Day By Day

A new day dawns...

My “New Normal” Life

 

There were a couple of big songs with the title "Day By Day," very different in nature. Sarah Vaughn sings the first one, a love song, here. For the song from “Godspell,” sung by the Fifth Dimension, visit this video. 

 

My own “day by day” life is something else right now: the challenge of another 24 hours without the love of my life but with a challenging little puppy for a companion. If I’d been offered the trade – cute as the puppy is -- I would not have taken it. This is, however, what life has given me, and having Sunny Juliet as companion is better than being all alone. Also, everything is beautiful these days in Leelanau County, orchards full of bloom along nearly every road. “We live in a beautiful place,” the Artist so often remarked. I mustn’t lose sight of that truth.

 

When SJ and I arrived home from our cross-country odyssey a week ago Saturday, and she was introduced to her Michigan house and yard for the first time, the air felt like June, at least. It cooled down to an April kind of evening, but those first spring days back in Leelanau were followed by others that felt way too much like summer. “If May is this warm, what will July be like?” everyone wondered. Kind of worrying.

 

Then my puppy didn’t feel well the following weekend. (Of course, the weekend! When the vet’s office was closed!) Her little head and tummy felt unnaturally warm, feverish. She was lethargic and had no appetite. That was very worrying! Her behavior and demeanor were so unlike her that I yearned for her usual maddening naughtiness. Please, let my puppy not be sick!

Not herself

Monday I took her to see the vet, and by that evening, after IV fluids and antibiotics, she was ready for a good dinner. The furnace came on that night, also, and Tuesday morning was so chilly I had to layer up to go outside, with Sunny so much herself again that I could hardly get my socks on, what with her wanting to make a game out of pulling them off my feet before they were all the way on. Cool weather, challenging puppy. Back to normal. 

"Mine!" She has recovered!

And so we go forward, Sunny and I, day by day. 

...and comes to an end.

 

My Recent Reading

 

Last night I finally finished a nonfiction I began reading while still out in Cochise County, Arizona. The Mourner’s Dance: What We Do When People Die, by Katherine Ashenburg, was inspired by research she undertook after her daughter’s fiancé was killed in a road accident, so that, instead of the wedding she had been planning, Hannah found herself participating in a funeral for the young man she had planned to marry. Ashenburg reviews mourning customs around the world and historically in Western culture but comes back again and again to mourning rituals that Hannah devised for herself, since in today’s United States there are no universally prescribed and accepted forms. 

 

At first, I was interested in how naturally Hannah’s homegrown practices had welled up in her, and how similar they were to age-old ways. More and more, as I thought about mourning customs, many of them made psychological sense to me. 

 

This is an unusual book, both personal and general survey, but the two aspects join well. For example, in the chapter entitled “Sad Clothes,” a history of mourning dress (with Queen Victoria centrally featured), the author reports that she asked her daughter --

 

…if she wished she lived in a world where she could wear a universally understood mourning sytmbol, like an armband, and she said simply, “I would love that.” …Other mourners corroborate Hannah’s feeling. A few months after her father died, the writer Barbara Gowdy was walking down the street, missing him. A stranger in the opposite direction took note of her woebegone face and jokingly ordered, “Smile!” Months later, she was still angry as she remembered the episode: “That never would have happened if I had been able to show by my clothes that I was in mourning.”

 

Hannah’s personal mourning garb was a “vivid orange vest made of padded parachute silk,” a Christmas gift from her fiancé. My own widow’s weeds are an old, faded t-shirt of the Artist’s, and I also wear his watch and, almost every day, with jeans, one of his belts. 

The author mentions more than once that during gatherings of mourners, Hannah was offended by social conversations having nothing to do with Scott, her deceased fiancé. It is all too true that "life goes on" and that people have many personal concerns of their own besides the loss of a friend or acquaintance. But grief is unavoidably self-centered. Regardless of how many friends and relatives I lost prior to losing the love of my life, with the loss of him I felt like -- knowing full well that it was not at all the case -- the first widow in the world and the most deeply bereaved lover of all time. So when someone says helplessly, "I don't know what to say," I am not offended in the least; when they utter stock phrases, such as "I'm sorry for your loss," I appreciate the effort; and any time someone has a story or a personal reflection on my husband to share with me, I am grateful. When no reference is made to his death, however, I feel as Hannah did, resentful and aggrieved. One world has vanished, and another, left behind, has been shattered. How can that be ignored?

