memories

The Gifts of A Happy Place

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April 16, 2024

Paris and the Cotswolds may not be part of current plans.

We no longer live at our beloved Sweetwater Farm.

Living in Minnesota , instead of Ohio, means I can no longer decide on a whim to spend a day at Chautauqua.

Dear and as meaningful to me as those places are, however, they are not my only happy places.

I am happy most of the time wherever I am, but oh, how happy I was this last weekend to be in one of my happiest of happy places: Door County, WI, which is only 5 1/2 hours away from our St Paul home.

Over the years we have spent many happy times there, sometimes with family, sometimes with friends, sometimes just the two of us, which was the case this time–my birthday present planned by my husband. It is a place we gravitate to over and over again.

Do we gravitate there over and over again because being there makes us happy or because we are happy there do we want to go there again and again? Chicken and egg?

A Childhood Happy Place

When I was growing up my family moved many times. My Dad worked for a large corporation and was transferred frequently as he climbed the company ladder. At the end of the school year, the moving van would appear at our house, but before we moved into our new home, we returned to the same summer vacation spot in northern Minnesota. Year after year. Summer after summer. That was a place of both grounding and transition. Of memories and memory-making. Of ease and taking a breath before the work of resettlement. Of surety and stability. Of time to process the loss of friends and to hope for the presence of new ones. Of comfort. We knew what to expect and how we would spend our days.

That place was our past, our present, and a path to the future.

The Touch of Past, Present, and Future

Because we vacationed in Door County with our children when they were young and later, in their adult years with our grandchildren part of the scene, we have a history there. We reminisce about our son sketching on the sandy beach and about taking the ferry to Washington Island specifically to go to the book store there, and about playing miniature golf when the club was taller than our grandson and eating cherry coffee cake at the White Gull Inn. And more. So much more.

Going there now reminds us of some of the building blocks of our lives. The conversations we had while savoring the sunset or fruity daiquiris before a leisurely dinner. The dreams fulfilled and those that drifted away. When we laughed and what we treasured. Who we have been and how we lived.

And now in the present in this happy place, the past sits lightly, and we feel a simple, but rich gratitude for being here. For having this time to be together. The weather doesn’t dictate the gift of this time. We eat good meals. We browse in favorite shops, and we roam back roads, delighting when we spot sandhill cranes in an open field and a deer loping across a gravel road. We gaze at the water as the sky turns into evening pink. We read and doze in our room, no longer pulled to do something, go somewhere. Being here now is enough.

And the future? Well, who knows much about what the future holds, beyond our eventual deaths. But we envision more time in this happy place because we feel welcomed and at home there. But more than that it is a place that seems to support the people we are becoming, for that becoming continues until it doesn’t.

Past Door County Moments

An Invitation

Where are the places that represent past, present, and future for you? I would love to know.

A Decade In This Place

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November 21, 2023

THEN

AND NOW

Full Circle

Thanksgiving weekend, 2013, we moved back to St Paul, the same neighborhood where we bought our first house in 1974, when Bruce graduated from medical school and started his family practice residency, and I was pregnant with our daughter Kate. Now we have two grandchildren, Peter, almost 16 and Maren, 21.

The decision to return to where our family life had begun was not difficult. We yearned to be with our grandchildren more, as well as my aging father. Our life in Madison, WI, was good, very good, but it was time to return home.

Meeting This House

“I can’t do this,” I thought as I stood in the dull and dingy-looking and oh, so small kitchen. “Where’s the refrigerator?” I asked our realtor. Between the two of us we took up all the floor space in this teeny, tiny mini-kitchen. With a big smile she pointed out two refrigerator drawers underneath a counter.

“Isn’t this a clever idea?” She beamed, obviously hoping for a positive reaction from me. “Not having a full-sized refrigerator gives you more counter space,” she added.

I was not enamored.

The cabinets were painted a sickroom white, not the shiny white of nurses’s uniforms of the past, and the countertops were mottled grey and tan, like age spots on ancient hands.

Bruce pointed out the pluses. Excellent condition, good storage, and the price was right, to say nothing of the perfect location–five blocks from where our daughter and her family live, and three blocks from the kids’ elementary school. Yes, location, location, location.

I pointed out what it didn’t have: a fireplace or front porch or central air. All things on our wish list. And that garage, a cramped one-car garage, so small I wondered if I could master the necessary parking maneuvers for my Jeep.

Lectio Divina for a House

Our offer on the house was accepted, and my head agreed with the decision, but my heart was not in agreement. I knew I needed some time with the house. Without my husband. That opportunity came during the house inspection.

