NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS

                                               

Each year, at the start of the New Year, we take pause to think about the things that we did last year that we just as soon would not repeat this year. They were mostly things that were unproductive, or hurt other people or us. For some of us this desire to not repeat, comes in the form of a resolution, but for many of us it’s just time to reflect and try to clean up our act a little. If all of the resolutions that have been made over the years were actually kept, this nation would be a much better place to live. But as has been said, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” I know I have failed miserably at this many times. Always because I wasn’t serious about it in the first place but also because I promised things that weren’t really possible for me to do. I have rethought this whole process and I am vowing to take these promises more seriously or not do them at all. I don’t want to be disingenuous.

The word resolution has many meanings but the one we are most familiar with, as it pertains to New Years, means to be determined not to do something that we have been doing, again. The second meaning that I am drawn to means finding a peaceful solution to a problem. It doesn’t necessary mean you have to entirely compromise your beliefs but structure them in such a way to make them more acceptable to others. A little give and take if you would.

I think this year will be a year of reckoning for our country. A year when people in Washington and party hopefuls that want to be there, need to be thinking about being more of a problem solver and less of problem makers. That being so resolute in their thinking and beliefs and not leaving any room for compromise will not solve anything. That candidates making promises they can’t keep is lying and wrong. We have all been there before and saw the results. One thing that always comes up in resolutions is the act of looking back, albeit briefly. Now that being said no one in today’s political climate would ever admit that they did anything wrong so how can you resolve to change with that attitude? Their opponents on the other hand are more interested in what the other party did wrong, then anything they themselves did right. Basically nothing constructive will ever come from that.

So this year I say this. We need to look ahead and set some goals and try to get there and if we don’t-- lets just say that in our heart of hearts we will know we tried our best. It’s a big mess and it will take time. Lets not waste energy on talking about all of the things that went wrong in the past but just resolve to do better going forward. No promises, just an earnest effort to solve our problems in government and at home. There was a time when this country was looked up to as the best of the best. A place that epitomized freedom and opportunity and people flocked from all over the world just to be a part of it. But something changed after World War II and we lost all of that good will we had fought so hard to grow and protect. We went from being respected, to being hated. We need to build that respect again and hopefully someday we will be emulated again. In the meantime we need to build character.  Ben Franklin said, “How few there are that have the courage to own their faults, or resolution enough to change them.” Let’s prove Ben wrong and be more then a few.

COPING

                                                                        

 Last night was the first snowfall of the season. This morning I gazed out over my backyard, from the comfort of my desk chair, to see a new world cloaked in a soft covering of dazzling white. Unblemished, as of yet, it seems to masquerade all of the imperfections that were there yesterday—as right on cue, and in the background, the radio softly plays the Irish Ballad “Danny Boy” throughout the room. Selected lines of the lyrics seem so relevant to me right now. “Summers gone and all the flowers dying. The valleys hushed and white with snow. “

It’s my first winter without her, and that is one thing that cannot be masqueraded by snow or anything else. My first time through the holidays, and already Christmas seems so different. So subdued, and inconsequential, and not the season it used to be. I went to the cemetery yesterday and knelt by her grave. The second verse of “Danny Boy” says so well what I felt she was telling me. “And I shall hear, tho soft you tread above me and all my dreams will warm and sweeter be. If you’ll not fail to tell me that you love me, I’ll simply sleep in peace until you come to me.”

The human mind is such a complex depository for all of the feelings and memories we harbor. It’s not something that can be turned on and off, at will, and it seems to want to have all of its files full, and when something like this happens, we keep drifting back and opening them up. Although painful at times, we simply won’t and can’t let go because they are just that precious to us. But each sunrise brings a new dawning, and eventually we will add new files and try to fill them with more good things, in the hope that they, too, will become relevant and precious to us. We’re not trying to purge anything; we’re only trying to cope by making new memories because, beyond that, we simply don’t know what to do. Each day there are new packages to open. Ones that try to replace the memories we can’t, and won’t, throw out but we put them away in the attic instead.

I look around me at all of the lonely people in the world. There is no comfort in knowing you aren’t alone in this—only a greater realization of what life is all about, and an understanding of how fragile our lives really are. No, it’s not the same for everyone. It does seem like the greater the love you had, the greater the love you lost. But it is also the greater the lesson you learned, about how to love, and without her, that would have never happened.

“Danny Boy” is now over and the radio has gone on to a new song. I know the song can’t last forever and neither can any of us. I also know there are new songs to sing every day that we never knew existed.  It will take us some time to learn them but we have to try, because only in learning will we realize their true meaning and what they’re trying to tell us. “Danny Boy” won’t go away—it will always be there as long as you have a memory. And now “Tis you must go and I must bide.”                                               

KITTYS CHRISTMAS

                                                

 Christmas Eve to her was her birthday, her wedding day, the birth of her children, and a Mardi Gras celebration—all wrapped together in one euphoric day. It was the evening she had waited for all year and the next day was the day she started planning her next Christmas — often while I was out burning the torn wrappings and discarded boxes from the previous nights celebration. Nothing gave her more satisfaction or brought her more happiness than seeing those sparkling eyes on the kids and grandkids as we all sat around that tree, buried in piles of gifts. She had never gotten over that little kid mentality when it came to Christmas. The gifts that had been given to her by others remained piled alongside of her chair until all of the other gifts had been opened, and all of the thank you’s had been uttered. She didn’t want to be distracted; she needed to see each and every reaction.

