Home

I've been thinking a lot about home--where it is, what it means.  I thought about it yesterday when the flight attendant said, "San Antonio" in a lilting voice, how I love this city and the people and places that make it what it is.

After five weeks away, it was good to land yesterday, to be met and picked up by my friend Pam, then delivered to my house and have her come inside and enjoy the first sighting of my newly upholstered furniture with me, delivered in my absence. Home is the place where a good friend meets you when you return and who oohs and aahs with you about what's new!

Sweet Kate next door had stacked five weeks of mail neatly and watered and trimmed my yard, and it felt good to walk into a clean house through a neat yard--making it easy for me to relax and plan Elena and Nathan's Halloween party Monday night. Home is the place where you have great neighbors.

Home is the place that holds your memories with you, the place where your tribe lives.  Cecelia called to offer me a much-needed massage, which I had this afternoon before heading to New Braunfels to celebrate Sharon's birthday together in a few minutes.

Home is also other places: Carlene's house where we can sit and talk and rest for hours; Day's beautifully remodeled house; Linda and Steve's table and sailboat; bright yellow leaves in New England whirring past as Mike and I look out the windows of his truck.

The first day back, I'm sort of dumbstruck, between Here and There, not quite sure what to do first, missing There and Them while looking forward to settling back with my people Here. I woke up from a nap wondering which borrowed room I was in, only to discover I was in my own bed in my own little room.

The refrigerator is virtually empty--except for bottles of kombuhca--so I got in the car last night and drove to a fast-food place for a late-night snack.  Tony gave me my free coke and reached out the window to squeeze my hand.  "I've missed you!" he said.  Home is where, when you return to it,  somebody has missed you.


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5000 Dreams

My friend Diana has introduced me to many things I love, including this blog by her friend Sherry who has lived for the past five years in Bali.

https://writingforselfdiscovery.com/2016/10/26/are-you-content-be-terrified/

I subscribe to her blog and always enjoy it; this one was particularly provocative and probably relevant to all of us at times.

I have had two wonderfully relaxing days at Carlene's!  As soon as she gets home from the eye doctor, she's driving me to Commerce to meet Mike and then Mike takes me to the airport early tomorrow to head for Texas.  I've been away five weeks and it's been such a great trip, every single day of it!

Fall Festival, Schenectady, New York

Mosaics with glass

A week ago this morning, we pulled over to see what was going on--and arrived early for the fall festival, another highlight of traveling duo.  We met a woman who made glass mosaics, listened to bluegrass music, tasted home-made breads, goat cheeses and pastries, and talked for a while to the people of Birds of Prey who rescue and rehabilitate owls and other injured birds.

After being rehabilitated, this owl was about to fly free

Nobody,  I mean nobody, would travel Mike's style, but me--and I love it.  Neither of us says no to either of us, and we are both filling up our bucket of photographs (for me) and flea markets and junk shops (for Mike) and best of all, meeting people.  In these weeks, we've been as far north as Maine and have visited fifteen states.  For miles after a stop, we talk about the encounters with birds, dogs, horses, and humans.

This Saturday morning was equally wonderful.  We'd tried Lancaster County last night, but it was jam packed with traffic and had become very commercialized since my last trip there.  What we found today was even better--Jim's Farmer's Market in Chambersburg, an Amish and Mennonite market serving great food and selling Amish crafts.  Little kids were riding a cart drawn by a miniature horse and helping their mothers make cotton candy and potato chips to sell.

This is our last night on the road.  We're traveling South on I81 and staying tonight in Wattsfull Motel, a motel I've stayed in many times, high on a hill, the wind beating against our door so hard it feels like the building is shaking. The Shenandoah Valley is beautiful, miles and miles of farmland and interesting barns, cows in fields and fields of corn.

It's hard to say good-bye to this trip.  Except for one unexpected detour down the stairs two weeks ago, it's been exactly the trip we set out to have.

Cape Cod Delight

There is no more peaceful place to wake up than Linda and Steve's house on Cape Cod.  Through open windows you can feel the breezes and hear the early morning sea birds and the sounds of Linda and Steve talking downstairs.

We wished we'd had more time to spend there, but we packed in a great visit with dear friends for two days.  They greeted us with a kabob dinner in their homey dining room, all decorated for a belated birthday party for me and a bag full of presents.  (In the early years of our friendship, Linda and I used to send each other a birthday party in a box, and she did it again, with her generous spirit and choice of wonderful books, calendars, and scents, along with Halloween toys for the kids.)