Sitting in my car before entering the house, I scanned the block of well-tended homes sheltered by mature trees. My eyes rested on our future home. Not too small, not too big. A pleasant-looking house. I liked the window boxes on the four front windows of the sunroom and the mums on the steps with one small pumpkin obviously placed there by little kid hands. I did not care for the yellow-gold exterior and wondered what color would bring it more to life.

Once inside, I wandered room by room, “reading” the house, gazing with soft eyes, as if encountering a piece of scripture for the first time. Lectio or “reading” is the first step in lectio divina, a spiritual practice that opens the reader to a more intimate relationship with the Word and often leads to clarification, even transformation.

I stood in the narrow, window-lined front room only big enough for a couple comfortable chairs and thought how lovely it would be to sit there and read. I noted the two windows in the kitchen, a gift in such a small space. I paused on the landing going up to the second floor, a refinished attic space and looked out the windows to the backyard. “I could have my office up here and call it ‘the garret.'”

I returned to the front door and took a deep breath, moving into deeper meditation, meditatio, the second step of lectio divina. Could I begin to let go of my space requirements, my vision of what I thought I needed? Could I imagine myself in this space?

There was no room for our large formal couch in the loving room, but how about forming a circle with four comfortable chairs? I began to picture certain loved pieces of furniture in this space. What about placing my lady’s writing desk next to the front door? What a pleasant place to sit and write a letter. My heart softened.

A fountain of ideas began to flow, overflow about ways to modify the house to our taste and lifestyle. A new palette. White wood work and white living room walls. Light beach aqua in the front room, which eventually I called “the snug,” and turquoise in the dining room. Clearly I had engaged with lectio divina’s third step, oratio, or “being active, but it was in the kitchen where I fully embraced that step.

Kitchen Transformation

During our first years of marriage, I cooked and baked and prepared dinner parties in a tiny windowless kitchen where initially I had waged combat with cockroaches. That’s where my Christmas tradition of baking loaf after loaf of cherry walnut bread began. Our kitchen at Sweetwater Farm was small, too, with almost no counter space, but oh, the Thanksgiving feasts created there.

Instead of seeing the space as limited, I reframed it in my mind as efficient. What it needs, I told myself, was crisp marshmallow white cupboards, a white subway tile backsplash and white solid surface countertop. And how about red walls? Santa Claus suit red.

The Fourth Stage: Contemplatio (Resting)

No, I wouldn’t have everything I wanted. A friend suggested we build a front porch. Of course, with enough money and patience and vision, one can do almost anything, but just because we once had something doesn’t means we must have it again. Instead, I rested in contemplation, assured I would discover a new gift.

One day on my morning walk soon after moving in, I noticed a neighbor’s inviting side courtyard, and then I saw other gardens and patios located in narrow side yards, creating private space. Could we do that? We had skinny space on one side of the house leading to the gate into the back yard. Tall arborvitaes lined the boundary between our house and the neighbor’s, leaving space just big enough for a couple chairs and a small table. My husband the gardener enthusiastically approved the plan.

As I settled into our new home, I continued practicing, although unconsciously, lectio divina, opening to its invitation for transformation. Our new secret garden space, which I call “Paris,” symbolized my willingness to let go and discover something new, vibrant, and pleasing; to be transformed.

The Next Decade

We were 65 when we moved into this house, and now we are 75. Our hope and intention is to spend the next decade here as well, but, who knows. Bruce has said he would like to stay in the house on his own, if I died first, but If I were a widow, I would move into an apartment, not wanting to take care of the gardens. In the meantime we live fully, happily, gratefully in this space.

An Invitation

Is there some aspect of your life in which the spiritual practice of lectio divina could be helpful? Something calling for transformation or reframing? I would love to know.

Memory Prompts

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November 14, 2023

This past weekend my sister and I went to a vintage Christmas market, and I bought this little treasure from years gone by. It’s a nut chopper.

Of course, I don’t need a nut chopper, for I have a food processor and also a smaller electric one that works beautifully for herbs and nuts, and most often I buy walnuts and pecans already chopped anyway. However, when I picked it up I remembered baking cookies when I was a child. I had instant replay images of kitchens in homes where we lived when I was growing up. Now I hasten to add that my mother was not the kind of Mom who enjoyed cooking with her children. I learned to cook and bake by trial and error. Still, this little glass container with its cheery red top, which just happens to match my current kitchen’s decor, inspired homey, happy thoughts.

