Column

We look at paintings of that first Thanksgiving more than 400 years ago, with tables nearly sagging under the weight of wild game, venison, waterfowl, lobster and mussels, corn, beans and pumpkins, we often sigh and say, “Life was so simple back then.”

It was simple. Life was so simple that heat in homes came from logs crackling in a fireplace. There was no central heat with digital thermostats to program or air filters to change. People had no dreaded gas and electric utility bills, but they also sometimes froze to death.

Life was so simple there were no complicated configurations of indoor plumbing, no hot water heaters with annoying calcium and lime build-up, nor reverse osmosis water filters.

Toileting was so simple they didn’t even have to flush. They just waited for a spring thaw and dug a new pit for the privy downwind from the cabin. If you had to go in the middle of the night, you either held it and hoped your bladder didn’t explode, or walked through pitch black to the outhouse praying a bear wouldn’t eat you. Very simple. Hold it or possibly die.

With no sprawling hospitals, emergency rooms or urgent care clinics, disease and dysentery swept through communities wiping out multitudes in a single swath. Very simple. Here one day, gone the next.

As magnificent as the paintings are of that first Thanksgiving, they’re missing the smell of sweat and hard work, the sound of trees being felled, iron pots clanging and the warm feel of fresh kill being butchered for a meal. Paintings can’t convey blisters and calluses, the full measure of agony and fear, or broken hearts grieving the loss of loved ones.

Despite hardships, fear of the known and the unknown, the small band resolved to care for one another, to remain united and to survive.

Because the past is always part of the present, we stand as beneficiaries of those who have gone before. What the early settlers left us was not monetary wealth, but priceless models of courage, tenacity, perseverance and faith. So, how about a moment of thanks this Thanksgiving for those who laid cornerstones to our foundation?

I married a hottie. He loves the heat and the sun.

When the summer sun is scorching and most people hide inside to keep from flash frying, he goes outside to do yardwork.

I tend toward the cool side. Some like it hot, some like it cold, and for some mysterious reason they tend to marry one another.

Our favorite pastime is playing endless rounds of tag with the thermostat. Our banter over the temperature often sounds like a poker game. He says, “I’ll see your 68 and raise you six.”

“That’s 74,” I say. “I can’t do 74. I’m out.” And I will be out—passed out cold once the oppressive heat kicks in.

When summer heat arrived full force this year, I had to hide his flannel-lined jeans, affectionately known as his stuffed scarecrow pants. He spent the bulk of summer outside and I spent the bulk of summer fanning myself in front of the freezer door.

After intense negotiations, we agreed on warmer temps inside the house during the daytime and lowering the thermostat at night. It was a momentary truce in our cold war.

That said, I remain concerned whenever he is outside in blistering heat. When the sun hits the front porch, he goes out, sits in a wicker chair and reads. You know what happens when you read in the warm sun, right? You fall asleep. Your head drops, whatever you are reading falls from your hands and your upper body slumps.

I tell him I am concerned about this because we have numerous runners, walkers and cars passing by our house.

He says I don’t need to be concerned; there is a second chair if someone would like to join him.

My concern is that if people see a man of a certain age slumped in a chair, they could think there is a medical emergency and call 9-1-1. Then a fire truck and ambulance will roar up to the house with sirens screaming, I’ll run outside to see what is happening, see paramedics jerking him out of the wicker chair, then keel over from shock.

“Is that what you want?” I ask.

He says he can’t hear me. He is sitting in a patch of sunlight pretending asleep.

And now, fall has arrived, temperatures are dropping, the furnace is kicking in and winter is within sight.

The flannel-lined jeans have magically reappeared. I ask if the plaid flannel shirts are close behind. He says never question a man in plaid as he always has solid points.

We’re ready for whatever winter brings, my stuffed scarecrow and me.

 

Pity the evil queen in Snow White asking the magic mirror who was the fairest of all, waiting anxiously for the reply. Today all the queen would need to do is upload an image of herself to an AI beauty analysis app and wait a few seconds for the results.

Beauty analysis apps score faces “plain, pretty or gorgeous,” or “attractive, average or sub.” One app scores hair, skin, jawline, cheekbones, nose, chin and lips on a scale of 1-10. Another app uses percentages to rank symmetry and proportion. Yet another uses percentage points to score images for confidence, fun, smartness, trustworthiness and approachability.

