All posts by Greta McDonough

I am a writer, therapist, and college professor living and writing in the Ohio Valley. My work takes me to the Bluegrass, Appalachia, and Eastern Europe. I teach and I write. I read. Everything.
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A New Walk for 2026

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The joke is I celebrate the New Year with Papua New Guinea, and then have the rest of the day to go about my business, sweep up dropped Christmas tree needles, nap, and retire around eight to read and dream of 2026, to be startled awake later on as neighborhood fireworks disturb my sleep. 

I no longer desire the riotous New Year’s Eves of my youth and young adulthood.  No longer spend hours, days, really, figuring out what to wear, who I will be dressing for, who I will be celebrating with, where I will be and kissing whom when the ball drops and the countdown ends and everyone around me is roaring and laughing and having a high old time. 

My earliest New Year’s Eves were spent with my brother and Granny Opal.  We begged to stay up until midnight and she made a show of allowing it, knowing we would never make it, not really.  She gently shook our shoulders at the stroke of twelve, bells and firecrackers going off  in the distance, so faint a sound that by morning we wondered if we heard them at all. 

Now I hatch a plot to babysit on New Year’s Eve to give exhausted parents a small break at the end of the year.  I am not so kind; I want to spend time with the little ones and this is the stunt I pull, and I need an excuse in case some well-meaning but misguided friend or friends should invite me out to celebrate in that desperate “are we having fun now” way I remember from years past. 

I might deign a late lunch, the late part making it festive.  But that is all. 

I crave quiet and contemplation and a new notebook with blank pages too pristine to make a mark on, not yet, not until I am sure.  Odd how the waves of white pages invigorate me, all that  possibility, and everything hopeful and glad. By February the careful penmanship will be abandoned, goals and plans having given way to lists and chores, reminders for doctor’s appointments, trips to the dentist. 

But every new year deserves some thought and consideration.  Especially since this past year was such a stinker.  A nagging health issue, nothing life-threatening or dire. I just couldn’t walk.  Hardly at all.  I didn’t even have the good grace to break a bone, just a repetitive use injury that took forever to figure out. I tackled the holidays last year like I was crazed, and messed myself up.  And now, a  full year later, I’m still not recovered, but there is light at the end of the tunnel. 

And it was a dark tunnel, too, giving me a glimpse of what old age can look like, feel like, be like.  I didn’t care for it. 

I have found a new intervention, a protocol that is working well, finally, and I am grateful for the skilled and kind practitioner who helps me. The tunnel is less dark, and not even a tunnel anymore, as I think about it.  A little bit of a wobble, I think now, but a year-long one, and it is my job to make sure it doesn’t happen again. 

I’m often lazy about my health, my intentions, so many things.  I am not my age; I truly believe I am 35, maybe 40, but that’s about it. My body begs to differ.  But you know what?  I come from prairie stock and that is going to come in handy as I work through my exercises, build strength and recover. 

My father went about everything like he was killing snakes. A broad-shouldered ‘bull in a china shop” kind of fellow. My mother’s people were delicate.  So tuning in to that sensibility can’t hurt, either. Had my parents visited Giza, my father would have not truly experienced  the pyramids until he had walked over and kicked them. My mother’s attitude?  “I can see them from here.”


Somewhere in there is where I live, between the avid adventurer and the diva in the sedan chair, swooning in the heat. The brawny outdoorsy type and the petite fleur with fallen arches. I resist the fainéant approach that was my mother’s, although I am every bit as lazy.  It just isn’t how I see myself. Now, though, I might need to embrace both approaches  if I am going to thrive into my dotage. 

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Home for the Balmy Holidays

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And so this is Christmas.  Balmy temps and curling ribbon everywhere.  Stray strips of Scotch tape stuck to my pants, grocery bags on counters ready to be unloaded for family traditions, nothing fancy but reminding me of my mother, my grandmothers, and Christmases when I lived in a state of high anticipation, sick, almost, and beside myself. 

Any other Christmas I would be pouting because it is so warm, but I have been assured that, as warm as it will be this week, there will be a dip into the low twenties, maybe even the teens at night, and all that volatility satisfies my need for atmospheric drama, so I sit around thinking about where my “warm room” might be if we lose power in an ice storm. 