Memories were clearly on my mind, especially since last week’s theme for the writing group I facilitate was memory. Before reading the writing prompts to the group, I shared some guiding words, quotations about the topic. For example,

There is no explaining this simple truth about life: you will forget much of it. The painful things you were certain you’d never be able to let go? Now you’re not entirely sure when they happened, while the thrilling parts, the heart-stopping joys splintered and scattered and became something else. Memories are then replaced by different joys and sorrows, and unbelivably, those things get knocked aside as well, until one morning you’re picking cherries with your three grown daughters and your husband goes by on the Gator and you are positive that this is all you’ve ever wanted in the world.

Tom Lake by Ann Patchett, p. 116

Remembering events and people from our past lets us claim and share ourselves…We do not merely have these memories; we are these memories…memory is a way of describing the cumulative nature of time, the presence of the past with us. Time not only unravels; it also knits up…memories reveal God’s presence in our life. Memories retrace a sacred journey.

Winter Grace, Spirituality and Aging by Kathleen Fischer, p. 45

The prompts included choosing a decade of your life and writing down as many memories of that decade as you can, or writing about an experience when your memory is contradicted by someone’s version of the same experience or event, or encouraged by Kathleen Fischer’s words, “open the album of your life,” and simply begin writing.

My own response during the 20 minutes of writing time was inspired by what John O’ Donohue says in Eternal Echoes, Exploring Our Yearning to Belong, “Memory is the place where our vanished days secretly gather. Memory rescues experience from total disappearance.”

Lost Memories

A few months before he died, I asked my father what memories he had about Christmas when I was a little girl. My father had an excellent memory, which he nurtured and worked to maintain. For example, when he was in his 90’s he wrote down the names of everyone in his first grade class. Eventually, he remembered each name. He also made a list of everyone who reported to him during his long and successful career.

Here’s the rub: He had no memories of Christmas when I was a little girl. Over the years he had shared his own early Christmas memories, like getting an orange in his stocking and going ice skating on Fountain Lake on Christmas Day, but he was not able to unveil memories about me at Christmastime.

It was clear he was disturbed by this lack of memories, and he quickly said something like “Your mother handled Christmas,” and I’m sure that was true, but really? Nothing about my first Christmas morning or presents I loved or how I reacted to the Christmas tree? Frankly, I was hurt. I changed the subject, wishing I had never brought it up. Later I wondered if bringing some family pictures or sharing my own early memories would have induced a different outcome.

I hasten to add, and I want you to hear this clearly, I have no doubts about how much my father loved me. I have never questioned that, and I treasure my relationship with him, but I am aware that some of the details of my life, stories I would like to know, have disappeared.

When I asked my father to share memories about me as a little girl, I unintentionally opened a place of sadness in him, an emptiness he didn’t know he had. I’m not sure that was a good thing, unless I can use it to learn something about myself and my own memories. What do I most need to remember and even more, what memories about my loved ones do they need and want to know?

Joan Chittister in The Gift of Years, Growing Older Gracefully refers to memories as both burdens and blessings. What I choose to remember and share can be either a burden or a blessing for my loved ones. My hope is that this incident with my beloved father can be remembered as a sacred moment, for as Chittister says, memories, can “tell us what is left to be done. They become a blueprint for tomorrow that show us out of our own experience how to live, how to forget, how to go on again.” And I add, how and what to remember.

Now about that nut chopper. I won’t use it for its intended purpose, but instead I will fill it with red and green Christmas M and M’s, as a glimpse into sweet memories.

An Invitation

When have memories been a burden and when have they been a blessing in your life? I would love to know.

Home Away From Home: Door County, WI

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April 18, 2023

In order to have this–cherry coffee cake–
first, there must be this.

We spent this past weekend in Door County, WI, a place that over the years has become a home away from home, even though we rarely stay at the same place. At breakfast one morning at our favorite place, The White Gull Inn in Fish Creek, we tried to remember all the times Door County has been our vacation, get-away destination. We listed at least 20 times, and I’m sure we missed a few.

For those of you who don’t know, Door County is a peninsula with Green Bay on one side and Lake Michigan on the other. Many have referred to it as the Cape Cod of the Midwest. That’s fine, but I don’t think it needs to be compared to anything–it is its own kind of time-out haven.

My husband planned the trip this time to celebrate my 75th birthday, which seems like a logical time in itself to reminisce and honor the past without neglecting the present or denying the realities of the future. We roamed favorite routes, as we always do, staying alert for sandhill cranes and turkeys, glimpses of spectacular water views, and the pink haze on the cherry trees, moving steadily towards blossom time. We noted what stores and restaurants were still alive and hopefully well, and kept saying, “Remember when…”

A kind of life review of our adult years.

