Family Grounding

I had a dream in the late spring of 2018 shortly after we had laid eyes on and fallen in love with the piece of land I last blogged about. In this dream I lay in a single bed in a small guest room in the early evening. The door to the right of my head is slightly ajar and a shaft of hall light cuts across the floor. The wall at my feet holds a single open window. There is no furniture save a little wooden dresser below the window at sill height. On the dresser a sheet of white paper, its edges carefully squared to the wooden top. Intrigued by the purposeful placement of the paper, I move to the dresser to look. It is blank.

The full moon comes out of a cloud and moonlight pours in the window all over the dresser and the paper. The paper begins to roil as though marbles beneath a lake are attempting to surface, and encountering a latex skin, are submerging again. Their struggles to break free increase continually until numerous 8-inch towers of stretched surface stand from off the dresser at once only to be pulled back under while others are rising. Eventually this lava-lamp-like dance stretches the necks too thin. They begin to break free. Quivering globules, like flower pod seeds, float on the wind out the window.

I want to go with them, and I follow them out. Out to the moonlit meadow and up through the glowing tree branches. Up through the treetops, they're chasing the moon, and high in the sky I realize I'm still in my bed soaring higher and out into space. And now we are cruising feet-first into the cosmos with stars whipping by and planets and nebulas passing. The globules, filled with excitement, are clinging to the blanket. The moon is all but forgotten and as curiosity mounts, the globules begin to venture out from the bed. Tentatively at first, like kittens exploring, going out a small distance and zipping back to the safety of the blanket.

They grow bolder taking longer and longer treks to examine passing stellar anomalies. Straight ahead, at the very vanishing point of the tunnel of stars racing toward us, I see a light. I know this is the end, the goal. It is very far away but we are moving fast. Some of the globules become aware of the light and go speeding ahead to appraise this new advent. I watch with some anguish as they burst into flames and disappear.

This was a strange dream to be sure, but before I venture any interpretation I think I'd best pick up the tale where I left off two years ago in my blog titled 'Keeping a Lid On It'. As you might recall, in the spring of 2018 I had resolved to make paintings to raise money towards buying 31 acres on Clinch Mountain in northeastern Tennessee. And as far fetched as that might sound to anyone weighing the cost of an acre against the cost of a painting and its likelihood of actually selling, things went remarkably well.

We parked our camper in Keren and Bobby's driveway and they graciously offered me a large room in the basement to use as a studio. So began four months of art immersion in which I became practically inaccessible to my long-suffering family. I discovered a body, drinking only coffee with goodly amounts of heavy cream, could easily go five days without getting hungry, and on average I joined the dinner table every three. I also discovered this low-food regime did absolutely nothing to reduce a certain paunch I had developed over the last few years, which I have since named my cream-belly.

In my overly idealistic imagination I saw myself producing a painting every three days but at the end of three months I had made only 11. This was not disheartening, though, I had made a body of work I was happy with, and I found an art printer in Knoxville obsessed with making perfect prints of the highest quality. Most importantly I had released four years of pressure to create art.

Bethany spent countless hours making the Land Ho! art store, Douglas, Fynn, and I created a video to introduce it, and the sale began. It lasted a month during which I finished a 12th and final painting while packaging prints and art that sold.

This final piece stemmed from a break we had taken in May, two months into my painting spree, to drive out to Chicago for Bethany's Mom's birthday. We had been hearing reports that her condition was going downhill, but seeing it first hand filled our heart-sack with lead sinkers. Her volition was gone. There was no initiated conversation, no walking into the kitchen to see what was cooking. No walking anywhere unless it was suggested. This was far harder for everyone around Mom than it was for her. Seldom did the shadow of lost ability darken her brow, but for those concerned for her, the memory of what had been was agonizing. The increasing amount of care needed was taking its toll on everyone. Bethany's dad, her brother Stephen, his wife Rene, Caroline the daytime caregiver; everyone looked tired.

The balm for this was Mom's smile. Her eyes tracked all conversation in the room, and although she could not volunteer anything, her involuntary reaction of smiling with enjoyment was a floodlight turning on. To see Mom, who all her life defined service, and doing, and self-restraint, in a position where all that remained was to be, to react, to enjoy… was still to see Mom. Clearer even. There was no filter. She welcomed a steady gaze into her eyes, a clasping of spirits, which inevitably ended in buoyant laughter or streams of tears on both our faces, with no words or need to say why. These were the unspeakably sweetest moments I spent with Mom. When we left for Knoxville, two things were clear beyond all doubt; our next move after the art sale would be returning to help care for Mom, and I would be making a painting of her.

I chose a photo of Mom taken the summer before. She is sitting at the dining room table filling up a sheet of paper with the same word over and over in beautiful cursive. This was her daily pastime when the photo was taken. The filled sheets intrigued me and Bethany to no end. What was happening inside as she wrote? Was there subconscious meaning in the word she chose? I picked the photo because it seemed to represent that Grace (mom) was still there as a person despite the debilitation of her mind and body.

