My gleanings include rubbish and pies.

I guess I've had enough time and thinking power this week to read and ponder, but my activities didn't result in anything of my own to posit or report, so I'll just pass on some recent gleanings.

Women Priests?  I love it when a reviewer is bold enough to say "This book is rubbish." Honesty and confidence! Although, if that's all she can say, she won't get a hearing; I want to hear reasons for her belief. I just read this blog post titled "Merlin Stone's book is rubbish", and though I had never heard the author's name before I immediately wanted to read that article.

It's a brief review of  When God Was a Woman, which the blogger first had to read in seminary years ago. She writes, "There is neither historical nor anthropological support for her thesis that the Hebrews suppressed goddess worship. She tries to prove that the Canaanites had a matriarchial and matrilineal structure. She is wrong on both counts." Go to the blog Just Genesis to read the supporting details. The writer always has lots of fascinating historical and archeological knowledge to pass on.

Pies, pies, pies... Three women collaborated on a book, which as soon as I read about it I had to have sent as a birthday gift for my granddaughter. It may be a bit early for her, but I like to encourage little girls to start taking a creative role in the kitchen and to look to real grownups for inspiration.

The book is Pieography, written by Jo Packham, Food Styling by Anne Marie Klaske, Photography by Traci Thorson. All of these women have blogs; Jo and Traci feature photos of some pies, but I think you have to get the book if you want the recipes and stories.

I haven't seen the book yet, but I've enjoyed Anne Marie's blog in particular. The clean and elegant style is nice to surf around in and see snippets of the Klaske Family's farm life. On Thursdays you can get inspired to bake pies!

Death of the Old Man:  Father Stephen Freeman shared a link to his daughter's blog, on St. John of the Cross and the loss of identity, or the Dark Night of the Soul, or the "death of the old man." Actually the subtitle of the post is "The Loss and Discovery of our Identity in God" (italics mine), so it ends on a very positive note, to be sure.

She writes, "If we had always thought of the death of our old man as purely symbolic, it may come as something of a shock to think of real pain being involved. But when our turn inevitably comes to go through pain or tragedy, then we may take comfort in knowing that many have travelled down this path before us."

Icons and Images:  A book on the history of the use and theology of images in Jewish culture and in the church is the subject of this blog post on Orthodox-Reformed Bridge. Early Christian Attitudes Toward Images is written by Stephen Bigham, and a series of four blog posts is planned to review the book. This structure follows the organization of the book:

The book is divided into four chapters. Chapter 1 deals with the “hostility theory” which holds that the early Christians were hostile toward images. Chapter 2 deals with early Jewish attitudes toward images. Chapter 3 deals with the early Christian attitudes towards images, that is, the pre-Constantinian period. Chapter 4 deals with Eusebius of Caesarea who witnessed the beginning of Constantinian era.

The author is an Orthodox priest, and the blogger Robert Arakaki was Reformed in his theology before converting to Orthodoxy. I'm looking forward to reading all the reviews of what looks to be a thorough treatment of the subject.

Beethoven in Space:  Lastly, here's a music video featuring Hubble images and beautiful music. A blessed weekend to you all!

Aunt Ida warns against haste in the blood.

Over a year ago I shared here a few excerpts from old letters written from Central and South America by Aunt Ida. I still plan to transcribe them all and share some more stories, but I'm afraid have fallen right down on that job.

This week we've been struck by an unusual heat wave. No one has AC here, because it's so rarely warranted, and my recent experiences of wilting and sweating made me remember this passage from one letter in which she writes home to her sisters about how to cope in the Panamanian climate. I managed to dig it up and offer it here for anyone who may have need of it.

Tues. a.m. Aug. 5, 1919 ...I like this country. Talk about the lure of the tropics. It’s got me. You couldn’t pull me away from here. It’s warm but everything is built for it. And it’s always the same so you can get ready for it and stay ready. I sleep with a sheet partly over me every night, and it’s the same at 4 a.m. as at 9 p.m. Everything is built open like a porch and tightly screened and it’s comfortable. All you have to remember is to take it easy and not hurry. “Never hurry” .... A negro sewing woman said one reason why I was so warm was because I had “haste in my blood.” And that is right. If you even “feel” in a hurry, the heat just surges through you. But if you keep calm, you stay cool. This place would never do for Ma. She’d just naturally die. Because she has so much “haste in her blood” and she simply cannot learn to take it easy. You have to learn it or you perish. You know how easy I take things – well if I keep that pace I’m OK but just let me take a spell where I want to straighten up or do the least thing and I’m all “het up.”

