What a beautiful weekend! First, the Country Living Fair was amazing. I got to spent a good block of time with my friend and mentor, Janine Pettit of the Girl Camper podcast and goRVing fame. We did live broadcasts from the fair which was great fun. TOW-Wanda is ready to put away for the winter. Her water pump works fine according to the guy at the RV shop. It didn't work for me all summer. Go figure. Her bearings have been repacked and they rebuilt the wall behind the bed where the water leaked in because a seal was missing from when it was built.
The first thing I noticed as I arrived at the Country Living Fair yesterday was the number of women pulling wagons and wire grocery carts, prepared to haul off oodles of awesome stuff. Booth after booth of antiques and high quality arts and crafts spilled out in the pathways, beckoning you to come into the shady recesses of the vendor tents. Soaps, candles, jewelry, clothing, wall art, figurines, signs...it was a veritable cacophony of color and rust, lace and dust. And don't get me started on the food tents! Ice cream and honey and salsa and cobbler and burgers and pickles...it was enough to put me over the edge of my self-imposed dietary restrictions. But I was good. A cheeseburger, no bun. Fries with Sriracha salt. A roasted ear of corn. Yummmm.
In the 21 years of my second marriage, I can count on one hand the number of times I got a bouquet of fresh flowers for no reason. As a matter of fact, I can count on one finger. It happened once in all that time. I understand why. For one thing, we didn't have the money for it till the later years. For another, I was married to a man whose idea of romance was best demonstrated in his marriage proposal delivered during the commercial break of an Audie Murphy movie one Saturday afternoon.
I pulled TOW-Wanda away from the river yesterday. I had her all hooked up and I stood across the road in the field, debating. Should I walk over and stand on the deck one last time and soak up this view I have come to love or just move on? I chose to move on. I've known all along my time at the river was a gift with a shelf life. I got selfish...I wanted more. More time. More days languishing on the deck. More sights, sounds, and smells of life on the river. The bottom line is, the place was not mine. It was a privilege to live there as long as I did and I appreciate my friends letting me stay there all this time.
I am so excited for this weekend! I'm pulling the camper up to Columbus to get some warranty work done. While it's in the shop, I'm bunking with good friend and mentor, fellow Sister on the Fly and Girl Camper...Janine Pettit. Janine has a podcast called Girl Camper on iTunes and it's all about traveling the back roads of America and learning how to camp like a girl. Janine has been promoting the Girl Camper movement since 1999. She's not the only visionary in this field. Maurrie and Becky from Sisters on the Fly, Mary Jane Butters with her Glampers on the Loose, and Julie Thorsen from Girl Camping...just some of the great women who promote this lifestyle. I think the original Girl Camper was Mazie Morrison, mother of the real life sisters who founded Sisters on the Fly. She was one amazing woman. She had moxie.
When I was a little girl, my Uncle Bob would take a pick axe to a rocky outcropping up by the barn. He'd pick away and dig out wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow load of rock then spend hours with a sledgehammer busting it into gravel. He would load that gravel up in his wheelbarrow and fill in the driveway a couple times a year. He was a hard worker and I was always proud of that nicely graveled drive up past the house at the farm. As I walk down to get the mail and the newspaper, I look down and that rock is still there, pressed firmly in the earth, mossy ground covering winding between the gray stones, and I think of my sweet Uncle Bob. Grandma had chicken pox or measles when she was pregnant with him and he was born with a developmental disability. He was without guile...the sweetest angel unawares.
I have been preaching at you all for the last nearly four years to "go with the flow". Stop standing in the middle of the stream trying to hold the waters back. Just turn around and go where God leads you.
Most of the time, this is excellent advice. But sometimes...sometimes you have to be a salmon. You have to jump the rapids to come out on top. You have to fight and scramble your way upstream to get the goods. That's happening a lot in my life right now. My aunt wants to come home to the farm to live. She thinks I'm going to live there and take care of her. I don't know where she got that, but I just can't. We tried that and it did not work for either of us. And, she cannot live there alone. The place is falling apart around her and she can't take care of herself, let alone a big farm house. And...there's the matter of these tenacious fleas. We need to discuss alternatives. It isn't going to be easy, but I have to travel to see her today and have "the talk".
My time here on the river is coming to a close. There are a number of factors involved but the biggest is familial obligation on both parties. I'll be spending a larger amount of time out at the farm and with winter coming, there's just too much to worry about with the river house. If there was a frozen pipe like last year and I wasn't there for several days, the results could be disastrous. The possibility remains to return next year, but I have come to learn not to count on too much too far ahead. I will certainly miss this view and the ready access to the river.
You were the brightest star in my night sky. You carried my heart on a velvet pillow. You were my handsome man. You taught me how to live without you. You taught me how to love, how to trust. You showed me there were good men who stay.
With every passing year, you step back a bit into the shadows. It hurts, but it doesn't. It makes me sad, but it doesn't. Having you, and losing you, have become a part of who I am. As real as my wrinkles and my right arm. You are a part of me. The scars on my heart will mark where you sat in my life. Thank God I can think of you now and smile. Thank God I got to have you. You would have been 66 today. Instead, you are forever 62. At the top of your game. And...I will always, always love you!
