Oh But it was Worth it!

I knew downsizing would get to me eventually so when an invitation came to go to an out-of-town wedding, I sent my RSVP card back marked ‘yes’ before I could change my mind about giving myself a mini vacation. It was close enough that I could have done it without an overnight stay but that would have had me driving after dark which is something I’ve been avoiding for a couple of years now. So I went with Plan B which involved me inviting myself to stay the night at my niece’s cottage. The cottage is ten minutes away from the wedding venue so I got to see both sides of my family on the same day, killing two birds with one stone. To be clear I’m talking in metaphors here. No bird died even though a flock of wild turkeys looked death in the eye by crossing my path while I was driving in the boondocks. It was touch and go there for a few minutes while they took their sweet-ass time and I was jamming on my breaks. 

I’ve always enjoyed being in the country this time of the year. Seeing the Canadian geese squawking their way across the sky, the wild turkeys and pheasants that for some crazy reason seem to like being alongside the roads, and the Sandhill cranes out in the fields looking for corn left behind from the harvest are common sights and signs that summer is giving over to fall. I even got to see a family of deer crossing the road not fifty feet in front of my car which sounds like there should be a joke involving about why they did it. But the punchline isn't that funny; there was water on the other side of the road.

It was an out-of-ordinary venue for a wedding---an Indian casino---for the bride’s third wedding and the groom’s first. The place was picked because the location was central to the guests who had to come from different parts of the state. She’s a great-niece on my husband’s side of the family and she had a tumultuous first marriage and a second marriage that ended tragically. There are decades in between us but her widowhood came close on the heels of mine so we often got seated next to each other at family parties. Funny how that works out. Together but alone in a crowd. Then last year she showed up at the Christmas party with the man she just married.

Back to my side of the family: I spent my summers growing up at the cottage my niece now owns, so my inviting myself to stay overnight was not a stretch of etiquette. Since the day she bought it, I’ve had a standing invitation to use the place anytime I want. I went early so we’d get some visiting time in before I had to leave for the 5:30 ceremony. I was only at the wedding a few hours before I had to leave or be forced to drive back to the cottage after dark when small, furry animals would have risked becoming my road kill, but it was enough time to cover the wedding basics. The casino has a huge buffet where we ate and ate and ate. And after the wait staff cleared the dishes away and the cake was cut they gave us each a ten dollar coupon to play the slots. That emptied out the private room they’d rented of just about everyone but the bride, her three her kids---who weren’t allowed on the casino floor---and the asthmatics. 

Smoke has been known to give me asthma attacks and although smoking is no longer allowed in any other public places in Michigan, Indian casinos are exempted. I’m guessing this 147 acre place has become a mecca for sucking on cigarettes. Just getting to the private room from valet parking where I was told to park, I had to walk the entire length of the casino---past all 2,000 slots machines, a wifi café---whatever that is---all the table games and the glass-fronted poker rooms. The smoke was overwhelming and the people sitting in the dim-lite casino in front of the slot machines with their dancing neon lights didn’t look like they were having fun. Their glassy-eyed stares made me feel sorry for them. And I kind of felt sorry for the bride when her guests scattered like roaches once they got their coupons. 

When I got home I found a message on my answering machine from Levi’s kennel. “Levi is okay,” the owner said right out of the gate but they’d lost their power and a few trees on their wooded acreage. There had been tornado warning that forced everyone down to their basements and a neighborhood in between where I live and the kennel had lost some roof tops to straight line winds. Less than a mile away from the kennel a wide path of trees had been mowed down like grass in a public park, but the kennel has sound-proof walls so the boarders didn’t hear the wind whipping through the pines, or so the kennel owner assured me. Levi was glad to see me and even happier to get in the car to leave. 

