Wish you could be here to spend Christmas with our nutty nephews. In the meantime, enjoy these photos — they should give you a great belly laugh!

(click to enlarge each photo)

Yesterday, I was riding in the back seat of my friend Donna’s car, gazing out the window at Amish farmhouses and rolling eastern Pennsylvania hills. Since Monday is washday, almost every farm had somber laundry hanging on the clotheslines, accented with a few pink child-sized blouses. Donna was telling us how the Amish had begun raising some interesting livestock. “You mean, like llamas?” I asked.

“No — look,” she said. Across the field was something much less common than a llama. It was a camel! We drove a little further, and suddenly there were baby camels almost close enough to touch. I rolled down my window to look, and Mike said, “Watch out that they don’t spit on you.” I quickly rolled it back up again.

Like the camels, I find many things curious and incongruous about the Amish lifestyle. For example, at night, the old-fashioned buggies are lit with newfangled LEDs. And when you pull up to a gas pump here, you often find a pile of steaming horse poop in front of it. What’s inside those mysterious horse-drawn contraptions that needs gasoline?

After our camel experience, we turned down a busy road and found ourselves behind a horse-drawn farm wagon that clop-clopped placidly at about five miles per hour. We had to wait our turn to pass him, and when we did, I noticed that his load consisted of eight little Amish children sitting on hay bales. The boys were all in the back of the wagon, and the girls were up front, as far away from the boys as they could get. All the children wore black anachronistic clothing, the boys’ outfits topped with charming straw hats.

A while later, we arrived at our destination, Donna’s mother’s home. While the others unloaded the groceries, I sat down in the living room to catch up with Odessa, who lets me call her “Mom.” We’d just started to chat when she looked over my shoulder and said, “What have we here?”

I turned around, expecting to see Donna, Mike, or Barry. To my surprise, it was a group of black-clad Amish children. “Would you like us to to sing to you?” the oldest boy said to Odessa. His English was clear but heavily accented. “That would be fine,” she said, sitting back in her chair.

As the eight children arranged themselves into three groups around their songbooks, I recognized the group from the farm wagon. The man driving, the father of several of them, had dropped them off and gone on an errand while they entertained Odessa with traditional Christmas songs.

“Seventy-nine,” said the tallest boy. They turned to that page and began to sing a Christmas hymn, a very unfamiliar tune. Their voices were high-pitched and their Pennsylvania Dutch accents gave a slightly nasal tone to the music. When they finished, one of the girls said, “Eighty-three,” and they launched into another one.

During the second song, I noticed something strange. The older children were gamely singing away, but their little brothers and sisters were having trouble focusing on the music. After a while, one of the little girls gave up singing completely and stared with her mouth hanging open. Her silence had its effect on her brother, who also lost his concentration and stared, openmouthed, at the corner of the room. The others faltered a little.

Odessa had muted her television, but she hadn’t turned it off!

As the Amish children labored through about seven different songs, it became evident that the television, though silent, had the power to mesmerize them completely. The older boys, who stood with their backs to it, couldn’t stop glancing over their shoulders to see what was happening on the tube. They got confused, repeating some verses and skipping others. The younger children, who unfortunately were facing it directly, leaned on the arm of a chair and stared, unabashed, at the lively, colorful pictures on the screen.

There were two earnest girls whose singing carried the concert, probably because they couldn’t see the TV from where they were standing!

At Odessa’s request, the children sang Silent Night, and then finished with “We Wish You a Merry Christmas.” The oldest boy said, earnestly, “If you’d to hear more singing, you can come to our school on December 22nd.” I think he was embarrassed at their performance and wanted a chance to show that without the distraction of TV, they can sing much better.

As the little group left through Odessa’s kitchen, Donna gave them cookies. I was laughing silently — and sympathetically — at their predicament. I haven’t had a TV in 30 years, so I get mesmerized by the darned things, too. But that afternoon at Odessa’s house, the Amish children were so different from anything I’d experienced, watching them struggle with the pull of the television had me completely mesmerized.

Like a young woman whose husband went away to sea, she waited patiently by the water. She grew old but never lost her beauty, and he never returned.

She was a grand old wooden sailboat, agreed by all to be the Belle of the Boatyard. Everyone who had ever taken a stroll in the boatyard was drawn to her elegant lines and sweeping overhangs. I had photographed her numerous times, capturing images of her accelerating but lovely decay.