May you all keep as cool as possible this summer, in every sense of the word.

May the pots never grow cold.

About 30 years ago we owned a modular house whose many large windows were covered by the original fancy draperies, so that when the curtains were closed they covered most of the expanse of three walls with nubby gold curves. The walls were thin particle board painted to look like wood, as you can see in the photo - but I didn't mind those as much as the drapes. I would have preferred something more rustic and casual and of another color to go with the country setting, but even if we'd had the money we couldn't have justified spending it to replace Perfectly Good high-quality drapes.

It was a recurring temptation to me, though, to stew over how ugly and Not Me they were. This was tiresome, and eventually my better self convinced my offended self to stop, using this argument:

What is your purpose in life? To love God and be useful to Him.

What is the most important way for you to do that? To love people.

Do you need pretty and tasteful drapes in order to love people? No, I answered. If someone who comes to my house sees my drapes and not me, I can't help that. If they need my hospitality and friendship they need it from me personally, and God will just have to use me in spite of this ugliness in the room. (Which of course was not a universally recognized ugliness anyway.)

Those of us who have read any of Edith Schaeffer's other books know that she by her life and words demonstrated the importance of love and hospitality. Her book The Hidden Art of Homemaking, which is the subject of a book club hosted at Ordo Amoris, I do not take as contrary to the rest of her life and work, but complementary to it. Some of you may not have read the other books like What is a Family? Partly from reading it I am pretty sure that if she had to choose, she would herself rather have been a resident or guest in a plain and even ugly house run by a warmhearted woman than in an artistically decorated dwelling with an unkind or angry soul. We've all heard of and perhaps had the experience of going into a house where the decor was shabby or messy but you wanted to be there because it felt like home -- welcoming and nurturing. Mother Teresa's saying fits here: "Love begins at home, and it is not how much we do... but how much love we put in that action."

I think Edith's own houses were like this, because she was that kind of woman, and likely much more than I myself am. But I have it as a vision to be like that, and am inspired by quotes that speak of a woman being able to make a home wherever she finds herself, of a woman herself being the heart of her home....but I can't find any of those at the moment. The line that has intrigued me for years now is from the Santana song "You've Got to Change Your Evil Ways," from the perspective of a man who is dismayed by his woman who's gadding about all the time:

When I come home, Baby,
My house is dark and my pots are cold.

These are just signs to the poet that there is no woman at home to welcome him.  The verse reminds me of advice I read to housewives who haven't figured out what to make for dinner, but who want to do something to give their husbands a good feeling when they come in the door after work: While you are getting your act together put an onion in the oven to bake so that he will get a hopeful olfactory signal.

A message I get here: A woman conveys her love and hospitality by these simple modifications to the environment: opening the drapes or turning on the lights, cooking something in the kitchen, and in both ways warming up the sensory atmosphere. If she has a kiss and a smile for her family and guests all the better.

The last few years when my husband and I live here alone, I notice that I am the one who thinks about light control. In that photo above you can see all the light that came into the humble house with the gold drapes. It was the best feature of the house, as I was later to discover, when I wanted our new house to have as much light -- it was not to be. The photo was likely taken in the winter, when we would open the drapes wide and let in all the warming sun.

In our area we can get along pretty well in summertime without air conditioning, if we manage the windows and window coverings: At night open all the windows to let the cool air in; in the morning close everything up to shut out the sun's rays, and leave them that way (and the house kind of dark!) until the air inside gets as warm as outdoors -- then you may as well get any breeze that might stir, and be ready for the coolness to enter as soon as it arrives.

In Spring or Fall our present house doesn't get very hot, so in the mornings I like to open the blinds and let the sun in as soon as I come downstairs -- but my man never thinks of doing this. For my mind, sunlight is the very loveliest decoration. And at night, I like to close the curtains or blinds so as to feel sheltered against the world. This also seems to be, in my experience, a homemaker's impulse.

I have learned to do many artful things in my houses over the decades; I have arranged and painted furniture, swept the floor, bought bedspreads and embroidered Bible verses to hang on walls that I painted, but those things aren't more important than the light-monitoring I do. I also tend the fire in the stove, and light candles, and keep the pots warm.

