Yesterday, I had the luxury  of spending the afternoon reading and writing on my back patio. My only company--the bumblebee and the dragon fly pictured here. I relaxed; they didn't. 

I watched them. The bee was busy and the dragon fly-while I'm not too sure what his/her job was--flitted from flower to flower- leaf to leaf. They both made me stop and take notice of the bee's appreciation of the flowers and the dragon fly's  delicate, gorgeous wings and pink tail.

I don't have much of a garden now. I live in a lovely, landscaped place. Wonderful people come by and trim the hedges, mow the lawns and put mulch down to prevent weeds from growing between the shrubs. But I have to have some plants to call my own--and those I've put in ceramic containers. Most are on my back patio, but this year, I bought a fern for my front  "nest." 

Soon, I will have to worry about frost. I will have to decide what to bring inside and try to save (in the case of the fern, I may have to build a small room) and what not to save. The "not saved" will make me sad.

Perhaps, that is why I was so mesmerized by the flights of my  insect friends yesterday. All of us were rejoicing in our way the warmth of the sun, but I felt each of us was preparing for the cooler, colder months ahead.

I like Fall and Winter. I like the excuse of turning on my fireplace (and yes I have one of the fireplaces that ignites with a switch) at the first hint of cold and earlier twilight. I like heating up a warm soup and buttering a crusty bread for my dinner. I feel less guilty starting to read at 4:30 in the Winter than at 4:30 in the summer. When the sun shines brightly, I feel as if I should be doing something outside--tending to my little container garden--taking a brisk walk.

But yesterday, I felt the tug of the seasonal transition about to take place. I wondered when I would be saying goodbye for this year to the bumblebee and the dragon fly. I've already said goodbye to the humming bird.

Maybe that was the thought that nudged my brain when I finally came inside. I really don't like goodbyes. So, I'll stay outside for as long as I can and take my signal from nature as to when this season is fading and another will take its place.

Labor Day! It is supposed to be a holiday celebrated to honor those who work hard every day of the week--and yes, every day is more the norm than having weekends free. Have we come a long way--mostly--but not far enough.

If my family's experiences are common with others, I imagine that most feel the tug of cell phone calls, email messages and instant messages--the former word, being the watchword-"instant." I see my children being tethered to a world benefited by technological advances--but freedom from this world is hard to come by.

Mind you, they don't complain much--I am not complaining on their behalf--but this Labor Day celebration has become deeper than just relief from the sweat shops of long ago.

There's a lot of fodder to mull over in what I've just written--fodder which I will think about in the year before the next Labor Day--and, yes, as is my wont, I will probably write about it.

But today, I am focusing on my Labor Day traditions--and they involve cooking. I think my mind calendar recognizes that winter is coming, and I am gripped by a terrific nesting instinct. Five minutes ago, I put a huge pot of chicken soup to boil on the stove, consisting of chicken carcasses that I have frozen and tender frozen chicken morsels (which I have saved for soup), fresh onions from the farm market, parsnips for sweet flavor, and a bunch of tri-color carrots. To all of that I add sprigs of what you see in the accompanying photograph. My herbs. I love herbs--I love their fragrance. Every time I snip a leave of sage or throw into a pot of sprig of thyme I am transcended back to the era of kitchen gardens.

In 1992, our house was battered by Hurricane Bob. Larry and I were in Rochester when we knew that the hurricane was going to strike, and we feared for our home--the way one would worry about a family member in danger. We got in the car as soon as we could, and arrived in our driveway at about 2am. Our car headlights revealed that a huge limb of a tree had gouged my "kitchen herb garden." I cried out "oh, my herb garden." Larry (as was his way), calmly said "do you see that the rest of the tree has fallen on our house?" Hmmm--yes, I guess I had--but-my herb garden.

Back to Labor Day. Our house was a pretty frenetic place when our kids were teenagers--both adults-mother and step-father--had incredibly busy careers. The teenagers in residence had lots going on in their lives as well. Truth be told, we probably ate out more than we ate in. But on Labor Day, the nesting instinct hit me full force.