Not that an ice storm is predicted. 

Yet. 

We know from Luke that on the night of Jesus’ birth the shepherds were keeping watch over their flocks at night.  Fall and springtime are the seasons for that, so perhaps on the first Christmas the weather was a bit balmy, too. A nice temperate 50s or 60s, 70s, even, and also a good time to travel for paying those taxes. 

But not when you are expecting a child, of course. And not on the back of a donkey. 

We assume a donkey, and I think we must stick with it, because surely Joseph didn’t let Mary walk.  In a college class years ago the professor lectured on the steep and rocky terrain of the region, with dramatic drops from the Galilee hills to the Mediterranean coast. A trip of any distance can be difficult, but this one, surely more arduous than most. 

I let this weather remind me of a distant land, a distant time, rocky climbs and descents, the vagaries of living with obligations, inconvenient timing, life in general.  Different, and not so different from us. So much to get up in the morning to do and very little of it our own idea. 

There is almost nothing in my Christmas preparations that pays tribute to the original Christmas story.  Not the cookie baking, the candy making, the frantic house cleaning, the wrapping.  While I place my nativity set with great care, it occurs to me I used to collect them, and where are they now?  The handmade clay figures crafted in South America, the delicately carved ones I found out west.  Others I can no longer remember.

But this little one my mother had, so tiny all the figures fit in a round box the size of a tin of fancy salt. This one I keep near.  It lives in its little box in a drawer in the living room throughout the year.  I see it sometimes when I am looking for an old recipe of my grandmother’s.  Her recipe boxes live in that drawer, too. 

Being of the House of David, Joseph had to return home to pay taxes.  He had no choice but to walk, and Mary had to go, too.  In many ways we live a great distance from the first Christmas story. Sometimes we enjoy the lively debate over time line and the possibility of kings from the east, stars in the heavens. We, with our giant brains, we think and ponder and select and argue and muse and interpret charts and writings and texts, to make sense of the story.

And then there is faith. That thing that can’t be argued, quantified or proved.

Many of us make the effort, rocky as it can be sometimes, inconvenient as it often is, to return home at Christmas.  This may be our own House of David, with a long lineage and tradition, or the homes we have built with our own two hands and with the hands of others who we now claim as family, our familiars.  Those places where we might  seek out the brightness of hope in a dark night.

And suddenly, there it is.  By Christmas Day the light is already returning.  As promised. As always.  This Christmas let me wish each of you that moment when you feel the love and warmth of others.  When your heart expands and you love them back.  When, if only for a twinkling, you find yourself well and truly home. 

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Cold, Then Warm, Still Christmas

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The bitter cold of the past few days will give way to warmer weather, with the possibility of downright tropical heat as we near Christmas.  Or that is what my little buddy, Ryan Hall, is telling me.  Sweet Ryan is teasing the possibility of record heat on Christmas Day.  Seventies, y’all.  Seventies.

Now.  Let that settle. 

Two days ago I traveled to Louisville, leaving home in the single digits.  I had extra coats in the car, a sleeping bag, gloves, an unbecoming hat but one that would see me survive, should I somehow get stranded during the two-hour trip.  Nuts and chocolate, water, a working flashlight. I wasn’t heading out to explore the Northwest Territories, but I was ramped up like something big was about to happen. 

Next week it looks like I may have to break out the shorts. 

But Ryan–who you can find on YouTube at Ryan Hall Y’all–promises lots of drama getting to those record temps.  Cold, then warm, with storms and unsettled weather every few days, so there is that to look forward to. And I do. 

We have had warm Christmases before, and the worst in my book, are the ones that are just like the fall, all that warm weather protracted, a sameness I find maddening.  I would never choose to live in a perpetually perfect climate.  Would prefer a place that builds to the crescendo of a true and snowy winter, ebb into glorious spring with some dramatic storms for visual interest, then settle into a verdant summer, but one that gets cool at night.  Autumn, well, autumn can do what it likes,  as long as the leaves put on a show. 

Our recent taste of true winter, though, has been sufficient to put me in the holiday spirit, and I will happily drag through the coming rains and warming temps to finish my shopping and make incessant trips to the grocery store.  By all accounts, this winter will be changeable and dramatic and that suits me just fine. 

