If This Is December, It Must Be...What?

So many tulle tutus, ready for Cinderella's entrance.

A few weeks ago Husband and I were going over my calendar, which has been increasingly unpredictable since I joined the full-time gig economy.

"You're on your own for meals on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. I have rehearsals in the morning on Friday, but nothing after 3:00," I was telling him when he looked up at me.

"Is this the way your life is going to be from now on?" he said.

Well.

No, this isn't the way my life is going to be, and certainly this was not the way I had expected retirement to unfold. Apparently not having a salaried full-time job means I am like a kid with an all-rides pass at the carnival: I will run from the Ferris wheel to the Tilt-a-Whirl to  the swings to the big slides to everything else until I either throw up or pass out from exhaustion. But they're so much fun! And everything is out there waiting for me!

There are the things I had intended to write about in the past months since I left you on that Costa Rican suspension bridge: The rest of Costa Rica, including my lovely visit with a dear Peace Corps friend (Hola, Sharon!), the food (because I ate fried plantains every single time I had the chance and I do not regret that one bit), the places we stayed (one of which was the embodiment of my fantasy dream home). Also, having my 65th birthday which is all sorts of weird to even write when I feel 46 inside. Also, the Best Day of the Year. Also several other topics.

So many things I wanted to inflict on share with you, but friends, apparently there are just too many fun rides to ride.

There was, for example, the Accompany a Small-Town High School Musical ride, during  which I fell in love with the music of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown all over again. Oh, my gosh! So much fun. None of the cast had ever heard of Charlie Brown before they were cast in the play so I felt as if I should have been riding in to rehearsals in a covered wagon based on the antiquity of my personal knowledge.

And  there was the musical presented in my regular job, for which I sewed 47 (count 'em) tulle tutus for the ballroom scene of Cinderella.  My lack of finesse  as a seamstress would make my mother cringe but for costumes that are seen from a distance of at least 40 feet (stage to closest dancer) and are only in the production for four minutes, I'm the perfect choice.

And there are the 22 dozen dinner rolls and the pies I baked for the Best Day of the Year, because I do love to bake but don't have much reason to do it now that Husband and I are in the You'd Better Clean Up Your Eating Habits stage of life.

There are the Christmas stockings and special projects I'm knitting while I watch the new seasons of Hercule Poirot that have been added to Amazon's Prime library.

So many good rides, so little time. So much reluctance to ditch any of them, but so needing to do so.

Such a good life.

Costa Rica 2019: What We Did (Zip!)

The path to the zipline included a suspension bridge

There is a common denominator in the two trips during which Husband and I were in the company of our offspring on our trips to Costa Rica: In both instances the tipping point of deciding on this destination was the availability of ziplines.

In 2001, when the Boys were 15-, 13-, 11-, 9-year-olds, they did not want to go to my second favorite place on earth. Not at all, not for any reason. They didn't speak the language, they didn't know what kind of food to expect, they would be missing a big chunk of summer vacation time, and (because this blog is all about Truth) they had spent 15/13/11/9 years listening to their mother talk about the enormous cockroaches and dusty bus rides of her Peace Corps years.

So, actually, kind of my own fault. But it would be fun! And they would see where I had lived! (And if that isn't the way to get a kid to enthusiastically jump on the vacation destination bandwagon, I don't know what is.)  Still they sulked.

Finally, as a good parent does, I resorted to bribery.

"We'll be able to go ziplining!"

These words were the bibbity-bobbity-boo of my sons' age group. Suddenly we had a group of more-or-less enthusiastic travelers and the resulting zipline experience remains in my top family memory bank.

Ziplining, for those who have never had this experience, is the closest thing I can imagine to flying. Steel cables are strung between landing points throughout the mountain, and with some kind of metal do-hickey clipped between that line and an industrial-strength harness that manages to harass all of the personal and private areas of the body, even an unathletic land slug such as myself is able to fly over waterfalls and peer down on volcanoes. It just takes the confidence in the equipment to sit down into thin air, and the rest is all wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

It is, as we kids say, awesome.

Lovely Girl#2 had zipped in Hawaii during years past, and I'm pretty sure the prospect of returning to the lines was the reason she agreed to celebrate the first anniversary of membership in our family in Costa Rica. (Doesn't everyone take their in-laws on a romantic get-away?) I have imagined that conversation several times:

Boy#2: Hey, how about we take my folks along on our anniversary trip? And maybe a brother?

LG#2:

Boy#2: We can zipline!

LG#2: Out of my way--I'm packing the sunscreen!

The 2019 Day of the Zip dawned sunny, which is a lovely gift during Costa Rica's rainy season.

The company we chose promised 12 lines to zip, including one that is a kilometer long and the second longest in Costa Rica. (One of the lines was being repaired so we actually only zipped 11 times, but we did not complain about this. Much like being on a plane that is delayed for mechanical reasons, you do not want to the operators to say "Oh, you're inconvenienced? Then let's just take off." No, thank you. Plus they gave us lunch in the canteen in lieu of the 12th zip, so, win!)

I had talked to the company rep in advance and explained that while 80% of the party ranged in athleticism from fit to quite fit (did I mention that Boy#4 had run a half-marathon the previous weekend?) the remaining 20% (moi) could best be described as creaky. "But I can walk really well!" I oversold my fitness. The rep assured me I'd be fine--it's a short walk to the first take-off spot, she said.

So we strapped into our harnesses and blue helmets that the operators admitted would be useless if we actually fell from the zipline but promised would be dandy to protect from errant branches and in giving us all a distinctively Lego-headed vibe.

A tractor-pulled trailer took us the first leg up the mountain, but then we all piled out and began the mile-long trek to the lines.

My friends, I would never lie to you (literary exaggerations aside): This initial trek was on the upper edge of my bell curve of personal comfort. We followed a path of stone steps, several hundred of them, and the steps were not of equal height, and there was no handrail (In the mountain! Can you imagine that?) and I may have oversold my physical fitness to the firm rep because I was pretty gassed by the time we reached the first zip.

But then they hooked me onto the first line and I sat into the void. All my inner whining and outer puffing and panting were forgotten and I remembered that you cannot do this activity without grinning.

I am not a beautiful zipliner. Look at this picture of LG#2 on the line:

Gorgeous, isn't she, with her daintily crossed ankles? And watch her coming in for a landing:

She steps onto that platform with the grace and confidence of the trained dancer she is.

I would show you a picture of me in the same pose except, well, I believe this was the line in which I failed to make it to the platform and was stuck far enough out on the line that the overall-clad zipguide had to come out and rescue me by wrapping his legs around mine and hand-over-hand hauling us both to the end of the line. It was every bit as ungainly and mortifying as it sounds.

But guess what? I didn't even care, except to realize that the guide deserved a hefty tip. Look at this face:

Sweaty, slightly sunburned, wearing a truly dorky helmet that was sliding backward, and still as happy as a human being can get.

It's the magic of the zipline.

