Saturday Afternoon Chat: Some alone time, a couple of outings, visit by friends, and bad Anne of Green Gables sequels

June 3, 2023June 3, 2023 / Lisa R. Howeler / 9 Comments

Everyone, I am so excited because by the time you read this, or maybe while you are reading it, I will be having an afternoon to myself to write and watch movies and do whatever I want.

In other words, I will be sitting in my house completely lost and wondering why I thought it would be a good idea to accept my husband’s offer to take the kids to a movie and for me to stay home.

The whole thing sort of went down like this:

Husband: “I’m going to take the kids to Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse on Saturday and you can stay home and write.”

Me: “Uh. Oh. Okay.”

Husband: “Great. Have fun.”

And boom. Here I am. Alone. Writing a blog post.

Alone. In my house. With the dog. With my family 45 minutes away from me one way.

Alone with my thoughts and an old movie (How to Marry A Millionaire).

Ahem.

Did I ever mention that alone time is highly overrated? Because it is.

I’ll update in my Sunday Bookends post how many times I cried wishing my family was home with me interrupting me 15 times while I try to write and that I had instead gone with them.

For now, though, a little about last week.

There is very little to report, honestly. It was a fairly relaxed week – at least physically. Mentally my mind seemed to race all day.

We spent Sunday at a Memorial Day service at a small cemetery about 30 minutes away. A bagpiper played some music in honor of the holiday at the cemetery which was recently repaired and cleaned up.

The speaker who was supposed to come didn’t make it so it was just the bagpiper, but he did a wonderful job. The music was very poignant and moving as we overlooked the cemetery full of veterans of wars that our country fought as far back as at least the Civil War, if not the Revolutionary War as well.

After the service we stopped at a playground right down the road for Little Miss to play a bit. She, however, was more interested in playing in the creek behind the playground, which is totally fine with me. She had no interest in leaving the creek when it was time to go and we hope to stop by there again soon to give her even more time to play.

The water was very low there because we have not had a lot of rain recently and also did not have a very snowy winter.

I have a feeling that our county will be under a burn ban soon. In our area we are allowed to burn trash in a barrel outside in our backyards, but not if there is a burn ban in effect. That will probably come soon as our grass is starting to fade to yellow in some places and our trees are very dry.

Little Miss and The Husband threw rocks in the creek and Little Miss and I put our feet in the water. It was really a very nice and relaxing afternoon.

The Boy was home resting after working the night before.

On Monday we visited my parents for Memorial Day after The Husband went to a Memorial Day service to take photographs and my dad and The Boy went to a service downtown.

The Husband cooked steaks on the grill that my dad had bought a while ago from a local farmer.

The steaks were excellent.

Little Miss, The Husband, and the Boy took a ride on the golf cart before we left. Little Miss helped clean out the pool at my parents before the golf cart ride. My dad is trying to get it summer ready. We will have to do some more cleaning tomorrow when we visit to get it all the way ready.

On Thursday Little Miss had a friend over to visit.

Yesterday we did pretty much nothing, other than The Husband who was awesome and braved the heat we were having to pick up groceries.

It turned out to be not as hot as we thought it was going to be but he didn’t want me to have to deal with any drama after the loss of the key fob last week. There always seems to be drama when I do the shopping. Sigh. He also does a great job and keeps us well within budget. Not that I go too crazy with the budget, but Little Miss does tend to add extra fruits to the cart when we do it, which is okay by me.

This past week started writing more of book two of the Gladwynn Grant Mysteries. I am having fun crafting the story and will hopefully write a little more on it today during my break.

I started to watch Anne of Green Gables: The Continuing Story today but – ick. I forgot that the story was not from the books and was, quite frankly, ridiculous and way too over dramatic. The actors were too old to be playing the parts, they took the story out of Prince Edward Island and to the United States and Kevin Sullivan took way too many liberties with the characters for my taste.

I have not enjoyed every Anne book I’ve read (like Anne’s House of Dreams. Yuck. So depressing. Seriously.) but there is a reason I love L.M. Montgomery’s books. They are whimsical and full of joy, most of the time anyhow. There are some sad and hard stories but at their heart is a youthfulness and hopefulness to Anne that I really didn’t see in this mini-series or as much of it as I was able to watch today. I watched it years ago and remember not enjoying it very much then either.

Staying on the topic of Anne of Green Gables, this week I unfollowed the official account of the original mini-series when they started pairing scenes from the film with modern music – particularly Taylor Swift.

I am not a fan of Taylor, one, but, two, I am not a fan of modern music being paired with films about vintage shows or books. I read those books and watch similar movies to escape the modern world. I don’t see why they need to be combined and connected to the modern world in any way. Leave me my vintage fantasy world, please. That’s what I wanted to tell them but instead I just quietly unfollowed. No need to be a prude and a drama queen at the same time. *wink*

I usually share what I am drinking and forgot to do that at the beginning of the post so I’ll share now that I have made myself a cup of peppermint tea to sip and filled it with honey after being without honey for a week or so. The weather was very warm last week so I didn’t bother to make tea, but instead drank a lot of water with lemon or grape juice mixed in.