What then, to do with a summery Christmas Day?  

Usually I would  pout and spend most the day bemoaning my bad luck, as if the thermometer is the true meaning of Christmas.  I know better, of course, but being bundled up and happy as I visit friends and family is the linchpin of my holiday fantasy.  Candlelight Service with my family on Christmas Eve, then walking home in the cold, the air crystalline and our breath billowing clouds of white. Laughter, and gentle ribbing as we bump along to the warmth of a welcoming hearth.

In fact, that last bit really happened one year, so not a fantasy.

The promise of more snow later on has improved my mood immeasurably. In fact, I am looking forward to this late December warm-up.  There are leftover leaves to rake.  There is a box of anemones I never got around to planting, and wood hyacinth, too, which I think I ordered by mistake.  Maybe it’s not too late for them, and I love the idea of one more dig in the dirt before the New Year.  

And Christmas Day seems a hopeful time for coaxing new life. In the bleak mid-winter, and all that.

I don’t know.  Maybe just buying all that down outerwear has shifted my mood, or perhaps I have grown reasonable, tempered, let’s say, as life spools out in its own way. But I can see me come December 25th, sipping mimosas on the deck, mariachi music in the background, sun on my face, dirt under my nails, happy as a Christmas clam.

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No Holiday Prep Here–And It’s Divine

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Any other year I would have purchased my turkey by now.  Would have fretted over it, the size, the brand, frozen or fresh?  Would have wondered if you had already beat me to the best turkeys, the most favored size.  Too small and you run out, too big and risk setting the oven of fire, which I did, three years ago.

The canned pumpkin would have been bought, also my favorite pecans, possibly the yams.  There would be a notation in my calendar indicating what date to buy bread so it can get properly stale.  One year I bought my bread too early, thinking, stale bread is stale bread.  No, my friends, it is not. 

On these errands I would be thinking of how I drove my grandmother around to gather all the staples for Thanksgiving.  The bread from the discount bread place.  Celery from Wetzel’s.  Maybe the turkey from there, too. 

This year, I will prepare pies, and only pies.  And even that isn’t a requirement, but a suggestion if I feel like it. 

For the first time in decades, decades, I tell you, I am not fixing a turkey, nor dressing, nor yams nor cranberries, nor nuthin’. Except maybe those pies. 

When my brother-in-law’s daughter floated the idea of hosting Thanksgiving at theirs, he laughed and said, well,  good luck getting Kathy and Greta to let loose of doing the dinner. He honestly thinks we enjoy it. And now I wonder if my Granny Opal loved all the preparation and work as much as I assumed she did. 

Kathy and I jumped, or would have if either of us were able, at the idea of showing up, eating, and going home.  That we had to drive to do it, a nice little hour and half jaunt through Indiana, well, that was even better.  An adventure, an “over the river and through the woods” sort of thing.  

It must be said, I pride myself on doing the Thanksgiving food, but I have grown weary of it.  Kathy, less enamored with cooking than I, prides herself on her house, big enough for us all and comfortable, well-appointed with centerpieces and decoration that have required thought and artistic expression. 

She can cook, but the aggravation of preparing the meal while trying to feed kids who mess up the kitchen and get in her way, well, it’s been a nice set up.  I cook, she cleans and decorates, and the kids, if they can be bothered, drag out to my car to help carry in the bird, the dressing and various pots and pans full of food.

But this year.  This year!  We have accepted Mandi and Chuck’s kind offer and we will turn up on the day to feast and feast and feast some more. Spend the night if we want.  Spend two.

Here is the other thing.  We will not even have Thanksgiving on Thanksgiving.  We will gather on Friday to accommodate a couple of conflicting schedules, and that is just fine, too. 

Never did my family do this.  There wasn’t a pressing need, really, but even if there might have been, my mother was not one to flex.  

We were lucky as a family that we all lived close enough to see each other often, so it didn’t seem a tragedy if a few were missing from the table. We would see them on Saturday. 

But nor did my mother guilt my married siblings when they spent a holiday with the in-laws.  She insisted they do, sometimes, if a set of parents were aging and and she felt like she would have years with her children they would not. It was a kind and thoughtful gesture in her matter-of-fact way. 

