30th Anniversaries, Birthday Celebrations, Small Beauties, Losses, and American Troubles

30th Anniversaries, Birthday Celebrations, Small Beauties

This was a big week for us

my husband Glenn’s 53rd birthday, and our 30th wedding anniversary, which I found out was the Pearl anniversary. It was super-hot for our holidays, so we mostly hid indoors and ate homemade cherry frozen yogurt, but we went to the Willows Lodge for our anniversary (blessedly well-air-conditioned) and had cocktails and salads (too hot for anything but that and ice cream!) We walked in the small garden only after it got dark, checking out the blooms and visiting their cute pair of pot-bellied pigs.

Glenn’s birthday, lavender field

For Glenn’s birthday, he wanted to go out for cheeseburgers, so we went to a gluten-safe outdoor place in Kirkland and then went to the lavender farm to see how the lavender was growing and the wildflowers were faring. It was still hot at 8 PM (over 80!) but we still managed to have fun, and I marveled at the Instagrammers bending into uncomfortable poses (I still haven’t mastered that Instagram habit of posing in a totally unnatural and uncomfortable way that seems most fetching?)  We were very thankful for the small beauties all around us – sweet potato fries (gluten free!) at the cheeseburger place, lavender honey ice cream on a hot day, flowers that show up unexpectedly in your garden (this year, giant hot-pink lilies, though our dahlias were eaten by slugs.) We were also thankful not to have on the news most of the time this week, because of our celebrations.

Losses and American Troubles

Red sunflower in our garden

We lost so many people in a week Shelley Duval, Dr. Ruth, Richard Simmons, and (exactly Glenn’s age) Shannen Doherty. Then the shooting at a Trump rally. I am old enough to remember the attempt on Ronald Reagen’s life—I was eight at the time—and know the Brady Bill that was passed eventually because of it. Perhaps something like that will happen again—a fire captain lost his life, after all, and people will recognize the need for more gun safety. We can hope, anyway.

Before the shooting incident, there were a lot of calls from Democrats for Biden to retire or stop running and step down. Some of the comments rubbed me the wrong way, not just the agism, but the ablism inherent in the criticisms. (I legitimately do have a neurological condition, and it doesn’t make me stupid or incompetent. And I have to take a cognitive test—two hours’ worth—every year because of my MS.)  I like Kamala Harris quite a bit as a candidate, but I still didn’t like the comments people were making or the tone they were taking.

Hummingbird and verbena

I don’t usually do much political blogging here—I try to stick to the writing life and living with disability and chronic illness, as well as pictures of my (mostly Pacific Northwest) surroundings. I can understand how people feel confusion, anger, frustration, and disenfranchisement with America and its systems right now. I try not to give into despair even in seemingly endless lists of end-times events.

Perhaps focusing on small beauties in the best thing to do. Not to squeeze our eyes and ears shut, but to open them wider – to the wider world around us, not just the news that social media and television scream at us in increasingly alarming tones. To the person who lives across from us, to the birds and flowers, to the cherries at the farm stand or the friend who needs a visit who’s been in the hospital, or the relative across the country who’s been fighting with cancer.  Because we are not powerless, though at times we can feel that way. We can do small kindnesses, donate to charities we believe in, treat each other with understanding. Hug our cats and our loved ones. Tomorrow is not guaranteed to any of us, but in the waiting, we get to decide what we focus on, what we spend our energy on, what we place into timelines or gardens.