Summer's End

How can it be the end of July already? Where has the summer flown? 

Next week, I head back to school for a couple weeks of prep before students arrive. They start August 12th. 

As usual, I had planned/hoped to accomplish a lot more this summer - reading, travel, planning, writing - but despite failing to do all the things, we did accomplish quite a few. The last two months were incredibly full. I wrote about our trip to Michigan; the next week I taught a session of camp at the kids' school. My session was drama camp: I directed a group of 10 6th-8th graders in an abridged production of A Midsummer's Nights Dream, which was tons of fun and a great success, despite a host of costume malfunctions and a few forgotten lines. Never having done something like this, I was a little apprehensive about how it would go, but it turns out the hardest part was finding a good script that fit our time frame while using much of Shakespeare's original language. The script I found online worked perfectly and preserved the basic plots and language in a 40 minute production. 

The following week was VBS week - I didn't volunteer this year, even though I suffered pangs of regret for hanging back. This was supposed to be a week of planning, reading, writing, research, but was mostly focused on travel planning and resetting the house after hosting a big graduation/birthday party for our 18 year old. In a few weeks, she'll head to college, and we'll be down to one child in elementary school. The 10 year old has already shed tears anticipating her sister's departure, and I have had a few moments of anxiety about having an only child. I'll need a babysitter! I suggested hosting a foreign exchange student to my husband and daughter, but I didn't get much enthusiasm for that idea. Not for the babysitting, of course! But perhaps slightly motivated by the hope of forming a bond with someone whose family might host us overseas...

Family vacation followed on the heels of VBS - this time we headed back to San Diego to celebrate the Fourth of July with our oldest daughter - as well as her birthday on the third.  Our VRBO for this trip did not measure up to our fabulous place in Maine, not surprisingly. Given it was a holiday week, we were lucky to find a place that was relatively close to the beach and big enough for the seven of us who gathered.  Our oldest was on vacation with his wife*** See big announcement below!*** while our third son needed to work (I regretted not funding his trip but struggled with the fairness) and our fourth son was working in Italy (more below on that, too). 

Our original plans were scrambled a bit, but the resulting week turned out to have a nice balance of time with family and friends, without being too active, although it wasn't exactly without some conflict. The first couple of days were full of celebrations - we hosted a party for our 22 year old daughter at a brewery/taco place with her friends and a few of ours. The next morning we followed that up with waking early for the Fourth parade in Coronado, which offered opportunity to catch up with friends and relive happy moments. On Friday we went to SeaWorld, thanks to complimentary tickets for military and veterans. This was a request of the 10 year old, who loved it, despite long lines and expensive snacks, which reminded others of our group why we don't go to amusement parks very often.  Saturday was Balboa Park and beach day, followed by dinner with friends, while Sunday was Mass, brunch, and concert in the park. Some of our group would have preferred to just hang at the beach on Friday and Saturday and skip SeaWorld and the museums, but in the end, everyone got to do a little of something they liked.  We would have had more beach time if the ocean waters in Imperial Beach and Coronado were not contaminated by sewage overflowing from Tijuana's water treatment plant. This has been an ongoing issue for years, and it doesn't sound like a solution is in sight. As a result, although our condo was a couple blocks from the beach, we had to drive up the coast a bit to get past the e. coli water.

Most of the family left Sunday/Monday, but the 10 year old and I stayed two more days to go camping with friends in the San Bernardino National Forest. The temperature was unusually high - in the 90s even at 8000 feet elevation, but we managed to fit in a couple hikes in the morning and evening, and spent the hottest part of the day at Big Bear Lake, which benefitted from the heavy snows the past couple of years so that it had higher water levels than the last time we were there. That suited the girls just fine. My original vision was more of a backpacking trip - in fact, I bought a new backpack on sale - but I was just happy we could get in the mountains for a bit where the girls could enjoy unmediated time in nature. 

I had just enough time after returning from that trip to get the laundry done before we headed to Oklahoma City for the weekend to celebrate my father-in-law's 82nd birthday and meet their new puppy. This is their third golden retriever, and we are all praying he is as well-behaved and smart as their previous two dogs. He is a very much a puppy with lots of energy, but he is adored by all - let's just hope he can get housebroken!

