the serenity I was seeking. I had flashes of scenes from Disney’s Pocahontas in my head as I stroked the water with my oar. My girls and I loved that movie when they were all young, with its soaring soundtrack and strong, beautiful hereon. I was imagining myself – a white, middle aged, decidedly non-Native American woman -- with cartoon, raven-colored hair, a winsome profile and that enviable Disney princess 20” waistline, as I belted out,

What I love most about rivers is
You can't step in the same river twice
The water's always changing, always flowing ...

What's around the river bend
Waiting just around the river bend

I look once more just around the river bend
Beyond the shore where the gulls fly free
Don't know what for what I dream the day might send
Just around the river bend for me, coming for me

But after the first bend in the river, I didn’t find gulls flying free, but miles of RV and trailer park campgrounds, bustling with weekend partiers. It was 10:30 a.m. and I heard that familiar sound of a Natty Lite being cracked open riverside. A shirtless man sitting on a lawn chair rested the can on his generous girth as scores of children ran amok ... And I do mean muck. The riverbed was pretty low from the dry spring, giving the water the muddy look of a parking lot puddle. I waved a tepid hello. “Good morning!” He raised his beer to toast me.

“Can I squirt you, lady?” yelled a kid, crocodile-swimming towards our canoe through the shallow water. Other kids were running and swimming around, through and above the river as well. It was a Lost Boys-meets-Lord of the Flies kind of vibe. 

“Oh, no, thanks,” I replied as his less polite friend drenched my daughter with a bazooka power soaker. We both were sticky with river mud already, so what did it matter, honestly? Except that Merriweather kept up her steely silence. 

We continued on, meandering past more campgrounds full of volleyball nets, smoking grills, and homes that ranged from modest to extravagant. Some houses had folded lawn chairs; others were festooned with party lights. Some had painstakingly manicured landscaping, other a couple of lonely flower pots. It was all very sweet, very mid-Ohio Americana. I felt like a voyeur, floating by a diorama of “Life in the Midwest, USA, summer 2000’s.”

 “Woo hoo! Show us your tits!” We had just turned another river bend and were greeted by a raucous group of young men. And more Natty Lite. My daughter was repulsed and starting stroking her oar faster. “Oh, no, not happening!” I yelled. “Not today! Just passing through!”

“I’d rather starve.”

“I’d rather starve.”

We were roughly midway through our journey, and the Darwinian playground we just navigated through had made us hungry. Luckily, the Mohican river is peppered with weird little float up eateries serving burgers, fish and chips, chicken skewers, hot dogs, beverages…the works. There’s even beer to-go. None of it felt very regulated or legal, but we had come this far.  “To hell with it. Let’s do this.” I said as I stroked towards “Captain Weenie” and ordered us all some hot dogs and beer. Merriweather broke her silence to declare she “would rather starve to death.” 

She did have a point.  There’s something just not right about buying food made in a ramshackle houseboat, eating it in a filthy canoe whilst having swamp ass, and floating in muddy river water. We ate and drank just the same. But I can check that off my to do list. Don’t need to do that again. Ever.

After our visit to mid-Ohio’s version of the “wet market,” we floated on to find what we came for: an open stretch of quiet woods. The revelers and beer swillers were left behind, the canoes spread apart and all there was to hear was the wind, the birds, and the splash of the oars. Dappled sunlight scattered in front of us, shining through leafy branches as the towering trees swayed in the breeze. And all of the sudden, it was smooth sailing. 

It really was a lovely day. All of it. Even the amphibious float-through, marginally sanitary dining options. Humans of all sizes, races and backgrounds finding a variety of ways to be out in nature and enjoy themselves.  And patches of gorgeous nature. 

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Our trip was 7 miles; there is a 14-mile version, which I hear is calmer, more nature centered. You do have to make it through that same first 7-mile gauntlet, but I want to give it a try. Maybe sooner than later. I look back on that day and feel like maybe it’s a metaphor for these times. This year has felt very much like we all are paddling against the current, losing our oars, getting super soaked with wretched, muddy river water, and putting up with unseemly behavior by way too many people. But I’m hanging on to the hope that there is smooth water with quiet breezes ahead.

Just around the river bend. 

Loafing Off

Our farm kitchen is a wide-open space, built to handle crowds, to welcome folks in to cook and eat together. A few years ago, just before St. Patrick’s Day, it was covered in flour, butter and raisins and laughter, for I had invited my three sisters and cousin down to make Irish Soda Bread together. 