While you're working on the outward appearance of your home, attend also to your heart and keep it warm with prayer. If the family members are getting snappy or sulky, take a prayer break together and ask God's help - then sing something to warm up the atmosphere. I like this quote that Debbie posted, by Laura Ingalls Wilder:

Let's be cheerful! We have no more right to steal the brightness out of the day for our own family than we have to steal the purse of a stranger. Let us be as careful that our homes are furnished with pleasant & happy thoughts as we are that the rugs are the right color and texture and the furniture comfortable and beautiful.

Thank God for making Edith Schaeffer the kind of woman who could pass on to us a bright homemaking heritage.

Edith Schaeffer

Edith Schaeffer died today!

I only heard by just now reading this blog post, from a friend of mine whose mother and I are friends and fellow home-lovers. Edith Schaeffer through two of her books, What is a Family and The Hidden Art of Homemaking, helped me in many ways to develop my own style and philosophy of homemaking.

Several particular principles and practices, from the importance of caring for the sick to table decorating, became part of my being and contributed to the joy of being the woman of my home. She was the first decidedly Christian person I read who understood the importance of beauty in the home, and she gave many (I remember I thought almost too many!) examples of how one might create a home environment that was rich in all the important things, even if worldly riches were lacking.

I am very thankful for this sister in Christ. May she rest in peace, and may her memory be eternal.

Bridges and Streams

Great-grandparents

Last week was filled with historical talk and images - even theology. First there was the cemetery where we had buried my father-in-law in January. We checked to make sure that the gravestone had been cut and set properly, and then we visited the graves of Mr. Glad's great-grandparents and grandparents on both sides of the family, and several aunts and uncles.

At left is one set of the great-grandparents whose graves we visited, people born in Cornwall in the mid-19th century. They came to California to work in the New Almaden quicksilver (mercury) mines near San Jose, where the wife Eliza gave birth to my husband's grandmother and several other children.

When I look into the bright eyes of that face I just wish I could hug her. Why do you focus on her and not him, my husband asked? Because she's a woman and I'm a woman, I answered. I feel strangely connected to her across the years and in spite of the fact that I never knew her nor are we even related by blood. I wonder if she is praying for her descendants, including my children and grandchildren? I can't see and touch her right now, but (Matthew 22) "God is not the God of the dead, but of the living." She is a real living person, not an idea.

New Almaden Englishtown

The novel Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner tells the story of a miner and his wife who lived for a time there in Englishtown, with tales involving Mexican miners in the camp's "Spanishtown." The Cornish people attended the Methodist Episcopal Church on the hill and Eliza is remembered as loving to read her Bible.

When her children were grown and the parents had moved into San Jose, she still prepared a large spread every Sunday afternoon and expected all the children and their families to come for Sunday dinner. She was especially fond of her grandsons.

Many of the women those days kept chickens and cows but Eliza was the only one in her family who had the gumption to kill a chicken. When any of the others wanted chicken for dinner they would take their bird to Eliza to chop off its head.

A mother and father not ours

On the first night of our trip to these forbears' old stomping grounds we had dinner with a dear cousin who also is linked and indebted to them. We came bearing gifts of photographs of some relations who have passed on, and we talked about our family -- and of course, our own childhoods.




Next day the Mister and I ate a picnic next to the Felton Covered Bridge in the Santa Cruz mountains. It's the tallest known covered bridge in the country, built of redwood in 1892 to span the San Lorenzo River. No one knows why the builders made it so high.

I started thinking about bridges as a metaphor, as in "Bridges to the Past"....What would be the thing to be bridged, the gulf over which we can meet on a bridge? If we are on this side of the bridge, what or who is on the other side?

burned redwoods at Henry Cowell

The bridge lies near the Mt. Hermon Christian conference center, where my husband from his earliest days enjoyed the creeks and paths and sleeping on the porch of his grandmother's cabin.

He and I spent our brief honeymoon in that cabin, and strolled dreamily around the redwoods of Henry Cowell park nearby. It was drizzling that day in March 41 years ago and we had the park to ourselves, no doubt breathing the same woodsy, cold and moist air that we drank up on this trip.

Our marriage has endured to the present; it's a continuing thing, so the bridge idea doesn't exactly fit in that case, but it was pressed back into my mind a few more times anyway.

