vacation: sum of sorts

What I Did on my Summer Vacation

I wonder, has anyone actually ever written one of these essays? Or assigned them?  I feel like “What I Did on my Summer Vacation” is the quintessential “first day of school” writing assignment, but I don’t remember actually ever putting pen to paper on this particular topic and I can’t help but wonder if it is more mythological than not.

 But there’s a first time for everything. And, urban/suburban legend or not, I’ll take a stab at it.

Preface:  Who Cares?

This writing exercise could be the biggest literary-selfie ever, but I feel a small amount of obligation to report on the month of my absence and, in some small detail, to let my constituency know how it is that I have used the generosity of time afforded a bishop on vacation.  The last time that I had this much consecutive time off was 24 years ago when I was plunged from the 3^rd grade classroom into full time motherhood (for the happy third time).  I was lucky to be a “stay-at-home-mom” and spent some good months sunning in the backyard with kids playing in the inflatable kiddie pool, taking long walks in our neighborhood with a stroller or wagon in tow, and having the luxury of time to do things like bake bread and make stock. It is not a privilege that goes unnoticed or unappreciated, so let me begin there.  Thank you.  And so, for those who are interested, read on.  For others, we’ll be back to ecclesiastical-related blogging in a week’s time.

Terrain:  Overview

I did not cover as impressive a geographical footprint as I had imagined on this vacation (see section on  “why I didn’t go to California”) but I did manage to travel the length of New England in my car and the ridgeline of a few PA mountains on foot.   I spent time on a tiny island in Maine (a scant mile in square mileage), walking the coastline of mid-coast Maine, visiting childhood clam-shack-haunts, making  a detour to the RI coast,  a couple of stop overs in CT and more than a few days in my hiking boots learning what it means when the Appalachian Trail hikers talk about “Rocksylvania.” My elevation went from 0 (that island!) to 1,543 ft. above sea level (ridge of Blue Mountain) which is not particularly impressive  when you consider that Mt Katadhin in Maine steps up at 5,269 ft. above sea level and  Clingman’s Dome, in the Great Smoky Mountains of TN is the highest point on the AT  measuring 6,625 ft. in the sky.  No records were achieved on this vacation for sure, but hiking in 90+ degree heat was just fine. No records needed.

Aesthetics

Icy blue green water and black rocks.

The echoey screeching of gulls and slamming surf

Thick maple syrup over blueberry pancakes the size of dinner plates

Soft pine needle carpets and dappled sunlight in cool, deep forests

Clear, clean air

Bayberry warmed by the sun

The tangle of pricker bushes pulling at delicate shins; tiny spots of red, red blood

A late summer field filled with milkweed and monarchs

Rows and rows and rows of corn (as high as a elephant’s eye)

Hawks playing on drafts of air in lazy circles

The tug of a fish on the line

The crack of a baseball bat hitting a double

Mint

Basil

Pie

California

Wildfires kept me from going to the Writer’s Conference that I had hoped to attend in Carmel by the Sea.  The Soberanes fire was within 10 miles of the conference center and we were warned that there could be a possible evacuation.  It wasn’t worth the risk to spend the money to go. It wasn’t worth the risk to be trapped with wildfires on one side and the cliffs of the Pacific on the other.  I stayed home and wrote on my porch.

Idle Time

How well do you do at filling idle time?  It is an art, I think, for those of us who live connected to our i-phones and calendars and agendas to feel at ease with a certain amount of leisure time.  It is a trick to go from 100 mph to 0 mph without some sort of psychic collision.  I found myself returning to old practices and patterns of things that have fed me, spiritually, in the past:  Cooking.  Playing my ‘cello.  Reading. 

The escape into a novel is luxury. I had forgotten.  I love when a good books turns a day into minutes.  When one moves from sofa to chair to chaise with book until the last page is turned.

The study of one page of music over and over and over again until some small amount of mastery is achieved is, in some ways, crazy-making ( who spends hours on one page of music?) and, in the end,  if you can let go of total sum gains, entirely satisfying. (I’m not sure that JS Bach would give me a pass on his Allemande in GM, but I’m taking it.)

