"Hence! home, you idle creatures, get you home: Is this a holiday?"
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
"Julius Caesar Act I, scene 1)
Some years ago, I read a novel by the author, Richard Ford entitled "Independence Day", a Pulitzer Prize winner and a story that follows the protagonist through the titular holiday weekend and the challenges in his personal life. It is a pastoral meditation on a man reaching middle age and assessing his place in life and the greater world in general. This blog, less reflective and skillful than Ford's, is about my Memorial Day weekend during a difficult time for everyone.
Julius Caesar got it right with the above quotation, very fitting, but even more so for our current times. When I saw all the photos of huge parties all over the country, his advice, sadly, went unheeded. Our weekend started off with a mutual decision to leave the old homestead and travel the 167 miles down to our country home in Cherry Valley, NY where we would be alone and social distancing would not be difficult at all. A long walk down a lonely country road would be just what the doctor ordered for cabin fever. Zoom would not even be an option as we have no internet service down there. FaceTime would be the order of the day if we were to socialize.
Upon arrival, we found we weren't alone. On the beam above our front door was an avian maternity ward. On the left, a skittish mother robin, flying from her nest to a nearby tree, chirping at us angrily.
To the right (and a first for us), a rather large mourning dove who could hardly give a care about our presence. She was beautiful and statuesque, her black beads of an eye staring down at us. This set the precedent for the rest of the weekend where we would then enter the house through the garage door or the back door from the deck.
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| Mama Dove |
One thing that was obvious was the amount of work we would have to do in the garden and around the house, not having been there since New Year's Day. The nice brick border the family had built around the large garden had been overrun by the erosion of dirt burying my work. I spent hours doing the necessary archeology to uncover my objet d'art. Suzanne is the designated weeder and planter, finding the unwanted growth everywhere, bending and pulling...tedious work. Other tasks were putting out solar lights for the driveway, vacuuming, dusting, etc. I put up the hammock and Suzanne hung the beautiful Cosanti bell from Arizona that gives off a beautiful tone in the wind.
A long walk down the road to the pond to search for a heron rookery was non-productive as mother heron had not yet chosen to return to the spot from last season. We did meet a neighbor who lives down the road and chatted over a distance of the road's width. Nathan is a world class lumberjack who has competed around the world. It's nice to know some neighbors when your homes are so distant, you can't catch sight of them.
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| Our neighbor Nathan, from down the road, doing what he does! |
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| The local pond in recent years, photograph taken by our friend, Nancy Rice. |
We realized we needed to buy some plantings for our land so we figured a quick trip to the local Amish nursery, Shady Maple Produce, in the middle of nowhere would be a safe experience. We donned our masks and latex gloves and were off. Boy, were we wrong! It was quite busy and none of the staff had masks or gloves, the same for some of the customers, as well. We scarfed up a few plants, paid, and got out of there quickly. The sad thing was that many of the customers were elderly and, unfortunately, quite obese. Not to be pejorative, but, that is not too uncommon in our less prosperous rural areas that often have fallen on hard times.
Saturday came and we had heard that one of our favorite restaurants in the area, 204 Main Bar & Bistro, in Sharon Springs, was doing curbside pick-up. Only six miles away, the food would still be hot by the time we got home. I called to order and Jim, the bartender/waiter/wallpaper designer (his husband is the chef) texted me their menu for the day and I called back to pick out Szechuan Pork with Green Beans over Jasmine rice as well as Schnitzel with greens and a fried egg. As I pulled up in front of the restaurant later, Jim masked and gloved, came running out and placed it in the back seat of our car. Wow, was that a tasty meal and there were no leftovers. I texted Jim later in the evening to tell him how much we enjoyed it. He replied with three thumbs up.
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| 204 Main Bar & Bistro |
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| Dinner! |
The evenings were quiet and Suzanne and I occupied ourselves with reading, she on her I-pad, and me, as I'm won't to do, holding a real book! I finished a book that had me enthralled as I love American history and what's brought us to where we are today. "A Good American Family - The Red Scare and my Father" is an excellent read by David Maraniss, another Pulitzer Prize winner, about his family's journey through the terrible years of McCarthyism. My takeaways were 1. You could fight for your country's freedom against fascism and still be labeled a pariah... and 2. The courageous and important struggle we must maintain to assure Freedom of the Press... both very timely issues. It's a story also of how the strength of family bonds facing adversity is so important to us now.
Sunday afternoon, I received a pleasant FaceTime call from my "new" brother, Marc, checking in. He concerned me as he had been ill but, fortunately, seemed to be on the mend. After finally finding my brother after 74 years, I don't want anything to happen to him now! He always cheers me up and I hope he feels the same way.
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| Brother Marc and me and some of his family when I visited him in November in Virginia |
That evening, I BBQ'ed a nice flank steak with enough left over for open face steak sandwiches on Monday. Expecting the worse from holiday traffic, we were pleasantly surprised by the near-empty NY State Thruway all the way home. By our next visit, things will look better around the place, hopefully less weeds, and the robin and the dove will be new moms!
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