A highlight of our weekend in Oklahoma City was a visit to the Blessed Stanley Rother Shrine.  Bl. Rother was a priest from OK who was martyred by - who? drug lords or the government or both? - in Guatemala in the early 80s. He was warned that he was a target for assassination and was given the opportunity to return to the States, but his famous quote is "A shepherd doesn't run from his people." 

The Shrine is a large and lovely classical church - its ornateness and expense might have dismayed Bl. Rother, other than it draws many people to visit. The day we visited, we stood in line for almost an hour to venerate relics of Padre Pio- his glove, a lock of hair, a piece of his tunic, some blood. More people were in line when we left than when we arrived. The shrine complex also includes an informative museum of Bl. Rother's life, while at the end of the plaza in the front of the church is a replica of the hill of Tepeyac and a tableau of St. Juan Diego and Our Lady of Guadalupe. We didn't follow the path to the top of the hill because a line of people were also waiting to reach the top to prayer. So although our visit was incomplete, we were heartened by the large number of pilgrims visiting. 

After Mass and brunch at a Old Country Buffet, a bit of a tradition with the grandparents, we returned to Austin in time to do more laundry and to spend a few days with our son who returned from his service project in Italy. He was working with L'Arche in Bologna for 6 weeks. Three of those weeks were spent on a bike trip through the Dolomites. The first three weeks he worked as an activities assistant and spent time on various outings and activities with the residents. L'Arche is a residential community for adults with disabilities. He had an amazing experience becoming "comfortable with the uncomfortable" as he said in this essay he wrote for ND. And his Italian improved! To say we are proud of him for doing this is an understatement.  But we were also sorry to that he only had a week home with us before heading back to campus to work a job with Irish media creating content for their athletics department. 

My visit with him was cut even shorter because I had to pack up again on Wednesday. This time I was heading to Oakland for a conference for Catholic school educators on teaching the Holocaust.  The conference was excellent - full of history, stories, and time for reflection.  Sessions were led by a priest and a rabbi, both scholars of Jewish history, as well as a by a teacher who leads a Holocaust seminar for Catholic high schoolers in Atlanta. We heard from the son of a survivor who has helped produce a documentary on an education initiative she started, and another presenter shared information about the Jewish partisan movement of resistors during WW II. A researcher from the US Holocaust museum presenter her research based on her access to the Vatican files of information from WWII, which was just recently opened to researchers. But the highlight of the weekend, aside from time to learn from these presenters and from my fellow attendees, was a visit to a temple and Shabbot services followed by a meal with two survivors and a dozen or so second generation survivors. The two women were in their 90s and full of welcoming energy. One of them was a small child who was hidden away and then sent away on the kindertransport, while the other ran away to the woods and hid with the partisans, although she was too young to fight. She had to stay almost five years in a displaced persons' camp, a part of the history we don't hear much about. It was a very moving experience. 

The past week since returning from that trip has been spent resetting and researching for the return to school. Each day I've logged onto a webinar hosted by Teach Like a Champion, which has had some really practical advice, even if it isn't as inspiring as the Holocaust seminar.  We've had our dental and doctor visits for the summer, although the eighteen year old had to return to the dentist this week because she chipped her two front teeth on the 10 year old's head in the pool. It wasn't the ER visit she thought it might be the moment after it happened, but it was an unplanned expense. 

Tomorrow I return to school for teacher workdays. I'm wishing I had one more week. I wanted to get to Indiana to see my parents on the farm, even though we saw them in Michigan, but I've run out of time, so that trip will have to wait until the fall.  In three weeks, we'll be boarding another flight to take our daughter to school at Furman University in South Carolina.  A new phase of our lives will begin, one the ten year old is not looking forward to. She'll be an only child for the second half of her life. We'll miss having high school events on our calendar, although I'm sure we'll find ways to fill the days. We're already planning our fall trips to see the kids at their various homes around the country! 

A few photos: 

The birthday girl

Enjoying the parade

Fireworks atop the NAVFAC building downtown SD

Visiting Belugas

Riding roller coasters

Patting manta rays

Walking the IB pier

Balboa Park in bloom

Body Surfing at No Surf Beach

League of Wives statue that my friend helped get created and installed

Ship wreckage Coronado beach

Camping in San Bernardino NF

Hike to Jenks Lake

With a Holocaust Survivor Etty H

Puppy pals

Starring as Ms. Hannigan

Siblings!