Although I worry sometimes we blow off too many family obligations–any kind of obligation–these days.  Attending the funeral, choosing skiing over the holiday with family.  Just not showing up, however that may look.  This new bunch of people we have about us — notorious for not showing up.  The ones aggrieved at going to the office three days a week–how cruel! Never mind an entire workweek. 

But this year, I see how this easing of tradition has suited me just fine.  Better than fine. I see how it reduces stress for my niece and her husband with the three little ones.  They can be with his family on Thursday, all relaxed and happy.  Then with us, in Indiana, also relaxed and happy. 

How surprisingly easy it has been to let some things go. 

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Boo, 60s Style

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The weather is just about perfect for the lead up to Halloween. Suddenly much colder, rainy, with leaves slicking the streets. Dark mornings, a sense of foreboding by afternoon. Lots of staying inside and looking out into a world transformed into a blustery something, that is familiar and foreign. The fretting–would we still be able to trick or treat in the rain? Would our costumes melt before we made it to school, before the parade around the neighborhood that started just after attendance was taken?


Parents, and by parents I mean mostly mothers, lined the sidewalks for the spectacle, maybe even walking us to school since our vision was often obscured by our vacuum-formed plastic masks. Perhaps they were on standby to take our costumes home, I can’t remember. Some costumes were elaborate, I suppose. I never noticed. I shuffled along with self-conscious steps, thinking only of my own get-up, wanting, and not wanting, everyone to look at me.

Down Frederica Street, to Griffith Ave., then up Alderson Court, and in through the back door of Longfellow School. What learning could have taken place between that parade and the cupcakes some mother would bring a few hours later?


Even before elementary school, I must have been dressed in store bought costumes, the ones with the face mask attached to your head with a fiddly elastic band. The flimsy smock of a dress to show you off as a princess, or someone else pretty, worn over your clothes all twisted and uncomfortable. The costumes came bundled in plastic wrap, dangling from a hook by the cardboard top. There must have been glitter involved because it clung to my face for a couple of days.


And those masks, those false faces of torture. The eye holes than never quite matched up with your actual eyes, the way the nose holes scratched your face, the mouth hole wet with condensation. The temperatures might have been autumnal, but inside that mask it was a sauna, but so much went into choosing the costume I never complained. I thought I would be in trouble if I took the mask off. Or the magic would be gone, or something.


But sometimes the weather wasn’t blustery at all. It might be sunny and hot, remnants of a summer that just wouldn’t die. This was wrong in every way. Sunny and cool was acceptable. Hot and humid was not. I remember almost nothing about those Halloweens, except a great disappointment.


As my siblings and I got older, we were less interested in the Ben Cooper store-bought costumes, whose masks were, let’s face it, always a little bit creepy and not in a cute way. They were for babies, anyway, and we were surely not that. We began to make our own, but we put forth the least amount of effort, dipping into the rag bag for inspiration.


Our dad was a World War II buff, so we had plenty of G-issued gear–map cases, ammo belts, and helmets to choose from. Our repertoire then, ran from Army Guy to hobo. If Mother felt energetic she might burn a cork and give us five-day-old stubble, which worked for both Army Guy and hobo. That was the extent of our theatrical make-up.


When we were really little we hit our own block, then we went to our grandmother’s, who never once recognized us. After working over her neighborhood, we visited her best friend, Beulah, who didn’t recognize us, either. She invited us in anyway, and once she discovered she knew us, brought out full sized candy bars she had set aside for us. After you hold one of those – it took two hands — Trick or Treat was over. We sat on our spines on her living room sofa, sighing and resting and contented.


I have one friend who loves Halloween and the sophistication and terror of her costumes astonishes me. Last year she scratched on my backdoor all done up as a witch, screeching my name. My heart leapt to my throat –I knew it was Linda, but in truth, it took a minute.


I don’t have trick or treaters in my neighborhood now. Churches, communities host events, the “trunk or treat” outings that provide a safe environment for the little ones. I get it, but sometimes I long for a glimpse of tiny children, all scary and proud, shuffling through leaves and dragging plastic pumpkins and pillow cases, parents watchful, just outside the range of a vacuum formed mask, the illusion complete.