She believed in quantity more than quality, although many of them were very nice gifts. She never wanted to spend her whole allotted amount on one wonderful gift because that brought happiness only once. She was a careful shopper always looking for bargains and coupons that would give her the most “bang for her buck.” You see, half price meant another gift could be purchased someplace. The purchases would be stockpiled in every closet, nook and cranny in the house until the tree went up, and then the stack would engulf the tree.

Then her life changed and the cancer that would take her home, to be with the real meaning of Christmas, spread throughout her frail body and last Christmas, she knew it would be her grand finale. The kids had all married long ago and there were other sides of the family to contend with when it came to spending Christmas together. For many years we had celebrated early or late, but always managed to get together as a family. But this year had to be special because she knew, and we knew, it would be her last one, and we would be all together one last time, on Christmas Eve.

So on the eve of our Savior’s birth, we gathered around her that one last time. We did our best to hide our emotions, because just below the surface was an agonizing sadness that said to all of us, this would never again be repeated. We smiled through our tears, as did she, and it was a night to remember.

I’m not sure what Christmas will bring me this year. I’ll try to spend some time with all of them. My tears are still there, held only in check by my resolve to move on with life—a feat I find daunting most days. I know it will be a big change for all of us but a necessary change just the same. I know that try as we may, we will never forget the happiness and the spirit that came alive with Kitty’s Christmas. We will probably never again know someone who got so much joy out of giving and making others happy.

PROBLEMS IN THE LUNCH ROOM

            

Last week a woman at church stopped me to tell me she likes my column and she said I was developing into Crosslake’s answer to Andy Rooney. Not sure what that meant, but just to be compared to an icon like that was good but knowing full well he was often referred to as just a cantankerous old man, I’m not sure if that’s good or bad. I did trim my eyebrows this morning just to be safe.

There is an ongoing discussion about obesity and proper eating habits in our schools. Last week it was an argument about pizza and if it should be classified as a vegetable or not, because it has tomato paste in it.  Kind of like classifying liver as a vegetable if you put ketchup on it but be that as it may be. The schools are just running out of healthy choices for food that the kids will eat, because at home too many times the kids make the menu up themselves.

My wife worked for many years at a junior high school and part of her job was holding the food fights to a minimum in the lunchroom. Two years experience at that, in that school, qualifies you to work in the lunchroom at Stillwater prison.  She often told me about the huge gray garbage cans that ended up filled with the vegetables and fruit the kids wouldn’t eat but the schools were forced to serve. For many people the question was, why do you feed them things they don’t want? The explanation was always the guidelines make us serve it. My questions were two fold. Why make them take it if they tell you they are going to toss it and to go deeper in that thought process why wouldn’t the kids eat it? My answer to the last question, that I already knew, was they don’t have to eat it at home and they’re not going to eat it here. You can lead a kid to the lunchroom but you can’t make them eat what they don’t want to eat.

So in essence the schools end up trying to educate kids about healthy eating choices but the parents who always hold the trump card with the kids when it comes to who has the most influence and rightly so-- them or the schools-- don’t offer it at home or insist on it. For some parents they might as well tell their kids that Math is malarkey and science is all a bunch of monkey poop. Yet the government regulators seem to think that the problem lays in the schools and the schools alone and they need to fix it. Well my apology to the school cooks for having to be such bad people.

Now going into peoples home and telling them they have spoiled rotten kids is never going to fly so you can see where this whole thing starts and ends. Why do I care and how would I know what kids want to eat? There are sixteen million kids living in poverty in this country—one out of four—and most of them would welcome any food. They’re the ones in the lunch room that do eat their food, along with the ones who come from family’s that teach their kids good eating habits. Sadly the ones with obesity problems are all to often the ones that eat just what they want to eat. Blame Mom and dad and not the schools for that mentality. Let the kids have Pizza one day a week but Pizza as a vegetable? Humbug

LETTERS FOR HELP

                                                            

 Each day as I go and pick up my mail there seems to be an increasingly amount of letters in my mailbox asking for donations. Some of them go so far as to paste coins to their letter or send me pages of address labels, calendars and Christmas cards. All of them in an effort to somehow touch my so-called soft spot for a donation.

