All posts by GretchenJoanna

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About GretchenJoanna

Orthodox Christian, widowed in 2015; mother, grandmother. Love to read, garden, cook, write letters and a hundred other home-making activities.

To be like that orchid.

my garden, , ,

This morning I helped make Communion bread at church. The only pictudough risen 8-4-15re I took this time was of the big bowl of dough before it was turned out and divided among us four bakers. It was just so symmetrically bulbous and gaseous.

When I came home I noticed the lovely rose, as I had noticed yesterday, too, and I thought I really must take a picture of it. But I forgot, and was eating my lunch when rain began to fall! It was only a few drops, and it didn’t spoil the roses. I went out even while it was still coming down and captured two roses. This may be the last season for that rosebush  – I don’t know that tea roses fit into my xeriscapic visions. (Just so you know, xeriscapic is not a legitimate word, but what form of the word could I use for the idea of “visions of xeriscape?”)

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Many more pretty and colorful flowers are blooming in the garden right now, though I must say I’m mostly noticing the unkempt parts. It’s less than a week now until the pool will be broken into pieces that will be dumped into its own hole. I had to call the mosquito control man to come and spray that little swamp at the bottom that the electric pump couldn’t extract.

 

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Because I’ve had to mIMG_0273ove pots and firewood and steppingstones and all manner of things out of the way, the yard front and back is in great disarray in addition to being drought-stricken.

I’ve decided not to keep some plants, after I watered them for weeks with water from the pool; miniature roses in pots are also not waterwise gardening. But it feels like euthanizing old pets merely because they’re too much trouble. All of this upheaval is unsettling.

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unwatered plants

The ornamental/cherry plum tree you can see sticking up purplish next to the house in the pool picture will be removed shortly after the pool, and the pine tree thinned out and shaped. My shady part of the garden will not be so shady anymore.

The wisteria is telling me  she has no idea that there even is a drought. And she keeps me busy cutting off those wild stems that weave in the breeze. If you don’t recognize her, she is the green frizzy mop on the arbor next to the purplish plum.

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In the house, I can hardly believe it, this orchid is still blooming, a condolence/memorial gift from March. When I came home from the mountains one branch had wilted and dried, but after I watered it it revived completely. I’m sure I’ve posted its picture here before, but I can’t help sharing again, it’s so wonderful. I would like to be like that orchid.

On the table by the orchid is a little Jubilee tomato from my front yard. Those tomato plants do not like where they are planted, not one bit. The fruit is almost all small, tough, and/or tasteless. I now regret that day of tomato-hole digging, as I don’t really need any tomatoes at this time of my life anyway, but I did learn some things from the experience.

This week is lots of cookie-baking at church for our food festival in September, and also the the bright and blessing Feast of the Transfiguration. I’ve had house guests of the easiest sort coming and going, and a couple of them who I hope will stay a few weeks as they are on an errand of mercy. They are taking me out for dinner this evening, and I think I will end this mélange on that cheerful note.

When Husbands Die

books, grief, quotes, women, ,

Soon after my husband’s death I read When Husbands Die by Shirley Reeser McNally. The author who was a widow herself surveyed a group of women who had been widowed within the previous ten or more years, and organized their responses into a book. 

It was what I needed to read at the time, a sort of controlled support group, where I didn’t have to interact in real time with anyone, but could glean comfort from hearing from women who were in the same situation and who knew what I was going through. It’s strange, when I think about it, that an experience that is so common to humanity, the death of one’s spouse, can be so outrageous and solitary and impossible to prepare for.

One reason for the solitary aspect is the uniqueness of every relationship, and of each griever. This collection of women’s stories was interesting in that the women were all educated and able to write articulate and thoughtful responses to the questions, whether they were in their first months of grieving or years down the road. Most of them did not have to struggle financially, even if their husbands had died fairly young.

Shortly after reading the book I told people that it was something like reading a sociology textbook, and a little dry, but now I think, wasn’t that what I needed? I certainly didn’t want to read anything dramatic about someone else’s trauma. C.S. Lewis’s A Grief Observed was not as helpful, partly because it was only one person’s story, and that of a man, one who hadn’t been married very long. I am a woman who had been married a long time.

I especially liked hearing from women who were at a later stage of grief, about how their lives had changed over the years since their husbands had died, and the ways in which they had built new lives that were good. I went back this week and reviewed the passages I’d highlighted on my Kindle. Here are a few of those favorites:

“…the shared stories indicate that women must work through three to five years of grief and change before they feel well on their way to a recovered, reinvented life. The hard work of grieving must be accomplished before healing takes place.”

“…disorientation, fatigue, loss of self-confidence, feelings of abandonment, shock, and bone-deep sadness.”