As I painted the paper on which she wrote, the image from my dream came to mind. White lava-lamp-like globules rising from the page. The more the image sat in my mind the more compelled I felt to paint them in. So I did. Even though I had no words to explain at the time, the globules came to represent the silent, pure activity of Mom's spirit calmly surfacing in every circumstance handed her.

The sale went really well. We brought in 25% of the cost of the land, and that was super stimulating! We also received some generous donations. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! to everyone who gave, bought, and kept us in their thoughts. 

We began our extraction process from Keren and Bobby's which involved finishing up trim work and caulking in the room I had used as a studio, packing up Fynn's forging operation in the backyard, weather-proofing the go-kart to store under the porch, and removing the camper awning which had been irreparably damaged in a storm. This was a very sad thing as the awning had provided us with shade, shelter, and comfort and seemingly doubled our living space. It gave Fynn a place to spread his unending project generation and Bethany and I a place to sip a glass of wine in the evenings. We knew it was improbable we could afford a replacement anytime soon and this loss of luxury was compounding the growing feeling of dread and claustrophobia of what we were heading into. Little did we know how hard it really would be.

We had taken one trip in April to see the land and explore the 15 acres we hadn't seen the first time. We loved it twice as much. We took another in June to Rogersville, the nearest town, where I rented a spot in the local arts fair drawing portraits. We got to meet lots of people whom we loved and afterward stopped by the land for the sunset. We loved it three times as much. It was excruciating to be packing to head the opposite direction for an unknown period of time.

Our schedule for arriving in Chicago was dictated by a Sol LeWitt job I had taken starting at Harvard on August 13th. I had a train ticket out of Union Station on the 11th. The prospect of being alone for a month was not encouraging for Bethany. She was nearly paralyzed by the thought of helping out with Mom. "You know I'm not a caretaker!" she said to me on the verge of tears. 

"Your ability and your job" I said, using my authoritative and wise-sounding voice, "is going to be helping your DAD. You think like he does, and you will be a great help in organizing his thoughts and plans."  Boy, was I wrong!

We had wanted to take a two week 'family alone' break prior to heading to Chicago, but there was only one week before I had to be on a train to Harvard, and we still had three days of packing and checklists left.  That's when we got the call.

We were at a restaurant laughing with Keren and Bobby when Bethany's phone rang. I couldn't hear what was being said, but I watched Bethany turn gray as fog on the ocean. Bethany's dad had a possible heart attack and was in the hospital. He had been at the park with Mom on their evening walk pushing her mobility chair when, on a whim, he decided to break into a trot and give her a little "zip." Thankfully Stephen and Rene were there and saw him collapse.

Our urgency immediately tripled as did our anxiety. Our ability to leave, however, remained the same. Even dropping the few house projects left on our list and focusing purely on packing it still took us three full days. By then we knew that Dad had a faulty heart valve and was scheduled for open heart surgery on Friday. Stephen and Rene were now shouldering all the night time care of Mom that Dad had been handling, and they were a bit overwhelmed. The messages coming through from them were sounding increasingly desperate. 

On Monday August 6th we hitched the truck (after removing a large family of wasps from the camper hitch) and made the hard decision to spend some family time in a state park over the Blue Ridge Mountains. "There's nothing we can do for your Dad in the hospital," I reasoned to a visibly fraying Bethany, "and we have GOT to have some family grounding before you dive into Chicago and I head to Harvard. Stephen and Rene can last a little longer. We need this."

And so, with an extra scoop of guilt we headed out of Knoxville and, as is our wont, threw up a prayer; "Hey God, help us get the grounding we need before heading into this next phase of the journey." Saying those words "next phase of the journey" was a commitment, a cementing in our minds that the land our hearts were clinging to might very well belong to someone else before we could return. The dream needed set free or we would never have the heart to do the task ahead.

"Well," I said, "if someone else gets the land..."

"Then God will find us some that's even better," Bethany finished. "We were brought to that land after asking for HOPE that we could find a piece."

"It certainly has been that! And very motivating." We were starting to feel quite a bit better about the whole thing. Matilda shifted to third then back to fourth again. "Um, that didn't sound good," we murmured simultaneously. Thus began a number of increasingly frequent shifting abnormalities. By the time we were approaching Boone North Carolina, it was every ten minutes.

We decided to pull into a Walmart parking lot for the night while we tried to figure it out. "Maybe it's just the computer," I said hopefully, "and it just needs to reset itself." I lifted the hood and poked around. I checked the fluids. I unhooked the battery. Bethany made a snack and we talked about our options, coming to no conclusions except that we really didn't want to think about it till morning. We wanted to relax. This was not relaxing. We were chomping through corn chips like wood chippers, crumbs flying, pacing back and forth in front of the truck. We needed a distraction. "Hey, doesn't Caleb Drown live in Boone?" I asked.

Caleb had been on the 'friends to visit' list for years. A personality large as life itself, impulsive as a moose, humming with electricity and goodness. We called. His wife was away, he was home with the two boys, and did we want to get a pizza and hang out? We did. Bethany and I had both spent time babysitting Caleb when he was the size of his oldest and now here he was a blossoming trunk of manhood and his oldest the spitting image of the boy we had known.

