An Especially Poignant Spring

Spring arrives at our half hill in a rush. One day everything seems bare, even dead. The next buds are swelling into blooms, leaves emerge, and the whole picture changes. The wild azaleas put on their brief show of delicate beauty (meanwhile, the cultivated but neglected domesticated azalea in the back flower bed outdoes itself with blossoms. The native hydrangeas, which all winter look like a collection of dead sticks, put out the most tender green leaves, luminous when backlighted. Soon they will take on their familiar oak leaf shape. The dogwoods are especially showy this year. Old Susanna Road leading out from town and Quail Hollow Drive, our street, have become an avenue of white. Even our cautious white oak trees are joining in the proclamation of spring.

And the other day, sitting on our front deck, we heard -- heard, not saw -- our favorite proclamation of the season: the laughter of children floating across the slough. It has been spring break time for the schools, and even though it was March, the water was high enough, and warm enough, for the children to make the most of it.

The water at the end of our dock is high enough that friends had no trouble picking us up one evening for a picnic on one of the islands.

Spring does bring pollen and catkins, too, but that's a small price for having trees.

This is an especially poignant spring, because it probably will be our last on this blessed spot.

We have lived in this house, first as weekenders and then as full-timers, longer than we have lived in any house. We wanted a place where our children and their children could come and bring their friends, a place with plenty of room for them and yet private space for us. We wanted the house to fit onto our half hill, among the trees, and to look as if belonged there. We got all of that and more.

But times and people change. The children cannot come as often as they once did, and the grandchildren are at the age when they need calendars to keep up with all of their activities. It is wonderful when they can come, but for most of the year we have way too much space to heat and cool and clean, and we have figured out that if the kids get an opportunity to come for a week or two, it would be more economical to put them up in a condo.

Still, it is not only the trees that have put down roots here. We bought and built because of the water, but we have found in Dadeville a sense of community that makes us look forward to coming home when we are away. Nor could we ask for better neighbors. We would love to find a way to live within a stone's throw of where we are now; certainly we don't want to move more than a mile or too.

It was late in the summer when we made the decision to put the house on the market, knowing that it was unlikely to sell during the winter. We went through the ritual of thinning out and throwing away, but only in a desultory fashion. With a new season bursting upon us, the task of deciding what to keep and what to sell, give or throw away takes on a new urgency. Still, until the clock is ticking I will delay making decisions on some possessions. Our real estate agent, Linda Shaffer, has posted lots of photos on her web site (http://www.flexmls.com/share/1iZp/377-Quail-Hollow-Dadeville-AL-36853). If you know someone who is looking to live in paradise, you might tell them about it.

When we first began coming to this house, we arrived eagerly on Friday nights and left reluctantly on Monday mornings. After we moved here full-time, we reminded ourselves that people plan all year to spend a week or two with what we have every day. Soon or later, we will be faced with packing up and moving out, but until that happens we will regard each day as a special gift.

