It is cold and colder around here in Northeast Ohio, with snow and freezing rain-must be December. On Thanksgiving and the day after at my daughter’s home not far from Lake Erie, there was plenty of snow for the first snowman of the year. My grandsons were thrilled. I don’t drive anymore, so after my son-in-law drove me home away from the white stuff that day, when it snows again where I live, I am free to admire its beauty.
There is the anticipation of continuing holidays in the air. For me, there is a touch of nostalgia from my own childhood to that of our family when my daughters were young. Above, is a photo of my holiday shelf, minus the tiny menorah soon to join the lights. We acknowledge the cosmic approach of the solstice, and we have lighted candles against the dark since ancient times. May we all invest in the hope that the New Year will start bringing us closer to returning light to the darkness of our world. There is no timeline on achieving this, unfortunately. But I cannot afford despair and wish to contribute lightness within my own small circle of family, friends, and neighbors.
I wrote this poem in February of 2025, already foreshadowing the contrast of the beauty of the world outside my window to the ugliness of what was to come.
Predictably Unpredictable Weather 2/16/25
Today the snow fell as temperatures dropped
without yesterday’s warm permission.
It is pretty.
It is soft.
It is quiet.
It draws birds back to my feeder.
Bluebirds return to fallen seeds below.
Everywhere the ground reflects light dimmed
by clouds releasing their crystalline burdens
onto black branches underlining every snow-capped twig.
We are another month closer to the new year which may have a sliver more positive anticipation after the recent elections. “Count your blessings,” is surely an overused and saccharine phrase these days. But if you are reading these words, it is likely that you are fed, warm and dry, and are using your computer in relative comfort. I daily do give thanks for these things that I do not take for granted.
Sure, living in a retirement home that has been undergoing major kitchen renovations of our former 30-year-old equipment and poor set up, now gives rise to food complaints as we endure months of food prepared in 5 huge FEMA style trailers that we have rented for the duration. Lack of dishwashers has meant eating from paper plates, buffet style serving, and endless repetitive menus due to the poor storage and freezer space available.
The entire restoration project is supposed to culminate in a grand Thanksgiving Day opening meal- but we shall see. We are still so fortunate. Most of us buffer our complaints with that understanding and we are very involved in supporting local food banks and services to support those in our area that continue to struggle as our national/state support systems continue to decline. It is horrifying that this occurs in America even as millions all over the world are starving who are also affected by the brutal decisions of our supposedly wealthy country.
Tragedies strike close to home with friends whose daughters and sons have lost their government jobs, their grants, their SNAP benefits, and their livelihoods. We are all affected by their lives as fellow human beings. Counting your blessings is one way to focus on the good and the hopeful during the avalanche of desperate news. It is only a moment of your time and has repeatedly been said by wiser and heartful beings, moments are all we really have. Make each one count as best you can on the positive side of the equation. As I titled this blog long ago, we are: shining light into dark places.
No sooner did I wax poetic about the crisp fall weather last month than the afternoon temperatures rose into the 80’s every day. We are back in drought territory. It is a lovely time to be a walking, appreciative human being and a stressful time to be a tree. Trees are shedding early with little vibrant color so far. I am enjoying the last slowly vine ripening tomatoes that were also given a final boost. As I sit by the shrinking ponds and the sinking lily pads, I look and hear and smell fall progressing.
Gone to seed
Pods and pinecones
Berries and burrs
Nuts and tufts of wispy
fluff – the urgency of spring
no less the urgency of fall
The laze of summer
The slumber of winter
Love itself has no season
and at the end
all I hope to leave behind.
This fall seems almost unendurably poignant as so many of our valued beliefs and systems have been prematurely forced to go to seed. Living as I do in a continuing care retirement home, dear friends and neighbors are passing in their time. These personal losses on top of global decimation are a lot for my witnessing heart to bear. I am grateful for those in my community both here and outside of Kendal that share their strength of heart with me. Going it alone is not an option.
Yom Kippur was honored with a lovely service enhanced by two Oberlin Conservatory students playing a heart-rending version of the Kol Nidre. I shed tears to share the burden of being human for so many atrocities that we commit as a species. To find atonement- or I as I see it, at-one-ment with the whole of my being, means asking for mercy and forgiveness every step of my path and not just once a year. We each have a role to play in standing for truth, compassion, and justice.
