Forty-Five Years Ago

 Forty-five years ago today, on a crisp, sunny Saturday, October 10, I took a walk that changed my life.  There, in the Presbyterian Church where I had attended since age 12, I took my Dad's arm (wondering how in the world I could leave this man I had loved all my life to go live with another man), and walked down the aisle toward my new life as Mrs. James Mitchell Wilson.

It had all come about so quickly (in some ways), even though we had been dating about two years.
A few weeks earlier (about 6 weeks), Jim was about to graduate from the SBI Academy, which was held at that time at the Institute of Government at Chapel Hill.  He preferred to stay closer to the western Piedmont or mountains of North Carolina, so he had requested any placement west of Raleigh.  Then he called me one night with the disappointing news that he was being assigned to New Bern, which was about as far east as they could assign him!  He knew nothing about the area, and I pointed out to him how close it was to the beach, about Tryon Palace being there, etc.  His reply was, "well, I don't think I want to go down there alone..." and hinted that he wanted me to go with him.  I  warned him not to say anything he didn't mean, to which he replied, "okay, but we will talk about it this weekend."

The next thing I knew, wedding plans were being rapidly thrown together.  He was graduating and would have to report to his assigned area by mid-October, so time was a premium. We went to Madison and picked out a diamond together.   Thanks to my Mom and Aunt Maxine, dresses for maids of honor were made in record time.  My beautician loaned me her wedding dress and veil.  The florist, which had attended church with my family for years, gave a discount on the flowers.  The dry cleaner cleaned the wedding dress for free. Since my minister couldn't work in counseling, Jim's former minister worked us in and talked at length with us about the seriousness of this decision.  The next few weeks were a whirlwind of activity with showers, cookouts, rehearsals, etc.  Electing to do a small reception with family and wedding party after the rehearsal, we were saving the cost and details of a big reception following the wedding. Jim's father had gone down to New Bern and arranged for a rental house, furnished, for us to move into.  My dad went with us with a rental truck to take what few furnishings etc. to the house.

The wedding was small but beautiful.  Fall flowers, attendants in shades of deep green or yellow, and beautiful weather contributed to the day.  In a rapid blur, the ceremony was over, and suddenly we were on our way to our honeymoon.  I had been somewhat sad that the annual fall trip to the mountains would be missed, but Jim surprised me with a trip to the mountains for the honeymoon.   Whether it was happiness or just an  especially beautiful fall, the few days were indeed special.

Staying at the Hotel Roanoke in Roanoke, Virginia, was an experience.  The next morning, as we were leaving the room to go to breakfast, we encountered one of the Shriners that had been convening in the hotel.  He hoped they had not disturbed us with their partying.  Jim embarassed me by replying, "It's okay -  we are newlyweds and didn't plan to sleep much any way."  Breakfast was at the grill across the street, which was frequented by the retired engineers from the Norfolk and Western Railroad.  We nearly choked to keep from laughing as they repeatedly commented on which train was coming in and whether it was on time or late.

After a couple of days touring caverns, riding along the mountain roads, and enjoying the fall weather, we stopped by and visited both sets of parents before heading to New Bern.  There the tone of our marriage was set right away when he was called in to work earlier than originally planned.  I would learn not to cook or plan anything without consulting with him from the first day there on. I would soon learn to do lots of things around the house by myself, learn to go places alone, and enjoy what time we had together.

 After a year or so, we began trying to start a family, which, it turned out, wasn't as easy as we anticipated.  By the time Jimmy was born we had been married nearly seven years, and that time included a move to Greenville, a miscarriage, and the loss of Jim's mother.

Sitting here tonight, thinking back on those events, it seems impossible that it was 45 years ago. 
Those years included various physical problems, the loss of Jim's father, my father,and a couple of beloved aunts, and a few weddings to attend.  Jim lived long enough to see Jimmy graduate college and attend one year of law school, and he, thankfully, had met and gotten to know Karla.  He would pass a few months after our 30th anniversary, so he was not around for their wedding.  Nor would be be around for the births of three darling little grand girls, who he would have spoiled worse than I do.
I guess the moral to all this musing is: cherish every day, for the time flies by more quickly than you know.  