Contact the writer at billatthelake@gmail.com

The Way the Current Set Me

Cousin,
    You said you'd be interested in a narrative of my latest medical adventure when I had time to write it. Well, it's 4:30 in the morning, an hour earlier than my usual rising time, and I'm wide awake, and writing is a better use of time than surfing the internet or even working the crossword puzzle I didn't get to yesterday.
    Often things happen out of the blue; certainly this latest brush with mortality seemed to.
    But it's like piloting a boat across a tidal inlet: Sometimes the best way to see where you're actually going is to look back at your wake. In this latest case, I was confident in my compass -- the three bypasses I had thought would last as long as I did -- and I damn near ended up on the rocks.
    Things got choppy on a Saturday two weeks ago. The started with me feeling vaguely crummy; nothing specifically wrong, just not a bundle of energy. Later in the day, I was helping Adelaide plant some pansies down by the seawall. When I walked back up to the house, not a great distance, I was really out of breath. I also felt a tightness in my chest. Not pain, not even that squeezing feeling that people often describe. Just a tightness that I still can't say whether was real or psychosomatic. I took my blood pressure. It was higher than it should be, but not dangerously so.
    Then I tried to do what we so often do: deny what is. It's arguing that you've followed that safe course on the compass while hearing the surf pounding in your ears.
I'd played 18 holes of golf in Auburn the day before and then driven with Adelaide over to Clanton to pick up a car we were thinking about buying. Earlier in the week I had been in the gym at least a couple of times, including good sessions on the stationary bike, and had taken at least one good, long walk.
    But, dammit, something just wasn't right, and we decided to go to the emergency room on the theory that a false alarm was better than a real one unheeded.
    Potential heart attacks get prompt attention in the ER. They gave me some stuff that would help if I were having a heart attack, including aspirin, and did an EKG, took an X-ray and drew some blood. The ER physician said the EKG and X-ray looked normal, and there was nothing in the blood chemistry to indicate a heart attack, but he had talked with my cardiologist, who said they should keep me overnight and that he would look in on me on Sunday.
    It turned out to be a good call.
    Although my EKG looked normal, it looked different than the last one I'd had when I had my annual checkup with him in February, a checkup that included an echo cardiogram and a stress test, which did not reveal any imminent dangers. My cholesterol and triglycerides had been good, too.
    There was enough question to warrant a heart on Monday, so I spent a second night in the hospital.
    I really didn't think he was going to find anything (denial again), but he emerged from the procedure to tell Adelaide that he had found scar tissue creating blockages at all three sites where veins had been grafted onto the arteries. They scheduled sessions to put in stents on Friday and the following Monday. The reason for doing it in two sessions was that the dye they use in the procedure can damage the kidneys if there's too much of it in the blood.
    Adelaide didn't even have to work hard to keep me from doing much physical activity while we waited for Friday, and I plenty of time to ruminate about how I got to this point.
    After the bypasses (three years and a month earlier) I had worked at keeping fit and at eating wisely. While I hadn't limited my diet to leaves and twigs, a hamburger was a rare treat; we didn't eat red meat of any kind very often. I couldn't remember the last time I'd had bacon. We always used skim milk and put flax seed meal on our oatmeal or cereal in the mornings.
    But I had to admit, I had not gotten as much exercise during the hot, dry summer (which around here seemed to start in May and is just now ending) as I ordinarily do. And I had noticed that I would be breathing a little hard when I began some activity, although that went away after I got going. And I was a little slower going up hills than I used to, but I didn't have to stop to catch my breath. And I am 70 years old; that ought to account for some slowing down.
    So there were signs, but doggone subtle ones.
    On that Friday the doctor put four stents in one artery, and on Monday he put in two more stents, one in each of two arteries.
    As I'm recovering, I've thought about my brother and sister. My sis, a year older than I, has always eaten pretty much what she wanted, and what she wanted was often fried or salty or sweet. My brother, four and a half years younger, is a very disciplined eater. Both of them have coronary systems to envy. I think they inherited genes from my mother's side of the family. My inheritance, apparently comes from the Brown side of the family, not particularly noted for longevity.
    Even if fate has drawn the line on the chart, though, I will keep trying to account for the current.
    You recently sent me a copy of one of your favorite poems. There is a poignant line: How dull it is to pause, to make an end, / To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
    I can promise that I will not rust unburnish'd.
Cousin Bill


Contact the writer at billatthelake@gmail.com

Some Instructions Are Just Too Stupid

    I don't think I am growing more prickly (some might argue that would be impossible) but I increasingly chafe at being told what to do by people who have no business doing so. There are enough people who are in a position to tell you what to do, and who often insist on your doing stupid things, but I am not talking about them. Them I avoid as much as possible and grudgingly comply when there is no alternative.

    No, it is the more mundane things that set me off.

    Like the envelope from someone who is trying to sell me something that states prominently "Do Not Discard." Naturally, those envelopes go directly into the waste basket; I'm thinking of leaving an all-weather waste can by the mailbox.

