Washboard duet

Bluegrass music is literally in Jay's blood. I can tell you that his grandmother, my mother, was born in the hills of eastern Kentucky, and that we had many an evening of mountain music when we visited early in my life. But all you really need to do is watch him when the music starts.

We have been feeding this interest for some time now, with visits to the Adirondack Fiddlers, and to various fairs and events nearby. There are regular and spontaneous hoedown throw-downs all around us- at the farmers' markets, art events, festivals, bluegrass is alive and well right here in and around the Green and Adirondack Mountains. Since we are positioned smack between the two ranges, we get it all.

This summer we have discovered Little Theater on the Farm in nearby Fort Edward. It's exactly what the name says, a little theater on a farm. The stage and a seating area are in the back of an old dairy barn. They hold regular bluegrass jams, as well as gospel jams that are thinly veiled bluegrass jams with maybe an extra nod to the spiritual roots of the music.

A few weeks ago we had our large animal vet, Lauren Marsh, out to help me with some infected scratches on my horse's legs. As we worked, we chatted about the area and the culture. Lauren asked if we knew about "Pickin' in Pawlet." I said no, but we were happy for the tip.

Tonight we went to our second Pickin' in Pawlet, in the Tavern of The Barn Restaurant. Yes, I took my 2-year-old to a bar to dance and chase women. Okay, well, I took him to eat and dance. The other part he did on his own. And hell, he's almost three, right?

He is becoming a big hit among the locals. and tonight he joined the jam. A beautiful young woman who regularly sings with the musicians, also sits by the stage and strums a washboard when she is not singing. She loves Jay, and gets up to dance with him when he hits the floor. Tonight she got out a second washboard, and invited him to play along. He was in seventh heaven. He studied her closely (technique is very important- must get it right!). Soon he was strumming along with the band in between the local ladies' frequent dance requests.

It's a beautiful thing to watch, spontaneous and fun, as a jam should be. He already "gets" the spirit, and why not? It runs through his veins, it makes his very heart beat. It is his lifeblood.

Native Pickle.

I threw down a big fifty cents on an old-school metal Spiderman lunchbox for Jay at a 

garage sale last weekend.

It is now his most important possession.

And, now, most things are food.

Laura has been going through boxes of her childhood toys. Among them is a canoe 

with two Indian chiefs, in full head dress and regalia, paddling along. The canoe is 

dark green and mottled. I explained what is was to Jay, and said "Can you say 

'canoe'?"

"It's a pickle", he said, and slammed it into his lunchbox next to an apple.

End of discussion.

Too soon.

I have been reading many Facebook posts about mothers this week. A dear friend, Denise Gainey, has been writing and sharing her final months with her own mother, who passed a few days ago. The writing has been beautiful, painful, and inspiring. As with many, it has triggered many thoughts about my own mother. Here are a few:

Many of the posts I have read begin with some form of this statement: my mother was taken too soon. I believe every one of them. I know that I am one of the lucky ones; my mother is still here.

When Laura and I visited my parents about five years ago, mom had just had two of her coronary arteries re-opened using stents. The new flow of blood through her body reinvigorated her, and she felt more energized than she had in years. Neither of her own parents lasted very long. Her father died of heart failure at age 49, and her mother died of cancer shortly before her 51st birthday. During this particular visit mom told me, "I never expected to live to be 70 years old. Every day I have from here on out is a gift."

And what a gift it has been. Too many of my friends do not have the gift I have, two living parents at my ripe age of 55.

Her many gifts to us go WAY back, but let's just look at what she has done in retirement. 

• I was able to pull out one of the many exhaustively researched books she made for us on our family history and look up the ages of my grandparents. These resources are so very rich to me, and will be a wonderful thing to hand to Jay. 
• Our house is filled with beautiful quilts, all entirely of my mother's own, aged hands. Every one of them is a splash of love to me. When any of my four siblings posts a picture on Facebook that was taken in their home, I almost always see a "Gramma Gerri" quilt somewhere in the frame. She will warm us forever and a day.
• In addition to her prolific quilting for us, she made "lap quilts" which are about four feet by six feet, perfect for a couch or single bed. In one single year, mom made over fifty (yes, about one per week), and donated them to a shelter for women and children escaping domestic violence.

