Farewell to My Life "Away"

 This week is one of the most exhausting and bittersweet weeks of my year.  This is the week we shut down our life at the farmhouse and prepare to fly south for the winter.  I have chronicled this week many times over the years, and one would think after so many years doing this process it would get easier or that my mental state would be more prepared for what lies ahead, but alas, I am a slow learner.  Add to the clean out the fridge, put everything away for the winter, pack up your suitcase, wash everything you can lay your eyes on frenzy that is on my "to do" list, we had to prepare for a hurricane!  I think it was a blessing and a curse.

Hurricane Lee hit Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and PEI last weekend.  We all knew it was coming and hopefully everyone prepared as well as we did.  Hopefully no one needed all of their preparations either.  All last week I kept saying we were going to over prepare and hopefully it would all would work out.  Well.. it actually did!  The hurricane came and went and it was one of the more interesting and lovely hurricanes I have ever seen!  Go figure!

Absolute favorite part of any hurricane I have ever seen!
I watched this rainbow move across the horizon for about 30 minutes!

Just had to go down at high tide to see just how high it was.

Hurricane Lee came and went and left nothing but muddy yards and rain weary people in its wake.  The past week has been dreary and downright depressing!  September did not win me over this year.  After what can only be described as a rainy summer, September has been more of the same.  My brain works so much better in the sunshine!  Add to the rain the cooler than usual temperatures and the mass evacuation for the hurricane and we were left with each other and the dreary gray sky in our final week and try as I might to get motivated to pack, clean and ready the house for our departure, I just kept dragging my feet.  I did manage to get "some" stuff done and the hurricane prep helped get all the flying objects inside, but darn if the day before we leave...yet again...is like a friggin' marathon!

One of us got to power wash not one but 2 lawnmowers, run the 
gas out of them and put them away for the season.

The poor garden had to be cleaned up and we harvested most of the available produce.
Can I say how much I am going to miss eating super fresh, organic produce 
every day?!

Last but not least we had to empty all of the potted plants that
have provided us with so much joy as they 
adorned our various decks and porches.
This truly is one of the hardest things I have to do every time we leave.

This week has provided me with many opportunities to reflect on what I will miss and what I won't miss when we leave.  I will miss a lot for sure, but after spending a solitary week in the cool and gray I am very much looking forward to some sunshine.  Of course, one week back home and I will be begging to come back to the coolness up here.  Such a quandary...but alas, we must go home at some point.

Things I will miss...

-The garden!  The thought of eating vegetables from the supermarket and not minutes old from the backyard is daunting.  I swear every summer my body thanks me for eating organic vegetables.  The vegetable from our garden taste so much better than anything I can buy at the store, and we get very spoiled.  Meals are usually planned around what we just picked out of the garden.  I have this, this and this...search a recipe and that's what we have for dinner!  Easy.  Add to the garden the brilliant flowers that we have up here and I am all in!

-Having people around who are happy to drop by or be dropped in on at a moment's notice.  Until recently when everyone escaped the hurricane, there was any number of people who would drop by for dinner or invite us over for dinner.  Back home it's just the two of us...every night it seems.  There are no spontaneous gatherings.

-The light.  The light up here is different.  For some reason, maybe it is just my shore-colored goggles, but everything is more beautiful up here...especially when the sun is shining.  The air is clearer, the greens are greener, the blues are bluer, and the air is clearer!

-The ease of life up here.  There is no traffic.  There are many open spaces.  The population is sparse.  The pace of life is a lot slower than the one at home.  When I first arrive these are some of the things that drive me crazy, then after a couple of weeks, I have slipped into the easier pace of life up here and greatly appreciate it!

-No TV!  I have not sat down and watched television since I left home.  If I must confess, I really don't miss it 95% of the time.  Then college football starts...or baseball season gets serious...and I feel very left out.  Add to those things one...or two lonely, gray weeks and I find myself resorting to watching Seinfeld on my computer at night just to pass the time.  Desperate times require desperate measures.  I much prefer the nights when digital entertainment is the farthest thing from my mind!

Things I am looking forward to when I get home...

-My hair salon!  Vanity of vanities!  

-A nail salon...my poor neglected feet!  More vanity.

-Eating out...within a couple of miles from my house!

-My golf club which is only 2 miles from my house and where I have made some very good friends.

-My car.  We have one, very old truck, up here and two people living 20 miles away from the nearest golf club or grocery store with one truck is a challenge.  The truck has been in the shop twice this summer resulting in no car...or borrowing cars.  I miss my car, the one with the backup camera and the blind spot warning and the comfortable seats and the Bluetooth connection.  That 2003 truck is nice and all but it is not my car!  I miss my independence!

There is a short list of things I will miss and things I am looking forward to when I get home.  Today has been a marathon and still it isn't all done.  The leaving is a slow and painful tearing yourself away from the idyllic life we are privileged to live in the summer up here.  Yes, I might complain about the details, but for 3 months of living in what can only be described as stepping back in time to a kinder, simpler life it is all worth it!

Until next summer, farewell to my home away from home.  I sure wish I could channel you when I need you in my "real" life!