The joy of creativity in the kitchen. Roasted beets with cantaloupe, chunked garden tomatoes, feta and a honey dijon dressing.  Pesto.  Corn chowder. Carnitas. Tamales. Sesame Noodles. Chimichurri. Key Lime pie. Dal.  Peaches over yogurt with homemade granola.  A delight to cook in bare feet at the counter watching the birds at the feeder while the radio sings Dvorak. 

And Prayer.

Prayer is layered in all of this.  In the glory of God’s creation leaning into the wind on a mountain cliff, in the sunrise that emerges incrementally from the ocean in hints of pink, orange and scarlet; in the sharing of table and time with family, children, dear friends, college classmates; in rejoicing in good health; in grieving those lost; holding in the heart those who are ill or lonely, lost, searching, struggling.  Prayer is never far. Never far. And God is as close as one’s own heartbeat and tender as the grass and as powerful as the tectonic forces that pushed mountains into the sky. Worship and Intercession do not go on vacation. But they take a different form.

Now What?

There’s a snap in the air today, praise God.  It is the snap that I’ve been waiting for and it arrives just as my Vacation slides into Home Plate. 

The snap of chilliness on my legs as I pad down to the kitchen to press the “on” button on the coffee machine tells me that it is time to put on long pants, lace up shoes and go back to work.

It is time to go back to the gym.

It is time to plan menus again a week at a time with my calendar in one hand.

It is time to think: Power Point. Convention. Confirmation. Clergy. Budget and Finance.

It is time to re-engage the rhythm of study-prayer-writing-preaching

Meetings. Which mean Relationships. Which are good.

Meetings. Which means Information. That leads to Mission. That is Good.

Leadership and Liturgy and the Work of Building the Kingdom.

Now. Now. Now.

vacation: sum of sorts

What I Did on my Summer Vacation

I wonder, has anyone actually ever written one of these essays? Or assigned them?  I feel like “What I Did on my Summer Vacation” is the quintessential “first day of School” writing assignment, but I don’t remember actually ever putting pen to paper on this particular topic and I can’t help but wonder if it is more mythological than not.

 But there’s a first time for everything. And, urban/suburban legend or not, I’ll take a stab at it.

Preface:  Who Cares?

This writing exercise could be the biggest literary-selfie ever, but I feel a small amount of obligation to report on the month of my absence and, in some small detail, to let my constituency know how it is that I have used the generosity of time afforded a bishop on vacation.  The last time that I had this much consecutive time off was 24 years ago when I was plunged from the 3^rd grade classroom into full time motherhood (for the happy third time.)  I was lucky to be a “stay-at-home-mom” and spent some good months sunning in the backyard with kids playing in the inflatable kiddie pool, taking long walks in our neighborhood with a stroller or wagon in tow, and having the luxury of time to do things like bake bread and make stock. It is not a privilege that goes unnoticed or unappreciated, so let me begin there.  Thank you.  And so, for those who are interested, read on.  For others, we’ll be back to ecclesiastical-related blogging in a week’s time.

Terrain:  Overview

I did not cover as impressive a geographical footprint as I had imagined on this vacation (see section on  “why I didn’t go to California”) but I did manage to travel the length of New England in my car and the ridgeline of a few PA mountains on foot.   I spent time on a tiny island in Maine (a scant mile in square mileage), walking the coastline of mid-coast Maine, visiting childhood clam-shack-haunts, making  a detour to the RI coast,  a couple of stop overs in CT and more than a few days in my hiking boots learning what it means when the Appalachian Trail hikers talk about “Rocksylvania.” My elevation went from 0 (that island!) to 1,543 ft. above sea level (ridge of Blue Mountain) which is not particularly impressive  when you consider that Mt Katadhin in Maine steps up at 5,269 ft. above sea level and  Clingman’s Dome, in the Great Smoky Mountains of TN is the highest point on the AT  measuring 6,625 ft. in the sky.  No records were achieved on this vacation for sure, but hiking in 90+ degree heat was just fine. No records needed.

Aesthetics

Icy blue green water and black rocks.