“…our culture…is not open to the commonality of death, and how important it is that we come to terms with it in our lifetime.”

“I think women are better able to cope. We are greater realists and more skilled at accepting change as part of life because of our biological natures: monthly changes, pregnancy, childbirth, etc. Widowers tend to remarry sooner. They don’t know how to nurture themselves.”

“Is it ever possible to have no regrets; to have accomplished all you wanted to do; to have said everything, done everything? No. Omissions you recall later may bring sadness, sometimes guilt, until you understand that it was important for you and your husband to do things in your own way. That’s the only way you and he had.”

“…dying is something each of us has to do alone, at least in a human sense? The moment must come when, in dying, we move beyond our surroundings into another space.”

“…it is a sudden time, when things must be left unsaid and undone.”

Maggie and I share stories.

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Now that Pearl’s family has moved to California, I have nearly half of my grandchildren within an hour and a half’s drive. It was so easy to pick up Maggie on the way home from the mountains, and to bring her here to spend almost a week with me.P1010015P1010096

First, though, the evening I arrived, her mom took a few of us to the Arboretum on the University of California campus in their town of Davis, so I could check out some of the many plants with low water needs. A rustic and rusty arch of shovels signals the beginning of this part of the gardens, with wide plantings of grasses and native California plants leading on into the Australian section, which is what I was most interested in. I have noticed in books that a lot of striking and unthirsty species come from Down Under.

Maggie had her camera, tP1010093oo, and found families of ducks to take pictures of. We didn’t spend too long, but I managed to take many pictures with identifying signs next to the plants that I liked, so I didn’t have to take the time to write down names.

I’m only posting a few of those, of the nicest looking, which I wouldn’t mind having in my new garden if I can find them in nurseries.

The next morning Maggie and I drove off to my town. I had downloaded Anybody Shining by Frances O’Roark Dowell from Audible on to my tablet so we could listen on the way home, which we did for about an hour, Maggie in the back seat because she’s a lightweight. We shopped that afternoon and evening, to resupply my fridge, and we watched “Cheaper by the Dozen,” under blankets on the couch.

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Shopping took a lot of our time during the next few days, because we were planning a tea party that we held last Saturday, and also were having company on Sunday. Giving the tea party was the focus of our time together; Maggie came up with several good ideas before we even got home.

We planned and shopped and cooked and in the end we served: deviled eggs and mint chocolate chip meringues made by Maggie; two kinds of P1010119 crpscones with jam and creme fraiche; chocolate pastilles; ham and Swiss quiche made on puff pastry; fresh blueberries and raspberries; chocolate orange sticks; some fancy chocolate and sprinkle-dipped Rice Krispy treats we discovered on one shopping trip; and of course the tea, black and rooibos, and hot cocoa for little girls who preferred that. They all did.

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Eight of us ladies whose ages spanned the decades down to four years old enjoyed our party very much.  My little goddaughter Mary, four months old, was also present but not enjoying the goodies. The conversation was edifying and stimulating. I sent scones home to the menfolk, and that evening Maggie and I ate leftovers. P1010142 crp

We listened to more of our book on the computer and came to the satisfying end. The next day Maggie mentioned it in her own blog post. It is about a girl about Maggie’s age, living in the mountains of North Carolina about a hundred years ago, and her desire to have a friend. The history and the culture of the mountain people are the background of the story, in the telling of which the protagonist Arie Mae expresses her good heart and charming wholesome self through letters she writes to her cousin in the city. The descriptor “shining” she applies to at least two other people in the book, but Arie Mae herself is the truly shining character.

I made Maggie pause the recording so that I could write down a wonderful word of advice from Arie Manybody shiningae – but could I find the paper I wrote on, just now? No! So I washed dishes and listened again to the last few chapters of the book till I could find the place again.

A sub-plot of the story is about the more educated people coming from the city to write down the songs and stories of the mountain folk, to start schools, to help them in various ways. One conflict concerns the dynamic of the outsiders coming in with their ideas and advice for the people who get the feeling they are not appreciated for who they really are.

The way Dowell ties this aspect of the story in with Arie Mae’s growing friendships is delightful. She writes to her cousin, “It takes time to get to know people. You got to listen to their stories, and you got to tell your stories back. It all goes back and forth, back and forth, until one day you turn into friends. Until that time, I expect it’s best to keep your opinions to yourself.”

My Maggie and I enjoyed more stories together during her visit, in the form of two more movies: First “Hook,” which we watched here at home. I find that story delightful, but I think Maggie at her age couldn’t enjoy the Robin Williams character as well as I. And maybe the lost boys were too familiar in their exaggerated annoying boyishness to a girl with three older brothers. Then we saw “Inside Out” at the theater. How wonderful to go out to a movie, just us girls. We even shared a bag of popcorn. I am liking this new phase of grandmotherhood!

