Here we go again

Blogs are supposed to be fun and not tinged with guilt. Mine used to be that way. Now, although the promise of fun is still there, the guilt has arrived, because I haven’t written a blog since 2021 when our beagle Tillie died, and somehow I feel like I should.

I think the demise of my blog started when I learned to quilt, about five years ago. Despite being retired, my days are busy and I’m involved in a lot of things, so free time is limited. When I do have some, it’s the quilts that call to me more loudly than the keyboard.

I still see and hear blogs. When someone says something provoking, when animal antics amuse me, when my mind has been ruminating and wondering, I think, “I should write a blog.” And then I don’t.

Truthfully, part of the demise of this blog occurred when WordPress “improved” my platform while I was away for a while, and I couldn’t figure out how to make it work. That’s when it also ceased being fun. I’m not a computer dummy; I’ve been doing all sorts of things on the computer for a long time. But I’m not a tech geek; I don’t keep up with the terms and the latest developments and I don’t have the patience with it all to read about and learn the latest update. I don’t want it updated. I found something that worked and that’s the way I want it to stay. After all, it’s the words that are important, right?

So, I don’t have much hope for getting THIS blog posted. I’m writing it in Pages, and will copy and paste when I’m done, then head to my old, antiquated “2010” free platform, and see what happens. If I can’t figure it out, you’ll never know I wrote this. If I can, at least to some degree, you’ll laugh. You’ll laugh when you read it (I hope) and you’ll laugh when you see the skewed format that resulted in my not knowing how the heck the “improved” system works.

I’ve thought about just starting over. But then I might lose all the blogs I’ve already written–that deathless prose that sits there in cyberspace and probably doesn’t get much read. But it’s there, and I know where to find it even if no one else does.

The idea, of course, is to add to that list of blogs from time to time. If I can make the site work, I will. But I warn you: you’re apt to see quilts mentioned a lot.

I just finished this quilt for a raffle at our church. We live in a peninsula, so it’s perfect.

Adieu, little pal

It’s been six weeks, but I still can’t get used to taking a shower without without someone barging through the bathroom door to lie on the rug and wait for me.

It was one of Tillie’s favorite “stay with Mom” routines, but Tillie is gone now. On November 15 we helped this beagle-basset girl over the Rainbow Bridge, and then cried for two weeks. Oh who am I kidding? Tears still lurk, to flow freely when I run through the memories that both hurt and heal.

Tillie came to us at around age 10 through Midwest Beagle Rescue, Education and Welfare. (BREW for short.) Five years later, almost to the day, we had to say goodbye. It’s one of the harder things about adopting a senior dog, knowing that their time with us is going to be shorter than usual. It’s worth it, though. I love knowing that a dog with a less-than-ideal background is going to spend its final years in a happy, loving home where they are treasured and treated as a valued family member. As seniors ourselves, an older dog is usually easier for us to handle, and less likely to outlive us.

First contact. Picking her up from the fosters.

Because Tillie was a “bagel,” as beagle-basset mixes are whimsically referred to, she was not a petite girl. And she was overweight when she came to us, so our 53-pound girl had to be whittled down. She got only dry dog food and low-cal treats, and slowly but surely she dropped down to about 40 pounds.

Run dog, run! Snow was a favorite.

It wasn’t easy. Tillie was the queen of food-driven dogs. She inhaled her twice-daily meals, and always tried to convince us that an hour earlier than yesterday was appropriate. We had to rope our bifold doors closed on the closet where her extra food was kept. Since used tissues were evidently a delicacy, the bathroom wastebasket was stored on a shelf, and the one in my sewing area in our bedroom was kept behind the machine or she would knock it over and root around for whatever goodies she was sure were hiding among the fabric scraps.

Any place was a time to eat.

One time we came home to find that she’d pulled an entire plastic bin of dog food from the pantry to the middle of the kitchen floor, and teeth marks proved she did her best, without success, to get the lid open. After she ate an entire package of brats that had been thawing on the counter, and pulled a heavy glass baking dish filled with coffee cake onto the floor and ate the whole thing, we never left home without going over our check list: closet roped shut, check. Pantry door shut tight, check. No food on the counter, check. Even bags on the cupboard or the kitchen table weren’t safe, because she was determined see what was inside.