Money Spent: $96 for two nights and three days for Levi's kennel, $40 for a wedding gift, $5 to tip the valet and $40 on a new blouse. Now I have to get back to my downsizing to help defray the cost of my mini vacation. Oh but it was worth it, just seeing the morning come across the lake of my youth slowly revealing the sailboat masts and the docks extending over the water whispered to my soul and reminded me of how grateful I am for the childhood my parents gave me and my brother. Now my granny-nanny niece is doing the same for her two grandsons and I got to see them interact up close and personal during my time spent at the cottage. But I'm lucky I didn't come home with teething marks and slobber on my shoes. The baby loved my shiny Mary Janes. ©

An Afternoon with my Two Favorite People

Friday night I packed the back of my Chevy Trax up with an oddball collection of stuff, all with one thing connecting them to another---my parents.  There was a coat and hat rack from the turn-of-century, a small side table/book case my dad made, a box of silverware, a box of containing embroidery pieces my mom did, a few of her hand crocheted dollies, a baby quilt she made for either my brother or me, a quilt she made for my dolls, a set of embroidery quilt blocks that never got put together and my brother’s and my baby blankets. I was actually worried I’d get into a rear in collision on the way to the lake and these things I’ve been holding onto would get destroyed before I had a chance to put them up for grabs.

The next day I almost fulfilled that car accident vision in my head and it would have been a doozy. I was in the right hand lane of the expressway going through the busy city and after passing a large convoy of slow moving military equipment in the center lane, I put my turn signal on to pull in front of the head truck in the convoy and at the exact, same time a car in the far left lane was doing same. We came towards each other like two fat and happy sports fans coming together for a belly bump. And like a synchronized ballet we both saw each other at the same time and jerked ourselves back to where we came from, the belly bump not completed. Thank goodness! I would bet money that the young guy driving that head military truck was peeing his pants. I know I would have been if I hadn’t just emptied my bladder at home five minutes before the almost pileup of heavy equipment that surely would have closed the highway down for hours. At least my obituary would have noted the fact that I always follow the rules of life. “She died in a fiery crash, her turn signal still flashing when the fire department arrived.” 

I met my two nieces at a popular bakery/restaurant for lunch before going over to the family cottage to have what one of my nieces dubbed an episode of the Antiques Road Show. After the waitress took our orders my oldest niece told the waitress to bring her the check and I protested telling her to give it to me. The waitress said, “The first one to speak up wins.” My younger niece laughed and said, she told her husband that’s exactly what would happen. Niece #1 always has an excuse for taking the check, this time it was because niece #2 had a birthday in August and I was bringing family treasures out for them to pick through. One time niece #1's excuse for taking the check was, “I just got a new credit card and I want to see if it works.” When hearing that, her nephew naively asking, “Why wouldn’t it? You have to apply to get them” which had everyone howling with laughter. 

Niece #1 is enamored with all things mid-century and she was thrilled to get my mom’s silverware. Before I gave the set to her I researched to find the pattern name on Replacements Ltd. and I had to go through 28 pages of flatware before it popped up. When I saw that ‘1950’ release date, I was so excited that she’s lucky I didn’t call her because it was after midnight. Replacements Ltd. is a great resource for finding missing pieces of vintage and antique crystal, china and flatware sets. I love Google. I was also able to find the building plans for the revolving book case/end table that my dad built for my mom’s 1958 Christmas present. I have my ways of paying my niece back for lunches. I snapped those plans up on e-Bay. She was a teacher and will enjoy that show-and-tell prop.

But the most fun part of the day was when niece #2 told a long-drawn out story about a trip she made to Pet Smart to buy a goldfish and they wouldn’t sell it to her after asking what size tank she had (15 gallons) and how many fish she already had (three). She was told her a fish would die with four in a tank that size and then she’d come back wanting a replacement. “What if I sign a pledge not to bring back a dead fish for replacement, would you sell it to me then?” “Nope.” “You’re serious!” “Very.” “Can I see your manager?” After telling the manager she’s got four grandchildren and she wanted a forth fish so they’d each have one to name the manager told her if she didn’t quit trying to buy a fish they’d have to ask her to leave the store. She ended the story by saying she went to another store that confirmed the fact that four fish in a fifteen gallon tank is too many. PETA guidelines. “So you won’t sell me one either?” “I’ll sell you anything you want,” the clerk said. Niece #1 and I had tears running down our cheeks we were laughing so hard. Niece #2 has always had a great sense of humor and a personality that makes her fun to be around but until that afternoon I didn’t realize that she could easily do standup comedy. ©

Fourth of July Kisses and Misses

When you’re a septuagenarian the 4th of July comes with many memories. For me those memories usually include bodies of water, family potlucks, small-town or boat parades, fireworks and The Kiss. No one could ever forget their very first kiss if it took place with the whooshes, crackling hisses and booms that come with pops of brilliant colors bursting overhead in the night sky. Oh! My! God! I was fifteen and he was seventeen and when he died nine-ten years ago they had to cut him out of his house because he was so obese. I’m glad that teenage crush burned itself out because I would have hated a life that included cooking for a man who ate himself to death.

