The Sad Porch (Part One)

It is true that I did not completely lead with my practical mind when I bought Ruth (my house). I'm a romantic about houses, and of course that's dangerous to one's sanity and bank account. 

One of her many charms is that she has a screen porch. Screen porch! For Midwesterners, this is a short form of saying "my house allows me to be outside in the summer without being eaten alive by mosquitoes." Also, "my house has a room that becomes a walk-in refrigerator/freezer just in time for the holidays, and thank goodness, because there's no room to put Aunt Lydia's cranberry jello salad in the fridge."

That's where the practical side ends. Screen porches on old houses should also be like a misty, out-of-focus photo from a back issue of Victoria Magazine. They should have vases of fresh flowers, and white wicker, and ladies with dark hair (that would be me) reading Edith Wharton while sipping lemonade from vintage glassware. 

But I have described my screen porch's quality and construction before, thusly: two guys got drunk on a couple of cases of Natty Light and decided to build a screen porch out of whatever shit they could find laying around. 

About as far from Edith Wharton and fresh flowers as you can get. Add to this a smelly fungal sponge of an old carpet, and sickly shades of "old bruise" mauve and dirty pink beige paints, and it was pretty depressing. And frequently in the beginning used to store stuff during ongoing home-improvement issues elsewhere. 

I am not proud. 

I would also like to mention, for posterity, the clusters of fake plastic ivy the previous owners hung up there to make it festive. 

Over the last five years, I was basically putting lipstick on the pig by painting out the murky purple with leftover paint from other projects, and telling myself that keeping it clean and tidy out there was enough. 

But I saw rot on the exterior siding of the porch and knew it was just a matter of time before I was going to have to get serious about it. Then along came the new dude in my life, and one day this summer Tom took a crowbar to the outside of it. 

It was just as bad as I thought, and worse. And it ended up being what we (and by we I mostly mean he, because he totally wore the superhero cape on this one) worked on for the better part of our summer weekends. 

I'll be back with a progress/part two post soon!

Postcard from Galena, Illinois

I'm weirdly untraveled in the area of the Midwest where I grew up--Iowa and surrounding states. My childhood experience didn't include much travel at all, and then I lived elsewhere--Seattle and Detroit--for most of my adult life. So in many ways I'm more familiar with the Pacific Northwest and Michigan than the place that's supposed to be home. 

Like I said. Weird. But also, I've discovered, a fun and unique perspective. I get to be a tourist and make discoveries in a place that has already long been home to me. Best of both worlds. 

Tom and I had planned a long summer weekend trip away months before July, but I'd set aside the vacation days and almost completely forgot about it. And then my aunt passed away, and I just didn't have any enthusiasm for anything for awhile. I didn't realize that we'd forgotten to make reservations until the week before. 

Oops. Since Galena, Illinois is a huge tourist destination, that was nearly a deal-breaking oversight. I lucked out with a room at a local B&B, though, and it turned out to be a happy accident. It was uncharacteristic of my usual over-planning self, though. 

To me the best part of vacation is not the destination so much as it is just being pried away from my usual routines and obligations. I need that, because I get too attached to them. And even though I'm as big of a homebody as anyone, sometimes I just want to get gone, you know? Besides, if I never get outside my own city limits and never hit the highways, I miss stuff like this: 

Yep. That's a plastic life-sized skeleton torso (with eyeballs) mounted to the back of a semi-cab. I have no idea. Mascot? Warning? Joke?

Galena, Illinois is a river town that used to be a major steamboat port before the railroad expanded west, and now has a large downtown historic district, boutiques, restaurants, B&Bs, wineries....in other words, a touristy tourist trap tricked out in Victorian-era gingerbread trim. 

Which I don't mind if you see it for what it is, eyes open. Also, tourist trap or not, I'm a huge history geek. It doesn't matter where I go, I'm gonna pry some history lesson out of it. And Galena's are pretty good as history lessons go. It includes a former home of a U.S. President, Ulysses S. Grant. 