Love and Loss

I've been thinking a lot about love and loss this week, due in part to the calendar flipping to May.  Tomorrow, May 2, marks the 20th "anniversary" of my father's passing - hardly seems possible it has been 20 years.  Being the first born, and being a female, I became and, in some ways still am, a "Daddy's Girl".  We shared several common interests, one of which was a fascination with the newspaper business, particularly the actual printing process.  My first job was proofreading at the same newspaper where he worked, and I dearly loved sneaking down to the press room when time came to "roll the presses"!  How I loved the sound of those presses running despite the loudness of the noise.  He would see me there and grin that absolutely wonderful grin of his and there was just a magic moment between us.  While I have always been close with my mother, there was just something truly special about my relationship with my father.  I remember the night I graduated from high school (something he never got to do between economic necessity and then the war):  as he tearfully looked at my diploma, I remember saying "I would give it to you if I could" and he hugged me.  This man with only a middle school education managed, with the help of my mom, to bring up four children in a Christian home, see that they were healthy and happy, and then saw all four graduate from college (although I, as the indecisive one, managed to wait to do it until age 45, and, of course, he was there to cheer me on when I graduated).

May 10 brings another sense of loss, for that is the date, now 14 years ago, when my beloved Jim passed away.  While we knew the status of his cancer, neither of us expected it to take him quite so fast, and I still look back on the six months between the diagnosis and his death as the shortest six months of my life.  Jim (Flip) was one of a kind.  Slow of speech and slow to react, he often seemed shy or hesitant, but he was, instead, sly as a fox, thinking about every word before he said it.  He was great at detail and observation, which made him really good at his job. He worked long, hard hours and was a natural caretaker, whether it was taking care of his family or his yard or his garden, which he dearly loved.  While he was not one given to public or outward displays of affection, he was a truly loving man, and I miss him every day.  One thing that came out of his passing was a change in my relationship with my mother.  Now both sharing the label of "widow", we have a new bond the last 14 years.

Adding to the sense of loss is May 20, the day my beloved grandmother passed:  the woman I adored
and revered.  I think of her often now that I am a grandmother myself, and I even see a similar bond between my first-born granddaughter and me that reminds me of that relationship.  Even though I was only 10 (about the age of my oldest granddaughter) when she passed, I still think of her often.

Now, this week, I add another loss to my calendar.  The gentleman who became an important part of my life the last few years has now decided he cannot deal with the geographic distance and the lack of commitment on my part.  Citing that he is "tired of hurting", he has decided to end our relationship.  While my brain logically understands the situation, my heart is broken.  We had a wonderful, loving friendship that lasted several years, and I hardly know how to get through a day without talking to him.

It is said that to open yourself to love is to open yourself to vulnerability and pain.  I think of the Garth Brooks' song "The Dance", in which he states that even if he had known at the start how it all would end, he still would not have missed the dance.   I have had some loving dance partners, and I would not have missed their dances, even if there was eventual pain.

Sunny Days and Roses

Finally!  We have some truly warm, sunny days!  It seems to me that winter lingered longer than usual this year, with so many gray and rainy and cold days that I began to wonder if we would ever see the sun again!  Today had all the qualities of late spring/early summer:  heat, light breeze and lots of sunshine.  It made me want to think about potting plants, buying and placing lawn furniture on my patio, maybe buying a bird bath, hanging the bird feeders, etc.  I know that by August I will be fussing about the heat and wishing for some of those cooler days and maybe even for the rainy ones, but right now, I'll take the sunshine!

