Thoughts from Ocean City, Maryland

I don't know exactly what kind of closure I thought visiting ocean City might bring. There was no rush of emotions, although I'm sure I could have worked them up if I tried. Ha ha! That would have been a pointless waste of emotional energy. Instead a took in my surroundings, imagined what it might have been like 45 years ago, and breathed out past yearnings.

Another childhood friend, an earlier love of mine, when he found out we'd eaten dinner at Hooters on the beach (Hey. it was walking distance from our hotel and open when most places were closed...), suggested their crabcakes but I'm not eating crustaceans. His response, "Well there's still pit beef, Thrasher’s fries and Smith Island Cake!!" Gail and I didn't find pit beef or Smith Island Cake this trip, but we did share an order of Thrasher's Fries and they were not only an Ocean City original but fabulous too (with vinegar on top)!

Gail wasn't interested in walking down the old fishing pier or across the sand to the water's edge. It was cold and windy, and she was tired. While she sat on a bench on the boardwalk with her book, I took a walk by myself. I didn't walk all the way out the pier by myself, instead I walked as far as the steps down to the sand and underneath, like I imagined we might have done at 14... 

Had it been warmer I'd have taken my shoes off and put my feet in the water. Had I been more relaxed I'd have sat in the sand and gazed out over the ocean... Instead I picked pieces of shells and pebbles from the line of debris left by the waves and tucked them into my pocket and, just for old times sake, wrote a note in the sand... One like we used to write in the snowbanks along the creek during the winter we spent together in 3rd grade. And then I scuffed it out with my foot.

"The box" is is pretty much packed, the memories, hopes, and wishes tucked inside. The box has a cover but it isn't quite sealed up. I haven't yet found the perfect ribbon with which to tie it shut... but I know that's coming too.

Ocean City 2025

Ocean City, Maryland has been a long awaited destination. I have waited 46 1/2 years to get there.

I was just 14 years old in the fall of 1978 when my father's late-in-the-year, October vacation took us south to Virginia where we went camping near Williamsburg for a week. I'd been asking for months prior, even as far back as summer, "Can we go to Maryland?" I asked over and over and over again, but it wasn't Ocean City on my mind back then... My wish was to find my childhood friend Joey, the boy I'd met in 3rd grade, the one I'd been writing to for five years. I was a young girl in love with a dream.

Part of our vacation took us to the Manassas Battlefield, the Battle of Bull Run, and one day we took a ride to Washington DC where we visited the National Mall, Lincoln Memorial and Smithsonian Institution. It was on that day that my parents drove to the little town of Clinton, Maryland and found the home of my special friend. He wasn't home but his step dad told us where to find him at a little pizza parlor down the road... 

Back at Joey's house our parents visited over coffee while we played board games in the living room and laughed at the antics of our sisters and his dog. We visited twice (I think) and on one of those visits Joey said he wanted to take me to Ocean City. It was one of his favorite places. I'm honestly not sure if he wanted us to come back another time during that trip, or if he was hoping for a whole new visit when the season began anew, but it was not to be. Mom and Dad felt like they had "worn out their welcome" and we headed home with no plan to return.

Joey and I continued to write letters. A few letters one year and a few the next, until James came into my life and my dreams of one day (possibly) being with Joey again faded away forever. It was an impossibly difficult dream to release. My dreams today are obviously no longer the same, but the hope of one day reaching Ocean City never went away. This was one of two pieces to finally completing the process of bringing closure to my childhood love story.

Final Goodbyes (or are they?)

It's hard to believe I will never run into her randomly at Wegmans, or turn the corner at the florist gift shop and see her smiling... It's hard to imagine she will never call me out of the blue and say, Hi, Mart! (or Toots, or kiddo...), or that I'll never get another text message... 

She's absolutely right. We almost could have been sisters, with our platinum blond hair and light colored eyes. Her eyes were bluer than mine, her smile brighter. One would have never guessed how much she struggled with rejection. She was beautiful through and through..

The calling hours and service were today. Friend after friend, coworker after coworker, ex husband, son, brother, all testified to her love, both for her friends and family, and her savior. She was one of a kind and our lives are woven together like a tapestry whose threads weave over and around, come together and move apart before coming together and winding around again.  My sweet, sweet Cindy, you will never be forgotten...

"Goodby, my beautiful, sister friend.
Godspeed and I'll meet you on the portal's other side.
Thank you for loving me.
I love you the mostest too."

What Day Is It?

What can I say about the last week and two days...? So many fragmented thoughts have still to be knitted together in my heart and mind. 