The evening was a relaxing fantastic distraction. Of course, waking the next morning in the Walmart parking lot, all of our dilemmas were sitting where we left them, wearing slightly wounded expressions. Did we find a mechanic in Boone for a problem we hadn't diagnosed? Did we rent a car to make it to Chicago? But then what? We'd still need to get the camper. Maybe rent a truck and tow it? But we'd still need to come back for Matilda and I was headed for Boston in four days.

"Well," I said finally, "we don't know the problem and picking a mechanic here in Boone is harder than picking one where there're less choices. The truck still runs and our home still follows, I propose we keep going forward and if we break down, trust God to break us down near a mechanic that knows our truck." 

"That's exactly what I was thinking." Our eyes locked. That was it then. Our hands agreed by squeezing, and together we stepped into the unknown.

We were a half-hour down the road when the transmission started grinding, then shifting wildly, then not really working at all. We managed to limp into Wilkesboro and unhitch at a VFW campground. A local shop called Gear Jammers agreed to put aside their other work and take Matilda in.  I said to Bethany, on our way to the garage, "I didn't expect family grounding to have so much grinding."

to be continued …

gold tried in the fire : part 3 / sifting the ashes

This is my story of the last year, told in six parts. Paragraphs in italics are my dreams, and the dated snippets come directly from my daily journal. I trust my family to forgive me for all that I've shared, because I can't tell this story without including the heart parts … and some of them are raw, and hard to swallow.

Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4 / Part 5 / Part 6

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sifting the ashes

We got the house tidied up from the whirlwind move that left things all over the place and drawers half emptied. We decided that yes we were taking the camper with us to the beach, so there was an epic sort and removal of the majority of the things and projects the boys (well, Fynn mostly) had flung all over the basement and any other surface that wasn't already covered. A daunting detangle in a space that had been in flux for weeks, and barely kept functional as it was. I also started to get glimpses of how much I'd buried that might start coming to the surface if I dared to relax, and worried a wee bit about that. To top it off, the weather was bitterly cold, and in attempts to empty our black tank before leaving we discovered the valve was frozen. Trying to thaw it with a space heater blew a fuse. I gave up. Our camper isn't built for winter use so the tanks are not heated, and we'd been doing everything we could to keep them from freezing and cracking. We finally pulled out from between the snowbanks on Thursday afternoon, staggering with tiredness, cold, and a dawning elation at being pointed towards the beach and Michael's family.

Two Days on the Road : one freezing night at a truck stop pointed into the 5° air blowing at 20mph and leaving the truck running all night to power the furnace, one frozen and cracked sewer hose, one night in a WV campground that was miraculously open, one warm bourbon at the empty campground's non-empty bar, one tire changed for a couple of ladies stranded with their trailer, one late night arrival, one backing up of a very long driveway with the camper, one cozy tuck in between two huge beach houses, many hugs of welcome.

Seven Days Together : one solo sit in the hot tub, one girls afternoon out, one CodeNames tournament, two family game shows, one beach photo session, two personal breakdowns, four ducks consumed, six fantastic meals that the women didn't have anything to do with, one forging demonstration, 14 life updates given, every day filled to the brim with intensity.

Seven Days Home : one caravan to Raleigh, one fantastic pizza joint, two lovely days with Uncle Dick and Aunt Judy, three days in a familiar state park, one set of taxes almost finished, one lovely Fynn Fort, one night in a free riverside campground on WV land George Washington used to own, one speed bump at 30 mph, one smashed litterbox, one epic camper mess, one long gearing up to return to work, one safe arrival back at 2nd Ave.

We dragged ourselves back to work; emptying the house one box at a time, visiting at Park Ave (the new abode), celebrating Paul's birthday, sitting with Mom on Sunday mornings, and starting to pick away at the overall renovations on the old house. The lists were daunting. Michael spent his days on working on the house, and his nights on communicating with family over some subjects kindled by the time together. I'd assumed for years that Michael and I would be the ones dealing with the cleanout and fixup of 2nd Ave, and Dad had confirmed that in the fall when the decision was made to move them into Stephen and Rene's place. I love working with Michael, and we'd both been looking forward to this for months. So why were we having trouble getting up to full steam ahead?

The cumulative weight of the first six months in Chicago wasn't entirely lifted in the two weeks we'd been gone. I'd barely scratched the surface of anything emotional to be honest, and had come back to more adjustments, endless decisions of how to get rid of things, a preoccupied husband, and a daunting list of things to accomplish. There were more social opportunities now, which were lovely, but we both struggled. Part of the difficulty was due to the transition from a tightly structured schedule as to my responsibilities to Mom and Dad (pre vacation) to a family life with a day job (post vacation), and the resulting re-negotiations of how decisions were made, balanced, and executed. The focus was no longer so narrow, and the emergence from tunnel vision a bit blinding.

We finally found a working groove, got going on spacking and sanding and painting, and Michael's brother Nathan showed up to join the fray, bringing his very welcome electrical and plumbing expertise to the stack of lists now living on the dining room table. The lists that were partly buried under a dish of keys, piles of things to go to Park Ave, envelopes of photos to sort, boxed up teacups to mail, and things to get Dad's input on the next time he stopped by. We sailed jerkily through the next month and I struggled with some resentment at sharing Michael as my work partner, and deep sadness at old issues rearing their heads.

