From Where I Sit

By Pat Spilseth, Columnist

Finally, two spots of color have appeared on the lake in front of my house. The portable red fish houses have perked up my mood today. Other than chirping, singing birds appearing at the bird feeder, it’s been one silent, gray, freezing day after another. Too much gray gloom is not healthy for us Pollyannas!

I need sunshine and color. Even my ageless geraniums in the kitchen garden window are still adjusting to coming inside and are just beginning to bloom their cheery red blossoms.

I’m waiting for those glorious annual garden catalogues to arrive in my mailbox. I desperately need some color in this endless January of frigid gray weather. Don’t many of you need a bouquet of fresh daisies or red tulips to lighten the winter doldrums? I need to lighten the thickness of time on these winter days.

I love the sunshine and warmer days. Thank goodness for the happy, chirping nuthatches at my bird feeder in the kitchen window. Seeing them devouring the tube of sunflower seeds cheers me. I wonder what happened to the cardinals. Usually their brilliant red feathers are at the feeder too, but I haven’t seen them all month.

This past year we often got news of another friend who died. Those calls are now expected. I’m at that time of life when the past has more years in it than my future. Friends are dealing with more illnesses, the death of parents or caring for family members who can no longer live by themselves. Several are moving out of their homes to downsize or into senior housing. Some are finding the strength of their faith to help to cope with spouses suffering with dementia or  debilitating illness. It’s a time of life that tests one’s mettle.

I miss my daily walks in the woods with my Beagle Buddy. Dogs are life savers for many of us. They encourage us to take walks to maintain good health and boost our spirits. Many folks adopted a dog companion during the Covid pandemic, fulfilling the need for company. Often I remember the dog’s name rather than the owner’s name, but I haven’t met any dogs named Buddy. My Buddy is irreplaceable.

It’s so easy to discount the value of simple pleasures like coffee with a chocolate chip cookie. How easy it is to take for granted simple contentment. I need to value more the goodness of a healthy life, loving kids and a good marriage.

Some days I find myself spending hours searching for the right piece to fit into a jigsaw puzzle. It perks me up to listen to phone calls from friends or if I finally find a good mystery to read. This month I’ve read four books by Grisham and Balducci…intriguing mysteries fill my dark evenings. Lately, I’ve also read fast moving, mindless tales by well known authors who satisfy my craving for a good tale but don’t light my fire anymore.

Author John Updike writes about “the silent years skipped over.” I identify with his thoughts. Many of us live years of our life on a treadmill, unconscious, going through our daily routines. When our kids were young, life was a rigid demanding schedule of rise, dress and get ready for school, have breakfast, rush to the bus, grab a cup of coffee and off to work. We carpooled to swim team or basketball, football, tennis or soccer practice, followed by dinner, confirmation classes, piano practice, homework and finally, a tired collapse into bed. Life was an endless series of changing scenes and people who added zest to our lives.

The past has stretched and settled into the present. My imagination is a carousel of flashing moments. I conjure up shreds of the past: picnicking at the Giant Chair and Table, swinging on Tarzan vines at Monkey Vine Palace, wading in the chilling waters of First Creek, skating on the frozen rink at the old football field, watching ski jumpers fly through the air at Glenwood’s ski hills and sitting around the bonfire at Halvorson’s Point listening to guitar music…

Trailing photos emerge of my little kids in their Easter finery hunting for Easter eggs on our lawn. I remember car trips to Grandma’s house in Glenwood to visit on the screened porch and play on the banana slide with her neighbor kids. Kids still dog paddle at our beach and get slivers sunning on our weathered dock. Water-skiing and tubing with giant inflated tubes claimed our kids’ teenage years. Concussions and car accidents accompanied those days as well as tennis tournaments, proms, bonfires and speedboat rides.   

I locate touchstones, select memories to treasure. My life’s slide projector flashes a rotating carousel of moments I’ve lived…those I savor as well as those I’d like to forget. It’s hateful to recall playing the fool, those embarrassing moments of maturity struggles, broken hearts and deaths of favorite friends.

Walt Whitman’s poem “Song of Myself” captures all these feelings:

“I am of old and young, of the foolish as much as the wise,

Regardless of others, ever regardful of others,

Maternal as well as paternal, a child as well as a man,

Stuff’d with the stuff that is coarse and stuff’d with the stuff that is fine…

Not I, not any one else can travel that road for you,

You must travel it for yourself.”

Writing a daily “Gratitude Journal” seems like a good idea. Though some days can be depressing this endless winter, if I concentrate on my blessings, my day improves. I try to savor my favorite memories of the past, embrace the future and enjoy the present.

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To contact Pat, email: pat.spilseth@gmail.com.