Another nonfiction book I read in the past week concerned the last days of the author Marcel Proust. Proust at the Majestic: The Last Days of the Author Whose Book Changed Paris, by Richard Davenport-Hines, started off slowly for me, with far too many facts and names crammed into the first chapter, and there were many repetitions through the work, but it held my interest and kept me company and lulled me to sleep for my first week back in Michigan. The detailed report would be meaningless to anyone not familiar with Proust’s work, but for those in love with A la recherche du temps perdu it is fascinating to see the concentrated effort needed for the writer to finish his work, as well as to learn that all Paris, from titled nobility to cab drivers, came to a shocked standstill when they heard of his death. 

 

 

County in Bloom

 

Cherry blossom time!

I was only home a week before the cherry orchards burst into full bloom, along with all the wild cherries, and now my little apple trees, too, are flowering, and I find myself telling Sunny frequently what David so often exclaimed to me, “We live in a beautiful place.” I imagine Sunny appreciating the landscape with her nose, taking deep draughts of orchard tree and dandelion perfume. Lilacs will open soon. Orioles are passing through! (See more blooms here.)

And I will be opening the bookstore soon, though "regular" hours may be elusive for a few more weeks, as my life remains in disarray, regardless of how many tasks I check off the list of things to do.

My Own Personal “Song of the Open Road”

A windy day in New Mexico

One of my Arizona neighbors suggested that I could listen to podcasts and/or audiobooks all the way across the country. I told her I usually have the radio off on long trips, but that sometimes I sing as I drive along. One of the songs from “The King and I” was in my head all across New Mexico, finally ceding place to an old pop song or two. And then came “The Red, Red Robin,” which I like to perform (mostly to myself, in solitude) in a slow, plaintive, bluesy rendition. Often, though, the songs were playing only in my head, over and over, and anyone seeing me at the wheel would have noted nothing more than silent stoicism or perhaps a few escaping tears, because everything the Artist and I had seen before triggered memories, and I missed him every minute, every mile. This trip was, for me, a kind of pilgrimage but not to one particular destination: the entire length of the journey was its point.

Sunny was seeing this picturesque ruin for the first time.

Vaughn, NM: Position still not filled? I could do that!

My route on Day One took me east on I-10 from Willcox to Las Cruces, 70 through the San Augustin Pass to Alamagordo, and then U.S. 54 to Tularosa and on to Santa Rosa, New Mexico. The stretch from Tularosa to Santa Rosa became a favorite road for the Artist and me, starting with the first time we traveled it (top photo of this post is from that stretch), and since Santa Rosa was also a favorite New Mexico town, it made sense to stop there for my first night.

Evening in beautiful Santa Rosa, NM

Little Sunny Juliet and I covered over 450 miles that first day and 515 miles the second day, finishing up Day Two with a visit to a big, beautiful dog park in Winfield, Kansas. 

And if the name “Kansas” brings to your mind a flat, empty, boring landscape, you don’t know Kansas at all. I left U.S. 54 at Meade and dropped down to U.S. 160, a very narrow two-lane road but very light on traffic and heavy on gorgeous scenery. Often the road ran straight ahead of me to the distant horizon, but it had many deep, rolling dips and rises that it reminded me of ribbon taffy. The vistas off to either side were monumental and breathtaking, too; unfortunately, without any road shoulder, pulling off to photograph the land was close to impossible. Just think for a moment about all the hill regions of Kansas: Red Hills, Flint Hills, Sand Hills, Gypsum Hills – and those are only the ones I know. There are more.

 

The morning of Day Three began well – but then! – well --! 

Getting a tow

At Duke's Alignment & Tire, Winfield, KS

Well, the good news was that (1) I carry AAA road service; (2) I was still in Winfield, a town large enough to have towing and tire services; and (3) though I had bought four new tires in Arizona before leaving (and was not happy to have ruined one of them so soon!), I had also given car room to one of the old tires so I would have a real spare in case I needed it. So while I lost three hours of travel time that morning, the situation could have been much, much worse, and I was grateful to Cole, the young guy who handle the big towing rig so easily, and to Duke, the guy who got me in and out with my spare mounted as quickly as he could. And as I've said, Sunny and I had visited a fabulous dog park in Winfield on Monday evening, and we made it there again before the tire incident, so we were pretty well pleased with Winfield overall, and I had no regrets about my chosen route.