March 1 / Stephen to Mom … “Mom, you raised three little pigs …” Mom “No, I certainly did no…!” … her most coherent response in months!

March 2 / Dreamed I was watching and caring for Grambie

The Sunday mornings I usually spent with Mom were delightful and quiet. Most often just the two of us, though sometimes Michael came along. I came to fully appreciate the changes in our relationship that had come about during her care, and really enjoy the closeness. She wasn't super responsive, but still reacted to things with her eyes and the very occasional word, picked up and ate small snacks with her increasingly gnarled fingers, and listened to stories and music. I'd tell her things, and assume that she knew exactly what I meant. The painful truth was that as fiercely as I'd loved my Grambie (Dad's Mom) during her life, I hadn't felt that same fierceness for my own Mom until the last six months. It made quiet time with her all the sweeter.

March 3 / Dreamed about an eight-ish year old girl, a “princess”, being driven down a road in a cart, surveying. She saw groups of women in funny handmade green suits walking across fields. The princess character sees them. Freezes for a second, then resumes the ride but is changed. The ladies see her and are a bit wary, but are not threatened.

Being back in Addison, working in the house I grew up in, and temporarily in a very similar social circle to the one in my teens and 20's, was a bit of a mind flip. I'm no longer the same person I was in those years, the one who believed that other people had a right to judge everything we had, did, and wore, because a good bit of our income was based on donations from folks wanting to help out Bible Truth Publishers, where my Dad worked (and still does). I felt I had to always be useful, helpful, and an example to others of a holy and modest Christian. I had to help my family be worthy of the charity that we accepted.

I built that self image on my “approval ratings”, and so never wanted to disappoint anyone, especially not my father. I wanted to be all the things I was supposed to, but the internal dichotomy grew between the image I tried to project, and the person I was covering up in the process. I grew roots of worthlessness and unworthiness, because I could never live up to the standards I set for myself, or felt were being set for me. I tried to be more liked, more loyal, more humble. I also got somewhat proud of how unworthy I was, though I labeled it as piety at the time.

I believe my identity now, at 48, is closer to the 7-year-old who moved to Chicago in 1978 than I've been for nearly 40 years. That girl was confident, rather outgoing, self-assured, happy, and a bit wary of change. She didn't have a self-image to live up to, but knew who she was, and didn't shy away from it. The shift really started to take hold last spring.

A few months before we came to Chicago, I had a dream. It was triggered by having a friend help me dig up the unworthy/worthless roots, which set off a cascading realization as to where so many of my defaults came from. My identity was not rooted in who I was born to be, it was based on what other people thought of me. A slippery slope for sure, and one that I'd scrabbled on for most of my life. I knew in my heart that my true freedom is being unafraid, confident in knowing that I'm loved and approved of by the God who made me (thanks to Jesus), and that love is a gift I was born to share. Divorcing myself from the deep need for my fellow humans' approval was daunting though, and I had to have a little help in getting the process started.

I dreamed that I was in a slowly moving and loosely knit group of people, no known destination or purpose or scenery. Only person I knew was Michael, and I didn't see him but knew he was there. I became aware of a slight warmth and fullness growing in my abdomen, and realized it was pooling blood ... and that I was internally bleeding and it was going to kill me. There was no distress or pain, just curiosity and a sense of very limited time left. I rather enjoyed the feeling, mostly out of curiosity, but also found the warm belly to be comfortable. I thought almost idly of heaven, and thought That Will be Nice, but didn't focus on it.

I started to feel like maybe there were some people I should talk to before I died, and had an itch to call my parents. I don't know if I did or not, nor do I remember any words being spoken at all, but the feeling passed. Possibly because I realized the end was coming soon. I had a more urgent desire to talk to my cousin, and Michael helped me find a room off to the side somewhere where there was a desk and access to a phone somehow. I just made it in the room and into a chair, but could feel my life ebbing away. I had to acknowledge that I didn't have the strength to call and talk, and felt very slightly agitated about that.

I don't remember dying, the dream just ended there, and shifted into a different one in which I ran into a couple more people that I thought I should contact. What came clear to me was that the blood of Christ was filling me up to the point that the false identity (worthless and unworthy) that I'd been building on had to die. I had to be reborn, in my heart and my actions, as nothing more than a child of God, no strings attached. It left me feeling light, strong, and peaceful. I was still drying the wings of this newfound freedom when we got to Chicago in August, and I dove back into the bosom of my birth family.

That's a lot of navel-gazing digression, but I had to lay it out to get to my point. Diving in and being very quickly handed the reins of responsibility, by my Dad, for something I'd never expected to have to do, and then not getting one single iota of judgment from him for any decision that I made, most of which directly affected the life and well-being of the most precious-to-him human on earth? It was my father, and my Father, saying to me that if you do this for me, and for her, and for love, that is all that matters. I do not condemn you, shun you, or judge you as unworthy for any decision that you make. I just love you. There will be gold too. Oh yes, there will be gold. It's not about earning approval at all. It's just about doing the good that's put in front of me, with everything I've got, and trusting the results to God. What immense relief I find in that, and stronger wings too.

