Shout out to Charlie as he returned the tree now helpfully cut into chunks to our neighbor.
”Well Done!”
Month: December 2023
”Neighborly Love?”
The neighbor to our south cleared out a few trees a couple of years ago but for some reason left this dead one standing. All it would take would be a strong wind from the south and it would tumble. The wind came last night and the dead tree fell ungracefully over taking one six foot section of our fence and one long support beam of the grape arbor with it.
The rain abated long enough for Charlie to cut up the branches and the trunk and unceremoniously return them to their home. He has put up a temporary fencing so Zoe can’t escape. We haven’t seen the neighbor so we don’t know if she realizes we are also keeping her dog in her own yard. Thus far she has benefited from our fence, not needing one of her own.
Sadly we had never asked her to take down the tree so we are responsible for repairing the damage on our side. Apparently that was the last dead tree on our fence line, so the fence once repaired should stay erect. I am just grateful that the dead ones which formerly abutted our fence line were gone. They would have done significant damage to the blueberry structure.
May the rest of you stay dry and calm as we hope to. At least it hadn’t snowed!
”What’s Pickleball Anyway?”
The latest craze to hit here is pickleball. It appears to be the aging baby boomers’ answer to the hula hoop fad of our youth. Everyone MUST play pickleball. Towns(including ours) must convert tennis courts to pickleball courts or turn lovely open fields(the adjacent town) to pickleball courts. Realizing that it snows or ices over in New England for several months of the year the rush is on to convert abandoned malls into pickleball courts. In our town the tennis club applied for and was granted a zone amendment to add pickleball to their indoor courts.
Pickleball has proved a bonanza for orthopedists, sending countless seniors(86% of emergency room pickleball injuries were to seniors) to the hospital with injuries including partial and complete ruptures of Achilles tendons, plantar fasciitis, ankle sprains, and various foot and ankle fractures.
Noise complaints are rampant among the neighbors of pickleball who say that the noise is not just loud. Apparently the high pitch of the noise of plastic ball on paddle is irritating in a way that the quieter thump of the tennis ball is not. (Of course people next to tennis courts and basketball hoops are sometimes annoyed too.)
I have no interest in taking up the activity. I am amused, however, watching some men play pickleball with the intensity that resembles squash. The game is much less rigorous than that, but they may not be able to help themselves!
Is this a worldwide trend or is the United States alone in pickleball insanity?
”Novel Treatment”
Throughout the United States and Canada Native American children were, until relatively recently, taken from their families at a very young age and sent to boarding schools. The premise held that such children needed to be acculturated into the “mainstream” and not hold onto hairstyles, dress or beliefs from their indigenous past. Needless to say this produced devastating trauma for children and families alike. Only recently have governments and churches acknowledged their responsibility for the damage done.
The 2023 novel The Berry Pickers does not explicitly deal with this practice. The story itself is compelling and a reader might never connect the plot with the larger issue of taking children from their families in the historical pattern I mention. Here a four year old Mi’kmaq girl from Canada disappears from her family while picking blueberries in Maine. For fifty years neither she nor her family know or understand what happened to her.
Without divulging the plot I can say that she is essentially erased and recreated during those years. Eventually both she and her birth family must reckon with the long lasting separation. And if you, like I, are reading the novel on two levels as both plot and a metaphor for history, you may truly grasp the impact of such ruptures. The book is a best seller here and certainly stands alone as a touching novel. I hope, though, that others may make the connection I have and may ponder the damage we often produce with “good intentions.”
”Reconnection”
I made a very close friend in high school who continued to be an important person in my life through our 30’s. Because of issues in my own life I stopped communicating with her in my early 40’s with no adequate explanation to her. I grieved that situation but had no idea how to repair it.
My 16 year old granddaughter asked me about my high school friends. When I told her about this she encouraged me to write and reconnect. Even though 30 odd years had passed, I thought she had a point. So I wrote a letter as a combination explanation and deep apology. I had no idea if anything would come of it
To my deep joy, my friend wrote back and forgave me and wanted to connect again. After an exchange of letters(real ones, not emails) we decided to speak on the telephone. We have now had two one hour catching up talks and plan many more. There is no substitute for a friend who knew each others’ parents, siblings, ex-husbands, present husbands, jobs, loves and heartaches. It turns out that we can build on that solid foundation and learn about the subsequent years we were apart.
I owe my granddaughter deep gratitude. And she was thrilled to know that she was able to give excellent advice to her grandmother for a change instead of the other way around!
”New and Improved Neck Warmer!”
We have always had herding dogs who love to be outside and come in the house long enough to eat and fall asleep at our feet. Friendly, but pretty aloof over all. When we decided at our age we needed a smaller dog who couldn’t knock me over, we got Zoe in March. What a contrast! She hates going outside unless we go too. She wants to be with one or the other of us at all times. Her favorite positions are on top on one or the other recliner–whichever one is occupied.
Fortunately her good nature is constant. She loves the groomer. She even loves the vet and runs into the office to greet everyone, seeming to ignore the things they put her through. She immediately warms to any house guests. When the phone rings she runs over to join in the conversation. If the call is on Face Time she will drop a toy in front of the screen to invite the caller to play.
When we were without a dog for the first time in our marriage I really longed for another creature to liven things up. Things get a little dull occasionally with just the two of us. Zoe apparently heard the request. She livens things up from dawn to dusk. I had no idea how my idea of “dog” was conditioned by our string of Australian Shepherds. Zoe has made it quite clear that I was misinformed! According to her dogs are constant love machines. And I can’t help but love her back.
“Returning to the Fold”
After my extended break to take an online class on the spirituality of aging, I am back to my blog. While the class was indeed interactive, it ended up being a much less satisfactory way of connecting with others than the blogging world. We had set questions to answer each week and were encouraged to respond to one another’s answers. So far, so good. But there was no way to follow one participants’ responses over time since each comment was attached to a question and the questions were divided into six weeks. I grew frustrated with this structure and missed the easier give and take with one writer at a time.
The material itself was engaging but led me to understand that it is a mistake to consider the question of aging and spirituality as having one dimension over a long period of one’s life. While I am interested in aging late in life, the class looked at issues from mid-life on. I realized that things that concern me at 76 are very different from those when I was 50, but the curriculum tended to conflate the two.
I was glad to have a chance to revisit the stages of life delineated by Erik Erikson, my professor in my senior year at Harvard. But I was even happier to find that his widow, Joan, had added a ninth stage to his eight stage model to allow her to consider life in one’s 80’s and 90’s. I will write about her additions in a later post.
I am glad to be back and look forward to beginning to catch up with the two months of all of your lives that I have missed. And it doesn’t look as if I will leave to take a similar class any time soon!
Saved By Words 