Frugalism? Frugal Minimalism? And What About RWE?

With a title like that, you have got to be wondering where I am coming from. Where I am coming from is almost three weeks of being heavily involved in my father's medical situation, starting with the broke femur on February 8. The great news is that he has been making a stunning comeback for his age and is already walking, slowly but steadily, with a walker, and the PT team hopes to graduate him back to his rollator in the next few weeks. He will be returning to his apartment (one floor below him right now) about mid-March. 

As I earlier today emailed my dear friend David, I am exhausted. With all the positive news on the Dad front, I feel as if I can finally stand down. Seeing him today and his changed attitude really drove that feeling home. I think that is why I am so exhausted: it is all hitting me and sinking in. 

So now let's turn to the here and the now.

I recently read this book after seeing Gabe Bult (who I watch on YouTube) rave about it. I get a kick out of Gabe; he reminds me of my son Sam at times. Gabe was so enthusiastic about this book that I got it from the library (of course I checked it from the library: FREE BOOKS):

I noted (in a text to the same David mentioned above) that Sasaki is post-Marie Kondo and her "spark joy" approach (which I still don't buy into) and I found him easier to read. (Although, in tip #26 of "55 tips to help you say goodbye to your things," he does praise Kondo for her "killer phrase" and writes that feeling "the spark of joy will help you focus.")

But I don't live in a minimalist household. I am not a minimalist. I am married to a man who will never be a minimalist. But all the same, I found the book giving me some mental space. I found myself thinking of ways that I could make small changes.

Hence the opening photo. That is the guest bed in my study. Usually it is covered in papers, files full of papers, and miscellaneous stuff. Yeah, just stuff. When we had a guest earlier this month, I made a huge stack of the "stuff" and moved it temporarily to another room, then moved it back to the bed as soon as our guest left the next day. After reading Sasaki, I spent 30 minutes and went through all the mess, filing some, recycling some, shredding some, and just clearing the bed. 

Wow.

Whatever the state of minimalism in this household may be, I laugh to think that we get bonus points for being frugal. For example, this bottle of soy sauce came into my life in late 2010, when Sam moved out to Portland:

I just finished it 10 days ago. (And in part it lasted that long because Warren does not like or use soy sauce.) Per Sam, when I posted this photo on Instagram and called his attention to it: "End of an era." 

Sure was. 

And on other frugal fronts, we had an entirely free main course last week because, on a stop at Andrews House, our community center and the home of our legal clinics, there were two massive zucchini and boxes of small onions (Andrews House, among other things, runs a mobile market for people who have food needs). Yes, I took them; they had been sitting there all week. The zucchini were so large that there was enough for two batches of banana zucchini bread AND our supper of zucchini and onions, sauteéd and served over pasta.  

Free supper! Now that's frugal. Oh, wait, we had it the next day too! TWO suppers for free! 

For evening entertainment, I continue to work on the jigsaw puzzle in the evenings. Free entertainment, of course. (Just like reading or writing letters.) It is slowly coming together:

Finally, what about RWE? What the heck?

RWE is Ralph Waldo Emerson, the sage of Concord and the man who inspired Henry Thoreau to turn off the conventional path and seek his own direction. I have never read any Emerson, other than very short excerpts here and there. (In comparison, I have read a lot, although not all, of Thoreau's writings.) I have never read Emerson's most famous essay, "Self Reliance." But the opening of "Nature," also considered his other greatest work (and the one that grabbed Thoreau who heard Emerson read it while Thoreau was an undergraduate at Harvard) drew me in:

TO go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society. I am not solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody is with me. But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars. 

Let him look at the stars. Be still, my heart.

So what about RWE? I hesitate to say I will go on an Emerson deep dive. But I may (may, mind you) dabble a bit more in his work. After all, life is a journey, not a destination. (And yes, RWE wrote that too.)

Reflections on Pickles and Poetry

Of course I still have this book on my shelf! 

Way, way, way back in the day, I purchased (through Scholastic Books, the source of all my school-era books), a slim volume of poetry with the enchanting name of Reflections On a Gift of Watermelon Pickles and Other Modern Verse.

The copyright is 1966; I probably bought it in 1967 or 1968 (when I was in 6th or 7th grade). Looking through it now, as it nears 60 years of age, I smile at what passed for "Modern Verse," both in light of who the book was intended for (young adolescents) and what the poetry choices are. (The times they were a-Changin' even then.)

But the book resurfaced in my mind in recent days not because of poetry, but because of pickles. And reflections on pickles. Not watermelon pickles, but just old-fashioned homemade sweet pickles. 

My grandmother Nelson, who pops up in these pages every now and then, canned everything she could—tomatoes, beans, corn, just to name a few—especially at this time of year as the garden started to hit maximum production. And one of my sharpest memories of her canning still is the sweet pickles she put up every year.

They were delicious. Period. Only once decades later did I taste a homemade sweet pickle that recalled hers. The vendor at the farmers' market selling them never returned, so I could never talk pickles with him. 

Decades later from my grandmother's kitchen, looking at the recent gift of a cucumber, I wondered whether I could find a recipe to make refrigerator sweet pickles. Google complied and there I was, pickling away.

Cutting the cucumber:

Preparing the pickling syrup:

And pouring it over the cucumbers:

After that, I let them set for a day or so in the refrigerator, then tasted them. Ehhh, not quite what I was looking for, but not awful. That night, talking with my Aunt Gail, I told her about my experiment, first telling her how I still missed the sweet pickles that Grandma (her mother) made. Gail chuckled and said, "Mom made a 14-day pickle," which I have since Googled enough to know that is more work than I am willing to invest. 

"These pickles just aren't the right flavor, Gail," I said, explaining that the recipe took only celery seed for its spices, and I thought I would pour off the syrup, add a hefty shake of pickling spices, and reheat it.

Gail agreed immediately, then said she would add some extra sugar to boot. "You often have to do that with sweet pickles, April. Not a lot, but you know what I mean."

And indeed I did. The next day I poured the syrup off, added pickling spices and sugar, and poured the "new" syrup back over the cucumbers. 

The next day, I tried one. Okay, now we're talking.

The pickles are not my grandmother's, but they are close enough to bring back memories, all of them sweet.

I know, they are not watermelon pickles. Truth be told, I have never had watermelon pickles. But these words I am penning now are a result of the gift of a cucumber to be turned into refrigerator sweet pickles.

And that is close enough. 