Forty years ago on the sidewalk outside our apartment, a little boy rode a tiny bike and threatened to knock my three year old off his tricycle. "How about I knock you off your bike?" I'd asked him, and he quickly replied, "My mom will call the police." Last night that little boy came home from the store with a half gallon of Rocky Road Ice Cream and said to his mom, "I brought the things you asked for and Martha texted and asked for ice cream, so I brought that too." (I hadn't, but that's beside the point.)

Friendships don't always begin with pleasantries. At our first encounter that little boy had also walked right up to me and declared, "We worship Jehovah." He stood directly in front of me as I sat on the ground watching Jimmy ride his tricycle, and waited for my response. "We worship Jesus," I told him.

While I remember those first moments of interaction, most of what came in the days, months, and years to follow blends together into an afghan of lifetime friendship. I heard her family call her "Ruthie," while the neighbors told me her name was Ann. My mother stepped up when the family needed daycare. On a moment's notice James and I were invited to her wedding in the community center at the apartment complex and learned on our way there that her new husband was the cousin of our friend. In time both of our families moved to the same little town in Wayne County, NY and I babysat on and off while she worked. We each had another baby giving each of us four (Josh, Joel, Charlie, and Drew for her, and Jim, Dave, Beth, and Joe for me). We took our kids on picnics, talked on the phone for hours, and argued religion. Tragedy struck their extended family and they moved a half hour farther out into the country. There was a barn and horses and a continued friendship.

I don't know why some people face trials and tragedies over and over and over, I only know that each one she faced knit us closer together. It's not my place to list them here, but I can tell you I have never stopped loving her and her children. Last Friday morning when she sent a text telling me the doctors at the Pennsylvania hospital had advised her to ask family members to come and say their last goodbyes to her sweet husband, she was a thousand miles from home. My daughters didn't hesitate to encourage me, for the third time in as many weeks, to make the 2 1/2 hour drive to the hospital. I sat with my friend, did everything I could to help her and the staff, met her son at the elevator when he made his 7:30 pm arrival, and made no attempt to hide my own sorrow when her husband David left this world at 12:30 am on Saturday, September 14. We spent the night at a hotel, met with a Pennsylvania funeral home, picked up her camper from a family member, and made the drive north from Watkins Glen, NY to my home in Webster. On Tuesday we headed south and I followed them home. 

I could look heavenward and ask God all the same "why?" questions I've asked in the past but the trusting Him to be there is much easier than understanding any of the "whys?" He is the one who knit this friendship together. He is the one who takes yarns of contrasting and complimentary colors and fashions the strands into unimaginably beautiful blankets. I don't understand, but I know He does.

Time Marches On

Looking backward is not advised, and yet each morning I look back over my Facebook memories, pour through the pictures and find myself amazed at how fast life moves along and what has transpired. Past moments on the farm very often catch me by surprise, bringing with them all the feels of yesteryear; bittersweet, poignant reminders of another life...

Materially speaking the farm was everything I'd ever wanted but had never dreamed would be mine. Simply stepping out the back door took my breath away. Three barns and a house surrounded by apple orchards, three and a half acres of land on a country road, and a wood burning stove. The kitchen was spacious, the living room big enough to hold our ever expanding family whenever special occasions arose. We spent countless hours outside in the yard, on the back porch, or gathered in the living room. Picnics, parties, holidays, we did them all...  And then the bomb dropped and the bottom fell out of my world. 

Grief is complicated and complex with threads of varying thicknesses and colors, twisted and wound into a multitude of indistinguishable knots. For months I picked numbly at knotted, outer layers, terrified of what lay beneath the surface, often setting the entire mess aside. I did all I could to live a normal life in a world that had suddenly shattered. Death leaves a visible gaping hole. Abuse leaves an unseen, shredding of the soul. Outsiders witness the abused gasping for breath, but they do not see the wound. The gasping renders others clueless. Rather than come alongside the breathless, they offer empty platitudes or avoid getting involved altogether... 

The best way to untangle a knot is to follow one colored strand, tediously and methodically unwinding it from the others. Eight years. I've been untangling threads, cords and strands for over eight years. It's a wearisome task.

(And here my thoughts were interrupted by someone I love. My phone was ringing and on the other end someone who intricately understands the complexity of grief, abuse, and knotted threads. If only (another fruitless hope)... If only I could wind the hands of time backward, to erase at least of portion the heartache to which my not-knowing-better has contributed. Today I know something different. Today I would give different advice.)

