It’s Back

It’s back and things are beginning to close down again.  The delta variant of the Covid-19 virus is spiking especially among the unvaccinated.  The CDC currently recommends everyone to wear masks and socially distance when inside.  People around Berkeley are doing that.  But today, even here where 70% of eligible folks are fully vaccinated, it feels like things are beginning to close down.  In-person Church meetings scheduled for the coming week have been moved to zoom.  People walking along the streets in Berkeley are wearing masks again.  People are scared.  The story from Provincetown on Cape Cod  about many breakthrough cases among the vaccinated, I think, has folks concerned and no longer trusting that vaccination will protect them for catching Covid.  I feel like “oh no, here we go again.”  We’ll just have to wait and see if any in-person gatherings can happen in the near future.  What I wonder will happen to our birding trip in Arizona from August 19-25?  Will a complete shut down happen again?  I don’t think so.  It’s hard not to be really mad at all the people refusing to be vaccinated.  It’s because of that the virus has so many susceptible hosts.  There is so much mistrust of the medicine and science and government.  

That too is like a virus spreading among the susceptible.  We’ll just have to wait and see what happens.  

Clearing Out is Hard

Clearing out the clutter and detritus of 41 years of accumulation is hard work.  It makes me feel faint.  It tugs my heart.  I’ve been working on the book shelves in my office for a week now.  Some things are easy to throw out—old church directories, notes from a long ago meetings, class notes from Natural History class last taught in 1994.  I tossed my notes from seminary without even looking at them.  Other things feel like I’m throwing away mementoes of my history.  I put my weaving books in a bag, I’ll be lucky to weave a few more afghans.  I not interested in doing more.  Day after day, I fill doubled grocery bags with books to give to the book recycling center that I hope will accept them.  I have a little pile to go to the local neighborhood library with titles like “Broken Open:, “The Art of Being Yourself:, bird by bird.  I had decided to clear out my desk and sell it on Craig’s List.  When Arne was here, I told him my plans and he said “don’t get rid of the desk.  I want it for someday when we have more space.  Put it in your storage area.”  It is a beautiful solid teak desk bought in 1968.  It made me rethink what I’m tossing.  That of course is what keeps clutter sticking to us, the hope that someone will want it after we’re gone.  When Erik heard what I am doing, he told me to save books I have loved and put little notes in them to gift them to my children and grandchildren.  He told me he would love to have something from his grandparents and got nothing.  This makes it much harder.   I will keep clearing out but more carefully.  It’s good to be rid of books I’ll never look at again.  Nevertheless it feels like a concrete end of life task and that’s a hard realization.  

Letting Go

 Change of one’s place brings new clear ways to see what is filling up my house.  Returning to Berkeley after a two month absence has encouraged me to see what needs to be changed around here.  Accumulation of clutter of years of memories fill my space and suddenly I see it and want it gone.  Cleaning out my bookcases is one thing that needed to be done. Today I purged a shelf full of memories of my past.  I threw out 25 year old envelopes full of evaluations from classes I taught at College Prep.  It no longer matters to me what the students thought of me.  I have memories of my own that will sustain me.  I threw out my notes from seminary, if I’ve not looked at them in the past 20 years, who else will care about them.  I remember only the kindness of certain professors and the Hebrew prayers said by my Old Testament professor at the beginning of each class. A few ideas I picked up linger.  What I really needed to learn for ministry, I learned on the job, not in seminary.  I threw out all but a couple of folders of notes of retreats I lead from my ministry days.  I threw out all my notes from weddings I officiated.  I hope the couples are still together and happy given the stresses of any marriage over the years.  I threw out photo books of marine biology trips from long ago.  I hope the participants have happy memories that live in their hearts from those happy times.  These were special times for me, I guess that’s why I saved the notes all these years.  It’s time they all go into the recycling.   As I see it now, what matters is how one felt about the experiences I shared with them and what I learned.  I know I gave my all, did the best I could in all my endeavors.  I worked very hard in all I did.   I learned from my mistakes and probably made new ones,  I gained a bit of wisdom along the way.  I hope it was enough.  I remember sweetly these experiences, with joy and pleasure.  I hope the participants I served in my years of teaching and ministry do as well.  It’s time to savor the memories and let go of the clutter.  

