Finding Joy

 This week, as I watch a number of my beloved institutions struggle with change, I have been trying to counter my sadness by searching for joy.  Monday was the last day of Volunteer Coordinator at the Botanical Garden whom I love, the woman who was the heart of their volunteer program, had her last day.  I was very sad to have this happen in addition to all the difficult changes that will be coming in the Propagation Program.  And it was the last day for one of the two volunteers in our Monday section.   Last week some time, Lew, the Garden Director, stopped by as he does to chat and said he was looking for a phrase to capture the Garden experience.  So I’ve been thinking about that.  What came to mind immediately was Joy.  I further thought about Joy and came up with Finding Joy.  Lew changed it to Embrace the Joy.   So Monday, I suggested to the volunteers in my section, after we do the minimum necessary work of plant tending and stocking of the sales deck, we go out into the Garden and just have a stroll around.  I wanted to Find the Joy.  And the good news is, I found it, in a beautiful flower we ooo-ed and aahhhh-ed over, in the evident joy of my co-workers just being in the beautiful Botanical Garden.  I thought it is really important to seek Joy in my days.

So I’ve been doing that this week.  Yesterday as I was out to lunch with a friend down on the beautiful 4th Street, I found joy in the company of my friend, hearing what she has been up to.  She’s so humble and such a wonderful giving person.  I feel fortunate to call her my friend.  The meal was outstanding.  We chatted with the young couple sitting next to us who had a 8 week old baby with them.  It was a joy to hear about their family, to hear how happy they are in the glow of new life in their family.  Then later I went for a long walk with a walking buddy.  I found joy listening to hear tell of all her adventures, kayaking in the Delta.  I even saw pictures of her new love.  

Last night we went to the Director’s Reception at the Botanical Garden.  I don’t know how we got invited, but we were happy we did.  It was a lovely party just to thank us for our support of the Garden.  The catered food was more than ample for our delicious dinner.  There was a live string group playing happy music.  Everyone there was in a good mood.  They even had activities for us to do on a stroll through the Garden.  I have been finding joy everywhere.  Liam brings joy whenever he comes to visit.  He and Arne came on Sunday (the third Sunday this month).  Liam has been building and putting together a 3-D wooden motorcycle for Bob.  It is amazing to watch his focus and his incredible ability to follow the pictures to build this motorcycle.  There were 420 pieces!  Such joy when he finished it.   I truly believe joy comes from an artesian well deep within  me, but is invited out by my choice to recognize it.  The world is full of all things.  I want to embrace the joy of my experiences.  

 

A Day in the City

 Bob and I went into San Francisco today to meet friends at SFMOMA (the Modern Art Museum) to see the new Diego Rivera exhibit.  It was fun to get on BART and ride into the City, then walk to the Museum.  We shared a latte while we waited for our friends to come.  The exhibit was not terribly crowded so we could easily move from painting to painting and read the placards.  With more than 500 paintings, murals and sketches, it is the biggest collection of his work ever shown.  The way it was displayed was outstanding, with videos of his biggest murals dominating whole rooms and the painting hung on beautiful sheets of hardwood.  But overall, I can’t say I liked his work.  His hollow eyed peasants portrayed such sadness in many aspects of their lives that it depressed me.  Not even the paintings of mothers and children had any life in them at all.  His politics played into his art.  I don’t think he was a very nice man (perhaps I came with that impression from the movie “Frieda”), but his painting tells of an unhappy man looking at the dark side of life.  

After we’d seen enough, we were invited back to our friends’ condo for more conversation and a delicious late lunch.  It was an elegant table and a most delicious lunch of air fried salmon served on a bed of tasty lentils and a salad with oranges and avocados.  We laughed and told stories and heard what we’d each been up to in the last year.  The afternoon sped by and soon it was 5 o-clock and time to go.  We took a Lyft ride to BART, riding through the Tenderloin district on the way back Civic Center Station.  It was depressing and made me wonder whose responsibility it is to solve the intractable problem of homelessness and drug addiction.  The hopelessness of the people was overwhelming.  The area around the BART station had so deteriorated since I’d been there before the pandemic, I wouldn’t feel safe going there after dark.  I wondered how an artist would portray the homeless and the terrible political division in our country these days?  What would Diego Rivera have seen and painted these days?