For those who are not familiar, Irish Soda Bread is like a raisin scone in loaf form. It is best enjoyed right out of the oven, smothered with butter and honey and eaten with a steaming cup of tea. Of course, a turd would taste great covered in melted butter and honey, but this smells way better and feels like an Irish nana’s hug. 

My cousin has “the recipe,” handed down to her from her mother, who found it in a parish cookbook eons ago. I imagine it was probably originally penned by a square handed, strong backed Irish mother with a heart shaped, porcelain face and fair, sparkly eyes.

So, there we all were, soaking our raisins, buttering our pans when my one sister wandered away and decided to crack open our favorite beer, Conway’s Irish Ale. After a few sips, she decided to jump in to help. The kitchen soon turned into a snow globe of flour as she ripped open bags of flour willy nilly, darting this way and that, spilling buttermilk across the counter, sending cascades of it onto the floor. We giggled and reprimanded her, cleaning up after her mishaps. “Stop fussing with the flour!” “Leave the bloody raisins alone, for the love of God.” I remember looking at my sister, blinking away the powdery cloud that enveloped us, thinking, “What in the world is going on?” She finally drifted away to finish her beer on the couch, as we continued to putter about it the kitchen, cleaning up her mess as we baked. 

 It turns out that, unbeknownst to us, my dear sister was in the beginning stages of Alzheimer’s. I look back on that day with bittersweet tears. In its ridiculous comedy and tragedy rolled together, it was so very Irish.

The following year, I tried to continue the “Loaf Off” as Soda Bread Sunday, inviting family to bake soda bread together and donate the loaves to St. Colman Church in Cleveland, my parents’ and grandparents’ parish, home to baptisms, First Communions, marriages, funerals, prayers of thanksgiving and please for help of my large Irish clan for over one hundred years. When one of my many nieces heard about the event, she gushed, “Of course I’m coming! I wouldn’t miss this tradition for anything!” One year in, it was hardly a “tradition,” but I had to loved her enthusiasm. 

My esteemed cousin, we’ll call her “Mary” (because every Irish Catholic family has at least one of those), owner of “the recipe” taught us the key to baking a successful loaf involves soaking the raisins beforehand, cutting the butter into the flour, and paying attention not to overfill the loaf pans. That last point is important. Just ask my local fire department. They were unanticipated visitors to our Loaf Off a couple of years ago after a few loaves were inadvertently overfilled. As they rose, gewy wet batter spilled over onto the bottom of the oven and quickly burned, sending billows of smoke out of the oven as we peeked in to check on their progress. The kitchen full of women scattered into action, screaming, hurriedly opening windows, turning on the exhaust fan, swatting the smoke away from the smoke alarm, shouting expletives and obscenities that would make a leprechaun blush  ... to no avail. In no time at all, we were visited by a hook and ladder with full-suited, handsome firefighters. “No worries, gentlemen!” my sister shouted out the front door. “It’s just Irish cooking!” We tried to pay them for their troubles with fresh soda bread loaves, but after taking in the scene of middle aged, pasty-faced screaming women covered in flour, they declined. 

This March of 2020, just before the whole world turned upside down and then stopped still, my kitchen was full to the brim with sisters, nieces, grand-nieces, a grand-nephew, cousins, a nephew and a dear friend. At one point there were about fifteen people in the kitchen, soaking raisins, filling loaf pans, stirring wet mix into dry mix, cracking eggs ... it was chaos. Not “controlled chaos,” just straight-up chaos. I was cleaning layers of butter and flour off my counter for days. 

We ended up with eighty-five soda bread loaves, wrapped and ready to sell at the church charity. I know legions of cousins across Cleveland who have dozens in their freezers as well. While I gave away some of ours to neighbors and friends, most remain frozen until further notice.

In these coming days of stillness, that freezer full of soda bread baked with love, laughter, butter, buttermilk and yes, chaos, is comforting. As my daughters stream home from the east coast to join in the “hunkering down,” that soda bread will hold down the house, like ballast in a grand Irish ship steaming through the choppy waters ahead.

I am already making plans for next year, but rethinking it. Yes, we will have Soda Bread Sunday, but everyone will make their own loaves at home. No Loaf Off. We will gather with a few loaves, make a pot of hot tea. I’ll cut the loaves, slather the slices in butter and honey and we’ll all sit down for a good Irish visit. No flying flour, no sticky countertops ... we will just be together. In these days of stillness and isolation, I realize that just that – being together -- is an Irish blessing fit for the season.

Slainte!

MARIE CONWAY BEIRNE’S RECIPE FOR IRISH SODA BREAD

The recipe makes 2-3 loaves, depending on pan size. 

