This week I told myself to be nimble, to pivot, but I clomped, of course, instead of pirouetting. I kind of felt like I was at one of those old folk-dance events I went to in eighth grade—the Girl Scouts held them, I think—where, just when I thought I was getting the hang of the step, the caller would say, "Switch partners! Sashay…RIGHT!"
Right, I would think. That's…this side, and then I would sashay, a beat after the other dancers.
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This week flew by, starting, last Saturday, with a lovely lunch at a wood-fired pizza place with old friends, and ending tonight with an impromptu, root-through-the-fridge stir-fry that tasted better than ones I spend long hours planning.
I cleaned up files at work this week, consigning last year's grants to the paper archives, which was tedious but satisfying, and interesting meetings nibbled at the edges of the filing chores.
I made a cake this week and tried a new fudge frosting recipe, of which we all approved. I wrote letters and sent cards—birthday and sympathy—and I cleaned out drawers and a closet.
I packed things up for the clothing bank.
It was a fruitful week; things got finished and conversations were rich.
But it was not a week with one cohesive theme, and sometimes I stumbled, switching gears.
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We drove, all three of us, to Mount Vernon late on Saturday morning, to meet Larry, Cynthia, and Steve at an Italian place, new since we lived in that town. We planned to meet at 1:00, but all of us, independently, decided we should arrive early and make sure we could get a table, and so we met in the parking lot and clambered inside, where it was nicely humming with lunchers, but not jammed-packed crowded, at 12:45.
We sat at a long table topped with a rustic wood slab, polished to a high gloss. We had a funny, attentive wait person; the food was fresh and good, and the conversation veered between, "Remember?" and "Whatever happened to…." and the richness of life right now—lots of talk about trails and hikes and gardens, and lots of good plans for the future.
After lunch, we drove to Larry's house and settled in his front garden. He had us choose between cherry pie ala mode or hot fudge sundaes with cashews. We had each thought we were too full after the lovely lunch to eat dessert. We were each wrong.
We sat in the shade, and red-headed woodpeckers zoomed in to the bird feeder, and then swiftly disappeared, and tiny birds—birds that Mark calls cheepers—flitted and chattered.
Larry brought out a magazine from 2003, the year we moved to Mount Vernon, and just a few years after Larry arrived there, recently retired from overseeing the landscape department in a large Midwest city. Larry's garden was the cover spread, and inside, probably one half of the magazine was all about Larry, the flowers and plants he chooses, the way he puts them together, and the way he gives them freedom to grow into maturity.
The photographer came in July 2002 to take pictures of the garden; that was, Larry said, a drought year, and he told the photographer that they'd have to be selective about which plants to feature.
"Well, for heaven's sake," the photographer exclaimed. "Couldn't you have WATERED?"
Larry says he responded, straight-faced, "Gosh! I wish I had thought of that!"
The pictures in the magazine showed a lush and healthy garden utopia.
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Before we left, Larry got out his garden tools and some plastic bags, and he separated some hosta and gave us cuttings. The hosta are acid-yellow, bright and brash, and Larry says the deer just leave them alone.
And then we wended home by even backer back roads than the regular back roads we normally take—there's what we like to call a short cut from Larry's, although it may take us ten minutes longer to hit the bright lights of Zanesville, going that way.
We were exclaiming over the green growth in the fields, and baby goats frolicking, and settling in for a long, comfy ride, when we saw an RV pulled to the side of the narrow road. A couple of burly guys were struggling with a tire, and a sweet-faced woman, herself a little on the burly side, was standing by the vehicle directing traffic.
She was holding, I thought, a cat, but Jim said, "Oh, my gawd!" And Mark responded, "I know. Right?"
"What?" I said. "What?"
"Did you see the lemur?" asked Jim.
I turned in time to realize the critter in the woman's arms was a lemur, ring-tailed and big-eyed. She clutched it calmly, using her other arm to wave a driver to the far side of the road.