As for the poetry collection itself, which you can find on Wikipedia, probably the real reason I have carried this book along with me for so long is the poem on the back cover, Eve Merriam's How To Eat A Poem:

Some poems stay fresh forever, pickled or not.

Commonplace Quote: A Chair

 

Photo by Kelly Miller on Unsplash

"Remembering is a chair that is hard to sit still in."

Sarah Broom, The Yellow House

"A chair that is hard to sit still in."

I have to think about that concept. 

When is it hard to sit still in a chair? 

When you are waiting for something to happen or someone to arrive. That happened to me last week when longtime friends who live far away but were in town for family matters said they would come over "sometime" that afternoon. Indeed they did come over, but for the last 30 minutes or so before their arrival, as the afternoon wore on, I found it impossible to stay seated for more than a few minutes. Instead I kept prowling by the front window to see if they had arrived yet.

Even reading could not hold me.

When else is it hard to sit still in a chair?

When the chair is uncomfortable. Goldilocks, of course, had this issue: too big, too hard, too whatever. I don't mind a hard chair, provided it has a sturdy back (our kitchen chairs, now in their 21st year of service). I have not had too many experiences with a chair that was physically uncomfortable to sit still in. 

So let me go back to the "remembering"  that starts the quote. 

If I am remembering something good, something warm, something satisfying, I can sink into that memory, let it wrap its arms around me like a comfortable, broken-in chair.

The chairs I can see from the couch in our downstairs study - those kitchen chairs, the green chairs in the living room  - those trigger some warm memories. I bought them all when I was moving out of the house my then-spouse and I had bought 12 years earlier with such high hopes. These chairs were my steps in making a new home for myself and my sons. They served us well then, they continued to serve us well when Ben went off to college and Warren joined our home. They are now in their 3rd home since their initial purchase, and I cannot imagine our house without them.

If I am remembering something that hurt me something that did damage - then the chair of remembering is indeed hard to sit still in. No matter how far I have come from that long ago event, it can still sting or worse. At that point, I am all over the place, wriggling on that chair, until I can let the memory go, take a deep breath, and once again sit easily in the chair. 

I saved that quote in late 2019. I would probably save it again, even when I find it easy to sit in that chair of memory. While typing this out this morning, my mind went back to my grandmother Skatzes and the study chairs she sat in - kitchen or living room - and the joy of sitting beside her. 

That is a chair of remembering I could sit still in for a long, long time. 

The More Things Stay the Same, the More They Change

 It was Madeleine L'Engle who first enlightened me to the value of turning adages inside out for new insights. Which is why instead of echoing Jean-Baptiste Alphone Karr's pronouncement that the more things change, the more they stay the same, I have come to realize that in my life, it is just the opposite.

I have been silent on this site for months. This will only be my seventh post for 2021, a number that no amount of polishing can make shine. That will likely not change until the fall for many reasons, none of them good, all of them good. Looking back at my last post, an embarrassing 58 days ago, I am already noting what has gone awry, amiss, on the lam, or, frankly, despite the sameness, changed radically.

I indeed went to Mayo in early June, as I noted in that long ago post. It was more than wonderful to see my oncologist in person; I was in tears. And while everything on paper stayed the same, we three (Dr. Leung, Warren, and I) suspect there may be deep-seated changes afoot. We head back to Mayo in mid-August for a long day of testing and then a meeting with my doctor. 

I am still working. That stayed the same. Only it didn't. I'm working through the rest of the calendar year, albeit on different terms.  I will not be mediating come the new school year (which starts in mid-August); I'm already several weeks into other projects. I now know just how Charlie Bucket felt when he found the Golden Ticket. 

My dear, close friends did come in June. We had a wonderful evening of glorious talk and laughter and tears and good food. It was one of those evenings where everything just shimmered. 

And my gardens. They need more than a few sentences, so I will share a few photos down below.

See you down the road.

The very first tomato (yes, there have been more)

The very first zucchini (not a success story, yet)

Broccoli (one of three)

The first (but not last) cabbages

Even a tiny batch of basil for pesto (another ongoing saga)

A Different Holiday Season

Who didn't have a different holiday season this year? 

Okay, Hanukkah was pretty much the same. Eight nights of lighting candles is always something I look forward to, and this year I used that time to read and reflect. I put my menorahs on a small table in our front window, watching out, as JewBelong reminds us, for the curtains and for anti-Semites. So far, so good. 

 The last night I didn't get the candles lit until late (because I had Poetry Group earlier), so they burned long into the evening. I own three menorahs and light them all, so there was a lot of light:

The last night

Christmas was a whole different experience this year. Normally, December is a rush of holiday concerts and performances for Warren, but in the pandemic world, live music is on hold indefinitely. That alone made December feel different. For example, we typically put off buying a Christmas tree until after the last performance (which would have been December 21 at the earliest); this year, we bought one out of sequence in part because there was no sequence and in part because, in Ohio at least, there were localized runs on trees, with various vendors selling out. We did get a tree. It stayed on our porch for several days until a windstorm made that a losing proposition, then it stood unadorned and unlit in our living room until, well, about the 21st. 

It wasn't for lack of enthusiasm; it was for lack of time and...time. Among other things, Warren was producing the first live (as in prerecorded concert) by the Symphony for the Symphony's Holiday Concert. (There had been an earlier prerecorded concert, produced and shot by the Farm Bureau for the annual Benefit in the Barn fundraiser; this one was solely a Symphony production.) Until it went live on Facebook on December 20, it consumed a lot of energy and time in this household. Want to see it? Here it is:

Actually, we had two trees this year. The first was a pine tree, the one I just wrote about. The second was a sculpture that we had bought back in January, in one of our Mayo cross country jaunts (the last of 2020, unbeknownst to us at the time). It sat outside all summer, but came in for the winter and Warren thought it would make a great tree. 

It did. And yes, that is a trout in the upper circle on the right. 

A tradition Warren and I started our very first Christmas is buying a special "us" ornament. We label these and keep them in a separate box. Over the years, we started buying an ornament from somewhere we had traveled that year as our "us"ornament, then expanded that to buying "us" ornaments from all of our trips in any year. So, for example, here is our 2012 ornament from Whitefish Point when we went to Lake Superior that year:

But guess what? We scrubbed all of our 2020 travel plans because of the pandemic. Other than the trip to Rochester for Mayo and Warren's Midwinter Conference in NY, both in January pre-pandemic, we went nowhere. 

