Month: June 2025

Turquoise colors the early morning sky as a granddaughter and I leave the house for a donut run. We turn out of the neighborhood, zip past the strip mall, clear two stop lights, lean into a roundabout and begin cruising a lovely stretch of road bordered by magnificent estate homes with manicured lawns and swimming pools.

My backseat passenger asks how long it will be before we get to the store and comments she has never been on this road. The implication is clear: These are not Grandma’s neighbors. Grandma could be lost. Donuts could be at risk.

“I know exactly where we are. Look to your left up ahead,” I say. “There’s a house under construction that is so big you can’t tell where the front door is. Sometimes there are as many as 20 work trucks there at a time.”

She sits up tall, cranes her neck and says, “Whoa!” which is what most people say when they pass the house.

“Looks like they’re building a wall around the property,” I say. “They could be worried about people trying to break into their house. If I had that much money, I might be worried, too.”

“I’m worried,” comes a soft reply.

“Why are you worried?”

“Because I have a lot of money.”

“How much?”

“I have 40 dollars at home and 100 dollars in the bank.”

“That’s a lot of money, for a girl who just finished kindergarten. I’m sure your money is very, very safe. You don’t need to worry.”

“OK. But I still worry.”

“About what?”

“I worry about my dog. I worry she might run away.”

“Your dog is never going to run away. She loves living with you and your family. She loves her dog bed, all the cuddles you give her, the tricks you’ve taught her and the bell she jostles to go outside. She would never run away. You don’t need to worry about that.”

Silence. She’s thinking.

“Want to hear me spell picnic?” she asks. “P-i-k-n-k.”

“It’s actually p-i-c-n-i-c,” I say.

“It’s the c,” she says with a sigh. “Sometimes it sounds like k and sometimes it sounds like s. Aren’t there some rules about c?”

Now I’m worried. Who knew worry was contagious? There are rules about c, something to do with the vowels that follow it, but even for $140 dollars I can’t remember them well enough to guarantee accuracy.

I spell picnic a couple of times; she spells it a couple of times and the language arts crisis passes. Another worry left in the dust.

“Look at us!” I say. “We are taking an early morning ride in the car together under blue skies and puffy marshmallow clouds, and you’re about to pick out a donut. Today is a good day. We don’t have a worry in the world.”

Silence.

“Strawberry frosted with sprinkles!” she says.

 

 

 

I may be only one bag of Miracle-Gro away from going officially overboard on the whole garden thing this year.  I blame it all on a long, hard winter. My survival kit during snowbound months with no sun and sub-zero temps consisted of chocolate and mail-order seeds.

Starting seeds indoors was how I convinced myself winter would one day pass and spring would again return. I threw myself into the project with such passion that I even bought a grow light.

Grow lights are small but mighty purplish UV lights on flexible arms that can illuminate an entire room. The lights were so bright that, from the outside, the upstairs of the house looked like a cannabis farm.

Not wanting to be awakened at 2 a.m. by a SWAT team, I cut the grow lights and started moving seed trays to follow the sunlight each day. Morning sun poured in by the fireplace, noonday sun filled the family room and the days ended with seedling trays perched on cookbooks, catching late afternoon rays in the kitchen.

The things we do for love—and garden-fresh vegetables.

On a visit to Monticello, we saw the fantastic greenhouse room where Thomas Jefferson cultivated seeds and kept detailed notes. My maternal instinct prompted me to begin keeping notations on seed development as well.

March 20th: Roma tomato beginning to crown. Soil dilated to 2.

April 1st: Shocker! Twin peppers birthed over night!

When we went out of town for a long weekend, I asked if the plants could stay with one of our girls. She gave me the look. “We watch your kids,” I said. “Surely, you can watch my babies.”

I wasn’t so far gone as to leave page after page of written instructions, however, I did call a few times. I had separation-vegetation anxiety.

And I may have asked her to send pictures.

And I may have texted: “Tell the herbs Momma will be back in no thyme and let the basil know I’m rooting for him.”

No response. I think she blocked me.

What I didn’t plan on was such a hearty crop. We now have a small vegetable garden overflowing with cucumbers, pole beans, tomatoes, peppers, herbs and red potatoes.

They are so robust that they all scored in the 95^th percentile at their last well check.

Get a group of women together and chances are they will talk about relationships. And shoes. More specifically, relationships with shoes.

The conversations are about shoes somebody loves, shoes somebody used to love (but broke up with due to plantar fasciitis), and shoes somebody dreams of meeting in the future.

These are women in crisis grappling with the reality that they can no longer live in fashionable heels but need to wear comfortable shoes. Transitioning to comfortable shoes is a major life change that aging experts fail to mention.

My closet is a melancholy walk down memory lane. It cradles shoes that I shouldn’t wear, and can’t wear, but can’t let go of. This is known as shoe separation anxiety.

Yesterday, I pulled a dusty box from under the bed to feast my eyes on a beloved pair of boots I can no longer wear. It was sole food.