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Costa Rica 2019: We Are Family

Lovely Girl #2 took this selfie of us with my Costa Rican family of the heart--Rosa-Emilia, Chena, Vital, and Jose-Antonio.

Before we start this post, a few numbers:

• Year I swore into the Peace Corps: 1979
• Ages of the parents in the family I lived with during this experience: 48 (the dad) and 44 (the mom)
• Year I finished my service: 1982
• Year I had intended to return to Costa Rica: 1983, or 1984, or maybe 1985
• Year  I actually returned to Costa Rica: 2001
• Change in family size in the intervening years: +1 husband, +4 sons
• Number of times I swore I would return following the 2001 trip: Every year. I promise.
• Number of times I actually returned following the 2001 trip: Once, a long weekend 50th birthday celebration organized by a Husband who knew how much I wanted it. 
• Current ages of the parents in the family where I lived during my Peace Corps experience: 88 (the dad) and 84 (the mom)

Those numbers are the closest I can come to explaining the urgency I felt to get back to Costa Rica.  For years I've put my second heart home on the table as a possible vacation destination, but it was never quite the right time. Time, or finances, or other priorities simply made this trip a luxury, and frankly, when four kids are growing up and getting through college and setting out on their own, luxury isn't an option. 

This year, though, the trip suddenly flipped from luxury to necessity in my heart of hearts. 

During the years I lived in Tilaran, a beautiful city in the low mountains of Guanacaste, I roomed with a family that adopted me as their big, bumbling, blonde galoot of a daughter. Chronologically I fell between Vital and Chena's two daughters, just a couple of years older than the two boys who rounded out the family. They became my family of the heart. 

 And because Chena was (like most of her contemporaries) a housewife, she became the most delightful surrogate mother in  a two-continent region. She was the one who showed me the societally-accepted ropes of being a Tica, taught  me how to brew a perfect cup of cafe chorreado, and laughed with me at the absurdities of life. She was the one who nursed me when (at age 25) I caught a horrendous case of the measles and was desperately ill, and when I managed to crash my motorcycle into a pasture and the resulting bruised (broken?) ribs kept me from being able to dress myself. She was the one who slogged through calf-deep mud with me to go to a dance in a nearby town, both of us squealing with disgust. 

I was 24, and she was the mother of grown children, so I thought of her as the most fun-loving, full-of-beans elderly person I knew (ah, the arrogance of youth). Years later I still laughed thinking of the afternoons we spent drinking coffee and discussing the neighbors' foibles. 

We've kept up through Facebook, and with occasional video chats, but this year my simmering need to be in the same room with my Tico family boiled over. 

Here's the thing about family of the heart: Whether you have been away from  them for 40 hours or 40 days or 40 years, that time compresses into a tiny, manageable thing that can be slipped into a pocket when you're together again, and it's as if you've never been apart. 

I walked onto the porch of the concrete house where I'd shared a room with Rosa-Emilia, my Tica sister, and called into the open front door. Within moments I was hugging Chena, then Vital. They are older and less healthy than they were during our hugs two decades ago. Vital, who's now 88, sleeps much of the day. At 84 Chena walks with a cane and pain in her right hand (arthritis? carpal tunnel?) has made it impossible to do the regular housework so a lovely neighbor takes care of them. 

Within minutes, though, we were laughing again, and that lovely laugh hasn't changed at all. 

We spent much of two days with the family--Chena and Vital, of course, and their daughter whose room I invaded for more than two years, and their son Jose-Antonio who lives just down the street and took us on a photographic excursion high above the city. (Another daughter splits her time between a home in the United States and trips back to Costa Rica, and the youngest son lies in the capital city.)

We reminisced, and caught up on neighbors and families, and shook our heads sadly at the state of politics in the world, and everyone laughed at the size differential between my boys and my tiny Tica mama:

They're standing on the same step

By the time Boy#2 and Lovely Girl#2 arrived to continue our vacation further inland, we had exhausted our hosts and my non-Spanish-speaking family was ready to understand more conversation than they had for the past hours. We took a final round of pictures and prepared to get on the road. Chena pulled me close, and traced a cross on my forehead with her thumb. "Dios me la bendiga," she whispered a blessing.

I waved once more to Chena, who was standing in the  door of the house, then we drove away. I only cried for a few minutes.

The Ticos have a phrase they use whenever they talk about an event in the future: Si Dios quiere. It means "If God wills it," and is almost as pervasive as "puravida." Are you going to the market today? Si Dios quiere. Will we win the soccer game? Si Dios quiere. Will the present arrive in time for Christmas? Si Dios quiere. 

Will I see this family of my heart again in this lifetime? Si Dios quiere.

Costa Rica 2019: Zipping Into a Deep Dive

As of today, we have been back from the Puravida Adventure* for a full week. So why have I not been filling your feeds with pictures of intrepid zipliners who (Oh, gosh!) just happen to be posing in front of a volcano?

So many reasons, but perhaps chief among them is the sentiment I posted on Facebook just before we boarded the plane that began the return trip from Costa Rica to Kansas: "I'm ready to be home, but I'm not ready to not be here." Because, oh, people, this was the trip you dream of when you dream big.

It was big in an actual, measurable way. Check out the picture above. You will note that I, a tall woman who has been in the back row of pictures since second grade, am the shortest in our traveling party. Lovely Girl#2 looks down on me from a couple of inches, Husband hovers around 6' even, and Boys#2 and #4 each claim 6'4" or so, so we may  have been the most vertically-gifted traveling party in the nation during those 10 days.

But it was also big in the sense that every single variable that could have gone our way actually went our way. In the next few days I'm going to be pulling out some specific topics to oooh and aaaaah about, but for today, let me just say that if we would have had Boys#1 and #3 and Lovely Girl#1 with us, this would have been the most perfect trip in the history of vacations. (Those three are adults, with actual paying jobs, and I am thrilled about that, but sad that those same work schedules didn't lend themselves to October vacations.)

Here's one example of how the vacation gods cared for us: We went to Costa Rica during the rainy season (optimistically christened "Green Season" by the local travel board). Because I lived there during my 3-plus years in the Peace Corps, I knew rainy season is not a myth but is often manageable. Husband did not know this, and for the month before we left my beloved insisted on pulling out his weather app every single day to show me: "Look! It's going to be raining in Guanacaste every day." And  I would patiently remind him, "Yes, it's the rainy season. It will rain every day. But there's a good chance we'll get at least some sunshine every day, even if your app isn't showing that."

Finally, with two weeks to trip time (at the point that all of our reservations were non-refundable), I stopped him as he pulled out his phone.

"I know rain  is forecast for Guanacaste. I know that. You  have told me that several times, and if you tell me again I will be forced to grab that phone out of your hand, throw it on the floor, and stomp on it 800 times. I cannot control the weather, and even if all we do is sit in our AirBnB and read books and watch our luggage mold, WE WILL HAVE A GREAT TIME."

Ahem.