During the summer that Laura was pregnant with Jay, mom went into the hospital to have a hiatal hernia repaired. There were severe complications after her surgery, and another surgery soon followed to remove her gall bladder. I talked to my dad nearly every day for a while, and we helped each other through the ordeal. I passed along messages to the sibs, but mostly dad and I connected over our concerns for mom and also for him and his stress and health. We agreed that Jay's impending arrival went a long way to giving mom the energy to fight and stay with us.

Mom turned 77 in May, and seems to still be going strong. I still need her, and we still love knowing that we can call at any time to give important messages and updates. Not the least of those includes Jay getting the first words of the phone call:

"I WENT PEE-PEE IN THE POTTY!!!!!!!"

I know they were extra happy to get that phone call.

They won't be here forever. I know this. But, they HAVE been here long enough to get me started on this parenting journey. Any time I get with them will make me a better parent. When I lose them, no matter their age or mine, it will be too soon.

Crazy bouncy rolly

It's been a crazy, bouncy, rolly couple of weeks. 

It began with preparation for the Bedlam Farm Open House cookout, then the open house. We left that Sunday for a whirlwind trip to Long Island for Jay's great-grandfather's 90th birthday, capped off with Jay's intro to the ocean at Robert Moses beach. 

The day after we got home from that, Laura left for a four-day work trip to Pennsylvania. She got home around 11:30 am Friday, and by 12:30 I was on the road for a three-day horse show in Massachusetts. 

I got home Sunday night, and spent Monday sorting and editing over 5000 pix from the show before getting dragged away for a steak-and-beer birthday dinner. 

A full day with Jay yesterday included a trip to Emerald Lake beach in Vermont, then more editing while he napped. Strong storms last night coupled with exhaustion meant no progress on uploading photos, but Jay and I got in some good hill-rolling before the rain and thunder hit. And, just for good measure he was UP, for good, at 3:00 this morning. We discussed the value of sleep and the likelihood of dinosaurs visiting (THEY like to sleep at night too!). 

Finally, 7:15 rolled around and it was time to ship him to daycare for the day. I came home and uploaded the 3286 images that survived the cut, watered the garden (just in time for another storm), and...

NOW.

An hour before I go to pick him up. A bit of ME time. I'm afraid to get too cozy. I will sleep MUCH longer than one hour if I sack out.

As if on cue, this year's fawns introduced themselves just now. Two does have given birth in our woods every year since we moved in. This is our fourth summer here. I was hoping the moms and fetuses made it through the really tough winter, and expected the worst. We generally see them before this, and I thought no way, no babies this year. Then, craning my neck and shoulders to stay awake, I saw this forty feet from my back window:

And soon there was another. I fumbled around to get me camera set up (still in the garage in the car with the wrong lens for this), and as luck would have it, the kids were feeling brave.

They bounced around my back yard, checked out the horses, and eventually answered a call from one of the mothers to get back home.

Better than a nap, any day. 

Project 199

It's been an intense week. 

I posted earlier in the week about meeting some incredible older men, with amazing stories and histories. I find that if one really wants to understand the history of the early to mid-20th century, the thing to do is find people who lived it and talk to them.

My wife Laura's maternal grandmother was born in Providence, Rhode Island in 1918, at the height of the flu pandemic. Her father later told her that she was put in the corner to make it or not make it; he could get another daughter but not another wife. She said she'd been fighting ever since, and everything I ever saw from her confirmed that. Her father was a physician in Providence, and saw patients in the front part of their house. People paid when they could, with whatever they could, and that became especially so in the 1930's during the Great Depression.

The stories go on and on. While working for Outward Bound, I took a group of semester course students into Leadville, Colorado, to do some service work. We met an 80-year-old mining widow. Her husband had passed away decades before from health issues related to silver mining, and the resultant lead in the water that gave the town its name. She remained here, in the highest town in North America, to live out her years, and told of the earlier days raising her family there.

