A truly joyous occasion....

 June 29, 2022

Well, that was a very fast month. Tomorrow is the last day of June already, and the next day is Canada Day! We’ve had a few days, here and there, that I could have sworn were much better suited to mid-August than June. But who am I to judge? Mother Nature will give us what she will, and she certainly has no regard for my opinion on the matter. And she would point out that those days were very close to being summer days—officially, that is.

I’ve had two very heartfelt outings this month and I count that fact as a blessing. I know I can’t spend my whole life staying home. And to be clear, it’s not the attending of these functions that I mind so much. It’s the preparation for doing so, most especially these days, the mental preparation. I am stepping out on faith, but I cannot deny that to do so means overcoming a wee bit (well, maybe a wee bit more than a wee bit) of anxiety to do so.

Yes, I’ve taken two initial doses of Moderna’s Covid vaccine, as well as a first and then, near the end of May, a second booster. Yes, if they announce in November/December or anytime that I should get another one, you can bet I’ll be rolling up my sleeve and getting in line. And yes, I absolutely do believe in the science. I understand that the purpose of the vaccine is to protect against severe illness and death, not to prevent getting the virus at all. Which is why I am a wee bit more than a wee bit anxious going out to gatherings of more than a small handful of people. I understand that I can get the virus; I need to keep my faith that if I do, I will not suffer a severe case of it.

We attended our grandson’s wedding last Friday, and it was a truly joyous occasion for us both. We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. We were honored to sit in the front row, and to accompany the wedding party and the parents of the celebrants to the photo venue.

Through the course of the evening, it was wonderful to have impressed upon us anew just what a good sport and wise man is our grandson. You see, our new granddaughter is a Newfoundlander by birth, and her father, a  man who was born on “the rock”, saw to it his new son-in-law was “screeched in”. Some of you may know what that is. The rest of you really should see the play, “Come From Away”. (This play was live captured in honor of the twentieth anniversary of 9/11 and is available on Apple +).

After the meal came the first dance, and how lovely the newlyweds looked together, and how very happy! And I was again honored when, after the groom’s dance with his mother, the DJ called for other mothers and sons to take to the floor, and my son collected me for a dance.

I can’t boogie, but I managed a halfway decent slow two-step.

We humans love weddings because they are a beginning, and beginnings bring hope, don’t they? And weddings have been with us since Biblical times, so there’s that sense of continuity that we all need. And we especially need that in times that otherwise are tumultuous.

I used my walker at the wedding—for the walking from parking lot to chapel, from chapel to photo venue, then back to the dining room where the reception was being held. Yes, I didn’t try to rush, I walked a bit slower than I had on that first spin I took it out for. The wedding and reception and the photo venue were all at one basic location, which was amazing, but it was a very spread-out space. And the meal? Absolutely five-star cuisine. There was also an open bar, and who the heck does that anymore?

All in all, we had a wonderful time. Since it was a busy and yes exhausting day—I had gotten my hair done for the first time in about three years that morning—how very fortunate for us that we have absolutely nothing on our agendas for the next day. Nor the day after that.

We might be able to move and function by Canada Day.

To my Canadian friends, have a Happy Canada Day. And to my American friends, I hope you have a Happy Fourth of July, or Happy Independence Day, how ever you prefer to call it.

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

 

 

 

 

I can still learn something...

 June 22, 2022

Last week, I bought myself a new walker.

My daughter had picked up a used walker for me several years ago, at a yard sale. She told me at the time she knew I didn’t necessarily need it then, but it would be something that would be good to have on hand, going forward, and “just in case”. She was right. I used it a few times around the house, sometimes if I needed to tend something at the stove for more than five minutes—the seat on the walker is just the right height for me to sit on and use the stovetop easily for an extended amount of time. I have used that walker a couple of other times to actually help me get around, too.