In Catholicism, prayers may be offered many specific times of the day, as in Islam. Compline is the last one before retiring.
I originally wrote this hot chocolate piece last year when I spent New Year’s Eve and Day at home n my residential community, Kendal at Oberlin. This year I had a wonderful bittersweet visit with my daughter’s family at their home. My grandsons are now 3 and 5 years old and we played many games, sang many songs, ate well, and they definitely ran and jumped around (a lot) inside as it was too wet and cold to be outside. It was very sweet, if appropriately tiring for all adults involved. The bitter part came because the whole family is leaving in 5 days for Barcelona and returning in July.
My daughter is taking the family to Spain while she does her academic research there. Her husband works remotely, and the boys are enrolled in a school in Barcelona that has students from many countries for as long as their parents remain in this very international city. My older grandson will be taught half in English and half in Spanish. The younger one will likely learn Spanish by osmosis with his age group in the schoolroom and on the playground as younger children often do.
When my son-in-law was preparing to drive me back home, the 5-year-old said goodbye , then added, “But grandma, you aren’t leaving forever.” I assured him I was just going back to my home and will be ready to greet him when they returned from Spain. The three-year-old apparently cried after I had I left because he hadn’t said goodbye to me. In fact, he had a 2-year-old moment and had refused to say goodbye as I wheeled away in my ever-fascinating wheelchair. Fortunately, FaceTime will remedy this omission and will keep us connected for the long haul over the next 6 months. I am so happy they are going on this grand adventure and I will miss them all like crazy.
Hot Chocolate 2024
As a kid, I wasn’t all that fixated on chocolate. Weird, I know, but unless there was chocolate in a rarely offered pastry like eclairs, napoleons, or croissants, I’d go for a piece of creamy or fruit filled pie every time. From a family box of chocolates, I’d gladly eat the ones filled with the good stuff- jellies or fruit fillings that nobody else wanted. S’mores were only part of outdoor fire events, and drinking hot chocolate was for outdoor winter playtime. With or without marshmallows or tiny peppermint candy canes, hot chocolate wasn’t chocolate to me, but something exotic and foamy and wonderful to drink as hot as my child tongue could take. Holding a steamy cup between snow-cold fingers after sledding and skating was a treasured ritual.
Hitting menopause changed my tastebuds. Dark chocolate suddenly acquired its proper place in my personal food pyramid. Because of living with MS, I never have been able to ingest lots of sugar or caffein without inducing an inflammatory immune response. To the outside observer, this dark chocolate desire is not evident. Once in a great while I can usually handle maybe one square of 95% cacao chocolate for dessert. It is deeply satisfying to me while others cannot believe I like something that is barely sweet to them. For me, the lack of sugar allows the essence of the chocolate flavor to linger and inform my senses with its tasty mystery.
Today, on New Year’s Eve, I remembered that I had a container of organic dark chocolate powder mix to make a cup of hot chocolate for myself. I opened a box of almond milk and microwaved some in my favorite cup. In went four decadent tablespoons of the mix. Stir vigorously, and voila! Hot chocolate. No marshmallows or candy canes were injured in the process of this experience.
I sipped and gazed out on the gray day. Some of my neighbors are away, and the paths are quiet. Even the sparrows and house finches are no show outside on my bird feeder right now. I slowly sip and nostalgia arises for my family. One daughter is home with two coughing little boys so there was no sleep for the family last night. Naps have ensued. The other checked in while streaming her favorite gamers after successfully selling off some furniture at the local secondhand store. All is well enough in their world, and I finish my drink with deep satisfaction and so much gratitude.
In my grandson’s Montessori preschool, each child’s birthday is marked by the birthday child circumambulating around a ‘sun’ to mark the passage of the year. A paper crown and, of course, cupcakes, follow. My just turned four-year old grandson knows it takes a long time for another year to pass before he will be ready to go the ‘big kid school’. We, too, have circled once more around the star of our planet. I will mark the event with my neighbors in some low-key gatherings, and now that I rediscovered the hot chocolate mix, I will greet the new year with one more cup even though this year there is no snow, no ice, and no crown, paper or otherwise. At my age, time is fluid in nature. A year seems forever to a youngster, and to me, it is more an arbitrary marker as seasons continue to confound us with unpredictable weather patterns due to our climate crisis.