That kind of behavior isn’t unusual with a beagle, but it was for us. Our two previous beagles weren’t the treat-seeking missiles that Tillie was. The upside is that she was easy to travel with. Whether we were by the side of the road, in a motel room, or at someone else’s house, she attacked her food bowl with enthusiasm, drank her water immediately, then did her business and was ready for whatever came next. As she got older, and her health began to worsen, she lost that food drive. I rather missed it.

Comfy butt to watch neighbors

Waiting for Mom to bring ice cream

When we first got Tillie, squirrels drove her crazy. She evidently hadn’t spent enough time outside to become used to them. A true beagle, she loved bunny scents, and when coming upon one, the tail wagged furiously, and the yipping and baying began. Then I’d pass the leash off to George and he would be hard-pressed to keep up with her. In our neighborhood, where rabbits tend to nest under sheds, or in the state park, she’d drag us at break-neck speed through shrubbery, around trees, over logs and inevitably into some dense thicket where George had to finally call a halt. I’m sure Tillie thought that when it came to hunting, we just didn’t “get” it.

Time to go out!

Get the belly, too, Mom

Tillie’s bed was anyplace in the house she wanted it to be: on the couch, in our recliners, on our bed–and finally, now and then, in her own beds, one in the living room and one in the bedroom. She liked our bed best, though; during the day, it allowed her to look out the back window and watch the neighborhood, and at night, she stayed warm between the two of us, always careful to claim only her half of the bed. We never told her no. We put her bed on top of our bed when George was working on guitar music, or when I was sewing, so she was in her own spot. It didn’t always work. I can’t count the times she chose to nap on top of fabric I’d just cut out, or on the pattern, even the tools I used. “Tillie, MUST you?” was a familiar lament.

Helping George practice

Always in the undergrowth

Tillie had her little ways that always made us laugh. After her breakfast, while we were still eating ours, she sat by the door and stared, waiting for her trip outside, an inscrutable look pasted on her face. When she lay on the floor, her back legs stretched out behind her, we called her frog-dog. It’s not an uncommon stance for beagles, but she was the first of ours to do it and I think half the photos I took of her were in that position.

Ashes and condolences

Tillie loved greeting the neighbors and their dogs while out on a walk, but she wasn’t interested enough to hang around. A nose-to-nose sniff, or a pat on the head, and she then lost interest and got back to sniffing. Her nose seldom left the ground because, after all, there might be treats like bunny turds or bits of food that came from who-knows-where. She didn’t play with other dogs, she didn’t play with toys, and she didn’t do tricks. She would come when called–if it suited her. Tillie definitely didn’t miss out on the stubborn gene all beagles are born with.

Tillie was my shadow, following me from room to room–yes, even into the bathroom no matter what I was doing in there–and she wanted George and I to be together during walks. “You wanna go for a walk, Tillie?” George asked, and she’d look at me. The whole family was supposed to go, and if I stopped to take a photo, everyone had to stop and wait. She loved wading into the underbrush, so much so that we had to buy her a stronger, retractable leash and special ring for her tags.

A last memory provided by the funeral home

It was sad, and a portent of things to come, when her walks became shorter and shorter, when she’d suddenly lie down in the middle of one, when she lost interest in her food and we no longer had to put the wastebaskets up. Beagles’ life spans are 12-16, and by age 15, she had kidney issues and a large mass growing in her esophagus area. In all other ways she was healthy and happy, but when it became difficult for her to swallow without choking, we knew we had to make the hard decision so that her death would be peaceful, with us talking to her and stroking her until her very last breath.

Now, Tillie’s ashes rest in an urn on the end table with the urns of our previous beagles, Badger and Lady. Her picture hangs with theirs on our Christmas tree, and eventually more pictures will join the others’ on our beagle “wall of fame” in the living room.

Rest in peace, Tillie. As your collar said, you were the Best.Dog.Ever.

Pandemic–the good, the bad, the ugly

George and I were commiserating with each other today as we did the dishes after lunch.

“It’s the last of the bean soup,” I said, sadly, as I wiped the big kettle that had held the Cajun meal we’d eaten for days,

“Yeah,” George said, equally somber voiced.