Nowhere. Not Minneapolis (for the 2020 League of American Orchestras conference, which went virtual), not Rockland, Maine (to see our friends David and Vince in their retirement home), not to Indianapolis (for PASIC 2020, which went virtual) and, the hardest of all, not to Portland/Vancouver to be with our family out there. 

Not a single place. And although in the early years we bought an ornament unrelated to travel (that started in 2010), neither of us were going into a store just days before Christmas. And it wouldn't be the same, frankly.

I'm the one who solved the 2020 dilemma, shortly after Warren set up the second "tree." We still had the price tag from that sculpture, and, well, that was a 2020 trip:

(For the record, we paid $50.00, not $75.00, for our piece. I would also note that the sculptor is Tom Nelson, no relation.)

For such a screwy year, it is a perfectly heartfelt reminder of what 2020 held. 

We didn't hang a lot of ornaments this year. Our "us" ones, some others that held special meaning or just felt "right," three wood flowers that Mona, my grandchildren's beloved Nana, had each of them paint and then sent to me earlier this year:

Orlando's efforts

And one more. 

A very special one. 

Earlier this year, my good friend David (the one in Maine) announced that there would be "21 Days of Just David," and he would send me something by mail for 21 days. Sometimes it was a postcard. Sometimes it was a bumpersticker. Sometimes it was a heartfelt letter. Sometimes it was dirt. (There's a story behind that too.) One of the packages arrived much later (he had warned me) and turned out to be an ornament of Frodo Baggins as played by Elijah Wood in the movies "The Lord of the Rings." 

Seriously. David had found someone on line in Canada who turned these out:

Why? David, Vince, and I together watched each of the three "Lord of the Rings" movies when each was released and all of us made fun of the agonizing faces Wood made as Frodo. That was 12+ hours of Frodo agonizing over every single breath he took, mind you. It became a running joke over the years between us. Here, for example, is David being Frodo as he does dishes:

Frodo/David agonizing over the dishes

You get the point. 

Of course the Frodo ornament had to go on the tree. I went running upstairs to my study to grab him and bring him down. 

There is a quote from the final movie on the back of this ornament and I teased David that the first sentence (minus the "Sam") would be my response to inane questions for the remainder of 2020:

May 2021 be brighter for us all. 

A Longer Commentary on August

Yesterday's post was not a teaser. Truly. It was the best I could do after almost an hour of staring at a blank screen. 

Last night Warren and I talked about many things, as we so often do: how his day went, how my day went, Court issues, Symphony issues, what the weekend holds. You get the idea. (Yes, our offices are only about five yards apart, but there are days where we can spin off into our programs and meetings, not reemerging until supper.) 

For the curious, the weekend looks a lot like the week, except that I do not turn to Court work at all, and Warren tries to minimize Symphony work. Warren works in his shop; I do laundry and read. Our at-home weekends never fail to disappoint my close friend Cindy, who often starts her Monday email to me with asking me about my weekend, this past week asked "Did you do anything FUN over the weekend?" Keeping within our Covid-19 restrictions in this state, she buys feed, buys groceries, shops at Goodwill, and sometimes eats out during her weekends. When I pointed out that I am still pretty much on medical lockdown, she emailed back that I "must be" getting restless by now and ready to GO DO SOMETHING.

Not really. The one thing I really wanted to do—travel west to my family and then northeast to friends in Maine—got scrubbed months ago. Those trips aren't coming back this year and I have made peace with that. But otherwise, while I would like matters to be different, I am more than satisfied with my stay-at-home life. I have not been in my office at Court for over five months; all of us have had to learn new ways to do our old jobs. Life rolls on. 

As I mentioned yesterday, August has held some hard times. A close friend/colleague had a serious medical crisis erupt in her family and that hurt both professionally, because we had to work around her absence and the uncertainty of her return, and personally, because we are such good friends. The major medical crisis started to resolve positively when she found herself in ER. None of this was Covid-19, for which all of us are grateful. Other close friends are dealing with the death of a beloved dog. Someone else near and dear to my heart is struggling with major depression. There are some family stressors (larger family, not me and Warren) going on. In none of these situations can I show up and hug the person, which is what I want to do. I can only talk on the phone or text or send wishes into the air for them.

August has been heavy at times.

But the rest has been good. Today was the livestream funeral mass of a longtime friend and colleague who died back in the winter; watching that brought back wonderful memories even while I cried. I had a wonderful, uplifting long phone call with a young friend who is headed back to college for a career change and our talk reminded me of the joy and power of direction. Our Legal Clinic continues to operate virtually; I am the volunteer who assigns the attorneys so I have firsthand knowledge of who we are serving and how our attorneys are providing these people hope and advice and direction. The Symphony participated in its 6th Benefit in the Barn, tackling hunger and food insecurity in our county and one adjoining county. Go here to watch it; that's Warren speaking in the beginning.  Between the Clinic and the Symphony, I am reminded how I am always humbled with the strength of our community. 

And our Poetry Group started meeting again, by Zoom. That was a good thing, because Emily had been sulking. We meet again this Sunday and I can't wait.

Emily D. sulking 

And then there was a surprise this month: a stunning, amazing, never-saw-it-coming-ever surprise. About a week ago I received an email from a name I did not recognize, titled "Uncle Ski." 

Uncle Ski was my uncle, an engaging, wonderful man who died seven years ago. I blogged about him after his death; you can read my words here. So the title on the email was so specific that I thought it was not spam or a phishing attempt, and opened it.

It was a lovely email from someone, a man named Sam, who read my blog post all these years later and reached out to me directly. After thanking me for my words, Sam wrote "I really appreciated reading it because it gave me some perspective on myself."  Then he dropped the bombshell: "Your Uncle Ski was my grandfather." 

I had to catch my breath. I'm still catching it.

Sam and I have exchanged several emails. My stepcousin once removed (his mother was my Uncle Ski's daughter) is a writer and blogger. Imagine that. You can find his blog at All the Biscuits in Georgia. He just saw his oldest son ship off to his first Navy deployment, a fact that would have made Uncle Ski, who served his whole life in the Navy, immensely proud. I have given Sam my dad's phone number and encouraged him to call him; my dad, when I told him what had happened, marveled at the connection, then said, "Oh, I have a lot of stories to tell him about his grandfather." 

You could hear the anticipation in his voice.

100 Words

Warren and I had a long evening last night for First Friday. We ate at home, then went back down, Warren working,  Amanda and I chatting with parents looking for their children’s artwork on display.

Once back home, we were tired and cold and hungry.

“What about popcorn?”