I'm a reader of presidential biography, I'm always keenly interested in visiting presidential historic sites, and this one was one I honestly didn't know about. Grant lived in many states over his lifetime, and this home in Galena was gifted to him by the community after he became a civilian again, post-Civil War. His family lived in it for only a very short time before he became President, and afterwards returned only rarely. 

I liked Grant's taste in chairs. The green velvet armchair was so beloved it traveled with him on tours. 

The day we toured the Grant home was broiling hot and humid, the house was only open on guided tours, timed every 15 minutes, and packed full every group. I was annoyed that we were pushed along, and annoyed at having to look at everything over the shoulders of other tour group members. I'm arrogant enough to not want to be one of the unwashed masses, and unwilling to admit that I'm just as unwashed as the next person. Sigh. Also, I just don't like crowds. 

We took a selfie while we waited for our turn at the guided tour. We bought hats in downtown Galena because it was so hot. Our children were not amused by this development as shared on social media. We, however, thought we were stinkin' adorable. 

One of the saving graces of the downtown area on this hot weekend was Galena Brewing Company. 

I wish I could say the same for the rest of the restaurants and bars in the area. They were high-priced, mediocre mostly, and getting away with it because, well, lots of tourists packed in a small town with few choices. 

If the eats weren't the best, I could have easily spent an entire afternoon photographing all the architectural interest.

There is a lovely city park on the Galena River, named after their presidential citizen. 

With a restored Victorian fountain....

And a pedestrian bridge over the river to the downtown area. 

The historic neighborhoods were intensely pretty

Our B&B ended up being a perfect choice, even if it was last minute. I had a serious case of garden envy. 

The breakfasts there were large and excellent, and made up a great deal for the less-than-great restaurant situation elsewhere. (Readers can find the B&B's website here.)

Did any of my readers and friends take get-away weekends this summer? Where? What are some favorite places in your area? 

July

Photo by Dyan Millsaps Shirley. All rights reserved. 

In July, Karen, my aunt and godmother, died.

The cemetery in July is blindingly hot and bright, with sunshine reflecting off white curtains of swift wind-driven clouds, and off Missouri farm hillsides so rustling and vibrant with growth they sigh and gleam like the flanks of living animals.

The day we laid her to rest was just like that. The heat and light were brutal, especially when grief-- the collective grief of husband and daughters and grandchildren, sisters and cousins, friends and townspeople-- made us all wan and weak in the face of our loss.

Even so I could not think, if such a cruel thing had to be endured, that it could happen at any other time of the year. Karen was a farmer and the wife of a farmer. She loved the land and all good green growing things. She was at her happiest then, it always seemed, and it was then that she was in her element. In that sense it was a blessing we were able to say our goodbyes to her with that high and handsome land all around, in the fullness of the summer season.

She had two daughters and eight nieces and nephews, and she had a heart big enough to mother us all. She spent so much of her life in July and other months too, welcoming us up the gravel driveway to the farm, cooking and baking for us, sending us to the hen house, helping us find the new kittens, picking hay out of our hair, making us wash our dirty bare feet at the back door hose, scolding us, patting our backs, making dresses for our dances and quilts for our beds. It was only right that we all made it back for her one more time, and we did. I wish we'd done it more often in recent years, but we made the big mistake of growing up, and the intricacies of our own adult lives carried us down that gravel road, but not back. I suppose this is what grief is mostly made up of. Regret.

She had the elegant shoulders of a slender 1930s movie star, but she wore plaid short-sleeved shirts and jeans and sneakers and perpetually carried enamel pans, full of vegetables for dinner that night or cherries for canning or kitchen scraps for the hogs. Her garden was eternally enormous, and with every passing year more and more flowers--cleome and cosmos and sunflowers--budged in with the asparagus and tomatoes and beans. It grew a little wilder too, with the neat rows of the past run a little ragged and butterflies, barn swallows, and martins skimming the air. It wasn't a competition in her mind, though. Earthy potatoes and full-blown roses both held equal glory in her worldview.

