Greetings from the non-Midwest

Life keeps unfolding in bizarre and compelling ways, always keeping me guessing. I went and helped my uncle out a bit, but haven't been able to bring myself to go back since.

I'm sitting at my messy kitchen table gearing up for a new phase of the day: the one where I go to the grocery store for a couple of items for dinner and the coming few days, then going to a dance class. Yum! Flageolet beans are soaking and a quick, barely-kneaded bread dough is sitting in a warm oven doing its yeasty thing.

Daily life is about the most basic of things. Yesterday a trip downtown on bikes turned dramatic when I made a mistake that caused an accident. Luckily we weren't in heavy traffic, but there were some scrapes and freakouts, and justified mistrust. But my poor kid might have felt worse when I accused myself of being a terrible mother out loud. "Where's the tissue box, Mom?" she asked, brimming over before she could find it.

Today I had fun making lunch: gluten-free mac and cheese from scratch, with apples, carrots, and brown rice chips. Delish, all of it, and everyone liked and ate most everything, which is always satisfying.

A couple of days ago, we returned home from Iowa, where the heat wasn't bad and the company was good. I still feel I stick out like a sore thumb there, because I seem to have come from folks who were still headed west long after these folks' ancestors settled in the Midwest. (Just a point of clarification for non-Coloradoans: Colorado is not the Midwest in our minds -- at least not until you get far enough out on the plains, in the eastern part of the state that you can't see the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains.)

Often communication was easiest through the pets that circled us and begged for scraps from willing feeders. (I joked that dogs think I don't know their names because I'm always telling them, "Dream on.") One of the relatives spent most of her time treating her dogs like toddlers, taking every step with them and attending to their every need as any good mother would. And instead of being horrified, I found it sweet, and only a little sad that she didn't feel as comfortable with the people around her. But they all have a way of not talking about things that is, shall I say, a bit alien to me.

Of course I feel I am alien to them in my analytical qualities. I am always thinking of situations on many levels, trying to see context while trying to hear what people are really saying. In short, a lot of people would say I think too much, have too much time on my hands. Maybe, but I have something I want to make with it. Something I need to say. Because if I try to spill out all these complicated feelings about the food industry right there in their heartland kitchens, it won't be pretty. I can't do that to them. There's an interesting set of choices at work: it's okay to put one's energy into remodeling a bathroom or a porch, and then to talk about one's choices and travails, but they're not going to talk about that person's parents, or this person's tragedies.

All the same, it's good to see everyone up close, to smile and laugh and eat together until you want to burst. It's good to know we're all just who we are, and it's fun for me to be in a group where the grandma sits at the top of this small mountain of people. Events like that involving my own grandparents have been sparse indeed. I can't fill one hand with instances. Amazing. And here's this lovely lady who's had kids and grandkids and still laughs and gets around at 89.

And these aren't folks who are going to let any of theirs fall through the cracks, either. I saw that in how everyone looks after the youngest, who has some special needs, shall we say, but whose community is rising up to meet her.

Aw, jeez, it's raining again!

This could be the last time

We spent the weekend camping, only about an hour away but we definitely felt like we got a break from the usual routines. It's good to take those breaks, to go and hang out for a while. To settle in and talk and play and eat and plan and joke around together. I have a friend in a group who has had a tradition of going camping together with others in her group yearly, and my friend is bitterly disappointed that so many of her peers no longer want to camp. I understand her feelings -- I would be sad if I didn't go at least a couple of times a year. (My in-laws really had that one figured out -- they took their kids camping and roadtripping all the time. My father, too, knew of the natural wonders that awaited us in our own backyard; my mother was unfamiliar with the entire notion of family camping as I grew up knowing it.)

Fourth of July Campground kept coming up in conversations over this past weekend, because one of our camping party had just been there a week earlier. The talk about that lovely spot brought back memories of a picnic with my grandmother when I was around 10.

My grandmother had driven to our house from her home in Littleton, a rare event in itself, as we usually trekked to her for Sunday visits and dinners and celebrations. At our house, we loaded up the car with food and drinks and blankets and piled into her massive, white Cadillac Coupe de Ville convertible, the roof down. We laughed and kidded and slid around the curves on the red leatherette bench seats as we went up Boulder Canyon, passed Nederland, and then turned off the Peak-to-Peak Highway.

It was a time when I was realizing there was a lot I liked about being outside. I was warming to Colorado (having grown up in both Colorado and California) and found it a thrill to be up in the mountains with my grandmother, Oma, and my family and aunt and uncles, even if she moved slowly and couldn't walk very far (I remember swollen ankles being a perpetual problem for her). We spread out our picnic blanket in a flat, grassy clearing, and everyone scurried around, helping Oma get comfortable. I remember the greens of the wild grasses, the rosebushes, the quaking aspen leaves, and the scent of the fire my father and brother built from the fallen pine branches and logs we'd gathered.

I don't remember anything substantive about that day: no revelatory conversations, nor secret habits revealed on a hike. I just remember a joyful sense of being in the sun, being in the right place with the right people at the right time.

Just a couple of years later, Oma died in a car accident in Ireland, when my aunt was driving. That might have been the last time, then, that Oma had enjoyed an excursion in the mountains. I missed her this weekend, all over again.

We're all in sync

I was talking with a friend today and he said he hadn't had "the most relaxing summmer," elaborating that he'd helped make elder-care arrangements for someone, helped some folks get married, and helped some other folks stay married. I've been noticing, though, that I don't know anyone who has had a relaxing summer. I wouldn't call mine relaxing, f'r instance.

I think that lack of downtime this summer, though, is more than a result of our overscheduling tendencies. I tend to run with a fairly high-achieving crowd, I suppose, but still, it's not just the ambitious and committed -- it seems to me that everyone's world has changed tempo.

Certainly I'm not the only one floating this theory, but I think this is like women whose monthly cycles synchronize after they spend a lot of time together. September 11 was like hitting a reset button for everyone, not only the folks in the U.S. Everyone had to think about the unthinkable at the same moment; I believe that affected everyone around the world in a way that few unique events ever do, and in a way that we have all been collectively reacting to ever since, which I think has synchronized the world psyche. The prospect and achievement of the moon landing united all of humanity in a positive way; 9/11 had the same effect but in a negative way. Now I perceive a major busy uptick in our collective, long-term reaction.

Oh, it's so easy to generalize about everyone. But do you know anyone who has had a relaxing summer? I didn't think so.