Returning home, on this lovely day, I thought how special this day was and how very fortunate we are. 

                        

Our 56th Anniversary

 Today is our 56th Wedding Anniversary.  It’s hard to imagine that Bob and I have been married so long.  It’s the longest living relationship I have.  Fifty-six years!  I remember our Wedding Day so very well.  It was a pretty simple wedding by today’s standards.  About a hundred of our friends and relatives came to the Alhambra Church of Religious Science at 4 pm on that smoggy hot afternoon in July.  Rev. Carmelita Trowbridge, the minister at the church, our family’s minister, married us.  It was unusual, maybe even unheard of, to have a female minister.  Bob always was proud he was married by Carmelita.  It was a very progressive act.  All my grandparents, but one, Mama Rolfe had died.  She was there.  And Bob’s only grandparent, Grandma Grandin, his mother’s mother, was there.  Growing up I had 6 grandparents because of an earlier divorce while Bob only had 2, his father’s father and his mother’s mother because of earlier deaths.  I don’t remember if we had music.  I remember the processional, my father escorting me in to the church and handing me off to Bob. My sister, my maid of honor, taking my flowers.   I don’t remember the ceremony.  And then we were married.  I do remember the funny short photographer who went around telling us “to sparkle pretty.”  Afterwards we had a simple juice and cookie reception in the church social hall to please Bob’s mother’s sensibilities.  Off we went for three days at the Santa Barbara Biltmore, a really fancy hotel for our honeymoon

I don’t think when any couple marries that they can imagine what a life together will be like.  I know I didn’t.  The ups and the downs, the unexpected twists and turns of a life make sense only looking back.  We’ve been very fortunate.  Bob has always been employed and we’ve had enough money to be comfortable.  The 60’s were a prosperous decade, America was the best!  At least for college educated white folks like us.  I thought I’d married an academic, a professor type and that we’d live our lives out being a part of a University.  It turned out that was the script early on, at Yale.  Bob opted to work at National Labs where he could devote all his time and energy to research which is what he loved.  He worked for a time at Oak Ridge National Lab, then moved in 1979 to Lawrence Berkeley National Lab.  I picked up what jobs I could when we moved and had a long career as a biology teacher which suited me very well.

We had a wonderful family of our own.  Three sons were born while we lived in New Haven and became the focus of our lives.  It was one of the greatest pleasures (and work) of our lives to nurture and help them grow up into who they are.  My memories from the busy busy years of their growing up are some of the richest memories I have.  We traveled often to Europe where Bob had work.  We had lived in Copenhagen a year when we were first married and returned for a summer with our family of two sons.  We had a year living in Israel and Germany with our three boys.  Then more years living in Germany.  I became skilled at making our home in different cultures in foreign lands. I am a homemaker in the best sense of the word.  Living abroad fostered a love of travel in our children.  Bob and I traveled a lot during the early years of retirement- to Antarctica, to Australia,  to New Zealand, to Africa, to South America and Central America and Mexico.  Bob traveled to many places, going to conferences and when he could renting a motorcycle and exploring the roads in that country.  We started going on birding adventures.  I loved tromping around in the beautiful natural areas in different countries.

What has it taken to get us to where we are?  Both of us are hard workers, both of us are seekers of new and exciting activities to keep us interested and growing.  For spice, Bob is an adventurer, me to a lesser extent.   Bob reignited his passion for motorcycles riding on and off roads.  I have explored my inner life and became a minister to the surprise of everyone, even me.   We have encouraged each other, stood by each other and loved each other as best we could.  It’s been an amazing wild ride of our lives.  Now as we stand on the cliff of actual old age, we enjoy each other’s company more than ever.  We go on walks together.  Simple pleasures like Thai take out is enough.  I see us walking into the future not knowing what is coming, but enjoying life and being grateful for all we have had.  