Then I grinned. “We could always hold a little wake service for it this afternoon.”

I giggled, he rolled his eyes, and we continued working on the dishes.

This wasn’t pandemic mania. It was just Sawyn wackiness that surfaces at random moments through all of our days, not just after being quarantined in our own home for…how many weeks now? Six? Amazing.

I’ve been thinking I should write more about this moment in our history. I did write one blog earlier, but I’ve been encouraging people to keep regular journals of what life was like during these challenging days for the sake of future generations. I mean, don’t we all love reading about the details of life under the Bubonic Plague? Well, maybe not, but there IS a gruesome fascination with all things life-threatening.

“What did YOU do during The Pandemic, Mommy?” And Mommy will talk about life without toilet paper; masks on everyone, robbers or not; long, lingering glances through the window at neighbors whose faces we’ve forgotten; church on television; and virtual concerts by stir-crazy musicians.

I haven’t kept one of those journals, though. What, I’ve wondered, could I possibly say that everyone else isn’t already saying? What DARE I say that others are secretly thinking?

So, today I’ll dare a bit.

They’re talking about opening businesses, and I’m underwhelmed at the idea. That virus is still out there, and there are just enough people who aren’t careful to make shopping a dicy idea. I’m sorry for the businesses, but saving them might come at a high price if we act too early. Just yesterday I asked a health care provider what she thought about lifting restrictions. She breathed a long, careful sigh and finally said, “Well, I don’t think we should be in too much of a hurry.”

Once the businesses are open, there are those who will think everything’s back to normal and throw caution to the winds. Heck, there are already people like that. George and I called in a curbside pickup order at our local cheesemaker’s (this IS Wisconsin, after all) and were appalled when we got there to find carloads of people going in and out, no masks, no social distancing, everything a lark. Even the clerk who brought out our order wasn’t wearing a mask. I emailed the store and asked if maybe they could put up a sign advising people to wear masks. The response? “It’s not required by law.” Safety requires a law? To me, that translates, “we’ll get our money however we can.” Money talks.

Most of those carloads of people were visitors, despite the fact that they’ve been asked to avoid unnecessary travel and not come running up here. We could tell by the license plates, and by the number of people in the cars. (No one takes the whole family to make a cheese run.)

The plea to stay away fell on deaf ears for a lot of the people who own condos or other second homes up here, too. Three weeks after the quarantine started, over 400 new postal starts were ordered in the north part of our peninsula by people who ignored the stay-away request and did what they felt like.

“But we own property up here, we spend money here, we volunteer here,” they complained on social media. “We’ve got a right to be on our own property.” The virus is no respecter of property rights, and travel increases the risk of spreading the disease. But that’s the United States for you. Rights supersede responsibility, and the almighty dollar bestows special privileges.

A newspaper columnist pointed out that we should have compassion and kindness toward these non-residents who long to be here, who figured they’d be safer up here, or that they could vacation while quarantining. And I thought, doesn’t that work both ways? If you love it so much up here, where’s the consideration for the people who live here full time, whose ONLY home is here, and whose hospital has only 25 beds? While our grocery store shelves emptied, the parking lots saw every other car with an out-of-state plate. And–dare I say it–when the pandemic is over, how many of us will continue to look askance at those visitors’ plates? All of our Covid cases up here have involved people who traveled or were exposed to those who did.

HOWEVER–and this is a big however–there are far more of the non-residents who did stay home, whose summer places have remained closed and empty because they listened, because they know how to cooperate to ensure public safety. To them we owe a huge thank you, because they worked with us and not just for themselves. When life returns to normal, or perhaps to a new normal, it will be so wonderful to see once again those family and friends who have stayed away because they love it up here enough to want to help keep it safe. I think it was St. Mother Teresa who said, “Love demands sacrifice.”

And sometimes, love demands a bit of wackiness–like wakes for bean soup, and masked-man jokes at the grocery store. It all belongs in the journals–the scary thoughts, the coping strategies, the good, the bad, and–if the beauty shops don’t open soon–the ugly.

Fishing pole reflections

When I was a kid, my grandmother told me stories about Freddy and Tommy Hawn. A few years ago, I finally met Freddie.