Most recently and notably during that several days-long period last year when I pulled a groin muscle (turning over wrong in bed one night). It was a Godsend at that time. When my husband renovated our bathroom to provide a door between it and our bedroom, he made sure that door would accommodate a walker, since the main doorway into the bathroom from the hall will not. He was able to do that, of course, because he had a walker right here that he could measure.

Whether I want to admit it or not, the truth is that down the road it will be a walker and not a cane that I will be needing most often to get around. Sadly, arthritis is an ailment that only gets worse, not better.

I have an electric scooter, as you know, a three wheeled nifty device which comes apart into three pieces and which remains in the back of my car for whenever I may need it. It’s a real blessing, but I have never been able to put that sucker together on my own. It’s just a bit too heavy for me to manage the task. This means if I want to go anywhere and use that scooter, I cannot go there alone.

That, my friends, is not real independence.

My old walker, which is currently employed as a clothes and blanket holder in my office when not helping me at the stove, is really in sorry shape otherwise. The single most important problem with it is that the brakes didn’t work. That doesn’t matter too much if I’m using it just around the house here, or perhaps I should say it hasn’t mattered too much yet. But if I want to take it out somewhere, well, that would be a problem.

Last week I was scheduled to have an outing, one where I could not take the scooter (and never mind that there would be no one there to help me with it if I did). And that was why I bought a new walker.

This one is fairly light weight, folds nicely (the old one will not fold; we think the bolts are seized), the brakes are functional and all four wheels of this shiny new one work well.

Now, even before I got the scooter, I noticed that if I went into the grocery store for just a couple of items, I was able to use the grocery cart as a “walker”, and that using the cart meant I walked just a tad better than I did with my cane. With that as my only background experience of being an arthritis sufferer using a four wheeled push by hand conveyance, I anticipated being able to walk the more than two city blocks that were going to be required on my outing with my new walker without any serious problem at all.

And I did! It was amazing! Now, the handles on the walker were a bit high for me that day (they have since been adjusted), and because they were I did have some discomfort in my arms, but walking? I tell you truly friends, I walked at the same pace I used to walk before my arthritis got as bad as it is now, before I needed a cane for every step outside and most of them inside.

Our outing had begun at a Veteran’s social club, and after a couple of hours, it was time to make that long (for me) trek to our second and final destination. I walked those two blocks to the city market, and I walked around inside the market, including up a ramp. The outing was a complete success.

However, the next day, for  me, was… interesting. I awoke early, not because I had finished sleeping but because my legs were screaming. However, I am pleased to report that I wasn’t at all stoic about the condition I was in. Although I don’t usually take pain medications in the morning, I did that morning. And while I didn’t just sit around all day, I didn’t push it, either.

And I counted the pain as worth it, because the person to whose benefit that outing was undertaken thoroughly enjoyed the event, and that was the most important thing of all.

And I will prove I’m still capable of learning from my experiences. I promise to take it a little bit easier with that walker, the next time I use it.

 

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

 

 

Maybe timing is everything...

 June 15, 2022

 

This is an unusual week for me, because I am taking this week off from most of my regular routine. I’ve of course written this weekly essay, but that is the total of the writing I had planned to do over these seven days. I generally don’t write on Sundays, but it’s really been a long time since I’ve stepped away from novel writing for more than a day.

Little odds and ends that need doing have been accumulating over the last several weeks. To be honest, I have so many tasks on my to-do list that I have a very bad feeling that I won’t get much done despite my plans to so. Sometimes I show an appalling lack of self-discipline.

And maybe that’s not a bad thing at all. Maybe I am allowed to take the better part of a week and just, you know, watch some TV, read a little, play a few games. I enjoy acrostics, and I have found one free site online that I like. In the interests of full disclosure, and in case you don’t know, acrostics are crossword puzzles with a twist. The top half of the page is a “crossword grid” and each square has a letter and a number. Each crossword once completed reveals a quote from some author or another. The bottom half of the page is comprised of several questions, or clues each designated with a letter, and each of which require an answer. Each letter of the answer has a number above it, which corresponds to the crossword grid. And as you answer those questions, the letters are distributed into that grid.