As John Prine puts it …

Well I'm thinking I'm knowing that I gotta be going
You know I hate to say so long.
It gives me an ocean of mixed up emotion
I'll have to work it out in a song.
Well I'm leaving a lot for the little I got
But you know a lot a little will do
And if you give me your love
I'll let it shine up above
And light my way back home to you.

Cause you got gold
Gold inside of you
Cause you got gold
Gold inside of you
Well I got some
Gold inside me too

Back to Part 2 / On to Part 4

Housekeeping

I’ve never been the most consistent housekeeper, but you all pretty much know that by now. I do make lists often though, so will attempt to briefly update you on what we’ve been up to since the last post about the Land Ho! Art Sale in June.

The Sale is over!

The Land Ho! sale ran for two weeks, and we sold a nice amount of work! Enough to get a good nest egg going for our Land Fund, even after paying off all of the costs of scans and canvas and paint and shipping supplies. It was a lot of work to get everything ordered, packaged, and shipped, but it felt good to wrap up that whole effort and call it finished. Big thanks to everyone who ordered something, or sent in a donation, it was mightily appreciated!

Finishing up at Keren and Bobby’s …

After hogging Keren and Bobby’s basement and driveway and back yard for months on end, with all the forging and art making and sprawling that we seem to do, it was time to move on. We had to finish up some work first though that we’d started before the Art Sale became a thing, so we focused on the renovations in the basement that had been started before it was turned into a temporary studio and shipping center. Lots of trim and painting and flooring and sanding and door hanging before we had to call it quits because Michael had a Sol LeWitt job coming up in Cambridge Massachusetts … but first we had to get the trailer to Chicago so the boys and I could help out at my folks while he worked at Harvard.

Getting Out …

Getting out of any long-term stay is hard, and leaving after 6 months is even more difficult. There was a torn awning to remove and dispose of (sadly), many tools to sort and stow, and a seemingly endless list of things to pack and dispose of and tend to. We badly wanted a few days to ourselves before landing in Chicago, but it seemed like the window was getting so small that we might not have more than a night or two on the road. We had to be there by Friday August 10th at the latest. On August 3rd, we got a call that my Dad had something that appeared at first to be a heart attack, and he was in the hospital. We prayed, packed faster, and managed to get on the road on the 6th. After a few hours of heading over the mountains, we knew that Matilda’s transmission wasn’t just sending out warning signals, it was in its death throes.

After stopping for a night with Caleb and boys (pure bliss!) we tried to limp North but had to admit that we weren’t going to make it. We were forced into a …

Mini Transmission Vacation!

It was now Tuesday August 7th and we were in Wilkesboro NC with just 4 days until Michael had to hop on Amtrak in downtown Chicago. It was now looking like Dad had open heart surgery looming in the next week or so as he had some afib and a faulty valve, and they were busy giving him tests to rule out possible complications. We had to find someone who could get and replace the transmission in a 1995 F250 in 2-3 days. We asked God to point us in the right direction, limped into a big truck body shop, got a recommendation for a transmission place in the next town that said they might be able to help, and landed in a VFW campsite nearby.

After chatting with a friendly veteran, befriending the camp host’s 4 crazy dogs, and getting the camper set up, we took off to see if these folks could indeed help us. Matilda’s 20’ of red and white loveliness looked like the runt of the litter when parked among the rest of the trucks in Gear Jammer Transmission’s crowded lot. The mechanics came on out, crawled under Matilda and poked around, and made a few phone calls. After being assured they could get a new one and put it in in the next 48 hours, we hitched a ride back to our campground with the friendly owner.

Before collapsing for the night, we took the transmission guy’s recommendation of a hole-in-the-wall BBQ place a short walk from our campsite, devoured a quiet and delicious meal together, and mused on the way in which we were getting my strongly desired “few nights to ourselves” before landing in Chicago. It was hard to fully relax with the worries about Dad and his pending surgery, which ended up suddenly scheduled for Friday the 10th, but it was still lovely to be on our own and puttering for a couple of nights. We got a purring Matilda back late on Thursday, and prepped for an early Friday morning start.

Dad’s Surgery

Friday was our drive to Chicago day, and Dad’s surgery. I’d talked to him a couple times by phone, and knew he had no fears at all. We trusted that all was in God’s hands, and got on the road. He was scheduled for a valve replacement, a double bypass, and an ablation. He ended up with a quadruple bypass, a new valve to replace what they discovered was an abnormal 2-flap one, and a maze procedure. By the time we arrived in their driveway just before midnight, he was out of anesthesia and back in one piece in the ICU.