Can I untie the tangled, haphazard knots in this string of life? Can all the pain of yesterday be woven into hope and beauty? This is my earnest prayer.

This is Your Life (or mine)

I went to my high school reunion looking not only for connection, but to come clean as well. I've woken up thinking about Frank telling me he couldn't find my picture in the yearbook, wondering if perhaps I'd missed some bit of rudeness or an intentional jab, but all I can come up with is an unintentional compliment. For some reason unknown to me, he was expecting me to be there this weekend and had actually looked for me in the yearbook. This is one of the guys that 90% of the girls had a mad crush on 41 years ago. He was nice looking, but not one of my crushes. To the best of my recollection, he never acknowledged me, until the reunion (He was a somewhat quiet kind of guy.) , so the fact that he sought me out and asked the question is accepted as complimentary. Now I'm finding myself more concerned about the friend who, in her effort to protect me from prying questions, may have inadvertently steered people away from me. I wanted them to ask questions, but hardly anyone did.

After the reunion was over, I posted this on their Facebook page. For those who wondered and didn't ask. For those who asked someone other than me, for those who didn't ask but were told something anyway, for those who have known all along, and for those who didn't even remember me. It's not "water under the bridge" as one friend put it. It is my story and it deserves to be told.

 

Although I started kindergarten in Webster (I was part of the group who walked to Spry from Indian Village for a week or so when the school budget didn't pass in 1969) and attended Webster School for all of that time, I ended up not graduating with the Class of 1982. It's one of those things I've grieved silently for years. When the Class of 1981 was graduating on June 20, I was getting married. Our first son was born in Albuquerque, NM that September. We would go on to be married for well over 30 years. In that time we had seven beautiful children. I received my GED after our third child was born, not quite the same as a regular diploma but it brought a small sense of closure at the time.

 

Today I am back in Indian Village, living in the tiny ranch my parents called home my entire childhood, looking out the front window at one lonely Webster water tank where there used to be two. Our children are grown and we have more grandchildren than most of you could imagine. (I have a hard time imagining it myself...) 

 

I am so grateful to have been included in last night's gathering of the Class of 1982. The sixteen year old Martha thanks you. (And the 17 year old one too.) Thank you to each one who signed my 40 year old yearbook. It's no longer completely empty. I'm looking forward to seeing last night's pictures and meeting up with some of you for lunch or coffee in the future.

Martha

 

The mind is still settling. It was quite the weekend in more ways than one.

The Tapestry Has Two Sides

I've been watching adoption reunion videos this past week or so and feeling an incredibly real piece of the pain birth moms face when they decide to give their child away. When I first learned I was pregnant at seventeen, I had no clue what would happen to my baby. The only thing I knew for certain was that I would grant him the gift of life. I didn't know if I would be granted the gift of keeping him, and I can still feel the pangs of panic deep inside when I remember the thoughts of letting my baby go. No knife ever cut so deep into my heart. I am forever grateful for the gift he is, for our life together, and for the man he has become. Jim, you are loved more than words can tell.

 

This is my brother Dan. When I was a little girl I thought being adopted was the best thing in the world, except I wasn't adopted. My mom often told the story of the night a six day old baby was placed in their arms, how they'd had to borrow clothes, diapers, and bottles because his arrival was so unexpected. The story was amazingly wonderful, but it only told one side of the story. When I considered placing my own unborn child for adoption, the heartache of my brother's birth mom became painfully obvious. "Don't you want him?" my mother had asked, and she had answered, "Yes, but I have nothing to offer him." 

 

Years after my brother's passing, I took my own mind back in time and grieved my own loss of him. Although I knew he loved me, we had never been close. Perhaps I had been just as much a source of competition for him as he had been for me. By the time we had something in common, our sons, he was too far away to reach, and then he was gone.

 

It wasn't until about 1998 that my experience with a teenage pregnancy and my brother's adoption story came together in an unexpected turn of events. A stranger in my town lost her father to cancer. My aunt had come upon the obituary in the local newspaper and shared it with my mom. The man's mother was still living, and she was my brother's birth mom. 

 

I remember mulling the information over in my mind, but I've forgotten exactly how it all played out. I knew there was a family out there missing my brother. I couldn't help them find him, but perhaps I could help give them answers. I don't remember how long I waited before making a connection. I do remember being scared to death, and shaking on my end of the phone.