How did the crush end? Exactly one year after The Kiss he gave me a line of hickeys that went from my ear all the way down to my cleavage. I was so naïve I didn’t even know what they were until my brother told me I’d better cover those up before our mother saw them. Not an easy thing to do at a lake cottage where we spent half our days in the water, but for the next few days I lived in a flannel shirt and if my mother knew why I was bundled up, she never let on. And thus my very first crush ended. On the next 4th of July when he again came to stay at his friend’s cottage, I was no longer drooling over his beautiful face and taken in by his flattering words. 

 

The year of our bicentennial was another memorable 4th of July. You might remember that year we celebrated the nation’s birthday for the entire summer, not just on the fourth. There were festivals and fairs, synchronized church bells, a flotilla of ships like no other on the Hudson River in Operation Sail, a laser beam via satellite cut a star-spangled ribbon here on earth and a landing pad was built for UFOs to come help us celebrate. Red, white and blue clothing, food and product packaging was everywhere that summer. I even stood in a long line to sign a copy of the Declaration of Independence that was buried in a 100 year time capsule. America’s creativity was in high gear.

 

That was 1976 and Don and I went a little crazy collecting every souvenir we could get our hands on. We were sure saving them for the next fifty years would make us rich. The problem was lots of other people had the same idea and all those special edition postage stamps and coins, glasses, cups, hats, jewelry, newspapers, fast food wrappings, Liberty Bells, quilt patterns and dishes are still in my basement, in a souvenir wooden crate put out by the Anheuser-Busch brewery. My husband didn’t drink but that didn’t stop Don from buying two of those boxes of bicentennial beer, the bottles from which got sold off individually twenty years ago. My all-time favorite bicentennial souvenir, though, is hanging in the back of my closet. It’s a long, loose fitting hippie-style dress with a smocked front that I made out of a light weight “homespun” cream colored fabric with small, 1976 dated flags and fireworks printed all over it. I wore it to every weekend festival, parade and bluegrass jamboree we could find that summer of ’76. Like I said, we went a little overboard and we lapped up all the patriotic theme celebrations within a 100 mile radius. My only regret is that I don’t have a photo of me wearing that dress. It was the best summer of my life. 

 

There were lots of other years when my 4th of July memories all blend into one of two categories: 1) the years when we’d lounge around a lake at either my parent’s cottage or at a cottage with my husband’s family. Food, family and roasting marshmallows over campfires after dark. It doesn’t get much better than that; or 2) the years we’d take off on mini vacations, antique hunting at garage sales and flea markets along Lake Michigan on our way up north. When we’d get there the best part was waking up in a tent pitched in a state park and hearing the waves washing the shore and the seagulls calling us down to the sandy beach. 

 

For my entire life, I’ve claimed the 4th of July as my favorite holiday and I’ve meant it. It represents family, fun, apple pie and patriotism. And now I miss it, the way it used to be. I miss the smell of large bodies of water and fireworks. I miss the family storytellers and jokesters, the ladies who made the best dishes to pass and guys who gave the warmest hugs. I miss how the strangers we met on mini vacations had the time for friendly exchanges. I miss having a president who didn’t embarrass me! I miss the certainty I used to feel that the better, most altruistic side of ourselves and others will always rise to the top and guide our nation down the path our Founding Fathers, in their infinite wisdom, envisioned for us. Hopefully, the checks and balances our constitution promises will kick in with the mid-terms and, like that line of hickeys I got on the Fourth, the current administration’s total lack of credibility and decorum will prove to be an anomaly that will do no permanent damage. ©

 

the beer case, stock photo, mine is in better condition