Winfield was very, very good to us.

Tuesday afternoon did not see us covering us a lot of ground, either, what with construction stops and detours, but this is how it goes sometimes on the road, and once I gave up the idea of making any kind of distance record for the day, I found myself stopping over and over with my camera. Because, why not? (And bear in mind that the photographs I take with my camera are only a small fraction of the ones I see to be taken but drive right by.) For instance, when I stopped to text my sister that I was finally in Moline, Kansas, she texted back that the oldest swinging suspension bridge in the country was there. I looked up and saw a sign on the other side of the road directing me down a side street to the bridge, and here it is. The road itself was originally a Cherokee trail. It seemed well worth the time to make that little detour.

What town was I passing through when this cabin caught my eye? Surely I made a note of it in my road atlas....

Right across the street from the old log cabin was this very photogenic old truck. 

And who wouldn't have stopped for a picture like this?

Eventually, of course, despite the tire problem, road construction stops, detours, and numerous photo opps, the puppy and I made our way across Kansas to and across Missouri. Redbud trees in bloom against spectacular rocky road cuts, and U.S. 54 rolled for many miles as a limited access in Missouri, divided highway rather than two-lane, making for easy cruising; however, I didn’t mind at all the twisting, curving two-lane stretches that preceded and followed the easier divided road. Day Four would be an easy distance: El Dorado Springs, Missouri to Springfield, Illinois, and so, reaching Louisiana, Missouri, by noon and knowing I was only about an hour and a half from Springfield, I decided to explore the town of Louisiana. I had an ulterior purpose. Because --.

 

The Artist and I crossed the Mississippi River together many times. We crossed often at St. Louis, which I always considered a “nightmare,” due to very heavy traffic and all the converging and intersecting expressways at that point, a true crossroads of a very busy country, all of whom seem to be on the move when you are threading your way through that maze. My preference was to cross at Hannibal. The river town famous as the birthplace of Samuel Clemens draws heavily on that history for its tourist business, but it’s still a small town, and the last time we came through there we explored around a bit and had lunch rather than simply rushing through.

 

Louisiana was a different story. 

 

The only time we crossed the Mississippi at Louisiana, Missouri, we were on our way east. I was at the wheel, and when I saw that very old, very narrow, old iron bridge ahead, all I could fixate on was getting safely across it! The Artist said, too late, that he would have liked to see something of the town. “Do you want me to go back?” “No, we’ll save it for another time.” But “another time” never came, and so this time I would see Louisiana for both of us.

 

…Comes into my mind now another song, “The Water Is Wide,” an old Celtic folk song. Ah, my love and I! Our love never waxed cold, never faded away....

 

What do I do in the car besides sing, silently or aloud? On this trip, I shed many tears. Not only for shared memories that are now mine alone, but for sights my love and I thought we would have time to see but never did see together. How he would have loved this river town, too! As my emotions ran a rollercoaster gamut, over and over, from excitement to pangs of grief, I kept turning corners in Louisiana, Missouri, and going around blocks and exploring farther and farther from my designated route, jumping out of the car over and over to photograph scenes I wanted so much to share with my beloved partner, the Artist. -- So many scenes that I am going to put them in a separate post and leave this one with an image of dogwood in blossom in the soft Illinois prairie rain. Good night for now.

Dogwood blossoming in the prairie rain....

I am Pierre’s dog.

Another dawn, another day

David, a.k.a. the Artist, took me to a new coffee house in Willcox, and we sat out on the front porch on Haskell Street (Business I-10) with our drinks. When I was in graduate school and reading Sartre, I wrote a paper called “Consciousness of Self and Pierre’s Dog.” Or maybe it was “Pierre’s Dog and Consciousness of Self.” The first line, anyway, was “Consider the dog in this café,” my variation on Sartre’s famous “Consider the waiter in this café.” In my version, Pierre’s dog was called that because, while Pierre did not own the dog, he and the dog had fixed morning routines in the café every day. Then comes a morning when Pierre does not appear, and everywhere the dog looks, all he sees is Pierre’s absence. 