Who knew you could tell all that from a simple headshot?

Beauty apps tease users with the lure of self-improvement. After critiquing hair, skin and face, links to products that may help remedy flaws and shortcomings magically appear. How convenient. Such benevolence.

Of course, these beauty analysis apps are targeted toward young girls still maturing, still developing confidence, still getting comfortable in their own skin and changing bodies. Some of the apps require users to be age 16+, but the majority have no age restrictions whatsoever.

I have a vested interest in this phenomenon. Of our 11 grandchildren, nine are girls. Four of those nine girls are teens now. They are flourishing in a myriad of directions, creating, sewing, designing, discovering athletic abilities and cooking talents, devouring books, playing piano, banjo, guitar, fiddle and French horn.

The last thing any of them needs is a computer app scoring their faces.

Beauty analysis apps, designed to entice tweens and teens, are one eyelash extension shy of being online bullies. They prey on insecurities.

Maturity is a process that happens over the passing of time. For a young person still in the process, physical critiques can be devastating. You can work hard and improve your grade in a class at school, but there’s no way to improve a 4/10 score on your jaw line, change the spacing of your eyes or the shape of your mouth.

Why would we think a software app can define beauty based on preset points of size, shape and symmetry programmed into AI?

True beauty has an abstract quality that transcends the physical. Beauty encompasses essence, being and movement. Beauty shines through kindness, selflessness, heart, mind, spirit and soul.

Perhaps the best affirmation of beauty is knowing you are made in the image of God. That’s a powerful place to start and a wonderful foundation from which to build.

We accidentally left for our vacation in Maine a day early. I take full credit—or blame—it depends on who tells the story. There’s nothing wrong with leaving a day early, except that when you get there you won’t have a place to stay.

A quick online search landed us a reservation just outside a picturesque New England town we’d been to before, a charming spot with water, docks, boats, and giant lobsters painted on cafe windows.

Our reservation wasn’t actually in the picture postcard town, but somewhat nearby. As a crow flies. A crow with two broken wings and no brain for navigation.

I couldn’t find pictures of the place where I reserved a room, but when the car is loaded and you’re panicked you don’t waste time on details.

It was long after dark when GPS led us off a state highway and onto a blacktop side road. With no moon or streetlights, we popped the headlights on high, penetrating the thick black night with all the brilliance of a birthday candle.

We drove and drove, curve after winding curve, without a single vehicle coming in the opposite direction. Side roads had no signage. “Enter at your own risk” was understood.

The only sign of life we passed was a few trucks and half-dozen people in a clearing gathered around a fire blazing in a barrel. We didn’t stop to socialize.

Mile after mile, trees hemmed us in on both sides of the road. The forest was dense and ominous, the kind that terrorized Little Red Riding Hood, Hansel and Gretel and Goldilocks.

We kept going. But to where?

I knew where. Deliverance.

I imagined our lodging would turn out to be some grizzled old coot’s ramshackle barn at the far back of his property. Amenities would include an outhouse with a creaky door, lots of flies and no toilet paper. Our sleeping quarters would be two filthy sleeping bags in a rickety hay loft where we would be killed in our sleep.

I shared these thoughts with my husband. Apparently, it’s not easy being married to someone with a vivid imagination.

The blacktop finally dumped us onto a road with other vehicles. GPS directed us down a steep drive that led to one of the most charming places ever. It was part hotel and part inn, like something out of the old Newhart sitcom. Thankfully, there was no sign of Larry, Darryl and Darryl.

The clerk was closing shop for the night but checked us in and mentioned a trail on the backside that led to chairs by the water for a black sky view.

We dumped our bags and headed down a long trail with a small flashlight while dodging goose poo every other step. At the water’s edge we plopped down in Adirondack chairs, looked up and fell silent.

I’d never seen so many layers and layers of stars.

I’d never seen millions of stars all sparkling, twinkling, appearing and disappearing. I’d never seen the Milky Way. I’d never seen that mysterious hazy band that looks like part fog and part cloud weaving among the stars and spiraling throughout the galaxy.

We sat amazed beneath a superdome of stars beyond the power of our comprehension and the capability of numbers.