I was a little stressed at that point, is what I'm saying, with the eight gajillion things I could not control. But do you know what?

The weather was gorgeous. We ziplined in full sun, with the clouds blowing away from the top of Volcano Arena to give a perfectly unimpeded view of the jagged peak. We walked around the town where I had lived and popped into the bakery without carrying our umbrellas, and although we did go to the beach on the one full-on-rainy day, we knew a warm tropical rain is perfectly fine when you're going to be getting wet anyway.

And Husband, who is sensitive and reasonable, had not mentioned the forecast again so he wasn't forced to scramble to get a new phone.

So today's post is just to let you know that we've gone and are home, and our Costa Rica trip was, well, WE HAD A GREAT TIME.


*Puravida is the all-purpose Costa Rican word that means Great! Super! All Good! Hello! Good-bye! Literally it means "pure life," but who remembers that?

Hey! Look at Us!

I'm not the kind of person who likes to be in wacky photos. If you see me in a picture where all around me attention-grabbing poses are being struck, you can immediately pick me out as the one who is standing stock-still, mortified and motionless.

But look! That's me up there on the escalator, third up on the left side, waving so extravagantly that my right hand is a Bionic Woman-ish blur. Also, I'm wearing an enormous fabric sunflower and a shirt with a design that includes embroidered ruby slippers. Now I'm not a shrinking violet, but this kind of exuberant extroversion is not usually in my roundhouse.

Apparently it takes being with 6,000 of my closest friends to put me in that kind of mood.

For the past five days I've been at the international convention of P.E.O., a philanthropic organization that supports educational opportunities for women of all ages. We raise and give away (or loan) money to women who are new high school graduates, women who need more education to reach their career goals, women who are earning advanced graduate degrees, and women from other countries who are studying for doctoral degrees in the United States. And if that isn't enough, we also own a women's college that attracts great undergraduates from all over the world.

P.E.O. has distributed more than $344 million worth of educational assistance to over 109,000 women, and last week I attended its 150th birthday party.

Now it may have been just the sugar rush from all the desserts they were feeding us (Birthday cake for thousands! Yes, please!) but I'm convinced my uncharacteristic joie de vivre was generated by the knowledge that this group does such great things. You can't help but be impressed by one of our assisted students who has used a P.E.O. scholarship as a springboard to attend medical school and plans to go back to her poverty-stricken hometown to practice. Or a doctoral student from a England who points to a personal tragedy as the impetus for her study of women's issues.

This group is a sisterhood, and I'm not going to deny that there are occasional sibling squabbles (although, oddly, the fact that the entire Kansas delegation dressed alike one day didn't provoke any "you're always wearing my clothes" outbursts). But I feel completely confident in saying that we left the convention feeling upbeat about the work we're doing, and determined to do more.

Beyonce may claim that girls run the world, but they are going to need education to do it right. And  having just watched that video for the first time I would also say that they're going to need more a more thoughtfully selected wardrobe. Obviously she should be wearing a black knit jumpsuit as she rides that rearing steed; white is completely impractical in this situation. Of course, that is  coming from someone who just showed the internet a picture of herself wearing a ruby-slipper-encrusted shirt.

Okay, ignore the fashion advice. Just watch me waving wildly and appreciate the organization that prompted that enthusiasm.

Women deserve no less.

Pura Vida

Volcano Arenal in 1979.

I almost didn't see this.

Back in 1978, I was a young college graduate. I loved the small town where for two years I had been a cub reporter on the county-wide newspaper. I loved my job, which was entirely made up of talking to interesting people and writing stories about those interesting people. I loved my friends and my church and my Army-green Ford Maverick. I was renting a cute house and had my own piano and furniture. If I'd been married, or even had a dog, I probably would have stayed there forever. 

I was 24 years old, though, and something inside me wanted an adventure. One day I was agonizing over this dilemma to a friend who was married (with kids, and a dog).

"So let me get this straight," she said to me. "You're going to live your life, and get to be old, and you're going to tell your grandkids 'I really wanted to do something cool, but I had a house full of second-hand furniture'?"

Within a few weeks I had quit my job and stored the few pieces of furniture I wanted to keep in the back of my grandmother's garage.  A couple of months later I was a Peace Corps volunteer living in Costa Rica at the base of the volcano you see above.

That sounds much more primitive than it actually was: I was renting a room with a family in a medium-sized town, and that family took me in as if I was one of their own four kids. I was the same age as the oldest daughter, and although I could not have been more different from them in looks (I was taller, wider, and blonder than any of them) I felt like one of the family.

It was the perfect adventure for someone of my timid nature and fear of creepy-crawlies, and I fell in love with that family and that country and that time of life.

Costa Ricans have a phrase they use at any opportunity: Pura vida. It means "pure life," and can be used to respond to almost any question, as long as the answer gives you pleasure.

How are you today? Pura vida. How was that fresh pineapple? Pura vida. What's the outlook for the future? Pura vida.

My Peace Corps experience was pure life, with the usual ups and downs of life accentuated in an unfamiliar environment that soon became home. I loved the musical accents of Tico Spanish as much as I loved the beaches and friendly Ticos and fresh fruit and well, so many things I can't list them.

When I left Costa Rica in 1982 I assumed I'd be back yearly for the rest of my life. Instead I've been back only twice--once with the whole family in 2001, and again with Husband for a long weekend in 2004. That second visit was so brief that I couldn't even visit "my" family.

Then a few weeks ago Boy#2 and his Lovely Girl decided to celebrate their first anniversary with a trip, and invited us to celebrate along with them. Their destination? Costa Rica. I managed to keep from shrieking out loud at the invitation.

Husband and I will spend a few days with my other family there, then join Two, LG#2, and Boy#4 for several more days in the country I adopted decades ago.

Next month we'll be at the foot of the volcano again.

Pura vida.

We Were in the Room Where It Happened

Boy#4, MQB, Boy #3. And some unnamed statue.

In the 48 hours since I posted this photo on my Facebook page, I've been asked perhaps two dozen times what I thought of Hamilton, and I've replied with perhaps two dozen different answers.

Unbelievable.

Rave, rave, rave, rave, rave.

Best money I've ever spent.

And while that last review was a bit of an exaggeration (there's a lot of competition for that title) I can say without hesitation that I do not regret a penny of the not-insignificant expense or a minute of the five hours we drove to the venue.

For years I had listened first to the buzz, then to the soundtrack, then to the friends who had seen a live performance of Hamilton. So when the traveling production came to Boy#4's city and he and Boy#3 invited Husband and me to join them for a Sunday matinee, I didn't hesitate. Yes, I wanted to go. Husband, who prefers a good TCM festival to rapped history, decided on a trip to Lowe's instead.

From the moment the first note was sung I felt my face split into a grin that was almost painfully large. During the next three hours I was amazed, thrilled, irritated (high school girls who love soundtracks should be segregated in a soundproof booth rather than seated behind crabby old me who doesn't want to hear them sing along), and was reminded that live theatre is a special kind of magic.