Because Aunt Karen never passed up a moment to notice. Beauty. Creation. Good things. She pointed out bluebird nests, or strawberry blossoms, or wildflowers under the oak trees in the pasture, or a new baby calf, or the dark gloss of healthy midsummer corn. "Just look at that. Look at that. Isn't that pretty?" Being with her was a near constant invitation to notice the fine things contained in the everyday. It didn't ever occur to me that my whole life she was gently teaching me the most important lesson of all. Not that tired concept of "gratitude", which speaks so much of obligation; but the vocabulary of an open heart, words that we could all use more of in our increasingly cynical world. Wonder. Fascination. Joy.

I have always loved gardening--thanks, of course, to her-- and now it has become my solace in grieving her. I feel near her there, digging in the dirt. I thought of her days after her death, when my dirty fingers patted neatly-petaled globes of zinnias. I thought of her weeks later, when I filled up the bird bath. I thought of her in August, when I was stooped head and shoulders into the tomato patch, filling the giant stainless steel mixing bowl with them. I think of her every time a hummingbird flits too close, bravery inversely proportional to emerald size. Now bees and butterflies swarm the asters in October, and still I'm thinking of her.

But thinking of my aunt only carries me so far. Even the stories I could tell others, and I could tell plenty, will bear fainter and fainter witness as the years pass from this sad July. In the end, I think the only way to really honor the aunt I miss so much is to absorb parts of her, sink the good I knew of her into the marrow of my bones, so that those things I loved about her become an actual part of me. And for her, to honor her, I'm going to touch the shoulder of the person next to me when I see a pink sunset, a fat bumblebee, a sparkly stream, and invite them the way Aunt Karen did, to see with an open heart. Just look. Look at that. 

Return to April

I'm going to take liberties with the timeline, and toss the blog back to April. You can do that in blogger world. I wish you could do that in real life, too. Just a little, now and then.

I've had a lot of emotional adjustments to make this summer. Some were very good, and some were bad, and some were in between. But while I'm trying to make sense of them enough to write about them (and I need to write about them), I felt like April was a good, safe place on the calendar to visit.

In April, Tom and I went to Missouri to see my Dad. My sister Dyan came up from Atlanta, and we made a long weekend of it in the Ozarks.

This is the view from my Dad's place, which we call "The Hill." I wish this was a painting.

The Ozark hills in April are made up of tree bark and green mists and blue sky, mostly. But it also has dozens of tiny wonders you'll miss if you fail to pay attention. You need to get up close and personal with an Ozark spring to really know it like you should.

New oak leaves are as rosy and beautiful as any spring flower.

And mayflower is hidden under its own great green silk umbrella:

Blue-eyed grass. It should be the name of an Emmylou Harris album, shouldn't it? 

We visited Wilson's Creek National Battlefield. Ancestors fought in this battle (you can learn more here). We keep returning, partly because my Dad's a military history buff, partly because we ran a race as a family here (read about it here), and partly because it's just one of the most indescribably pretty pieces of land in southern Missouri--rolling hills and winding creek, oak savannah and tallgrass prairie. Below is the Ray farmstead. It is sobering to realize so many men sacrificed their lives in a place so beautiful, on a hot day in August 1861. 

Dad and Tom are in the photo, two of the men I love the most in this world. They met for the first time that weekend. They got on well. (Whew.) Then again, I sensed they would. Some things fall into place like they were meant to happen all along. 

I have a fascination for stone fireplaces. I'm not sure why, but I always come home with photos of them. 

The furnishings in the Ray farmstead museum are so simple it feels serene. 

Local volunteers and museum docents are dedicated to bringing history to life here. This gentleman told us about life on the battlefield for a Union soldier. 

I was fascinated by the design, angles, light and shadow of this split rail fence.

And the bark of this chestnut tree:

And sunlight filtered through sassafras leaves.

Sassafras light. Those are two words I've been playing with since I took that picture, bouncing around in my head. What do they mean? I don't know. Still, I like the sound of them, paired with the memory of that April weekend. It's a good alternative title for spring in the Ozarks.