 

As for reading, I haven’t finished a book since we were in Michigan, and that last book I read was Rinker Buck’s The Oregon Trail, which I left in Illinois (our second night out on the road) for my sister and brother-in-law to read. I tried to finish Absalom, Absalom! for a Zoom meeting with the reading circle but couldn’t manage to lock myself for long enough into that depressing, claustrophobic atmosphere to get through the last third of the book. Instead, while traveling and during our first days and nights here in the cabin, I read now and then a few pages of SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome, but my progress in it was slow, my attention repeatedly drawn away from the book to our dog’s unaccustomed demeanor. 

 

Then Sarah had a good day on Sunday, and I felt briefly optimistic that she would “recover from the trip,” as the Artist put it, and that we would have – not long hikes, but at least one more short walk with our neighborhood adventure pack before I had to leave her home on mornings I went off into the mountains with them. So on Monday and Tuesday of last week, which is to say during Sarah’s last days, I started into my winter writing project.

The following Tuesday, on what turned out to be her last day of life, I only “left” her briefly (we were scant feet apart and could look into each other’s faces whenever either of us had the desire) to sit with the handwritten diary that a young man in Pennsylvania began in 1854, a diary I will be transcribing this winter, putting his entries together with my own journal entries and other thoughts and reflections on his time and mine. 

 

Now that she is gone, I still read myself to sleep after an evening movie but have set aside SPQR for a comfort book, one of Alexander McCall Smith’s novels set in Botswana and featuring Mma Ramotswe. When we wake up in the middle of the night, as we do every night, the Artist and I may talk quietly or lie together in silence, but sometimes then too I turn on my bedside light to escape to Botswana. The cows in the book are comforting. I wish the cows of Dos Cabezas would pay us a visit, but they seem to be grazing and foraging somewhere out of sight.

The comfort of cows....

While I was lying on the floor with Sarah on Tuesday, stroking her head and fondling her ears, a Motown song by Gladys Knight and the Pips came into my head and would not go away, and it has been there ever since. “Neither One of Us Wants to Be the First to Say Goodbye” is a song about a couple postponing a breakup they realize is inevitable. For me, it was about my dog – about Sarah hanging on and about my world having shrunk to wherever she was lying at any given moment. She never did “go to sleep” but kept following us with her eyes whenever we moved from one part of the room to another. She and I did not want to say goodbye to each other – and the Artist and I did not want to say goodbye to her.

Night lingers as day begins

My sisters mentioned another song, one called “Sara,” by Jefferson Starship. I put off listening to that one for days after Sarah’s death, and when I finally called it up, the Artist and I could hardly bear the lyrics: “I’ll never find another girl like you…. No time is a good time for goodbye.” 

 

Then the other day I picked up a small collection of poetry, ten poems by ten different poets, put together in a book by Roger Housden called Ten Poems to Say Goodbye. This may be the book I will finally finish and be able to add to my “Books Read 2020” list.

I am thankful

But life goes on, as it always does, and Thanksgiving will be here in two days. The Artist and I have each other! We have priceless family and friends! And we have received a flood of touching and very meaningful sympathy messages from a couple hundred people, many who knew Sarah for years and others in distant places who knew her only through my blog posts. We were unbelievably fortunate to have found puppy Sarah in the first place and then to have had her in our lives for so many years -- the best traveler, the best bookstore dog, and the best companion imaginable. 

 

I am very well aware of how blessed I am, what a wonderful life I have, and there are moments already when the Artist and I can make each other laugh, even over shared memories of Sarah. At the same time, for now, Sarah is my Pierre, and I am her dog: Everywhere I look, I see her absence.

Beautiful Mornings Not For Sale

On one morning’s drive into Willcox, a song came into my head, and once it was there it stayed for several days. “Who Will Buy?” My first and unforgettable introduction to it came during a high school talent show, when a schoolmate sat alone on a stage and sang her heart out. “Who will buy this wonderful morning?” the song begins. A later verse asks, poignantly, “Who will buy this wonderful feeling?” and the song’s final, plaintive question, “What am I to do/to keep the sky so blue?” is answered only by the desperate, doomed wish: “There must be someone who will buy.” 