So we made a bowl of popcorn and sat together on the couch eating, the shared contentment reminding me of my childhood. Popcorn was the go-to snack in my family when I was growing up: it was cheap, it was easy to make in quantity, it was filling.

There was always enough.

Dumpster Diving With The Best Of Them

"Did the butter get thrown out too?"

Dad looked pained. "Look in the freezer. It should be in there."

It wasn't.

This is not a tale of butter that mysteriously disappeared. This is instead a story of combining households and generations and lifestyles.

My brother Mark and his wife Jackie are selling their home and moving into my dad's house, the one we moved into in 1970 and in which he continues to live today, first with his shrinking family, then with my mother, and. finally, after she moved into memory care last November, by himself. Mark and Jackie recently hit a financial wall, not of their own doing, that, as they each characterized it, was the straw that broke the camel's back, the camel in this case being their ability to make their mortgage payment and pay their bills and pay for Jackie's medical insurance, as the just announced cut to her hours eliminated her employer-paid health insurance. It was the insurance that was the last straw; given Jackie's health issues, "going without insurance" is not an option. So they made the difficult but solid decision to sell their house while they are on the upside of their mortgage and move into the old home place. (Back in 2018, I interviewed Mark and Jackie about their grocery budget given the money issues and the health issues.) With Dad a month away from turning 86, still in good health but, as he puts it, old, I think we are all, starting with Dad, relieved that he will no longer be living alone.

The house is large; Mark and Jackie will take over the upstairs, all three will share the kitchen and the bathroom. As a major part of that move, both households are downsizing. Jackie, Mark, and a crew of loyal neighbors are deep-cleaning Dad's house for the first time in...ten years? Twenty? Since 1970?

Don't get me wrong. Dad and Mom did not keep a dirty house. But Mom's ability to do housework disappeared years ago due to physical limitations, and Dad's ability to keep up with everything diminished as he aged and as Mom took more and more of his time. You wouldn't walk into the house ever and notice anything much more than dusty shelves and accumulated clutter on the counters and surfaces, but as Mark and Jackie prepare the house for their move, their hard efforts are showing just how much dust and dirt and grime had accumulated over almost 50 years.

So back to the butter. One of the tasks Jackie undertook yesterday was cleaning Dad's refrigerator for the first time in...a long time. Again, nothing was filthy and there was no spoiled food, but..yeah, it was overdue. Jackie scrubbed shelves, she wiped down bottles and containers, and when she found items that were past their pull date, she pulled them.

Note: Jackie's mother, Judy, was an RN. Jackie can and does wash her hands with more attention than most of us ever even think of doing. Judy taught Jackie well about food safety, about keeping surfaces (counters, sinks, refrigerators) clean, about safe food preparation. Those early life lessons have served Jackie and her husband and children well over the years. Those lessons also include paying scrupulous attention to pull dates and "use by" dates.

Second Note: Dad was not raised by an RN. Neither was I. Dad, in fact, lived his early years without electricity, without running water, without refrigeration. You get the point. I, of course, grew up with electricity, running water, and refrigeration, but believe that food is more durable than what we give it credit for, especially non-perishable items and items kept frozen. I also believe strongly that "use by" dates are, for the most part, something foisted on us by food manufacturers (note my word choice: manufacturers—we eat manufactured food in this country! ) who want us to continually be buying their food items "fresh" (like a can has a "freshness" quality to it). So while Dad and I talked this morning about the butter, he talked about how his family prepared and kept food when he was growing up and how that butter in the freezer would keep 20 years.

So where was the butter? When I quizzed my brother when he and Jackie showed up later, he said "probably in one of those trash bags near the top of the trash container." (We were already outside, near the big trash tote.)

I didn't miss a beat. I popped open the lid, opened the bag closest to the top (the contents of which were still cool), and rummaged around. First up was a never-opened bag of pecan halves. Score! Next were the two pounds of butter, still cold. Score!

Jackie, who was out of the porch cleaning something, called over, laughing. "I can buy you butter, April! And I'm not eating at your house!" I called back, "You can't eat butter anyway, you're lactose intolerant!"

I took my finds inside to show Dad, who grinned. He was happy. Mark, knowing the vast gulf on food that separate me and Jackie, laughed.

When Jackie came back in the house, we both stood in front of the built-in cabinets in which Mom had kept baking items and spices. I looked at her: "You opened this yet?" Jackie shook her head.

We opened the doors. It was a hodgepodge of things: some boxed mixes (Mom was truly a bride of the early 1950s; convenience food was what everyone used and she never really gave up that habit), an empty plastic container, and a somewhat full canister. (I opened that one: powdered sugar.) There was an unopened box of corn starch, an old opened box of baking soda, and an opened container of petrified baking powder. There was a whole drawer of spices, some of which, as I looked closer, probably predated my parents moving into the house 49 years ago.

Oh my.

"Let me just take these all," I said, grabbing some grocery sacks. I dumped the items we knew were past redemption: the petrified baking powder, the old soda. But the rest?

"I'll sort them out when I get home."

We bagged it all. I put the butter and the pecan halves into the bags as well, hugged Dad, and left.

The snazzy Tupperware container is on the left, the Jiffy mix is on the right

When I got home to Warren, I was excited. "Guess what I found! The butter! Guess what else I found! Come look!"

Warren dutifully looked. I then spread my treasures on the table and went through what I had brought home. I kept the powdered sugar, both in the canister (a cool circa 1970 Tupperware model) and an unopened bag of the same. The regular sugar made the cut. I kept the mixes—brownies, lemon bars, pumpkin spice cookies—because I sometimes bake for other occasions where a box mix is not the end of the world. I even kept the Jiffy Corn Muffin Mix, which, until I was well into my teens, constituted the only "cornbread" I really ever ate, with the rare exception of Kentucky cornbread. (I was an adult before I realized the sweet stuff was considered "corncake" and the Kentucky stuff, unsweetened, was truly the cornbread. I still sweeten mine, but not as much as I did in younger days.)

t took me about 15 minutes to sort the spices, opening each one and smelling and tasting them. Nine of them I emptied and recycled the containers. 12 of them I kept.

The pecans? I'm about to start making pesto, and I use pecans in my pesto to thicken it. We just yesterday bought pecan halves at Aldi, where they run .529 cents an ounce, the cheapest in town. That six ounce bag I rescued? $3.17 worth of pecans at that price.

Sweet.

The butter went, of course, in the freezer. I texted Jackie a photo of it.