Raise your cup to auld lang syne (old times’ sake), whatever your choice of beverage! May 2025 bring unforeseen opportunities for deeply healing changes to “Crown thy good with brother/sisterhood, from sea to shining sea”, and all the way around our deeply troubled world.
December raindrops on berries in Courtyard Garden pond
Thanksgiving was wonderfully exhausting for one of compromised body but worth every moment of time spent with extended and close family. I have much to be grateful for. I did come home with the start of a baby cold which today, is still a full blown (and blowing) head cold. But this, too shall pass and does not diminish the warm glow I also carried home with me despite the polar temperatures ,“that are making it feel a lot like Christmas…”. Confined to my room as much as possible to avoid sharing my viral gift, I have been thinking.
When there are more floating islands of garbage in the oceans of the world, than there are islands of land, my grandsons will not mourn the loss as I do. They will have grown up with a world that has already lost so much of what I took to be my planet Earth. There will likely be few fish or vital coral reefs. Animal species found only in zoos and preserves, mountains covered with trees found only in a few remaining national parks, digital recordings imitating the lush sounds of rain forests- this is a small taste of what may lie in their future. To them, these profound changes will already seem normal and not losses.
Generational gaps of experience have increased so rapidly in my lifetime. I believe there was a greater generational overlap in my own past. I could understand the assumptions and expectations of my grandparents and my parents’ lives because our culture had progressed more slowly in their lifetimes. My grandson was born in 12/2019, on the cusp of the Covid 19 epidemic. Within the first month of his life, only a very few vetted people were allowed into his house, and everyone wore facemasks. There were no trips to the library, grocery stores, or playground. He had limited contact with anyone other than his family with the help of a single babysitter, and the child of one close friend. The atmosphere of fear and uncertainty was everywhere, despite the best of precautions for safety.
I, on the other hand, spent childhood summer days outdoors unsupervised, and only came back home when it was time for dinner. There was an assumption of safety that no longer exists. While my 82-year-old neighbor was shocked by the assassination attempt of the presidential nominee in 2024, her 20-year-old niece assumed it was life as usual in this country. ‘Oh, another shooting.’ Whereas, I was shocked to see my mother crying for the first time when JFK was killed. Of course, it shocked the nation, not just me and my mom.
I, on the other hand, spent childhood summer days outdoors unsupervised, and only came back home when it was time for dinner. There was an assumption of safety that no longer exists. While my 82-year-old neighbor was shocked by the assassination attempt of the presidential nominee in 2024, her 20-year-old niece assumed it was life as usual in this country. ‘Oh, another shooting.’ Whereas, I was shocked to see my mother crying for the first time when JFK was killed. Of course, it shocked the nation, not just me and my mom.
In 1981, my grandmother couldn’t understand how I had driven to her house with my firstborn baby in the car. “But Judi, driving with a baby in your lap is so dangerous.” I explained to her about car seats for infants buckled in the back seat with seat belts and she was relieved and amazed. She mentioned that my husband would soon be flying out of “La Guardia Airfield” for his job- newly named airports were not yet in her vocabulary.
Compared to those memories, the advent of technology with internet access via computers and smart phones is that much more startling. The steady infiltration of AI is beyond anything like the advances that occurred in my grandmother’s generation. I often endeavor to explain the world to my 97-year-old neighbor. I caution her to not answer her single landline phone when 99% of the time it only rings with scam calls. She can’t help picking it up every time, navigating her wheelchair with great effort to answer it. “It sounds like the same woman again. I tell her I can’t hear her, but she keeps talking and talking. I feel badly but I finally have to hang up on her.”
As my neighbor is gradually losing her cognitive abilities, I repeat that she doesn’t have to be polite, that she can simply hang up as these callers do not actually want to talk to her, but only want to sell her something or to get information from her which can be dangerous. She agrees but still picks up the phone politely out of a lifetime of habit. She cannot hold the idea that a telephone call could be dangerous or that she could be so bold as to hang up on a caller.