 

Mr. Glad and "The Giant" redwood tree

Our Cabin in the old days

From the covered bridge and the park we drove up a hill to the neighborhood of the old cabin where we'd spent so many happy times with several generations sleeping in nooks and corners and beds tucked into closets. Another cousin and his wife live around the corner in a cabin that's been in his family for many decades, too.

We two couples walked up and down all over the place remembering the fun and family going back 60 years. Mr. Glad and I hadn't visited "his" cabin since 23 years ago it passed from our family. We saw that trees and ferns and birdbath have been taken away, to make space for parking trucks.












That's too bad. Well, let's keep going downhill toward the kind of landmarks that don't change so easily.

Two Cousins on New Swinging Bridge

The natural beauty endures - some of these redwood trees have been around for hundreds or thousands of years. The unnamed tall tree above looked to us as large as The Giant we had seen a few hours before in the state park. We were gazing up at it from the Swinging Bridge, a suspension bridge that still sways when you walk on it, though it has been improved from what it was in Mr. Glad's younger years.


Cabin Cousin named this scene "Stumphenge." People are always making structures and arrangements that are symbolic of the most meaningful things in their lives. Some of those structures, as I was to reminded the next morning, are intangible.

It's obvious I love a good bridge -- some of them are majestic works of art, and even the less dramatic show the human need and desire to go from here to there on the earth, to interact with the natural landscape in practical and artistic, and sometimes playful, ways.

I am often more comfortable on a sturdy bridge than I am down in the canyon or river below. Two creeks come together on the Mt. Hermon property. This confluence of Bean and Zayante Creeks is just about The Most Favorite Spot from the Mr. Glad history files. I have waded in the creek here too, with our children, and have sat picnicking on lovely warm summer days. We looked down from the swinging bridge and sighed our contented memories.

At this time of year we didn't want to be down there in the chilly water. From the bridge, wearing our cozy jackets, we could get a wide view. You feel that you know where you are, and there's no sand or pebbles scratching between your toes.

The next day as we drove home Mr. Glad and I listened to a discussion about a famous theologian who is now acknowledged to be a BRIDGE between East and West, Pentecostals and non-Pentecostals, and other disparate groupings. If I tell you his name many of you will feel an immediate urge to click away to another blog, because the Unitarians have done that to you.

When they controlled the educational system of this nation Unitarians worked hard to steer young people away from the Puritans, and one small tactic in this program was to inoculate them against a man who preached a lot on themes like humility, beauty, and the sweetness of the Love of God. They did this by making sure that schoolchildren had in their curriculum one of his worst and least representative sermons.

In our usual intellectually focused condition we search for these rational bridges to connect us to our roots and to each other. I'm afraid the Unitarians were trying to keep us on a platform without even a good view of the life-giving stream. If I stay in my mind and only think about God, it is like looking down from a bridge at the river, when what I am dying of thirst to do is splash and drink and be refreshed by the Living Water.

But in the presence of God, living our theology by prayer and love to one another, we can be part of a continuum, like the earthly water that over the millennia constantly comes back to us as rain into the streams and snow on the mountains, evaporates from the oceans to make clouds that float inland again....

If Jonathan Edwards and I both live in Christ, who said, "Except you eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, you have no life in you," then we are in the same vital current. And that's the important thing.

One of my dearest and most influential friends, Anne, gave me a copy of Edwards's Religious Affections more than twenty years ago, and I spent a while this morning becoming re-acquainted. But I don't think it's likely that I will read much more of the works of this brilliant thinker who is for some people a bridge. I already spend too much time standing on and studying bridges and platforms.

Instead I want to live in communion with God and with His people -- including my distant-but-near relations from the 19th century, the 18th century -- even the Holy Apostles, and all of that Cloud of Witnesses who (I Corinthians) "did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: and that Rock was Christ."

San Lorenzo River

Tears poem

I want to say something to go along with this poem, because I love it so much, though it probably stands better alone. I suspect that most of my crying is for selfish reasons, but the thoughts here make me hope that once in a great while my tears might be an expression of true humanity, or at least have a humanizing effect. We can make our tears a gift to God, when we come before Him with them; He already knows all about the chaos in our souls, if that's their origin. 

Some church fathers say that tears for whatever reason cleanse the heart. One pastor said it's because when you are crying it's impossible to be double-minded. I'll be mulling over that idea for a long time. But troubling and puzzling as they are, I will thank God for the gift of tears.