In addition to the summer-like weather, my roses are blooming.  The "knock out" roses are hanging full of red blooms, and will, hopefully, bloom until almost frost in the fall.  But the one I am excited about is the antique rose, rooted from the original plant that was at my grandmother's house.  My mother brought the cutting to me as a housewarming gift when I moved into this house.  I worried all winter that I would kill it, but it is full of  buds and bright pinkish red blooms.  How exciting to see a plant that goes back a couple of generations blooming again.  Just one more example of the circle of life, I guess!  I remember seeing that rose bush as a child (and I remember the vast number of thorns on it, too), and to see it blooming in my yard is truly special.  Grandma's house no longer exists, but her rose bush lives on! 

I was thinking with some disappointment again this spring of the tulips in the flower bed in Greenville (the bulbs were planted by my husband in the fall before he got sick) - those tulips bloomed every spring and always cheered me up.  It was almost like he was telling me "hi" every time I saw the colorful display.  I asked someone in Greenville the other day if they had noticed if they were blooming, but they had not seen any color so maybe they hadn't.  By now they should have been dug up, split, replanted, etc., so they may have suffered. 

So, in the absence of the tulips, it is a real joy to see Grandma's rose blooming in the glorious sunshine!

It's Rainbow Time!

Every morning that the sun is shining, I sit in my living room and enjoy "rainbow time" - a myriad of rainbows scatter along the walls and ceiling cast by the prisms in my window.  Today, as I also listen to the construction of three, yes three, houses next to mine, I wonder if the new houses will block the sunlight and block or diminish my rainbows - hope not!

What is it about rainbows?  The science teacher in me knows that the prisms (just like raindrops) refract or bend the white light coming from the sun into the spectrum of colors that make up white light: or as we learn in school ROYGBIV (Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet).  Right now I see all those colors vividly in no less than 15 rainbows!  When conditions are right after a rain we see the arc of a rainbow caused by the light being bent by raindrops - so it is just science, right?

But rainbows are also Biblical - God places one after the flood in the Old Testament to symbolize His covenant with the people.  So, seeing rainbows can be a beautiful reminder of God's promises and His presence with us.

My love of them, however, is much more personal.  I received a prism from a "secret sister" during the time my Dad was hospitalized, had surgery, and died in 1995.  All that summer, and in the subsequent years of springs and summers, every afternoon when I walked into my kitchen I was greeted by scattered rainbows, bringing a smile.  It was like they reminded me that, although I was sad and grieving, there was also joy in remembering pleasant times.  Over the next few years, I obtained more prisms, so that no matter the angle of the sun at various times of the year, at least one prism would catch the light and break it into the glorious colors.

Then, when my world totally changed in late 2000 and the spring of 2001, the rainbows added another pleasant association.  Jim could not be outside during the sunny part of the day due to the chemotherapy, but he loved being outside.  He began "following the sun" every day inside the house.  He spent mornings in the living room on the East side of the house, enjoying the sunlight.  Then, after lunch time, he moved to the den on the back side (West) of the house, so he could enjoy more of nature's glory safely inside.  By mid-afternoon, when I returned home from school, the prisms in the windows were splitting that sunlight in its spectrum of colors.  As I walked into the house, on every sunny day, he would shout, "come on in, it is rainbow time!" So now, every morning, when it is my own "rainbow time", I feel like he is with me, reminding me of more pleasant memories.

 

It's that time of year again - the temperatures rise and fall like a roller coaster, sometimes cool and crisp, sometimes downright cold, and other times almost as hot as a summer day. The shadows are getting longer as the Earth shifts from Summer to fall and the shorter daylight and cooler temps have stopped the photosynthesis in the leaves, changing the greens to fall colors. Now some of the trees are ablaze with reds, oranges, yellows, and variations of those colors, and some of the leaves are already scattering the streets and lawns. This is my favorite time of year, not only because it is my birthday season, but also because it is like all Mother Nature is raging against the impending winter by lighting the world with color. Soon the trees will be bare, and the winter winds will blow the leaves everywhere, and the world will be darker with shorter days and longer nights. I miss the maple tree in the backyard in Greenville - the tree transported from Madison and transplanted there as a sapling. Every fall it reminded me of Moses' burning bush, completely and gloriously aflame in hues of red, orange and yellow. I do have a few seeds from that tree, and may eventually try to plant them (although I really don't have enough yard for it - maybe Jimmy and Karla could plant one in their yard). I do hope it is putting on a show for the new owner and brightens his fall as much as it always did mine!