How was your week last week? Did you do anything exciting?

Drink any lovely teas or lovely beverages?

Let me know in the comments.

A Memorial Day journey with my parents

June 1, 2022May 8, 2025 / Lisa R. Howeler / 7 Comments

I didn’t really think about the emotional impact of traveling with my parents to place flowers on the graves of our passed-on loved ones when they asked if my daughter and I would like to ride along Sunday.

I also forgot that every time we pile into the car with my parents, something weird happens or the adventure becomes much longer than originally planned.

This trip was no different and there were a couple of times I thought we were going to be waiting for a mechanic.

When we started out on the journey, I heard my parents speaking in hushed tones.

“Should we even be driving this?” Mom asked.

What did that mean? Was something wrong with the car? Great. Just great. Now we were on a 20-mile journey in a car that might explode or something.

“What do you mean should we be driving it? Is this a problem that could leave us breaking down on the road, or leave us flying over an embankment into a tree?”

My questions were met with a silence that spoke volumes (harkening back to the days when I was a child and my parents decided there were things I didn’t need to know) so I started to pray.

Luckily the car problem never became an issue and Dad was able to get it fixed two days later (well, today as I am writing this).

My parents decided we would make the trip after lunch on Sunday, but lunch was late so our trip was late. By the time we arrived at the cemetery about 30 minutes from my parents’ house, it was almost golden hour, the time when the sunlight is the prettiest. I always feel guilty admiring the hundreds of flags dripped in golden sun spread out across a cemetery. It’s a solemn place, not an overlook. Still, the staff of the cemetery did a nice job again this year.

My dad and Little Miss planted flowers by my grandparents’ grave and then we stood there a few minutes, not sure what to do next.

“Sometimes when I come alone, I say a little prayer,” Dad said. “Or talk to them. Should we introduce Little Miss to them?”

Oh. Right. My grandparents were there. Under the ground. I should be focused on remembering them, but I’d stowed that emotion in the back of my head to simply make it through the day without getting weepy. Here it was, though, in my face.

So, I introduced my grandparents to Little Miss, and then, as I told Grandma how much she would have loved Grace, I started to cry. I wasn’t only remembering the time I had spent with her when she was alive, but the times I used to come and sit by her grave with a bag of black jelly beans, eating them and chatting along to her like she was still around (though feeling a bit dumb about it). Grandma loved black jelly beans but wasn’t supposed to eat them because the licorice was bad for her high blood pressure, I guess.

(Unnecessary explanation number five in this post: I talk to my grandmother because I knew her the longest. I was two when my grandfather died. I was in my mid-20s when my grandmother died and I lived with her part of that time.)

Stuffing our emotions back in, we headed back to the car and then drove around the other side of the cemetery to my aunt and uncle’s grave. This is my dad’s sister and her husband. Next to their grave, is the burial spot of a friend/neighbor of my dad’s and a cousin of my uncle’s — a decorated Vietnam War veteran who reminds my dad of the darker side of being a member of the United States Army. This man (first name Guy) was a sniper, was injured, earned a Purple Heart, and then was placed on duty to escort dead soldiers home from Vietnam. Guy killed himself in 1998 in the woods behind his house, a short drive from my parents’ house, we believe to stop the memories of all he’d seen.

After my dad planted flowers at his grave, and Little Miss and I had gone back to the car, Dad, a veteran of the United States Air Force, turned and faced Guy’s grave, saluting him in the respect he probably wasn’t given when he came home from war. The sight hit me hard in the chest and as I turned to tell my mom, who’d missed Dad’s salute, I broke down and she did as well. We were a bit of a blubbering mess for a few minutes.

With the tears behind us, Dad suggested a stop at a local ice cream place and that’s where things went off the rails. First, there was a huge line at the place, second, Dad accidentally left the lights and air conditioner on, so while he was waiting in line for the ice cream, the battery in his car died. This is where living in a smaller area comes in handy, because my dad looked to our left and the man in the next car was someone he knew.

Our family has also known the man’s wife for years. The two of them managed to get the car jumped but then another man walked by who knew Dad and Little Miss, Mom, and I sat there wondering if we would get home before 10 p.m. at that point. It turned out he was the brother of the woman we knew and he’d only recently moved back to the area after being away for probably 30 years.

We might not have known when or if we were going to get out of there, but we did know we weren’t going to make it to my Uncle Billy’s grave, at a different cemetery, that night, because the sun was setting fast. My parents ended up visiting his grave the following day.

While we were waiting for our ice cream, I told Little Miss, who wanted to go play around some tables, that we couldn’t go far because we would need to help Grandpa carry the ice cream.