There was no name on the boat, and her white paint was peeling to the silvered wood, highlighted with golden-orange rust stains. Rumors abounded about her mysterious past. Had she been owned by someone famous? How did she end up here? How could something so breathtakingly beautiful have been abandoned like this?

And then, around this time last year, I ran into Kenny on a Saturday. He had a big smile on his face.

“Whatcha doin’ out here on a Saturday?” I asked him.

“I think I just sold a boat,” he said. He turned and pointed. “That one.”

“What? How? Who?” I sputtered.

There’s a big movie studio in Wilmington, and a movie crew had driven out to the boatyard that morning. They were looking to buy a lot of old boat parts to use in a set, and Kenny suggested that they would do better to buy a whole boat. Then, in his low-key way, he showed them several choices.

Kenny owns a handful of the older boats in the yard; people sometimes stop paying their storage charges and eventually he has to take possession. What came as a surprise was that he didn’t own this one; she was not his and she was not for sale. I suspect that people had tried to buy her many times over the years. This time, her owner said yes.

That afternoon, when there was no one around, a truck pulled up next to the boat. A couple got out, and they walked around the boat. Eventually, the man climbed up the ladder and started carrying personal things off the boat. The woman went back and sat in the truck for hours.

I wandered over to say hello and congratulations. But as I got close to the man, I realized that congratulations were not in order.

He looked like he was about to cry.

The boat’s name was Fresh Breeze. She was his dream boat. She’d been in this very spot for 18 years.

The man’s name was Ken, and we sat and talked about how it happened. The dream and the boat came first, and then the marriage to someone who was afraid of sailing.

When I asked how long it had been since he’d been out to work on the boat, he couldn’t remember. “A couple of years, I guess.”

From the evidence, it looked more like ten.

He pointed to the tree beside her. “That thing blocked my view of the water, so I cut it down a couple of times.” The tree was now taller than the mizzen mast, over 30 feet tall.

It started with a friend who had a sailboat. Ken recounted their adventures in the waters around Pamlico Sound like it was yesterday. Then he decided to buy his own boat and fix her up. He couldn’t wait to take his friend out sailing. At first, he came every weekend, puttering and painting. Then every other weekend. Then every few months. Years passed. Now his friend has died, and Ken can never take him sailing.

As his wife sat in the truck, I helped Ken grieve his dream. That dream was alive as long as he owned the boat and paid the monthly storage bill, even when the portlights fell in and the water poured out through the shrunken timbers. We didn’t speak of that. We talked about the places where he wanted to sail, and how much fun it is to anchor in remote places away from other people.

Eventually, Ken started to ask me about Flutterby, and my sailing dream. At the time, we had been hauled out for nearly three years, overwhelmed by the magnitude of our refit. The difference was, Barry and I were working together. Ken derived some comfort from the fact that some women do have a sailing dream, that we want to fix up boats and go cruising, too. His wife hadn’t been able to do that, but it was apparent that he loved her and was glad for the time they’d spent with their grandchildren.

He told me that the love of his family turned out to be more important than his sailing dream. He said it with awe, as if he was realizing it as he spoke.

A few days later, a boat-transport company came and carefully loaded Fresh Breeze onto a truck to go to the movie studio in Wilmington. I talked with Ken again that day, and he was doing better. He gave me lots of encouragement. As a matter of fact, we splashed Flutterby only about a week later.

I got tears in my eyes as I thought about Fresh Breeze, who will never be launched. People like Ken want us to carry the torch and live the dream for them. They’ve gotten called away by other responsibilities — work, family, other interests. But I can’t live someone else’s dream, only my own. I get called away, too, and I have no regrets about that. My family and friends are more important, too.

Now Ken’s lovely belle is going to be a movie star, and in a strange twist of fate, she just might inspire someone else’s sailing dream. Her parts are being used in a movie called “Journey 2: The Mysterious Island.” Film star Michael Caine plays a grandfather stranded on an island.

If even one young movie-goer is inspired by the movie to take up sailing, it will be a fitting end to the life of Fresh Breeze. We’ll never know who they are, but they will be carrying the torch for Ken, and all the others whose sailing dreams never came true.

I’ve just spent almost 3 weeks with my Dad in Florida. I’ve been wanting to write about him all this time, but what to say? Should I tell you about the books by Henry H. Schulte, Jr.? Or the newspapers he’s managed and edited? The thousands of students he’s taught and mentored? What about his children, or the adventures we had with him?