The stories were straight out of Gram’s imagination. Every single one was different, but the characters were always the same: Freddy, the freckle-faced, bare-foot boy who lived on a farm with his grandparents; Tommy Hawn, the Indian boy whose tribe dwelled in Imagination’s Forest; and my cousin Karen and I.

Except for the fact that we visited our story-land friends through the help of a magic wishing stone, I’m sure the stories were based on people, places and principles from Gram’s own youth–an impoverished youth, spent running wild in the forests of her eastern Michigan home.

As a kid, I dearly wished Freddy and Tommy Hawn were real. As an adult, I’m glad they live only in story, never to change, grow old, get cynical or move away. And since they’ve done none of those things, I was able to meet Freddy on an outing one day.

I was visiting an old mill, situated on the banks of a forested river, once used by local families, now a tourist attraction. The wheel still turns, and corn is still ground there, small amounts for the visitors.

The river runs strongly alongside, but a small channel has been diverted to turn the wheel. It’s an idyllic setting–a setting out of stories and grandma tales.

And sure enough, when I rounded a bend, there sat Freddy. He was a local kid, perched on a tree stump at the very edge of the river, his feet dangling above the shadowy depths. He was wearing flip-flops, as near to bare-footed as we’re likely to see these days.

He was wearing a striped t-shirt, the kind popular back in the ‘50s, and a rakishly askew baseball cap. His cut-off jeans resembled the knickers of long ago. Arms resting in his lap, he held the pole casually and gazed quietly off into the distance.

Tourists weren’t far away, watching water spill over the dam and enjoying the geese that had perched atop it. My modern-day Freddie was oblivious. He never looked around, never glanced at the dog nosing a nearby tree, paid no mind to the conversations swirling just out of earshot. He could have been sitting there a hundred years ago, alone with his thoughts and a possible fish dinner in the making.

It was a perfect summertime occupation for a boy. Whether he caught fish or not isn’t the point. He was learning to be alone with his own thoughts, to drift and dream, to sort out issues or just to be. The loudest noise was the of the water gushing over the dam, but nature’s sounds–even loud water sounds–have a quietness that allow our own thoughts to surface.

I’d like to think this boy, only 10 years old or so, had yet to develop the annoyingly modern habit of insisting on constant noise–TV, radio, headphones, cell phones. I’d like to think he was learning to be comfortable with silence, to be entertained by his own ideas, that he knows how to listen to his own inner voice.

I once saw a sign that said, “‘silent’ and ‘listen’ use the same letters.” Coincidence? Maybe. But probably a profundity discovered by someone thinking quietly about language and words, not someone buried in cacophony.

My modern-day Freddie, fishing quietly by himself alongside the river, brought back happy memories for me. But I hope he was planting seeds of behavior in himself that blossom as habits of quiet thoughtfulness and restful dreaming. More and more, they’re needed in our busy world.

Beating the quarantine

I attended a concert this afternoon, and I think I saw that there were over 400 people there at one time or another.

Social distancing? Oh, there was plenty of that. I was in my own home here in Wisconsin. The performer, Eric Lewis, was in his own home in Tennessee. Each of the audience members was in his own home, scattered around the country. It was a live-streamed online concert, and ain’t technology grand? It would be much harder to survive this Covid-19, quarantine-yourself virus without it.

This streaming concert was part of a Monday-through-Friday schedule of virtual live activities hosted on the Facebook page of the Door Community Auditorium in Fish Creek, Wis., in the same county where I live. My musician husband George was one of the performers last week. Every day at 2 p.m., we music lovers gathered around our devices to watch other local musicians–Eric is local seasonally–perform in front of their iPads, rattling their virtual tip jars and smiling and chuckling with an audience they couldn’t see.

Earlier in the day there were morning meditations, tours of artists and their work, storytelling, and finally a dance session. There was something for everyone and it was all very joyous, the result of a community working together to rise above social isolation regulations, to share the need for connection. We’re like a community of meerkats, popping out of our burrows to wave and say hi, even if not in person.