We went to sleep that night in a comfortable bed in a clean room, giving thanks to the Creator for the wonder of creation, last-minute plans and the road less traveled.

 

Because I love, love, love saving time, I am looking forward to the first weekend in November when the entire nation will save 60 minutes—not the Sunday night news program but an hour on the clock.

Of course, nobody likes to mention the fact that the only reason we are “saving” an hour is because an hour was stolen from us in the spring. The second weekend in March is when 48 of the 50 states willingly consent to theft — to turn the clocks forward, have an hour taken from us, and try to trick our bodies, metabolisms, sleep cycles, plants, animals and small children into believing it is one time when everyone knows it is another.

Fall is when we set the record, or the time on the clock, straight. We gain back the hour that was stolen.

Justice.

The question is, what to do with the hour we gain?

My first instinct is to go to the gym. That is quickly cancelled by my second instinct, which is to celebrate and make a coffee cake. Then maybe I can go to the gym. If there is time.

Or maybe we can redeem the extra hour at the end of the day and have dinner twice.

Why do all my time-saving ideas have to do with food? They call it comfort food for a reason. I am comforted that my stolen hour has been returned.

Here, have some coffeecake.

I’ve tried reporting the stolen hour in spring as a theft and people laugh. Guess who’s laughing now? And enjoying her extra 60 minutes. If it wasn’t stolen, why are they returning it?

Most of our clocks are digital and will reset themselves while we sleep, but a handful will not.

The clock in our bathroom must be reset manually. If you-know-who resets it late Sunday afternoon and doesn’t tell me, I have a moment of panic wondering why I’m going to bed early. Am I sick? I don’t feel sick.

If I wake up, look at the time on my phone and see it doesn’t match the time on the bathroom clock, I have another moment of self-doubt. Am I in in the twilight zone? More importantly, do they observe daylight saving time in the twilight zone?

A small battery-operated clock on my desk needs to be reset manually, which I will forget to do for weeks. One day down the road, I will look at it, panic, scramble, and rush off for some appointment an hour early.

There was some rumbling about curtailing daylight saving time last year, but that’s all it was — noise. All this back and forth, sleeping, not sleeping, switching up schedules for babies and small children, is exactly why we shouldn’t mess with Father Time. There’s a reason the old guy looks grumpy. He knew what we were about to do.

They say birds of a feather flock together and while that may be true most of the time, I have proof it is not true all the time. Our 12-year-old grandson and a jet-black Cayuga duck sitting beside him, with its long neck and head resting on the boy’s shoulder, have been flocking together for weeks.

The boy says it all began because the duck’s mother did not get moody. He actually said broody, but I thought he said moody, which made no sense because every mother is capable of moody.

Apparently, the momma duck did not experience a hormone surge prompting her to get all broody, fuss with the nest, sit on the egg and warn encroaching intruders by quacking and hissing.

The boy took the lonely pale gray egg with black markings inside the house and made a cozy nest for it in an incubator. He misted the egg with water at regular intervals, knowing the egg would have been damp from the mother duck returning from a swim in the pond.

Days passed, weeks passed and the egg began to crack. With a little help, the duckling hatched. When the duckling was big enough to fit in the boy’s cupped hands, he took it outside to a nest made with pine shavings. He tucked the duckling in the nest under a heat lamp, hoping his fowl friend would integrate with new feathered friends.

Didn’t happen. “The other ducks wanted nothing to do with him,” he says. The duck bobs wildly in agreement, quacks twice, and nibbles the boy’s ear lobe.

The duck did integrate eventually, but with the boy, not the other ducks. The new webbed-foot companion and constant shadow was named “Mr. Drake.”

“How did you know the duck was a him?”

“By his voice. He had a raspy voice. Only drakes have raspy voices.”

Mr. Drake takes four swift jabs at the boy’s neck.

“Does that hurt?” I ask.

“Not really,” he says with a grin.

Mr. Drake glares at me and lets out a nasty, angry quack.

Mr. Drake follows the boy whenever he comes outside. The boy walks up the hill; Mr. Drake walks up the hill. The boy pushes the raft into the pond; Mr. Drake pushes into the pond and swims alongside.

The boy shoves a kayak into the pond, climbs in and lifts Mr. Drake onto his lap. The two silently glide, sending waves gently rippling through the water. The green sheen on the duck’s neck shimmers in the dappled sunlight. The quiet is periodically pierced by a deep, throaty quack.