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Dark Academia For the Ages

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For someone with very little going on, I still wake in the hours just before dawn with a mind racing with a hundred niggling things to do, to see to, to settle and to clean. Most recently the names of Dark Academia color palettes have jostled me from my sleep–Turkish Coffee, Essex Green, Urbane Bronze, Vintage Vogue.


Dark Academia is the antidote to all that white/grey/is it some kind of blue/phase we are coming out of. For ten solid years I couldn’t buy furniture, could barely purchase pillows and the like because everything on offer was cool and gray and, to my eye, antiseptic–and none of it went with anything I already owned.

When Laura Ruth first came to my house to see about what we might do with the addition she uttered, maybe to herself but I heard it, “Well you aren’t afraid of color…”and I took it as a compliment, whether intended or not. Even with the addition, which is all scandi-like, the whites are warm, the oak floor stained nice and toasty, and beiges and tans and pale wheats are punctuated with black and white, and capped with dark bronzy ceilings and warm burnished brass.


And right now, I am sick to death of my bedroom, and so enter Dark Academia. Think of any study in any English manor house on any Masterpiece Theatre you have seen. Think of riding to the hounds, the inner sanctum of an Oxford don’s office. Think of rich browns, greens so green they are black, and jewel tones so revved up they are no longer jewel tones, but something deeper, sootier, darker.


Tweeds, velvets, elbow patches, Wellies by the door sitting next to the Irish Setter.


And yet, a quick search for Dark Academia colors will also include some warm whites, one of which I am happy to say is the wall color of my sitting room and pantralarium. And let me recommend it to you now, as I have to everyone I know — Shoji White, thank you, Sherwin-Williams. A white that is warm, but not yellow, working in all lights and on lots of walls, no matter your decor.


But back to my bedroom. Mostly what I want is a new bed. And that will mean some rearranging, and its been awhile since I last painted, and, having a fear of missing out, I have been wracking my brains to figure out a way to use some of the dark colors I have been seeing. I have already made the commitment to do a black and white bathroom, but it just simply isn’t going to be enough.


Some of that moodiness is gonna have to spill over into that bedroom.
I can’t go full-throttle, with dark woodwork, dark ceiling. I have some restraint. But as it stands today, I am thinking a Turkish Coffee for the walls, and working some velvet in there somewhere. It is a fine line to walk, the one between masculine smoking room and bordello. But that’s half the fun, isn’t it?


Much can be accomplished with unlacquered brass and those warm gold picture frames. Apparently, there are even rules to live by for those who wish to live the Dark Academia lifestyle. I ran across this gem of a list:


Wear vintage clothes, elegant accessories, emphasize sharp features with purely dark or light colors and jewel tones


Listen to jazz or classical music


Light candles


Stay ahead in school


Make ancient Roman or Greek food (?)


Have routines


Hang stuff up on your walls


READ.


Okay. Now, we can imagine the author of this list, and I see her, for surely I think it is an early adolescent girl, and my heart swells a little with her earnestness. The colors, the clothes, the attention to scholarly pursuits in her personal version of academia. But is there anything here to offend, to censure? I think not. Parents may have some rules about those candles, but if the advice is to make a warm and cozy place to burrow into and dream and think, and especially the all caps, READ, she pretty much nails it.


I write this on the rainy morning after the harvest moon, and I am an autumn and winter girl at heart. So, bring on that Dark Academia. I have jazz stations on my phone, and candles, and ton of books I need to READ.

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Bardstown on the Run

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Last week nine of us from our girls group convened in Bardstown for a two-day visit that I can recommend to you. So I will.


Our pal, Julie, has lived in Bardstown since college and she planned our days with precision and compassion, leaving time for us to acclimate, to eat, and then, you know, eat some more. We gathered at her home to coordinate, but mostly so we could visit her mom.

Nancy Purdy was secretary at Owensboro High School for years, and we knew her, not just as Julie’s mom, but also as our friend and protector as we negotiated the vagaries and angst of high school. She was happy to see us, and we were happy to see her, and she told funny stories and hugged us in that special way someone does when they have known you most of your life. We couldn’t linger, though, because – ice cream.