Before we even knew about this series of online events, George had decided to do his own live concert on his FB page, sitting on a stool in our living room, in front of our fireplace with a crackling fire, and me in my ‘jammies in the chair next to him but well off camera. People were charmed by the idea, and his group of fans and neighbors and old Chicago friends showed up, online, to listen and leave comments and applause emoticons.

Our friend, musician and artist Jeanne Kuhns, started a daily “sing for my supper” offering at 5 p.m., cranking up her iPad to chat a bit with viewers and then sing one or two of her original tunes. She usually started with her cat Wrecks on her lap, purring and rubbing and doing his best to remind her that it was HIS suppertime, too, and he wasn’t inclined to wait until she’d sung for it. Jeanne plopped him down, gave him his bowl of kibble to keep him busy and quiet, then picked up her guitar for 15 minutes or so of entertainment.

Normally, George plays dinner music for the yacht club members on the first Friday of each month. Not happening this month. Oh wait–yes it is. He’s playing from our living room, and the yacht club emailed its members to tune in. The show must go on!

It’s not just entertainment that has taken up technology to reach out to sequestered audiences. Our cathedral streams daily and Sunday Masses, as do many individual parishes. Our pastor has offered “front-porch confessions” with privacy and social distancing guaranteed–not a use of technology, but definitely a use of creativity.

For me and George, this whole thing hasn’t changed our lifestyle a great deal because we’re retired, and we’re homebodies, so our daily schedule looks much the same as it ever did. He’s had some gigs cancelled, of course, and I can’t get to the quilt store. But, as one nun suggested for surviving this forced cloistered existence, we’ve followed a schedule and the days are done and gone before we realize it. Phone calls from friends, trips to curbside pickup at the grocery store, walks with the dog, time for prayer, time to cook and do chores, time for working on the things we like best.

“Remember,” I told George this morning, “when we used to get up in the morning and cheer when we realized we had nothing special on our calendar that particular day? Now we can do that every day!”

The trick, of course, is not to project; not to fearfully anticipate weeks or months ahead with nothing on our calendar, because too much of a good thing ceases to be a good thing. So, we focus on today as if it were our only day–and for all we know, it may be. No one is guaranteed anything but THIS day.

We take our precautions, we enjoy each other’s company, we call friends and neighbors who aren’t online to give them local news they can’t get from television, we email family–in other words, we do stay connected.

What we don’t do, and what we probably should do, is keep a journal. This is a historical time that hopefully will never be repeated. Fifty years from now people might be interested in how a country survived, or how their own ancestors survived and coped during this outrageously unexpected pandemic.

Cleaning Grandma’s house

Some of my fondest childhood memories include me, on my hands and knees, carefully cleaning the pipes beneath the bathroom sink in Grandma’s house, or scrubbing around the sink drain with an old toothbrush.

It’s not that I lacked for other activity. Like other kids my age, I wanted to play outside, fly kites, go to the library, hang out. But Grandma’s health wasn’t good, and a stroke had left one arm paralyzed. Grandpa was busy with what was considered “men’s jobs” so my cousin Karen and I were recruited to help out with Saturday chores.

Somehow, doing chores at Grandma’s was much different from working around my own house. For one thing, I didn’t have two pesky younger sisters to ride herd on during the process; instead, I had someone my own age, someone with two absent pesky younger brothers. We could work side by side, comfortable in our shared oldest-sibling status, commiserating with each other and sharing the secrets of the first-born.

Grandma, a meticulous housekeeper, first explained in detail how we were to tackle each chore. We weren’t limited to one room in the house, but for some reason it’s the bathroom I remember. Maybe it was the small quarters that created the feeling of intimacy–and privacy. With two young teenagers in there, there wasn’t room for Grandma.

So, while I attacked the sink, Karen did the corners and baseboards with a rag, finger poked into it as instructed, ferreting out any errant dust mite that thought it might have found a place to hide. Although we were alone in there, Grandma would be inspecting later.

When the tub sparkled and the sink shone, when the toilet glistened as well as the ones on TV, when the rugs had been shaken and then replaced, and the towels rotated from the supply in the linen closet, Karen and I had time to dawdle. With the door shut, we were sure Grandma wouldn’t notice.