What kind of mind can conceive of and complete this opera, where every word of dialogue is rapped? What kind of artist devises the choreography that supports the music so seamlessly that it feels like part of your own imagination? How can this be so intricate but seem so effortless?

The night before I had been at the keyboard when the our community theatre presented its final performance of Shrek. Community theatre is filled with people I know and love, and the production has been so much fun. When it comes to artistic or technical brilliance, though, it is not on the same level as what is perhaps the greatest musical ever written.

But at the end of Shrek the cast, made up of my friends and the neighbors' kids and the lady who makes the doughnuts, spilled out into the audience and sang the final song. As they filled the little theatre with the joy of "I'm a Believer" I looked past the keyboard to see a couple of teenagers dancing with an abandon my muscles immediately remembered from half a century ago.

It's the same way I know I'll never forget my sudden tears when Lafayette and Hamilton sang "Immigrants! They get the job done!" and the Hamilton audience broke into applause.

Live theatre does that. The history, the love stories, the conflict and resolution--it's the emotional muscle memory of our lives, and we're in the room when it happens.

Did You Pronounce This Pot-Purry?

The taste of summer

Believe it or not, we are in a brief moment of my life when I have not much to overshare on the internet. (Hello, July!) I am happy, age-appropriately healthy, and my children are not doing much to inspire me to violate their privacy in a way that would attract the attention of Cambridge Analytica*. My time is being occupied by (badly) accompanying the local community theatre's latest production, and by (badly) sewing up some curtains for the spare bedroom's facelift. Neither of these is going well enough for me to blog, which is amazing since I blogged my heart attack so apparently that was going well.

But when I have a dearth of recent observations, I tend to turn for inspiration to whatever is on my phone's photo file. They could be filed in the category I pronounced as Pot-Purry before I started watching Jeopardy and became educated.

Here, in no particular order, are the things that have caused me to pull out my trusty iCamera:

1. Caprese salad, which is seen above. Oh, my, heavens. I do not even calculate the WW (the lifesaving organization formerly known as Weight Watcher) points for this magical melding of mozzarella, farmer's market tomatoes, and local basil. It is the taste of summer, and even Weight Watchers WW cannot deny me summer.

Adorable August

2. Every year my Much Older Sister's Christmas gift to her siblings is a calendar that features vintage and current pictures of our extended family. I love this gift more than you can imagine but as I turned the page to August this week I was struck by three features of this picture taken in front of the family home when we were 13, 12, 8, 4, and 2 years old respectively. First, I was quite sure in that moment in my life that I was destined to be the Fat Lady In The Circus. My self-image was that I was grossly obese, even though looking at this picture I realize I was a perfectly average size. Hmmm. Booo, Teen magazine. Second, just how stylin' were my younger brothers? Hubba-hubba bubbas, for sure. That spiffy plaid jacket was especially fetchin'. Finally, the cute centerpiece of this is now the the world's most beautiful grandmother. How did we ever get to be old enough for me to make that statement?

3. Finally, since I'm now retired I'm kinda-sorta looking for ways to earn yarn money, which is the money I would spend on yarn if it did not seem such a frivolous use of retirement funds. This job search isn't serious, but I did take an online aptitude test to see if maybe I'm overlooking potential opportunities. And because the internet does not lie, I now know that the way I will be earning my yarn money is as a (drumroll, please) SINGER. Yes. The internet does not lie, but it apparently is tone deaf, because no. And if I move to my second choice of new careers, that would be as an athletic agent. Hahahahaha! Internet, you stupid.

Okay, off to practice musical accompaniment and sew some curtains. I may do those badly, but not nearly as badly as I would do the next eight things the internet thinks I should do.




*Side note: If you have not yet watched The Great Hack on Netflix, close this browser and open your Netflix account in order to be transfixed and frightened.

It's MOM Already!

Marie Antoinette does not approve. 

So here's the takeaway wisdom from today's post:

Time flies when you're getting old.

It is MOM (Medical Overshare Monday) again, already. It seems only yesterday that I was regaling you with stories of my wonky shoulder, then heralding the miraculous healing powers of physical therapy (honestly, miraculous), and with a short break to talk about how wonderful my family is and how much fun grown-up children are, we're back to me, me, always me and my failing infrastructure.

If you check today's picture you'll notice that even Marie Antoinette looks disapproving at how much upkeep my corpus is needing, even though Marie's head pops off when you push the button on the back of her neck and she really shouldn't be all judgy-judgy about my meds. Up until a couple of years ago I was able to list my prescriptions on one line at the doctor's office (thyroid supplement and thank you, Mom, for that faulty gene) and my over-the-counters on one additional line (multivitamin).

Then came the discovery of clotting issues (that faulty gene was yours, Dad) and a lifetime prescription for blood thinners.

This week's addition to my ever-growing list of medicines came after a routine bone scan ordered following my annual check-up. I joked about it at breakfast, since the only risk factor I had for thinning bones was my status as a Woman of a Certain Age.

"No way this is a problem," I told Husband. "I'm a big-boned, overweight, dairy farmer's granddaughter with impeccable sin habits. No sir, I don't smoke and I don't chew and I don't kiss the boys who do, heh-heh-heh."

The universe picked up on that heh-heh-heh and the next morning the doctor's office called, because of course they did.

Osteoporosis, with a prescription for twice-daily calcium tables, once-weekly bone strengthener, and five-times-weekly 30-minute walks.

I asked if this was a severe case, and the medical assistant explained patiently that osteoporosis is a number on a scale, and once you pass that number you have it. It's like pregnancy--no such thing as being a little pregnant.

So to recap: In a short two years I have gone from being able to list all my medicines on one line to having a spreadsheet that enumerates not only the names of the medicines but also the times at which they should be taken (morning, evening, once/day, twice/day, once/week), plus the special instructions (remind pharmacy of coupon or be ready for sticker shock, take with water only and don't lie down for following 30 minutes, take with food, etc.).

As I was whining to my brother about this sad state of affairs, he reminded me that our dairy-farming grandmother lived to be 98, even with the osteoporosis she passed down to me.

"Aren't you glad you're alive now, when they're catching this really early and treating it aggressively?" he said.

Well, yes, there is that. I bet Marie Antoinette wishes there had been some way to remove that button from the back of her neck, and also to fix the arm that is held on with Scotch tape after I dropped her one day.

I'm thankful for the treatments, and that my faulty calcium usage was caught way early, but enough for now. I'm hoping the next Medical Overshare Monday is a long, long time in the future. 

What It's Like

Mothers of younger-than-adult children sometimes ask me what it's like to have all of my grown-up, out-of-the-house, earning-their-own-salaries children back in the nest for a few days. (No, they don't really ask that. I'm just saying they do because I imagine they are asking it in their minds.)

The picture above actually sums it up quite well: I asked the Boys to pose outside the Fancy Restaurant where we celebrated my retirement, and that's Boy#2 poking Boy#3 in the ribs and making him laugh, while Boy#4 grins at the camera, and Boy#1 is obviously waiting patiently for the chaos to subside. I am behind my phone saying "Oh, for heaven's SAKE! STOP THAT!"