Sadly, my most comfortable shoes are a pair of well-worn hiking boots. That’s a hard one to pull off at weddings and funerals.

The last shoe convo I had in a group of women went like this:

“I love Hoka. They’re like wearing clouds,” said one.

“I can’t do clouds,” countered another. “I need support.”

“The On tennis shoes are good,” chirped another. “They have so much cushioning on the bottom you could use them for a flotation device.”

If you happen upon a comfortable-shoe conversation, think twice before sticking your toe in the water.

I first noticed my shoes were unbearable at a wedding two years ago. Silver heels. You should see them. You still can—they’re on the closet shelf. I kicked them off under the table during the reception and, when the wedding was over, walked barefoot on gravel to get to the car.

Two weeks later I was in a podiatrist’s office. He said I needed orthotic inserts. I questioned that. He explained in detail how they would help. I said, “OK, I stand corrected.”

Orthotic inserts are so expensive that I keep them in the safe deposit box at night. Comfort comes with a cost.

Costly as they are, comfortable shoes are such a relief to hurting feet that they quickly become both necessity and obsession. The search history on my computer sadly reveals 98 percent of my searches are for shoes with arch support. I toe the line.

I now know why Dorothy in the “Wizard of Oz” kept saying “There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home,” while clicking her ruby slippers together. Home was where her comfortable shoes were.

The morning after a storm that snapped tree branches, sent people scurrying to their basements and trash cans blowing to the curbs, I was sitting in a line of traffic adjacent to a small family-owned garden store.

A woman out front of the garden shop struggled to untangle flagpole ropes twisted in the storm. Hunched over in an awkward position, she couldn’t seem to get a grip on them. I wondered why she wasn’t using both hands when a swatch of red and white peeked out from under her arm. She was holding a folded flag beneath her elbow pressed tightly to her side.

With the flagpole lines finally free, she attached the flag, taking care that it didn’t touch the ground. Old Glory was halfway up the pole when the traffic resumed moving.

The woman who raised the flag has probably done that hundreds of times, but I was glad to be there at that particular time, to see her respectful handling of Old Glory and to watch the stars and stripes reach for the sky.

My dad fought under that flag, as did two of his brothers, one who was killed in combat. I have a total of six uncles who served under that flag. Two made the military their careers. My mother-in-law, brother-in-law and our son-in-law all served under that flag.

“Served” sounds so easy. Bombs, gunfire, tanks, makeshift hospitals, sleeping in tents, land mines, Agent Orange, suicide bombers and open burn pits.

Nobody ever comes home the same.

Some never come home.

The lives of those who serve are upended just like the lives of everyone who loves them, prays for them and waits for them.

June 14th is National Flag Day. We fly the flag from our front porch almost every day. To us, it is a reminder of the long and bloody road to freedom and a nod of gratitude to all who have served.

There is power in that flag. Those red and white stripes, and stars on a field of blue are so powerful they can temporarily unite opposing teams on football fields, baseball fields, soccer fields and basketball courts. That flag can trigger the roar of the crowd at the Indy 500 and NASCAR races.

In rare moments, that flag can even quiet warring political factions at our nation’s capital.

Old Glory represents our shared history as well as our shared hope for the future.

I called the garden shop and told the man who answered the phone that I’d watched someone raise the flag in front of their business that morning and appreciated it.

“You know why we have that done every day?” he asked. “My dad served in World War II.”

I find myself still pondering the surprise announcement from Warren Buffett, age 94 and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, that he is retiring because he was “beginning to feel his age.”

I keep wanting the man to expand. Specifics on “feeling his age” would be helpful and greatly appreciated.

He did say he noticed he was operating at a different speed. Did he try a second cup of coffee?

Was there a day he dropped something on the floor and had to stop and think about which knee to go down on first so he could get back up?

Did he discover he could only sleep on his side, no longer on his stomach or back?

Did he suddenly find he loathed all his pillows? This one was too hard, this one was too soft and not a single one was “just right”?

Were neighbors asking him to turn down the volume on the television?

Was there a day that he was jolted because he needed spreadsheets printed in larger type?

Were there times he planned on telling a group of investors three things, but could only remember two?

Did he turn on the television one night and discover “Antiques Roadshow” was exciting? Did he start building his schedule around the program, “Discovering Your Roots”?

Was music in restaurants so blasted loud that it sometimes made him cranky?

Did he read those snippets on famous people having birthdays, not know most of them and think, “Who cares?”

Did he find himself grunting when moving furniture, hoisting large suitcases or pulling out the wooden cutting board?

Was he finding he often wore a heavy squall jacket when everyone else was in shorts and T-shirts?

Was he gazing out a window for long periods of time wondering if one of those cute little nuthatch birds would stop by? Or maybe a chickadee?

Had he started feeding squirrels and naming them?

Did he get a thrill one day when buying spray paint at Walmart a clerk demanded I.D. for proof of age?

Did someone give him an electric blanket for Christmas, and he later realized his thanks was over-the-top effusive?

I’ll miss Warren Buffett in the investment arena. He was a steady table in a world of three-legged chairs.