“Hey!” a little boy with a buzzcut and a neon green shirt declared. “My Grandpa’s name is Grandpa too!”

All in all, the trip was a success, and we did make it home before 10, but not before dark. We let anyone who gets in the car with my parents know that they might want to plan for a longer trip than expected.

There is a good chance something weird will happen or Dad will want to take them on a tour of an area he is familiar with or once visited. Either way, the trip is going to be longer, and often more interesting, than anyone expected.

The soldier’s hat

May 25, 2020 / Lisa R. Howeler / 6 Comments

I have been blogging about 12 years, although I don’t have all the posts from all those years. I do have some and I found this post today from around Memorial Day in 2014 while looking for another post. I thought I’d share it here again today and maybe share some of my past posts like Mama’s Empty Nest has been doing recently.

I remember the day Harry gave my son the VFW hat. We were at a celebration at the local Veterans of Foreign Wars where they were honoring Harry because he was moving from the area to live with family.

I had taken Jonathan with me so I could grab a photograph for the local newspaper, but also so I could say goodbye to Harry, who I had interviewed years ago about his service during World War II. We had visited Harry at a nursing home a few weeks earlier while also visiting my aunt. My son, Jonathan, was 7 at the time.

I told Jonathan that Harry had fought for our country during World War II and to free the Jews during the Holocaust, something we had been talking about one night when he had asked me some historical questions. I remember how horrified he was about Hitler treating the Jews so awful and because of his age, I left out the worst of it, mainly only telling him how much the Nazis had hated the Jewish people and how wrong it was. After I introduced Jonathan to Harry, who was in the hallway sitting in a wheelchair, Jonathan, without prompting, saluted him.

Harry was touched and overwhelmed. As I sat and chatted with Harry, often having to almost shout since he had lost some of his hearing by then (he was almost 93), Jonathan drew a picture of Harry in the war, jumping out of airplanes and fighting in the Phillipines. Again, Harry was touched and impressed with Jonathan.

A week later when we attended Harry’s farewell celebration, we were surprised and emotional when Harry asked to see Jonathan and handed him two of his VFW Commander hats. Harry was thrilled to see Jonathan and smiled and talked to him, thanking him again for the salute and the picture.

We were definitely sad a year later when we heard Harry passed away. He had dedicated more than three decades to the local VFE post, where he served four years as post commander, 20 years as post quartermaster, 10 years as district quartermaster and three years as district commander. During his time at the VFW he had been named an All-American post commander, an All-American quartermaster three times, and also received several awards through the VFW.

DSC_4821-Edit-2 When Harry passed away the new post commander, Dan Polinski, told the local paper about the countless times Harry and others of Harry’s generation had stood in all kinds of weather to honor veterans who had passed away. Dan remembered one specific day where the rain was coming down, cold and stinging, against their faces.

“The younger of us, and I use that term loosely, said to Harry, O.C. Spencer, and some of the other World War II guys, ‘Listen, you guys, don’t stay out in this.’ The wind was whipping and it was brutal,” said Polinski. “Harry, and O.C., and all of the old crew — all of the old World War II guys who had stood with this Color Guard guy at many other funerals — just said, ‘No. He would do this for us.’” (Morning Times, Sayre, Pa. August 1, 2014)

I can attest to Dan’s story because I remember those rainy Memorial Days (in fact, I remember more rainy Memorial Days in Bradford County than sunny ones. It seems it always rains when there is a parade or a ceremony to honor veterans here.) I covered a few of those ceremonies for local newspapers and when I first saw Harry, and fellow World War II veteran O.C. Spencer, standing out in inclement or sweltering hot weather, I wondered why someone didn’t get them a chair or an umbrella, or usher them inside. Looking back I know it was because they stood not only to honor the fallen and those who served but to honor our country. They did what so many of us don’t, or won’t, do. They did what they’d done years ago when called to fight; standing when others turned or walked away.

DSC_5342_1 We keep Harry’s hats sealed inside the clear plastic case he handed them to Jonathan in and we keep them in an honored spot next to a sealed American flag given to Warren’s family after his great-grandfather passed away. And when we do pull the hats out we not only remember the man who stood at every Memorial and Veterans day service, no matter the weather, in full uniform, honoring those who served and those who fell, but the man who came home from war, worked with troubled youth with his wife for a decade, worked hard at every job he did, and also showed us how to persevere during the toughest times in life.

It’s hard sometimes to look at the local Color Guard during Memorial Day services and not see Harry standing there, rifle propped against his shoulder, back straight, jaw firm, gaze steady. I find myself choking up at the memory of the dedication he showed and how a new generation is missing out on the lessons of perseverance his mere presence there taught us.

What is important, I remind myself, isn’t that he isn’t here anymore, but that he was there at all and that there are people still around who will work to keep his memory and legacy alive.