What A Difference A Week Makes!

After a busy day of sitting with the girls while Karla had a doctor's appointment, running errands, unpacking some of the myriad of boxes I still have, making beef stew, taking out the recycling for tomorrow's pickup, I realize how quickly I'm settling into a routine in the new life I've begun.

It is hard for me to believe that a week ago I was frantically packing and facilitating the loading of a moving van, and that one week ago tomorrow I moved into this new house! The decision to move came about very quickly, and I could not believe how fast the deposit was secured, the mortgage was arranged, and all the other pieces of the puzzle came together. After all, I only saw the house for the first time in November, and here I was, closing on December 28, starting to move a few things in a couple of days later, and then throwing my entire life onto a moving van a couple of days after the New Year came in!

Watching those rooms empty was more painful than I expected...it brought back memories of seeing that house for the first time, empty, 37 years ago when Jim and I toured it before deciding to buy it. Since we had rented a furnished house in New Bern, this was our first real home together. It was the house we set up real housekeeping in. It was the house where I miscarried our first child. It was the house we brought Jimmy home to when he was born. And it was the house that Jim died in. I got through the day pretty well until time to leave right after the moving van pulled away. Suddenly there wasn't enough time to properly say "good-bye" to the house, no time to say "thank you" and "see you soon" to my friend who has given me so much help and support, and no time to go by the cemetery to say "good-bye for now" to Jim...I had to get on the road in order to get to Jimmy's by dark. Needless to say, I cried off and on all the way to Raleigh.

Now I'm settling in at the new house. I've been too busy to be sad - there's just too much to do to get unpacked and organized. The house is coming together and is beginning to look and feel like home. Later, in a couple of days, however, I have to go back to Greenville to pick up a load of things (items the movers wouldn't take and I had no room for last week) to bring back to the new place...I almost dread going back into the house because I know it is going to be hard. There will be other trips back, I assume, until the house sells. This is a good move, and I am happy with my decision. Already I'm enjoying the closeness of Jimmy, Karla and the girls. But I guess that, in order to say "hello" to new beginnings, you have to say "good-bye" to old ways.

Lists!

I HATE making lists...always have...just prefer to "fly by the seat of my pants" most of the time. Yeah, I know that I get more done when I make a list, prioritize, and check off the items one by one! And, yeah, I always advocated making lists as a strategy to help my students, but I really hated doing it myself!

So, what does it say now that I'm retired, with "all the time in the world", that I find myself making lists more frequently? There is housework, of course, to be done routinely. But more importantly, there is the "other stuff"...the fun stuff like crafting, sewing, reading, watching movies, etc. Now I find that if I want more time for the "fun stuff" I have no choice but to make lists, get things done, and then do what I really wanted to do. Of course, it doesn't help that I have a really bad habit of procrastinating and another bad habit of dreaming up projects that may or may not ever get done!

Right now I'm sitting in my office/sewing/crafting room and looking at a long list of unfinished projects: several baby quilts for various friends, curtains for a friend's new office, afghans to crochet, sundresses I planned to make my granddaughters last summer still not done, several cross-stitch kits to finish (some started already, some not touched), three scrapbooks for my granddaughters that haven't been updated since the fall (I do, at least, have the photos organized, dated, etc. so that will be easier!), lots of supplies that are out because of the various projects that need to be put away, a couple of Christmas projects for next Christmas, and lots of paperwork to file/go through/throw away, etc. as well as the tax stuff to get to the accountant (it is basically ready except for one piece of information I'm waiting on)...

Whew! I'm retired...why does this overwhelming list look like WORK???