There’s so much to say, I never got around to writing anything.

So I was sitting on a Delta DC-9, ready to take off from Melbourne, Florida When looked out the window, there was a man standing on the ground wearing safety gear and holding a couple of orange flashlights. He waved. That was unusual.

Then I heard voices behind me. “Look, Sky, that man is waving at you.” I craned my head around to see a little boy, just a toddler, in the seat behind me. He was traveling with his parents, two people who looked surprisingly young to me.

From the conversation behind me, I figured out that it was Sky’s first ride in an airplane.

As the plane taxied and took off, Sky and his parents entertained me with their observations. When we took off, they told him to watch how fast we were going. Once we were airborne, he said, “Lookie! The sun is coming! The sun is coming!” A few minutes later, “Where’s our house? When will we land? Where’s Grandpa’s house? Are we landing yet? I don’t see Grandpa’s house.”

We ascended through a light cloud layer, and the view was one of the most beautiful skyscapes I’ve ever seen. The dark ground, lit by pinpoints of electric light, was softened by a transparent black veil. At the same time, the sunlight reflecting off the clouds made a bright ethereal landscape above.

I’ve really enjoyed having Sky behind me during the flight, despite the fact that he took me at my word when I told him he could kick my seat-back. He sang the alphabet song (but got confused at the end) and traced his letters on the window. “Big A, little A. Big B, little B…”

Sky’s joyful curiosity reminded me of my Dad, who I’d just left that morning at 5:20 am. Even though Dad is over 80 years older than Sky, and he just had open-heart surgery, he is just as vibrant as that little boy.

The first two days after Dad’s operation were scary to me. Dad was in the ICU, which I expected, but he was not himself, which I didn’t expect. The first day, he didn’t even wake up. The second day, he was awake but didn’t talk.

On the morning of the third day, I walked into the ICU with my brother, full of apprehension. Then I heard his voice. And I heard peals of laughter from his nurses.

Dad was back!

For the next two days in the ICU, he pestered the nurses with questions about how the ICU worked and what the nurses were doing. He entertained them with his stories and his observations while they did their work. We joked about the fact that on Day Two, he had been making mooing noises because of the cow valve now implanted in his heart. Then we’d joke about the fact that it must have come from a bull, not a cow. The two of us were giddy and talkative. When the nurses saw me, they told me how lucky I am.

I know that.

My Dad’s a lot like the little boy, Sky. He is full of curiosity about the way the world works, cataloging his finds and comparing them to his prior experiences. Sometimes he seems to say whatever pops into his head, like a little kid who doesn’t worry what other people will think. He can be very observant and oblivious at the same time. We laugh a lot together. He makes silly noises and sings silly tunes. He likes teddy bears.

In the past decade, I have heard over and over, “Your Dad is amazing for his age.” It’s not his age that’s amazing. It’s his little-boy way of experiencing the world, his natural ebullience. He’s always been like this.

For Sky, the little boy on the plane, I wish that life would always be like his first flight, that he would always feel like he could touch the sky with his joyful enthusiasm for life.

In my Dad, Henry, we have proof that it is possible for all of us. He’s touched the sky many times, and will continue to do so into his 90′s. If Dad can do it, we all can.

“I promise, it will be worth it,” said my friend, Sparkle. I had to trust her, but waking up at 4:30 am was a severe test of our friendship.

The beeping alarm didn’t phase Barry, who rolled over and stuck his head under the pillow. I got up in the dark, drank a sleepy cup of coffee — Sparkle had gotten up at 4:00 am to make it — and carried one to Barry in bed as a bribe. We’d loaded the van the night before, so now all we had to do was rouse two pairs of sleeping kids to go with us.

One pair was Sparkle’s youngsters, who’d been through this drill several times before. They climbed into Mom’s car and went back to sleep, knowing that what was in store was worth it.

The other pair was our traveling companions, Anneliese and Nick, who in their early 20′s are too old to be proper kids but are still young enough to be used to people calling them “kids.”

We parked the van while it was still dark and started walking towards the park. Suddenly, I saw the first one ahead, an enormous colored lightbulb against the indigo sky. It was a full-sized hot air balloon that appeared in the night sky for a few seconds, and then, suddenly, the lights went out.

