The Day Trip and the Fancy-do Restaurants

 

Thursday I went on a restaurant hop to a tourist town along Lake Michigan. Restaurant hops are popular events at my senior center and they do a couple a year. The way these restaurant hops work is we’ll have a salad or soup at one swanky place---this year it was on the fifth floor of a hotel with ceiling-to-floor glass walls on two sides. Needless to say, the views were as incredible as was the spinach almond salad with dried cherries and bacon balsamic vinaigrette with a side of warm flat bread that I had pre-ordered before the day trip. Then the 50 of us split off into little informal groups to shop for an hour and half along the tourist hub of specialty stores before meeting up at another restaurant for the main course. That was at an Irish pub and those who had them claimed the beer floats were incredible. I’m not a beer drinker and can’t wrap my head around the concept of ice cream and beer together in a glass but West Michigan is getting quite the reputation for its micro-breweries and unusual offerings in the higher end bars. I had turkey breast slices layered with avocado, applewood-smoked bacon, lettuce, tomato and onion with Chipotle aioli on grilled sourdough bread plus cottage fries. It was great!

More shopping was on the schedule after that and before the dessert course of wonderful creations served on the whitest tablecloths you can imagine. It was an elegant place in a converted, 120 year old storefront on Main Street where we could watch the tourists walking by. I had coconut panna cotta with pineapple, tapioca and cilantro. Very different than anything I’d ever had before which is why I choose it and it was easy on the palate---light but flavorful. On day trips like this I love sitting down in a restaurant and having your heart’s desire brought to you without having to go through the ritual of everyone at the table reading a menu and changing their minds a hundred times. When we sign up for these trips we all pre-order from a choice of three things for each course.

I’m not a fan of window shopping (or purposeful shopping for that matter) and if I would have remained alone on this trip I probably would have found a shady place to people watch or read part of the time and I would have been perfectly content doing it. But another widow who lost her husband a year after I lost Don and I are slowly building a relationship and she invited me to tag along with her and another woman as they checked out the boutiques. They are going to Ireland in the fall with a group from the senior hall and they were using this day trip to get to know each other better since they will be sharing a room on their overseas adventure. The senior hall sponsors a guided, overseas trip once a year and if I was inclined to go abroad I’d feel safe traveling that way. If they ever pick Paris or Alaska as a destination I will probably be tempted beyond my ability to say no. It’s not on my Bucket List to travel but I’d love to see the Louvre in Paris and Glacier Bay in Alaska via an inside passage cruise. Thankfully, I’d have nine months to “train” and get in better shape for a trip like that. The day after the restaurant hop I was so wiped out I could hardly move. Walking in the sun and riding in cramped seats and my old bones don’t mix well.

In case anyone is wondering what a restaurant hop costs, we each paid $36.00 and that included the 3-course meal and non-alcoholic beverages, gratuities and transportation. Our senior hall doesn’t make money off any of our trips and events so they are as affordable as they can possibly be for what we get in return. Next month I’m going on another day trip, this time to our state capital where we’ll be dining on a riverboat cruise.

I have been known to "bring Don along" on these day trips via my ash locket with his picture and date of birth and death inside. I sometimes wear it for courage and Thursday I noticed that my shopping companion had an unusual pendant on her necklace. It was a circular glass piece surrounded by diamonds and it held her husband's wedding ring. Inside of the glass---in the center of the ring---were tiny things floating around---a cross, a yellow ribbon, a boat, etc., that represented different parts of his life. I like my more discrete heart-shaped locket with its tiny pocket for ashes better BUT if I had seen one of those pendants first, before having Don's ring incorporated into a beaded necklace, I would have bought it. See what I missed by not being a fan of the Home Shopping channel!  ©

Wedding Bands and Borrowed Courage

I finally got it back…my husband’s wedding ring that was incorporated into an opera length necklace. It was made by a woman who does bead work for craft shows and small boutiques. She did a good job but how could I not like it considering I picked out all the beads that she used.