I did what I am doing today, every burner had something brewing--from soups, to sauces, to mulled fresh fruits. I recall clearly, my son, Rob, coming down the back stairs and passing the stove and looking at me and saying "so, mom, are you going for mother of the year?!" It wasn't fresh, it was just his way of acknowledging that this is what his mother did on Labor Day. I'm sure it had something to do with honoring visually--home and hearth. 

Our family lived a modern life--but traditions--and food played a role--and it was how I have honored my Labor Day. 

The odd thing is--my nesting instincts while still vital are feathering an empty nest now. But no matter--I will freeze what I make today to feed my visiting family. As I close this piece, I am looking at a simmering pot, smelling the fragrance of the herbs and letting my mind happily drift to the memory of "so, mom, are you going for mother of the year."

Eleven years ago in November 2002, I took the photograph on the left. It was Thanksgiving Day. I was traveling alone in Canada trying to heal my broken heart ten months after my husband died. I wrote about my healing journey in my memoir Above and Beyond Wellfleet. I visited the Abbey Saint Benoit du Lac seeking solace on a day that really was my husband's high holy day. He loved Thanksgiving. Nothing made him happier than to be at the head of the table in front of a huge turkey, table laden with scrumptious food and surrounded by family and friends. One year, we had too many to be seated around the dining room table, so we brought the ping pong table up from the basement and covered it with several large damask table cloths.

Facing my first Thanksgiving without him was almost more than I could bear-so as I wrote in my book "I ran away from home." Almost as divine intervention, this beautiful Abbey was about a half hour away from the inn where I was staying. I went to the 11:00 o'clock Mass Thanksgiving day morning and listened to the Monks sing Gregorian chants. When I took Communion--I felt my husband by my side. I was consoled.

Last week, I went to the Abbey for joy not for solace. I was taking another Canadian sojourn. This time I was not alone. I was retracing some of my over a decade old experiences with my 11 year old grandson, Ethan. We stayed in the same town, No. Hatley, where I stayed in 2002. I asked Ethan if he would like to go to the Abbey. He is a remarkable child/young man--another blog for that description. Yes, he wanted to go.

What a privileged moment I had in store. He was entranced.So entranced that when we went to the Abbey gift shop, he looked for architectural drawings of the Abbey (which we did not find) so that he could design his future house with what he saw. I thought the visit would be quick. It was not. He took it all in. He asked questions about the altar, about the gorgeous container in which the holy water was kept. He even made an extremely funny comment. Which had to do with seeing a small group of people on a platform next to the tower. He wanted to go there, so we asked and were told, "no, that's not possible." When we were leaving Ethan remarked about the group on the platform, he said to me, "they must have been Monks dressed in casual clothing." Priceless.

Eleven years ago, I left the Abbey with a slightly uplifted spirit. Hope was beginning to melt my  icy heart. 

Last week, I left the Abbey laughing and full of joy. Both experiences are sacred.

I just left a friend's house after an overnight visit. A friend I've known for over 27 years.

Right now, I am sitting on a bench overlooking Cape Porpoise, ME harbor. It is one of my favorite places. It is about an hour from my home. I come here some times alone--some times bringing visiting friends. I come here in every season. I have a photograph of a dear friend and me  in this very spot on a freezing-cold January day when the harbor was slick with ice crystals.

The harbor is beautiful-calm and peaceful. As I sit here looking at the beauty, my thoughts of friends pleasantly overtake my being mesmerized by the water, boats and island. My journal captures these thoughts (which are now being transcribed on my computer).

I think about the greeting card phrase "friends are the family you choose." I am fortunate in that my family are my friends--my daughter and son and their families being my best friends.

When I mentally survey the list of those I feel privileged to call friend, I realize they reflect the mirror of my life--each phase of it. There are the friends who shared childhood, school and college experiences. There are those who shared experiences of being a new parent, burgeoning careers and dramatic changes of life and loss.