Michael and Harvard

Saturday morning we took stock of the state of things at the house where my brother Stephen and his wife Rene and son Paul were caring for Mom, briefly visited Dad in the hospital, and then Michael packed up in time for me to take him to the train heading downtown, where he’d hop on Amtrak to go East. I must have messed up my Metra schedule while reading it on my phone in the truck the day before, because the train he was to catch only ran on weekdays, and at the last minute I had to hightail it into Chicago to drop him directly at the station. The prospect of Michael being gone for 5 weeks while I was helping with Mom and Dad and the household, while also parenting and homeschooling, loomed large, and I tried to get my head around how to handle it all as I drove back to the house.

Michael dove deep in Cambridge where he was helping re-install a huge Sol LeWitt wall drawing in a museum on Harvard’s campus. A 5-story atrium with tight spaces and convoluted scaffolding and minimal AC was more challenging than some jobs, and between Harvard’s work rules and delays from the construction crew working in the same space, the job stretched to 7 weeks. Getting him back at the end of that time was pretty delightful.

The Scene at 4N405

Since we arrived on August 10th, much has changed. Dad was in the hospital for another two weeks after we got here, and was more than ready to come home when they pulled the final drainage tube out. Mom took a pretty steep dive downwards after he went into the hospital, missing the connection of being with him daily, and having seen what happened to him when he passed out while at the park. Their bond is a huge part of what keeps her going, and without seeing him or being able to be with him at all, she lost a lot of ground and basically stopped being able to walk.

Her care needs increased a lot as a result, and she currently needs 2 or 3 people’s help on a daily basis. They decided to move into the in-law apartment at my brother’s new home, which includes a flat floor plan and wider doorways, and plans are in motion to add a kitchenette and laundry to accommodate their needs. In the meantime, we have added a Hoyer lift, a wheelchair, and a ramp down the front steps to the household. Dad has gained strength steadily, and recovery is going well enough that he’s back to work and up to long walks and carrying boxes to the car. Those boxes would be the result of the sorting of his vast book collection down to one bookcase’s worth to take along to the new place.

A telegram my grandfather Elmer sent to his fiancée Juanita for Valentine’s Day in 1937, 8 weeks before they were married.

We’re currently taking care of Mom with a lot of help from my sister Martha, working on sorting and emptying the house of a lifetime of accumulation (it is minimal by most standards!), and preparing to fix the house up for sale once they move. There’s a lot to do, and we’re here as long as we’re needed.

The land we had our eye on is still available, but we’re not focused on it at the moment. We’ve tried to just do what’s in front of us for years now, and the current situation is no different. There are needs, there is work that we know in our hearts is ours to do, and we’re in it with everything we’ve got.

Onward …

One Thousand Days

We spent the 1000th day of being on the road in Brooklyn. The boys and I at least, Michael was working his butt off at UCONN installing a Sol LeWitt piece that day. It felt momentous to me, this getting into the 4 digit category, and kind of stunning. One Thousand Days. So many, that much of it is getting blurry, in terms of where/when/with whom, and … what year was that?

DAY 2

The boys and I have kept journals since day one, though I'm the only one tracking the overall numbers. It kind of annoys Michael a wee bit, I think because the trip has become so very one-day-at-a-time that marking the overall duration seems pointless, or just plain distracting? I somewhat get that, but couldn't help myself in at least writing Day #1086 in my journal this morning when I curled up to write about yesterday.

Hitting #1,000 back in October made me shiver. How much have the boys changed in that time? What's growing, hardening, softening, missing, or coming into focus? Is Douglas's spine forever bent from curling up in his bunk? How on earth have we survived financially? (just fine, thank you God). Have I really slept in that camper for 850+ of those nights? Is Matilda about to croak in a pricier way, rather than just creak? Shouldn't we have visited more people by now? Was I really so self conscious about sleeping “in public” at a truck stop? What on earth do we have back in that storage space in PA, and is it covered in mold by now?

DAY 999

Just for kicks, a few stats, as of 12/18/2017 … day #1086

>  Number of “people visits” we've made … 78

>  Shortest visit … 2 hours

>  Longest visit … 3.5 months*

>  Number of visits where it hurt at least a bit to leave … 78

>  Number of states we've been in … 41

>  Number of regular campgrounds we've stayed at … 57

>  Number of days just boondocking** … 71

>  Miles driven towing the trailer … 16,505

>  Miles put on Matilda in total … 45,345

It's funny, this tracking the days bit makes me focused in a way I never have been. More attentive to the passage of time in days, and only days. What's accomplished, said, noticed, felt, enjoyed, annoying, disappointing … it's all measured one day at at time. No schedule whatsoever to make us pay attention to weeks or months or semesters or vacation days left or hours worked or anything of the sort. It's a more profound shift than I had any idea was coming, and it has consequences.

I notice the temperature, the humidity, the insect sounds, the birds, the temperaments of my boys, my moods, my body's reactions to things, the health of the cats, the fragility of my nails, the color of the light, the spirit in which something is said, body language cues, how much stuff we have added since we left home (partly by how Matilda feels when she tows), how quiet my boys can be, how patient my husband is, how much I enjoy the boys' bedtime rituals, how media affects us all, how our relationships shift when we don't have media, how little most things really matter, how much I long for community, how delicious humanity is, how much I depend on God, how slowly I walk now, how grounded I feel, how at peace I can be for long stretches of time.