TEARS

Tears leave no mark on the soil
or pavement; certainly not in sand
or in any known rain forest;
never a mark on stone.
One would think that no one in Persepolis
or Ur ever wept.

You would assume that, like Alice,
we would all be swimming, buffeted
in a tide of tears.
But they disappear. Their heat goes.
Yet the globe is salt
with that savor.

The animals want no part in this.
The hare both screams and weeps
at her death, one poet says.
The stag, at death, rolls round drops
down his muzzle; but he is in
Shakespeare’s forest.

These cases are mythically rare.
No, it is the human being who persistently
weeps; in some countries openly, in others, not.
Children who, even when frightened, weep most hopefully;
women, licensed weepers.
Men, in secret, or childishly; or nobly.

Could tears not make a sea of their mass?
It could be salt and wild enough;
it could rouse storms and sink ships,
erode, erode its shores:
tears of rage, of love, of torture,
of loss. Of loss.

Must we see the future
in order to weep? Or the past?
Is that why the animals
refuse to shed tears?
But what of the present, the tears of the present?
The awful relief, like breath

after strangling? The generosity
of the verb “to shed”?
They are a classless possession
yet are not found in the museum
of even our greatest city.
Sometimes what was human, turns
into an animal, dry-eyed.

              ~ Josephine Jacobsen

(thanks to Maria)

Bird's Open Heart

I am taking a tutorial from Bird on aging gracefully; she is graceful and gracious both. The two of us were talking about how we both are forgetful hostesses, never remembering to offer our guests so much as a glass of water, much less tea and cookies. But my friend never locks her door, and usually doesn’t even shut it all the way, because she wants visitors to come in without knocking; she doesn’t always hear a knock or the doorbell.

She is always so glad for company, and resists talking about herself, preferring to ask about her younger friends and their families, and hear other people’s stories. Her own stories are only told when they pertain to some matter that concerns her guest, or after emphatic prompting. Bird is almost 95 years old; is she ever going to become what I find to be the more typical elderly person, living in the past, and impatient with recent people and their doings?

When I had her for tea last week she was the guest of honor. I picked her up and drove her to my house, and on the way here in the car I showed her a list of topics we wouldn’t mind her talking about. She started laughing — I don’t know at which question — and said teasingly, “I am not going to come to any more of your tea parties!” But when the guests had all arrived she was willing to share of her past and her tales with them, and entertain us all with her humor.

There is the story about her novel, written in high school, about the Spanish dancer Juanita. It was a love story, but Bird knew nothing about “the kind of love you have when you are married.” At the end of the romance, when Juanita and her suitor have progressed in their relationship to the point where the ardor is intense, the novel closes with the line, “Juanita leaned.”

The photo here was taken when her 11th child was a toddler and Bird was about 35 years old. She looks happy enough to burst—serene at the same time. I think she must have been the best wife for her husband; she was apparently not contrary, but neither was she wimpy. She had to be strong and steady when he was depressed and couldn’t work for — was it three years? The kind of person who would keep doing her own job of running the household, waiting and praying for things to change.

She told us over tea that decades ago, when some of us used to see the couple walking “together,” Bird ten yards behind, that Mr. Bird had needed long walks to help with his “emotional problems.” He would be in shirtsleeves, and she was wearing a sweater, and he told her he was embarrassed by her wearing the sweater, and asked her not to. She replied that she needed the sweater because she was cold, and suggested that he walk by himself if he was embarrassed. And he said, “But I need you to talk to!” This was funny because he was way too far ahead for them to be able to carry on a conversation. When one of their adult children later died, the priest told her husband, “Now today, you walk beside your wife.”

Bird seems to have walked as close to her husband as he allowed, as long as he lived. She has been a dear and encouraging companion to me, as we both try to walk with God. My prayer is that He would give me a measure of her spirit.


(I wrote the piece above several years ago; more recent posts in which Bird appears are here and here. Now she has reached 100 years, and is as young as ever. She still keeps her door unlocked and her smile bright.)

Journaling about footling

When I'm writing in Word, the program often tells me that I am spelling a word wrong, or that it doesn't exist. So I head on over to dictionary.com and check it out for myself. Today it was journaling, which even they tell me doesn't exist. Oh, yeah? Just look at my blog and you will see that it does indeed exist, though I of course did not invent it. Even dictionary.com can't keep up on everything.

