Seventy Five

August 31

Along route 28 the sunflowers are bending their heavy heads.  Their season is nearly over.  I saw asters last week, and the leaves are turning on the earliest branches.  Summer is ending, and I’m starting my seventy fifth trip around the sun, happy, loved, and healthy. Tamar and Ryder were up for the weekend, and Tamar gave me the “Book of Hudi” she made for me, with photos from my infancy and through all the big stages of my life. Amazing to see my Dad holding baby me 75 years ago, to see my grandparents holding my little hands. How does it happen?  How do the years pass? How do we go from zero to 75?  I think about my grandmother at 75, long since widowed, and my mother – was she 75 when they moved to their last home in Sharon?.  I try to imagine my daughter at 75, and our grandkids and the first great grandchild, Ashlee Sapphire, who will celebrate her first birthday in September.  My grandmother lived to see her first great grandchild, but not her second.  I was pregnant when she died. The generations give way to each other, making room, leaving memories.  Like Janus, I find myself looking ahead and looking back, remembering my father at the head of the table and imagining Asher there.

My 75th year started with a beautiful morning.  I drove to Fly Creek early, with sunlight pouring over the fields along route 205.  Here, the drive to a friend’s house takes me through rich farm country on a two lane road where the speed limit is never more than 55.  There’s a lot I miss about California, most of all the dear family and friends who are now three time zones earlier.  But I don’t miss driving on an eight lane freeway at 70 miles an hour.  I do find myself wondering why they sleep so late in California.  Here, the east coast news is fresh when I read it, not three hours old.  And the six o’clock news is not on at 3:00.  My life feels stretched across the continent, although everything we own is here now.  It’s the first time since 1989 that I haven’t had stuff of some kind in California, and that was after less than 2 years away in Washington State.  California has been my home base since 1971.

On Averill Road two bedrooms, a storeroom, and a shed are full of boxes holding our possessions.  We have so much stuff!  I haven’t quite decided how much to unpack before we’re able to move into the upper level.  Certainly not all the art, or the 24 brown Nambe dinner plates we bought in New Mexico.  But certainly winter clothes.  It was 50 this morning, and soon I’ll be wanting more than the two sweaters I have here in Hartwick.

September 3, 2023

Houses slide towards ruin, houses are abandoned.  Houses are repaired, new windows, insulation, siding, a porch that doesn’t sag. The direction houses will take this year is set by August,  and whatever is going to be done on the outside will be done in these next two busy months.  The kind of fall we’ll have is determined largely by the timing and temperature of the first cold snap.  It’s the difference between muddy looking, oh well hillsides, and breathtaking brilliant yellow, orange and red, oh my God hillsides.  It sets the mood for winter too.  After a ho hum fall it feels like winter has gone on for too long before it even starts.  But after one of those brilliant falls we cruise right into the beauty of the first snow and holiday lights, and we know we’ll get through the short, dark days.

Rabbi Molly Karp was up for Shabbat prayer and study this weekend.  It was lovely to gather with friends from the Oneonta congregation who we haven’t seen in over two years, like slipping into a comfortable sweater.  We sat out on the Bauers’ deck beside their grand maple tree and talked about the divine.  I was able to say Kaddish for my cousin David who died on Thursday.  I had scarcely seen David since we were kids, but I had looked up to my handsome older cousin in those days.  He was a regular feature of many family gatherings, of Hanukkah parties and long days of swimming in Amenia that ended in bonfires and Hebrew songs.  The last time I saw David, I think it was at the closing party before we sold our dear Amenia, he looked and sounded exactly like his Dad.  They both died too young.

The work on Averill is coming along nicely under Mike’s good stewardship.  We’re buying a lot of stuff for the house, and a 30 year warranty is more than we’re likely to need.  I’ve had no fear of death since I saw Shayne out, but I’m certainly in no hurry for it to arrive.  I’m planning for a spectacular autumn.