“Does Mr. Drake prefer the kayak over swimming alongside the raft?”

“I think so,” the boy says. “But a lot of times he jumps out of the kayak and swims alongside.”

“Does Mr. Drake ever, well, you know, in your lap?”

The boy just chuckles. There are some things you simply don’t tell Grandma.

And Grandma thanks you.

 

I am an accidental gardener. If anything I plant grows to maturity, and by some fluke of nature becomes edible, it is sheer accident.

If we had to survive on what I grow, we would both be very, very thin. Spaghetti thin. We are not spaghetti thin; we are more like rotini.

Several years ago, I dreamed of growing potatoes. I threw some potatoes in a shoebox, threw the shoebox in a cabinet in the garage and the spuds sprouted wildly. I chopped up those taters, buried them in the ground and forgot about them.

That year we feasted on baked, mashed, sliced and diced potatoes from late summer through Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas and into spring. It was a starch marathon.

Last year, I was deliberate about the potatoes, reading, researching, spacing and hilling, tending their every carbohydrate need. They grew to the size of marbles. Not even the chipmunks wanted them.

This spring I ventured into mini-pumpkin territory. Once again, I read, researched, dug and planted according to specs in a diligently-ended vegetable bed. Mission accomplished, I threw a few leftover seeds into a perennial bed that thrives on neglect. I figured the seeds wouldn’t sprout and even if they did 40-pound rabbits would bound out of hiding, devour them, belch to wake the dead and lumber back into hiding.

I tended the carefully-planted pumpkin seeds in the vegetable bed with great devotion and high hopes. I watched and watered and weeded day after day. Days turned into weeks. Nothing.

The seeds in the perennial bed were long forgotten. I may have hit them with the hose a time or two, and if I did it was purely accidental.

Back in the well-tended bed, on what seemed like day No. 479, a single bloom appeared.

That same day, I happened to walk by the dried and cracked perennial bed and was shocked. A pumpkin vine measuring 30 feet was rolling through black-eyed Susans, twisting around phlox, and cutting straight through a patch of veronica. What’s more, a secondary vine split off, branched north and was heading for the neighbors.

Back in the carefully tended garden bed, the single bloom had collapsed, no doubt doomed by the suffocation of excessive attention.

As for the vine thriving on lack of attention, I peeked beneath the enormous leaves and counted 40 blooms.

We may be harvesting crate loads of miniature pumpkins by the time you read this. We may be selling them in the driveway.

Once again, the accidental gardener has achieved victory. It may have been by chance, but it is still one more in the win column. I’ll take ‘em however I can grow ‘em.

 

My husband is one of those people who can sleep anywhere, anytime.

He can sleep sprawled halfway on and halfway off the sofa, in a straight-back chair with three grands crawling all over him styling his hair, and during cross-country flights with severe turbulence.

It’s a gift. The man is so gifted he can even fall asleep while I’m talking to him.

I do not have the gift of sleep.

The dark circles under my eyes are green with envy.

Now, I am more sleepless than ever after reading about a study from China linking “sleep irregularity” to an increased risk of 172 diseases.

Yes, I did read it right before crawling into bed.

After tossing and turning and pummeling my pillow, I was finally drifting off when I heard a toilet flush and remembered that kidney disease and urinary incontinence are linked to poor sleep. Maybe I should get up and drink some water. Of course, if I did that, I could be getting up again a few hours later.

I put kidney disease and incontinence out of my mind, which meant I had 170 more poor sleep-related diseases to go.

I threw the covers over to his side, was semi-comfortable again and heard my left knee pop. It’s a Rice Krispy knee that often snaps, crackles and pops.

Poor sleep is also linked to bone fractures. Maybe I just fractured my knee. Is that possible? Just when I convinced myself I didn’t have a fractured knee and was feeling drowsy, all the diseases linked to poor sleep began racing through my head like a thoroughbred at the Preakness . . . gangrene, fibrosis, cirrhosis of the liver.

Respiratory failure, heart disease, obesity, diabetes mellitus . . . I was on a runaway train destined for insomnia.

If only visions of sugar plums would dance in my head.

I may not have the gift of sleep, but I do have the gift of waking up. I can tell myself what time to wake up, and I do. I’ve been able to do this my entire adult life.