Reflections on Turning 80

Yesterday was my 80th birthday.  I’ve been dreading turning 80 for a very long time.  As I reflect about the decades of my life, 80 just seems really old.  It looks comparable to me to being an old car.  I am afraid of all that might go wrong.  I’m stronger and in better shape than I’ve been in years.  I hope that counts for something!  As I think about the 80’s decade, I remember that all our parents died, in their mid-80’s.  Much as I’ve thought about death, I’m not at peace with it happening.  As a friend said to me yesterday, “I knew I’d get old, just not so fast.”  Thinking about how I want to live in this new decade, I decided I want to use more spices.  Why not add more flavor to my life?  I’m going to throw out my 30 year old cardamom and buy fresh and cook Indian food.   I want to pay attention to what brings me joy and seek it out.  I want to be joyful more often.  Who doesn’t want to be around a joyful person?  I want to let go of my tendency settle for small and seek bigger things pushing out the boundaries of a constricting age.  I want to have adventures, even if the adventure is just driving on the freeway down to Palo Alto.

Yesterday turned out to be a great day, one I’ll long remember.  Arne flew out here to be with us for my birthday.  It was wonderful to have all the sons here together for the first time in a year and a half!  We sat together on the sunny porch sipping coffee and eating raisin toast.  We went for a leisurely stroll to the MSU campus to admire the grand trees and walk on the verdant and deserted paths.  I got a tiny Tasty Twist soft cone with Erik and Arne in the heat of the day.  Paula and Paul made an early dinner of barbecued hamburgers and sausages followed by homemade angel food cake with fresh strawberries and blueberries: red, whites.  Then I was presented with many lovely and thoughtful gifts.  

Afterwards, we all went to Jackson Stadium in Lansing to see the Lansing Lugnuts play the Dayton Dragons (really….). And was it crowded from the line to get in to the crush leaving more than 5 hours later.  It was something to be in such a large nearly sold out crowd after such a long time avoiding them.  The stadium holds around 7000 people.  Very few people wore masks.  It was outside, but we were tightly packed together in the seats.  Everyone was relaxed and enjoying themselves in the hot evening air.  The game was one of the most exciting I’ve seen. The Lugnuts lost in the 10th inning 12-8.  I couldn’t keep track of all the different pitchers that came in.  Around 10 pm there was a serious fireworks display just behind the stadium.  It was hard to decide whether to watch the fireworks exploding colorfully in the air or the last innings of the exciting game.  At times, it seems the players looked up to see the rockets go off.  As the game ended I got up and Paul said “don’t you want to watch the fireworks?”  I thought we’d already seen them.  But no, those were just the City of Lansing’s display.  Three carts were pulled out onto the field, the lights turned out and fireworks exploded right in front of us over the field.  It was a glut of close up beautiful fireworks punctuated by screaming from the crowd.  I couldn’t help but feel a bit sad, as the times seem so hard for our country just now.  President Biden said we’d return to our former 4th of July this year and here in Lansing, we certainly have.   Getting home, I sat in the chair reflecting on what aa wonderful birthday I had and how very loved I feel.  It doesn’t get better than that!

Pickle Ball

 About a month ago, here in E. Lansing, Bob and I were introduced to Pickle Ball.  Bob got hooked right away, me not so much.  We play at a park a 15 minute walk from here, Patriarche Park.  There are six pickle ball courts there.  Monday, Wednesday and Friday Prime Time Senior Center has three reserved courts and anyone who shows up gets to play.  Pickle Ball seems to have a very generous hospitality.  There’s a very friendly group that plays.  Pickle Ball is an easy combination of tennis and ping pong.  The court is smaller than tennis, playing is almost always doubles.  The paddle is a big rectangle is aluminum and the ball is a wiffle ball full of holes.  Bob quickly recovered his ping pong skills and has a great reach to catch the ball in flight.  For me, the big problem at first was hitting the ball at all.  Now after a month of playing, I can mostly hit the ball, but strategy is beyond me.  We play often.  Today Bob invited the family to come and play with us.  Paula picked it up fast.  Paul is a whiz.  All the six courts were full this morning.  Even our “drill instructor” Gary was there.  It was fun to play.  Kindly, Paula said she loved that we are learning a new sport and that every time I miss the ball, I smile or maybe even laugh.  It’s hard not to cry.  E. Lansing will be re-doing the six courts and putting in four more soon.  Bob saw that Berkeley has only four courts in the whole city.  I guess Pickle Ball isn’t such a big deal out West.  Here in Michigan, between the friendly hospitable culture of Pickle Ball and Michigan nice, it is easy to start to play and to be incorporated into a game and encouraged.  Pickle Ball is a very sociable sport.  It’s fun to learn something new, even if I have a long way to go before I’m much of a player.  