Right now I have enough address labels to last into the next millennium. I have used them so often; I have forgotten how to write my address. In fact some days I’m not even sure what my address is. I could wallpaper an entire room in them and still have some left over. The other day I saw an advertisement for a company actually selling address labels. That’s like selling leaves in the fall or snow in the winter. I haven’t bought a Christmas card for years and most people send me Christmas letters instead of cards anyway. I put a calendar in my garden shed this year for the first time because it’s the only building that I own without one in it. My watch tells me the time, date and day of the week, if I care to gaze down at it, as does my computer when I turn it on in the morning along with my phone. My smart phone will tell me the time and date in Bangkok if I’m headed that way. Not likely. If all else fails I find a pretty girl and ask her. I get the date and a smile, what more could you asks for. The other day I asked my phone if it was going to rain today and it told me what do you care? You’re not going anywhere anyway. My smart phone is a smart-ass phone.

Now I’m not a scrooge by any means and I set aside a part of my income to give away. My favorite place for donations are those run by volunteers helping the sick and needy. Food shelves, clothing centers and churches rate high on the list with me. I do support cancer research and people volunteering to raise money for them by walking, running, crawling or swimming. I support those in my family in their time of need as long as they are trying hard to help themselves. I believe in giving with a warm hand and if I die broke that’s okay. I was broke when I came into this world, naked and crying and I’ll probably leave the same way. However, I will not support organizations run by professional fundraisers. I don’t make political contributions because it only encourages the politicians to do what they are best at doing-- nothing. It’s my feeling that if you are a good, honest politician and I hope that’s not an oxymoronic statement, that you will be elected without having to buy your votes. I know some of them and I vote for them. I do the best with what I have but I’m only one person when it comes too charitable giving. If I gave to every one of those letters or phone solicitors I would be the one standing in the soup line instead of helping buy the soup. The only good I see coming from the avalanche of letters I get each day, is it does help the post office pay their bills and they need all of the help they can get. I have lost my level of trust with some of these people. I gave to one organization and quickly received letters from many more in the same business.

To all of the people who work so hard volunteering their time to feed, cloth and care for people less fortunate--- thank you so much for your efforts. It’s a shame you have to compete for the available money with those whose efforts are suspicious.

THOUGHTS OF WINTER

Maybe it was the day the acorns started bouncing of the roof-- and my head-- and the birch tree turned yellow that I got the first hint that summer was saying good-bye. Later driving down the road I noticed the sumacs were turning red and there were few boats on the lakes anymore, and some of the cabins were already shuttered. The schoolyards are busy again and those orange buses are back on the road and the roads also see more motor homes heading south in the exodus, I call the flight of the silver heads.

I remembered back some sixty years when I was a kid and winter preparations seemed so much more complicated then they are now. There was wood to cut and stack and still warm caning jars, filled with vegetables and fruit covering the kitchen table. Mom would make me take them to the cellar, two at a time and stack them carefully on the shelves. Potatoes were dug and put in gunny bags and carrots and beets were hung from the cellar rafters.  Storm windows were dug out of the back of the porch, washed and put back up and straw bales were stacked next to the leaky foundation of the old house. Now days we close the windows, lock them and push the little button on top of the thermostat from cold to heat and sit back and wait.

I remember when the thing I was most proud of was a sheepskin parka my dad had bought me at an auction. Mom knitted our mittens and caps and my overshoes had six buckles on them that would get full of ice and you had to wait for them to thaw out before you could leave that chair on the rug by the back door. The back of your mitten was your handkerchief for that rosy running nose you always had. We had a sled with steel runners that we drug up to Allen’s hill by the Catholic school in Staples for a two-block icy ride down to the bottom. It wasn’t any Arctic Cat by any stretch of the imagination but we had fun and it always started. There was a skating rink at the bottom of the hill with an old boxcar for a warming house and when you got too cold you could go in there to warm up and carve your name and your sweeties in the wooden walls.

My three brothers and I slept upstairs in an unheated bedroom, in a bed piled high with comforters mom had made. The windows would freeze over with frost and you would lie in bed and try to think what the ice crystal patterns looked like. Waterford was no match for Mother Nature. When mom called you downstairs for school you ran for the kitchen with your clothes under your arm to dress around the cook stove. While you ate your oatmeal she would walk around the table with a pan of warm soapy water, making sure your face was clean and your hair was combed.

Maybe it was the simplicity of it all that makes me think fondly of it yet today rather than the cushy life I now have. Oh, I do appreciate the cushy life I now have, but appreciation only comes because I know what it used to be like---and hear we go again kids--- yes, back in the good old days. We were just happy to be alive and healthy back then and yes, there are probably some who live like that even today. In some ways I would kind of envy you, if time hadn’t spoiled me so much.

THANKSGIVING

                                               

 I wanted to write something special for Thanksgiving this year and for a few brief moments the sarcastic part of my meandering mind spoke up and said, “What is it you want to write about Mike that happened this year? Do you want to write about the death of your wife, or your dog dying, or the day you fell in the woods and a stick went into your eye and you ended up in urgent care? Maybe you could write about your son losing his business and his home or your friends who are suffering with illness. Maybe you should just skip Thanksgiving this year and keep your big mouth shut.” Then I stopped and looked around me and realized that there are two sides to every story and it’s up to you to pick the one you want to tell and the sarcastic one--- well it really does no one any good at all.