Then the second day, we got a tour including a sail, and we ended the day with dinner in Chatham and seeing the new Beatles movie in a thirty-seat theater, foregoing the debate.  Mike now loves Cape Cod and the Kots as much as I do!

Hagerstown, Maryland and New Hope, Pennsylvania

We spent the afternoon in Fredrick, Maryland,  where Mike had to have his brakes replaced.  Then we went to Hagerstown where we rented a room in a three story farmhouse.

A story is 13 wooden steps--I now know because I fell down the entire flight backwards that night.  There was a step outside the bathroom door that I didn't expect and when I fell on the landing I just kept going, thump thump thump, all the way down to the wall.

I now have a knot on the top of my head and bruises everywhere--unpleasant souvenirs from a fall.

The owner, a massage therapist, had arnica for the bruises and nothing seems to be broken, so we are carrying on.  Last night we arrived here in New Hope, Pennsylvania, a beautiful place on the water that divides Pennsylvania from New Jersey.

Mike wanted to go to a flea market in Lambertville, so we went over the bridge to New Jersey and moseyed for a bit, then had a good lunch in a Pennsylvania diner.  I'm home for the rest of the day, aching all over.

Falls Church, Virginia

What a great early-birthday weekend we've had with Day, Tom, Jackson, and Marcus!

On Saturday, we watched the Tennessee game that went into overtime. Day said, "I can't believe that's my mom yelling over a game!"  We had dinner on their beautiful new screened porch and Marcus made the grilled cheese sandwiches (his specialty) to go with the soup Day had made.

The Learys have three pretty new bathrooms
and a fantastic screened porch.
The boys have moved downstairs and Day and Tom
have moved upstairs--beautiful bedroom and new studio for Day. 

Marcus playing the sax on the new porch

Birthday lunch for Jackson, Day and me

Then Mike took us all out to dinner at a place the boys chose.  Jackson said, "Mike is so cool!  He knows everything about cars."

In three days, Jackson will be fifteen, and his number one interest right now is cars.  He's quiet and observant and loves to listen to people talking.  Marcus is eleven and he enjoys posting to his YouTube channel .  His hobbies at eleven are superheroes and comic books.

Yesterday we had a birthday brunch in Leesburg after walking around in Luckets looking at antiques.
Tom and the boys bought juggling pins and Mike bought silver dollars for the boys from a collector.

Day in one of our favorite antique shops in
Luckets--the hat room

Jackson and Tom practicing juggling in Luckets

Marcus with his new comic books

Day and her super-tall 15-year-old

Marcus enjoys antiques as much as the adults do,
especially old boxes

Last night before watching the debate and before taking Jackson to a party, Day and I opened birthday presents.  The Learys gave me a precious little robot girl, a reproduction of a rocket carnival ride, a traveling bag filled with goodies for the rest of our trip, and a cute print of two giraffes like one they have.   Day's 45th birthday present was a string of freshwater pearls, a blouse and two Texas T-shirts.

Our visit couldn't have been better!

Driving Through Southern Virginia

We had planned to make it to Northern Virginia to see Day and family, but there was a big crash on I81 and traffic was backed up for miles.  After sitting nearly still for two hours, we decided to stop for the night in Blackburn, VA--home of Virginia Tech--and drive on to Falls Church in the  morning. 

Mike and the Donkey

Window Dressing in Cleveland, VA

Mike's new pals

We went to Cleveland to find this former grocery store--because Mike
recently bought a sign that used to be on the store:
"Staple and Fancy Groceries"
Cleveland is now a veritable ghost town.

So many beautiful barns.
We stopped to talk to Larry, the owner of this one.

Appalachian Crafts and Stories

Mike and I share a love of this region and its crafts and stories and people.  It was just a coincidence that we landed in Jonesboro the day before the National Storytelling Event that happens there every October.

The little town in the mountains of Tennessee will be filled with stories all weekend, the best storytellers from all over the country, chosen from local and state storytelling events all year.  On the day before it started, the town was festive.

I bought a basket from Diane--a combination of Appalachian and Shaker style that she's perfected over 25 years of basket making. We talked to her for a good long while as she was set up in the visitor's center.  Mike had bought me a storyteller T-shirt there and I didn't realize until miles down the road that I'd left it at Diane's display.  I called and she said she'd mail it to me.

"What's your favorite part of the day?" I asked Mike last night.