Neither of us could remember how we learned about Door County or when we had first visited, but we obviously fell in love with it and kept returning–sometimes just the two of us, but also family times when our children were little. And later when our children were grown. The summer of 2010, when we lived in Madison, we rented a house for a month. Bruce came for the weekends, and our daughter and family came for a few days, too.

I spent my alone time reading and writing. (No surprise!)

When I was growing up and my family moved frequently, we always went to the same resort in northern Minnesota for a week or two before moving to our new home. That time served as transition time, easing us from one place to another. Whether my parents realized they were doing that or not, that week offered a touchstone, making what was changing and what was ahead and what was left behind not quite so daunting.

Door County has become a similar touchstone–a place where I mark the changes in our lives, not just as memories, precious though they are, but as a timeline of growth and development. I recall many leisurely dinners, lingering over what we came to think of as “daiquiri talk,” dreaming and imagining what our future might hold, could hold. In fact, Door County was where we realized that we wanted to retire back to St Paul and put a plan to do just that into motion.

This past weekend was quiet, for the spring/summer season has not yet begun, and I realized how much less I need “to do,” “to see,” “to visit,” in this stage of my life. How content we were to spend more time reading in our pretty room or on the balcony.

Note the cherry wallpaper! Cherries are a definite theme in Door County.

We have celebrated birthdays and anniversaries in Door County and have been there each season. We have each had alone time there plus been there with friends and family. I don’t need everything to be the same with each visit there, although I would be crushed if the White Gull Inn closed, but instead enjoy seeing the mix of old and new. We’ve been young there, and now we are old there. I feel the span of time there, and it is a good feeling.

Perhaps if we were still living in the home where we raised our family, a home where we lived for decades, I might prefer to vacation always in new places, to cultivate new places, new experiences, but instead, Door County has become the place of returning. The place where time is measured. It is the place where each time we leave, I think about when we might return to our home away from home.

One More Thing:

As we often do, when we are out roaming, we visit a library. I think if I were living in Door County, I would spend a good chunk of time in Egg Harbor’s library–with its water view and comfortable places to sit and read.

Not only were there books, but a charming seed library too.

An Invitation

Do you have a home away from home? A place that is an emotional tug? I would love to know.

Pesto Time: Past, Present, and Future

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August 23, 2020

These days my morning meditation time is spent first in the garden and then in the kitchen. The basil hedge calls, “Nancy, it is time to make pesto.”

The Present

Before clipping enough basil for two batches of pesto, I run my palms through the leaves, filling the coolness of the morning air with the aroma that whispers, “green,” “fresh,” “delicious.” I smell my hands, telling myself to remember this day when the garden is bare and in hibernation.

I fill the gathering basket and promise I will harvest more the next day –and the day after that until both the basil and I, the harvester, are done.

On the way back into the house, my gathering basket on my arm, I pause and listen to the bees humming as they keep the allium company. I know this may sound silly, but they remind me of the llamas humming their own sweet songs when we lived at Sweetwater Farm. Stay in the present. You can write about the past in a minute, I tell myself.

Look closely to see the bees in their purple environment.

Now it is time to transform basil into pesto.

Sprinkled clean, the basil leaves air dry–two cups of basil for each batch of pesto. One of my tricks is to cover the leaves with a towel and roll a rolling pin over the top, releasing and exploding the basil flavor. My food processor awaits–the basil, nuts and garlic first, followed by a mix of olive and vegetable oil. Then grated Romano and Parmesan cheese with salt and pepper to taste.

I spoon the, let’s be honest, messy mix into a freezer bag. Yes, I know the trick of storing the pesto in refrigerator trays and using it one cube at a time, and that is a good idea, but storing it in freezer bags means it lays flat, leaving more space.

Then on to batch number two.

And tomorrow batch three and four.

The Past

As I separate the leaves from the stems and later as I put away the needed ingredients and clean the kitchen, how easily I remember other pesto making days and even before that how I became enamored with using herbs in cooking and growing my own herbs.

One summer when our children were young, we took a family vacation in the Boston area. One of our stops was the Plymouth Plantation where I had a fascinating conversation with a woman who was tending an herb garden. She stayed in perfect character–a woman in early colonial days– as I asked her about the herbs she was growing. I wanted to know what her favorite herbs were for cooking and she was surprised by my question, for she used herbs for medicinal purposes. That brief encounter led me to a desire to know more–and, of course, I amassed a library of books about herbs.