Blessed Stanly Rother Shrine

The priest that married us is in this photo with Fr. Rother

Oakland Cathedral of Christ the Light

Forgot to mention Summer Swim Team!

Once more to the lake

It's been awhile since I taught E. B. White's classic essay "Once More to the Lake," but it's elegaic title and tone capture the experience of this summer's brief trip to Michigan. As I mentioned in the last post, in early June, my youngest daughter and I flew to Traverse City to meet up with my parents, my older brother and his partner, and my sister and her family. Last summer was reunion year - all three of my siblings and their families, all my nephews and nieces, and all of my own children gathered on South Shore Drive for a summer vacation that was both relaxing and emotionally draining.  There were a lot of people to feed and entertain.  We weren't all on the same schedule, but even so, we did make some great memories. This summer trip had no expectations and so less drama, but also fewer emotional highs. 

Like White, my experience of the lake is colored by memories of my own childhood as I witness the experiences of my youngest.  As I've written about before, when I was growing up, our family went to the same place every summer. We did the same things - swim, bike, read, eat cherry pie and ice cream, watch the sunset, shop in little gift shops, and take a hike or two. Occasionally neighbors would take us out on their boats. My dad, brothers, and grandpa fished. A couple of times, I went on the charter boat, but I mostly read. We didn't mind doing the same thing every year - we craved tradition.

My own children have different memories. Visiting the grandparents has been our tradition, but we've done a lot of different things in the summer the last few years. We have gone to the lake many times, but not every year.  My youngest had few memories of it before last summer. Now that we have gone twice in a row, she has memories of the places and people. But her experience is so different - instead of a handful of cousins around the same age, it was just she and my niece this year.  They play quieter games than their brothers did at the same age.  When I was that age - 10 - I had two cousins and a sister to pal around with, but I also loved solitary time. I was a reader and a dreamer. I liked to spend time at the lake drawing and painting and writing stories. I wanted to hike up into the woods.  In White's essay, he watches his son play in the water and feels time condensing - he is both his son and his father in that moment. Mortal and immortal through memory. I experience a similar emotion when I watch my daughter, but I also am missing not just my own childhood summers, but the childhood summers my children experienced.  Nostalgia threatens to overwhelm at times.

Meanwhile, reading a book about nostalgia on the flight - Ann Patchett's Tom Lake, which as I mentioned takes place in upstate Michigan - reminded me of how unreliable memory can be, and how some memories are resurrected at surprisingly or unexpected times. Visiting the cherry orchard I remembered made me realize I didn't remember the cherry orchard as it was, but rather I remembered what it meant to me. I either never knew or never absorbed the connection of the orchard to Bruce Catton. How often my memory is untrustworthy! I biked to it this summer and stopped to take a few photos, but it no longer is a thriving orchard. Even though house looked tired. I didn't poke around much because I didn't want to trespass, but I remember posing for photos among the trees one summer with my sister and cousins when we were in high school - pre-digital photo/selfie days, but at that age when we loved to envision ourselves as models.  We were beautiful - maybe not by worldly standards - but in our awkward, hopeful, unique ways.  

So here we are - five weeks after this vacation, and I'm just getting around to finishing this post. Somehow this summer has not had the time for the reflection that I was hoping to find. 

In the cherry orchard

Flora of the Michigan coast

This photo is supposed to be of a bald eagle swooping over the lake, but I missed it!

And here is a photo of a deer that just ran into the woods...

Another view from the orchard that doesn't exist any more

Lady's slipper! A rare sighting

Great color contrasts

Modeling

What I've been reading lately

 While the rest of the country is suffering from the heat dome, here in Texas we have had a fairly mild summer compared to last year - it's only been in the low 90s most of June. We've been enjoying the pool, getting up earlyish to exercise, taking a dip in the pool before bedtime to lower our core temperature, and eating lots of popsicles and ice cream.

Yesterday was one of the first days I have had to sit by the pool and read. Not that the summer has been all busy, but when I haven't been busy, I've been social or working on things like finding new homeowner's insurance and planning summer travel and taking an online course for teaching religion. Not really work, but tied to a laptop. 