My friends represent the rich tapestry of my life. Each is like a thread that I hung onto and wove into my happy and sad moments.

Last night over a glass (or two) of good wine, my friend and I talked about the old days--some good-some bad. We recounted a story we've told each other time after time about how we first met as strangers on a 36 ft. sailboat living together for five days. We were a part of three couples who were sailing around the island of Antigua. We could have become instant enemies--dealing with the close quarters and the "events" which happened every day. Instead we became close friends.

Her husband and mine are gone. We hold fast to the remaining couple, because they are the standard bearers of our original friendship.

As I left to go home this morning, I stopped for coffee, and then I was pulled to this bench, overlooking this harbor to collect my thoughts. I did not know that they would lean into a whole retrospective of thinking about all my friends. As I reread that sentence I wondered if it had an air of pomposity -- as if I were saying --"oh, look at me and how many friends I have." I was worried. That would be a terrible interpretation. Rather, the meaning I wish to convey is "look, how lucky I am." Because, in fact, I count my friends as one of my great blessings. And it's not often that I got to say a group "thank you."

A humming bird visited me on my return home from Maine, attracted by the flowers on my patio. He/she comes by nightly now around dusk. Two nights ago, I sat poised with my camera to try and capture my new friend hovering--I failed.

Sitting still waiting for his/her return, I thought about how good it was to be back in my home after having spent a glorious half summer with family and friends at the Maine cottage. I leave there reluctantly, but it doesn't take me long to realize how incredibly fortunate I am to have a home I love.

I call it my nest. 

The first chapter in Above and Beyond Wellfleet is dark--it was the hardest chapter to write, because the world I recounted in that chapter was filled with foreboding. I felt terrorized (not too strong a word) about not being able to focus on my future positively. I was stuck --mentally and physically.

My family and I moved quite a bit when I was growing up, and no matter how insecure I felt moving to a new place, I always felt secure in the homes my parents created. As an adult after marriage, I moved into new homes five times. I remember each lovingly.

So I was shocked to discover that the home on Cape Cod that my husband and I cherished turned into a haunted house for me after he died. I write that I tried desperately to love it again, but each day we quarreled.  I moved furniture, I bought two cords of wood for the fireplaces, always having been comforted by the warmth and light of fire. Nothing worked. The luster of the beautiful house was irrevocably tarnished.

I sold the house--and I did it abruptly and in the opinion of most way too soon after having experienced a dramatic loss. But I could not feather this nest--this nest that held my husband's and my dreams--which without him had turned to nightmares.

These are strong words I write. They reflect the value I place on my home. When my husband was going through a year of Interferon treatment for his Melanoma, we sold our family home in Rochester  (the Cape house was our retirement home) and moved into a one bedroom apartment. The apartment was different from what we had been used to. One night, we had friends over for dinner--they were not only worried about my husband's health, they wondered how we were adjusting to our new and very different living environment. I overheard Larry say to them when they asked how we were, "Connie has made us a home here."

A home. A place where it doesn't matter the elegance or fancy address. It matters that you wake up and go to bed peaceful in the knowledge that you are safe and secure. A place where hummingbirds might stop by for a nightly visit.

Several days ago, I found my grandmother Wilder's photograph albums. There are four. They capture my grandmother's life from about 1909 to the last one dated, 1929. The photograph pictured here is of my father, in 1929--he was eighteen. 

There is a lot for me to think about after having spent the last several hours turning the pages of her life. Her photographs captured joy and good family times, but I know that her life was not all joy and good times. She lost her first child, Ruth, (whose photograph is in the first album) when she was barely a year old. My father was her second child. I wrote in Above and Beyond Wellfleet that for the first few months of my father's life, she kept his bassinet by her bed, and would wake up several times during the night to make sure he was breathing. When my father was eleven, she lost her beloved husband, Solon, when he was just thirty nine years old.

None of these sad events are revealed in the photographs. Instead,  the images show how much she made of her life as a single woman, bringing up two boys while healing her broken heart.