That interest led to a small herb garden complete with a white picket fence in our small St Paul backyard, but later, when we lived at Sweetwater Farm in Ohio I had a chance –and the space–to more fully indulge my interest in herbs. Thyme, rosemary, sage, of course. Chives, cilantro, oregano, dill, tarragon, marjoram, a variety of mints. But I also loved lemon balm and lemon verbena for lemonade and other summer drinks. And lavender–perhaps my favorite. I grew lavender right outside the back door where I could enjoy the laundry fresh scent with each going out and coming in. I dried long stem bundles and later filled sachet bags to hang in closets and tuck in dresser drawers.

On pesto making days I moved from my tiny kitchen to the harvest table, spreading the bounty across the surface. I became a pesto making factory. Sometimes friends joined me for the process–each taking home a batch or two.

Oh, how I loved and am grateful for that time of my life.

I grew herbs mainly for food, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t healing. Walking in the Sweetwater Farm gardens the summer of my mother’s recurrence of colon cancer and my diagnosis of uterine cancer soothed me. I extended healing and loving blessings to spiritual direction clients when I offered a carefully tied bundle of lavender or fresh sprigs of rosemary and thyme. I gave thanks for the bounties of creation as I tended the earth. I thought about my grandmother, who loved to garden, and wished she had been able to visit us at Sweetwater Farm.

I am in a time of my life when memories rush like a waterfall. Everything seems to remind me of something. The present leads me gently into the past–not to be stuck there and not even to pretend those were the “good old days,” but more simply as a reminder of all the days I have been privileged to live. And to note growth where it has occurred, but also those darker, tighter spaces where more growth is needed.

The Future

Pesto over spaghetti is in the future. Cold winter nights when a reminder of summer is just what is needed. Meal times when I am tired of or bored with cooking. How jolly to open the freezer and pull out a bag of pesto. I make sure to never be without pasta in the pantry.

I know others who buy bushels of tomatoes or corn on the cob and spend hours in the kitchen preparing the bounty for later enjoyment. Or those who make strawberry or peach jam.

When we do this, we are not only preparing food for another day, but we are harvesting and storing memories.
And, taking in the smells and sights and tastes of the present moment, we are in the midst of spiritual practice.

An Invitation

What do you harvest from your garden–your internal or external garden? I would love to know.

Advent Week #4: A Different Rhythm

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Yesterday I slept till 7:30. How is that possible when Christmas Eve is only days away!

In another stage of life I would have been up much earlier, whittling away at my too long list. Most years I finished my shopping by this time, but not all the baking I thought I needed to do. And the stack of presents, including many that required delivery, remained unwrapped. Cards! Entertaining! Holiday events! ETC. ETC.

And all done alongside the normal stuff of life, including parenting and working a full-time job. You know what I mean. You’ve been there, too.

At this current stage of my life I can move more leisurely through the list; a list which is not as long and involved as it used to be. I still intend to do some baking this week, but except for a couple gifts I still need to buy and another one that will arrive on my doorstep today or tomorrow, the wrapping is done. I mailed most of the cards last week and finished the remaining over the weekend while listening to Christmas music, and I will walk to the mailbox with them later today. Entertaining has been simple–mainly snacks and drinks in the living room–and the menu for Christmas Day is planned. I will grocery shop tomorrow.

Do I miss the hustle and bustle of the years when our family was much younger? Some days I do, for it all passed so quickly. But at the same time I am so grateful for the many wonderful memories stored in my heart. I unwrap those joys frequently.

What I realize now is that those years were in large part about creating not only memories for ourselves, but also about creating holy times, sacred times. The focus for many years was on the creating and the doing –not just the gift buying and giving or inviting special guests for Sunday Advent suppers or filling the house with glowing lights and the smell of fresh greens or even reading from our stack of Christmas books at bedtime, but doing all that in honor of the gift of the Christ Child. And what that birth, that gift means for the ways we are asked to live our lives; our ongoing journey to be the person we were created to be.

Oh no, I regret none of it.

Now, however, I realize at this stage of my life this season is much more about being, about resting, about knowing and feeling and cherishing and paying attention. A different rhythm.

And remembering–not just the past, but remembering and holding, although with a light touch, the love that surrounds us always. “…for God’s steadfast love endures forever…” (Psalm 136)

Yes, I slept later than usual and perhaps, I will again tomorrow, but I am ready, not only for the arrival of our son and daughter-in-law from Cleveland, but I, a woman no longer young, am ready to BE, to live fully in this different rhythm of my life. May you be ready, too.

An Invitation: What are you noticing about yourself during this Advent time? I would love to know.