So what have I been reading? I finished Terms of Endearment by Larry McMurtry yesterday. I've never seen the movie but I pictured Shirley Maclaine as Aurora Greenway the whole time I was reading. She doesn't entirely match the image of Aurora as described in the book. Aurora is supposed to be full figured, maybe plump, and taller than average. She is bossy and flirtatious and unpredictable, qualities MacLaine might have succeeded in representing. Just looking at the cast online reveals that the movie doesn't follow the book closely. The first two thirds of the book are about Aurora romancing four "mature" lovers as she enters her 50s. The last third features her daughter Emma another decade later, just prior to her cancer diagnosis.  It sounds like the movie focuses on or combines Emma's tragedy with Aurora's adventures.

I picked up this book because I have never read anything by Larry McMurtry, and I'm trying to read books by Texas writers, most of which are westerns, unsurprisingly.  Terms is an unusual book, relatively light on plot. In fact, I kept wondering exactly what the conflict is - Aurora's inability to choose a suitor? Her struggle to redefine herself in late middle age? The challenge of relationships in late middle age?  Even having completed the book, I am a little muddled about the themes - maybe because I knew a cancer diagnosis was coming, which should have been the central conflict but really comes late in the novel.  While I was reading, I was anticipating Aurora discovering she has cancer and that would precipitate some change in  her relationships. I kept waiting for her to reform/educate Vernon Dalhart so that he becomes her chosen suitor, but she just sort of decides one night after a failed dinner party to stick with the General.  I would need to reread that section to decipher if she really has an epiphany of sorts - maybe a decision to be loyal to someone? It's more of two books in one, and I can't decide if I liked it or not. It kept me reading and wanting to find out what happened, but I didn't really care for any of the characters. The most likable was Vernon, but he gets sort of set aside after featuring largely early on. Aurora's choice of the General, who is jealous and self-centered, over Vernon, who is kind and generous, is baffling - a statement about the inscrutability of attraction?  Some of the language betrays its 1970s origins.

While on vacation in Michigan, I read Ann Patchett's newest novel Tom Lake, which is set in Michigan at a summer theater remarkably similar to Interlochen, which isn't far from where we stay on Crystal Lake, about 45 minutes from Traverse City. Reading a novel set in a place you particularly love is always intriguing. In my imagination, the cherry orchard that Joe Nelson inherits from his aunt and uncle seemed remarkably like a cherry orchard we used to hike to. Of course, it can't be the same since the one I vaguely remember has a view of Crystal, not Lake Michigan, and it didn't have a little cemetery, but it did curve up a hill and smell sweetly of cherry blossoms and clover, laced with the scent of cedar and sand that pervades upper Michigan.  I hadn't been back to that orchard in years and years, so I biked by it only to discover it doesn't really exist anymore. Most of the trees are gone or no longer being cared for, so the orchard looks half wild. I had forgotten - or never really absorbed - that the property belonged to Bruce Catton, the historian, so that house is not a small farmhouse like the one in the novel, but a larger tudor style dwelling. In my memory, we hiked up the hillside behind the cottage where we used to stay, but I no longer know where the path is, and public access to the path is probably limited now by the newer homes that have sprouted up along the shore road. 

This pleasant blend of memory and imagination endeared the book to me, and the ending provides a sense of promise, but I was hoping for a little more from it. Perhaps my expectations were too high.  The premise of novel explores the relationships between mothers and daughters, and adults and their past, as the story centers around a mother in middle age, Lara, revisiting the past as she tells her adult daughters about a love affair she had with a famous actor one summer before he became famous. The mother had a shortlived acting career that ended because she really could only play one character, Emily from Our Town. (In the notes, Patchett writes that she hoped the book would inspire people to go back and read Thornton Wilder's play, which I am inspired to do, so it is a success in that regard. My memory of Wilder's play is dim in regard to details.) 

Patchett's novel moves back and forth between the present, which is set during the Covid pandemic, and that summer when Lara met the famous actor during a run of Our Town at the summer theater. They live like camp counselors - visiting each other's cabins and sneaking out to swim in the lake. The love affair doesn't outlive the summer. Lara gets hurt and is replaced by her understudy on the stage and in the arms of the famous actor, Peter Duke.  