Off to Camp

For the last week, there’s been a flurry of activity around here to get the girls ready for camp.  Sonja’s pink footlocker and Erika’s powder blue one came down from the attic.  CAMP looms large for the girls especially since they missed it last summer because of the pandemic.  This will be Erika’s fifth summer and Sonja’s third at Camp Minewanka.  The camp is located on the shore of Lake MIchigan hardly a mile from where we used to rent the DeJong cabin for the family summer vacation.  Paula took them on many trips to the mall to get all their supplies on the long list.  They need 3 bathing suits each and some special clothing with no cotton in them to wear in the rain!  Last week was also sweet because I felt the girls intentionally spent more time with me.  To be sure, I helped that out by having two craft activities set up during the week.  First we painted glass with Testor’s model paint.  Erika chose a pint mason jar with a handle and painted yellow roses on it.  I was impressed how she googled “how to paint a rose” and got instructions, then practiced the steps on a piece of paper.  Me?  I just painted cherries on the salt shakers and then decorated around the glass.  I painted a couple of other simple projects too.  Sonja ran off before she started.  Second, I set up to make collage greeting cards.  I went fast making a number of them, while Sonja and Erika took their time and created beautiful cards.  It was fun to be working together in our bright porch.  Sonja came over Friday morning just as we were driving off with the invitation to go to Groovy Donuts together.  We made a date for Saturday morning.  It was mentioned many times, so I realized clearly this was a special treat.  Saturday morning at 10:15 after a tennis lesson and picking up their dirty clothes, we headed out to the Donut Shop.  They spotted it first, “It’s the place with the purple storefront, Gramma” they excitedly called out.  We went in and it was hard for us to choose from the sumptuous display.  As we waited in line I told them about the Helms Man truck with baked goods that used to come by our house once a week with a jingle to call us out.  How I loved the raised donuts they had!  So I got a groovy donut: a raised donut with fancy purple, green, pink and yellow lines of frosting on it.  Erika got a chocolate donut with chocolate frosting and sprinkles and Sonja got one with filling, a Napoleon.  Returning, the girls set off to seriously pack their footlockers with all the gear they need for three weeks at camp.  It was a big task.  We were there to cheer them off the next morning.  They were so excited as Paula drove them off to camp.  We won’t see them again this summer.  When they got there, Paula said the girls were “over the moon, happy to see the camp and returning friends.”  I know they will have a wonderful time full of adventures and fun.  I am so happy for them.   Across the miles, our other granddaughter, Elsa also left for camp yesterday.  I can’t wait to hear about all her adventures at Mountain Camp in Pollock Pines in the Sierra Mountains.  What fun for them all!  

Small Things

 Sitting here with my morning coffee on our sunny porch, I’m thinking about change, small changes and big changes that disrupt our lives.  Here in the Midwest, green lawns are everywhere.  Every house in our neighborhood, the Bailey neighborhood, has a green green lawn perfectly manicured.  Coupled with all the big green trees, there is a curtain and carpet of green everywhere.  My ruminations this morning are interrupted by the noise of a lawn mower at the Pump House Park kitty corner from our house.  Grass grows, dust settles, and imperceptibly change is happening.  We all seek the comfort of familiar habits, places and people.  Talking to my friends, recently,  I’ve been saddened by their hard news.  Falls, fires, cancer are all big disruptive changes.  We live cartwheeling along a cliff of potential catastrophe.  When something happens, we are shocked.  But constancy is an illusion.  Things can change in an instant.  Recently we had a near miss when a car sped through a red light and only missed us by 10 feet or so.  In fact change is happening all the time, like the grass growing and dust settling on the clean floor.  We choose not to see it, until we do.  Living systems maintain balance with homeostasis.  Disruptive change sets in motion equal and opposite changes which function to restore balance.  I don’t know exactly what the remedy is.  Living in constant fear of change isn’t helpful and paralyzes us.  Living in la-la land keeping change totally out of our mind isn’t helpful either, we need to take reasonable precautions.  I remember a story from when my mother had cancer.  My sister and I had accompanied her to see Dr. Rosenfeld, her oncologist.  At one point during the visit, he said to her in a frustrated tone of voice, “You do know you have cancer, don’t you?”  Yes, she knew, but she chose not to give the cancer energy by worrying about it.   She taught me we must hold the tension of both, knowing change can happen at any moment, while still enjoying and appreciating the good in our life and the world.