 

The conversation resulted in us being able to share photos and stories with a sister who had been looking for her baby brother her entire life. She couldn't have known how brokenhearted I was for her, or how deeply I felt her pain and disappointment. I so wish I'd been able to give her more than stories and old photographs...

Old Boxes

Finally being able to admit and express my grief has been healing. For close to 40 years I felt unable to say my heart was broken at the loss of my childhood friend. It felt like such an admission was tantamount to unfaithfulness (I was accused of that once by one of my own children for simply reading the old letters) and even very early on I was desperately afraid of hurting the guy I'd married, even though my relationship with Joey was no secret from James.

Joey and I shared the fall, winter, and spring of 1972-73. We walked around the block on cold winter days, each asking the other if their feet were cold. (He wore cowboy boots in the snow.) When it was getting dark, and it got dark early, he always walked me home before heading home himself. In the spring we walked some more, and then suddenly he was moving away. I never even met his mother, never went in his house. He had come to mine instead. There are no pictures of us together. Not one.

As a young girl I dreamed Joey into what I wanted him to be. (Isn't that always what we're tempted to do?) But dreams are not reality. Reality is that God gave me a special childhood friend, a box full of letters to cherish, and the incredibly wonderful opportunity to see my friend when we were 14 years old and my family was on vacation in Virginia in the fall of 1978. I was in heaven! (I had my very own football player!!! Number 87.)

Today I'm healing. I honestly am. I've done enough internet stalking (ha ha!) to settle my heart. I am absolutely nothing like the woman Joe married, and I don't find myself attracted to the man I see in pictures. I find it strange, and I am intrigued, even amused, at my lack of attraction. I don't see anything terrible or offensive, I'm simply not drawn to him. He is a complete stranger and yet we are connected by a few months of time and a string of childish letters. (I love it.)

I've dragged taped-shut boxes from place to place for over half my life. Today I'm unpacking those old boxes and letting go. The little box of letters will be forever cherished, but I can stop grieving. It's time to smile at the memories and move on. 

The Little Orange Box With the Dog On Top

It's just a little box.  Slightly larger than a standard letter envelope and maybe an inch tall. I don't remember it's original purpose, only that I asked Mom if I could have it. It was the perfect box in which to keep my little collection of letters. In time I glued a magazine picture of a floppy dog on top to make it look more special. For a good portion of my childhood, and well into my teenage years, it was kept safe in my dresser, tucked into a corner of a drawer. I always knew exactly where it was.

Every so often during my school aged years, a new letter would turn up in the mail box hanging just outside our front door. Mom always seemed just as excited as me. If I happened to be down the street playing, she would call out that a letter had arrived and I would run home as fast as I possibly could. Once the letter had been open, read, and savored, it would be placed into the little box along with the others. By the time the collection was complete there would be a total of fourteen letters received over the course of 8 to 9 years. From 1973 to 1982.

The story started when a new family moved into our neighborhood. The brother and sister rode my bus and the boy was in my grade, but not in my class, The house they lived in with their cousins was down the street and around the corner in a place I often passed but never hung out. It was only when I took my dog for a walk around the block that the little boy's sister asked my name and said, "My brother loves you." Not long after that meeting my mom noticed a little boy walking back and forth, and hanging out in front of our house as if he was looking for someone. "Who's that out there?" she asked and I replied "Oh, that's Joey," and promptly decided to take the dog for another walk.

I've written about Joey a few other times. Our friendship ended abruptly. Almost violently abrupt. There was no chance for me to explain, no undoing what had transpired between letters, only the heartbreaking knowledge that my final letter would wound him deeply and I would never ever hear from him again. A piece of me died when I answered his letter in January of 1982. A piece of me still grieves.  I've let the memories go over and over again, yet our friendship was such an integral part of my childhood that those memories come back time and time again, usually when I least expect them. It's almost as though I am missing something important but don't know what I'm supposed to be finding.

Memories can be painful, even good memories. Every corner of this house holds memories, a whole lifetime of memories. The wall reverberate with them. When the house is still and quiet, and my present family is gone, voices from the past are speaking. Not only are Mom and Dad here, but my sisters, and others as well. I don't literally hear voices, of course, but the past is intensely vivid and I miss those days gone by...

The Woods at Webster Park

I have a lot of thoughts, and plenty of words, but not much I can write here... so I'll tell you about my weekend. 

 

 

 

 I spent some more time walking alone in the woods this past weekend. When I have my camera along, I'm never really alone. I parked inside Webster Park this time, walked to the campground, and sneaked through an unoccupied campsite to the hill of pines that lines the sites where Mom and Dad used to set up our camper. It didn't look like I remember, the pines are old and dying, and the undergrowth is taking over, and yet I found it all wonderfully enchanting. I couldn't resist building a pine cone house. Or two. Or, actually three.