While I loved reading about Michigan, this book had a couple quirks that prevented it from being a favorite by Patchett, although I did appreciate how she portrayed the way that children get the past wrong - they misunderstand and create stories about their parents based on patched together stories that are missing information. Lara's story is supposed to fill in the gaps for her girls, even though the idea that a mother shares as much about a past love affair with her adult children is perhaps a stretch. At times it is a little unclear whether she is sharing or just remembering. In the end some holes in the familiy history are filled in with a few surprises.  The relationship between the girls and their mother improves perhaps somewhat, but doesn't change much as a result of learning about her past. Lara's relationship with her husband seems strong, but her deep dive into the past seems to make her realize how much passion she experienced with the actor, who ends up an alcoholic. That isn't really a spoiler because you know in the beginning he is both famous and a drunk. On the other hand, her marriage seems deeply satisfying and healthy, despite it being something of a rebound relationship. It seems a testament to how much love for a place keeps the family united and people grounded. Even the famous actor loved the orchard more than perhaps he ever loved any person besides himself. 

Other fast reads: Carrie Soto is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid and James by Percival Everett which is one of the hot books of the summer. Reid's book is the story of a professional tennis player making a comeback after years on the sidelines. Carrie Soto retired from professional tennis after reaching a goal of winning a Grand Slam, but when her record is threatened by a younger player, she returns to the court. This book may not appeal to everyone because much of the novel is spent describing Carrie's training and games, and of course, Carrie makes some bad choices during her famous years. She does reconcile with her father and achieve some self-awareness over the years about how single minded and rude she was. It was interesting to reflect on what it takes to rise to the top - and is it possible to do so without using and abusing others. The question of whether genius requires a little monomania is an interesting one. 

James, Percival Everett's novel about the slave Jim from Mark Twain's books, has garnered a lot of media attention and accolades. It moves fast - James falls from one misadventure into another in an episodic plot harkening to the structure of Twain's book, and others of that time. It also employs both the irony and sarcasm present in Twain's voice.  I need to go back and reread Huck Finn - it's been a long time, and I forget a lot of the details. I considered reading Tom Sawyer with my 8th graders, but the language was an issue. Twain is a writer I have never really loved, although I appreciate his talent. Percival Everett's book has some of Twain's biting humor, but is lighter on descriptions and heavier on both action and commentary about the use of langauge. The premise is that James, known to Twain's readers and to white people in Everett's book as Jim, escapes and meets up with Huck and then gets separated and has his own adventures before crossing paths with Huck again near the end of the novel.  Everett revises Twain's story quite a bit, especially at the end, adding events that suggest "this is what I wish was could have happened." In Everett's book, slaves have two languages - a grammatically correct and linguistically advanced English that they speak with each other, and a slave dialect that they speak in the presence of white people. Perhaps this is inspired by the literate work of Black writers like Phylis Wheatley and Frederick Douglass. James is a teacher who instructs children in when and how to use the slave language to give white people what they want. He also tells the children that there is no God, Who is another fabrication by whites to maintain power and oppress others. James runs away because he is going to be sold, but he doesn't want to go far because he is motivated to free his wife and daughter, whom I don't remember in Twain's book. 

The book is more of a mediation on the use of language to get and maintain power than a plot driven story like Twain's Huck Finn, although Twain's book also contains its share of biting satire, although the plot of James moved quickly. Occasionally, I'd have to backtrack to figure out just how the action shifted to a new location - but maybe that was because I was reading late at night.  The book is complex and mashes contemporary ideas about identity and language with a setting 180 years in the past. I can see why it is a source of conversation. 

I've also just finished rereads of Anne of Green Gables adn Anne of Avonlea with my daughter and started Anne of the Island. The sequels lack the endearing escapades that Anne experienced in the first novel, but are escapist retreats into the flowery descriptions of Prince Edward Island and the friendships and light romances Anne finds herself engaged in. That style of writing has been out of favor for a long time, but I love it, and happily my daughter seems to love it too - reading it out loud to her perhaps is an aid to appreciation. 

Finally, I skimmed a self-help book, How Not to Age by Dr. Michael Greger, the type of book you can usually just read the intro or a review and know what the book has to say. I actually checked this one out to get myself to be more motivated to go to bed earlier and to read to my husband a little bit to convince him of the virtues of eating more vegetables and less meat and carbs. And it provides a great defense of wheat germ, my long ago favorite additive, for brain health.  I am not a fad diet person, but lately aches and pains and poor sleep have me fearing that age is catching up more quickly than I'd like, so I need to be more intentional about turning out the lights earlier and getting more fruits and vegetables into my body. All the things you know are good for you, but books and junk food are just more enticing...