"Talking to the people," he said.

It's like sparking flames when people take the time to listen to each other, asking questions, and telling stories.

Mike perks up his ears when strangers tell us from whence they come.  He's attuned to every detail: the best places to eat lobsters, the history of their places, and what they do there.   The best restaurants and sites come from the people who know their places.

We weren't able to stay for the festival this year, but plan to go next year.  There are huge white tents all over town where people gather to hear stories.  But we heard plenty in the streets and in the shops in town.  "Everybody has a story," Mike says.  And when he looks at old objects and signs, what he really wants to know are the stories behind them.

First night in a Tiny House

Well....

One night in a 98-square-foot tiny house (romantic as it may sound, in principle) is enough to make me reconsider the upsides of cheap motels.

There are Tiny Houses and there are Tiiiii-ny houses.  This one nestled in a mountain forest near Asheville is the latter: 98-square-feet.  Compost toilet.  A sleeping loft that you can only get to by a ladder with no handles and no light switch when you get there.

You get the picture.

However....

I have never laughed so much in my entire life.

For example....

Mike was taking inventory of the kitchen this morning.  "Ten knives for a fourteen-foot-house?  And cans of gluten-free soup?  A coffee grinder with an assortment of special beans. This is what every rich hippie needs!"

When we arrived, we observed every tee-nincy element of cuteness and walked to the nearby pond and fed the pet donkey, then we each brought in a change of clothes and toothbrush and read the entries in the guest book.  Every single one "loved" this place and found it "inspiring."

Most tiny houses (in the Tiny House movement) average about 400 square feet--and that was what we were expecting.  My bad--I didn't read the small print!

I am seriously ladder-challenged.  But there was no choice.  I had to climb a tiny ladder to get into bed and remember not to sit up during the night.  When the inevitable happened, I had to descend in a very awkward manner to go to the bathroom.  "I'm not going up there again," I told Mike, and I settled into the sofa on the ground floor for the rest of the night.   Mike said I fell asleep because the whole house rocked with my snoring and the bears in the area hid out not knowing what kind of beast made that sound.

I don't believe that part, however.

All I wanted tonight was a big room, a big bed, and a bathtub and we found all that in a charming Mom and Pop motel in Abington, Virginia, where I am about to soak for an hour in the bathtub.

We're driving up Highway 81 toward Falls Church tomorrow.

In my next post, I'll include pictures of the tiny house.  We had a great day in Jonesborough, Tennessee, where the National Storytelling Convention is commencing.  We met fun people everywhere we went including a Philadelphia couple who told us good places to go when we get there.

Newport, Tennessee

So far, the leaves are green with occasional touches of yellow, but these mountains are beautiful this October 5th morning.  Mike says this is the "next best day of his life."  (He says that a lot when we're together!)

We already have a tiny house in the mountains scheduled  for tonight.  Mike loves tiny houses--so do I--and the one we found on AirBnB looks delightful!

We spent our first night in Newport, Tennessee, in a beautiful hotel in the mountains and had a delicious Southern dinner at Lois' Restaurant.

While we do these fun things, we're listening to news of Matthew and hearing that Nellie is among the evacuees in Florida and hoping that Matthew fizzles before hitting land.

A random memory

For a while--late Sixties, early Seventies--most everybody I knew had (and didn't have) the same stuff: no dishwashers, no microwaves, no disposals, dispensers, compactors, passports, or color TV.

None of my friends had housekeepers, yard men, king-sized beds, garages, or walk-in closets.  Or rooms named "master bedroom," "powder room," or "family room." Being unconventional was a point of pride.

Most of us had small, cramped kitchens with irregular lighting and mismatched appliances. Inside the window sills, something was always growing--green potato and avocado vines in iced tea glasses, alfalfa sprouts and homemade yogurt in quart jars, heavy brown bread dough rising in crockery bowls.

Slowly, people started getting things--a microwave here, a dishwasher there--and each acquisition was big news in the world of coupledom.   "Hey, we got a color TV!" our friends Robert and Ruth  called one day to announce. (This was shortly after we acquired a telephone, and we imagined that it must have cost "thousands of dollars.")

All married couples got fondue pots as wedding presents, but only one couple used theirs.  At their house, we sat around with chunks of hard bread and dipped them into melted cheeses with names I'd never heard of.

At a big Southern Living cooking show, my friend-at-the-time, Sherry,  (who'd bought me a ticket) introduced me to her friend-at-the-time this way:  "This is Linda.  The one I told you about who doesn't have a microwave, a television, an air conditioning or a dishwasher."