We caravaned downtown, parking in the city lot — I think that was the actual name, City Lot, a half block behind Hurst Discount Drugs. Hurst is important because of this. It has a lunch counter. In addition to their famous chicken salad (says so right on the menu) Hurst sells ice cream treats of all kinds. Old fashioned shakes and malts, the ones where they pour half of it in a glass and leave the metal cup it got mixed up in. Ice cream sodas and sundaes, generous sized kiddie cones. I didn’t see what everyone got, but we sat there in a row, the straws standing at attention in old-fashioned dispensers as we spun on the red stools like we were eight.


We checked out the cute shops all up and down the street and ended up at the Talbott Tavern. You can eat there, of course, or you can wander around upstairs and look at the historic rooms, see where Abraham Lincoln stayed, check out the bullet holes courtesy of Jesse James, and contemplate that for a minute or two.


We finished up at the Basilica of Saint Joseph Proto-Cathedral, the first Roman Catholic Church west of the Allegheny Mountains. It takes but a minute to explore but still fascinating. Pick up the brochure with a QR code that will take you to a virtual tour of the cathedral and its history.
Almost next door is the Rickhouse, a nice restaurant that serves, among other things, a huge pork chop, but it takes forty minutes to prepare, and I doubted my group possessed that kind of patience. But I plan to ditch them and return for it at a later date.


Thanks to the popularity of the Bourbon Trail, we had access to a newly built farm house, complete with a pool, hot tub, game room in a barn, and fire pit. We are old now, so mostly we looked at the pool, admired the fire pit from afar, and I never made it to game room. But the house accommodated all nine of us comfortably and I bet there are more houses there just like it.


Julie rousted us out of bed the next morning with fresh doughnuts from Hadorn’s, a family owned bakery and a Bardstown staple, and for reference, it sits just behind the City Lot and a stone’s throw from Hurst Discount Drugs.


We had reservations for a tour of Maker’s Mark, and I’m tempted to say if you have seen one distillery you have seen them all, but no. It was a great tour, and it ended with a tasting for four bourbons, and an exit through the gift shop.


Since I traveled with some who don’t drink, it is possible, by their generosity, I was over- served. But I wasn’t driving and I bought a lot of stuff.


Then we spent the afternoon in the tiny burg of Bloomfield, where Jerry and Linda Bruckheimer have restored what looks like the entire downtown, Linda having roots in Bloomfield. Nettie Jarvis Antiques is named for her grandmother. There is the clothing store, a tea room, Ernie’s Tavern, which is a bar on one side, a bowling alley and ice cream shop on the other.


And by bowling alley, I mean one from the 1950s, with ashtrays and paper scoring sheets. Bring your own shoes, or just stand there and throw your ball at the pins. That’s what we did. Dinner was pizza from Cafe Primo, all brick oven crispy. Leaving the next morning in an autumn fog, we looked like the final scene of a some wistful movie, six cars in a slow procession down the long drive to the main road. Sweet and nostalgic, and a longing to return.

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Killer Hot Tubs

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When on vacation with friends of a certain age, I find we are on different pages in terms of our interests and willingness to take on risk. For some of us–okay–for me, I prefer to pace myself by moseying, always moseying over to the pool. Perhaps a little saunter out to the balcony or deck, or screened in back porch. Shopping, well, yes, but as the sun sets, not during the heat of the day. A nice sprawl in front of the TV anytime.


Mornings I search for clues of the rapture, because by the time I arise the place is empty and devoid of human life except my own, as I slink — inside I slink–to the coffee maker, retrieve a mug, as long as it is sitting shoulder height or lower. My friends are out walking, biking, I don’t know what all, but more power to them.


Often on vacation there will be a hot tub, either attached to the place we are staying or in the lovely commons area out by the pool. One particular friend loves a hot tub about all things, especially at resorts and she keeps hitting the button–that one there, just below the red warning sign indicating the need to limit time in the hot tub. As wanton as a hussy she ignores the admonition and overcooks and why don’t I join her, what a great way to chat with people and find out good restaurants? No. I am pretty sure hot tubs kill.


