Thursday, June 27, 2013

The end of DOMA

We are celebrating the end of DOMA in our family.  Last August our daughter married Carissa in a lovely ceremony in the hills of Vermont. ( Where same sex marriage was legal)
Our whole immediate family was there to celebrate this event.

Our daughter and my husband's sister and our wonderful grandson are gay. The daughters of a great friend are lesbian, as are so many others I know. Strange to be singling them out, because these folks are just people I love. But right now, I celebrate the Supreme Court decision.

We straight people never really thought about how difficult life is for the GLTB folks. (They were in the closet.) We thought how liberal we were to accept the 'coming out'. But we never really knew the depths of it, the cussed inequality of the life they lead, and the everyday issues to deal with.

In fact, we never thought about this issue at all!  Our daughter went through all kinds of legal stuff to have her child adopted. She has wrestled with health insurance, taxes and so much more. For this wonderful little family, having the shelter of federal laws will be great. Unfortunately, living in Florida, those American laws will be hard to come by.

I believe that the outspoken tea party representatives in Congress and the evangelical preachers are spitting in the wind. Many, of course, are denying their own problems on the scale of sexuality. Many have never chosen to know that they have many gay and lesbian family, friends and acquaintances. When they acknowledge this, they soon come to realize that this is indeed not catastrophic. So, welcome your gay son or lesbian daughter, or even your transgender child. These are our people, in our families and in our communities. They deserve complete equality, and they are just like all of us - just people who are as able as any to raise a family and be a part of your community.

I rejoice this week to think that a substantial portion of Americans will be able to have all the freedoms and justice that everyone has.

And, now, on to the immigration overhaul!


Saturday, June 22, 2013

Hummingbird Central

We live in paradise - visits from grandchildren- here the twins in baskets, the screened porch where we watch the hummingbirds zooming about in their acrobatic flight, and the endless conversations we have about every imaginable issue.

Wherever I look there is something interesting happening. This evening while the last moments of dinner preparations were happening, we sat on the front porch to watch the hummingbirds swooping and swirling, now and again stopping at the feeders, then interrupted by aggressive mates. I think that the first nesting season is over, and they are, once again, in search of a new mate. Hummingbirds are not monogamous, and when the first nest has fledged, those hummers are out to get the next  best female. So we now have dozens of them flying from the crape myrtles and zooming about doing acrobatics among the four feeders we have arrayed on the eaves of our porches.

We had decided that we were not going to do our usual summer camp this year. Our schedule  was choppy and we were feeling elderly..

NOT! Several times this week kids have appeared to swim, after calling first, and they politely appear at the studio door, clearly wanting me to be Ms. Camp person. One kid, Luis, immediately made contact with my husband, with whom he had cooked last summer at our camp. He wants more (ever so politely), and proposes to bring some Mexican recipes they can cook together. How can we resist?

The hummingbirds zoom and the kids return and how can we possibly not respond? We fill those nectar feeders and welcome those amazing kids. Life is sweet for us all.

Wednesday, June 12, 2013

The daily routines of senior citizens

Having been retired for a few years, and done the requisite flopping around to figure out the shape of our days, we discarded some stuff. Neither of us wanted to play golf or go to spas or shop. We knew we needed to put major time into this lovely place we now call home and so we mended the fences and dealt with long neglected maintenance issues. And we continue to do this every day.

We have worked on the house and thrown out lots of stuff we no longer need, an ongoing project. We try to keep the place updated, not beige and old. Andy has built many pieces of furniture to replace stuff we never actually liked. Every summer we have our favorite painter redo a few rooms and address the issues of mold and rot on the exterior. We have reupholstered a lot of the furniture.

Life has a rhythm. We get up early, turn on the coffee, send the dog out, shower outside on the back porch and enjoy the sunrise and the hundreds of frogs. Andy's job is to "prune" the shower curtain- a tangle of grapevine and moonflower vines. My job is to drive to the mailbox - a mile up the road- and retrieve the newspapers. Along the way with my first cup of delicious coffee, I really slow down to watch the birds and check out the wildflowers and look for what may be in the water under our bridge.

Sometimes I see wild pigs, maybe a bobcat, often deer, and in these rainy times, hundreds of ibis feeding in the swamp. Often there are cattle in the road and they are hard to budge, and then, up the road there are my neighbor's chickens fresh into the day. I keep my eye out for interesting wild flowers.

While I am gone on my wildlife foray Andy is making breakfast and putting the laundry into wash. I return and our dog knows it's breakfast time so I prepare that and take out the compost from the day before, maybe take out the recycling and trash if the bins are full.

Then, after breakfast, everyone goes out on the screen porch to read the papers. This is a favorite part of the day for our very old dog who cuddles up to Andy's hip. I only read the Tampa Bay Times, and then leave to check email and spend an hour and a half on personal development, i.e. Lumosity, an advanced conversational Spanish course, ( I can now say with ease that my niece has just finished her studies to be an engineer and is now going to take a trip to Ecuador and her brother is now divorced and would you like to take a trip to a national park?),  and an hour of aerobic walking and weight training. Andy does two crosswords.

And then there is the shank of the work day. Today we broke down an old and decrepit garden box and installed three new ones Andy had made. This involved very heavy work, lifting, prying, and lots of shoveling garden soil, and taking the old stuff away and installing the new planters with good soil, ready for the fall plantings.