The next time you can’t sleep, try thinking about what time you want to wake up. I can tell you from first-hand experience, it  wo  r    k

 

We just dropped some serious money on an air purifier thinking it might help with my allergies. I have seasonal allergies. They’re only bad in fall, winter, spring and summer.

I do a lot of sniffing.

Somedays I sniff, hack and cough so much that if you heard it from another room, you’d think an old ranch hand was choking on chewing tobacco and holler to see if the guy was all right.

Everyone is used to me sniffing and coughing. Nobody hollers to ask if I’m all right. That one was decided a long time ago.

If the air purifier works some magic and helps my allergies, it’s possible I could have more energy. I might win more games of Mancala and chess with the grands. I might even be able to reach dishes on the top shelf in the kitchen without having to stand on a chair.

Clearly, I expect a lot for my money.

Not only is our air purifier supposed to help with allergies, but it is also supposed to rid the house of cooking odors. The leaflet that came with it says it will rid the house of bacon, pizza and meatloaf smells.

The cooking smell I’d like to eliminate is salmon. When I cook salmon, I throw open the windows, which lets the salmon smell out and clouds of pollen in.

Salmon tastes good, but it’s not a scent you’re going to dab behind your ears or want to permeate your clothes.

My better half and I were talking about all the different ways people fragrance their bodies—creams, lotions, cologne, deodorant, hair products, hand sanitizers. There are so many different scents and fragrances interacting on one body it’s a wonder we don’t spontaneously combust.

We even load up our homes and cars with fragrances: pomegranate rose water dish soap, mandarin coriander laundry soap (do you cook with it or wash your clothes in it?) calm and bliss-scented fabric softeners. Scented outlet plugs like almond croissant, salted butterscotch and warm apple pie enable you to fragrance while you sleep. I’m afraid I’d wake up and immediately want to start baking. Or eating. Or both.

The husband said, “Do you know what I think a house should smell like?”

“What?” I said.

“Bacon.”

I didn’t respond.

I just let it hang in the air. Along with the salmon and pollen.

Oh well. At least I have a gift idea for his birthday – bacon-scented plug-in air fresheners for the house. He’ll be in hog heaven.

We used to tell our kids to act their age. Now they tell us to act our age. We try, but it’s not easy when you are twenty-somethings trapped inside the bodies of seasoned citizens.

The husband spent five days last fall channeling Paul Bunyan, swinging an axe at the roots on a 60-year-old maple tree that a removal service had taken down. In addition to getting most of the roots out, he got two frozen shoulders, a wrist injury, steroid injections and months of physical therapy.

Not to be left out, I injured my back lunging over a seat in a moving SUV to retrieve a coffee mug. The vault went well but my landing was a disaster. I pose no threat to Simone Biles.

We are now trying (at least temporarily) to time our heavy lifting to whenever someone younger stops by. We don’t tag just anybody. We size ‘em up, study their spines, guess how much they can lift and whether they’ll sue us if something goes wrong.

We had new gutter filters installed last week. We signed the paperwork, offered the installer a lemonade and swiped our credit card. The installer hadn’t been out the door for five seconds when the husband charged after him on a dead run.

He caught the fella just in time to help move some heavy patio furniture back into place.

We have a huge hedge that requires being on a ladder and leaning over somewhat precariously to give it a flattop. Our son often spends the night on his way to and from jobsites in the area but usually arrives late at night and leaves before dawn. We’re not sure how the neighbors would feel about electric hedge trimmers buzzing while they sleep.

On the upside, if a delivery guy has a heavy box and I see him coming, most of the time he will gladly set it in the front hall.

Our house is on a crawl space that needs checking every year or so to make sure it is dry. To get in the crawl, you remove a metal partition from a window well, drop down on your arms and squeeze through the opening like a gator. We presented this opportunity to two grandsons as an adventure that would be second only to camping in the Rockies with no adult supervision.

They slithered down, reported the crawl was bone dry and emerged with a dead mouse. Naturally, other grands wanted to go down, but when the boys told them there weren’t any more mice, they lost interest.

We are now eyeing a large, worn, matted area rug in the family room that anchors an extremely heavy sofa sleeper. We may have to wait until the entire family comes for Thanksgiving.