And now we have proof, this cautionary tale from out to the east of us.
Two women, both in their eighties, were enjoying the hot tub at the cabin where they were staying with friends for a girls’ trip. When they tried to get out, they couldn’t. Mobility issues, pre-existing conditions, every news outlet reported. They became overheated, as you do, and then became unresponsive. Their friends couldn’t retrieve them either, but managed to jump in and hold their unconscious heads above water until help arrived — at their remote cabin in a remote area of Red River Gorge, and both women came close to succumbing to their relaxing dip in the hot tub.


Trips to the hospital packed in ice revived them, but still.


What were they thinking?


What are my buddies thinking when they keep adding time to the hot tub when the big red signs say not to. I joined them once, and when I got out on the trembly legs of a new-born fawn, I walked three feet and thought I might faint. Explain to me the appeal. I won’t even sit with my feet dangling over the side, anymore.


And I am not eighty.


But I am not a spring chicken, either. And since last December I have had a horrifying glimpse of what it is like to have “mobility” problems, what with a hip flexor injury taking its own sweet time to heal, and all the accompanying aches and pains that come with it–the over-stressed knee that has never caused me problems, until now. The knotted up rhomboid in my back that reacts to my bad posture and my ungainly gait, the one that likes to kick into spasm just as I drift off to sleep.


So, I am not without sympathy, but surely some common sense might be in order.


In exactly one month I will be on my own girls’ trip, in a large house somewhere near the Bourbon Trail, with its own hot tub, I imagine. There will be discussions about who should have what bedroom because this one can’t do stairs, that one wakes early and needs to be close to the coffee pot, another one hardly sleeps at all and needs to wander the premises all night long.


Not to be a spoiled sport, but I would rather not be called upon to hold one of their heads above water until the squad arrives. I would do it. But I would resent it. Because, forget about the temperature for moment, what about the quality of that water and all those flesh eating bacteria?

What about those?


No, I believe I will continue to mosey, to slink and to sprawl on fat furniture. I will swim in the big garden tub in my room, I’ll relax, sitting on my spine, reeking of Tiger Balm, and catch up on Netflix.


Y’all have fun out there in that tub, and keep 911 on speed dial. I’ll let them in if I’m getting up for snacks.

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Breaking the Ice

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Consider the ice pick. So simple, so understated, possessing a design that has not changed since the 1800s. Basically a wooden handle with a metal collar holding a thin, rounded blade in place. Perfectly balanced, with its beveled handle a comfortable two and half inches long, fitting sweetly in the palm, fingers resting gently on the smooth sanded edge, a grip comfortable and secure.


Lightweight, just this short of flimsy, but no. In that first downward dagger motion, the motion with the hand held high and a moment’s hesitation before crashing into the ice, it becomes evident, immediately and with a certain pang of guilt, this energy, this attack is not necessary, requires no gritted teeth, no concentrated strength. We understand in that moment the ice pick is perfectly suited for its job.

It is substantial, yet requires no force, no finesse. It just performs. If it were mechanical, it would hum. And hum and hum and hum in comforting perpetuity.


We may be forgiven the momentary lapse of judgment when we first pick up the ice pick.


We have before us a big bag of commercially made ice, ten or fifteen pounds worth. We bring it home because we plan a party, and some of it will be go into a cooler and some of it will be used for drinks. And all of it clumped together in a mass of frustrating, aggravating finger-burning coldness, making a mess of the counter and the floor.


First we do the the floor whomp, banging it down with might, thinking this will loosen it up. It does, but only the last little bit of ice in the bottom of the bag, that ice which will never see the inside of a glass or an ice bucket. Next, the butter knife, preferred by women, a steak knife preferred by men. Forgive the incorrectness of this, but it bears a truth not easily denied. Both methods equally ineffective, although the sharper the knife the more dramatic the failure, with those little piercing shards of ice flying around and melting on contact with the counter.


In organized households perhaps someone takes the hammer to it, the little tack hammer in the drawer there, the one used for hanging pictures and not much else. In my household, it is the first heavy object at hand; the corkscrew, the manual can opener, one time a can of tomato paste.
But no. An ice pick, and only an ice pick will do.


And who has one of those lying about?


Not I.