What I enjoy most is working back and forth; I look at the grid and see a word,  “s_ cce_ _” and figure the word is probably “success”; then when I have filled in all the possible or probable words in the framework, I go back down at the listed clues and see how many of those I can now get—because as you fill in a word in the grid, those letters appear in their “clue word”.

I don’t spend a lot of time on these puzzles, and I am quite slow at them. But I do enjoy the mental stimulation.

I’ve also spent some time outside so far this week and plan to do so again, tomorrow, on an outing that has been planned for a couple of weeks. The outing will occur rain or shine or, as the weather forecast calls for, very hot.

I’ve just finished my 68^th novel for my publisher, Siren-Bookstrand. That’s more books than I’d ever thought I would be able to write in my lifetime, let alone have published. I had the thought recently that this fact could be a sign that there is justice in the cosmos after all. I yearned to be an author from the time I was a teen. And then, I married young. Some would say while not yet an adult. And in those early married years, that dream of being an author never died. Life did get in the way, as I note in my brief book-bios. It takes a lot of time and energy to be a wife and a mom, and I worked outside the home for many of those years, as well. I still wrote and quite devotedly, too. And that activity happened most usually, and ironically, on Sundays.

Thinking about it now, perhaps I was never meant to be a published author in my twenties or thirties to begin with. Hell, when you think about it, a person doesn’t know much worth squat when one is in their twenties or thirties. So maybe, all, so far, has unfolded as it was meant to be.

I still enjoy writing, despite that the entire process takes a lot longer now that it did just a few years ago.

That’s just a part of getting older, and there is nothing anyone can do about that.

 

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

The Queen... and chipmunks

 June 8, 2022

I very much enjoyed watching some of the events of Queen Elizabeth’s Platinum Jubilee over this past weekend. I don’t have a single favorite moment. If pressed, I would have to say all of the moments we got to see Her Majesty standing out on the balcony.

Ahead of the Jubilee celebrations, The BBC produced a documentary entitled Elizabeth: The Unseen Queen. Her Majesty gave them access to the reams of home movies that her family had taken through the years, which they used as the basis of the story they told. David and I are both history lovers and watched it. I still have it recorded because I know I’ll want to watch it again. If you can find it, the film is worth the hour or so of your time. And yes, it is available in the U.S., I just don’t know where.

I also found an “anecdote” from one of her former protection officers who had spent a great deal of time in service to the Queen, about the tourists they encountered on one of their walks in the Windsor Park. This link should take you to it:

  https://twitter.com/Jake_Kanter/status/1532715805384884225

I’m in the minority here in my own country, in supporting the existence of the Monarchy. I might feel different down the road, but I love our Queen. She isn’t perfect; she has had a few missteps along the way. But what she has never had along the way is a change of heart. She vowed to serve for all of her life, and she has kept her promise now for 75 years—the first 5 years as the Heir Presumptive, and the next 70 (and counting) as Queen. Over the years, she has traveled more than any other monarch, and conducted more “official duties” than any other public servant on record.

One of the commentators said that part of her appeal, was that in a world in which everything seems to change all the time, the one thing that has not changed is the Queen.

Over the weekend, our television screens showed us that so many people came out to celebrate, all different ages, from across all walks of life. Many held signs, some were dressed up using variations of the Union Jack, but all with basically the same message.

Paddington Bear said it the best for all of us: “Thank you, ma’am. For everything.”

The weather network has predicted that we will not have any seriously hot weather for the first half of this month of June, and I hope that proves to be the case. I will admit that I tend not to go outside too much when it gets really hot out. Whereas I spent the first, oh, sixty-one or so years of my life making do with fans in the summer (and sometimes I would even have a bowl of ice in front of the fan), I don’t have it in me to return to that. We have central air and make good use of it. And I, for one, am very grateful for it.