DAY 1,012

Some of these bits came into focus on that thousandth day in Brooklyn … a day spent visiting friends and old stomping grounds. I was in the city I'd lived in for 9 years, but moved away from almost 5 years before. I never imagined I'd feel so differently walking through Fort Greene … evidence of a shift in perspective, almost entirely within myself. It's rare to get such a clear glimpse … the 1000th-day-me, seeing the Brooklyn-girl-me way ahead, disappearing around the corner onto Myrtle Ave. Feeling her to my core, and realizing how much she'd changed.

I've written and erased many many sentences about how I'm different now, but none of it is ringing true. Too pat or facile, or, quite possibly, incorrect. I feel the difference, but I can't pin it down really.

DAY 1,057

Maybe this will help a little?

1,000 days ago I would not have ...

• Bought orange and turquoise cowboy boots, and worn them delightedly and almost daily.

• Not cared at 4pm where we were going to be for the night.

• Not been particularly concerned about things like having $20 in our bank account and none in the wallet.

• Any idea that 1,000 days later I'd still not have driven Matilda while towing the trailer

• Wakened with the sun for weeks on end.

• Thought it was possible to fit another 6 Nerf guns, thousands more Lego pieces, dozens more books, a keyboard, a remote control plane, a large backpack full of survival gear, costumes, a scroll saw and dremel kit and several more drills and many other tools, piles of 'walking' sticks, boxes of art supplies, and 6 more inches of Douglas into the trailer.

• Had any idea there was such delight to be found in Unplanned Living. That it was desirable, delightful, softening, and addictive.

• Woken up parked in between semis at a truck stop, and felt right at home.

• Thought it possible that I'd struggle to remember what's in our storage space.

• Been able to walk through Brooklyn after a delicious breakfast at Smooch with Susan, with my heart beating in rhythm with my feet … feeling 6 feet tall, visible, peaceful, and as solid and light and whole as I've ever been.

DAY 1,086

Onward ...

* Not counting the first 5 months in Knoxville, figuring out that we didn't need to figure out any way to survive financially on the road, we just needed to Go.

** That means being in a place with no hookups of any sort, be it a rest area or national forest or roadside pullout. I don't count parking in driveways as boondocking, though we spent many many months parked in driveways or back fields or cul-de-sacs.

“The One that Got Away, and the One that Didn't”

We left Palmetto and needed a few solo days as a family before Michael took off for a Sol LeWitt install in NYC, leaving the boys and I parked on the east coast of Florida, near friends in Jupiter. We didn't have a campsite booked when we pulled out, and didn't really have a budget for anything, so aimed for a boondocking site that was mentioned somewhere online, supposedly on the edge of a USAF Bombing Range in central FL. Right up the boys' alley, and so I did my best to navigate us in the right direction. We pulled up at the gate at long last, only to discover that all three camping areas were “Closed for a military event” and that was that. When we asked for any local alternatives, the gate guard mentioned a County Park on the other side of the lake we'd been circling, before allowing that “You can turn around right over there ...” and shooing us off.

We pulled around the bend and out of sight before pulling over to do some Googling and some calling. There's a mighty LOT of Googling and calling on this trip by the way, mostly done by me. I don't know how we'd do what we do without it, though the Atlas is pretty handy too, and lives on my lap when we're driving. But back to the side of the road along Arbuckle Lake in central Florida, just out of sight of the tight-lipped USAF gatekeeper. Michael called the County Park number, and got a very down-to-earth guy named John (I can ALWAYS tell the character and accent of who he's talking to, as he unconsciously mimics every single one), who said that they had plenty of sites for a mere $22 a night, and only a couple spots were currently taken. As I was really hoping not to WalMart it for the next two nights, we headed the long way around the lake (the USAF owned half the perimeter), and several phone calls and a hitch hiker later, we finally found John. Google didn't know where he was, once again telling us “You Have Arrived” in the middle of a deserted road. (A paved one this time, however!)

John chatted, showed us possible sites, offered parking advice, chatted some more, talked about his grandkids and the history of the place, mentioned the gators and their usual hunting spots, pointed out the fence 15' from our door which marked the border with the other side of the USAF Bombing Range from where we'd started, and made us feel right at home. Michael parked, and I raced through inside setup while he chatted with John some more. We seem to have that bit down to a science now … Michael and the boys unhitch, put down the leveling jacks, stow the sway bars and all that, and get the whole camper leveled out. I do the power and water and sewer hookups, and move all the things inside back to their “camped” places that were secured elsewhere during travel.

We kept the cats in the first night, not willing to let them out after dark, though Michael took the boys out on a moonlight wander, which included the sighting of an owl. The next morning we got up for sunrise (yes, really!) and scoped out the lake, the dock, and the humongous wild grapefruits just out of reach over the fence. The USAF fence. Just barely out of reach, mind you.

We mucked around, did a little hike, and let the cats out but kept a pretty close eye on them as the gators were known to stroll past our chosen campsite at times. We had a little point of land between our campsite and the water, which was defined by The Fence, a reedy bit on the lakefront where gators were known to feed, and cypress trees along the third side that bordered the boat ramp inlet. A magical little spot with some benches built into the trees, and piles of lizards scampering through the cypress knees. A veritable cat paradise.