Summer in Four Part Harmony

It has been a challenge to write the last two months because I'm not sure how or even what to say.  I have thought about it, I have journaled about it and yet I still don't have the right words.  I have considered several short posts, but who am I kidding?  I don't write short posts anymore.  I have started and even titled a couple of posts only to leave them neglected...for weeks.  Labor Day, the unofficial end to what has been an interesting summer, is now behind us.  One I will remember forever, for many different reasons and forget much of for the same reasons.  Maybe it can be explained in four sections.

Part 1

After our return from Spain, we entered what I will refer to as the Roseanne Roseannadanna part of the summer, because "It just goes to show ya, it's always something!".  Either it was the lawnmower that we had to repair not once but at least 3 times this summer for one reason or another, or you discover one missing shingle on your roof can cause a major flooding event in your attic that leaks down to the second floor through the doorways. Or you walk into your kitchen and discover your very old, very lame dishwasher is flowing all over the floor.  So, like Roseanne Roseannadanna says, "It just goes to show ya, it's always something!".  Life at the farmhouse is not all sunny skies, beautiful flowers and sunsets.

Super fun times in the attic catching rain.

How to get saturated insulation out of the attic and to the ground,
use a tarp and some creativity!

Once we said goodbye to Roseanne, we said hello to a short visit from a few rays of sunshine in the form of our daughter and her son and some actual sunshine!  This may have been the beginning of the very short "real summer" when it was hot, humid and sunny.  With my brand-new dishwasher, patched roof and operating lawnmower it felt like the tide had turned.  There were beach days, grandson smiles, lots of playing and seeing life through the eyes of a sweet two-year-old.  Little did I know these days would become the calm before the storm.  

Sweet memories!

He was "all in" on the beach!

Part 2

The day before they left, I got a phone call.  It was that phone call we all knew was coming...someday... but never want to answer.  "Mom is dying."  A few phone calls later and one frantically packed bag in hand, I was on my way to Baton Rouge.  When I arrived, Mom was being made comfortable in a hospice care facility and nearing the end of her life.  My sister, my brother and I (My other 2 sisters had seen mom the previous weekend and said what they thought might be their goodbye then.) spent time with her holding her hand, talking to her, reading to her, praying, and just being with her for the next week until she finally passed on July 26, 2023.  It was a privilege to be there with her for her final days. 

Watching someone in their final days, especially your mother, is profound.  I will venture to say, you never really know...until it is your mom.  Many of you have lost your mothers, and I sympathized with you, but I never understood so deeply what that experience was like...until it was my mom.  Knowing that there was a person in my life who loved me unconditionally was subconsciously comforting, something I knew deep down and probably took for granted many times.  Being a mother myself, I know that unconditional love because I feel it for my own children.  It is a love like no other.  Knowing she is gone brings it to light and leaves me feeling a bit lost or empty at times. She lived a good life, not without its challenges.  She believed in God, the value of hard work, marriage, family, a well-coordinated wardrobe, and dessert.  She always saw the best in us, even when we were not our best.  Her face lit up when her family visited, especially in her later years.  She was sweet and ever appreciative of the good things in her life.  

Surrounded by her wardrobe and smiling at her cottage.

She loved living in Louisiana.

In her happy place!

When I returned to the shore, I was different.  I was in the same place, with the same people I am with every summer, doing the same things, but I was not quite all here.  I am sure this is a normal experience.  Grief or some form of it?  I felt slightly detached.  Maybe due to my own exclusion or to the fact that when someone dies, other people don't always know what to say around the ones who are grieving.  I felt the same, or at least longed to feel the same, but I'm not the same.  I just muddled through this part of the summer.  

Part 3

There was then the part of the summer that was busy, active, full of family and provided me with ways to focus on other things.  I tried my best to enjoy where I was.  I have trouble doing this because I always know there is something happening somewhere else that I am missing during this part of the summer.  Yes, I am still 16 years old in some ways.  I really need to accept that when at the shore, there is always something else happening somewhere and currently we are unable to be two places at once.  My mantra has been, "enjoy where you are."  The only problem is, I was never completely where I was.  A little bit of me was missing.  

Here is a video of this wonderful, full time at the shore!

Part 4

The shore has slowed down now to a much smaller and quieter group.  The families with children have gone home for school and work and the seasonal vacationers have gone back to their "real" lives.  The colorful potted plants have been retired for the summer and the decks along the lane look starkly naked, the toys in the yards and on the beach are stored away until next year, the number of beach chairs on the beach has dwindled and the pull to sit on the beach is weakening.  We are here for a few more weeks and I have mixed feelings about this time.  Part of me embraces this time because I get to do the things I want to do and have put aside all summer.  This time is a quiet, slower paced, and less scheduled.  The weather this summer has been less than perfect...seemingly all over the continent!  We were the ones who got the very wet, cooler than normal summer weather.  As a result, I am embracing every sunny and remotely warm day like it was a newborn baby.  

Hoping there are more days like this left in our summer.

And hope to watch this show on repeat a few times!

I am taking this time to let it all sink in, all of the challenges and anxiety at the beginning of summer, the sorrow in the middle, the love of family and friends that followed and the peace and solitude of the end summer.  Will I remember everything that happened this summer?  Nope.  Will I remember one thing and how it was a turning point, yes.  Everything will go back to July 26, 2023, the day I joined so many in the world who have said that permanent earthly goodbye to both of their parents.  Now I understand.