My grandsons will automatically know the dangers of this world and how to manipulate technology in ways I cannot begin to imagine. They will accept our beautiful, decimated planet as simply the way it is and mourn only the changes that will occur during their lifetime, that future one which I already feel distanced from.
This generational sense of loss has happened since homo sapiens arrived on the planet. The new naturally replaces the old. (What? tie a stone on the end of a stick to make a weapon?) The sorrows of my generation may seem unique, but so it has ever been. I deeply wish that the new may align more closely with values that are essential for continued life on this planet, values that sustain and honor the whole of creation we were gifted. I know the turnaround is not likely to make such a course correction in my lifetime but perhaps it will start with my grandsons onboard. That, I would like to imagine.
The holiday season has begun, and here, the decorative lights are showing up as the early mornings are as dark as the late afternoons. I anticipate ritual religious traditions with warmth and celebration joining my fellow retirement home residents no matter their affiliations. It is a time to gather the community together as we gird our loins for what happens after the January inauguration. We will keep ourselves and our loved ones, our neighbors, and our country close to our hearts to nurture and heal whatever destructive acts that may come our way. Nobody knows what the future holds, and it is time to dig deep into our strength with faith in our capacity to meet the challenges ahead. May it be so. May the light attend you and yours, now and throughout the new year.
October Northern Lights above Kendal at Oberlin, photo by Rebecca Cardozo
Northeast Ohio had a mid-level drought all summer. By the middle of September the trees had already started turning due to stress and acorns covered the ground under small oak tree near to a quiet spot where I like sit. The vernal pond has been a lush green field visited only by deer who scoot across the road from the woods.
This deer is only passing through just as we now only pass through the lovely, cultivated Courtyard Garden. In the garden the bench below is overhung with wisteria from a special cutting of the vine that survived the bomb in Hiroshima. Behind the bench is a wind chime with long tubes that keep ring-ing-ing in the fall breezes that are also passing through.
I am busily involved in another project with my creative photography partner, Rebecca. This time our focus is on water. She not only has photos of creatures living in and nourished by water from around the planet, but also exquisite pictures of water in patterns, frozen and misty, roaring African waterfalls, and captured in the white landscape of a single polar bear looking in her direction.
I have written about water in poems and songs for many years. My contributions to our program include offerings from my past albums as well as new songs I have written since coming to Kendal. Instead of water falling down mountains to the Hudson River where I grew up, I now live in the wetlands of drainage from Lake Erie. An indigenous speaker last year pointed out on a map what his people called The Great Black Swamp- which included northern land across the midwestern states below where the Great Lakes lie. He grinned at us as he said, “You know what I’m talking about.” As we have seven ponds created for drainage to create our campus, we laughed and assured him that we did.
Between coordinating slides with my poems and song lyrics on them, I am also tapping into the local talent to create song arrangements with a resident clarinet/sax player and a pianist player/arranger from the town of Oberlin. It is fun and challenging as my stamina is limited. I will also do a sitting-in my-wheelchair-dance to one of my pre-recorded songs. I treasure the opportunity as I cannot know how much longer I might be able to attempt this in the future.
I am fulfilled, ever grateful that I live in a place where I am cared for on every level. Shana Tova for those who celebrate Rosh Hashana. May we all find sweetness to hold alongside the political turmoil and our yearly tilt away from the sun as this year unfolds.
Yesterday’s sun was released through the early morning mist on every pond I passed. The chilly overnight autumn temperatures caused ghostly shapes and patterns to rise and swirl as the sun began to rise. Made visible by evaporation, subtle swoops and vortexes breezed above the waters. Sitting by one pond, my Polartec jacket zipped up to the neck, hands tucked into the ends of my sleeves, I drifted and dissipated along with the soft wet air we breathed- the fish, birds, the trees, the fields, and I. It is September.
In NY state where I grew up and raised my daughters, school always began the Wednesday after Labor Day. In Ohio, kids have already returned to school. My older daughter is on Sabbatical from this year’s teaching at her college, so the usual school related nostalgia of fall feels cut loose for me. I ate the last bite of summer with a fresh picked peach my friends gave me, and the perfectly ripe sweet corn from the holiday menu.