Fortunately, I am married to a man who gets me and shares my attitude towards food and towards food durability. He even smiled about the Jiffy mix: it's not anything we would ever buy, but what the heck, might as eat it up.

A little dumpster diving goes a long way.

The butter in its new home, our freezer

Things I Learned While Traveling

Warren and I just midweek (Thursday morning at 3:30 a.m. to be precise) returned from two weeks on the road: Delaware to Chicago, then all the way out to Portland/Vancouver (Washington, not B.C.), then down to Sacramento, California, back to Chicago by way of Amtrak, then home to Delaware by car. When I post my August financials, I will have a breakdown of the trip (even though some of it fell into September) and at some point sooner than later I will share a few pictures.

This post, in comparison, contains travel observations I scrawled in a notebook while riding the rails. This was not our first lengthy train expedition, but traveling is always an opportunity to broaden one's horizons. In no particular order, here's what stuck with me:

• Two small travel toothpastes are enough for two people for two weeks, no matter what your spouse says.
• When traveling as a couple, I will always pack more than I need.
• Don't leave the cheap flip-flops at home. Ever.
• When traveling by train, take every Fresh Air Break they call one, get out and walk around. Okay, every FAB except the one at 3:00 a.m.
• Amtrak meals (included with the roomette) are expansive. Don't eat everything. On the other hand, stockpile bottled water every chance an Amtrak employee offers you one. 
• The upper berth on an Amtrak roomette is adequate if you are into self-abasement.
• It is easier to sleep head to toe in the bottom berth than subject anyone to the top berth. (See previous entry.)
• The Milky Way is real. Look at it. (I know that, but it helps to be visually reminded from time to time.)
• Look out the window all the time. Even when it is dark. This is a big country. Treat yourself to it. 
• Practice patience. Practice mindfulness. You'll need it.

It's good to be back.

First Steps

My foot is back.

For the last four weeks, I have had one operable leg and foot (my left) and one inoperable leg and foot (my right). As I wrote about some weeks ago, I had surgery in early February to repair a torn peroneal tendon. I spent the first week with my foot and leg up to my knee swathed in bandages. I spent that week at home, reading voraciously (well, I always read voraciously, so I guess I read more voraciously). 

A week out of surgery, I exchanged the bandages for a nifty fiberglass cast. Given my choice of colors, I picked Symphony Blue:

Symphony Blue, you say? Why, of course:

My blue cast was still non-weight bearing, so I got around with the aid of this trusty scooter:

The scooter went like the wind on the smooth, polished halls of the county building in which our Court is located. And it was the envy of the walker/wheelchair set at the assisted living facility where Aunt Ginger lives. One wheelchair-bound tiny lady beckoned me over and said, with great longing in her voice, "I bet that goes fast." (A coworker, when I told him the story, laughed and pointed out that compared to the wheelchairs and walkers, I was in a sports car.)

With the scooter, I went back to work 12 days after the surgery. I couldn't (didn't) go to schools to conduct attendance mediations but there was other work to be done. All the same, I was counting down the days to March 9, when the cast would come off and I would get a walking boot. I was dreaming of being able to go to bed without a log (albeit a snazzy blue, lightweight one) wrapped around my leg, of being able to use our bathrooms without having to strong-arm myself on and off the toilet, of being able to stand on my own two feet again.

Yesterday morning very bright and early Warren and I were at my surgeon's complex. The technician cut the cast off and unwrapped my leg from the mummy-like cotton swaddling under the cast. X-rays, a chance to wipe off some of the dead skin that accumulates under a cast, a thumbs up from the PA, and the snipping and removal of the stitches followed. Then technician fitted me for the boot and I stood upright on both feet for the first time in weeks. All was great until she said, "Okay, take a step."

Take a step? I looked at her wild-eyed. I looked back at Warren. Take a step? Take a step? I had forgotten how to take a step! Warren stood up immediately and offered me his arm. Leaning heavily on him, I took one tentative, lumbering half-step. 

"I don't know how to walk." I was frozen and afraid to move. 

Talk about embarrassing.

In the end, I climbed back on my scooter (which I had hoped to return to rental that day rather than rent for an additional week) and scooted out of the examining area, out of the reception area, out of the building to our car. Warren was very sympathetic; nodding but not saying "I told you so" when I said I didn't trust my foot.

All the way home, all 30 minutes of that drive, I thought about walking. I have been walking for over 61 years. I thought through the act of walking: weight on foot, one foot in front of the other, left, right. Come on!  

We pulled in and I scootered to the first small step up to our slab porch. Warren made ready to help me get up and in, but I held up my hand. 

"No, I have to do this and I am going to walk."

And I did. Up the small stair, across the porch to the larger step into the house, into the house, and into the hall. My steps were halting and clumsy, but, by god, I was walking.

And I have been walking ever since. By midday yesterday, I had relearned the rhythm of walking. I'm not elegant by any means, and I get clumsy by day's end, but I am walking. The scooter is sitting in the living room where Warren parked it. I am delighting in being able to carry items in my hands, not having to back up the scooter to make a turn, in being mobile. 

Sleeping last night was heaven.

So this is my boot, my assistant foot, for four more weeks: 

I still won't be able to drive, but I head back into the schools for attendance mediations starting midweek this week. I am baking a pie tonight for our conductor, Jaime, for tomorrow's concert. 

The longest journey begins with a single step, according to the ancient Chinese philosopher Laozi. For me, yesterday, the longest journey started with me taking that first step down the hallway.

I haven't looked back.  

Inch One Hundred Seventy-One: Bone Tired and Other Little Bits

Last week I wrote about finishing the attendance mediation and speculated on its length and depth. I spent a part of the work week this week running numbers. Our department attended 384 mediations, 341 of which were mine. Our first mediation was, as I had speculated, in September 2016; the last was almost eight months to the day in May 2017.

And I am still recovering.

How tired am I? Yesterday I gave our bathroom a long overdue deep cleaning (and noted this morning as I showered that I still missed some spots in the shower). A byproduct of the cleaning was a stack of wet, dirty cleaning rags, destined for the washer. This morning, I started to hang up the rags to dry before I washed them, um, later today.

Really? Really?

You know you are really, really tired when you start to hang the wet dirty rags so they'll be dry when you go to wash them the same day.

While I type this, Warren is downtown doing some of the earliest grunt work for the weekend's Arts Festival. Time was, a decade plus ago, when I would have been downtown at about 5:30 a.m. to help chalk the streets and prep for the vendors to arrive. I have great memories of those days, but can't say I'm sorry they are over.