When my wife found out that she was not going to survive her illness I remembered her looking up at me from her hospital bed and saying to me. “We had forty nine good years together.” Actually if you count the ones before we got married it was more like fifty-one. At the time that was little comfort to me but now looking back I see what she was trying to tell me. So many people lose their spouses long before that. I read the paper and it happens everyday. We spent the best years of our life together in love, peace and harmony for half a century.

My dog lived to be fourteen and died at my feet. He could have been run over when he was five or died in some vets office on a stainless tabletop. He lived longer then most Labradors live and in good health for the most part. The stick that I fell on and went in my eye was blunt so all it did was bruise my eye. It could have been sharp and I would be wearing a patch today like old Blackbeard the pirate. My son is starting over in a different home with his family-- and yes---I do have a wonderful son with a great family. That in itself is reason to rejoice.

Two of my friends-- one with breast cancer and one with leukemia are in remission. Home with their family’s and loved ones this Thanksgiving. I have a great home with enough money to pay my bills and still have a few coins left in my pocket. My health is good and somewhere upstairs in my house there is shopping bag full of cards from my wife’s funeral and each one of them represents to me someone who cared about both of us and took the time to tell me that. Yes my friends and readers despite all that has happened I have been blessed and my cup truly runneth over. I challenge you to look at your life with an optimistic eye and to truly give thanks this holiday, for all of the good that has come into your life. To those of you who are far less fortunate and are sick, hungry, or lonely on this day. I sincerely hope that things change for you and next year you too will feel truly blessed. In the meantime God bless us all and happy Thanksgiving

    Mike Holst

AND THEY CALL IT JUSTICE

                                    

 I recently read an editorial about the plight of Dru Sjodin’s family as the court case of her killer winds its way through the system. I would like to comment farther.

Alfonso Rodriguez Jr., who was convicted of brutally kidnapping, raping and killing Dru Sjodin, has been given one last shot at getting his sentence overturned or altered. It’s called a writ of Habeas Corpus and its what you do when you have run out of excuses that make any sense for your actions. A district judge just appointed a new set of expensive lawyers for him

It’s been almost seven years now since that pretty and talented young woman’s body turned up discarded in a snow bank like so much litter. It’s been seven agonizing years since her parents first begged for justice, for their child’s murder. Yes, seven years of appeal after appeal winding through the courts. But that’s how our broken system works. Losing your child is only the beginning of your heartaches. Our court systems will do the rest. The best guess now is this will take until 2012. He will linger on death row for many more years-- if his sentence is upheld-- he will be living better than a lot of our population. The price tag for his defense will be staggering, but a carefully guarded secret. They don’t want to ruffle any feathers in the public but they are too late. My feathers are already ruffled.

Our justice system seems to go to the ends of the earth to defend some people and money seems to be no object for them. It’s in the best interest of the defense lawyers to drag this case out as long as they can because after all---they get paid for every day they are involved. If they win-- and it happens way to often-- the notoriety for them becomes a windfall for their resume and they go on to more of the same. All with the help of the government we pledge allegiance to with liberty and justice for all. The sympathy for the accused that they drum up, undermines the sympathy we should be having for the real victims here.

I am not an advocate for the death penalty; I am an advocate for swift justice that does not use our courts for a stage that makes a mockery out of justice. Years ago our government spent many millions of dollars convicting and punishing Timothy Mc Veigh, a self-professed killer in the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma. Just another example of what I am talking about. Even when you confess and the evidence is conclusive, they need to play the game for all its worth.

The winners in the end-- if there is an end to this fiasco, will not be Dru’s family; it will be all of those who lined their pockets with the money appropriated to defend her killer to the ends of the earth-- and in the name of justice.

LETTERS FROM THE PAST

                                               

They were laying way in the bottom of her cedar chest, under some winter clothes. A place I never had reason to go to, because it was all of her stuff. I was cleaning out her clothes to give them to someone when I found the letters­—all tied up with a ribbon—looking like a Christmas gift. I read the return address on the yellowed envelopes and it was my parent’s house, the only mailing address I had way back then. I remembered that she had answered each and every letter I ever sent her. But I, being me, never took the initiative to keep her letters to me like she had done. How I wish I had them now, but they are gone with the tides of life, like the “Love Letters in the Sand” Pat Boone had crooned about way back then when we were kids.

Carefully, I set them on the bed. But something was telling me—don’t open them up—not yet. It’s been over fifty years since I wrote them, so I scarce remember what they said, but I know it was all part of the courtship. The winning-over process all young lovers go through. Who knew back then what a wonderful relationship would come from this. That what we thought was love back then was only infatuation, but it was the seeds of a love that grew and grew. That love isn’t born from first impressions, but it comes from a lifetime of caring and sharing—from good times and sad times together. Yes, sickness and health, and being a family.

In order for these letters to be meaningful I would first have to visit the past in the right order, as if I was going through an old picture album, one year at a time starting at the back. Maybe it would be like reading a book from the back to the front. The ending of our story is still fresh in my mind; it’s all the chapters in-between her last loving act, and that puppy love that I know is in those envelopes, that I need to remember. All the acts that never were written down because I was too busy, or I was taking her for granted.