It is my birthday month. As a child, given that my birthday is around the fall solstice, I never knew if I would celebrate the occasion with a warm outside party or a chilly one based on indoor games. This year, I hope to celebrate with my daughter’s family and share my cake with my grandsons. I requested my son-in-law’s carob/apple/apricot/chocolate cake from a recipe he brought with him from Bosnia. It is fruity and dense without being too rich and drips with a dark chocolate coating. Being an excellent cook who loves international cuisine, I asked also for a Japanese dinner and was offered instead a Peruvian/Japanese meal. I did not know that was a possibility and eagerly agreed.
I asked for no physical presents as experiences are what I treasure these days. May your September bring you into fall with your own sweet desires to be fulfilled.
The following is a prose poem I read recently for a Poetry Potluck we hold at Kendal.
Lunch Lessons from a Finch
We both sat down for lunch. He flew directly to a middle perch on the birdfeeder with no competitors in sight.
He ducked his head inside for a seed, expertly cracked the shell, and swallowed the naked sunflower meat. Repeat. Repeat. Now and then he kindly dropped a whole seed for the ground feeders, mammals and birds alike. He paused.
He paused. Lifting his rosy head, he sang his own house finch song. Over and over, he trilled with abandon, before he returned to feed.
I paused with him. I set my fork down on my plate, already loaded for the next bite. His syrinx is located right next to his heart. If my larynx nestled up to my heart, what would I sing for my supper?
If my larynx nestled up to my heart, what would I sing for my supper?
The first response was tuneless gratitude. I was grateful for nature’s bounty and all the human hands that brought this meal to my table. Deeper still, awareness arose out loud to know that I have everything I need to be grateful.
I have everything I need to be grateful while millions have every reason in this world to be starving, desperate, and terrified. I sang my compassion for their suffering and the knowledge that to me, they are not alone, not even in the cruel death their bodies may endure.
They are not alone.
I picked up my fork up again, and slowly chewed the rice and vegetables with care. The finch flew away, and the rest of my meal tasted like heart honey.
Around mid-January I found myself turning teary while listening to the sad news or the occasional good news story on the radio, hearing just about any music, or seeing my dear elderly companions as they each navigate their days. I was teary when a retired nurse from my assisted living area recently returned for a day to fill an open space on the schedule. She is a very formal efficient sort of woman, and when I greeted her as I rolled past the nurse’s station in my wheelchair, she stepped out from behind her desk and came around to give me a hug. My friends and I were astonished at this display of affection. It touched me deeply and I saved shedding the tears sparkling in my eyes for when I returned to my room. I teared again up today when the sun shone bright after weeks of dreary cold weather. It was fifty degrees F on the first of February, and I went outside on my mobility scooter to enjoy the fresh air for the first time in a month. The above photo of melting ice on the pond is from that excursion. Joy undid me. It doesn’t take much. I, too, am melting.
I am not feeling sad, just very vulnerable. I know this emotional upwelling is because we are approaching Valentine’s Day, marking the sixth anniversary of my husband death. I try to remain available to whatever arises in me to mark this occasion. My daughters and I usually score some chocolate chip ice cream to honor his memory, just as we did when we served ice cream to the hundreds who attended his memorial. Grief is an unpredictable ongoing phenomenon. So far, this year is offering me a delightful mixture of nostalgia, memories, gratitude, and joy. I have written before about how grief is tied to gratitude. My heart was cracked wide open when Richard was dying. It appears that it has never again closed as tightly as before. This is what the touchstone of this anniversary is revealing to me. Losing him was his gift to me of a still opening heart.
Of course I miss him, and the intimacy of a partner who knew every fault I have and loved me anyway- the jokes we invented together when we were teenagers falling deeply in love- or co-parenting two cherished daughters- and the knowledge of how he would have adored his two grandsons had he lived to meet them. I embrace missing that Richard, the man who was my husband for almost fifty years. I also know how happy he would be that I live in a wonderful new home where I am supported at all levels of my being to thrive and live the last chapter of my life without his physical presence. His devoted life work provided me with the opportunity to live at Kendal at Oberlin and I am grateful for that alone every day.
