Signs of Fall

Signs of fall are all around. It's moving-in weekend for SUNY Fredonia students, and the Fredonia Farm Festival is in full swing. Quiet summer nights have given way to the loud voices and late-night laughter of our new student-neighbors as they make their way home from house parties and bars. On my way to the farmers' market early this morning, I saw the tell-tale beer cans nestled in the grass and the first few colored leaves on the sidewalk. Although fall is my favorite season, these early signs of fall are bittersweet. If fall is coming, that means summer is ending. And the end of summer means our last child will be leaving for her last year of college. It means the house will soon feel too big, too quiet, and too empty. It means taking baby spinach and baby kale for green smoothies off my weekly shopping list and adding non-vegetarian entrees to our weekly menus. It means my girl won't be perched on the other couch doing her nails or making bracelets while we watch Mad About You or Gilmore Girls. It means I won't see her ponytail swinging as she heads out for a run. It means she won't be making us laugh at the dinner table or on the tennis court. It means we have to get used to being two again, instead of three or four or five. We've been sending kids off to college for nine years now, but somehow it never gets any easier. How can it? How can we stop missing our kids when they are not with us? My mom is eighty-one, and she still misses my sister, my brothers and me.  She treasures letters, phone calls, and visits and wishes they were all more frequent.  So maybe it's something you never really make peace with, you just handle it as gracefully as possible and keep your door and heart open.  For everything there is a season.

Cape May

The first time we went to Cape May our kids were six, four, and one. One-year-old Emily spent most of the week asleep in her little umbrella stroller, but the rest of us fell in love with the Victorian houses and the little shops, with Sunset Beach and Bodacious Bagels, and especially with the sun, the sand, and the ocean! We returned the next summer, and then four more times over the next twelve years. We always went with some (or all) of my family--sometimes renting a house together and sometimes getting adjoining motel rooms. Some of our fondest memories are from those Cape May vacations--despite years when it was cold and rainy or when the water was too full of jellyfish to swim or when half the group had the stomach flu. To me there's something almost magical about a beach vacation, and I've been missing the ocean. After a seven-year dry spell, we are headed back to Cape May. Before long we'll be packing all three kids (now twenty-six, twenty-four, and twenty-one) and all our beach gear into our good old minivan to make the long drive to the Jersey shore. When we get there, we'll be cosily sharing one hotel room--tightly equipped with two double beds, a sofa bed, and a cot, so we're hoping hard for good weather and cheerful moods! I know things will be different than they used to be: Bodacious Bagels is no longer in business; my kids won't have their cousins to hang out with; Steve and I won't have my siblings and their spouses to laugh and talk and walk with; my mom won't be whizzing by on her bicycle. But I still can't wait to get there. I can't wait to see the mighty Atlantic Ocean and the brightly colored houses of Cape May again; I can't wait to take early morning walks on the quiet beach and spend afternoons reading in the sun. But what I'm looking forward to more than anything is having our little family together again for a few blissful, uninterrupted days.

Heavenly Hash Cake

Although we only spent a couple of years in Muncie, Indiana, we picked up a lot of things in that little community that we've carried with us ever since. It was there I learned to knit. There I fell in love with Little Kiddles. There we learned about candy strings. And it was there my mom acquired her recipe for heavenly hash cake.  For those of you who have never had it, heavenly hash is a fudgy chocolate cake topped with a layer of marshmallow cream and then with creamy chocolate frosting. It quickly became a family favorite. It was almost always my sister's choice for her "good report card" treat. My mom made it for church picnics, for family reunions, and for the fancy coffee hours my dad used to host for his university students. When there was a pan of heavenly hash cake in our house, all was well. The heavenly hash cake recipe is one of the oldest in my recipe box, and I used to make it fairly often. But then, for some reason, I stopped making it. In fact, until this past week, the last time I made it may well have been for my middle child's 7th birthday. That same dear child just celebrated his 24th birthday. He came home for a visit a few days after his birthday, and the day before he arrived, I found myself pulling out the old recipe to make a belated birthday/4th of July heavenly hash cake.  As I was spreading the thick chocolately batter into the pan, the comforting, familiar smell sent me hurtling back through time and space to the kitchens of my childhood. The next day when the cake was finished and my boy was home, I took my first heavenly bite, and once again, all was well.