After exploring the edge of the campground, I changed my lens and headed toward the "boy scout" part of the park where Mom and Dad took us on long afternoon walks when we camped. It was a favorite part of the day. I used to think I could never get lost in Webster Park. Ha ha! I probably overestimated myself, but I haven't been too lost to find my way out again yet. (It's not that big a park. Don't worry.)

When my camera battery died, I needed to make a decision. Go on without taking pictures? Or go home and charge the battery? (Like that was any question...) I returned an hour later to finish my walk and even made it all the way back to Mohawk Lodge, which when we walked with Mom and Dad, meant we had gone on a really long walk. 

It was the perfect day.

A Day of Memories and Memory Making

I took my sisters on an adventure this weekend. We returned to a place of wonder and childhood memories...

Rachel was a baby the first time we camped at Robert H. Treman State Park just outside of Ithaca, NY. We would return when she was a year old, and again a year or so later. Dad always camped in the upper campground at the top of the gorge. It was less crowded and he liked that. His favorite spot wasn't always available, but if it was we camped in the corner site just up the hill from the old mill where the bathrooms were located. Today there is no camping allowed in the top of the park. It is just a picnic ground and I think most of it goes unused and inaccessible to the public. We didn't go to camp though, we went to hike the gorge.

It was a beautiful day full of memories. So many first experiences I remember from this place. Wonderful memories of my mother showing me creatures in the creek; minnows, water striders, and dragonflies. Perhaps I am drawn here to heal...

She taught me how to skip rocks in the creek, and shared a love wading up or down the stream on the flat sheets of slate that line the creek bed.

I learned that Daddy-Long-Legs don't bite and it is okay if they crawl over my leg or along my arm.

We were told never to go into the Gorge Trail alone, but were allowed ample free time to play together in the creek at the top. I didn't take much thought for the rock retaining wall when I was six, but it is what makes this spot on the creek recognizable all these years later. Seeing those cut stones brings back a sense of comfort. This is where I sat on a rock while Dad helped me tie my shoes fifty years ago.


On Saturday we followed the signs that said "due to Covid-19" we should hike down the Gorge Trail, and back up the Rim Trail, a 4 1/2 mile hike. In all our camping trips there as a child, I'd never hiked the Rim Trail, so that was a new experience in a well loved and familiar park.

It was a beautiful day and I am forever grateful to my sisters for going along and making me smile. (Yes, my legs are feeling the burn. I don't know how many steps are in the "Great Staircase" but my phone tells me I climbed 65 floors on Saturday. LOL!)

Double Post (Because I Didn't Write Anything Last Night)

Sunday, June 28, 2020

I woke up a little late, took my shower, and logged into Church Online, but partway through I made a last minute change of plans. I hopped in my car and drove to my son's house as quick as possible. I didn't want to miss "Worship in Our Yard." I arrived early, in time to soak in a warm hug from my boy, and visit Numbers 7 and 10 before any other guests arrived. I haven't been to physical "church" since March 8, sixteen weeks. It was the perfect morning, the perfect gathering, and I left perfectly blessed.

It was a lazy afternoon (I even took a short nap on the living room carpet). Mid afternoon I met my friend Chris and we drove out to Canandaigua where we met two more friends for dinner in the Beer Garden at the Rheinblick German Restaurant. So fun and so yummy! Another wonderful weekend.

June 29, 2020

I've found that cleansing (and healing) old wounds can be a detailed process, especially if the original wound isn't dealt with properly. It might even need to be reopened and cleaned again. The "wound" I speak of doesn't ache and bleed like it did years ago. The deep and hidden grief is past, and the raw, throbbing ache hasn't plagued me for a very long time. I can't even recall the last time my heart needed stilling due to the pain. I thought it had healed, yet I've found it helpful in recent years to revisit the wound and drain any remaining debris. (Are you confused yet?)

I've written about Joey a couple of times (here), but the years of battling deep loss are difficult to admit. I grieved his loss silently and alone. How could I admit to the heartbreak inside when I had married James? I couldn't. I had little ones to tend and a guy who needed me to love him. I buried the sorrow over and over again until the sands of time dulled the ache.

