I played the piano today for the first time since my mom died. Somehow I knew it would be tough. For the last couple of years with few exceptions, the only times I’ve played have been for her during our FaceTime calls or when I was visiting her.
Mom was a gifted piano player. She taught me and my siblings to play. She’d always try to get me to show more emotion in my playing when I was young, but I was shy of exposing myself in that way. She knew what was in my heart and wanted me to find a way to express it with music.
This afternoon, my piano teacher sat invisibly by me as I played through some new hymns; I could almost hear her encouraging me along the way as I stumbled through a few of the harder ones. Then the tears in my eyes made it too hard to see the page and the music ended.
Deadlines are nice things, aren’t they? I committed to getting these seven little paintings all done before Sunday and they’re rolling right out on schedule so far. Considering that I haven’t so much as touched a paintbrush for months, it seems that I need more deadlines in my life.
These three will also have Bible verses written on them, but I don’t think they’ll be as easy to guess as one of my readers did for the first three. Hint: the painting on the left will NOT have the word “light” in it. Tricksy!
I was trying to decide whether or not to initial and date them on the front like I usually do, but since these are pretty much just copies of someone else’s work, I decided to do that on the back.
I’ll most likely initial and date this post before deleting it in the morning.
I went on an old-fashioned photography walk yesterday, the kind I used to do regularly. The sun was setting and bestowing upon the world that rich, dusky light that makes our hearts soar and brings a joy that is inextricably mixed with longing.
I kept walking and the sun kept setting and the camera kept capturing. The air was crisp and cold; my hands were un-mittened and feeling the shock of wintry-ness – it is here, already?
The geese flew overhead on an urgent mission to get to warmer climes. Farewell until we meet again!
The corn fields have been shorn, leaving some odds and ends in the grass that will no doubt be a happy circumstance for some critters.
And the sun kept setting and I kept walking and my cold hands kept taking pictures.
Praise God from whom all blessings flow…
Can I get an “amen”?
When the sun sets, the blog post will sink below the horizon.
Now that we’re back and I have space in my mind for things I couldn’t make room for before, I’ve been working on a new watercolor project. It’s going to be a series of seven paintings, each with a Bible verse on it.
Three down, four to go and then the lettering. I really procrastinated on this project, so it feels good to get it started. I wish I could tell you that I came up with these paintings all by my little old self, but they are each just copies of things I found on Pinterest. Some people paint, and other people copy those people.
I’ll probably taking the masking tape off this post in the morning.
I didn’t plan to be absent from my blog for so long, but here we are. With my mother’s death in early September and our youngest son’s wedding in late October, these have been busy and emotional days.
I’m looking forward to getting back in the writing groove, but right now I’ve got to cook up some noodles for supper, so writing will have to wait.
I’ll probably delete this in the morning, just like always.
I’ve completely neglected any sort of artistic endeavors for the last few months. A friend helped me learn how to make sourdough bread and I thought, “I’ll paint a loaf of sourdough bread for her!” It felt good to be back in the watercolor groove, but I had a hard time with it. I asked my husband what he thought the painting was of and he guessed a starfish on a rock. Ha ha! Well, he’s not really wrong – it kinda looks like that. Maybe it’s a starfish eating a loaf of sourdough bread.
Here’s how my first loaf of sourdough turned out, by the way:
It’s an all-day proposition so I haven’t made any since then, but my phone nags me once a week about the need to feed the starter.
Gotta feed that blog starter in the morning or discard it.
Pro Tip: Don’t go to the Lake Vermillion State Park entrance for this hike. Follow the signs for the Soudan Mine Tour, which you will not be taking. Pro Tip: Save some energy for the last quarter mile of the hike. Oh, and the Hiking Club booklet will tell you that this is a 2.5 mile hike, a bald-faced lie. One of the first signs you see tells it like it is: 2.9 miles. So who cares about four-tenths of a mile? Yours truly.
The drive up to the Soudan Mine was beautiful: blue skies smilin’ at me, nothin’ but blue skies do I see. (If you don’t hear Willie Nelson’s reedy nasally twang singing those words, you’ve missed the boat somewhere in life, and I’m not sure how you can make up for it at this point. Get some help.) All along the way we were seeing the fiery reds and yellows of trees here and there starting to turn. We stopped in Virginia for a picnic lunch at Olcott Park. Right after we sat down, an albino squirrel came over and posed for photos. I’ve never seen one before – have you?
It was a charming park, complete with conservatory, water fountain, full playground area, picnic tables, ball park and concession stands and a couple tree stumps that had been carved into monkeys and bears. Bonus points for the cemetery right next to the park.