May Valentine’s Day be not just a commercial reminder to buy cards, flowers, and chocolates, (there’s nothing wrong with any of those!) to show our love for others but also to serve as a deeper touchstone for sharing our love and light every day with all beings in our lives.
I have likely posted this song some years ago? but I post it here again with my voice of loving remembrance.
A new year. For thousands of years, we humans have been aware of our passage around the sun. It is a worldwide ritual acknowledgement of time. The cyclical nature of endings and beginnings has always been embodied in the natural world we inhabit. Mortality and renewal are sad and joyful in their turn. Denying the reality that we are embedded in this cycle seems ignorant and yet, our culture takes death so personally, that we employ all manner of denial to avoid the inevitable.
I include a piece I wrote last fall about attending to my body after death. I am so glad I did. It still makes me smile to think of that day. On this finally frigid morning, a bit of snow shower whitewashing clings to the grass outside my window. It has been overly warm until this week, and it feels like a relief to know we can have a real wintry day. Because I don’t have to drive anymore on icy roads, I simply appreciate the white stuff with a bit of nostalgia from when snow was a playground of delight. My cement garden frog looks a bit concerned because snow lingers between his eyes. I assure him the afternoon sun will rise above the rooftop soon enough and his serious stone visage will be restored- at least until the next snowfall. May this year bring joy, peace, and freedom to all.
My burial site 30 feet to the left. with my daughter and H
“I am not courting death, but death is courting me”.
Yesterday, my older daughter and I went to choose my burial site and we were giddy with joy. My death is not imminent (I sincerely hope not, anyway) but I was thinking the other night, “I am not courting death, but death is courting me”. Death is courting all of us since the day we were born if you care to think about. Which most people do not. Our culture in general does its best not to embrace death as an essential aspect of life. I currently live in a wonderful CCRC (continuing care retirement community) in the Assisted Living area of Kendal at Oberlin and am surrounded by neighbors in their 80’s, 90’s, and two amazingly sharp people who are 103. So, yeah, living here I think about death as a regular occurrence treated with utmost care, respect, and support for all involved in the loss of their beloved.
I have had MS for over 50 years and since I was in my 30’s, I have been hanging out in the secondary progressive phase of MS, (for me, a slow but steady decline). I am now officially in the primary progressive stage (my decline is increasing monthly). I am 72 years old, and my new neurologist said to me the words I have heard many times before, “You don’t die of MS but because of complications with having MS.” I also am not going to get any stronger so if I wanted to locate my burial site, now was the time to do so.
I live in a body that is in chronic pain. The increasing inflammatory nerve messaging to my entire torso, legs and back, means that I am in a high-tech power wheelchair, for which I am very grateful. I definitely have down moments as I eliminate one activity after another from my life. Knowing that my young grandsons will never know the active grandmother I had thought to be, is maybe the hardest one to accept. I am part of their lives through FaceTime and carefully planned in person visits that I treasure. They and I make the most of our times together with the help of my persistent daughter making sure that her sons know her mother. My husband, her father, died in 2018, precipitating my move to this Ohio community from our 60-acre homestead in upstate NY. His ashes were scattered in a river we once loved.
Yesterday, my daughter loaded me and a small portable wheelchair into the car and drove me an hour and half away to the Foxfield Preserves. It is a designated section within a 650-acre wilderness center with 3,000 allocated sites for a green burial. When I heard this advertised on the radio a couple of years ago, I was delighted. Ohio being a conservative state, I never imagined I’d have this option. I was now ready to prepay and manage my burial so my family doesn’t have to deal with it later. It made me happy to think of being buried in a natural setting wrapped in a simple white shroud and placed directly into the soil. That is just what I wanted.
This was the day we were to choose my site. First off, it was a glorious day for fall foliage viewing. Cool nights suddenly turned muted brass into a full fanfare of color. Except for doctor visits and seeing my daughter’s family in a Cleveland neighborhood, I don’t get out much. We drove south and west into farm country. Large working farms spread out for miles. As we got closer to Wilmot, (known as The Amish Door) the town where the Wilderness Center was located, we saw the occasional Amish horse and buggy trotting along the highway. The last three horses my husband and I owned were Amish animals, two of them from Ohio. One was a gorgeous fellow we named Lucas. He loved pulling a fore cart along our upstate NY roads and that trot was his specialty. Seeing these horses was the first tug at my heart. My daughter and I both commented that had he lived, this was the sort of area where her Papa and I would have moved to.