2007 Arts Festival Prep

A well-meaning friend recently reminded me that, in our early 60s, we are all at the age where we are more tired, take longer to heal, and generally are older, so I should not be so quick to look to my myeloma as the source of my exhaustion. I replied that I know we are all older, and I take that into consideration, but trust me, there is a difference between the two types of tiredness and I can tell the difference.

The caption of this post promises "Other Little Bits."

The first little bit is that I got my first poetry acceptance by an online journal. No pay, just publication. I am thrilled. More to the point, I am encouraged to go on.

The second little bit is about pets. When my sons were growing up, we did not have pets. Period. Their father was opposed to having a dog, ever. There were enough allergies in the house that a cat was ruled out as well. Ben, especially, very much wanted a dog, so it was no surprise to me when, as a young adult, he and Alise acquired Lucy, a medium large dog of indeterminate background (at least to me) and gentle temperament. Lucy accepted Ramona without much fuss and has tolerated her many depredations over the years.

Let's hope the newest addition to the family does as well. Meet Squishy Sanchez, joining Alise, Ben, Ramona, and Lucy this week:

I don't name them, folks, only meet them on social media.

Inch One Hundred Thirty-Nine: Chapter MCMLXVI, In Which I Am Reminded I Am Not 20 Or Even 30

When I was in my twenties and living and going to school out in Oregon, I drove cross-country more than once, setting all kinds of personal speed records. (This was back in the day when Montana and Wyoming allowed you to set your own speed limit provided it was "reasonable" for the road conditions.) With three drivers, I could get door to door, a distance of 2500 miles, in 48 hours, stopping only for gas, food to eat in the car, and bathroom breaks.

Now that was driving. But again, I was in my 20s when I did that.

I don't pretend that I am in my 20s. Or my 30s or 40s or 50s. I'm 60. I was not guaranteed I would ever reach 60, so I relish being 60. And at 60, I know my limitations, be they physical, mental, emotional, or any combination thereof.

So what was I doing driving cross-country across Indiana on US 30 at 11:30 p.m. last night, arriving home in Delaware close to 3:00 a.m. this morning?

Warren and I had the best of intentions. I was at Mayo earlier this week, we were supposed to leave Monday afternoon, and arrive home Tuesday early after a night in Oak Park. But more testing was ordered late in the day, which meant staying in Rochester a second night. By arriving early and taking a seat in a waiting area for over three hours on Tuesday, I managed to benefit from a cancellation and move my afternoon appointment to mid-morning, allowing us to leave the fair City of Medicine at noon. Great! With steady driving, we would be home before midnight, stopping briefly at Oak Park to retrieve items we had left for our return trip.

Well, that was the plan. And it held firm until we hit the worst ever traffic tie-up in west Chicago.  WORST EVER. It took us over an hour to crawl two miles. (I clocked it.) The cause was a badly damaged tanker; we saw tow trucks (plural) hauling it away. And the result was over two hours lost over a handful of miles.

We had a decision to make. Do we stay at Oak Park for a few hours, rest, and then drive some more? Or do we just keep driving? The latter won out, despite the little voice in my head screaming, "ARE YOU NUTS? ARE YOU CRAZY?" We stopped for 10 minutes in Oak Park to gather our goods, and then resumed the drive.

Goodbye, Chicago. Goodbye, Skyway. Hello, Indiana.

I drove a major chunk of Indiana, from Merrillville in the west to Warsaw in the east. That was so Warren could rest and drive the last leg into Ohio and home. To entertain myself, I softly sang show tunes, an old, old fallback from those long ago marathon drives. Once Warren took over, I fell into a numb trance, not quite awake, not quite asleep, just counting down the miles.

It is just past noon on Wednesday as I write this. I have been awake and up for some four hours, after about five hours of sleep. Warren went to work; I called off.  My body is reminding me sharply that I am not 20. Or any other age than the 60 I am.

But it is a beautiful fall day out. And I am home.

Inch One Hundred Nine: Lares and Penates

Lares were Roman deities who protected, among other things, crossroads and boundaries. Within a household, they protected all of those within the boundaries of the family line. Penates were the guardians of the pantry and wealth of the family, related to Vesta, the goddess of the hearth. Together, they were often worshiped in a family shrine.

Lares and penates. My desk and study are full of them.

A painted china pig, with chipped ears and one penny rattling around inside of it, a pig that was old when I first claimed it as my own as a child. A little ceramic owl, chosen from a collection of owls at calling hours for a friend who wanted her owls to go out into the community after her death. A little soft plastic Pegasus that will make its way into my novel. A  papier-mâché fish, which opens to reveal a cache of paperclips. A string of little wood houses, a few small rocks from Lake Superior, a skeleton Frida for Day of the Dead. A geode holding a dime won over a poetry bet and a piece of paper with a quote about poetry. A small framed picture of Warren.

If you sit at my desk and look at the walls and at the back of the door, which serves as a wall to my left, you will see more. There are photos and postcards of places I have been, poems,  two articles on writing, one of which is Neil Gaiman's thoughts about it. There is a cover off of the University of Chicago Magazine, showing a street sign for University Avenue covered in snow. On a bookshelf on the other side of the door are photos of Sam, Ben, Alise, Ramona, and Warren. Behind me in the small bookshelf: a Mason jar with marbles, a heavy glass horse head bookend I have had as long as the china pig, my engagement gong.

Years ago when I moved out of the house and into my first post-marriage space, I had a small study tucked into a walk-through space. My desk, a table, looked out onto an urban rooftop that could have graced any Edward Hopper urban painting. On the wall next to my desk, I taped anything that caught my eye. Quotes, photos or bits of photos, magazine pictures of Mini Coopers, buildings. By the time I moved out, I had covered a good six square feet or more of the wall. My study today is a variation of that wall.

My writing habits have changed over the last decade plus. I deliberately created this space but I rarely write—in the sense of creation—there. In the old days, the days of the apartment above the streets, I would make notes on buildings, put on headphones, and, often starting at 11:00 p.m. or later, bang out a 2500 word article on architecture while listening to Queen. Now I most often write in pen, usually somewhere other than my desk, then turn it into a column or a post while sitting at my desk surrounded by my lares and penates. This post started out on a concert program, while Warren played timpani up in front of me. I will carry this program home, carry it up to my study, and turn my scribbles into print.

When I read articles about decluttering and simplifying, my desk and its surrounds could be called clutter by the authors. Too much clutter.

And maybe someday I will feel that way. But for now I see lares and penates, guarding my desk, guarding my home, guarding my loves.