When I write a book I have to have two things in place before I can start—the beginning and the end. The rest of it always falls in place because I know where I started from, and I know where I’m going with the story. How I’m getting there—well, that’s the meat and potatoes, and basically, the story. This story of her and me is somewhat similar because now, I have both the beginning and the end. But there is a small difference, because this time, my journey doesn’t need to be a written journey. It just needs to be “a remembering journey” of how I got to where I am right now. Then those letters, lying on the bed, will mean so much more to me.

So, for now, those letters will remain unopened and someday, when I’m ready, they will be opened around a campfire with my crying towel and maybe a cold beer. They will be read one last time and burned and their secrets will die with me. In the song, “The Story of my Life,” the last line says, “So the story of my life will start and end with you.” Yeah, that’s what I’m trying to say, isn’t it?

THEN AND NOW

                                                            

 As is so often the case, people from my generation make comparisons between how it used to be and how it is now. This is a gesture to match or equate life between then and now that is both unfair and disingenuous. Our world and we have evolved into a far different society than the one we used to know and love. So many things that we now deem essential to our well being didn’t exist back then, but do now, and have to be dealt with. They are here; front and center, and they are real.

I think back to my mother and how she went most of her life without a clothes dryer, and hung her wash outside in the winter to freeze dry them and then bringing them inside to finish on a wooden clothes rack. If she made a cake it took two hours to assemble all of the ingredients and a miracle to bake it in her antique stove.  She baked her own bread spending countless hours kneading and making the dough. She arose in the morning to a cold kitchen and had to make a fire in the stove before the days activities began. She had a huge garden she took care of in the summer and fruit and vegetables that all had to prepared and canned. It is easy to say to today’s women, ‘you don’t know how good you have it’--- but wait for the rest of the story.

Mom never worked outside the home a day in her life. She never had to take kids to soccer or hockey, and she had eight of them. She didn’t have to take time each morning to be perfectly coiffured and dressed. She had no computer, no I pod, no cell phone to take care of. She went grocery shopping once a month for a few staples and dad would take her. She had no car of her own.  Her job was to keep the house in order and be a good mom and wife and she excelled at it but that was ok back then and now it seems it is not. We lived in a small town and very few women worked outside of the home. If she had known about the glass ceiling she would have been content to live under it, because she had no interest in what was on the other side of it.

It isn’t just times that change, but people change along with them. There is a lot more pressure to succeed and to develop into something you may, or may not even want to be. It’s to bad, that to often, there is also a stigma that goes with those who are content not to run with the pack. An almost socially acceptable perception that these people are lazy, and unwilling to make an effort to wring every little bit of creative talent out of their minds, when in essence they are just reasonably happy and satisfied with how they are.

There are many people who have made it all the way to the top, only to give it all up and return to a simpler life. I have known some of them and always they seemed much happier. Maybe they felt they no longer had anything to prove. Sometimes positions of authority can turn you into someone you don’t want to be, Maybe they found they were in a place that was not so nice, or not what they had envisioned, and maybe they went back to their roots because it was just more comfortable there.

MY OCTOBER LAMENT

                                               

I’m a summer person and I see autumn, not as the introduction to winter, but the cessation of another summer. I know it’s not a discontinuation of the time I love so much--and I know that another summer will come—but, for me, it’s a sad one, just the same.

I am standing here today, gazing out over our wind-swept lake through a cold and persistent rain. Yesterday we put the pontoon away and now the dock looks bare and useless. It begs to come out of the cold water, too. The big ash tree by the water’s edge--that shaded the beach all summer--has lost all of its foliage, and its leaves now litter the yard and the lake, while the tree stands skeletal and naked, almost embarrassed. The lily pads by the dock are all ragged, pale and sick-looking from summer storms and gnawing insects, trying their best to still stay afloat. A yellow rope tied to the dock that once was used to secure a paddleboat, now floats in the water, intertwined with dead seaweed and a few snails. A forgotten, faded-yellow plastic pail sits on the beach, half-buried in the cold wet sand. Its matching shovel, once intertwined with a grandchild’s pudgy fingers, now stands, half in and half out of the water like a lonely sentinel.

From across the lake, but far out of sight, a shotgun echoes; the hunt has begun. The water fowl, that swam by the dock so many times this past summer, are due to be harvested like the fruits of the garden, for the purpose God intended them to be. Most of the cabins and homes are shuttered and empty. The squeals of small children playing and adults laughing have vanished with the summer warmth but, if you listen closely, you can still hear them echoing through the annals of time. The aroma of outdoor grills cooking delicious meats has been replaced with the smoky fragrance of burning leaves, wood-filled stoves, and fireplaces. Back yards that were summer ball fields are now a collection of blue and green tarps sheltering all of the now-parked toys of summer.