Unlike many single women then and today, she was financially secure. While the photographs show some of the advantages that this security allowed her, they also show what meant the most to her--her cottage in Friendship was a recurrent theme throughout the albums, showing the times she shared with her husband, her boys, her friendships and connection to the people of Friendship.

When I look at this photograph of my father, I see the dashing young man he was at eighteen and the handsome man he continued to be throughout his life. He was afforded the best education, attending Andover Academy, and receiving graduate and post graduate degrees at Harvard. But his life wasn't easy either.

I stared at this photograph for a long time this morning. Taking in his confident stance, his argyle socks, his handsome face. He did not know then that he would lose three fortunes and suffer many other challenges over the next sixty eight years. 

Like my grandmother, he did not focus on the things that went wrong in his life, he concentrated on what went right. He never talked about what he'd lost, he always made it clear that he appreciated what he gained. When I was a teenager, I asked him how he managed to be so cheerful and not

complain about some of the circumstances that he faced. He answered with this aphorism "I cried when I had no shoes, and then I saw a man who had no feet." He really lived like that --with my mother's help.

That's my family history. It's an honorable legacy which helped me cope with my challenges. It made it easier for me to truthfully write the subtitle of Above and Beyond Wellfleet which is "A memoir about welcoming life after loss." 

The images I sifted through this morning renewed my sense of optimism. I felt strengthened by the courage revealed in a family beset by sadness, but determined to shirk that weight. Sometimes it is hard to push away the phrase, "life isn't fair". These albums are the proof that the phrase is a waste of time.

For almost sixty days, this grand cottage on the coast of Maine has been my family's home. My great-grandfather, William Henry Wilder, built this cottage at the turn of the century for his family and six succeeding generations have been grateful for his gift.

It is a family home. One that my family shares with my niece and her husband--by splitting the summer in half. Our stay begins in late May (as soon as weather allows the water to be turned on without freezing the pipes) and ends July 31--two days from now.

Each year, 67 and counting, as the time to pack the cars and stow our personal items in the attic draws near, I am struck with a bit of melancholy. I believe I started to sense a kind of sadness about leaving even when I was a small child. I especially remember being told by my parents that I could NOT bring anything alive home with me. Usually, I disobeyed, the evidence discovered when live periwinkles, starfish, and who knows what else began to smell--I just had to bring part of the sea with me.

Now, I bring memories with me to mull over as I review the two months of experiences. I pack up images in my head to take home, rather than sea treasures. I've shared over the last several weeks some of the images , such as "jumping for joy" and different generations clasping hands together at the water's edge. 

There are so many more.

I associate sounds as well as images when I think about the many splendid moments--like the echo of laughter during a badminton game, or the squeal of delight in trying to maneuver a homemade raft in choppy water, or watching a small laser sailboat capsize on its mooring during a torrential rainstorm and hearing the confident voices saying--"no problem, we can right it easily."

These are the images, but there is more to their richness . There have been pure halcyon moments--like seeing my two children together under this old roof playing a game they've played for years around the dining room table, and this year being joined by some of their children. Or watching older cousins helping to teach the younger cousin, how to navigate slippery, seaweed-covered rocks and look for barnacles ("those white things") to help secure footing. And watching my son-in-law and daughter-in-law show their love for this adopted summer home.

Above all, my packed-up memories are ladened with gratitude to those who came before with the vision of creating this family place, and now to those who will secure its future. My wistfulness of thinking about closing the door for the last time this summer turns very quickly to savoring the memories and looking forward to opening the door next year to begin it all again.

When I posted this photograph to FB, a  friend commented "Ode to joy".She was right, a lyrical poem could be written about the joy captured in this image. Nine friends and a dog had been asked by the various family photographers to gather as a group so that we could hold together a memory for them and us of the preceding days of their enjoying each other's company--laughing, boating, listening to music and playing a crazy game on their Iphones and Ipads that involved a lot of frantic shouting. Once we had them gathered, my daughter, Katie, asked them to jump. And they did and when they did-- "jumping for joy" never held such meaning.