When we arrived at the Wilderness Center, we informed the receptionist that we were here for the Preserves and to meet with H, our guide. We were told to take the elevator up to the observation deck as we were early, and the receptionist would come tell us when H was ready. This top floor was filled with nature scenes made of carved wood with painted displays for children (and me) to touch and climb in out of (not me, but my daughter and I immediately envisioned her boys in here). It was beautifully arranged information about the flora and fauna that the wilderness offered, with no plastics or breakable objects in sight. Going outside on the sunny deck provided an even stronger pull on my heart.
Now we could see that this whole wilderness area was surrounded by big rolling hills. We had passed signs for hiking trails on our way up to the information center and noticed two large solar panels over angled roofs below us in a parking spot. Looking around from on high, it was inhaling the hills that cinched it for me. I grew up in the Catskill Mountains of New York. So far, I had seen only the astonishing flatness of Ohio. This 180-degree panorama of rippling hilltops was balm to my flattened heart. I could feel what I call my ‘animal body’ sigh a huge gust of relief. This place felt like home to me. This place was my old home right here in my new home of Ohio.
Then we were summoned to meet H, and our tour of the Preserve began. She drove slowly in front of our car pointing out the three potential areas for my site. My impressions as we bumped along the grassy dirt tracks, was that the number 1 area was mostly wooded winding up to the top of a knoll. The number 2 area was partially wooded and partially winding down to the prairie, and the number 3 area was mostly a wide-open prairie field. When we stopped there, silence ruled all around punctuated only by birds whose field calls I did not recognize, and the calming drone of humming insects. No cars, no mechanical sounds- just acres and acres of wild Ohio. The sun, the molten colors, and finding an enchanted resting place for my body together with my daughter: all of it made us giddy with joy.
We chose a spot 30 feet off the driving track in the second area, on a ridge so you can look out beyond to the hills. I think you could maybe see down to the prairie below. I could not traverse it on foot, of course, but my daughter and our family will be the ones at my interment and if she said this was the place, then we agreed, this was the place. On our way back to the wilderness center building we met two women who asked H for help to locate their son’s burial spot in the woods. We waved her on to help them and met her back at her office. Such personal care and kindness and intimate knowledge of each burial further rooted the joy in my heart that here was the right place for me and for my family’s future visits.
We asked our guide questions, including requesting permission to bury a tiny pinch of my husband’s remaining ashes with me. She said, of course, and then advised us on various funeral homes who will take my body to hold overnight until the actual hole is dug after which my body will be driven back to the Preserve for interment. A memorial gathering will take place later at my retirement community. My community has always been very good at holding unique and moving memorials for my friends and neighbors and I know my family will have a good experience setting this up at Kendal when the time comes.
We signed the contract and agreed to the additional required donation that accompanies the arrangement. The idea of helping to maintain a small piece of wild Ohio is a lovely legacy for me to leave behind. Besides, as members of my family, my daughter’s family can come for free to hike, explore the wilderness area, or use the small observatory that had just sponsored a children’s astronomy weekend. I foresee that my grandsons will enjoy coming to Gramma Judi’s last physical home. The body of this land will always welcome them.
My mother would chant this to me every winter. Pondering this brought up the following random memories of winters with my single mom.
When my two older brothers and I got into the decrepit ’48 Chevy (some years I was elected to clamber through the open window because the front passenger door didn’t open anymore) she’d say,” We’re off in a cloud of…” whatever was happening. If we were going to the dentist, it was, “We’re off in a cloud of Novocain,” or in the winter, “off in a cloud of Santas…” or “ice skates, or sleds, or huskies, or squirrels…”
We lived on a short but steep hill in the Catskill mountains and never had much money to spend on cars or proper tires. In the winter, it was a daring adventure to see if Mom could gun the engine to get our heavy boat up the hill and into our sloping driveway. If it had slithered sideways blocking off the few neighbors above us, she’d reluctantly have to call somebody to pull the car back down the hill to park it discretely alongside the lower road. Otherwise, the vehicle threatened to remain there until next spring.
