Things I've Learned Lately

1. Staying home all summer doesn’t mean I have time to write blog posts every Tuesday as I had purposed to do. That was sort of magic-fairy thinking. Not traveling doesn’t mean automatic hours in front of the computer. You also have to not cook so much, or talk with so many people, or water the hydrangeas regularly.

2. Mackinac is pronounced Mackinaw and Tijuana is pronounced Tia-juana, despite the spellings. I waited until I was 61 to learn this, after no doubt proving myself an outsider in both places.

[Note to various commenters: it turns out that when you’re speaking Spanish, you say “tee-HWAH-na” and when you’re speaking English you say “tee-uh-WAH-na.” Kind of like when you speak English you say Germany and when you’re speaking German you say Deutschland.]

3. This is a good summer for snakes but not so much for me. Some summers I don’t see any around here. This year I’ve run across four, not counting the dead one on the road. I didn't "run across" that one or any of the others as in driving over them with a car, but run across as in merrily scooping up grass clippings along the blocks along the flower bed and literally raking my fingers right across the back of a very zigzagging, very alive, very striped garter snake. I can still feel it. I have not been the same since.

4. My husband has hidden reserves of clever humor. 

Me: I am so sick and tired of finding snakes around here! I picked up a piece of cardboard in the garden to see if there were any volunteer potatoes coming up underneath and there was

Paul: A volunteer snake??

Me: YES!! 

5. Speaking of volunteer plants, the mystery bush in the garden turned out to be hollyhocks! It showed up last year, multiple stalks in a cluster with squash-like rough leaves. But it produced neither flower nor fruit. I left it over the winter, and it grew even taller, then developed green bud things along the stalks, reminding me of both artichokes and ground cherries. Suddenly, I noticed a few blobs of red, and soon the whole thing bloomed in hollyhocks. I have no memory of planting it. Maybe a few seeds resurrected from previous owners long ago when the garden was dug through two years ago with numerous holes and trenches for the sewer line for the barn.

6. Our fine son Ben is annoyed by, or at least suspicious of, many types of people. 

a. People who wear stretchy caps when it’s not cold.

b. People who cover as much of their car as possible with stickers. This includes people in Subarus with every outdoor and left wing cause who think they’re sticking it to the man with stickers about socialized medicine as well as people with every manner of Bible verse slapped on every surface.

c. People who talk about their dog like it’s a child.

d. People who add unnecessary letters to children’s names. 

e. People on bikes who never yield to pedestrians and want to be treated like either a car or a pedestrian, whichever is most convenient.

f. People who self-describe as “creatives.”

g. People with tattoos in a language they don’t speak.

7. Ben said, “Clearly I’m annoyed by a lot.” He was finishing his dissertation at the time. I’ve learned that finishing up a doctoral dissertation and presenting it are unbelievably, alarmingly stressful.

8. Paul’s cousin Darrell is harvesting a type of ryegrass called Koga. I had never heard of it. Technically, it’s “Koga Tetraploid Annual Ryegrass.” 

9. “Conservative” has changed its meaning in the Mennonite lexicon. I had a conversation with an Amish person about taking pictures and it opened up a memory of my Uncle Art and Aunt Vina and Uncle Ervin taking pictures of us when we were Amish, which was ok because it was in our house and no one would ever know. These relatives were all “Conservative,” which, in that day, meant Conservative Mennonite Conference. “Conservative” meant that they could do and have all kinds of cool things like plaid dresses and pretty belts and taking pictures. Today, that conference is known as CMC, and the term “conservative Mennonite” has different and more restrictive connotations, at least when used by people in my sphere.

[The commenters also inform me that CMC is now RNOC—Rosedale Network of Churches]

10. It is ok to hire help. I feel extravagant and silly doing so because, after all, I come from Amish stock, we are almost empty nesters, and I am reasonably healthy and capable. However. Even though I am no longer doing multiple loads of laundry a day or baking gigantic pot roasts, it turns out this nest has a lot of cubic footage, cobwebs, and dusty corners, and the outside is way more acreage than is easily handled without a bunch of teenagers to help out. So. I hired a cousin’s daughter to whip the hedge into shape and a niece to clean weekly and another niece to bake food for the freezer.  My parents ran their own house and farm until Mom was 93, and I don’t recall them ever hiring help until the family got someone to live in and take care of them. I’ve learned I can honor their incredible work ethic AND get the nieces to work for me. The world is still turning, and I can still speak Pennsylvania German. Amazing.

11. Listening is a gift. Recently I was doing a bit of shopping and as I walked to my car a young woman came running across the parking lot. She gave me a hug and wished me a late happy birthday. She said, “I just want to bless you, because you were the first person to listen to me.”

Well, of course I started crying, as one does.

Listening, in the moment, consists of pouring more tea, nodding, saying “mm-hmm” repeatedly, and asking a question now and then. It doesn’t seem like enough to merit a hug in a parking lot five years later.

But apparently it is.

12. The problem was with Apple and not with me or my phone. See, a while back my phone went as blank as my brain when I have a writing deadline on a sunny day. I plugged it in, pushed buttons, and pleaded. Nothing.

I was about to plague our son Matt with yet another desperate, tearful, tech-related entreaty when Paul suggested we take the phone to Best Buy and ask them what to do.

The nice young man behind the counter said, “Oh, this is an issue with the latest update from Apple. It goes into what we call ‘brick mode.’”

He showed me how to fix it. Press the “up” volume button. Press the “down” volume button. Press the power button for longer than you’d think.

It worked!

In the following weeks, the phone went into brick mode a few more times, and I knew what to do.

When there’s a problem of any sort, I assume I’ve done something wrong or stupid. But sometimes it's not my mistake at all, but a glitch in the system and someone else’s error.

What a profound revelation.

12. Harvest in Oregon is just as fun to watch and feel and smell as it was when I first experienced it, 41 years ago. You'd think it might grow old. It doesn't.

13. I've been learning about stress and autoimmune things and activating the Vagus nerve to make your body and mind settle down and behave. One way to do this, say the Instagram experts,  is to stick your head  [still attached to your body, please] into the freezer, or to plunge your face in cold water.

Sudden revelation: this is why Canadians and Minnesotans are so chill: all winter, they plunge their faces into air that's often colder than your freezer, for long periods of time.

No one's as happy as Minnesotans walking into the coffee shop when it's 25-below outside and billows of mist surround them as they stomp inside in their parkas and Sorel boots. "Cold out dere," they mutter, grinning through their frosty beards.

Their Vagus nerves must be humming along like a well-maintained Case combine in a field of K-31 fescue.

Maybe I need to spend summers in Oregon and winters in Minnesota.

This is Emily harvesting Darrell's Koga ryegrass.