 

For a week, I had the privilege of enjoying this group of friends---hearing their laughter, watching parents and children make memories together and new friendships being forged. I feel younger, lighter, and happier just having been a tangential part of their summer fun. Their joy was contagious, and this photograph will help make the feeling permanent.

 

Fifty six years separate the youngest and the oldest participants in this week of fun (I being the oldest). The whole experience helped convince me (I didn't need much) that one of the best things in life is mixing generations--not separating them; at least making the goal of one generation learning from the other and sharing their joy.

 

 

 

 

 Good times go so fast. I took this photograph a week ago of my son and my three grandchildren on the rocks in front of our Maine cottage. The fog was just lifting, so hopes were high that the "messing about in boats" could begin. The sun did shine and the "messing" began.

As I stood on the porch, getting this image into focus, I was looking at the fifth and sixth generations to stand on these rocks. I am the fourth. Each of us has come to this place in the first months of our lives. While I know I am blessed to watch my grandchildren and children experience the beauty of this place and honor its heritage,I am also acutely aware of the fleeting moments.

This morning, I watched my son's car pull out of the driveway headed for home, and tears streamed down my face. I did not want to shed them, but there they were reminding me of how fast the previous five days had flown by. The solace was, we didn't squander any of them.

We laughed around the dinner table, we played a card game that we play every year, we rowed the boats, swam in what we never admit is frigid water, held hands so we wouldn't slip in the seaweed,  took in just about everything our surroundings offered and acknowledged how precious it was to have three generations under one roof. The hustle of the good times continues, friends and family are ready to make more happy memories for the next few weeks.

My nostalgia lingers, though. I try to push it away, but the memories of the recent week and years past creep into my thoughts. For now, I need to sit with them--just for awhile. Not so long that they dampen the happy times ahead, but long enough to absorb the echoes of the laughter and the conversations-a respectful pause to relish memories, thereby making them less fleeting.

Tomorrow I say goodbye to a friend--a non-human friend--a car. I am sad about saying goodbye. I've never been attached to a material object before, I work hard at managing difficult transitions. But when I heard the service rep at the car dealership say to me that my car was "totaled" after having been caught in one of the flash floods that hit the NE last week, I was bereft.

Let me be clear--this car was eleven years old with 187,000 miles. But that's the clue, it was eleven years old--the number of years it had carried me around since my husband died. It was my first major purchase without the guidance of my husband--although, my son and daughter played a role in helping me choose the car (which only added to its cherished status). It was time to say goodbye; probably five years ago would have been the right time to say goodbye, but I couldn't part with it.

Just about the time I bought the car, my son, Rob, recommended a book to me written by Neil Peart, drummer/lyricist for the band RUSH. The book, Ghost Rider:Travels on the Healing Road was a travel memoir that he wrote about a 55,000 mile journey he took on his motorcycle after the deaths( in the same year) of his 19 year old daughter and his wife. He was lost in grief.

The year the book was published, 2002, was the year my husband died. I read the book and while I did not hop on a motorcycle, I did hop into my new car and traveled to five cities in Canada--alone. I write about the experience in  Above and Beyond Wellfleet, and how healing the journey was for me. I decided to take this trip to escape the first holidays (Thanksgiving and Christmas)without Larry. That meant I was traveling through Canada through wicked snowstorms and on icy roads. My car never flinched at the challenge--that's when I think I developed my first friendship with a  "thing" rather than a person.

Over the past eleven years, my friend has taken me down many highways. It has seen me sing at the top of my lungs and heard me gush to myself about beautiful scenery. It made me feel safe and independent--two crucial aspects of learning to accept my new role as "widow."

Tomorrow, I will go to the dealership and remove my personal belongings and probably pat the hood, and mostly likely I will cry. Somehow it doesn't seem right that it will end up as scrap. It will always be in my museum of memories.

The intervening eleven years when we first hit the road together on my journey have been good years--hard in some ways, but as I say goodbye tomorrow I will also say a quiet thanks to my traveling companion who shared many a strengthening adventure with me.