Inch Sixty-Three: Evening Walk

My blogging friend Darla over at Bay Side to Mountain Side  often takes her readers on walks through her neighborhoods. She always carries a camera (or else has a more sophisticated phone than I do—trust me, that's a low bar) and so her posts are punctuated with great photos showing you what she is seeing.

I thought about Darla as I walked last night. I don't carry a camera or iPad or any other device when I walk, so I told myself to pay attention to what I saw so that I could write this post later. Making myself pay attention required me to stay in the moment as I walked, instead of sorting through my schedule, court matters, or other issues. Not a bad way to walk, all in all.

A robin has nested in the ornamental cherry tree in our front flowerbed, about ten steps away from the front door. As soon as I opened the front door and stepped out, she swooped away to a nearby tree to give me time to move out of her area. That was how my walk started.

I tried to pay attention to small things:

• The spiderwort's deep purple-blue blooms in that same front flowerbed.
• A clipped lilac hedge with the lilacs in bloom. I stuck my face in the hedge, inhaling the fragrance.
• Irises blooming in front yards.
• An old hitching post on a quiet side street.

I walked in the immediate neighborhood, which is full of old, large houses, most built between the late 1800s and the early 1900s. It is a visually soothing streetscape, the house patterns familiar through the tens of thousands of steps I have taken in this town. I walked down the alley I used to live next to, back when Ben and Sam were younger. In the little court of houses behind my former house and the next yard, my friend Patricia was outside with her daughter and husband.

Patricia and I have hardly seen one another all winter and rushed into each other's arms.

"Patricia!"

"April!"

I stayed a little while to visit, admiring the new candle fixture on their front porch, sitting in my favorite spot at the kitchen island, catching up with my friend. Then we hugged goodbye and I continued my walk, heading another block and a half before turning back towards home.

Steve and Debbie have just moved (this Tuesday past) into their newly built house, downsizing from their larger estate out in the county. Steve was outside, attached by a leash to a small dog, and I called out birthday greetings (thank you, Facebook) before crossing the street to talk with him. Steve and Brie (the dog) and I ended up walking two blocks together, chatting about lot splits and building restrictions and the city planner. Steve is also a lawyer whose practice has included a lot of zoning law, as did mine when I practiced, so it was a good discussion.

As we went our separate ways, I thought about how far Steve and I have come in a quarter century of knowing one another. Steve is the only lawyer with whom I openly argued in court, with both of us drawing a sharp admonishment from an otherwise congenial judge. It took me a long time to get over our initial introduction, but I eventually came to admire his professional skills and genuinely enjoy him as an individual. When I said "welcome to the neighborhood," I meant it. (And who knew that Steve was such a softie when it comes to Brie?)

I was conscious that I am walking more slowly now than before winter wiped out the frequent walks. Some of that is due to not having my walking legs under me yet, coming off of that long icy layoff. Some of that is what the myeloma or the treatment or both combined continues to extract as a toll from my life. But I'm not racing anybody or anything, especially not the clock, as I walk, and did not dwell on my steps.

By the time I reached home, I was ready to be in. Warren was at a rehearsal and would not be home until later. There was a foil-covered paper plate on the front porch; my youngest brother sent home birthday cake via my parents, who had supper with him and his wife earlier in the evening.

As I turned into our driveway towards the front walk, the robin swooped off the nest, this time flying only as far as the ground under the pine tree.She was back on the nest even before I finished closing the storm door. Apparently she decided one slow walker was not a threat, or else she was tired and wanted to be back home, in for the night.

And that is how my walk ended, tired and back home for the night, one with the robin.

Inch Forty: Furniture

November was a stressed and hectic month in the family. My mother had a long-overdue knee replacement early in the month, and the triple whammy of major surgery, great pain, and dementia took a toll on all of us, but especially my father. While he was relieved of the 24/7 duty of steering my mom through the day, he all the same spent a huge number of hours by her side as without him to interpret the world for her, she is increasingly lost as to day, time, conversations, and events.

One day early in the nursing home stay, my dad and I went room to room in the upstairs of their house looking for a sewing box that is apparently non-existent now. (And where is the button tin, I wonder?) We opened countless dressers and bureaus looking for the safety pins I had hoped to find in the sewing box.

We never found the pins. But we did find drawer after drawer of abandoned projects: plastic canvas and yarns, aging sewing patterns, brightly colored material that may have been meant for a quilt. Dad quietly observed that my mother would never finish these now and I was almost tempted to offer to clear them all away, but wisely kept my mouth shut.

As we finished opening and searching the last drawer, Dad commented that he had an upstairs "full of old furniture." He's right. One room contains a stout bureau, stripped and refinished, that in my childhood had been a battered glossy white with a Roy Rogers decal on the top drawer right between the two pulls. Then there is the bureau at the top of the stairs, with drawers ranging from shallow at the top to deeper at the bottom on the left half, the right side being a door that swings open to reveal a large storage area without shelves or divisions. It is a dark piece and the wood of the door is very thin. When I was young, my mother stored flannel sheets and blankets on the right side.

I always liked that piece of furniture. There would have been a time in my life when I would have loved to have had that piece in my own home for sentimental reasons. But none of the furniture was ever proffered to any of us and it has all set in the empty upstairs for long years.

And now I am of an age and at a place in life when acquiring furniture, even childhood pieces, holds no appeal for me. I want less stuff, not more. I cannot imagine passing these pieces on to my children. In addition to the cost and risk of shipping them west, these pieces hold no emotional weight for Ben or Sam because they didn't grow up with them like I did.

I do not know how much longer my parents will remain in the house. It is a large, old, limestone structure, the second floor and basement out of reach of my mom, the bathroom a tiny, narrow add-on long after the original house was built. When they bought it in 1970, both my parents were in their 30s, with younger children, plenty of energy, and lots of dreams. That was almost 45 years ago. Now it is obvious that the house was not built for an elderly couple, one of whom has mobility problems. Dad has observed more than once that the house and yard (an acre) and outbuildings are increasingly more than he has the time and strength to tackle on a daily basis. Time, especially as my mother's needs grow, will be at an even greater premium than it already is, and the deep reserves of energy and plans my parents both once possessed have long been spent.

And when my parents do leave the house? There'll be an upstairs full of old furniture along with everything else: abandoned crafts and abandoned dreams, old blankets and old photographs, and the faint whisper of memories.

Inch Eleven: Sixes and Sevens

Our house is all at sixes and sevens.