So in short, in spite of those receding hairlines and professional certifications and graduate degrees, much of the time it's what it's always been: Like dealing with a pack of puppies in need of house training. But there are also other moments during the week of retirement festivities that remind me (again) how much fun it is to be the mother of grown-ups.

This week is the perfect time for any home projects that have been deferred for lack of manpower.  We're having professionals re-do our pathetic backyard, which is currently made up almost entirely of dirt and failure. The pros were going to charge $X.XX to replace two buried pipes between the downspouts and the driveway, though, so Husband decided to take advantage of all the muscle in the house to lower the cost estimate. Included in the photo above are two engineers, one of whom is an actual professional engineer who designs pipeline systems for a living but was thwarted in his argument that "I'm the manager--I don't have to dig." Ha! Not so fast, professional engineer, and grab a shovel. (When he found out how little the lawn folks would have charged to replace the pipe, the PE snorted that next time he would bring a crisp $100 bill to buy his way out of the job.)

Whether you're a child or an adult, being together on the Fourth of July means you get sparklers and spark-pooping chickens and the like, even if you're of an age to overrule your mother's fear of the more robust fireworks. 

Midway through the week is the perfect time to take a generational break and give the young'uns some time to reflect on the crazy that their parents have become. A river float trip is just the right venue, as long as you send an occasional photo as proof of life. This also is an excellent time to do the idiot things your mother would find, well, idiotic. ("How about we jump off this fallen log into the rain-swollen river?" "GREAT idea!") Do not tell your mother about this until later.

This kind of celebration  is the best time for complete abandonment of any dietary restrictions, and when Lovely Girl#1 says she has bought way too many cookies, you must prove her wrong, especially if they are MomQueenBee themed! You'll notice that I am in danger of becoming that overly-thematically-appropriate crazy lady, what with my bee cookie and my bee shirt. Have I mentioned I have a beehive dress? I also have a beehive dress.

But maybe the best part of the week is when everyone is lined up in the same church pew, filling it a little more snugly than when they were toddlers but now able to listen more. The dress code appears to be blue, and I know I shouldn't have been taking a picture during church but I couldn't help myself.

Mothers of younger kids, hang in there during the sleepless nights and need for constant vigilance and refusal to eat any foods that aren't white. Much as we miss them when they're not around, having grown-up, out-of-the-house, earning-their-own-salaries children back in the nest is simply the best stage of all.

My Best Work

We're fancy.

When the Boys found out that my final, I-really-mean-it-this-time, no-I'm-not-kidding last day of work at Small College would be June 30, they asked what I wanted to do to mark the occasion. As I've mentioned here ad nauseum, it's a retirement after 30 years but one that has occurred with more of a whimper than a bang. So did I want a party, they asked? A trip? A gift card for the yarn store?

What I want, I told them, was to have everyone home for the weekend. The geographical vicissitudes that accompany employment these days have meant that the four Boys and two Lovely Girls now live in four different states, so full-family get-togethers are few and literally far between. We were last together at the Wedding of the Century Part Deux, and the last time Boy#2 was home was 18 months ago. (To my horror, he reminded me he'd never even seen the Taj MaJohn.)

So they came home.

We were missing Lovely Girl#2, since the transitional days surrounding July 1 are the absolute worst for resident doctors, but by Saturday evening everyone else had gathered. Then we were together for an entire week, split between the House on the Corner and the adjoining-state home of Boy#1 and Lovely Girl#1.

That first night they took Husband and me out to eat at a place far fancier than their childhood experiences would warrant. (A rabbit trail about fanciness: During the years when vacation meant pulling the pop-up to a lake, our camper was stranded in rising waters after a torrential downpour. There was no fast-food option near by so we went into the local truck stop for breakfast pancakes. The Boys were wide-eyed at its opulence, which today would provoke scathing Yelp comments but was a step up from McDonald's. "Do we get to keep the silverware?" one asked in amazement. At that point we realized we needed to raise our fanciness aspirations.)

Anyway, after we had stuffed ourselves with steak and asparagus and appetizers filled with upscale cheeses, Boy#1 reminded us of the event we were marking. My full-time employment at Small College started when Boy#4 was in pre-school, so our family had grown up while I was working there.

"We've had a lot of good times at SC," he said. "Let's talk about some of them."

The lump in my throat started growing while they reminisced about riding their bikes to the college and lobbing pebbles at my second-story window so that I could toss down Hershey's Kisses from my candy bowl. Or when they were ballboys at football games and learned a whole new vocabulary. Or the piano lessons they had with the head of the performing arts division, and how kind and encouraging he was.

And then it was my turn. So I talked about the man who hired me, and the man who was my boss for 17 years, and how they had believed in my abilities and encouraged me, trusting my professionalism even as I was learning from them how to lead and manage. I remembered the excitement when our department won the sweepstakes award of the professional organization for academic communications, in competition with universities dozens of times our size. I remembered the day spent with Helen Thomas, one of my journalistic idols who was a Commencement speaker. (She called me her Scout leader, and hand-wrote her address and phone number on a scrap of paper--"If you're ever in Washington, call me," she said.)

By then I was having trouble talking around that throat lump.

"But of all those things I did at the college," I managed to speak-sob, "I realize as I look around the table what my best work actually was. You all are my very best work."

It was corny and tear-stained but I'm okay with that valedictory on my career.

It was true.

Out of Limbo

So do you like what I'm doing with the sun room these days?

No, not the gloom in the back yard that augurs more rain. (Noah! Swing by here, please!) I'm talking about the three bright elastic bands artfully draped on the doorknob. Those resistance bands are a symbol of a momentous event this morning: My first physical therapy session.

You have no idea how delighted I am to be able to write that sentence.

Remember a couple of posts ago when I was oversharing about my wonky shoulder?  I mentioned that the soonest I could see the orthopedist was a full month away, and I may have passed that off with a carefree tra-la in print, but deep down my psyche was not so cavalier. Recovery from shoulder surgery is no joke and I was foreseeing the things I love to do--play the piano, knit, engage in at least minimal personal grooming--disappearing under the very real possibility of weeks of recovery.

People, that was one long month during which I tried to prepare for what might happen. I was hopeful that I would not need the surgery that the MRI report seemed to indicate was inevitable, but I also wanted to be practical in case I did need weeks of upper-right-quadrant immobilization. I made a list of British procedurals on Netflix and Acorn for occupying my mind during the non-knitting weeks. I started a Pinterest board of ultra-short Haircuts That Flatter Women Over 50, anticipating I wouldn't be able to handle a hairdryer. Truth be told, I even began to convince myself that it would be a nice two-month break from a lot of adulting if I couldn't cook or clean or weed. Summer was put on hold as we waited to see if I would be able to travel (or not) or host guests (or not) or wear regulation underwear (or not).