Burlap Curtains and Locust Shells

Two things happened recently that reminded me of my childhood. First, I read this Facebook post by author Anna Quindlen:

"Can I get a cicada update from hither and yon? Ours seem to have progressed from deafening to loud to persistent, which perhaps means one morning we will wake to discover they are gone. Two cicada uses, one small, one great: when you drop one onto the surface of the pond and a bass comes at it like a torpedo, you instantly understand the genius of fly fishing. And when you think that this brood of cicadas will not reappear for 17 years, it makes you soberly consider the passage of time. I will be 77 when they emerge again--that is, if I am very lucky."

Second, I saw this picture on Pinterest with the caption "DIY Burlap Curtains":

In the mid-1960s, when my dad was in graduate school at Ball State University, we lived in the Anthony Apartments, one of Ball State's off-campus housing communities.  Although my mom had very little extra money to work with, she did her best to make the small student apartment a home for the six of us. One of her thrifty ideas was making burlap curtains for the window in the tiny bedroom I shared with my sister and brothers.  They weren't as long or as grand as the ones in the picture above, but they did have red and white rick-rack trim sewed along the bottom.  Because the apartment was so small, we spent a lot of time outside, and because our budget was so lean, we mostly did things that didn't cost any money like taking walks.  But as I've mentioned before, a walk with my mom was never just a walk. One of the things we did on our walks during our two summers in Muncie was look for locust shells.  When we found one, we'd gently pluck it off the tree and take it home where we would attach it to our burlap curtains.  On the rare occasions we found a locust (actually a cicada) still in its shell, Mom would tell us the story of how baby cicadas hatch from their eggs then burrow underground where they stay for up to seventeen years before they emerge, crawl up a tree, shed their shells, and begin their adult lives. So to me, locust shells have always been more fascinating than ugly--though I've come to understand not everyone (including my husband) feels this way! As I remembered those burlap curtains with the parade of locust shells climbing up them, I was thinking about about how much the world has changed since I was a kid. I don't know where my mom got the idea of making burlap curtains--maybe she thought it up herself or perhaps she saw them in someone else's apartment--but today, with just a couple of clicks, I can find dozens of pictures and posts of burlap curtains as well as hundreds of other clever, creative, inexpensive window covering ideas.  And when I was a kid, the authors of the books I loved to read seemed remote, almost magical, and not-quite-real; now I can read the wonderful, intriguing, everyday details of authors' lives on their blogs and websites; I can even find out on Facebook that an author I admire shares my fascination with cicadas! Yet, at the same time, I was also thinking how little the world has changed: people have always found unique ways to decorate on a budget and amuse their kids at the same time; cicadas continue to emerge from their underground hiding places, reminding us of their presence with their persistent singing and by the shells they leave behind.  Since I often worry about the world my children are inheriting, I like being reminded that change can be good and technology can connect us in ways I never would have imagined, but I also like knowing that some things don't change.

The First Day of Summer

For most of his adult life, my dad collected half dollars. Somewhere along the way, after we kids had all grown up, he decided to divide up his collection among us. I can't remember how many we each got, but I do remember agonizing over what to do with my share. I kept them for a while then finally decided to put them toward a special purchase: an L.L. Bean tent, two sleeping bags, and a Coleman cooler. We loved our new green tent. Its first outing was at a campground on little Squam Lake; I was five months pregnant with our first child, and Steve and I were spending the summer with friends in New Hampshire. Later on, when our kids were small, we pitched the green tent in our backyard every summer and camped there. I loved those nights filled with stories, games, snacks, and giggling kids.  When the kids got bigger and we could no longer fit comfortably in our four-man green tent, we bought a second smaller L.L. Bean tent to accommodate the five of us on our yearly campouts with friends on Chautauqua Lake. The trips to Camp Chautauqua gradually died out as the kids grew up, got jobs, and moved away. But every summer I still get a hankering to sleep in the tent. The kids can't be talked into backyard camping anymore, but good old Steve usually humors me and agrees to sleep outside once a summer.  Well, since the longest day of the year fell on a Friday this year and since none of our kids were home, I thought sleeping in the tent would be a perfect way to celebrate the first day of summer.  Steve surprised me by saying it was "not a bad idea," right off the bat, and although we spent a few minutes talking about whether we actually had the energy to set up the tent and lug down all the bedding and whether our backs could take sleeping on the ground, we decided to go ahead and pitch the smaller two-man tent. As far as I'm concerned, the two best parts of sleeping in a tent are falling asleep to the sound of crickets and cicadas and waking up to sunlight peeping through the tent windows. The time in between of trying to get comfortable on the hard, bumpy ground is the price you pay for enjoying the falling asleep and waking up!  Last night, soon after we zipped ourselves into the tent, a loud party started in a backyard of a house down the street; instead of crickets and cicadas, there were loud music and even louder voices and laughter.  Finally about 2:30, Steve woke me up and said he hadn't been to sleep yet and he was sorry but he had to go inside.  I nibbled on a couple of graham crackers and pulled out my Kindle, which I discovered is much better for middle-of-the-night tent reading than the old flashlight/book combo I've used in the past, and eventually fell back asleep when the party ended.  I woke up early this morning to a cacophony of crows and the sun shining through the tent's plastic skylight. Steve and I will both be tired later today, and it might take more convincing to get him to spend another night in the tent with me, but I'm pretty sure I'll never lose my fondness for sleeping outside, even if it's only in the backyard!