Until last week, when I had just about had it. For months I have struggled with big bags of ice or going without ice altogether, the difficulty of a glass of iced tea enough to unhinge me. The reason, simple. I do not have an ice maker. Imagine it. I still can not. But a glitch in my kitchen design means I am lucky to have a no frills fridge at all and forget about one with a factory installed ice maker.


No worries, I thought. I have the old fridge in the garage, I can store bags of ice there, and make my own ice cubes, anyway, circa 1962. I gave myself much for credit for energy and motivation. I overestimated my ability to remember to buy ice, I underestimated the ease of making my own ice cubes. Gone are the industrial aluminum ice cube trays with the lever that ejected twelve ice cubes at a time.


We thought walking across the floor with those filled with water was delicate. Try it with the tiny ice cube trays all floppy and made of silicone. I went in search of an ice pick. I found one, and of course I found it at my neighborhood hardware store. And when I say I found one I mean, I told the guys at the counter what I needed and they walked me to the back of the store to get one. Sometimes they go and fetch me things but that afternoon I needed the exercise.


It was just like the one my grandmother might have purchased. Just like my grandmother had, in fact. Just like the one we probably threw away when cleaning out her house that last time. A simple tool, elegant and efficient in the way it bends to its one task with ease. Dangerous looking. Much maligned, a horror film cliché. And yet, my new beloved.

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HEAT WAVE

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There was a heatwave, not unlike this one. I was living in Bowling Green then, my sister was spending the summer with me, taking classes, and we were fiends for tennis. Boys wouldn’t play with us. Well, they would, but they didn’t like it.


We hit the courts one fine bright noon. Kathy remarked how deserted it was. We had our pick of courts with the sun bearing down on them, our little water bottles sweating in our hands. “Where is everybody?” she wondered.

“Inside, where they belong,” I replied. “You know people are dropping like flies, right?”


“Huh? “

“This heat, it’s killing people from Chicago to Memphis and anyone with sense is in the air conditioning, if they can find it.”


She looked blank, I shrugged, like it was of no more importance than if I was passing along something interesting I had just read about King Tut’s tomb. We played three sets of tennis, and feeling fine, but not total idiots, decided maybe we should go in search of some air conditioning, too.


We gathered our cans of balls, our tennis rackets and tiny tennis towels, our skimpy water bottles and took ourselves off home.


What I remember most about that afternoon is this. We were young, not too bright, and as fit as we ever were or ever would be. We were golden.


I write this in a chair that rocks, swivels and is in possession of a matching ottoman upon which my feet rest. The sprinkler rakes the big windows to my right, but I am not going out there any time soon to turn it off. I calculate the window of safety in which I might venture out to save my plants. It is a grave kind of arithmetic, even though, while it is hot, I have been hotter, and I am not sure it is so awful out there. I mean, it feels bad, but not that bad. Yet, I peek through the drawn blinds — no I don’t, I wrote that for effect — and take my pulse and try to remember when I last hydrated.


Because now I’m old.


Decidedly unfit.


And if I am honest, a bit of a scaredy cat.


There have been medical issues, not many or long-lasting enough to say I have a (fill in the blank) condition. But I creep around like maybe I do. I stay out of hot tubs, am cautious in a sauna, I weigh up my stamina for a walk around the neighborhood.


As if I could walk around neighborhood, anyway. I am almost recovered from a wonky hip issue, one that has vexed me since Christmas. The pain has migrated all over the place and is now, I think, in the last and only place left to be. And I am so much better. I can pick stuff up off the floor now. But it has gotten my attention.


I suppose I’ll never hold another tennis racket. I can’t get a bead on pickleball, and I suspect it is a pride thing. And while I have never been the biggest fan of summer, I have a soft spot for the girl I was once in it. The one with that backhand, the mean second serve. That one, who thought nothing of tennis at high noon, and 96 degrees. That one, who was always game, even if she wasn’t always best suited for the weather. I want a piece of her back.


She would be out there right now, mulching or pulling weeds, She wouldn’t care if it was hot. She would be at the nurseries this afternoon, looking for plants. Come home. Dig some holes. Maybe I need to quit twitching the curtains and just go out there to meet the day, whatever kind of day it is. If I only make it to the porch to drink iced tea, well, that is something, too.