We’ve been enjoying company the past couple of days. Morgan and friend, Albert, have come up from the city. They arrived in Ithaca yesterday afternoon, and return to New York tomorrow evening. It’s a little getaway for them, and a nice treat for us. Since George and I have had to work while they are here, we have had indoor picnics to celebrate our evenings together - grilled chicken last night, and london broil on the grill this evening. Of course, Morgan doesn’t participate in our meat-eating, so we have had other picnic foods like potato salad, baked beans, fruit salad, vegetable kabobs. It would have been nice to have our picnics outdoors, but it has been cold and damp since they arrived.

They are off visiting friends tonight, but I have put a rhubarb crisp in the oven for them to enjoy when they get in.

The cats have found Morgan’s suitcase to be the most pleasant resting spot. It would appear that Picasso is entertaining thoughts of a return trip to the city…….but if you ask me, she’ll think twice about it.

Posted: May 20th, 2008 under family, day-to-day.
Comments: 3

We arrived home this evening, around sunset. It was a long drive, on a different route than what we usually take, and George said it added over thirty miles to the trip. We probably won’t venture that route again.

We spent a very full couple of days. George and I did some birding at the wildlife sanctuary in East Aurora.

We had our lunches with Garrett (check out the monstrous candle in the window)

and last night Garrett treated me to an excellent dinner at the Roycroft Inn. We fit in a matinee yesterday, one of many showings of Iron Man. That was a movie George wanted to see, and Garrett wanted to see a second time. I wasn’t sure that I would appreciate it, but I enjoyed it too.

We had talked about driving out to Lake Erie today to check out the birds near the water, but the wind was whipping this morning, and we could feel the rain moving in, so we decided against it. Instead, we went back to Garrett’s apartment, and he entertained us with Guitar Hero.

By four o’clock, as we were getting ready to head home, the skies were dark, and the rains came.

Rebecca and Morgan called this evening, to make my day complete. Through all the ups and downs of thirty-one years of motherhood, I feel very blessed. I have three children who have turned out to be really great adults.

Posted: May 11th, 2008 under road trips, family.
Comments: 1

A February 27th doesn’t go by, that I don’t think of Grandpa Dick. I really miss him. He gave a sense of steadfastness, of continuation, of belonging. He was something of the family historian, through his journals, his words. He could tell you so much history of his place and time. Grandpa was part of the community fabric. Everybody knew him. He knew everybody. It was fascinating to listen to his stories, no matter what age you were, you could find the humor or the intensity of his narration, and you had to hear him to the end. He had delivered mail with a horse and wagon in the early 1900’s and stayed with the post office into the 1950’s. He had so much to tell.

Grandpa was born in 1892, he was 61 when I was born. I always remember him looking the same throughout my life, though I do remember him becoming lamer as the years went on, and his glasses changed prescription, so that his eyes seemed bigger, more magnified. He had a bald spot on his head, and he carried a cane, sometimes leaning on it while he visited.

I can see Grandpa in his recliner chair in his livingroom, watching a football game on a Sunday afternoon, or at his desk in the corner, the one with the cubbyholes, that I thought was so neat. He wrote in his journal there, recording the comings and goings, the births and the deaths, the weather statistics, the years the lake froze over - he could tell you each one. I can see him getting in or out of his car. He would sometimes pick me up after school, waiting out front, with the engine warming. He would never forget.

I can see Grandpa at the lake, checking the rain barrel, carrying out the corn cobs or watermelon rinds from dinner. He could line peas up on his knife, and slide them into his mouth, just to make you smile. He methodically would wipe the gummy ketchup from its lid, so that it was always tidy. You could count on it. The cottage belonged to him and Grandma. He had built it. It was a great gift they shared with the whole family.

Every birthday, till he went into the nursing home, Grandpa would send me a birthday card, and started it out “Jan, old girl” or something like that, and it would warm my heart. I miss those tokens of his affection for me.

Today, my affection is for Grandpa, his birthday, never forgotten.

Posted: February 27th, 2008 under nostalgia, family.
Comments: none

Deja vu…..it was just a year ago that we had a bad snowstorm,  Dad really didn’t feel well,  doctor’s appointments a week apart,  then the hospital for a week.    Here we are again….a snowstorm,  Dad doesn’t feel well,  the doctor tells him he has pneumonia,  again….and a week goes by,  Dad still doesn’t feel well,  his chest doesn’t seem to clear,  then coughing up some blood….back to the doctor.     I think we both had the hospital in the back of our minds today as we left the house for the lab,  then the doctor’s office, then back for an xray.     Off to the pharmacy for a stronger cough med and a different antibiotic.      Coumadin dosage is reduced - perhaps the cause of the blood?   Repeat labs in a week………we made it back home,  no hospital.    Whew.

Posted: February 13th, 2008 under family.
Comments: none

Grandma Dick was born on this day in 1901, she died in February 1985, at the age of 84 of Parkinson’s disease. She married at the age of 17, lived her entire life in Interlaken, had four children, with a span of 15 years between her third and fourth child.

I remember Grandma best in the kitchen - the wonderful smells, the cookie jar filled, Sunday dinners on the Currier and Ives dishes, blackcap pie when we were at the cottage with berries that had been picked in the patches along the back road. We were always invited to the lake for a picnic or a sleepover at the cottage. I can see her sitting in the metal chairs with her friends visiting after a meal, looking out over the lake from up on the bank. I can see her sitting in her chair in the livingroom of the house on Railroad Ave, sometimes working on an afghan. She would holler out “Joe! Joe!” when she needed something and Grandpa wasn’t paying attention. She had a weekly bridge game, and a weekly hair appointment uptown. I remember she used Camay soap in the upstairs bathroom. Her house had a comfort to it, always warm, always tidy, but under the stairs, she kept a special place for the grandchildren. A chalkboard on the wall, small toys and Lincoln Logs, a map puzzle of the United States (where I learned my U.S. geography and memorized the capitols). She had a coffee table just the right height for kneeling against and setting up little figures.

Grandma worked in the kitchen when I attended elementary school. I would see her behind the tray line, working at the big pots and pans, putting together our meal. Grandpa would drop her off to work, and pick her up later - she never drove a car.
Grandma would come to my concerts, my awards assemblies, my installations in Rainbow Girls (she was in Eastern Star). She was a member of the DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution) and her research provides the lineage for future generations to follow. She and Grandpa took me on my first flight in 1967 to California to visit my cousins. She was always very supportive. She saw me through the mumps when Dad remarried and was off on his honeymoon.

She worked in the village library, and I would take her place when she and Grandpa would go off on vacation. She gave me 50 cents for each day, to stamp the books with a due date, or return them to their place on the shelves. (This gave me time in the library, which was not well-used, to explore the books at my leisure - and some of my most treasured readings came from those hours - especially ‘A Wrinkle in Time’ and ‘The Golden Name Day.’)

I owe much to Grandma by her presence in my life, the influence she had in her quiet way, and the times she would speak harshly to me, though they were few. She was especially unhappy with me one summer day at the cottage when I dropped a favorite dish, and I felt badly that I had disappointed her. On my wedding day, she came upstairs to my bedroom to see if I needed anything, to wish me well in my married life.
Grandma would be 106 today. I miss her at holidays, bright summer days, rainy summer days, and ordinary days as I stand at the kitchen sink and reflect back on all the memories she gave me.

Jan, Grandma Dick, George - 1974

Posted: January 17th, 2007 under family.
Comments: none