With their bushy canopies stripped, the trees and bushes that sheltered the dark woods from sight this summer now offer a new glimpse into what had laid hidden from our eyes in their depths all summer long.  Long-forgotten rotting logs, tree limbs and leaves litter the forest floor. Their decomposing bodies returning to the ground from which they came, in a never-ending cycle of life. Unlike mankind, the flora seems to accept their wintry fate as a time to rest and rejuvenate. Time is not an issue for them; they live and die in the moment, somehow knowing they will be reincarnated to do it all over again next year. As for the birds and animals, it’s a time to think of shelter.  Either they go where they can survive or they burrow into mother earth and sleep away the winter.

For me at least, there is a loosely held correlation between the seasons and our own fragile lives and especially this year with the loss of my wife. I remember words from a song by Johnny Mercer that whisper through my mind each and every autumn day as I watch the colors. They go like this, “The falling leaves drift by my window--The falling leaves of red and gold--I see your lips, the summer kisses--The sunburned hands I used to hold.”

GUS

A while back I buried my best friend and canine companion for the last fourteen years. You readers have heard about my buddy Gus, so many times. He died where he always lay--- at my feet. At fourteen his hips were gone and he struggled to breathe whenever he had to walk any distance at all. But in the end he died peacefully, knowing full well he had done his best to be my faithful pet. He will be truly missed.

Louis Sabin said and I quote. “A dog doesn’t care if you are rich or poor, big or small, young or old. He doesn’t care if your smart, not popular, not a good joke teller, not the best athlete, nor the best looking person. To your dog you are the greatest, the nicest human being that was ever born. You are his friend and protector.” Those words fit Gus to a tee. If I was going somewhere, he had to go with me even if it was just to the mailbox. He would sit in the car for hours watching the door of the building I went in. When I was taking the dock out Gus had to get in the water with me, no mater how cold it was, just to see what I was doing out there in my waders. He would get so excited when we went fishing and had to check out everything I landed. He would get those furrows in his brow when it was only some weeds. If I dug a hole he had to dig with me, and at night Gus took up his place on the floor next to my bed. When my wife passed away, he relentlessly searched the house for her for days. When he couldn’t find her, he abandoned his place in the bedroom and slept where be could watch the back door. Sadly waiting for her to come home. How do you explain such loyalty? Heaven is supposed to be such a happy place and I guess mere mortals can’t really say for sure what is waiting for us there. I’ll be very surprised if there are no dogs.

A good friend, who is also a dog lover, sent me this poem when she heard about Gus’s death.

“So this is where we part my friend, and you’ll run on around the bend.

Gone from sight, but not from mind, new pleasure there you’ll surely find.

I will go on, I’ll find the strength. Life measures quality not its length.

One long embrace before we leave, share one last look before I grieve.

There are others that much is true. But they be they and they aren’t you.

And I impartial, or so I thought, will remember all you’ve taught.

Your place I’ll hold, you will be missed. The fur I stroked, the nose I kissed.

And as you journey to your final rest, take this with you. I loved you best.

                                                                                                Jon Willis

HOME CANNING

                                                        

 With summer slowly winding down, there are signs of fall appearing. One of those signs is the canning kettle coming up from the basement to sit in the corner of the kitchen once more. For many of us, this is a time-honored tradition once used to preserve the harvest from the garden. In my hometown there was a cannery that bustled with business for many years, but it’s no longer there.  Canning, once a necessity, is now more of a habit from a fast disappearing way of life. Each ping of a sealing lid on a jar brings a quick smile to your face and some satisfaction for a job well done.

If we were concerned with the economics of this process, we would stop tomorrow. But if were worried about money, those thousand-dollar fishing trips for three fillets would be out too, wouldn’t they? No, it’s not about the money; it’s about taste and old family recipes you can’t buy in any store. It’s the secret ingredient in the pasta dishes that give it that special zing instead of that watery, tasteless tomato sauce from the store. It’s jelly or jam that tastes like the fruit it was made from, and not some bland, generic, sugary paste. It’s jelly you can’t even buy—like homemade chokecherry. It’s warm rhubarb sauce—long after the snow has come and buried the patch. It’s vegetables that don’t taste like the can they came out of.

Today’s fast-paced life for many women doesn’t give them time to even cook, let alone can or freeze fruits and vegetables. But there are some—my wife was included—that just take the time because it’s that important to them. Oh, I have heard the arguments many times against home preparation. How can you be sure it is safe, they say. I think your chances of getting sick are much higher from that salad you bought at the local deli, than from home-canned fruits and vegetables. I’ve been eating them for over sixty years with no bad effects. I once spent a night in the biffy from eating bad food from a fast food restaurant.

Despite my views and my love for home canned vegetables, I know that home canning will not exist much longer and it has nothing to do with safety or economics. Like so many things from a way of life we grew up in, it’s not being done widely anymore because our values have changed when it comes to our eating habits. The skills are not being passed on from mother to daughter, and in many cases are already lost. My daughters learned to cook from their mother, but my granddaughters don’t have a clue. They think carrots come from the jewelry store and a hot dish is one right out of the dishwasher that somebody else turned on, because their not sure how to. They have a stack of coupons stuck to the refrigerator door of every fast food place in town. Well, at least they are trying to save a buck, are they not?