She did, of course. She must have. How could she have missed the murmur of young voices, rising in indignation at tales of woe or high-pitched with giggles engendered by the silliness teen girls have mastered so well. So, it was her wisdom that left us there for a while, bonding, enjoying the sense of freedom that came from thinking we were getting away with something.

I’d sit on the edge of the tub, Karen flipped down the lid on the toilet and sat there. We talked about boys, of course, daring to whisper the names of the ones who had caught our eyes. No one else would ever know–the boys above all–but saying our feelings aloud made them real and valid. We talked about what our parents let us do and what was forbidden, and what we’d do as soon as we were old enough to make up our own minds. We compared classes at school and which teachers just weren’t fair.

We loved those times. We didn’t appreciate the lessons we were learning–about keeping a house (almost an old-fashioned notion nowadays), about trusting someone else with feelings and dreams, about helping a grandmother who, at only 60 or so, looked extremely old in our eyes–and giving that help without expecting pay. Those Saturday mornings gave us purpose and prevented the aimless wandering that filled the hours of some of our friends.

Those mornings also built our self-esteem. It’s a word not bandied about so much in those days, but was, I think, innately better understood then than it is today, despite all the hype it now receives. We knew we were needed, and we knew that our abilities were appreciated enough that good performance was expected. We were a necessary part of the larger scheme of things–but allowed to be so in a way that still respected our young years. What a gift Grandma and our parents gave us.

I still clean toilets and scrub around the sink drain with an old toothbrush. Karen doesn’t join me, of course; as an adult, she lived a couple states away, tending her own house. Eight years ago, Karen beat me to heaven where she no doubt compares stories with Grandma. But I think of both of them often as I wipe down those pipes and poke my rag-wrapped finger into the corners. And I giggle, to myself, in memory of those young girls and the wise grandmother who gave us responsibility and space.

Will you please answer me?

I have a solution for making parts of society run a whole lot smoother: answer your email.

On a professional level, that seems a no-brainer. If someone contacts you about a project they’re doing for you, or a service you’ve offered to them, not much progress can be made without your approval, your recognition of content or timelines or whatever is involved.

As a freelance writer, I have deadlines to meet, schedules to follow, authorization to obtain before the final project is finished. When I don’t hear back from the people I answer to, I’m stymied, especially if a second email yields no results. Usually I proceed on the assumption that no news is good news and usually I’m right. But nothing makes me angrier or more frustrated than to carefully let everyone know my plans, get no response and then later learn I have to switch everything around because they couldn’t be bothered to let me know about changes or conflicts on their end, things I could have worked with if I’d known.

“We need to make changes. I’ll get back to you.” “Call me.” “That won’t work.” How hard could it be to type that and hit send?

While it’s imperative that there be clear, timely communication in the professional or business sphere, it’s true in the personal realm, too. No one likes sending an email, especially if comments or answers to questions are expected, and then hear nothing back. Emails DO get lost, so you always wonder if this is one of those times.

Sometimes the recipient is just too busy for a detailed response, or maybe they’re just not in the mood. I know that happens to me. But for heaven’s sake, at least acknowledge receipt. “Got it. I’ll get back to you” would suffice. Then make a note and DO get back to the sender.

We live in an age of instant communication, and we expect instant responses. Sometimes that’s a lot to expect, and sometimes it’s not even necessary. But there are times when a lot is riding on knowing the answers. No response COULD mean there’s trouble on the other end. It could mean your email server isn’t working properly. It could mean someone is sick or incapacitated. If you make a habit of not answering, no one will know for sure.

To not respond at all is just plain rude. It’s the equivalent of totally ignoring the comments of someone standing right in front of you. It’s easy to do when you’re not looking the person in the eye–and yes, I admit, I’ve done it. After this, I’ll mend my ways. I’ll try to remember that good manners apply to the digital age, too.

Good intentions and fun distractions

About five months ago I decided I was going to write a blog every week, just like I once wrote a column every week for the newspaper where I worked.

I was inspired by a monk friend, Eric Hollas, who posts one every Monday morning, just like clockwork. (monkschronicle.wordpress.com) I know he’s a busy man, having important work to do for St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minn. I know he travels a lot, too, and also maintains the monastic schedule when he’s home.