A Good Man

My dad was overweight for most of his adult life; he changed careers three times before settling uneasily into his job as a professor of education at YSU; he and my mom didn't get along all that well; and he suffered from depression, diabetes, and psoriasis. His was not an easy life, and yet he was a good man and a good dad. Although it's hard for me to believe now, there were a few times when we were growing up that I wished he'd go away and not come back. Yet I barely remember those dark days. What I remember is a dad who sat on the floor and played blocks with us, who made up bedtime stories about two hippopotamuses named Daisy and Lulabelle, who taught us to play four-square, who left packages of M & M's under our pillows on nights when he had a late class, and who gave us Friday night dimes to spend in town. When we grew up and left home, he supplied us with cameras, air conditioners, VCRs, and computers. He kept us connected with his Weekend Update emails and his frequent telephone calls. And since he didn't travel much, especially toward the end of his life, he made sure we knew we were always welcome visitors. As Father's Day approaches, I treasure the memories I have of my dad. Although he was far from perfect, just like the rest of us, he got the big stuff right: first of all, my dad was always in my corner--I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that he would go to bat for me if I needed him to; second, he believed in me--he thought I was smarter, more athletic, and more talented than I actually was; and finally, he loved me--completely and absolutely. So although it's been eleven years since I've bought a card or a gift for my dad on Father's Day, I am blessed every single day by the gifts he left with me.

Ancora Imparo ("I Am Still Learning")

I've been reading through an old journal recently. In an entry from September of 1986, I wrote, "It's so hard being grown-up sometimes." I was twenty-five, and Steve was twenty-six. If I had looked back on those early days of adulthood without reading through the journal, I probably would have said those were simpler, easier times. We were young and healthy.  We were back in school, we had relatively few possessions, we didn't own a house yet. In fact, I would have said we were relatively carefree.  But my journal entries tell a different story, a story I'd almost forgotten.  We were a couple of months away from the birth of our first child, and we were wrestling with decisions about the future, having second thoughts about careers, worrying about how we were going to support ourselves and our child. When I was a kid, I remember marveling at everything my parents knew and could do. I wondered how I would ever learn it all. There's a scene in the novel The Watsons Go to Birmingham--1963 by Christopher Paul Curtis where the narrator, ten-year-old Kenny, says, "Dad, I don't think I'll ever know what to do when I'm grown-up.  It seems like you and Momma know a lot of things that I can never learn. It seems real scary." In the fall of 1986, I was feeling much the same way. How did people learn to be grown-ups? There were so many things about life we didn't know.  What should we do or who should we call when the baby wouldn't stop crying, when we couldn't use the easiest tax form anymore, when the engine light came on, when the plaster crumbled, when the pipes were leaking or clogged or frozen, when something on my skin looked funny, when Steve noticed a strange lump on the back of his leg, when one of our kids was sick or hurt or heartbroken? But as time passed, we learned how to soothe a baby, how to do our taxes, how to use a pipe wrench; we found doctors, plumbers, and mechanics we trusted; we figured out how to tend to broken bones and broken hearts. Yet even now, twenty-seven years later, I have to admit, there are still a great many things that I don't know, and I suspect if I asked my mom, she'd say the same thing. So I guess what I've learned more than anything else is that you're never done learning. Plus, I was right all along--it is hard being grown up sometimes.