We cannot, of course, put a beautiful morning or a wonderful feeling in a box, tie it up with ribbons, and take it out when we feel blue. We know very well that life doesn’t work that way. But having such mornings and such feelings — and remembering them — and holding onto the likelihood that they will come into one’s life again, no matter how bleak a particular present moment might appear — those are the realizations that song has always brought me. And while the idea of buying special moments and feelings is a strange one, something we know to be impossible, at the core of the absurd idea is an essential and crucial knowledge, that of value beyond price. 

A friend sent me The Moth Snowstorm: Nature and Joy, by Michael McCarthy, a nonfiction book filled with sobering facts, to put it mildly: The world population of human beings doubled between 1960 and 2000, from 3 billion to 6 billion, while at the same time the world economy was multiplied by a factor of six; we have done away with fully half of the world’s rainforests; twenty percent of vertebrates are threatened with extinction; etc. We human beings have become aware of the problems created by our species, and we see what needs to be done, but our habits and desires and super-monkey ingenuity get in the way of reducing our destructive impact on the planet that is our home. Instead, our impact grows by leaps and bounds, and the natural world of which we are a part, on which we depend for our very lives, is destroyed piece by more and more enormous piece.

One argument frequently advanced to convince us to change our ways is that of “sustainable development.” It’s an idea we can understand, but it demands the sacrifice of self-interest — a tough sell. Another attempt at persuasion is the utilitarian argument, appealing to our self-interest. The second argument relies on the fact that we are dependent on nature, which implies that the value of saving our natural environment far exceeds the quick profits to be made by destroying it. But the utilitarian argument’s recognition of value requires commodifying nature and putting a price on various obviously useful aspects of it, leaving other features without defense. 

Hence McCarthy’s attempt at a wholly different kind of defense of nature, an argument for protecting the air, earth, water, and living species of our world that relies unabashedly on his own personal experiences. 

We should offer up not just the notion of being sensible and responsible about it, which is sustainable development, nor the notion of its mammoth utilitarian and financial value, which is ecosystem services, but a third way, something different entirely: we should offer up what it means to our spirits; the love of it. We should offer up its joy. 

Joy is the feeling expressed in the song that came to my mind as we crossed the desert and drove along the edge of the playa with mountains surrounding us in every direction. Beautiful morning, wonderful feeling. Why do I love this bleak landscape so? It is nothing at all like northern Michigan, with its lush green, moist spring, and yet the same joy that lights so many of my Michigan mornings comes to me here in Arizona. Like the Great Lakes hills and shores, the desert offers a vast expanse and offers room for the spirit to expand. My Michigan eyes, drawn at home to lakes and tree-crowded horizons, here are drawn again and again to mountains. 

And, as happens so often in Michigan, smaller details of my desert surroundings gladden my heart. A sudden splash of color along an otherwise muted roadside — “Oh, stop! Go back! What was that?”

desert verbena

One day it was desert verbena, and having seen it once I look for it again and again, even as other blossoms come along to delight my eye, and even as I scour the more distant views in hopes of seeing species of the wild animal kingdom.

golden smoke

penstemon

Mexican poppy

A group of eight to ten deer one morning surprised Sarah and me on our morning walk. (Sarah noticed them first, when one of the animals shifted position.) The group was initially only fifty or sixty feet from us, but as we turned to watch, they began moving slowly back toward the mountains, vanishing silently into the mesquite as if they had never been there at all. I kept looking, however (as did Sarah), and after a minute or two, one at a time, like a Jack-in-the-box, a deer would appear above the mesquite, as if propelled upward on springs! After the third or fourth deer-in-the-air, I realized they were jumping a barbed wire fence. No photographs of that episode in our desert morning, but it’s bright in my memory.

Another morning’s expedition, a walk around the bird-watching lake, brought another wildlife surprise when a jackrabbit ran across the road in front of us. Those ears! Wow! No time to employ the camera, not for that hare or for a second jackrabbit bounding away from the lake and into the tall grass, but seeing them was thrilling. Then there are hawks….