When headed precariously downhill, she commanded me to curl up into the space underneath the glove compartment. I huddled there as she inched her way down the slippery slope.It was a breathtaking experience. When I think about it, the car was built like a tank and it probably was a very safe place to stash me in case of an accident. As our mechanic used to say, while supplying my mother every two years with yet another ancient vehicle, “Nothin’ like iron outta Detroit.”
My mother was not very physically inclined, but she did appreciate walking and the beauty of the mountains, even in winter. One night, as I was muttering over my social studies book memorizing dates and battles, she came up behind me and slammed my book shut. “Hey,” I protested. “I have a test tomorrow.”
“No, you don’t. It’s going to be a snow day or at least a two-hour delay for school. Get your things on, we’re going outside.” Our elderly dog wisely declined to join us for the inclement weather.
I tugged on snow pants, my damp wooly coat, and buckled up my squeaky black galoshes. Covered by hat and mittens, we trudged off downhill into the night. It was snowing huge wet flakes and we listened to the soft hush gathering all around us. We didn’t talk much, united in the rhythm of our steps and the occasional sound of cars cautiously shushing along on the highway at the far end of our road. The temperature dropped, and hard snow started zinging against the totally white ground. By the time we reached the highway, we stared, astonished at the millions of flakes swirling thick in the green glow of the single streetlight. Mesmerized, my mom and I held hands gazing up into the dazzling moment.
To our horror, once in a while my brothers and I missed the school bus and mom had to take us there herself. Living in the country, the central school we attended was 45 minutes away. She was never dressed when she fed us breakfast, packed my lunch, (my brothers always paid 25 cents for theirs) and sent us off to the highway where the bus would stop to pick us up. We would have to walk back all the way up the hill after realizing we were too late, or it hadn’t been a two-hour delay, only an hour delay. We had been left behind. My mother would throw her winter coat on over her pajamas and tatty bathrobe and shove us in the car.
The race was on. If she could manage to overtake the bus as it stopped for pickup after pickup, she wouldn’t have to drive us all the way. If she did catch up, there she was in her nightclothes for everyone on the bus to see! If she had to drive us all the way, the whole school would see! To us kids it was horrifying. Probably nobody noticed, but we sure did.
Christmas was the perfect holiday for Mom to get excited about. My siblings and I were once enthusiastically recruited to make bell ornaments to hang on the tree. We made paper mache and molded it over lightbulbs with flared bottoms, wrapped them in aluminum foil, and topped them with ‘snow’ made out of soap crystals. Twisted pipe cleaners poked through for hooks. My brothers were not impressed and ditched the project before even one bell was finished. Undeterred, my mother and I carried on. When I later inherited the box of our childhood ornaments, there were still two sorry bells among the few surviving glass balls. My own children were also not impressed, and those bells no longer ring out Christmas cheer.
My single mom was a delightfully complicated and challenging mother all year long. I just unearthed something that I wrote on the first Christmas after she died of AIDS following a massive March blizzard.
Christmas Tree, 1993
I miss my mother. I look at this tree growing crookedly out of my living room floor, waiting for my children’s hands to tug each branch down with the weight of their joy, and it is now that I miss her.
For the first time, Mom, I do not flinch to remember your inappropriate childlike zeal with the Christmas trees of my childhood. Each year, your oversized emotions were squeezed into another lopsided evergreen we managed to haul through our woods, and each year, the tree was redeemed by your words, “This tree has……character!” Somehow, your determination to wreak magic would prevail, and that tree would shine proudly with all the handmade theatrical glory you craved.
From underneath it’s branches, the presents you gave and received carried too many words with too many loud exclamations. They clumsily unwrapped your own girlchild seeking love she had not found.
When the room was lighted only by the tree, when subdued expectations met the darkening sky, you always sang. Freed with the full throttled exuberance of each carol, your heart swelled out loud and strong. Your heart was made visible by your beautifully cultured soprano voice. Today, I can finally join my voice with yours, bringing peace to both our childish hearts. I like to believe we are all made welcome by the celebration of loving children.
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