Weirdly, during the weeks of limbo the shoulder started to feel better, largely because I began treating it as if it were an inconvenient accessory to be carted around rather than a utilitarian body part. Mentally I considered it the equivalent of a fur handbag: Useless and only marginally decorative.

Last Friday I finally met with the orthopedist. He put me through the standard push-as-hard-as-you-can, now lift-your-arm-as-far-as-you-can evaluations I've done several times in the past couple of months, and within minutes he had a diagnosis:

"You have excellent strength and range of motion. You do not need surgery."

My mouth may have actually dropped open. Say what now?

"Your pain is being caused by inflammation. You'll get three shots in your shoulder today to relieve that inflammation, and you'll do a short course of steroids, then physical therapy to build up the muscles around the shoulder."

But the MRI report--the complete tears, the atrophy, the retraction, the stuff I didn't even understand?

"You do not need surgery."

An observation:  A medical specialist's answers tend to shorten in direct proportion to the extent to which the patient seems to be questioning those answers. Or at least that was the case in this situation.

Honestly, I wasn't questioning either the doctor's expertise or his judgment, I just couldn't believe what I was hearing. It had the feel of one of those horrible practical joke gift lottery tickets, in which the gift recipient thinks he has won a small fortune, but the fine print on the reverse side reveals the cruel zero value. I kept waiting for the fine print to emerge and for everyone to laugh heartily at my gullibility.

I was finally convinced when the first of the shots went into my shoulder joint. Again, surprise! Apparently complete lack of muscular tone is an advantage in this situation because in contrast to the horror stories I had been told, these shots hurt less than most flu shots I've had.

The immediate pain relief was astonishing, and to my delight, I've felt so, so much better. I'm still to avoid lifting heavy objects (especially from some vulnerable angles) but no other restrictions were put in place. I'm cleared to play, knit, travel, and do all the things I had thought would be off the table after surgery.

This morning I was evaluated by the physical therapist, and from now on my days will include a regimen of arm lifts ("I's, Y's, and T's," for you physical therapy geeks), resistance bands, and scapular retractions and depressions (which apparently also are a thing). Of course this also means I'm cleared to clean and cook, but who cares? 

I'm out of shoulder limbo. Let the summer begin.

Antediluvian

I chose both the title of this post and its beauty shot carefully.

Antediluvian. Before the Flood.

I wanted to remind myself that just a few weeks ago I had snapped a couple of shots of the flowers in our front garden because this truly has been the most beautiful spring I can remember. Abundant moisture over the winter (both snow and rain) meant that flowers were blooming with wild abandon. Roses, impatiens, irises, geraniums, day lilies, rhubarb, basil, box elders, mint, one gift marigold, and that pretty light-green sticker bush that I can never remember the name of were all jostling for space in the tiny space in front of our porch.

It was glorious, and this picture doesn't do it justice.

But then there is this, taken eight days ago from the porch just behind that garden:

And this, looking north instead of south:

Those are the same roses, the same box elders, the same irises after more than eight inches of rain in a 24-hour period.

Really, I'm not complaining. We are so very, very lucky.

There has been so much rain, and it has lasted so long, but we are still okay.

The full name of the House on the Corner is "The House on the Corner at the Bottom of the Hill and the Intersection of Two Drainage Streets." The flooded shots above were scary, as I waited to see if a downpour would push run-off from the hill and the two streets past the bottom step of the porch and into the house. (It has not, in our 31 years in this house.) But within hours the water had drained away, and left our yard damp and puddled but our house dry.

So many others in the middle section of the nation are not as lucky. We watch in horror the television footage of houses sliding into flooding rivers. We marvel that the interstate highway that passes near Small Town has been closed. Our grocery store conversations start "Is your basement okay?"

And even these are not the worst: When my text alert chimed at 1 a.m. and Boy#1 reported that they were safe after a killer tornado passed within a couple miles of their home in a neighboring state, we were thankful but horrified.

In the past few days we've finally seen the sun, after weeks of unremitting storms. We're Kansans, so we emerge pale and blinking and with our senses of humor intact.

Small Town fairgrounds, which had just begun to dry out after flooding a month ago, were inundated again and I'm sure city workers chuckled as they posted the notice:

They knew they'll be the ones cleaning the up-to-their-eaves buildings behind the sign that apologizes "Sorry. No Camping."

And yesterday, with the sun finally out, Husband decided to see if the surface pump that has kept our basement dry-ish could also drain the swamp in the front yard.

Two hours later things were looking better:

By the end of the day the left-over puddles had soaked into the saturated ground.

It's not a lawn, but it's progress.

Today we're watching the forecast again. The sun was out this morning but the forecast calls for rain to begin again at 1 p.m., and the weather guys have told us to get the cars into the garage--"storms, possibly severe" are probable in the late afternoon.

One of my favorite bloggers, who writes wisely and frankly at swistle.com, describes my mental state perfectly with her tagline: "I acknowledge my luckiness without giving up my claim to the suckiness."

We are so lucky. We are not under water, we are not cleaning up tornado debris. But I mourn my flowers, and I am so, so tired of having rain in the forecast every day.

I am ready to be postdiluvian.

Medical Overshare Monday: I'll Go First.

Guess what, guys? It's Medical Overshare Monday!

This may not be an actual thing (yet), but the knitting Facebook groups of which I'm a member have all kinds of acronyms--we post pictures of our WIPs (Works in Progress), which transition to FOF (Finished Object Fridays), and humblebrag about our SABLEs (Stash Aquisition Beyond Life Expectancy).

I'm inventing MOM because I have some O'ing of my own to do. As you might have guessed, it is closely related to the high-quality artwork I found to open today's post. Can you believe it was a free download?

For the past year or so I've been whining that my shoulder was feeling wonky. I think I've even mentioned in this space a couple of times that my right arm was beginning to be a more reliable weather predictor than Channel 10, but pretty much everything I do depends on my right arm so instead of seeking an actual professional opinion I self-diagnosed the shoulder crankiness as aging pains. I continued to carry in grocery bags four in each hand, and I made the transition from earning most of my money at a computer keyboard to earning most of my money at a piano keyboard. Just for fun I knit, and knit, and knit some more.

Finally last week I decided I was tired of waking up in the night wincing because I'd jostled my shoulder in my sleep, and went to see my doctor. He did a couple of things that made me say "ow" then booked me in for an MRI. The results were available in my in-box the next morning.

Well.

The radiologist's report used the phrase "complete tear" several times, as well as the phrases "muscle atrophy" and "degenerative changes," and several other phrases that I won't bore you with but also sounded ominous. It appears that my arm is now attached to my body almost exclusively by thoughts and prayers, and as we've noted during the past few years, without some kind of action these are not always the most effective ways of dealing with concrete problems.

My doctor already had made me an appointment with a specialist, but May must be busy season for orthopedists because the earliest I could be seen is June 14. A piece of advice for you if you're in a similar situation: Dr. Google does not know the proper balance between "This may be manageable without much trauma" and "Get out the chainsaw, we're doing an emergency amputation."