While I was on that page, I noticed their Word of the Day on the left sidebar, and footle seemed to me a curiously cute and appealing word (which Word also does not know), so I took the time to read about it. This is what I read:

footle \FOOT-l\ , verb: 1. To act or talk in a foolish or silly way. 

noun: 1. Nonsense; silliness.

Quotes:

Sometimes, on a good day, I would go upstairs with my duster and footle around the parlor, adjusting paintings and straightening cushions, knocking them into shape with such military precision that even my mother would have saluted them.
-- Marion McGilvary, A Lost Wife's Tale: A Novel 

"I say, Charlie, for any sake do play up tomorrow, and don't footle."
-- Rose Macaulay, Abbots Verney; A Novel

Origin:
Footle has an uncertain origin. One candidate is the French se foutre, to care nothing." Another possibility is the Dutch vochtig, "damp or musty."

Not much to go on here, and it's confusing. What the narrator in McGilvary's book (I wonder if she is the Lost Wife...that might pertain to my discussion.) is doing doesn't seem to me either silly or foolish. It just reads like housework, done with energy.

I don't quite know what "play up" means, in the other quote given, so how am I to infer the meaning of what is given as the alternative behavior?

(One thing is clear, that people who add the subtitle "A Novel" to their book titles are more likely to use the word footle in the text.)

This all matters to me, because I've long been on a quest for a word for what some of us housewives do sometimes, on those days when I'm not under a deadline or working doggedly on a single big project. Instead, I do a little of this, a little of that, one thing leading to another; I am not in a rush, nor do I have urgent goals for the day, but I end up accomplishing quite a lot.

Do we just call this "housework"? I used to call it puttering, until I learned that there is too much of aimless, ineffective, and loiter in the definition of that word. When I am engaged in the behavior I am trying to find a word for, I am never aimless, and if I am not getting any physical work done for a few minutes, I am at least thinking hard or praying. And another question: As my computer and word processor are in my house, shouldn't I consider the work I do using those tools "housework"?

It gets complicated. Keeping the housewife healthy and able is part of the maintenance of the house, just as taking care of tools is a necessary part of the work of a carpenter's shop. So all those things I do that restore my soul are also housework. Voilà!

Once I was discussing this issue with my friend Herm, and told her about a word I coined to describe my style of puttering. It is serendipping. But it hasn't proved terribly useful to me, since only two of us in the world know it. I don't often need the word anyway, do I, if I am busy doing it?

Anyway, it appears that footle will not yet be of any help. Discovering it was part of my serendipping today, but did it accomplish anything? It gave me something to think and write about, and whether it was work or play, it was not aimless and it was fun!

Soul-nourishing gift from Mr Glad

Sunless and Satisfying Day

The beach cottage is next to a creek that forms a lagoon at this time of the year, cut off from the frigid Northern California ocean water by sand dunes and therefore swimmably warm, if you don't mind the algae.

The whole place is full of memories for me, going back more than 20 years to the first time I was here with our children, who with their homeschooling friends built rafts of driftwood and punted around, while their baby sister crawled through the sand.
 

Those are abalone shells lined up on the fence.

We've come many, many times to this sleepy village, and this week it was to be with our friends who lived full-time in the house for a spell but now only vacation there. Mr. Glad and I are normally just a couple these days, but they were lucky enough to have four of their five daughters with them.

No sooner had we arrived than I discovered the fuchsias and Chinese firecrackers that had enthusiastically taken over the mostly untended yard. They make you think you are in a tropical paradise, until you look up and notice the fog and the golden hills.

In the background of the third fuchsia pic, you can see the wild fennel reaching for the skies. A lot of it has already dried and is getting mildewed.

The fields of rattlesnake grass a block away also contradict the tropical theme. I picked bundles of the stuff before I came to the conclusion that it's really past its prime and that I should just come back next June to get it when it is still green and the "rattles" are whole.

Sand Art by Mr. G

We packed up some cheese, French and Italian breads, and watermelon, and drove up the coast to another beach just for fun.




One can't easily predict how grey and cool the days will be out there, but we expected the sun to come out by the afternoon, and we pointed out the little patches of blue we could see here and there near the horizon.




At least it wasn't terribly cold, though I did keep my sweatshirt on all day. The fog did not lift, but the sun burned some young chests right through it. And I was so happy and busy smelling the seaweed and the beach plants that I didn't even notice the weather change that never happened.