Preheat oven 350 degrees

6 cups flour

1/2 to 3/4 cup of sugar

3 tsp baking powder

1 1/2 tsp baking soda

1 1/2 tsp salt

4 TBSP of butter... cut into flour or work in with your fingers

1 box (2 1/2 cups) raisins....be sure to soak them first in warm water and drain well.

4 cups of buttermilk

2 eggs...beat eggs into the buttermilk

Add wet ingredients together, whisking them.

Add the well-drained raisins into the dry ingredients, then fold into the wet ingredients..

Add to well-greased loaf pans, lightly dusted with flour.

Bake for 1 hour and 5 minutes (or longer). When fresh out of the over, I brush butter over the top and maybe some sugar.

Kitchen Gadgets

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One of my favorite discoveries in the region our farm property is an Amish Country Store named Lehmans Market. “Country Store” belies the enormity of this place. It is more like an Amish Mall of America. This sprawling entity includes everything a good Amish household might need. The hardware section is a walk back through time with potbellied stoves, axes for cutting firewood, and all manner of wrenches, hammers and manly, old-timey devices. The laundry supplies section is filled with drying racks, wringers, washboards and clothes pins. There are provisions for candle making, soap making, “Simple Life” stuff you would need if you didn’t have, modern day distractions like television, internet or electricity … things any End Times home would need.

The book section is an odd collection of titles like “What’s it like to be Amish,” “There’s Room on the Porch Swing,” “Almost Amish” and the intriguing “Mennonite Men Can Cook Too.” Which brings me to the kitchen section: row upon row of accoutrement, large and small. Materials for making, storing, carrying, serving one’s own bread, pasta, jam, cakes, pies, soups, stews, stocks, lemonade, apple cider … stuff that would make Julia Childs drool. It is this department that I just had to bring my best friend to see.

My friend, we’ll call her Kathy, is a wonderful cook and she loves kitchen paraphernalia. She putters effortlessly around her kitchen, using her special gadgets, meant for anything imaginable. Juicing a small lemon? Got the gadget. A large lemon? Got a different gadget. A unique and clever stirring thingy, a special contraption for turning this or that, frying whatever. She’s got it. Sear it, bake it, freeze it, shake it, it’s covered. Observing her in her kitchen, she’s forever picking every last bit of beef off the bone so she can make it into a soup or stew later. She is constantly cooking, storing, freezing food, ready to put on a gorgeous buffet at a moment’s notice. Once, when she hosted my sisters and me for a weekend at her lake home, she disappeared for a few moments and was chatting with us from the other room. We barely knew she was gone before she somehow magically returned with freshly made ice cream (she’s got a gadget for that!) and an apple pie that made us weep it was so good. 

She comes by it naturally. Kathy’s mother is a Hungarian immigrant. She and her sister were raised by their Hungarian grandmother and great aunts, and all the recipes and traditions that came with them. I grew up across the street from Kathy and going into her house as a child was a cultural adventure. The house was subdued, bathed in a late 60’s glow of burnt oranges, pinks and goldenrod yellows. The Hungarian aunties were always in the kitchen, stirring bubbling pots on the stove, steam rising, enveloping their babushkas in mystery. There were smells there that that I never found in my own mother’s kitchen: paprika, roasted peppers, goulash, stews, soups, noodles slathered in something amazing and foreign (probably just butter, but it smelled different there). Their Hungarian chatter, reprimanding us as we wandered through the room with Barbies in tow, was at once exotic and familiar. 

As a teenager, Kathy enlisted her aunties’ help to tackle the painstaking task of making a Hungarian Dobos Torte, a multi-layered, complicated Hungarian delicacy that took her probably two days to make. I remember thinking, “why would you do that when you could just crack open a perfectly good Sarah Lee pound cake and have at it?” But she persevered, creating a lovely, delicate pastry that would make any bakery envious. Tragically, it ended up in a heap, when, while it was setting up in the basement, a load of laundry came down the shoot and blew it to smithereens. 

As I remember Kathy’s kitchen, I hear Hungarian chatter and the aunties’ silhouettes morph into my friend at present day, pecking through the kitchen aisle at Lehman’s, looking for just the right spatula – there are maybe twenty varieties. I chuckle to myself, looking at her, knowing her culinary tradition and comparing it to my own meat and potatoes upbringing. 

