Sunday, September 25, 2011

Swimming?????!!!! in late September?

Grimes Cove at the end of Ocean Point in Boothbay looks nothing like Sand Beach in Acadia National Park. But I didn't go swimming at Sand Beach today, and I did swim on yes, September 25, 2011, at Grimes Cove. I planted tulips in my garden for my son's wedding next spring, and got soooooo hot, I just had to go swimming.

Not that it was a completely new idea for me. As I was driving around Ocean Point yesterday afternoon, I saw 4 floating heads - a la Mao in the Yellow River - and thought to myself that it might be nice to go for a swim. I quickly thought better of it though, as darkness was descending, and I was hungry. But today, after sweating through the planting of 75 tulip bulbs, it was a really GOOD idea, and off I went.

The four floating heads had the same idea, and the 5 of us went for a swim, out and around a buoy in the Cove. It wasn't a long swim, but the water was in the mid-high 60's, which is warm for around here, and as long as I held my hands out of the water occasionally - to thaw out - I was happy, and it felt really good. A crowd gathered to watch us, but no one else seemed willing to come in. Even a Golden Retriever didn't come in. Still, it was well worth the effort, and I'm quite proud of having done it.

Now the challenge will be the Polar Bear Swim on New Year's Day!

Monday, September 12, 2011

Gardens vs. Boats



Yes, that is a tomato next to a pumpkin. This summer has been an amazingly productive summer for the garden. And the tomatoes! They are large, or tiny, sweet and red, delicious and numerous. But really, I've had enough. My stomach hurt the other day for all the tomatoes and cucumbers I've been eating. I had to give up cukes and start pickling!


So I'm making a resolution to better balance my need to sail with my need to eat. Some might suggest, this resolution is a long time in coming, but I've only felt it now, and it's my body.


So, next summer, I vow to grow fewer tomatoes, cukes, and zucchini, more corn and onions and leeks, less lettuce and more arugula, less chard and fewer beets. This will be easy to do next year because a major part of the garden will be taken up with tulips for Dan's wedding on Memorial Day. So lots of things won't be planted until after tulip time, thus making the season shorter than it was this year and last. Time will tell.


In the meantime, I'm yanking up the zucchini plants, and tomato plants, and soon the cucumbers, after I get one more crop of mature ones for Nancy Bither's Bither Family Cucumber Relish from Houlton, Maine. The tulips will go in soon after, and hopefully be perfect - just in time for the wedding next spring! Maybe I'll get some late summer sails in now!

Friday, September 9, 2011

One Year Later, Ten Years Later




I'm tired of all the 9/11 talk and stories of firemen, and First Responders. I do not mean to deny their heroism, but there are other heroes, and heroines, in the aftermath of 9/11.




A year after 9/11, my son Ben and his wife Torrey had a six month old daughter, Sarah Kate. They were living in Denver then, having moved there after Ben graduated from medical school. Ben was doing his internship in the Emergency Room of Denver General.




On 9/11, Torrey was teaching 5th grade at PS 234, the elementary school next door to the World Trade Center. As happens in the first days of school after summer vacation, Torrey had the flu that day, and a substitute teacher took her class. Ben was doing a 6-week residency in Farmington, New Mexico, and driving to work when he heard about the planes flying into the Towers. He tried to call Torrey but couldn't reach her by cell phone or landline. So he called me, in California. He had to go to work; I could and did, spend the day trying to reach Torrey.




I finally found her at home, on the computer. She was OK and hadn't been at school that day.


But she spent the rest of that day and year, and really the last ten years, dealing with survivor's guilt. And she, like all the other teachers in PS234, dealt with the childrens' stories, their fears, their horrid memories of that day for the remainder of that year. The school, when it reopened two weeks later (?), opened in an old Catholic school, in the neighborhood. Three 5th grades had to meet in an old gymnasium. The class moved to a different place 3 times that year, trying to find a safe and secure place to meet.




Those children were ten years old then. Now they are twenty somethings. The memories that they wrote about that year, were the sights and sounds of the bodies falling from the sky as they were evacuated from their old school. And their relatives who died. I can't begin to understand the strength and courage that those teachers used to deal with the nightmarish lives of their kids that year. And the parents who were left.




The firemen who risked their futures working to clear debris and find remains are undoubtedly heroes. But so are the teachers, parents and children of PS234, who survived and have been dealing with the horrific memories of that day, for the last ten years. I hope they have found some measure of peace.