Fortunately, my sons have shown excellent taste in marrying into families who are not only lovely and kind and have the most beautiful daughters, but also are brilliant in their own right, which is to say that Lovely Girl#2's father is an orthopedic surgeon who deals with this stuff every day.

Oh, yes, I did ask for help based solely on personal panic and from several states away the advice was excellent. With just a couple of texts the good doctor was able to talk me down off the ledge, and I'm now waiting patient-ly (that's a medical joke) until the actual appointment in a month. I'm hoping for a recommendation of physical therapy and some kind of miracle shots, but aware that I may end up on an operating table.

I'm trying hard not to pay any interest on a worry loan for which I might not need the actual capital, but also trying not to ignore ways I could make my life easier if the doctor here does recommend surgery.  Grocery delivery! Rolling luggage! Left-hand-heavy preludes! A stockpile of British procedurals for some posh-accent diversion!

In the meantime I have a pair of socks to finish in case I'm left-hand-only for a while.

Anyone else want to overshare?

Belated Mother's Day Observations

Boy#4 delivering flowers, and Boy#2 skeptical about whatever his brother is saying. 

The beauty shot that goes with today's observations will seem confusing at first glance. Stick with me, though, because it is emblematic of what I want to say about Sunday's celebration of motherhood. (I know, I know. I'm three days late, which also is emblematic of my motherhood style which began when I was a geriatric 32 and has always been behind the curve.)

Anyway, I almost skipped writing about Mother's Day even though this blog is just pretty much a series of blatherings on that subject. But I will plant my stake on one truth about being a mother:

No one knows how to do it.

Really.

I was sure I had motherhood all figured out when I was in my teens/20s and not yet a mother. I would be firm but fair. I would be my children's mother, not their friend. I would never be too tired to listen. I would teach them how to make pie crusts and read to them at every opportunity.

I had confidence in confidence alone, but it only took a few hours of actual motherhood to realize that I was unfit for the position. Boy#1 had been born precipitously (preeclampsia is a real thing) and I had sunk into exhaustion after midnight when the door of my hospital room swung open and in rolled a nurse with a sub-five-pound baby in an incubator.

"Time for his late-night supper!" the nurse said cheerily. I just gaped at her.

Honestly, it never occurred to me that after having done a full and strenuous day of work I would not be allowed to sleep through the night.

And that, my friends, should be the motto of motherhood, embroidered on sofa pillows in every home: Honestly, It Never Occurred to Me.

It never occurred to me that being firm but fair was a standard too high, until the day I heard myself callously telling a kid "Fair is where you take your pigs." (I didn't originate that phrase, but oh boy, did I appropriate it.)  It didn't occur to me that there are a lot of times when being a friend looks like a lot more fun than being a mother. It didn't occur to me how bone-tired I'd be during year after year of not-sleeping-through-the-night-yet babies, too tired for late-night discussions. It didn't occur to me that I make a lousy pie crust, so why would anyone want to learn that?

The only mothering vow I made that I kept was that I read to the Boys at every opportunity.

Still? I love being a mother. I loved the babies, and their pat-pat hands on my cheek. I loved the toddlers, who are the only age group who can properly wear overalls. And the school-agers, and even the teens (oh, the teens! Those tantalizing glimpses of solidity!). Honestly? Motherhood is equal parts roller-coaster emotions, cliff-hanging decisions, and boring slog, and no one knows how to do it.

We're friends with a family who had four children just older than ours, and that mom? She had it all put together. Her kids were kind, smart, and well-mannered at just about the time ours were going through their untamed hellion stages. A friend asked Sharon how she had been such a good mom, and she just laughed.

"You do the best you can every day, forgive yourself, then get up the next day and do it again."

That became my motherhood mantra, and I thought back on it Sunday. We'd spend Saturday car shopping with Boy#4, and he arrived with a gorgeous arrangement of spring flowers from all of his siblings. Then Sunday night we had what has become our Mother's Day/Father's Day/birthday tradition--a raucous Google Chat with the Boys trash-talking over each other and showing off the dog's latest trick and generally behaving as if they were at home around the table instead of in four different states.

I'm the luckiest mother in the word. We didn't know how to do it, but somehow Husband and I have children who are kind, smart, well-mannered, and obviously like us and each other. That this could be the outcome of such a terrifyingly uncharted journey?

Honestly, it never occurred to me.

At Least We Had Dessert

How much lemon tart can two people eat in three days? Apparently, this much.

This has been quite the week in Small Town.

It is early May, so there have been all manner of concerts and recitals as music instruction wraps up for the year. I've piano-ed until my wonky shoulder has begged for mercy.

It's the end of school, so the school board president (Husband) has attended receptions and congratulated retiring teachers and staff, clapped his hands sore for outstanding graduates, ooh-ed and aah-ed at dozens of final project displays, and marveled at the good work done by the folks in our public schools.

On top of this, I was scheduled to have club at the House on the Corner on Tuesday night. (Does anyone under the age of Way Too Old still use that phrase, "having club"? I'm guessing it's a quaint hold-over that we Baby Boomers learned from our mothers, signifying frantic cleaning and experimenting with fancy recipes.)

Anyway, that day I wasn't paying much attention to the forecast. All of my attention was on making sure there were enough chairs and that our immunity improvement system (a.k.a. accumulated dust) wasn't too noticeable.

Guests were to start arriving at 6:30, and with one hour to spare I looked around and lo, it was good. I had done all I could to make it look as if really high-class people live in the House on the Corner--fresh flowers! Napkins artfully fanned! Carefully casual arrangements of family photos! TWO lemon tarts chilling!

And then my text alert started to chime.

"Are you watching the forecast? Should we cancel?"

"Have you been watching the weather? It looks like it might get nasty."

Do you know what can be really irritating when you have spent all day trying to make it look as if you are something you really aren't, such as tasteful and put-together? Having that facade be unseen, that's what.

But the skies were darkening and getting that green-ish cast all of us Kansans recognize. I knew cancelling was the right thing to do, but...TWO lemon tarts! I was more than a little chippy as I made the calls telling my friends to stay home out of the weather, and that we'd meet a week later. "But come tomorrow afternoon for a coffee break and dessert," I told them.

My friend who calls me on my baloney texted me to remind me that this was the right call, even if I was being petty and pouty about it. She was right, of course, especially when we woke up the next morning to find that the forecast of rain had actually been understated--the system dumped nine inches just up the road from us, and flooding closed highways all around. It was so bad, in fact, that the coffee break had to be cancelled because my usual 20-minute commute home from work turned into six times that length as I spent nearly an hour trying to get across the only open bridge coming into Small Town from the south.

So it's been another learning experience. The lesson, obviously, is that I shouldn't complain about having a clean house and fresh flowers, even if I don't have guests to enjoy that false picture of daily life with me. Husband and I can come home from our May events and wait for the dust to re-accumulate, and while we do it, we can have a slice of lemon tart.