At the crossroads in Martinsburg, a motorcyclist pulled up to the light, lowered his foot to steady himself, and grinned at us. Instead of a helmet, he was wearing, I swear to you, a puffy felt turkey hat. The turkey's head bobbed over his forehead, and tail feathers waved behind his head in the wind. Red gobbler-thingies dangled under his chin.
We drove on.
"A lemur and a turkey helmet," muttered Mark.
When we drove by the old sway-backed school house, it was gone. A small clutch of people were feeding old boards into a fire. I thought about the shades of students who'd been to school there; were they dancing gleefully around the flames?
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Sometimes a ride home is just a little bit more than that.
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On Sunday, we planted the hosta Larry gave us, and we filled the window boxes with rich loamy dirt. We put coreopsis and coneflowers and daisies in the ground, and we filled the window boxes and planters with marigolds and snapdragons and vinca—things which, in our experience, the deer leave alone unless they are really, really, hungry.
I watered the pepper plants in their egg carton nurseries. Tomorrow is veggie planting day—peppers and tomatoes in the Pigpen.
Today was our first 90-degree day; the nights are cool, but not frosty, and it's time for those little plants to get themselves outside, soaking up the summer sun.
I thought about the mystery of things that grow, and, slicing a fat carrot, I saved the top. I put it in a saucer, filled it with water, and stuck it on the windowsill above the sink where we do dishes. When I got up the next morning, the water was gone.
The mystery of growing things. I refilled the saucer, and now I wait for fern-like greens to sprout, sweet little greenery right in my line of sight as I scrub up a pot. I used to do that with carrot-tops when I was a kid, eagerly awaiting their green-y moptops, and now it makes me smile to do it again.
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And Wednesday night, we watched the last Ted Lasso. And after Ted reminded Henry, in the final scene, to emulate a goldfish, and Henry, smiling, shaking his head, ran back into the game, after the credits rolled and Cat Stevens was stilled, we all sat back and sighed.
What will we do without Ted? we wondered,—even while I think it is the right and proper thing to wrap that story up: the tale is told.
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To learn more about the actors and the writers, I look Ted Lasso up on the internet, and find, to my surprise, that most of the articles are negative. Season Three: bad, they say. Things untied or tied up too neatly, too quickly.
And what's up with Ted and Michelle…has Dr. Jacob gotten the boot?
Disappointing, the critics say.
I will tell you the truth: I loved Ted Lasso. I waited for it eagerly every week. I loved the actors; I loved the writing. It was one of those rare instances, I think, where the right creative people came together at the exact right time, and they made something that helped me over a long, challenging hump,--something that was bigger than the sum of their individual parts.
In a very discouraging time, the show suggested that one person CAN make a difference, especially if that person works to be wholly and fully the best self they can be.
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No show, no film, no book, no piece or art, no poem or aria, can please every person. The most creators can do, I guess, is hope their babies meet the right people at the right time—the people who'll nurture and appreciate the creation, because it reaches them when the environment for it is exactly right.
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So---that people didn't like Ted Lasso: that's okay.
And that it was a joyful spot in my week for the three seasons of its run: that's absolutely okay, too.
It was a week to think about why one person loves a work and another does not, and to realize how much sense it makes that not everyone reacts the same way.
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And so, a week that startled us with lemurs stranded by the roadside and bikers bobbling turkey heads ends, after a scorching day, with the filling and refilling of the watering can. I wet those outdoor plants, nudging them to root in our soil, and urging them to grow.
I fill the carrot top's saucer with water again, too, and I go off to finish watching The French Dispatch with Jim. Like Ted Lasso, the film is kind of a fairytale for our times, and it's good, after a hot, busy day,--and after a week filled with disparate STUFF--to remember there is time, at the end of the day, to kick back, and, even in our hard-edged, practical world, there's always the chance of some everyday magic...or, at least, a little whimsy.
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I hope your week was wonderful.
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