Outside of town, horses look great but how is that barn still standing?

"Everyone leaves home and everyone finds a place to call home. Exodus, it turns out, is Genesis." Mickey Pearlman - A Place Called Home.  Lovely book, 1997 I think.  Twenty women writing about home.  I read it when it first came out and I'm reading it again. 

I moved here to Eastern Washington nearly 13 years ago after a life living on and about the Oregon and Washington coast.  I have family here but I wondered if I would ever feel at home here.  I miss the rain, the lush greenery, and the easy proximity to the ocean.  I don't like living very far from relatives and friends so living on the coast was out.  Make what you will out of that.  We moved a lot following my Dad's profession.  He and Mom didn't buy a house until I was 15.  After I married they moved again to Portland, Oregon taking my two younger sisters with them.  Chewing this over with a sister or two, I find that my home is more with people rather than places.  The closest thing to a physical home are my two grandmother's houses.  Even after 13 years here I don't feel permanent.  But then we really aren't permanent are we? 

Sunday I got up feeling icky and blah and found my blood sugar was low.  After I ate a good breakfast and I felt better.  In the afternoon I packed up my camera, water, and a fish burrito made from the leftovers of dinner and drove off to see what was going on outside of town.  There are large wheat farms, small farms, vineyards, and more wheat fields.  A little farther where the horses pictured above live, you begin to climb into the foothills of the Blue Mountains where Oregon seeking pioneers managed to drag their wagons to reach the Walla Walla Valley and proceeded make off with the lands the native peoples occupied.  A piece of the Oregon Trail can be seen here to the west of town complete with deep ruts.  I like it up in them thar hills.

My new phone and I are becoming friends.  It remained connected while I traveled in the hills, though I didn't see a tower anywhere.  I have yet to discover all the reasons it chirps at me from time to time.  My "texting' leaves at lot to be desired.  I now understand the "why" of the abbreviated phone language although I mostly laboriously still type everything out.  I may yet give in and send more "I luv u's" than the whole thing.  Two of my grandgirls said they were thrilled their grandmas were getting with it; perhaps we are not the antiques they thought we were.  Snicker, yes, that's exactly what I am.

Mother's Day

Ah Mother's Day.  A most peculiar holiday, and my Mom had high expectations of it.  I'm not sure we ever performed up to snuff.  That I don't miss but I do miss her.  She found this poem March 17, 1985 in a ladies magazine.  I know because she dated it in pen, she was a dedicated labeler of things.  It reminded her of her mother after she died and she kept it fastened to her refrigerator until she herself died in June of 1993.  Then Dad gave it to me.  It's been on my refrigerator ever since, getting yellow and wrinkly.  I found a plastic magnetic picture frame to keep it in better condition.  I've copied it verbatim with the author's name.

Mother

(for Mary Ann)

 

When I lost my mother

I found her days later

standing in a field

of tall grass

 

overlooking

the sea.

 

It was spring.

 

She was directing the tide

with one hand

 

while organizing a circus

of wildflowers with the other.
 

 
She made it look easy.

 

Making things look easy

was something she did daily.

A little bit at a time,

she used to tell me.

 

I can see her at work now

on this page

 

putting things into place

one foot in front of the other.

 

Robert Edwards

Thousand Oaks, CA

Updated Communications

OK, I got a smart phone.  I'm thoroughly Modern Millie.  Where do I get a kid to show me how to use it?  Oh, right, I have several grandkids.  I decided to try Straight Talk.  I liked my old carrier but I liked the ST price better than my old carrier's price.  Turns out, at least here, ST runs on the same carrier anyway!?  Weird.  Right off the bat they tell you it may take two or more days for the thing to boot up.  Is boot up the right term, activate, what?  It took three days, I'm cool with that.  Meanwhile I learned to move icons around, entered some phone numbers, and voila, this morning I got the email from them saying use your code and activate.  I am up and running.  Now I am trying to connect with my wifi.  Soon, soon. 

I have small hands but am fat-fingered trying to text.  How do those children get the flying fingers of texting.  Will it get better?  My maiden voyage in texting was successful though.  Then my son called and I failed to answer before he hung up.  Which reminds me, I guess I'd better set up my voice mail.  Not much else is going to get done here today.  I did get on Amazon and order a rubbery purple cover and a car charger.  I was sorely tempted to get several colors of covers but one thing at a time.  Want to make sure it really fits.  Many of the reviews on other covers complained that they slipped off on you.  Don't want that.  You can see what really matters to me.  I see Blogger doesn't even have the words text or texting in their spell checker. 