The are only two exceptions to this not going outside when it’s hot rule. The first, of course, is if I have appointments or otherwise must go out to get to some place or other. And the second is if the A/C feels insufficient to its task. I’ve found it’s psychologically beneficial to step out into the heat wave for a few minutes and then step back into the air-conditioned interior of my home. I get the sense of it being cooler, and that’s often all I need to actually feel cooler.

Our plants are coming along. Flowers, for the most part, are represented once more in the back yard by the coleus which our daughter planted. In the front yard, so far, it’s the bulbed spring flowers, and our two large peonies. The blooms are fading from our lilacs now, but they were very pretty and welcome while they lasted. We’ll likely pick up some more flower plants to go in, annuals, of course, before the end of this month. Our local greenhouse is a good source until the end of July, and even has a bit of a sale to celebrate Canada Day (July 1^st).

Our vegetables on the other hand, this year, seem to be a mixed result. The tomato plants are doing well, and a couple even have some blossoms on them. The beans on the other hand…well, let me put it this way.

Despite the fact that David feeds the little critters who live in and around our property, his offerings have been found lacking. Apparently, there is delicacy that our local chipmunks would prefer, even over the bird seed, sunflower seeds and peanuts in the shell they’re getting. And that delicacy is beans: either as seeds dug out of the ground or as tasty greens newly sprouted.

These chipmunks are not at all fussy; they’ll take them either way.

 

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

 

 

Small joys amidst tragedy

 June 1, 2022

Little things have always meant the most to me. At the moment, happiness is a water glass that holds water, and some sprigs of lilacs and lilies-of-the-valley. My husband presented this glass to me just the other day, the blooms from our own gardens. What an awesome gift! The combination of these two fragrances takes me back to my childhood.

Along the old fence that ran the length of our rural property, each spring one could find tulips and daffodils, narcissi and of course, the lilac trees in full bloom and the lilies of the valley. In the summer, those trees would be bare of their blossoms and the spring flowers would be replaced by the orange day lilies. But in the spring…. As I inhale my gifted flowers’ scent, I’m reminded of May days playing beneath our giant willow tree. That tree stood between the house and that fence, and one did have to be careful, because in places the roots had come through the thin soil to trip anyone not paying careful attention.

The branches of that willow hung low, nature’s largest green umbrella, and a couple of times during any given year, we would use the shears to trim them. It was quite an expanse beneath that old tree, a good-sized area and I always felt as if I were in my own private bower. Sometimes I’d spin tales, unspoken but thought, of having found a secret castle in the woods, an enchanted and private sanctuary where no bad things would ever happen.

The past nine days have been tough for all of us, haven’t they? Thoughts and prayers have become a mean cliché, but for me they still mean something, and I have been sending mine to Texas every day since May 24.

I am a woman whose grandchild died– one who didn’t live to be a week old. And a woman whose second child, a son, the father of that wee baby, died at the age of 29. And I am now a woman who is the last surviving member of her birth family.

I know what it is to lose loved ones; I know what it is to grieve. It’s taken a chunk out of me, but that’s life. I ache for the people who are now burying their 10-year-old children, and for grown children who are burying both their mother, and their father, the father having died from a heart attack two days after losing the love of his life.

Thoughts and prayers—words—are what I have. But they are not empty, nor meaningless, and they do not evaporate like vapor, mere seconds after being released into the air.

Here, I’m about to shock all of you. You’re used to long, drawn out essays from me, and today, I won’t give you one. Here, I will simply tell you what I think. I will give you my pure, unvarnished opinion.

My dear American friends: those among you who are urging “gun reforms” are not trying to take your guns away from the rest of you. There have never been, nor will there ever be, those mythical black helicopters. Those calling for reform truly just want to enact changes that would save lives. And those among you who say that “nothing can be done”, are lying. I would consider it a step major forward if they would say what is the truth: there are things that can be done.

They are just not willing to do them.

 

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury