Over Memorial Weekend I stayed with the majority of my children and grandchildren in a couple of cabins in the foothills near Yosemite National Park. One day we were all attending the wedding of my niece. The other days we explored in smaller groups, or hung out at the larger cabin with all nineteen of us together, cooking, eating, playing bocce ball or swinging on the tire swing.
On my drive in to the village of North Fork, near which our cabins were located, I saw lots of these recumbent white lupine plants along the roads. Just now, trying to identify them, I read that there are around 200 species of lupines. I can’t find any that look like these, so I’m giving up.
But those pinkish flowers under the lupines appear to be clover. It covered the dry slopes around our cabins.
We trust that Jamie will soon grow out of his love for his toy cell phone that he uses remarkably like silly adults. After all, it is always dead. His imagination obviously isn’t — but just what can he be imagining?
For a couple of hours Sunday Maggie and Annie played on a paddle board in Bass Lake while the others of us watched them, or watched Liam with his bubble wand. We might have rented a boat but they were all taken. Then we ate ice cream; it was hot!
In 2015 I was in the Sierra foothills south of here, and first learned of this plant below, called Bear Clover or Mountain Misery, Chamaebatia foliolosa. Back then we were in the same sort of dry terrain at a similar elevation, so I wasn’t surprised to see it again. Last week I couldn’t remember the name, but I recalled something about it being smelly.
A species of collinsia or Chinese Houses.
I had taken a big box of old maps up to the mountains with me, to offer to the family before I recycle them. Several people were curious, but Scout was most captivated by them and thrilled at the possibility of having some of them for his very own, now that he can read and decode them. His parents helped him sort them into categories, and eventually they let him take the whole box, to be more thoroughly sorted and culled later. He searched me out several times to thank me for the maps 🙂
One of the maps was called “Indian Country” and showed mostly the Southwest U.S. I don’t think it covered much of the territory that Lewis & Clark’s Corps of Discovery explored, which was certainly Indian Country as well. One of the plants the Corps encountered was a wildflower called Arrowleaf Balsamroot or Balsamorhiza sagittata, and I believe Pippin and I saw it, too, on a walk near our cabin.
The flowers had not quite opened yet, but they were showing some yellow. In the Corps’ journal we read, “The stem is eaten by the natives, without any preparation. On the Columbia. Aprl. 14th 1806.” By the way, lupine seeds were also food to Native Americans.
Our group didn’t eat anything like that. Our big meals together were BBQ on Sunday night, and bacon and eggs on Monday morning before we departed for our homes. I fried three pounds of bacon and drove off with my clothes and hair still pungent a couple of hours later.
It was far from North Fork, but I will end with this photo of alfalfa fields I drove past — slowly, in holiday traffic — in the Sacramento Delta. In one field I saw they were mowing, so I rolled down my window and got a whiff of that.
I’m happy and home and too tired to pull this all together somehow…. Oh, well, they are all things that I like, and/or think about. 🙂
It was a long day’s journey that took me to Georgia for my grandson’s wedding. Though journey doesn’t seem like the right word for it. When I was packed into the middle seat of an airliner I remembered John Ruskin’s words, “Modern traveling is not traveling at all; it is merely being sent to a place, and very little different from becoming a parcel.” Ruskin died in 1900 – what could he possibly have experienced that would compare with what Economy ticket holders a hundred years later suffer?
I had even bought extra legroom, to help me cope with the middle seat stress, but the two men on either side of me had broad shoulders and muscular arms, and made me wish for extra elbow room. Still, I didn’t have much to complain about. I was not uncomfortable, my traveling companions did not smell bad, and I always love having all that time to read my book.
Before we had left the ground, the 20-something man by the window finished eating a hamburger, put away his wrapper and was asleep within a minute. I know he was out because he was jerking in his sleep and bumping my arm. I was amazed.
I’m getting ahead of myself, though. At seven that morning I’d taken the airport bus from my town, so that I could leave my car at home and thereby prevent a good bit of stress. On that first part of my trip I did not read my book, because I had a surprisingly agreeable seatmate. Ideally, I would have chosen to sit alone with my novel, but it appeared sharing was necessary, so I moved over and the gentle woman sat down.
She didn’t talk loudly or fast or constantly, but we had quite a bit of conversation over the next two hours — about how she travels with Habitat for Humanity building houses, what tomatoes we grow in our gardens, about beekeeping and raising worms. I learned many things from her, and she was a calming presence.
“Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things: air, sleep, dreams, sea, the sky – all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it.” ~Cesare Pavese
What makes me plan a trip these days is always the desire to be with family or friends. But in cases like this, in the process of getting to my people I have to spend many hours surrounded by and dependent on strangers. The people themselves I haven’t found to be brutal or untrustworthy; of course, many of them are employed specifically to be helpful to the traveler. But the system, the schedules, the invasions of privacy that are supposed to keep us safe — they are brutal for sure. This trip, I wore jeans so that I wouldn’t have to be patted down, but at the Atlanta airport I was thoroughly frisked anyway. Yes, there is a lot that feels dehumanizing. But can our humanity really be reduced so easily?
That’s the drone up in the sky.
I won’t put off any longer telling you more about the wedding of “Roger and Izzy.” It was lovely, so simple and unfussy, you would have thought it was a 60’s wedding, if not for the many cameras and cell phones and even a drone! (But no professional photographer) In some ways it was an unusual and fun wedding, but the traditional service was performed solemnly in the name of the Holy Trinity by a white-haired preacher who might have come out of a storybook, the picture of a Southern Country Gentleman.
We were a small but joyful and festive group, and quite charmed by the setting, a family chapel in the middle of a vast green field. It was perfect for this event even though it has no electricity or plumbing!
A New Southern style restaurant dinner was our post-wedding celebration, and the food was excellent. Instead of cake the couple had decided to serve a southern favorite that I had never heard of: Fried Pies. They were bought elsewhere and the restaurant let us bring them in to eat for dessert.
It’s a rare dessert that I don’t finish eating, but I tried a peach pie, and the next day on my trip home a pecan pie, and I could not find one thing to enjoy about them. They were super sweet and bland, and the pastry was like thin cardboard. I have to ask you Southerners, Do you suppose these are truly like your grandma used to make?
After the wedding the guests along with the newlyweds enjoyed hanging out by the Chattahoochee River (don’t you love to say that?) for a few hours total, in the afternoon and again at dusk. The young people played an impromptu game of “Ninja,” which required no props and brought on lots of laughter. I didn’t try to understand the rules.
The groom’s sister, my granddaughter Maggie, had brought her ukulele across the country to play the processional for the wedding, and down by the river in the evening she plinked out some more tunes, which two of her brothers sang along with. She and her new sister in their sleeveless dresses had gotten chilly by this time and were wearing her brothers’ sport coats.
They were singing “Here Comes the Sun,” though the ball of fire had left the sky for the night. I could only think of the marriage of Roger and Izzy being like a warm sun that had just risen, to brighten and energize their lives from now on.
Sunday dawned much later than I woke up, evidently totally whacked-out in my inner clock. It was another day of bus-airport-airplane-airport-airplane-airport-bus — then home! That does sound like the schedule for a parcel, doesn’t it? But I had a sweet encounter at the Atlanta airport, which probably shored me up against the frisking that came after.
I had quite a bit of time before my flight, so I didn’t go through security right away. Instead, I sat in a rotunda that was filled with various groupings of chairs, ottomans and such. It was fairly crowded, but there were free chairs in one area where the occupiers looked fairly encamped, either sleeping or just sitting there people-watching. I wondered if they were loiterers who weren’t traveling anywhere. Before I chose a seat I made eye contact with one woman who seemed to be watching me, and she returned my smile. Later as I was reading my book I heard her snoring a little behind me.
When I got up to leave I glanced back at her and we smiled at each other again. I walked away and swung my backpack up on to my back — but it seemed to get hung up somehow on my sweater between my shoulder blades. I sat down somewhere else and tried to shift it this way and that but I couldn’t get it situated or unsnagged. When I tried to take it off I was afraid I was going to rip a hole in my sweater. Of course I couldn’t see what was going on back there.
Then I thought of the friendly woman in the rotunda, and I returned and approached her where she was slouched in her chair, and asked if she would help me straighten out my burden. I kneeled down with my back to her and she gladly fixed it. I still don’t understand what the problem was. When I took off my sweater later there was an odd stretched-out place but nothing was torn. The whole package of me was just fine.
“Most travel, and certainly the rewarding kind, involves depending on the kindness of strangers, putting yourself into the hands of people you don’t know and trusting them with your life.”
― Paul Theroux, Ghost Train to the Eastern Star
A couple of decades ago and more, this grandson was born into our family.
Of course I was quite taken with him!
More recently, but still “back in the day” when I had only five or six grandsons,
they would sometimes all be at my house, wrestling on the carpet.
This boy is the one in the middle, in camo.
His wrestling form improved from what you see here,
and in high school he was on the wrestling team. 🙂
We blinked a few times, and he had grown taller than his uncle.
Today, O wondrous day, he’s getting married! He’s grown in body and soul in the last several years, to prepare him for this…. But how can a grandma be prepared? I can only look on with thanks to God for His faithfulness, and pray for the bride and groom. (I never had found a proper blog-nickname for this boy, and now I think I’ll wait and figure out names for the two of them together.)
I have made a weekend trip to Georgia for the wedding. And I had to send word throughout Blogland of the news, and about my joy and amazement.
It’s a holy day, when a man is joined to a wife. May God wrap them in His love and grace.
I opened a gift from my daughter Pearl on Christmas Eve, an apron that she thought appropriate for me as The Queen Bee. It was a surprising metaphor, but I can see how the whole week that is just past was a picture of busy bees using the minutes and days to create sweet nourishment for all.
When my children and their families started arriving on Christmas Eve Day, you could say that I fell easily into the role of a contented queen surrounded by a humming swarm of people whose chatter and activities were endlessly fascinating. I could hardly believe my good fortune to have them all under my roof.
I will try to build this post around the activities that we engaged in for the six days that they were coming and going, sleeping here in varying numbers or coming just for a day at a time.
The Littles like big cousins and uncles.
During the week or two beforehand I had worked like a beaver — I should say, a worker bee — to get ready. Decorating, making up beds, shopping for several meals and 25 people, wrapping scores of presents, baking more cookies.
My own master bedroom that has over the last year and a half become an untidy catch-all, staging and storage area also needed to be thoroughly dusted up and set in order for some of my guests. I would sleep in Kit’s twin bed for a few days.
On the 23rd I fell into bed aching all over, partly from a sneezy and headachey cold. And when I woke the next day (the head cold and pain had vanished!), Kate and Tom had completed a grueling journey from D.C. and arrived while I slept (almost like Santa, eh?). The cheerful hubbub quickly expanded when Soldier’s and Pippin’s and Pearl’s families pulled in over the course of the next few hours and began cooking for us all.
Garden decor gift – made by Haitians from oil drums
WE ATE: For breakfast that first morning it was Baked Oatmeal with Cranberries and Apples and Nuts with Vanilla Yogurt on top, cooked by Pippin.
We ate candy.owl ornament from Pippin
Only a week before, I’d wondered via email to them all what I might cook on Christmas Eve that would be simple enough to allow us plenty of time for more than eating and clean-up — time to sing carols and open presents while the children were still awake enough to avoid meltdowns.
My colony rallied and came up with a plan whereby I would cook nothing! I could be as spacey and distracted as I wanted, play with the grandchildren or chat with the men about books and politics, while everyone else would get dinner on the table.
It was not a simple meal, but the true and traditional-for-us feast that they wanted, starting with oyster stew and finishing with cookies.
WE MADE MUSIC and SANG CAROLS… with more musicians than ever, partly because three grandchildren accompanied us this year! A violin, ukulele, two guitars, and piano. The four-year-olds danced — that is what they would call galloping around the room.
Over five days I refilled the cookie platter a couple of times per day, which was very gratifying – all those boys and men might have eaten every last cookie if I hadn’t saved some back for the one grandson who wasn’t able to be with us. By the time I took a picture the only thing left was my two favorite Trader Joe’s varieties: Chocolate Shortbread Stars and Pfeffernüsse.
Food for the birds.
WE GAVE GIFTS – And yes, we received gifts! I was given earrings and ornaments and books, a family tree chart, garden decor and an olivewood cheese board and a suet wreath for my wild birds.
The youngest grandchildren made gifts for everyone. This year they were very nicely crafted ornaments for the tree. And Pippin and Kate gave me bird ornaments, too, including a triplet of very furry owls.
Beaded ornament by Scout and IvyMy haul of book gifts!
I must tell you that the subtitle of the middle book in the stack is: “And Other Myths about Language Explained.” I was flattered by the gift-givers who thought me a worthy recipient of big books such as two of these are — certainly I am interested in them, but… Good King Wenceslas feels more my speed at this time, and I right away perused the wonderful illustrations.
WE WORSHIPED: Tom and Kate went to church with me on Christmas morning, where Tom hit it off with my little goddaughter Mary, and we admired all the shiny matching-sister dresses among the congregation. Kate took a video of the chandeliers swinging during a hymn commemorating the Incarnation. We sang “God is with us!” and afterward feasted on cheesecake and extravagant mounds of truffles in the church hall.
Mrs. Bread was there to give me a hug, and this darling brooch that confirmed the week’s theme. I happened to be wearing my black wool coat, which I do every two or three years, so she pinned it right on.
pakora prep
WE COOKED INDIAN FOOD: Tom and Kate and I started right in cooking after church: pakoras, curried lamb, roti bread, vegetable curry and basmati rice. Piles of spices and vegetables went into the curries. We all chop-chop-chopped and I made the roti dough and rolled it out, leaving Kate and Tom to figure out the most effective way to get the thin pancakes to puff up like balloons.
Tom’s amazing onion-chopping
WE HIKED: Two hikes were taken, but I joined only the second one, after half of the houseful had gone home. My boys and their wives were on this hike, several grandchildren, plus Tom. Kate had to stay home and study Hindi. Liam marched energetically up hills while singing lustily “Joy to the world!” And “Go tell it on the mountain….” He knows the first verse of at least six carols now. I tried to sing with him through my panting.
The picture is of four people trying to get two-yr-old Laddie into the fancy new backpack. His mom is helping partly by being something for Soldier to hold on to while he squats, even while she is carrying Brodie in a front pack.
We came to a lake at the end of our hike, and sat around on benches for a half hour before starting back. On the way out we saw these berries which I think are toyon.
WE BUILT FIRES in the woodstove against the cold. It froze every morning of our Christmas week, but starting on Christmas Eve the ban on burning was lifted. Maybe it was a present from the Air Quality Board? Usually it’s on the coldest days that the prohibition is in effect. I had lots of help building and tending fires, and bringing in wood.
WE ATE MORE: Naturally, when you have all those children from 0-7, six teenagers, adult men, nursing mothers, etc., in cold weather, we go on eating. One morning Tom fried three pounds of bacon while Joy baked tender buttermilk biscuits. For dinner one night Pathfinder and Iris made their famous posole for everyone and served it with Iris’s famous cornbread.
WE PLAYED VONNIS, a cross between volleyball and tennis. Even I played! A large number of us — maybe 18? — walked a few blocks to the tennis courts where we played with a volleyball. At first the younger kids tried to participate, but they gradually trailed off to the playground with a couple of the moms; we still had two teams with many true athletes in the 13-45-yr age range. I managed to return the ball successfully a couple of times. It looked like they were trying not to serve to my area of the court, and once I heard a grandson on the opposite team instructing, “Protect Grandma!”
WE REPAIRED THINGS: Not everyone went to the park for vonnis. Soldier stayed home to work on my playhouse, whose door was coming apart. I didn’t even realize this until we got home and he was still at it. I promised him that in the spring I will put some wood preservative on the whole house.
Scout and Liam found the little rakes I’d given them in the fall, and all on their own started raking up pine needles for me. (photo credit: Pippin) In the photo above you can see the frozen jade plant, and in the one below, the lemon tree with its frost protection.
WE MOVED ROCKS: A son-in-law and a grandson worked with me for an hour on the landscape art project of placing my favorite rocks all over the new front yard so as to look as natural as possible. A couple of these were huge and required their manly brawn, but I also wanted their creative input. It was fun – and I was ever so thankful! They went on to do some other yard cleanup and tool organizing before they were done.
WE TALKED: Of course I could not overhear even a fraction of the conversations that happened while all these relations were together, people who rarely see each other and had a lot of catching up to do. It was lovely that they could use my house as a meeting place.
inflatable solar lanterns
Annie and Maggie are 14 and 13 now — When I passed Annie’s bedroom I saw their heads together. And as I roamed upstairs and down I could hear my people discussing everything from baby care to Indian politics, from university life to cars.
After the Oregon contingent had arrived and eaten a late Christmas dinner of our Indian fare, all but three of us had gone to bed. Tom and my youngest Oregon grandson started talking about their Toyota trucks. They even showed me the Top Gear video that is famous if you know about such things, and I have to say that if I ever need a small truck, I will try to find a Toyota like one of theirs.
From the movie: planks that will become skis
On the last day of our Christmas reunion, when I got home from taking Tom and Kate to the airport, I showed the OR grandsons the video I am currently renting from Netflix, “Happy People: A Year in the Taiga.” I thought that as they are outdoorsmen and skiers and builders, they would like watching the men cut down trees and make their own skis and traps and everything. As it turned out, we ended up talking more about Werner Herzog who co-directed and narrated the film, and about how he has written books and made many movies. That led us to the topic of other books that we have liked or want to read. One of my favorite things ever is getting book ideas from my grandsons!
Soon their father was directing them to take leaves out of the tables and help in various ways to set things back to pre-feast mode. They said good-bye, and I waved as they drove away. I was not the queen bee anymore, and I was not a worker bee…
Now I am a bee sleepy with winter and cold and fatigued by so much buzzing in my hive… sitting by the fire I built myself, with visions of dear people and memories of their hugs to sustain me.
On my drive in to the village of North Fork, near which our cabins were located, I saw lots of these recumbent white lupine plants along the roads. Just now, trying to identify them, I read that there are around 200 species of lupines. I can’t find any that look like these, so I’m giving up.
A species of collinsia or Chinese Houses.
The flowers had not quite opened yet, but they were showing some yellow. In the Corps’ journal we read, “The stem is eaten by the natives, without any preparation. On the Columbia. Aprl. 14th 1806.” By the way, lupine seeds were also food to Native Americans.
What makes me plan a trip these days is always the desire to be with family or friends. But in cases like this, in the process of getting to my people I have to spend many hours surrounded by and dependent on strangers. The people themselves I haven’t found to be brutal or untrustworthy; of course, many of them are employed specifically to be helpful to the traveler. But the system, the schedules, the invasions of privacy that are supposed to keep us safe — they are brutal for sure. This trip, I wore jeans so that I wouldn’t have to be patted down, but at the Atlanta airport I was thoroughly frisked anyway. Yes, there is a lot that feels dehumanizing. But can our humanity really be reduced so easily?
Over five days I refilled the cookie platter a couple of times per day, which was very gratifying – all those boys and men might have eaten every last cookie if I hadn’t saved some back for the one grandson who wasn’t able to be with us. By the time I took a picture the only thing left was my two favorite Trader Joe’s varieties: Chocolate Shortbread Stars and Pfeffernüsse.
Gladsome Lights 