Both my friend Harry and I lost our wives in the last year or so-- so this year it’s up to us. Come Friday morning, the canning kettles and the jars are coming out and these two old white-haired duffers are going to be canning tomatoes. I, for one, am looking forward to it.---Ping, ping, ping.

TODAY

                                                          

 It was the fall of 1964 and we were welcoming our second baby into the world and moving into our modest new rambler home in a subdivision of Brooklyn Park. The world was ripe with promises back then and we were building a family to fulfill our future, with untold joys yet to come. Somewhere in the background the New Christy Minstrels were singing their signature song “Today” I’ve never forgotten the words to that song. “Today while the blossoms still cling to the vine. I’ll taste your strawberries I’ll drink your sweet wine. A million tomorrows shall all pass away.  Ere I forget all the joy that is mine today. Those words, said so well, what I was feeling at that time.

Today with our babies grown and gone and their babies now going out into the world and my beautiful Kitty gone to her just reward I can only sit and think back to that wonderful era when God was so surely in his heaven and all was right with the world, for her and me-- and yes-- I cannot forget all the joy that was mine that day. All of the tomorrows that have since passed away, and will pass away, will do little to dim my memory of her and that time and that place and now it’s seems that is all I have left of her.

The song went on, I can’t be content with yesterday’s glory, I can’t live on promises winter to spring. But today is my moment and now is my glory. I’ll laugh and I’ll cry and I’ll sing. This is the hard part for me. To put aside yesterday’s glory and look to the future and yes, there is a future as lonely as it seems sometimes and I need to embrace it. I need to embrace it because I need to tell the world that when you let love be your life’s corner stone, life can be so good and even though its been taken away from you, it gave you the great example of how love feels and works. It defines you.

So back to the title of the song,--- Today.--- There are so many cliché’s that come to mind. “Today is the first day of the rest of my life. Today is the day the lord has made,” and many more. They all have merit but for me, today is one more day on my lonely trip into a new world without her. A friend once asked me if the amount of love that goes into a relationship like we had, is commensurate to the amount of grief that exists when it is taken away. I have to say I don’t know the answer to that but it seems to me that grief should subside at some point. I can’t envision the love that I had for her ever going away.

My wife had a porcelain candy dish that broke and she glued it back together. It still held candy and served its function but the scars of that break always showed. That’s the way my heart is today. I’ll glue it back together eventually and it will still work and it will love once more but the scars will always be there.  As for me and now--I will remain grateful that this heart of mine, once knew such love.

THE DAY THE LILY'S DIED

                                              

 It’s the mid point in September as I write this and already I sense a change in the winds that blow softly across our lake. Last night, I noticed, it was dark earlier than usual. I used to retire for the night when it got dark but last night I looked at my watch and said, “It’s dark all right, but its way to early. You’ll sleep your life away.” But the real turning point for me comes in early fall and it’s the behavior of the Day Lily’s. They seem to be the last of the summer flowers blooming that decorate our yard even though they were the first to poke their heads out of the cold ground in the spring. They’re not that pretty of a flower but they are so tenacious and predictable and they have bloomed for a long time now. But even the lily’s have their life span and I fear the time will be soon when they too will go away. Then the leaves on the trees will change once again and all too soon snowflakes will fall and we will have to wait once more for the lily’s to appear.

How many times in my seventy some years have I witnessed this theater of seasons and how many times has it not had an air of sadness to it? Oh there were times in my life when I paid scant attention to it, because I was so caught up in the day-to-day activities of working and raising a family. Or I was young and full of foolish ideas or lovesick beyond my wildest expectations but that has all changed and so has my demeanor. I was like the lily’s way back then. I too took a long time to bloom and when I did, I showed off my wares for half a lifetime but then they too wilted and it was time for me to rest and reevaluate my life.

“Hope springs eternal in the human breast; Man never is, but always to be blest. The soul uneasy and confined from home. Rests and expatiates in a life to come.’

Alexander Pope wrote this in “An essay of man.” To show us that there is always hope, even in the depths of winter. For me that hope comes from past experience and knowing that some day, the lily’s will bloom again. Knowing that I’m not all used up and when care is pressing you down a bit, rest if you must but don’t you quit. I no longer use or need the talents I once acquired and mentioned before. You see I’ve developed a new sense of being, a new talent, a new love and a new me. It’s within all of us to do that, we only need to try.

 Many seniors have been in an early winter rut for far to long. They thought retirement was quitting time and that resting and dreaming is the norm, when its time to be moving on to bigger and better things. Yes lily’s have lived and died in our lives for all of our lifetimes. Way to many Lily’s, and some of them made up of wives and husbands, children and friends. We must make good use of every day the good lord gives us or waste it. So if metaphorically speaking, it’s October in your life or even late November and if you feel that your three quarters home from beginning to end, remember this. Keep your home fires going and maybe-- just maybe, the Lily’s will come back to bloom again.                                    