My nervousness about the cat/gator situation was much higher than Michael's, and honestly it's higher than the rest of them pretty much all the time when it comes to the cats. I'm the natural worrier, and wary of rule-breaking, as well as of the cats getting into fights that they very likely might lose. Most places require leashes, which we have and sometimes use, but Sparrow HATES it, while Edmund has learned to tolerate it. We often go against campground rules though and let them wander, after checking with the vibe of the place, and sometimes with our immediate neighbors. The dangers of local wildlife and traffic are assessed, as well as the likelihood of offending others or angering the campground hosts. Most places people seem to gladly turn a blind eye, or more often truly enjoy them, sometimes trying to get the cats to come and have their ears scratched. They never comply, but skitter just out of reach. This place had no rules, just cautions from John about the gators.

So the second night there, Michael gets it in his head that it's a crime to let those massive grapefruits fall off and rot, and he's determined to get one. He knows better than to tell me what he's plotting however (see the previous paragraph) and so the first thing I know about it is him coming in the door of the camper with one of the grapefruit cradled in both hands, and a rather triumphant grin on his face. He explained his process of making sure that our camper was between John and the chosen tree, and how he'd just barely hopped the fence. It was truly the best grapefruit I think I've ever eaten, and chock full of seeds, which we saved. So delicious in fact (stolen fruit and all), that the next day a second one was procured with the assistance of a certain smallish someone standing on his father's shoulders. Ahem.

The second afternoon was a lazy one, and I was sitting outside the camper reading, keeping half an eye on the cats' whereabouts, after scanning the water and not seeing any gator heads at the time. Lost in my book, I suddenly heard the SNAP of jaws at the tip of the point, and saw thrashing and splashing through the bushes. Terrified, I threw down my book, hollered in the camper that there was “a gator that just caught something on the point and I don't know where the cats are!”, before taking off at a hesitant trot towards the point. I quickly found Sparrow, unceremoniously tossed her inside, and went back to hunting for Edmund. It was clear that if he was dinner then that was it, but I called, went as close to the still twitching water as I dared, and then ran the other way, hunting and calling.

I finally found him waltzing slowly up to the camper from the other end of the park, and my heartbeat began to slow a wee bit. It only took about 2 minutes in all, but it was an awful two minutes. I know it's the price I pay for letting them out, and the risk we take, but the alternative is miserable cats as they've never known being cooped up. So be it.

I suspect what did turn into gator dinner was a heron or something like that, though I never went close enough to check for floating feathers.

Lots more photos here.

the rules of summer ... 20 years and counting

the Rule clan has been getting together for a week every summer for the last 20+ years, and this past week was no exception.  as one of my nephews is in his 20's now, i think that means we started the year he was a baby.  it's become a tradition that's not missed, except for really good reasons like some of the years my brother was living in Ecuador, or Michael having a job that he couldn't afford to miss.  but most years, it's been all of us, and that all now = 15.  the first 15 or so years were mostly spent camping ... and yes, that would be tenting. 

one of the exceptions was the year we went to the hotel in brown county state park in indiana, during which michael asked me to marry him (not for the first time, but it was the first time i actually accepted).  that was the year too that we went crawling through some caves, back when my claustrophobia wasn't quite so bad.  so, a fairly memorable time. 

we stopped the tenting bit about 5 years ago, as it wasn't so fun or easy for my mom anymore, and it became a much simpler process for all of us to just get a house together somewhere for a week.  far easier packing, smoother meal prep for 15 at a time, and stuff to do no matter what the weather.  there was the epic tenting year that involved a huge deluge and high winds and flying tarps and lots of fun drama ... those are a thing of the past. 

we always seem to find some form of drama however, and this year was no exception ... the electric golf cart that came with the house rental proved to be the kicker, as there were more paths on the 40 acres we had to ourselves than there was battery.  it died several times, at varying distances from the house, and one rescue involved a fair bit of hunting and gps-ing and scavenging of batteries and chargers, though it ended up being solved by the loan of another golf cart from the campground on the adjoining land. 

there were many games (loved learning Thunderstone this year), many songs, mucho fishing, many conversations, and many companionable silences.  and waaaay too much food!  i forgot to take a picture of it, but this house has been used as a guest house/retreat center for a long time, and so had the biggest table and best stocked kitchen of any place we've ever stayed.  the table easily sat 16, and we could have eaten 3 meals without having to do any dishes.  truly comfortable, easy, and spacious. 

i try not to think about how many more years we'll have the whole family together, but just enjoy the times we do have, and savor the moments a little more fiercely.  hug a little harder.  feel a little deeper.  watch a little more carefully.  know a little more fully what it means to love, to grow, and to feel the passing of the years. 

it was a good year, a great year in fact, and one that i'm very thankful for.

.....................

we spent one night in a campground after leaving the rental house, and then moved on to Crown Point Indiana, where we're starting some house projects for friends, and hoping that the rain doesn't entirely foil our plans!

onward ...