But we may have to pick up the pace of the forks. There's still a whole tart chilling.

It's My Bag(s)

You guys! I was going to start out this post with a disclaimer about our kitchen linoleum. (It's from the "So Old We're Calling It Retro" line of floor coverings.)

BUT! Meghan had her baby!

Do not call me out on overuse of exclamation points. Just do not. Because this is SO EXCITING! I happen to be a person who thinks the British royal family is all kinds of fascinating, and I prefer to ignore the moments when they are stupid or thoughtless or wear silly hats. I do not go to the extreme of forgiving of  actual Nazi sympathizers (looking at you, Edward VIII), but how can you not love Queen Elizabeth, especially if you have watched The Crown? And how can you not love royal babies?!

And there is a new one! Oh, I know that Harry has been something of a pill in the past (see also: wearing of Nazi uniforms as costumes), but he said just exactly the right things in just exactly the right tone of amazement and delight when he announced the birth.

But I digress. A few weeks ago I was looking at the distinctly un-royal corner of the kitchen where I dump carefully store my work gear. As a full-fledged member of the gig economy I have found that I not only wear a lot of hats, I carry a lot of bags.

Most of them are full of music: There's my accompanying-the-high-school-band-soloists bag, and my accompanying-the-college-music-majors bag, as well as my playing-for-funerals-and-church-services bag.

Some are what I call busy bags, because I whine and demand attention when I'm bored. These include the grand jury bag (which holds a knitting project and my special grand jury coffee cup), and the big bag that holds middle school choir music, my laptop (for freelance projects and blogging), and my lunch.

And there are the specialized bags, which in this picture include the bag of order forms and delivery cards for my women's group's annual flower sales.

Spring happens to be busy season for all of these gigs, but as they wrap up and we head into summer the bags also take a summer break. In the past two weeks we've had state music contest (yay, for all the participants and congratulations to I rating recipients!), college juries (reminding me why I was not a music major), the April grand jury session, and the delivery of thousands of plants. Those bags have been emptied and put back into storage. In a couple of days we'll have the final middle school concert of the year and summer break will be officially underway, so that bag can be on hiatus as well.

Wrapping up all of these responsibilities feels good, even as I know I'll miss them because did I mention I'm really enjoying all the gigs I have right now?

But if I had all my bandwidth on actual productivity, I wouldn't have had time this morning to shriek out loud at the IT'S A BOY! news or to obsess over possible names. (I'm on Team Philip; one of the Boys is named after his two grandfathers so I have a special place in my heart for this possibility.)

Congratulations, Sussexes. May all your bags hold diapers.

What I Would Have Said

A week ago today I received an award from the Small College where I've spent most of my professional career. The college recognizes five-year increments of service, and I had already collected my marble pen set, the college seal bookends, and the engraved salad bowl. This year I have been working there for three decades, which apparently is the crystal vase commemoration year.

I was conflicted about whether to attend the ceremony or not. Three years ago, I was told that while I would still be employed at the college, my employment was being drastically changed. It was unexpected and, frankly, unwelcome news.

So the thought of attending a ceremony to celebrate (woohoo!) 30 years was...fraught. The Boys, who have been my anger surrogates as I worked through All The Feelings associated with the end of my professional career, had all kinds of unprintable suggestions. But Husband had the best advice:

"You've done good work, and you only have one shot at this. You don't want to regret not showing up." And then he added a clincher: "And don't forget that they usually ask the 30-year recipients to make some comments."

Well. I was the only 30-year recipient, and since the organizers may have been unsure about what I would actually use my microphone opportunity to say, they skipped the comments moment. Fortunately, I have a blog! My own microphone!

Here's what I would have said:

"First I'd like to thank my husband for encouraging me to attend this ceremony. Between us we have one degree and 40 years of service to this institution, and it's been a huge part of our life together. But I'm also deeply grateful to the people who are here today, and to those who have moved on but were here during my time at Small College, who have been creative with me, and laughed with me, and supported me, and given me a chance to do what I believe I was called to do. Most of all, I want to thank all those who have been kind to me and have shown themselves to be brave and compassionate because Small College, like Soylent Green, is people."

The day I carried the final box out of my office across the street and set up my work computer at home, I added a screen saver that said "Give It a Year." I knew that most big transitions, whether positive or negative, take some time to shake out and that I shouldn't judge my altered life until I'd walked in the new shoes for a while. For some reason, though, the computer was glitchy and the screen saver never kicked on. No amount of re-setting settings or fiddling with toggles prompted it to play, and eventually I forgot that I had added this reminder.

Last week, in an eerie coincidence, the screen saver sprang to life. By then I'd given my new reality a year--three, in fact--and had pretty much worked through the blisters and calluses. I had told a friend in equal parts delight and relief that I am loving everything I do now, and so grateful for the life I'm living.

It's time for a new screen saver.

Looking Back on Bonus Year #2

A friend texted me last week.

"Congratulations on another bonus year," she said.

I had thought about that bonus year a few times as we moved into spring, thinking of all the things I would have missed if the toe-dip I made into the possibility of sudden death had gone south instead of north. Remember this? The pulmonary embolisms and heart attack?

During the first bonus year I was acutely aware of that event, and the wonder that I was still around to obsess over the bathroom remodel and to begin the search for the perfect Mother of the Groom dress. The adrenaline spike of unexpected survival wears off, though, and this year I have occasionally forgotten to consciously mark events I am so glad I did not miss when I was "imminently dead," as K. described me in her congratulatory message.

There is the delight I continue to take in the Taj MaJohn. Every time red carnations are available for $5 or less  at the grocery store I buy a bunch and stick them into a white pitcher and they make me inexplicably happy. The tick-tock-tail cat clock approves, too.

And there is my perpetual amazement that people keep asking me to sit down at the piano and play. I now accompany regularly for a middle school, a high school, and a college, and it has been a hoot to see the progression from the usually-endearing-but-sometimes-excruciating-squirrely junior high bundles of hormones to the usually-endearing-but-sometimes-excruciatingly-self-important collegiate bundles of angst. People under construction are fascinating.

Also, there is astonishment that this spring has been glorious, because an abnormally wet winter has led to acres of henbit spreading a purple tide across the lawns of Small Town and the bees and I are grateful for its beautiful weediness.

This is without mentioning the joy of the group texts each Sunday in which Husband sends a geography trivia question to our family and everyone contributes a guess. The Lovely Girls are dominant in coming up with the correct answers, although Boy#4 is an avid vexillologist and can be counted on for a fascinating commentary on the topic.

There are the friends who make me laugh and cry, and the satisfaction of editing a doctoral dissertation into final form, and...

So many things. So many things I would missed without the second bonus year.

"It was in my memories...you wrote a blog last year," K. reminded me.

"I need to go back and  read that," I replied. "And I need to start blogging again."

"Yes, you do. And yes, you do," was her immediate answer.

I will.