Ben, Alise, and Ramona arrive on Saturday.

Until late Tuesday night, the living room and study were bare to the sub-flooring. The furniture is out in the hallway and jimmied into other rooms. We are replacing the original carpet (which just turned 50 this spring) and the new carpet got laid on Tuesday. Jeff, the installer, was there when I left for work that morning and there when I came home late from legal clinic at 9:00 p.m. The carpet is in, but most of the furniture is still out in the hall.

Ben, Alise, and Ramona arrive on Saturday.

In addition to taking out the carpet, Warren also painted both rooms this past week with the paint we bought two years ago for that very purpose. We bought it so long ago that we'd forgotten the colors. Fortunately, we still liked them. And fortunately, they go well with the new carpet.

Ben, Alise, and Ramona arrive on Saturday.

All of the first floor windows are bare. The ancient drapes hit the trash. Armed with a screwdriver and a pair of pliers, I took down the vertical blinds in the kitchen as well.

Ben, Alise, and Ramona arrive on Saturday.

All of the walls are bare and the paintings and pictures are stacked in the bedroom that Ben, Alise, and Ramona will be using. In fact, lots of things are stacked in the bedroom that Ben, Alise, and Ramona are using. The artwork is dusty and needs to be wiped down well before going back on the walls. Well, to be honest, everything in the house needs to be wiped down well. We have decided not to put the artwork back up until the week after next.

Ben, Alise, and Ramona arrive on Saturday.

There were boxes stacked in the other spare bedroom to be taken up to the attic. Those boxes went up on Sunday and the box of blocks and the box of marble blocks came down. I still need to wipe the dust off of those boxes. Now there are other boxes jamming the second bedroom and we will deal with those later. Like in June. The large case of resonators is now under our bed.

Ben, Alise, and Ramona arrive on Saturday.

In emptying the study and living room, I was forcefully reminded of just how much stuff we live with every day. Most of it is Warren's stuff, including some furniture going back three and four generations. But some of it is my stuff too. Seeing and moving so much of our stuff makes me want to get rid of more stuff. Even the china—the set my uncle sent back from post-war Japan to his younger sisters, my mom and my aunt Ginger—is stuff. Right now the china is taking up a third of the kitchen table.

Ben, Alise, and Ramona arrive on Saturday.

It is early in the week still and my punch list to get me to Saturday is deceptively short. I know, though, that each item represents an expenditure of time and effort. After all, there's all that stuff.

Ben, Alise, and Ramona arrive on Saturday.

It will get done. And there will be new stuff come Saturday: toys and books and a stroller and the stuff of a young family.

Because Ben, Alise, and Ramona arrive on Saturday.

This Space

The purple bannister (an inside joke) leading from the half landing to the front door of the apartment was gone, ripped from its sturdy wall mooring. One of the mounting brackets lolled upside down, almost torn out of the plaster. The landing walls were fingered up with dirty smears.

After Roger found the keys and unlocked the front door, we stepped into the apartment hallway, the long, slender hallway that runs some 100 plus feet from front to back. We walked to the front room, the large room with its three single light windows that look down on our core downtown.

"Oh," I said. Then I repeated it. "Oh."

Every direction, it was "oh." The nails pounded into the walls, the holes in the walls, a broken lower glass pane on the French doors leading into what was once a study, the hole in the glass about the size of a boot.

Th dirt. The squalor.

"This is nothing. You should have seen it before we carted out the garbage."

We moved through the apartment, room by room. More items nailed into walls. More holes in the walls. Broken wood panels in several of the original four panel interior doors. The antique blue glass fixture in the kitchen broken and hanging askew.

I felt a lump in my throat. This was the first time I had been back in this space since March 2005. And here it was, dirty. Forlorn. Abused.

"This space" is a third floor apartment the building owners had rehabbed ten years ago after it had sat empty and locked for a quarter of a century. "This space" is a 2000 square foot apartment atop a late nineteenth century commercial Italianate building in the heart of the downtown. "This space" in 2002 was a gleaming restoration and updating of the 1920s era apartment.

"This space" was where I lived for three years, first with Ben, then with Ben and Sam, then with Sam, from the time I began the long, slow, hard unwinding of my marriage to the time I began the long, slow, hard trek through my cancer treatment.

Roger, my longtime friend and part owner of the building, stood quietly beside me as I took in the damage. We had just come from lunch together, during which he told me of the current conditions of the apartment. I asked him if he had the keys with him and when he said he did, I impulsively said, "let's go see it."

And here I was, seeing it.

The front room, which had hosted Ben's graduation party and many a DI practice. My study, where I wrote and put my life back together. Sam's bedroom, which sat empty for the first year until his longing for his big brother overcame his anger and sadness towards me. Ben's room, where he found refuge for the last two years before college. The kitchen, which had seen numerous D & D tournaments and my parents' 50th wedding anniversary dinner. My "Live Like You Are Dying" party, which saw 100 plus people pack the kitchen, the front room, the study, and the long hallway full.

I moved out of the apartment when I fell too far behind on the rent and my advancing cancer made ever catching up rent and climbing daily the 44 or so stairs to reach home impossible. On the day I moved, a whole army of friends and family showed up to do the work. There was one quiet moment, when almost everyone was in transit between the two places and I just stood in an almost empty room and cried. My friend Linda found me and hugged me, then gave me a squeeze and said "I know it hurts. But the next step is a good step and you will get better." The next day, a second wave of friends descended upon the empty apartment and cleaned it to a gleam. And then I left it behind, handing the keys to Roger two days later after one final walk-through with him.

Until now.

After Roger and I closed the door and went our separate ways, I walked to the Symphony office to see Warren. I told him about going back to the apartment. Warren said he'd like to see the space as he never made it there when it was my home. (The "Live Like You Are Dying" party? He was playing percussion in "The Nutcracker" 60 miles away that night.) "I'd like to see it to place you there in my mind," he said.

Next time, I said. And when I got home, I emailed Roger and told him the same. Next time.

Next time I will be ready to show Warren the apace. Next time, I will be able to say "this is where I lived. This is where this part of my life played out." Next time I will be able to say, "here is where Sam and I watched the World Series late into the night when Boston won, here is where Caitie kept her drum set for two years, here is where I would sit and watch the snow come down." Next time I will be able to say all those things.

This time, though, I needed to see it without that overlay of explanations. This time I needed to let the memories rush past me up the stairs and swiftly down the hall, just beyond my fingertips.

And this time I needed to say "oh." And "oh" again. And nothing more.