We got to the location of the hike around 1:30 and it was 80 degrees. Pro Tip: These are not ideal hiking conditions for people who identify as Wimpy. We aren’t ruled by Pro Tips, however, so we set off with cheerful hearts in spite of the fact that I forgot my knee huggers and had decided to skip the hiking poles, too. I must have thought I was young again.
Awww…cute little guy!
I found an old friend right away: Mr. Blue Aster. He’s the kind of flower that’s the last to leave the party when fall weather comes strolling along, way after all the others have gone to bed yawning.
We talked about other questions we wished we’d asked when we were in the visitor center and decided that to avoid more socializing we’d just look up the information on our phones. This prompted me to wax philosophical about how being able to look things up instead of talking to people was impoverishing us. At least that’s what I meant to say. Instead, I said “Using our phones impovers…impovers? No, that’s not right.” Kris supplied the word “impoverishes” and I mourned the impovering of my vocabulary as I get older.
Sign, sign, everywhere a sign; Blockin’ out the scenery, breakin’ my mind… (more music for you from the 1970’s)
The fall foliage provided a lot of eye candy, so much so that I couldn’t stop taking photographs. This was akin to the dewy spider webs that entranced me so much on a previous hike. I showed amazing restraint though, in that I only took about 20 photos of fall leaves instead of the 2 million that I wanted to take.
If you’ve read a lot of my hiking blog posts, you’ll have noted that Lord of the Rings references creep in on a regular basis, usually provided by that good husband of mine. I said, “Hey, you haven’t used a Lord of the Rings reference lately,” to which he replied, “Yes I did – I just told you the other day that (so-and-so) sounded just like Bilbo Baggins.” I had to tell him that didn’t count – it had to be while we were hiking. Immediately after this, we spotted some leaves that I observed looked like they’d been touched by Sauron. The obligatory LOTR reference portion of this post has been completed.
We were really warming up quite a bit as we walked the hilly trails, but it was hard to get too distraught because brilliant red leaves were everywhere. I decided to make a meme. One must keep one’s mind gainfully occupied while hiking. You can decide whether or not my mind was gainfully occupied or just wasting valuable brain cells.
The signs, they are a changin’. (If you don’t hear Bob Dylan’s rough and ready voice singing that line even though I changed one of the words, see above about getting some help. Hearing the Simon and Garfunkel version is an acceptable substitute.) Yes, there’s a new design on the horizon for the hiking club signs, The old one with its hiker silhouette is being upgraded to a hiking shoe. I don’t know – is it an upgrade? What do you think? Kris said he thought the old drawing looked like something my Dad would have drawn. He’s right!
Kris noticed that as we walked along, we were seeing lots of stones on the trail, but the black ones all seemed to have moisture on them. A mystery to ponder, that. I saw a sordid mess on the ground that turned out to be a mushroom that was past its glory days, but it could just as well have been carnage from the old “blood in tooth in claw” motif of the wilderness.
There were lots of red-striated rocks along the way. We assumed the red layers were iron, but found out later that they were actually jasper. Interesting!
We finally came back to the road that would lead us to our car, the last one-quarter mile of the hike. It was all uphill in the blazing sun and I had to stop a few times just to give my pounding heart a moment to catch up. I couldn’t help but think of Needlenose Ned in the movie “Groundhog Day” telling Phil Connors to watch that last step (into a deep puddle) – “It’s a doozy!” So here’s my warning to you: Watch that last quarter mile – it’s a DOOZY!
It took us about 90 minutes to do the hike. We went back to the visitor center to use the bathrooms and to ask the staff some more questions. She was very knowledgable and added a lot to our understanding of the Iron Range region of Minnesota. Here’s a few things she told us:
The Soudan area began to be mined for iron in 1882, going underground in 1889. In 1963 the mine was closed. The type of iron there was “hematite,” whereas other areas held “taconite,” from which it’s cheaper to extract the iron. Over 70% of the iron used for making steel comes from Minnesota’s Mesabi Iron Range region.
Knee Score: 7 out of 10. Lots of up and down and at the end, lots of up. By the way, according to the Strava app, my top speed during this hike was over 9 miles per hour. Dear friends, this is the first time I’ve had reason to doubt Strava. I cannot think of any time during this hike in which I was loping along at 9 miles per hour.
I’ve written occasionally in this blog about my mother, especially these last couple of years as I sought to find a way to enter into the world of dementia that she inhabited. Music was always the connecting point for her and I often ended our FaceTime calls by singing “Down in the Valley.”
Hang your head over, hear the wind blow.
At first, she used to chime in with me, bringing in a harmony. I loved it. As time went by, I was more often singing solo. If I couldn’t get any conversation out of her, I’d sometimes play the piano and sing folk songs and hymns, or I’d get out the Gilbert and Sullivan songbook and tackle a few of our favorites from their operettas.