Joey was a childhood friend who "loved me" according to his sister, and that is where our relationship began. Our time together couldn't have lasted more than 6 or 8 months while in third grade. He moved here in late fall and moved away before school was over in the spring. He showed up at our door with his cousin and sister one spring day to say goodbye. It was the last time I would see him because he was moving. That could have, and maybe should have, been the end of the story, but even as a child I had an overactive heart. When a letter arrived a few months later, my mother talked to neighbors and hunted down a return address. It was 1973.

James entered my life the summer of 1979. I'd never had a "boyfriend" other than Joey, and Joey still had my heart. Through the years I'd received a handful of letters, a few school pictures, several phone calls, and we had stopped at his house in October of 1978 while we were on vacation to Virginia. This lonely girl couldn't help but be smitten by the handsome football player of her childhood, but there was another boy in town, one whose heart was hurting and I became entangled in another web of hopes and dreams. (Cleaned up story here) Each time my heart returned to the thought patterns of my childhood, I took a few minutes to grieve and then pushed the sadness from my heart and mind. I couldn't live there.

When things unraveled between James and I, I found the need to seek out the little box of letters from the child/teenager of whom I'd once dreamed. It wasn't  re-connection I was looking for, it was closure (again), and I found it, like I had before, reading the letters. I didn't find the boy of my dreams tucked into old envelopes, but a guy with some self-centered tendencies I'd been blind to as a girl.

The internet has the unthinkable way of making what was once totally impossible, possible. It's way too easy to learn a smidgen (or two) about those we once lost track of. My childhood friend appears to have done well in life. He has a beautiful and successful wife, two handsome, now grown children, and an incredibly huge house on the banks of a well known river. I've stared at him in photographs, trying to catch some glimmer of the little boy/teenager I once knew, but the years have taken a toll I know nothing about and he is unrecognizable to me. I wouldn't have given him a second glance had he bumped into me on the street. At least I don't think so. Maybe my subconscious would know something I didn't pick up on with my conscious mind. ?

My friend and his wife live in what looks to me like a mansion. It's for sale. Over $1,600,000.00! A mansion has never been in my plans, especially one with five bedrooms and five bathrooms that all need to be cleaned. (Can anyone really use that many bathrooms?) There may have been days of raising children when I longed for a place to escape, but 7400 square feet seems a little bit overkill. (I have absolutely no clue what my old friend does for a living. Maybe he doesn't work at all... Ha ha!) I'm not glitzy and glamorous. I don't even wear make-up other than mascara. She is the national sales director in a extremely well known company, and has won numerous awards. (What does one person do to win 13 all-expense paid trips and 19 cars?) Oh, my! More than anything I am amused. I genuinely hope and pray they are truly happy.

Maybe all those years ago my mom thought our puppy love friendship was cute, but in reality she had no idea how deeply I would entangle my heart in future hopes and dreams. I'm sure she thought the relationship would slowly fade away and become nothing more than a sweet childhood memory. Maybe it finally has...

In Other Woods

It was a good morning and I came home from work feeling cheerful, but the cheeriness was short lived when I let myself be drawn into the political controversy. I've been managing fairly well, at least outwardly, until today, and to make matters worse it was with someone I love more than life. Truth be told, it doesn't matter which end of the spectrum one is on if we can't be kind. I am often disgusted with both ends, and yet I am the only one responsible for my response. Frustration and self defense so often get the better of us and in the end it brings forth misery and sorrow. Oh, Lord! Help me!!!

I needed a walk this afternoon so Hannah, Idris and I headed for the village. On our way back toward home we took a different route... We went through a piece of woods I haven't visited in over 40 years. Hannah had second thoughts, but somewhat grudgingly followed her crazy mother. I am so grateful for her cranky, compliance as I have long wanted to revisit the little creek that flows through this all but forgotten place. I hadn't lugged my camera along, but in my back pocket I had my "not-so-smart" smart phone with a halfway decent camera. God smiled and blessed me with sunshine as we neared the creek deep in the woods.

What a beautiful gift.

Getting back out of the woods was a bit trickier than getting in. A housing development sits in what was once a farmer's field and the little trail along the edge of the woods is long disappeared. It's a good thing Hannah had a great sense of direction. We emerged from the trees at the neighborhood park where Idris took a forbidden trip or two down the playground slide and then we headed home.

On our way back around the block, I saw a woman struggling to get her groceries into the house. I wanted to stop and help, but this crazy virus almost had me walk on by. As I was passing her driveway, I realized I had a face mask in my pocket. I decided to put it on, take a chance, and help her. She seemed grateful and I found another neighbor who grew up here in the neighborhood and is living in her childhood home.