The echoey screeching of gulls and slamming surf

Thick maple syrup over blueberry pancakes the size of dinner plates

Soft pine needle carpets and dappled sunlight in cool, deep forests

Clear, clean air

Bayberry warmed by the sun

The tangle of pricker bushes pulling at delicate shins; tiny spots of red, red blood

A late summer field  filled with milkweed and monarchs

Rows and rows and rows of corn (as high as a elephant’s eye)

Hawks playing on drafts of air in lazy circles

The tug of a fish on the line

The crack of a baseball bat hitting a double

Mint

Basil

Pie

California

Wildfires kept me from going to the Writer’s Conference that I had hoped to attend in Carmel by the Sea.  The Soberanes fire was within 10 miles of the conference center and we were warned that there could be a possible evacuation.  It wasn’t worth the risk to spend the money to go. It wasn’t worth the risk to be trapped with wildfires on one side and the cliffs of the Pacific on the other.  I stayed home and wrote on my porch

Idle Time

How well do you do at filling idle time?  It is an art, I think, for those of us who live connected to our i-phones and calendars and agendas to feel at ease with a certain amount of leisure time.  It is a trick to go from 100 mph to 0 mph without some sort of psychic collision.  I found myself returning to old practices and patterns of things that have fed me, spiritually, in the past:  Cooking.  Playing my ‘cello.  Reading. 

The escape into a novel is luxury. I had forgotten.   I love when a good books turns a day into minutes.  When one moves from sofa to chair to chaise with book until the last page is turned.

The study of one page of music over and over and over again until some small amount of mastery is achieved is, in some ways, crazy-making ( who spends hours on one page of music?) and, in the end,  if you can let go of total sum gains, entirely satisfying. (I’m not sure that JS Bach would give me a pass on his Allemande in GM, but I’m taking it.)

The joy of creativity in the kitchen. Roasted beets with cantaloupe, chunked garden tomatoes, feta and a honey dijon dressing.  Pesto.  Corn chowder. Carnitas. Tamales. Sesame Noodles. Chimichurri. Key Lime pie. Dal.  Peaches over yogurt with homemade granola.  A delight to cook in bare feet at the counter watching the birds at the feeder while the radio sings Dvorak . 

And Prayer.

Prayer is layered in all of this.  In the glory of God’s creation leaning into the wind on a mountain cliff, in the sunrise that emerges incrementally from the ocean in hints of pink, orange and scarlet; in the sharing of table and time with family, children, dear friends, college classmates; in rejoicing in good health; in grieving those lost; holding in the heart those who are ill or lonely, lost, searching, struggling.  Prayer is never far. Never far. And God is as close as one’s own heartbeat and tender as the grass and as powerful as the tectonic forces that pushed mountains into the sky. Worship and Intercession do not go on vacation. But they take a different form.

Now What?

There’s a snap in the air today, praise God.  It is the snap that I’ve been waiting for and it arrives such as my Vacation slides into Home Plate. 

The snap of chilliness on my legs as I pad down to the kitchen to press the “on” button on the coffee machine tells me that it is time to put on long pants, lace up shoes and go back to work.

It is time to go back to the gym.

It is time to plan menus again a week at a time with my calendar in one hand.

It is time to think: Power Point. Convention. Confirmation. Clergy. Budget and Finance.

It is time to re-engage the rhythm of study-prayer-writing-preaching

Meetings. Which mean Relationships. Which are good.

Meetings. Which means Information. That leads to Mission. That is Good.

Leadership and Liturgy and the Work of Building the Kingdom.

Now. Now. Now.

The Dairy King of Kindness

Soon, we will be returning to the place that fills the hole in my soul-   Mid-coast Maine.

Every year, we make our pilgrimage Down East; for me, it is more than eating my fill of lobsters  (I’m more of a steamed-clams-kind-of-girl, anyway), it is more than hiking on soft blankets of pine needles, and it’s even more than the stinging but strangely refreshing blue-black, icy water into which we jump (that’s the only way to “get in,” by the way,  there’s no wading slowly into Maine water.)   Going to Maine, for me, is about going home.

Now, you know that I come from CT.  Some of you may even know that I was born in New York, but that moving to CT when I was four and living my whole recollectable life there, I consider CT to be my real home.

But Maine is my soul home.