    The marketers don't like to be ignored, though, and they get more insistent. I am holding an envelope that, in addition to my name and address, includes these phrases: "Official Documents Enclosed." "Official Notification." "Requires Immediate Response." "SECOND NOTICE." "Time Sensitive Communication." Well, duh. Guess where that envelope is going?

    Maybe tossing their missives isn't the answer. I am considering saving a stack of the envelopes -- unopened -- until I have a large stack and then mailing all of them back to the sender. With luck, I'll open one of the envelopes and find a postage-paid reply envelope and use it to send the accumulation back.

   Almost as annoying is the recorded message that urges you to hold for an important message. I used to hang up immediately, but now I just lay the phone down and go about my business. I like to think I'm using enough of their time to save someone else from getting a call.

   At least in the above situations, I have the choice of whether to open the envelope or hold for the call.

   One night recently, I had a choice of whether to respond to a stupid instruction, but exercising my choice saved me no time. I was trapped.

   It was an event that  included a talent segment. The mistress and master of ceremonies took turns introducing each contestant and then going offstage.

    The contestant performed. The audience applauded. And the master/mistress of ceremonies returned to the stage with the instruction to give the performer another round of applause, even as the original applause was fading. Not once, not twice, but every single time.

    Excuse me, but isn't applause like a tip: something that is earned.

    I sat on my hands thinking that if it weren't for all the phony enthusiasm, the contestants could have more time to show off their talent. And the applause would have been truly earned.

Contact the writer at billatthelake@gmail.com

Time for a new adventure

To everything there is a season, and
a time to every purpose under heaven:

    It is a little after 6 on a gray Saturday morning. Downstairs one granddaughter and her friend are sleeping. Later today, another granddaughter and three of her friends will arrive. It is not a promising weekend for outdoor things, but I am sure the young ladies will find plenty of things to amuse themselves with. They are at an age when their grandparents do not have to spend all of their time being recreation directors.
    I have been sitting in the little reading room just off our second-floor bedroom looking out at the lake. A slight breeze has the water in motion – most often it is as still as a millpond this time of the morning – and I haven't heard any manmade sounds. Soon, even with the possibility, even probability, that rain could come at any moment, personal watercraft will be roiling the water. After all, how many weekends are there in a summer?
    I have watched the day develop from this vantage point almost every morning since we moved to the lake full-time nine years ago and on as many mornings as possible in those years when we were only part-timers.
    I have never tired of the view nor unmindful of our good fortune in being able to experience every day that which so many people get only to sample.
    My morning view is about to change.
    We have lived in this house longer than we have lived in any house since we got married, and it is the first house that we have had designed and built just for us. Like us, the house has its eccentricities, but I hope that soon some other family will enjoy this house as much as we have.
    As much as we have loved the place – and, as importantly, our neighbors and our neighborhood – we have recognized for several years that the time for change would come.Simply put, the house is simply too big for the two of us It has too many steps;. Adelaide counted the steps from the dock to the widow's walk; there were 105 of them. When the children and grandchildren are here, the house is just right, sometimes even cramped, but those times are increasingly rare, and that space is heated and cooled and cleaned year round.
    So in a few days a sign will go up offering our half hill for sale. We hope that someone will think it is as right as we did when we first saw this spot and visualized putting a house on it.
    I am, at least for the moment, curiously unmoved by the prospect of making some other house our home. I think that we most liberated we have felt was when we returned to the states after spending the better part of a year on a self-styled sabbatical in England and Holland. We had sold most of our belongings before setting out, and having only a few possessions made us feel, well, less possessed. That was many years ago, though, and as long as you have a place to put things, things pile up.
    We have decided that we need considerably less space – and far fewer things – and that this might be the time to make that change.
    We would love to stay on the water and in this neighborhood if that is possible. We don't know how that will work out, because like most folks, we cant really look for another home until we have sold this one. (I'd hate to fall in love with a place only to see it sell before we sold our own home.)
  &nbsp Whatever happens, it will be an adventure.


Contact the writer at billatthelake@gmail.com