Hear the wind blow, dear, hear the wind blow. Hang your head over, hear the wind blow.
She used to be a choir director and never lost her sense of rhythm and timing. If she couldn’t sing along, she’d “direct” me, her arms and hands moving with the music. Many times she’d say, “Very good!” or “Well done!” even when we both knew she could play the piano much better than I. 😊 But I could feel that wind blowing. I knew how this story was going to end – I just didn’t know when.
Roses love sunshine, violets love dew.
After we all grew up and built our own lives, Mom would occasionally mourn the loss of feeling needed. While it’s true that adult children don’t need their mothers in the same way we do as children, there’s never a time when we don’t need them in some way. I told her that, but I’m not sure I convinced her.
Angels in heaven know I love you.
When I needed her enthusiasm, she always gave it. When I needed her encouragement, she always gave it. If I needed her sympathies, she had storehouses of it to pour over me. When I needed advice about some project I was working on, she always gave it and then some! When I asked her to contribute her musical expertise to our children’s homeschool experience, she came through. I could always count on her to be in my corner. All through my adult life, she corresponded with me, a special bond between the two of us who both loved to write. When I was in my 50’s I got kidney stones and found out why some people say the pain is worse than labor. While one of my sons went to the pharmacy to pick up the pain pills, I called my Mom. She picked up the phone, and I burst into tears and after an initial alarm from her (What? What’s going on?), she gave loving support and soothing words. No, you don’t outgrow your need for your mother.
Know I love you, dear, know I love you. Angels in heaven know I love you.
She passed away a little over a week ago after a week of lingering. My siblings and I and some of our extended family spent as much time as we could at her bedside for the long goodbye. She wasn’t conscious, but we hoped she could hear as we talked and laughed, told “Mom stories,” held her hand, played some of her favorite music for her, kissed her and told her how much we loved her. And then she was gone. The wind blew right through that valley and our heads hung low, indeed.
We’ve been out in the canoe a few times in the last month, finally exploring local lakes and rivers. Our first voyage was through shallow channels that in less droughty conditions would constitute a river. Our paddles frequently met with the sandy bottom. I saw some odd little logs that turned out to be a friendly group of disgusting carp. Each time we came around a bend, we startled some contingent of wildlife – deer, lots of egrets and herons, a few ducks and even an otter (which I never saw – I’m taking Kris’s word for it). Many, many times I wished I could have brought my big camera with the zoom lens along, but it’s too risky. We keep our phones in a waterproof bag so it’s not always easy to get photos at all. At one point, the river got so shallow that Kris had to get out and pull us along. Visions of “The African Queen” danced through my head, but I made sure the leeches from that scene weren’t dancing in there, too. Toward the end, I had to get out and help pull, which ruined my sense of being carried along like royalty.
Our second time out, we explored a lake instead. After going under a bridge, we came to a tree-covered island that turned out to be a roosting place for hundreds of large waterfowl. Very cool. We discovered that we could keep our cameras in sandwich bags and take photos right through the bag. Since our sandwich bags were green, this lent an interesting filmy look to the photos which I rather liked.
We were on the water by 8:00 this morning in the cool of the day, paddling in choppy water to start with and then making our way to the western side of the lake where we encountered millions of milfoil weeds and chased off a congregation of pelicans. We stuck close to the southern shore on the way back, a nice smooth ride with the sun rising higher and making us sweat a little. Our souls were fatter by the time we left our valiant little water steed and got back into the car.
Pelicans whose worship service we interruptedPoignant message on the dock
The earth is the LORD’S and the fulness thereof; the world and they that dwell therein.
Late on an August night, we ambled over to watch the blue moon rise over the corn fields. Meanwhile, the blue moon made its slow crawl up the sky and wondered what all the fuss was. And the LORD God said, “You are my faithful witness in the sky.”
We went back home, thankful for what our eyes could see, and also confident that people with much better cameras than ours would give the moon its proper glory.
And will this post get deleted in the morning? Ask the Blue Moon.
They come and perch on our bird bath, like dignified and well-dressed guests in need of a place to rest their weary feet. I don’t see them bathing very often, just perching, watching and thinking birdie thoughts. They don’t stay long. I am always glad of their brief patronage and hope our bird bath gets good reviews since I put in fresh water daily.
One day I looked out to see a different kind of critter perching on the compost fence, but with no dignity whatsoever. He had a hard time balancing and looked more like a clown working the high trapeze act at the circus to get a few laughs. I gave them to him.
Muses brought to you by Lynniebeemuseoday.
I suggest you perch on this blog post in the morning before it disappears.
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