Morning or evening, hawks are easier to photograph, as they are so often to be found, like the verbena, right along the road, and just outside the back door of the ghost town cabin, the little canyon towhee is a frequent visitor. “Confiding,” one of the bird guides calls this species. I might call the bird “brave” or just plain “sensible,” as it seems to realize we pose no threat and that we can happily co-exist in close proximity, and I love to sit out in the sun with my book and camera and wait for opportunities to photograph the sweet little towhee. Such a simple pleasure feels extraordinary.

Here’s something else I’ve realized about my joy in the desert and mountains: The weather right now is as warm as any Michigan summer, but at home in the summer in Michigan, where vacationers will be relaxing on the beach, frolicking in the waves, and hiking woodsy trails, I will be spending most of my days indoors, in my bookstore. Here and now, though, I can be outdoors all day long, if I so choose — feeling the sun and breeze, soaking in the warmth, hearing and watching the birds, and generally drinking in my surroundings with all senses open to the world. It is this freedom to be out in the open spaces and to feel part of the world, rather than apart from it, that makes every ordinary day an adventure and every moment a fresh and priceless joy.

I cannot put these mornings in a box, and they cannot — thank heaven! — be bought and sold, but I will take precious memories home with me, in the words of the song, “to last my whole life through.”

You Weren’t the Only One Listening to the Radio, Dawn

In the truck the other day, on our way to Northport, the radio was playing an old Jimmy Buffet song, one I’d never listened to closely and wasn’t listening to closely that morning, either. My attention was directed beyond the windshield, my eyes scanning for deer and turkeys. We’ve been seeing a lot of both, the deer dark and lithe this time of year, the male turkeys all strutting and fanning their tails. So, as I say, I wasn’t listening closely, but the refrain kept repeating (as refrains will do) until it penetrated my consciousness. Huh? What was he singing?

“What to the left, and what to the right?” I asked David.

“Fins,” he answered – but I heard the answer as “Finns,” and that seemed strange, coming from Buffet.

“Is it a U.P. song?” I asked.

David cracked up. “Fins! ‘You’re the only bait in town!’" he added as clarification.

“There’s plenty of fishing in the U.P.,” I protested, defending my interpretation. “Remember the bait machine outside our motel in Manistique?”

“It’s about sharks,” David insisted – and of course he was right.

But if you know the U.P., can’t you see that small town bar, all the local Finns lined up with draft beers after a day of ice fishing, and then a lone woman walks in?

David shook his head. “Finns,” he reminded me, "wouldn’t even speak to her. It isn’t the same thing at all.”

I wonder. After all, with logic, everything depends on your premises. Of course, my premises depended on only hearing the refrain and not the verses. The rest of the song tells the story clearly. Oh, well!

Holiday Greetings From Up North

The favorite movie of one of my girlhood friends was “Meet Me in St. Louis” (1955), starring Judy Garland. My friend was so good at “telling” movies that I couldn’t figure out for years if I’d seen this one myself or just heard the story from her. We’ve all heard the song, though--“Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” with music by Ralph Blane and lyrics by Hugh Martin. Anything Judy Garland ever sung had a poignant quality, don't you think? It was something about the vulnerability in her eyes and the courage in her voice. But there have been different versions of the lyrics to this song over the years, and that's interesting, too. 

Life isn’t always easy, and a lot of people struggle with pain of one kind of another. Holidays are no exception. What to do about it? To “hang a shining star upon the highest bough” is one way to defy sadness, but it is a gesture of a moment, whereas to “muddle through somehow,” putting one foot in front of the other, doing all the little, ordinary things that have to be done day after day--that is a beautiful and deep kind of bravery.

Wherever you are this year, and whatever you are growing through, with family or on your own, I wish you at least moments of heart-lightness. And here's your song:

Have yourself a merry little Christmas 

Let your heart be light 

Next year all our troubles will be out of sight  

Have yourself a merry little Christmas

Make the yuletide gay 

Next year all our troubles will be miles away 

Once again as in olden days 

Happy golden days of yore 

Faithful friends who are dear to us 

Will be near to us once more  

Someday soon, we all will be together 

If the fates allow 

Until then, we'll have to muddle through somehow 

So have yourself a merry little Christmas now