My mother’s kitchen door was always open, ready to feed whomever walked happened through. It wasn’t fussy food -- no desserts that took half a week to prepare -- but it was the epitome of comfort food. That kitchen was chaotic and improvisational. My mother liked to cook … enough. It was a necessary part of the job description. Everything was made in large quantities. There was usually an overcooked chicken grilled out in the nice weather, eye of the round and a mountain of mashed potatoes on Sundays. The smoke alarm would go off when the oven door was opened to reveal charred dinner rolls. I was routinely enlisted to scrape the blackened bottoms off the dinner rolls. I don’t remember salad showing up in that kitchen until the mid-80s. My friend Kathy grew up in my mom’s kitchen, probably as much as she was in her own. She spent many, many hours with me in that kitchen, peeling potatoes, setting the table, eating, clearing the table, doing the dishes, sweeping the floor, feeding a baby or two at my mother’s expansive kitchen table.

Now, as adults, Kathy and I are both fans of food, cooking, fiddling around in the kitchen, and entertaining. I think we each carry with us our separate and combined kitchen histories. My mother would often say, in reference to family gatherings, “it’s not about the food.” For her, it was about being together, sharing stories, love, laughter. If the roast was burnt, well, that’s fodder for another story. For Kathy’s people, it was all about the food, old world traditions, recipes, history and bringing people together to experience them. Put all those ingredients in a pot, stir it together with time ... and here’s what you get: two middle-aged women pecking through an Amish kitchen aisle, sharing a friendship of some 53 years, getting ready to prepare and sit down to dinner together to share stories, love, laughter, old world traditions, recipes, good food. And maybe some of that homemade ice cream, because there’s a gadget for that.

Bobbing and Sobbing

I am bobbing up and down in the deep end of our outdoor pool on a chilly fall day. The hot, hot water of the pool is making steam clouds that hover over the water’s surface, shrouding me in an eerie fog. I am in a fog, indeed. I am sidelined from Life with an injury – a herniated disc – and I am in pain, feeling sorry for myself. I inhale the steam slowly, thinking “well, at least I get a good facial out of this.”

The past several months has been a real ass kicker of worry, sorrow, sadness and loss in my clan of loved ones. I have been driven by the need to seek out lifelines of joy to offset the rising tide by taking trips, nights out with friends, family, my husband. Trying to make moments count. It is important to keep moving forward, to seize the day.

But then, all of the sudden, the bottom just falls out. Sometimes, Life gets the best of you. Sometimes, you make such a point of seizing the day that the day ends up seizing you. And you find yourself in the deep end of the pool, sobbing.  

As I move through the fog, I realize I’m not in charge of anything. Or anyone. “What is the plan?” I think, blinking slowly, then just closing my eyes, thinking not just of me, but the larger picture. Perhaps this is the plan … to just be still. To stop moving forward. I am thinking of a yoga mantra that says, “Be here now in this.” I am remembering the biblical phrase that came to me as we kept vigil for my mom for days and days, “Be still and know that I am God.”

I bicycle my legs slowly and recall my visit earlier in the week, to the indoor pool at the local health club. I went there for a trial run, to consider joining. There, in the pool, I was suspended by a floaty belt, like a child, choking back tears as I surveyed my surroundings. The pool was populated mostly by women older than I, committed to taking care of themselves, recovering from their own injuries, attending to each other, building a supportive community, as women do. There was a man in the lap lane, dutifully putting in his time, going back and forth, alone. I thought he was an interesting juxtaposition to the female tribe on my side of the lane markers.

“I am a soggy, pathetic fly on the wall,” I thought as I bicycled my legs in slow motion, wincing as my back reminded me that all is not well. These women, laughing, cajoling, supporting ... It was clear they have been together for a while. “But I am not of them,” I thought to myself. “I am younger, healthier. I am vital. I am not an injured middle-aged woman. I’m good. I am … not them. I shouldn’t be here.” It all made me feel … vulnerable.

I continued in this vein, listing this way and that in my buoyancy belt, wallowing in self-pity … until I observed a couple of gals in the shallow end, moving their legs under water as they chatted. One was in a head scarf, bald as a cue ball, clearly going through chemotherapy. She seemed blasé about it, though I’m sure she wasn’t really. She shouldn’t be there, either. She should be doing whatever her own Life is: working, paying bills, cajoling her grandchildren, bowling, whatever. 

I peddled past them as they smiled hello. I was just another gal in the pool.

Back in my princess setting, in my heated pool with a crystal blue autumn sky overhead, I chuckle at my ridiculousness. I am ashamed of myself as I move my way through the fog.

“Who the hell do I think I am?”

I peddle over to the stairs and slowly, carefully get out of the pool. With humility, I emerge and say to myself out loud, “Get the hell over yourself.”  I gingerly grab my towel and go inside.

There are worse places for a pity party.

There are worse places for a pity party.