The new phone is like talking into a thin deck of cards.  I liked my old flip phone.  Too bad, moving on.  I had one of the first cell phones ever in Washington State.  Much better than my pager.  Had to get a bigger purse to carry it in, they were weighty.  I loaned it to my teen aged sons when they went off on trips in their beater cars.  Now I feel like I can't get along without it.  I still have a house phone but it is the most basic of services;  I dropped the long distance on it since  I have unlimited calling, unlimited texting, unlimited data - unlimited I say!  Ha! Will I even be able to see any data I chose to get.  The phone is a Samsung Android with a nice sized screen but I have Celia 1940's size eyes.  I can probably see menus from restaurants, yummy, and maps can be gotten with voice directions, but I'm sure not going to be watching any movies on it.  Maybe YouTube, if I squint really hard.

"Breton Woman Praying" Augusta Payne Rathbone (1897-1990)

“Prayer of an Anonymous Abbess:

Lord, thou knowest better than myself that I am growing older and will soon be old. Keep me from becoming too talkative, and especially from the unfortunate habit of thinking that I must say something on every subject and at every opportunity.

Release me from the idea that I must straighten out other peoples' affairs. With my immense treasure of experience and wisdom, it seems a pity not to let everybody partake of it. But thou knowest, Lord, that in the end I will need a few friends.

Keep me from the recital of endless details; give me wings to get to the point.

Grant me the patience to listen to the complaints of others; help me to endure them with charity. But seal my lips on my own aches and pains -- they increase with the increasing years and my inclination to recount them is also increasing.

I will not ask thee for improved memory, only for a little more humility and less self-assurance when my own memory doesn't agree with that of others. Teach me the glorious lesson that occasionally I may be wrong.

Keep me reasonably gentle. I do not have the ambition to become a saint -- it is so hard to live with some of them -- but a harsh old person is one of the devil's masterpieces.

Make me sympathetic without being sentimental, helpful but not bossy. Let me discover merits where I had not expected them, and talents in people whom I had not thought to possess any. And, Lord, give me the grace to tell them so. Amen”

Margot Benary Isbert

The Walla Walla Farmer's Market opens today, hooray.  Although that may not be exactly what they are calling themselves this year.  Last year the organization had a bust up and one group went to the Fairgrounds and one stayed downtown.  I'm not sure there's enough customers here to support two of them but we'll see.  Downtown is better for me, close to home and the Fairgrounds are, well dusty when the wind's is up.  So be it.  I plan to visit them both anyway; I love Farmer's Markets.  We seem to be experiencing a lot of this kind of struggle here lately.  The county library and the city library broke their connection after a scrap about money. Neither side would compromise and now both have less to offer.  Going to both requires buying into a yearly membership at one as an outsider, an option I am not including in my budget. I suppose it goes on in larger towns as well but as we are smaller the lack of give and take is highly visible.

On a lighter note...I went to see Bye Bye Birdie at WAHI last night.  Fun stuff, and of course it was wonderful that my grandgirl was in it singing and fan-girling for Birdie on stage.  Then afterwards she went with her cast to knosh at the local Sharis.  Then it hit me.  She's growing up, the beautiful little girl who kept special jammies in one of my dressers drawers is building her way to her own grown up life.  Now she is a beautiful young woman smiling at her friends, and young men are smiling at her.  And her lovely cousin, six months older, went to Greece last year sans parents.  Lions, and tigers, and bears oh my!

Both my sons left home at the same time leaving me wondering how I had missed (or ignored) the cues that they were growing up, or maybe I was mentally trying to postpone the inevitable.  I am surprised to be re-experiencing that exciting moment and the accompanying sense of loss as my grandchildren disappear into their own lives.  Of course I still see them, but their lives are no longer so open to me, which is as it should be, now they choose their time and what to share. Hmm, this is not turning out to be a lighter note.  Still, it is exciting to see how they find themselves and their talents, and find the people and things they love.  And I will once again adapt, maybe get better at it. Since they go down in age to only a year old, this cycle will repeat and repeat and repeat.  Duh, of course it does.

Better get my walking shoes on before all the green onions and asparagus is gone at the market.