Did you know that in colonial America the Puritans thought adorning your body with a wedding ring was immoral, wasteful? Instead of giving a ring during a wedding ceremony a man would pledge his devotion by giving his bride a thimble engraved with her initials. It was practical and useful in a time when all women had to sew if she didn’t want her family to go to church naked. And they went to church a lot in those days. When I was young and first getting interested in antiques it was a fad to collect initialed thimbles and if you were lucky enough to find one that had the end of the thimble removed you knew it was used as a make-shift ring by a Puritan woman who wasn’t all that keen on following rules and living a moral life. She could switch that thimble back and forth between the tip of her middle finger and up her ring finger when she wanted to add a little sin into her schedule. And don’t we all want that from time to time? When I wear my beaded necklace with Don’s wedding band incorporated I can slip that ring on my finger and I will feel like a double agent with a secret. I can pretend my ring fidgeting is a signal to other fans of Puritan style sinning. Party on, ladies, I’ve got a ring on my finger!

The second photo (below) is of my lion charm necklace which symbolizes my need to have courage throughout 2013. (See my New Year’s Eve post if you want more information on the idea of having a One Word Inspiration to take the place of resolutions.) It’s just a cheap craft store charm and chain but I only wear it when I’m going someplace alone where I need to be reminded to have courage in doing so. I was half of a couple for 42 years and the transition to being single in a couple’s world still feels like I’m walking naked in a dream---and that’s not a pretty visual when you’re my age. I haven’t gone to a restaurant alone yet, for example, still haven’t done many things I’d like to start doing again. So I’m taking my courageous lion with me in the spring to a breakfast-only café and the farmer’s market in a near-by tourist town. I want my summer time Saturday morning routine back! I couldn’t bring myself to go that market last year because I wasn’t ready to face the vendors' questions about why Don wasn’t with me. But life goes on and so shall I with a little borrowed courage from a lion charm or a beaded necklace. ©

“He felt lighter than he had in weeks, and he realized that the monster he had been running from wasn’t really a monster after all. It was simply that place in the heart that holds the measure of your history, the joy and the grief, the laughter and the tears, the magic and the wonder; all the ingredients that add up to the story of a life well lived.”

Lilli Jolgren Day, author of The Wonder of Ordinary Magic

Ghost in the House

A little background here first before I tell you what my ghost has been doing: I have three wedding bands and I rarely wear any of them unless I’m going somewhere and then Don usually had to remind me to put a ring on my finger. I found that gesture so sweet and sentimental on his part, but that’s another story for another day. I hate wearing jewelry and always have. One ring, a diamond incrusted band of white gold, I got on my wedding day and that is reserved for dress up events. Then I have a tungsten ring which is considered to be the most wear-resistant material on the planet and that’s the one that I wear most often. Then I have a cheap band that, at times, fits better than the other two. That band is the one that’s been hanging on the bulletin board for nearly ten years.

In all those years that ring has hung on the bulletin board it’s never, ever fallen off the pin----until after Don passed away. The first time it happened was the day the minister came to the house to plan Don’s service. After he left, I opened up my computer cabinet and that ring was sitting right in front of the monitor. I picked it up, started laughing and I said out loud: “It’s true! They DO send messages from the other side!” I’d actually forgotten the band was on the bulletin board and it took me an hour to figure out where it had come from. None the less, I took its sudden appearance as a sign that Don approved of the service I had just planned. The spirit was happy, I thought, and he’ll fly away.

Wrong. The second time the silver band appeared where I hadn’t left it I found it on the floor a short distance from the computer cabinet. This time I thoroughly examined the pin that I hung the ring on. It seems secure enough. I wiggled the door the bulletin board is attached to, moved it back and forth trying to make the ring fall off the pin. It didn’t. How in the heck had the band fallen not once but twice? Ironically---or not---I found the ring on the floor just after a friend had been here to inventory Don’s gun collection for a large annual gun show and auction. If I truly believed in spirits---and I’m heading in that direction---I’d think Don is none too pleased with my decision to get his collection into the Cadillac of local gun auctions. Why else would his spirit throw the ring on the floor at that particular time? “Sorry, buddy boy, we don’t count ghost votes in this house. Don't try to make me feel guilty!”

The third time the ring came up missing from its home of ten years I found it on top of my checkbook. I don’t even want to guess what that’s supposed to mean, assuming Don’s spirit really is sending me messages from the other side. This time I briefly considered Crazy Gluing the band to the bulletin board, but for now I think I’ll let my little house guest keep playing with my head. Or maybe I’m just afraid that if I Crazy Glue the ring to the board someday I’ll find that whole big board with the ring attached tossed around the room and then I really will believe in ghosts. ©