Then we addressed the problem of the pool deck which was afflicted with black and red algae. The two of us working together, Andy with the chlorine pump sprayer, I with the hose, quelled it. It looks really fine - for the moment. Deck perfect, we shuck our clothes and do our daily swim.

By now, it is lunch time and we forage for the leftovers. After lunch, the dog and I stretch out on a couch to read the last of the editorials, and then I nap for a few minutes.

Afternoons (maybe some mornings too) I work in my studio on whatever project is up. Right now a graduation quilt for a young friend.

And in this mix is for both of us a deep commitment to our volunteer work in the community. This means that we have to attend lots of meetings, tend to emails, and think seriously about and act in these local institutions we have signed on for.

And, best of all, is late afternoon when I begin to feel hungry and I go up to the house and inquire, "What's for dinner?" Andy asks me what there is in the garden and I go out and pick beans or tomatoes or eggplant or whatever, bring it in, and know that he'll make something delicious.

In a way it was far easier when we were in our work life. You just knew when you had to get up, take time for exercise- usually in the dark-get ready for work, go, come back nine hours later, somehow make a dinner. Do some work in the evening, go to bed, repeat, repeat. Even if it was great (our work was!), it was relentless in the best way.

Sometimes we feel plagued with calendar issues. When is that meeting? When this week do I volunteer? Who is coming, when and how many, for the weekend? What people do I need to connect with?

We are incredibly thankful for our energy and for the new people and stories and events we never would have been a part of before this new retirement phase of life. We are so fortunate to be able to make a difference in our new community.


Tuesday, June 11, 2013

The Amazing Joy of..

Here they are- all eight of them, my grandkids.  I never knew how much I would love having these kids in my life. They are ever changing. The twins are walking now, the oldest grandson has finished his second year in a really great college, the little ones are losing their baby teeth. The middle ones are doing well.

This is not one of those holiday newsletters in which everyone is described as stellar. We are a regular family, and we have our problems as all families do.

The grandparents - we!  have wrestled with the problems of retirement and seem to be managing.

We are in a kind of "re-nesting" period in which we have devoted a lot of time and energy to making our beautiful property even more lovely. We devote a lot of time to the extensive gardens and pastures, and we are paying attention to all those delayed maintenance things around the house.  And we have the time and energy to have many guests here.

Mostly, we are still in love, and have an intense friendship full of talk and sharing.

This spring we had our mile long driveway repaved with smooth lime rock. We had several rooms painted, and lots of little issues from the usual Florida rot repaired. Our vegetable garden requires lots of attention and it is still productive with vegetables every day.

This is the 'generative' age in which we take care of the life outside. We are deeply embedded in volunteering in our community.




Life is good! But it requires constant attention. Here you see one of our of our middle grandsons who had some trouble in his adolescence, but now is getting on top of this, working on being that best that we all know he can be.
We often say to each other that we have so much to be grateful for, so much good fortune in our lives.  Certainly, having those grandchildren has been a wonderful part of this.  We did not expect this. Who does?

Wednesday, June 05, 2013

Eighty-four year old woman wins eight million dollars in the lottery! That would be me..

NOT,  even in my dreams. But we were thinking about what we would do with eight million dollars, an unexpected boon. It reminds me of that game kids play about what they would do with a million . They want fancy cars, a mansion with ten bedrooms, and then they cannot think of anything else.

A few years ago we came into an unexpected million dollars. Yikes! Then, as now, we were prosperous enough, frugal in our ways. What to do with this windfall? Early on we decided that we needed none of it. We gave modest amounts to our kids, young adults struggling with mortgages, school tuitions, loans and all the stuff one needs money for at that age.
We did not ask them in particular what they did with this money. The rest was fun to play with. We contributed to new arts and science buildings at local colleges, we funded a program for minorities in grad school, we gave a lot to the Nature Conservancy and to a journalism school. It seemed easy to divest ourselves of a measly million.

But eight million! A different deal entirely! My partner points out that our elite athletes have this kind of money annually - and we see what dismal choices they usually make.

I think that you could go the way of Joan Krock of the McDonalds fortune who gave so much to NPR, and threw them a lifeline when they most needed it. The Gates Foundation is trying so much in third world countries to eradicate malaria and bring health to African nations that are so needy. Gates also funds so much in education in this country. Of course they have way more than a paltry eight million.

But here is an eighty-four year old woman who shops in the same Zephyhrills Publix we do. She did go and get a lottery ticket there. We know that. And what is she going to do with it?

Of course she could just shift the most of it over to her church, after giving each of her kids mansions and jaguars and enduring the pleas from all her relatives who come out of the woodwork with hands out. She'll get out of that wretched trailer home in Zephyrhills and move into the house of her dreams, as she deserves.

But maybe this woman is possessed of energy and creativity and will put the most of this money into something magnificent and lasting. She could fund music and arts programs in every school in the county, she could start a sustainable program in which every child born in Pasco County would have a mentor for the family, making sure that the child would be well nourished and have books and language at an early age and a chance at the brass ring. She could fund incredible child care centers. She could make a huge donation to the Boys and Girls Club. And so much else!

Fun to think about. And will we ever know what happened?

What would YOU do with this windfall of eight million dollars? Let me know and I will publish your thoughts.

Who could ask for anything more than a wonderful family?