Well, here I am, retired, no commitments except those I’ve volunteered for. How hard could a blog-a-week be? I’ve certainly got enough opinions about things, and enough to say when I happen to be with other people.

So, I wrote my blog, and then a week later I wrote another. That was five months ago. I haven’t written one since.

At first, I thought it was because I don’t do as much as I once did, no fodder for the mill. But come on. A writer should be able to find inspiration anywhere. No, that wasn’t the culprit that stilled the flow. The culprit was quilting.

Quilting is something I always said I’d never do. I’ve sewn apparel ever since I was in grade school, but all those putzy little pieces in a quilt didn’t look at all appealing. I won’t bore you with the details, but a couple years ago, a friend showed me an intriguing method I had to try, and I made my first quilt. This year I made two more. Then I discovered quilting videos.

I watch those videos with as much devotion and enjoyment as some people watch Masterpiece Theater. Quilting “daily deals” flow into my inbox and tempt me with possibilities. Every new thing I try only encourages me to try another one. I hardly have the patience to get through daily chores so I can head for the sewing machine and my latest projects.

Write about quilting, someone advised. Yes, but the writing would take up time when I could be sewing. You see the problem? I thought about writing–when I was making my Christmas place mats. I thought about writing as I worked on the quilt for my daughter for Christmas. I finally cast aside the blog-a-week idea as I worked on my Christmas table runner, and the Rudolph wall hanging, and the coasters, and the table toppers, and…

I’m writing now, though. Alas, it’s not a case of writer’s reform. Two weeks ago I had knee replacement surgery, which isn’t conducive to sitting at a sewing machine. Now I CAN’T sew. I have to go through endless therapy sessions before I can get back to all those quilting projects dancing in my head.

So, here I am, laptop on my lap, thinking and writing about good intentions and fun distractions, and a life with too many options. All in all, it’s not a bad problem to have, is it?

Getting my town back

What a difference a few hours makes. And if I didn’t know it before, I’d know it now: I’m definitely an introvert.

At 1:30, coming home from an after-Mass lunch, the streets were crawling with people and cars. Lots of “foreigners,” of course, people from elsewhere visiting this vacation destination. Double lanes of cars at the four-way stop, dawdlers and gawkers on the bridge who obviously don’t live surrounded by water like we do, hurry-hurry, scurry-scurry, left turns from through lanes, sudden turns with no blinkers, shopping bags full of gewgaws in one hand, double-dip ice cream cones dripping in the other, kids whining and foot-dragging, cameras dangling, sunglasses hooked in I’m-so-cool shirts.

I shuddered. “Let’s get home,” I told George, and we made a beeline.

Three hours later, I drove home from a photo assignment, traveling the same route as earlier. A car here and there and no wait at the corner, parking places empty, fresh air instead of exhaust fumes, not a pedestrian in sight. Sigh-worthy peace. My town reclaimed.

The difference, of course, is that it’s Sunday afternoon and the glut of vacationers has dissolved. They’re all out on the expressways, racing pell-mell, speed limits ignored, back to Milwaukee or Madison or Chicago or wherever they escape from. They’ll be back next weekend, but until then, I won’t miss them. At least the crush is down to the weekends; with school approaching, the weekday visitors are dwindling. Thank goodness.

That’s how I know I’m an introvert. I recently posted a picture on Facebook of the small Michigan town where my sisters live that swells like a sore tooth to three and four or more times its size in the summer. I posted it as a warning: approach at your own risk.

But then someone commented that they love that kind of busyness, the hustle-bustle, the activity. At first I was surprised, but then I remembered that extroverts are energized by that kind of cheek-by-jowl lifestyle. We introverts are not. As the old saying goes, “Introverts aren’t party poopers; we just just poop out at parties.” I do enjoy visitors one at a time, here and there, in a quiet conversation or two. It’s the faceless horde I can’t abide.

I know I’ve got a lot of nerve complaining about tourists. The businesses here depend on them because we don’t see much of them in the winter. The small towns toward the tip of our peninsula who make their money in the summer all but close down in the off season. Even my husband, a professional guitarist, is much busier in the summer thanks to that influx of Door County wannabes.