My ancestors lived in Maine.  Great Aunt Emma whom, legend has it, threw hogs over her shoulder and moved them around the Bowdoinham barnyard; Francis, the stern Baptist preacher in our family tree, whose tiny vest-pocket-bibles I now possess; and Doris, the small-town Brunswick socialite who lived in a three-story brick house right in the middle of the action on the corner of Lincoln and Maine streets. Edna St. Vincent Millay, one of our family's more famous relatives, wrote many of her poems in and about her native home of Maine.

When my mother and step-father retired to Maine, my mother wept; she discovered with a map in one hand and the family genealogy in another, that the house that they had bought on Great Island was a dozen yards from the homestead of James Millay, our Irish ancestor who first settled in Maine, generations and generations before.

When we go to Maine, it is either to the island of Monhegan, where my mother spent many summers growing up, or to visit family-  my sister and her brood in Brunswick, or our son in Portland. One of my best friends from CT moved to Eliot, Maine some years ago, so we add a stop there, too, connecting the dots of decades of friendship and family ties in our Maine Coast visits like pearls on a string.

Today’s story is about some thing that happened in Maine- 52 years ago:

My mom, aunt and grandmother had taken us for our annual sojourn north, and we were staying, together, in a cottage in the Thorburn Colony on Harpswell.  My mom and grandmother were widowed; my aunt’s husband was in Boston studying in graduate school that summer, and I remember that he had a part-time job delivering phone books.   This favorite uncle of ours, Uncle Pete, made his trips to see us in  Maine on the weekends in a VW camper, loaded to the gill with the afore-mentioned phone books.  We kids were delighted to see him and, suddenly, the tone of the whole house changed when Uncle Pete arrived.  Bedtimes went out the window, the water play down at the beach shifted from building sand castles to wild, splashing adventures in the water and on the slippery, treacherous seaweed-covered rocks; and we kids, (my cousins, brothers and I) lay in bed at night and could hear the grown ups in spasms of laughter as they sat at the dining room table late into the night playing bridge and drinking wine.  My Uncle Pete had a special gift for reading the wine labels out loud in a variety of hilarious accents that put  my mother, aunt and grandmother into hysterics.  They were happy days.

One evening, we went out to the Dairy Queen for ice cream. This was an unusual treat for us.  Even at the early age of five I was beginning to fill out my one-piece swim suit in ways that leaned more towards chubby than svelte, and so ice cream was not usually on the meal plan for me.  I approached this cone with no small amount of excitement, delight and a little bit of shame.  (I know…at 5 years old.)     We waited in line at the window.  My three cousins, my two brothers and me.  I remember being last in line.  I got a twist cone (chocolate and vanilla) with a chocolate dip that hardened like a thin shell on the soft serve peak of ice cream.   My brothers and cousins were already all across the parking lot at the picnic table when I got my cone.  My mom was fussing with her wallet, preparing to pay for the ice cream; my aunt was with the kids; my uncle leaned against our Ford Falcon smoking a cigar. The ice cream attendant handed me my cone.

I took one lick.

I nibbled at the edge of the chocolate shell.

I turned, pivoting on the toe of my blue, round toed Keds and… I dropped the cone.

The cone landed right on the hot, sandy blacktop.

I don’t think anyone noticed.  Except for me… and my uncle.

I remember standing in the parking lot, looking down at the cone and realizing that I’d lost my chance for this special treat.

My uncle quietly walked across the lot, passed right by me, went up to the window and, in a matter of moments, replaced my cone.

Today, 52 years later, this story sounds silly.  Sure: Kid gets cone.  Kid drops cone.  Uncle buys a new one.  Great story.

            But, like all stories that hang around in the folds of our memories for more than five decades, it’s much more than that.  It is about caring, inclusion, generosity, quiet noticing, compassion, feelings of worthiness, shame, family, and love.

And, it’s about ice cream.

We’ll be passing by that same Dairy Queen when we go on vacation this summer.

Since that trip in 1964, my mother, grandmother, aunt and two of my cousins have all joined the saints in light.  Of  my  family's senior relatives, in fact, my uncle is the last one standing.

Maybe I’d better stop and have a cone, in thanks for him.

Note:  this blog will be on hiatus until after Labor Day as I enjoy some vacation- and ice cream. See you in September.