Some of us took a walk along the bluffs, where I found so many interesting things to see and click my camera at, including stickers and a minty purple flower that filled the low moist places.

Rattlesnake grass and cow parsnip

When we returned to the cottage it was to cook together and cozy up with a big dinner and loving camaraderie -- lively talk and laughing followed by sitting on couches and in rockers. Mr. G and I couldn't help ourselves, taking lots of pictures of the girls so clearly content and comfortable with each other, tucked in with overlapping arms and legs and smiling so much you wouldn't believe it.

I didn't mind the grey skies, because the flowers and friendship made the best kind of sunshine.

Pacific in Pacific Grove

Seaside paintbrush

Counting my dear sons' wives, which I very thankfully do, I now have five daughters. It's sad to think how I spent several years complaining that I didn't birth more children; during that time I never anticipated the familial wealth that in-laws can bring.

Point Lobos (Click on any photo to enlarge.)

In an effort to enjoy our family friendships we women spent a few months planning our first mother-daughter holiday. When continents stretch between, the grandchildren have pressing needs, and the young women pressing schedules, it's a tribute to our devotion that we even tried. In the end, only half of us, two daughters and I, were able to get together recently, on California's Central Coast.

Seaside daisy

Pacific Grove was our home base. Every morning I woke with the feel of long-ago visits to my Aunt Margaret, whom I knew mostly in my teens. She lived in Carmel in a cream-colored house with white carpets, under a sky that was often white with fog or overcast, and the mood was so quiet. The sort of quiet that is filled with the sound of surf and the cry of sea gulls.


 Our gathering of last week was a quiet group, too, in spite of our much talking, which I imagine was still on the low end of charts that might be made of all-women excursions, as we often stood in silent wonderment over our surroundings.

In our Keen boots -- really, no one one had coordinated our foot attire, contrary to all appearances -- we walked a lot, up and down the hills of Pacific Grove and Monterey and Carmel-by-the-Sea. And we looked at flowers and trees and birds and tried to identify them all.

Flower is California hedge nettle

ceanothus in Pacific Grove

On Point Lobos especially the sweet smell of ceanothus blooms was filling the air, along with the buzzing of bees who were crazy over it. We liked the challenge of photographing busy bees. They liked how the pollen was offering itself to them on vast fields of stamens.

Carrying great loads of pollen

Protea behind Cannery Row

Lucky for us that Mrs. Bread showed us a Protea in her garden our first afternoon, so that we could guess their identities when we kept seeing them everywhere from then on. The genus includes a huge variety of forms that are really striking. I came home to find that our bottlebrush tree is not a Protea, however. Proteas seem to have come originally from the southern hemisphere, but they definitely like growing on this patch of the globe.

Behind Cannery Row murals have been painted along the bike path, evoking the culture and history that John Steinbeck depicted in his books. I liked browsing this lane better than the touristy shops which carry, as Doll pointed out, all the same stuff from China that touristy shops all over the nation carry. 

Oh, except maybe the otter dolls. I was expending so much mental energy drumming up buyer's resistance that I didn't even think about how I could have taken a picture of one. There were three stuffed toy versions of the captivating creatures that we watched lolling and playing in Monterey Bay, and I can't find one online that is as cute, to post here.

fava plant in bloom

While in Monterey it was quite fun to revisit the Cooper-Molera House so soon after our last visit, but long enough that the plants were further along in spring, as this fava bean plant with its black-and-white blossoms. There were even little bean pods forming lower on the plant.

Another Protea

cistus

Pacific Grove is called Butterfly Town, because of the Monarch butterflies that migrate there every year. I've long had a vicarious and romantic attachment to the place thanks to the book by Leo Politi, and now it has become a direct relationship with the same feelings.

Updated adobe cottage in Pacific Grove

The weather we experienced was surprisingly mild in spite of frequent short showers of drizzle or light rain -- but I might find it difficult to stay long where the sun doesn't show itself often enough to keep the spirits up.

Flowers seem to glow more vividly under grey skies, though, and that makes up for the drear a little bit. People paint their houses in cheerful colors. And peace and quiet count for a lot. 

The Pacific Ocean is not always peaceful, but it was fairly calm this week. The tsunami from Japan didn't make a big wave here. You can't see them, but two otters are playing in this picture. And peace and serenity and love were all playing some quiet music in our hearts.