But, I digress (I sometimes think that should be the name of this blog).

Meeting the men, listening to the elders like a wondrous child, was a high point for certain, but a couple of other things happened this week that I think will have a more lasting and profound impact on me.

One of those older men, Dominic, is Jay's great-great uncle. He is 92, and the brother of great-grampa Pat. During the course of the evening at the restaurant, I met a tall, physically imposing woman who had served in the Marine Corps. In the course of the conversation she said that she was about to turn 40, and that Dominic was her father.

THAT caught my ear.

I asked her more about that. We did the quick math, and sure enough the age difference between her and her father was almost precisely the difference between me and Jay, 52-plus years.  I asked her about her experience.

She loved it. "It was great. He had time to be home for me, he was always there. He was young at heart, and we had so much fun together." And now, about to turn forty years old, she still had him.

One of my concerns is leaving Jay too early. I wonder about my ability to stay alive, to stay healthy, and vibrant, and at what point caring for me might be a burden on a young man. This meeting gave me hope, and a kick in the ass to get healthier. It can happen. 

On the other side of hope is fear. I choose not to live in fear; I have seen it consume people. It's generally about as useful as Worry, which is the expression of fear in a slow burn, consuming fuel and life from people who should have other, productive things to do.

A close, dear friend is spending the weekend in the hospital, awaiting heart surgery. He's a few years older than I am, but like him I am overweight and have diabetes. My blood pressure runs a bit too high. I could be in a bed like that soon unless I change the course of my life.

Last night, at 11:00 pm, I should have been asleep but all I wanted to do was relive my early morning. Jay awoke at 5:10 am, and we set about putting together his shiny new train table. By 6:45 he was gushing over his new furniture- "OH, WOW!!!!", followed by "THANK YOU DADDY!!!". By 6:50 he was in my lap, lowering my blood pressure and removing the angst over "bolt B".

It's time for me to get it together. I am morbidly obese (don't waste your fingers typing a response that I'm not; the math is what it is. Denial is what has kept me here too long). An "ideal" weight for my height is probably about 60 pounds under where I am right now. THAT sounds intimidating, but let's start with a number that sounds within reach. Project 199 will being Tuesday, July 1st. That will involve dropping about 20 or so pounds. Then we'll go from there. I expect momentum to carry me beyond, but first things first. 199 is in my gunsight.

Monday is my birthday. I will enjoy cake and ice cream. Tuesday I will weigh in, and we'll get this party started. I have seen where I want to be and where I don't want to be this week, as clearly and honestly as it could have possibly been laid out for me.

Let's do this.

The Train Table and Bolt B.

Laura has been out of town for work, so Jay and I hung out together all week. Last night we visited Laura's father, aka Grampa Fred, for dinner. We had a great time, and as we got ready to leae Fred brought out a large box with an amazing train table, including track and toys. We had to rearrange Jay's car seat, the passenger front seat, and with a good bit of twisting and grunting, we got it into the Civic.

Of course when we got home, already past Jay's bedtime, the box HAD to get opened. I managed to appease him with some of the track and a couple of shiny wooden buildings, and eventually got him into bed.

One downside to these wonderful early summer days is that up here in the north country, the sun is up EARLY. At 5:10 this morning, we were up. By 5:15, the box was open and construction was underway. Let me justify this by saying that I would be leaving mid-day for a weekend-long horse show four hours away in Massachusetts, and I knew how torturous the weekend would be for Jay (and his mother) if the train table box lay in taunting mode the whole weekend. I had no idea how the table would get assembled until our early wake-up; now I had two unplanned (and yes, unwanted) hours to kill.

Okay, so by the time the table was together and I was choking down expletives with my coffee and the directions to the spiral track accessory, Jay was in full gratitude mode. "Thank you Daddy!" poured, gushed, repeatedly from his mouth with such sincerity and astonishment that it was hard not to keep pushing on. At one critical moment, trying to cram bolt B into tower 4 and the wooden block with the too-small hole, he crowded onto my lap. "I want to sit with you." He had a brand new dream toy six feet away, and he wanted to be with me. RIGHT NOW.

