Spending time with people of different age groups can be so insightful and enlightening. When they are older than us, they can reach out a helping hand to guide us into our future decades. They help us with not only their hard earned wisdoms, but also with examples of their successes and their challenges. When they are younger than we are, they can remind us of our more youthful goals and ideals and even help us to remember how to have fun and to play.
Frank and I had a delightful 4th of July. We hosted a simple afternoon garden party, a potluck, with just a few neighbors, friends and family. In hindsight I realized, that in our guests, we had quite a nice representation of nearly a one hundred year span of time. Let me introduce them to you now.
Over the years, we’ve grown quite close to our next door neighbor, Dorothy. She grew up in the South and has many a tale to tell about situations she has encountered in her lifetime, like being one of only a very few women and the only black woman in her classes at teachers college. Not too long ago, her doctor talked her into getting the shingles shot, as a preventative measure. The next morning she woke up blind and in terrible pain with shingles in her eyes. After several years, a corneal transplant has returned her vision, in part, to one eye. She, Frank and I meet out on the front lawn, several times a week to enjoy our eye exercises together. We take a zoom class taught by “Your eye wellness guy,” Richard Miller, to naturally improve our vision and prevent visual decline.
We have a little rental in the back and our tenant, Hugh, has become a lovely friend. He made Lasagna, in a toaster oven, with only one cooktop to brown the meats, heat the sauce and boil the noodles. It was a mastery of planning and timing to have the dish ready right on the spot at twelve o’clock.
A few decades ago, Frank and I experienced eighteen deaths in twenty-four months. It was a crash course in grief and at times we were totally overwhelmed. I turned to Cal Poly, our local university for help. They have a student job service to help connect community members who need a little help with students who are looking for a little work. So, into our lives waltzed Loretta Joy Hartwell. Just her name alone gives a pretty good picture of who she is. She actually skipped out to her car after we completed our initial interview. And that was the start of a life long friendship. I consider her to be my adopted daughter. She has had the good fortune to meet and marry her own true love, Ross. And they now have two beautiful daughters, Bea and Gigi. I was deeply blessed with the honor of being present for both of their births.
Our nephew, Brett, came to school here at Cal Poly, just about twenty years ago. And fortunately for us, and just like us, he decided to stay. Now, his life has been graced with Lauren. And she has graced all of ours with her warm connection and deep understanding. Both of them have jumped right into our community spreading their love and sharing guidance with the wisdoms of their young years.
Darling, I call “Darling,” because that is actually her last name, and a perfect fit. She and I met fresh out of college having both been accepted for the same job. Standing out front at the Agricultural Commissioner’s Office, we learned later, that there were two positions being filled for Inspector Biologists. At the end of the day, I suggested that we meet for a beer. But, since neither of us were that crazy about beer, we went to her house instead and ate mushrooms, that she had grown herself, sautéed in butter. Then I laid on her hardwood floor, under her grand piano, while she played Chopin, the Nocturne in E Flat Major.
Einar floated gently into our lives at a time when I thought I might not survive my thirties. A tall Swede, and a technical master, he was overseeing the recordings of my soon-to-become spiritual mentor’s channeling sessions. Jana Massey, who has since passed on, used to come through our town every few months and brought us “messages from spirit.” Einar, Frank and I grew to love and cherish each other from that beginning and now, we chat or see each other almost everyday. He is our main go-to-man for all things technical and the number one person I turn to for wise counsel during spiritual emergencies.
Dorothy and Einar chatted for quite a while on the fourth. Frank made fish tacos, the best that Ross had ever tasted. And I served my famous vinegar drink: ice cold sparkling water with a dash of Bragg’s raw apple cider vinegar, a splash of vanilla, a few drops of orange extract and one drop of stevia. Yum!
The two girls and I dined on the little benches around the bird bath and then up on the deck for desert, homemade, neighborhood grown, fresh baked apricot pie. Einar provided the half gallon of vanilla Häagen-Dazs. “Soul food,” he calls it. We had salads, fresh fruit and sauces and we even went up in the attic, to look at the puzzles and try on some Halloween costumes and plan our next tea party, with Lauren, up there.
Then it was on to fireworks. We started with my favorite, Dancing Ground Flowers. The girls, Hugh and I had to wait for any passing cars and then huddled tightly together in the middle of the street until lit match successfully touched fuse. And then we’d drop it, get away! and watch the show. Ross and Brett both missed this as the lure of our twin reclining easy chairs called out to them to rest and digest. They delighted in the invitation to a tiny little nap, followed by just another tiny little snack from the potluck table before joining the rest of us again for games on the lawn.
Thanks to Frank, the lawn was in perfect condition for a casual version of Boccee Ball. After watching a round or two, even Dorothy joined in. Having always been very athletic before her blindness, she set the standard and demonstrated a technique for double handed holds that we all started to use in the next game we played.
Brett and Lauren not only supplied the fireworks, but they also brought a new to us but ancient game called Kubb. I guess the Vikings used to play it. Kubb is a game of skill and strategy, that has been likened to chess. And like so many fun times, it involves throwing little sticks at bigger sticks and is perfect for groups that like to play on lawns.
We finished off the day writing our names with sparklers and burning “snakes,” those funny growing ash tendrils that get longer and longer after being lit. And because of that ‘potluck principle of abundance,’ everyone took home leftovers: salad, tacos and pieces of pie for later.
It occurred to me this morning, while thinking back on the day, that this lovely little garden party with it’s many pretty tables and small bouquets of flowers was graced with someone from almost every decade of life. Little Gigi, age eight, was under ten. Bea, just ten, covered ten to twenty. Hugh at twenty-five, filled the twenty to thirty spot. Loretta and Lauren, thirty to forty. Ross and Brett, forty to fifty. Here we skip a decade, fifty to sixty. But Frank and I, rising not quite yet to seventy, filled the sixty to seventy year span. Dorothy covered seventy to eighty. And Einar, at ninety-two, filled the ninety to one hundred decade. As Frank said, “It was a Century of Friends.”
Just before the final guests departed, Hugh, who had already returned to his studio, began to play the flute. He is quite accomplished. And like Darling, he has a Powell. They have a gold lining which brings a warm and round tone. We all quietly stepped out on the patio to listen as the sweet and lovely notes floated all around us, curling overhead on the air.
Thanks for joining in with us. How rich to live a life with so many friends of such a broad range of ages. What a beautiful life it is and what simple pleasures we’ve all now shared together.
Josephine Laing
© 2024