Pleasures of a Walk

In these weeks since I got over Covid, I’ve been trying to rebuild my strength by taking walks.  At first, I could only walk a mile, then I managed two miles, then three and two days ago four and half miles.  I’m getting back into shape.  But I must walk nearly every day to maintain my increasing fitness.  So today, I went out for a walk. It was a beautiful day, in the low 70’s with a nice cool breeze off the Bay.  I mapped out a route in my head and set off.  At first I noticed little things,  like the white cabbage butterfly and then a hummingbird.  The gardens are mostly dried up and not so beautiful as in the Springtime.  I walked past the yard where the turkeys reside and one came over to say hello.  I thought her wattle, all rumply pink was spectacular.  I walked on and noticed I was thirsty.  I had forgotten to bring along water.  But no worry, I found a ripe apple on the ground by the road.  I bit into it and delighted in its flavorful juiciness.  Further along, I noticed big juicy ripe blackberries, ripe for the taking right by the side of the road.  I had to stop and try them out.  I was transported back years and years to when I would pick blackberries with our growing sons.  Not only flavorful but memory inducing berries.  It was turning into a summer fruit walk!  I stopped by one of my favorite “Little Free Libraries” and found a Louise Penny mystery.  As I rested for a moment on the edge of the Park Hills fountain, I thought about what a lovely walk I’d had.  But I wasn’t home yet.  I had to walk up to Hill Road.  I chose the easier route around the edge of the hill and made it home.  It was a perfect walk!

                                    

Changes at the Botanical Garden

It’s tumultuous times at the Botanical Garden.  My peaceful place has been rocked.  Last week, the Volunteer Propagator Section Heads received shocking bad news.  We are to stop propagating plants immediately and work to reduce our stocks of plants, selling them cheaply.  It’s all because of a two year repair of a bridge on Centennial Drive near the Garden.  It will take away a third of our precious parking places which has started a chain reaction of changes that has lead to the big slow down of our activity.   Perry, the Volunteer Coordinator, asked me Thursday how I was and I told her not so well, I’m depressed about propagation.  She listened patiently and then said “Maybe leading a tour of kids would cheer you up.”   Since the pandemic closed the Garden a couple of years ago, and shut down all the tours, I haven’t led a tour.  Not for more than two years now.  So I thought about Perry’s offer and decided to take it.  Why not?  Maybe it would cheer me up.

As I thought about the route I would take on my tour, I realized I had a map of the whole Garden in my head and when I thought about what I would say, I realized I had the whole curriculum in my head.  I learned that the tour was for a school for autistic kids.  As I’d never lead a tour for autistic kids, I did some research on what I should be doing.  Keeping them calm, not presenting too much information and being very patient.  Patient I can do.  So I decided to take them to four different forests we have in the Garden.  Forests are very calming places.  I would take them to my favorite places.  I ended up with four 8th Graders.  Two of the four played the “oh, how boring this is” routine, so I got to use my patient skills.  The other two seemed to enjoy the tour.  I was happy to be leading school children around the Garden again.  I like what doing that brings out in me.   It is good to know that I can get back into this, when the propagation slows way down in the next years.  I do love the Garden so much, I want to keep up my volunteering there.  Finding beauty and peace and great joy there is a pleasure in my life.  

            

Perking Me Up

 This last week, we’ve had Liam in the afternoon after his Green Camp at the Botanical Garden was over.  His cheerful demeanor, his easy way of being was a delight for Bob and me.  He is so very much at ease with both of us, as I told him “you know how work us both.”  He smiled and nodded when he heard me say that.  He loves his time with Grandpa in his shop, building things, using all the tools or just watching  Grandpa work a job.  He helped Bob set the gopher traps down in the “gopher barrens”- the devastated area in the back of our yard where gophers reign.   When he had enough in the workshop, he’ll come up and suggest we play Spite and Malice.  Each afternoon when I picked him up after his camp, he wanted to look at all the plants for sale on the Plant Deck.  He found the succulent dish gardens the most interesting.  So we made one yesterday.  I’d collected some nice succulents, Bob made a dish out of a piece of scrap metal from the bottom of a tank and we were set to go.  Liam dove into that project, planting with panache and great focus.  We decided the dish garden was so beautiful, it would sell for $100.  His happy easy personality makes him great pleasure to be around.  He really perked me up.

Other things that perked me up this week:  going on a picnic in the Botanical Garden for Bob’s birthday.  The late afternoon angled light made everything look magical and beautiful.  And going on a walk with a friend.  I’m building my endurance back up after a couple of weeks lying around with Covid.  Yesterday, we walked 2 miles and I hardly noticed.  It really perked me up.  I am grateful for these and other things that bring cheer and light and love into my life.