As for my frustration with bolt B, which any idiot knows should have been a screw, not a bolt, and could have at least been the right size and maybe easier to handle by thickened, aging, arthritic fingers, well, fuck. Fuck bolt B and the fucking block and fucking tower 4; they'll wait.

I picked Jay up, slid my chair back from the table, and plopped him into my lap. The hugfest lasted about 34 seconds, and was summarily terminated when Jay put one hand on each side of my face. He smashed my cheeks together, forcing my lips to pucker. He laid a huge, WET, seriously I'm drowning here, kiss on me. He grabbed tower 4 and took off for the table. Fuck.

Okay, so I really don't talk like that, but my inner dialogue was seriously close to the surface early this morning. Fatigue, a few days of single-parenting, and 16 bouts with bolt B's had worn down my resistance.

Who knew that a face-smashing/ near-drowning at the hands of a two-year-old could heal so thoroughly?

The counsel of elders

Saturday night, we took Jay to the Hartford Volunteer Firehouse for a benefit concert featuring a band called The Tennessee Mafia Jug Band. It was bluegrass and country music at its true finest (there is PLENTY of not-so-fine country music out there, but this would have made Patsy and Hank Sr. proud). The fiddle player was fast and silky smooth, maybe the best I have seen in person. Banjos, stand-up bass, slide guitar, mandolin, washboard, and yes, a moonshine jug. It's my music, in my blood, as my mom grew up in eastern Kentucky coal country. We are Scottish-Irish, the very roots of mountain music hold us together. And, ya gotta love a band that closes out the night with a parody of a western classic, "Ghost Chickens in the Sky."

It's Jay's music too. He loves anything with a beat (Jewish reggae or rap a la Beastie Boys or Matisyahu make him snap), but mountain music moves his whole body from the inside out. It's a joy to watch. I can't wait until he's old enough for a trip to Ireland.

However, I think the best part of the night came when my friend Stephen and I were sitting together at a cafeteria table, listening and nodding to the music. Our wives were outside with the boys, Jay and his friend Rowan. Stephen saw someone he knew, nodded, and shouted "How are ya?" over the music.

I looked up. A man, maybe in his 80's (?), with a very broken body, weathered face, and incredibly engaging smile, nodded back. He wore work pants and a blue work shirt with two patches- "CRS ( don't remember the exact initials?) Dairy Systems" on the left, and "Phillip" on the right.

They chatted for a second until they remembered where they had met, and settled into a discussion of just about anything imaginable. Phillip had worked in the dairy industry his whole life, and his body showed the wear. His mind was sharp beyond what I could ever hope for myself. It was fascinating to listen to his stories, to enjoy his company, to marvel at his ingenuity.

Not one single part of this man was waiting to die. He had several irons in the fire, and plans to expand a couple of business enterprises. A written transcript of the conversation might lead one to believe that the speaker was in his thirties, established but still building. I was enthralled.

The next evening I found myself on Long Island with Laura and Jay. We introduced Jay to his great grandfather Pat for the first time, on the celebration of his 90th birthday. Somehow I ended up with the honor of sitting next to Pat and his "younger" brother, who was in his mid-80's. A few seats away was a third brother, the big brother, 92 years young. The brothers and their friends shared stories from World War II, from their early days in Long Island City, about their father who died young, and their mother who raised the youngest while the older three left to fight the war in Europe and Africa.

I was transformed more than once this weekend to a child, sitting at the feet of the elders, taking guidance in their counsel. Their stories were so much more than reminiscence; they were about the power of family, about never slowing down even while looking back. They were history.

There is a history in our world, and more of it dies off every day. It lives while, and where, our elders live. It inspires us when it is drawn from them into our lives. It is our duty to call it out, to ask the questions, to carry it forward. To Phillip, to Grampa Pat and your brothers, to my parents, you still matter so very much. Your stories guide us, your history has molded us and built a world for us.

Talk to me. I want to hear more.

I need to hear more.