But, when we’re being really honest, even the ones who love the crowded festivals and throngs of visitors admit they look forward to the quiet season when the tourists all go home and we get our county back. They, too, enjoy finding a seat in their favorite restaurant once again, taking a walk down the road without the sound of cars beating a path to the next attraction, finding nature and nothing but nature on a walk in the state parks. Musicians find time to gather together and listen to each other, something they miss out on in the summer when they’re playing their own gigs.

So, yes, for me it’s a love-hate relationship with the throngs that are wooed so assiduously by our chamber of commerce and the visitor center. They get in our way, but they fill our coffers. And sometimes they’re just fun to watch. That’s a nice, introverted sport I’ve resigned myself to enjoying.

The storyteller

My grandmother didn’t bake cookies or play games with me because she couldn’t. But she could and did tell the most wonderful oral stories.

That’s quite different from someone who writes out their stories. I know, because I’ve tried it both ways. With writing, you have the luxury of stopping mid-sentence and thinking about what comes next. You can change your mind, erase whole paragraphs, and start over. An oral story must flow, one idea to the next, each one permanent once it’s been pronounced. I think the oral version is harder, so, even though Grandma died 56 years ago, I look back in admiration at the worlds she created, first for her children, then her grandchildren.

Grandma’s stories were peopled with friends for my cousin Karen and me. Some of the characters were handed down from the stories she’d told my mother, others were new additions. Some of them were little morality plays, like the little girl whose bed ran away because she never wanted to go to sleep and her bed felt unloved and unwanted. Or the one about Mr. White and Mr. Brown, whose treatment of their families proved that skin color is no guarantee of virtue. Grandma obviously had no tolerance for bigotry.

The special stories were about freckle-faced Freddy who lived with his grandparents, and his friend, Tommy Hawn, an Indian boy who lived in a wigwam. My cousin Karen and I could visit them only by kissing the special magic wishing stone that summoned our horses for a thrilling ride into another world. We selfishly insisted those stories be only for us, so she invented other characters and settings for my sisters and for the neighborhood kids who wanted their turns with the storyteller.

There were the good brownies who lived in the woods and shared their magic with us, and the bad ones who lived under a bridge and threw stones. There was also a family of bears who lived in a tree, and who sometimes invited us to stay for lunch. Sometimes, she told stories from her childhood which was as far removed from ours as the magical places she invented.

Grandma had been raised in poverty, one of 8 or 10 kids, seldom owning shoes, hunting for food–once bringing home an owl because that’s all they could find–running wild and free in the woods, and having to deal with a father who liked his black-haired children but not the red-headed ones.

I doubt Grandma ever made it to high school, but she read and studied on her own. She raised her own children to know about manners and etiquette and the proper way to do things. She was a seamstress, for which I will be forever grateful, because I think I got her sewing gene. I also have her button box.

Grandma’s health wasn’t good, so by the time I was 5 years old she’d already had strokes and heart attacks, was diabetic and was paralyzed in her left arm. Sounds awful, and my mother tells me about times when Grandma hated that useless arm. But I remember a woman who, despite it all, whistled in the kitchen and laughed a lot, who taught me to love toads and frogs, animals, horses, and all things in nature–and who filled my head with wonderful, magical people and places.

Summertime was usually storytelling time. In the winter we were in school, but in the summer we could run next door if Grandma was on her porch swing, a sign that she was feeling well enough to be up. Almost the first words out of my mouth when I dashed up those porch steps was, “Tell me a story.” I’d sit beside her, helping push that swing that never stopped moving, and listen to her spin her tales.

Grandma died when she was 64 and I was 15. I still pray for her every day. I often pray on the rosary that once was hers and that she promised me I could have. She told me that when she got to heaven, she’d get a farm stocked with all kinds of animals, but especially horses. Then, when I got there some day, we could live together. I accepted the reality of that without question. I still do.

Later, I would tell stories of my own to the neighborhood kids, and eventually to my own children–but they were never anything like Grandma’s. The talent to spin a story right on the spot is a special talent, an art of its own, a largely lost art in our Western world. I like to think it passed to me obliquely, and that’s why I’m a writer. But nothing I’ve written has ever been as special as the stories she could tell.