Soon after the opening credits we were amazed to find out how perfect “Inside Out” was for us right now. The main character Riley has a few big things in common with my granddaughter: They are both twelve, and each has just moved with her family across the country to California. So many good ideas, so much wisdom is in this movie, I think I need to see it a few more times to be able to think about it more. Movies always go too fast for me, and there is a lot of fast action in this one, too, so that I found myself several times musing over the possible symbolic significance of an event – musing for a few seconds – and then another metaphor would interrupt me to suggest itself in the next scene.inside-out-

Riley seems to be at the mercy of her emotions in this story; you might even say that the emotions are the real main characters, as they try to manage her life to make it good. What seems obvious to the ringleader Joy is that Riley needs to be happy, so Joy is always working very hard to program the right thoughts and memories into Riley’s mind to make her happy. The other emotions eventually find out that they have a role to play as well.

Both Maggie and I were uncomfortable with the implication that Riley’s decisions were based solely on her emotions, but there is a lot of truth to the way the thousands of memories in her bank could be used to cultivate various emotions. I loved the image at the end of the movie, after Riley has connected painfully well with her anger and sadness, and the islands of Family and Honesty have seemingly sunk into the sea — she ends up in the arms of her parents, being comforted. She has grown up a lot in the recent weeks and months and is stroncross Maggie July 2015ger than before, and I’m sure her parents are wiser, too.

My granddaughter who was sitting next to me in the theater had decided a few months ago that she wanted to be baptized in her church before moving away. Back then I couldn’t get it together to celebrate such a happy event with her across the miles, so this week we went shopping for the present I wanted to give her, and found this lovely cross that we both liked. It is a symbol of Something  deeper than a memory or an emotion, the great Story of God’s love and our salvation. I’m so thankful He is with us and for us as we go through all the trials that accompany every stage of life. He is the only one who really knows us inside-out.

Web Gleanings from July

church, culture, philosophy, , , , , ,

Several articles I’ve read lately strike me as worth sharing.

Boredom is a topic that comes up a lot, maybe more so in summertime, when some people have more time to be bored.  In “The Quiet Alarm” Andreas Elpidorou explains why  “Boredom is precious, but there’s nothing particularly good about being bored. Its unpleasantness is no illusion, its subjective character no taste worth acquiring. We should give thanks for it – and avoid it like the plague.” 5161~Girl-Reading-Book-Posters

I’m not sure what I think about all of this; perhaps Boredom is so related to Time that it’s one of those realities that I could muse on for a long time and get more and more confused – but never bored! Read the whole article here.

The threat of boredom comes to mind when I think of cocktail parties, but David Brooks uses them as a metaphor for the exciting “online life” in his article “Building Attention Span”: “Being online is like being a part of the greatest cocktail party ever and it is going on all the time….” He says that “This mode of interaction nurtures mental agility,” or what he calls “fluid intelligence.”

He contrasts that with “crystallized intelligence,” which is what we get more of in offline learning, “…the ability to use experience, knowledge and the products of lifelong education that have been stored in long-term memory.” This kind of learning leads to wisdom, and goodness knows we need that. Read the whole article here.

Fr. Stephen Freeman’s retheotokos Decani monasterycent article “Why the Orthodox Honor Mary” begins a discussion that continues in the resulting comments,  contrasting the humility and submission of Mary as something to recognize and emulate, with the actual veneration of her as an aspect of our worship of God.

A fascinating bit of Bible exposition is in the comments where Fr. Stephen explains Jesus’s words to Mary at the marriage of Cana, and the meaning that becomes clear when you see that they hearken back to the story in I Kings of Elijah and the widow of Zarephath. Read it all here.

https://i0.wp.com/cdn8.openculture.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/28001845/Emily-Dickinson-Coconut-Cake.jpgTo end on a lighter note, how about some coconut cake to have with your iced tea on a summer afternoon? (If you are in the Southern Hemisphere, even better – just make that hot tea.) This picture of Emily Dickinson’s Handwritten Coconut Cake recipe, and the accompanying text, do encourage me that if I get back into the kitchen more, it won’t necessarily mean a lessening of my writing output. I do wonder what the form of the coconut ingredient is intended to be, but it would be fun to experiment with one of my favorite foods.

As I write, the sun has yet to emerge in my cool corner of California, but by mid-afternoon the situation will probably have changed enough that I could sit outdoors with some tea and some more reading material from which to glean. Happy reading to you, too!