"Or an electric can opener or knife sharpener," I added helpfully, fleshing out my identity as one who hadn't yet caved to advertising.

I acquired a secret yearning for real furniture at some point--a hutch cabinet, a table with four matching chairs, a headboard--but those were deemed less important than motorcycles.  We had two 250cc motorcycles and a dog (which we'd sold our wedding silver to buy) and a baby on the way.

Then we met Peter and Rita.  Peter was a doctor and Rita and I taught at UTSA together.  They had granite counter tops and matching appliances and chairs and sofas from a furniture store; we had a tiny kitchen with zinnia wallpaper, a green refrigerator and a yellow stove in our rented cabin on the hill.  We had two director's chair, a make-shift sofa (a trundle bed actually) and pillows on the floor where our friends gathered to dine on chalupas and spaghetti, smoke Salem cigarettes and drink Lancer's Rose.

What really capped off the difference between my kitchen and Rita's were fat packages of deli sliced meat, an assortment of breads, and honeydew melons!  To me, Rita's kitchen looked like a stage set in a movie.

Our fridge was stocked with iced tea and Lone Star beer; Rita and Peter had about twenty bottles of wine for Pete's sake!  Nobody we knew had more than one bottle of wine at a time, if any.  For sandwiches, I used leftover roast beef or pimiento cheese on homemade seven-grain bread--while at Rita's, you could choose from several kinds of deli meat and cheese, pasta salad from a deli, along with olives, pesto, guacamole, and hummus, each in little plastic cartons.

A Sunday in Lawrenceville

Lawrenceville First Baptist Church is the first place I knew when we moved here fifty-one years ago,.  I met Nellie here--and other friends from my new school, Central Gwinnett. My wedding took place here in 1967.  It's also the place where my daddy's memorial service was held nearly fifteen years ago. It's filled with memories.

The large downtown church has been remodeled and changed a lot since those early days, but I still know many good people there and I love hearing them say how much they still miss my daddy.

After church, we had lunch at Folks with some of Carlene's friends from Sunday School. 

"What does the Sunday lunch group call itself?" I asked.

"We just call ourselves the widows," Carlene said.

Person after person told me, "Your mother is the prettiest woman in the church," and "You are so lucky to have Carlene for your mother," and "She is the only 91-year-old woman you'll see RUNNING to catch the elevator!"  To me, they say, "You look just like your daddy."

"I call her my mama," Kwabena said.

"That makes me your sister," I said. 

At lunch, Martha asked Marlene, "What cruise ship are you going on?"

"I can't hear you," Marlene yelled back across the table--to which Martha repeated the question.

"I hate to say what I thought you said," Marlene said, laughing at her own dirty mind.  To me, she said, "I thought she said screws!"

Finally, Martha yelled across the table, "Do you need hearing aids?"

One of the women told how the doctor always asks her if she's sexually active.  "Next time, I'm going to say NO, are you?"

"It's none of his business really, but if you have eleven great-grandchildren, you aren't sexually active."

These women are witty and and quick-witted (all but the one in green who has dementia) and Carlene is the oldest of the group.  They knew each other's husbands and have been together through hard times and good times for many years.

Lawrenceville has changed a lot since the days I lived here.  Back then, we were pretty much all Anglo; now it's a diverse population from all over the world.  One of the ministers is from Moldova.  The pharmacist who gave me my flu shot yesterday is Nigerian.  Mona at the juice bar is from Haiti.  The manicurist and hair stylist are bothVietnamese.  In the high school where I graduated, there are between fifty and sixty languages spoken.

The traffic is unbelievable and ethnic restaurants are everywhere.  But some things never change: pine trees, iced tea, kudzu, red clay and sweet, funny women who lunch together after church.

Snapshots: First Day of October

Mary, Marlene, Carlene, and Margaret

Yesterday, Carlene and I went out to Marlene's for pizza and coloring in her coloring book:

Marlene, Carlene, Me and Margaret

Today we got news from Texas that Nathan got two pigs for his 4H project:

And that Miss Elena represented Thailand in a Culture Parade at her school:

Then Mary came and invited us to drive out to a 182nd church birthday celebration and gospel music at Salem Baptist Church in Lilburn:

This woman is a hundred years old
and was singing and dancing on the stage

Harmony is four, like Elena.
Her baby's name is Baby