COUPON SHOPPING 101

                                               

 Now that my wife is no longer here to do the grocery shopping I have inherited her bag of coupons and I had to swear on bended knee, with my hand on the family Bible, that I would use them religiously-- and get this-- add new ones as time goes along. The only thing that has gone in my mouth in the last fifty years, that didn’t have a coupon associated to it, was a pack of tic-taks I stole and food that was given to me. So yesterday I started out on my first shopping adventure. Keep in mind here I’m not a patient man. My father was not a patient man and my son is not a patient man. It’s in our genes to be impatient and we wear that moniker with pride. We do not like patient men. Women can be patient if they want to be; we have no opinion on that. To not be patient, and clip and use coupons, is akin to listening to someone running their fingernails down a black board. It just give’s you the willies, but a promise is a promise and unless I can find a loophole in what I promised. I gota do it.

Now I was taught, the night before you go shopping you sit down with flyers from all of the area grocery stores and look for bargains we can use. There are about five stores I am allowed to go to and one that I can never go to, because they once sold her an outdated can of black olives, which they would not take back and no one in this house eats them anyway, but it’s the principal of the thing I am told. Coupon 101 says you must match the appropriate store coupon with the manufactures coupon while carefully noting the expiration dates, size and amount requirements. Also make sure because you are going to multiple stores you have the right coupon for the right store. Avoid older lady checkout women because they’re mad at the world anyway and their feet hurt, so they will try to trip you up. Younger boys are the best checkouts because they don’t know what their doing most of the time, and they’re looking over your shoulder at the young ladies butt in the next check out lane and care less about what you gave them for coupons. I once bought six chocolate muffins with a coupon for charcoal briquettes.

When choosing products you must do the quality check. This involves looking at every pack of bacon in a bin, with four hundred packs of bacon in it, because truth be told, they always put the best ones on the bottom. Somewhere in the back room there is a butcher putting all of the good ones aside and reserving them for the bottom of the pile. It also means knocking with your knuckles on fifty-five watermelons because the ripe ones have the best acoustics. Always take your chosen product from the back of the shelf because what’s in the front row front has been there since they opened the store for the first time. Remember those black olives I talked about. Yep front row and my fault. Mea culpa.

Now last, but not least. DO NOT Leave the store until you have checked every item on that receipt for accuracy. They make mistakes and you have a short window of time to run to the courtesy counter and verbally assault the young girl stationed there while pointing out that you were born at night and it wasn’t last night and your five year old granddaughter has a better grip on math then they do. Happy shopping.  

SHARING YOUR LIVES

                                                

 Sometimes, when we drove around the countryside together, she would reach across and lay her soft hand on top of mine and smile. I always drove with my hand on the shifting lever in the console between us, and it was her way to say—we don’t need to talk; we just need to stay in touch. It seemed to me that her simple touch was her way of sharing, even in silence, and her way of saying—we are in this life together and I, for one, am so happy

As I now regroup and try to find my way in life without her, it’s that act of not having someone to share things with that is becoming my biggest obstacle. Sharing goes far beyond the realm of splitting things up with someone. It’s not like “cutting the hamburger in half” we so often did. Especially when it’s grief, joy, love or pride that we are talking about. You can break bread with many people, share a ride or even a drink together, but it takes someone special to truly share your innermost feelings with. Someone special, who knows you better than you know yourself.

You don’t get this way just by tying the knot or moving in together. You get this way because, as time goes along, you grow together and form this bond. A bond not built on getting rich or famous together. A bond, instead, built on love and compassion for each other. Your two hearts beat as one and your feelings go way beyond human understanding. For a short while, after you are first committed to building a life together, it’s almost a feeling of pride. “Look at her,” you would say. “Isn’t she pretty, isn’t she nice, and you know what—she’s mine.” But as time goes on and your love grows, she becomes less of a possession and more of a life partner. You have babies together and share all of the joys, and sometimes the troubles, that come with that responsibility. You watch them grow and sometimes you see that, in so many ways, they are simply an extension of both of you. You build your dream home together and fill it full of memories and mementos.  You bury your parents, and the grief seems so bad and you try not to think about your turn, or hers, with the grim reaper. That’s all a long way off, isn’t it? Maybe I’ll go first, you think, and I won’t have to worry about it. But then, that seems selfish of you—heaping the grief on her—and for the first time, you realize there will be no sharing in this part of life.

I drove home alone from a book fair yesterday, and my first real venture out without her. It was a wonderful day in Northern Minnesota and I had, had a great day with my readers and friends. For one afternoon I had put all of my troubles and strife away, and it was almost like old times again.  I say “almost” because now—alone in the car going down that same road we had traveled so many times together—I looked down at my hand, alone on that shift selector, and gazed at the empty seat next to me. The words from a song by LeAnn Rimes came into my head, even though the radio was playing something else. “You’re my world, my heart, my soul. If you ever leave, baby you would take everything good in my life, and tell me now how do I live without you? I want to know........”