“Did you see that?” I asked, excitedly.
“See what?” one of my sleepy companions replied.

Just then, it happened again. A balloon started glowing and rising in the sky. Then a second one. The first one went out and a third lit up for a while.

Barry guessed that they were using their burners to light the balloons from the inside. Each time they did this, the balloons would rise in the sky, and when they turned the burners off, they would sink for a little while. Then they’d light up again, but now they were in a slightly different place.

Hot air balloons in the Reno night sky are completely magical. Sparkle was right. It was worth getting up for this.

But there was more to come. When we arrived in the park, there were people everywhere, and vendors selling t-shirts and donuts and pizza. Loudspeakers blared with music and announcements. There were long lines for the port-a-potties. I had never seen so many humans gathered in one place at 5 o’clock on a Saturday morning.

What we’d just seen was the Dawn Patrol, a small number of hot air balloons that are qualified to fly in the dark. Now Sparkle led us onto a vast field, where we spread our blankets among the crowd, next to a truck marked “balloon chase vehicle.” It was like setting up for Fourth of July fireworks or a picnic on the beach. I wasn’t sure which way to face to watch the action.

But when the Mass Ascension Launch occurred, it didn’t matter which way I was facing. What I hadn’t realized was that the balloons were right here among us. They were just flat, and they were everywhere! Some of the picnic blankets were spectators, but a lot of them belonged to balloon crews who were just waiting for the sun to come up.

There was a gentle pastel-colored dawn, pinks and blues and yellows reminiscent of a baby blanket. The day was clear and free of clouds as the crews fired up their noisy fans and propane burners. Soon, all around us, balloons started growing organically out of the field like huge multi-colored pumpkins.

Mouths agape, we tiny humans started walking among the colorful giants before they took off. It was thrilling being in the middle of almost a hundred hot air balloons; the photos do not do it justice.

The balloons didn’t all rise at once. They filled at different rates, and when they were ready, they bucked like horses. Their pilots and passengers climbed into the wicker baskets, and then they were quickly cast off.

One by one, they drifted up into the sky, until the air above us was full of them, silhouetted against the blue. They had left the world of earth and created a new world in the sky. Then the air currents separated them and carried them slowly away, and they drifted over the horizon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Every year, there comes a time when Burning Man ends and we have to pack our dusty camping gear and clothing. It’s not like packing up just any campsite.

First, we have to take down and fold a shade structure that measures about 500 square feet, coiling dozens of dust-laden ropes that held it up. As we untie the ropes, we have to yank out the pieces of rebar that they were tied to, preferably before we trip over one of them and get hurt. Since the rebar was driven into the ground with a sledgehammer, it takes a lot of work to get it out. We have to mop up any yucky water that didn’t evaporate in the shower pond, sort the recycling and garbage, and find a place to burn the burlap bag full of dessicated compost.

We have to do all this while wearing dust masks and work gloves in the blazing sun. Even so, it’s not the most painful part of leaving — saying goodbye to all our friends is. There’s never enough time in one week to spend with all our dear friends in Black Rock City.

In the past, this onerous period has been followed by a painful multi-step re-entry into the “default” world. There are a number of steps to this re-entry, such as the first time I see pavement after a week. The first flush toilet. The first time I interact with a non-Burner. The first time I use a credit card. The first phone call I make. The first phone call I receive: “Hey, what’s that funny ringing noise?”

But this year was different. It has been almost a month since we left, and I am still floating on Cloud Nine, feeling bubbly and happy. Why?

It’s because I didn’t have to say goodbye to my friends right away. Yay!

We camped this year next to a great couple named Shade and Swirly Sue. The two of them had a small RV and an enormous, welcoming shade structure. They were fun and generous, offering cool foot baths to anyone who wanted one. Because of this, they made lots of new friends. By the end of the week, there were six people camping next to us instead of two.

All six left Black Rock City together, riding in Shade and Sue’s RV and towing their gear and bikes in a large open trailer.

We didn’t say goodbye to them when they left. We also didn’t say goodbye to our campmate, Sparkle. Or our friends in Silicon Village, Philip and Claire.

A couple of hours after we drove out of Black Rock City, we walked into a furniture-free rental house in Sparks, Nevada. “Guess who had a flat tire?” I called out to the assembled group, which included all nine of the fine Burners mentioned in the above paragraph. They were sprawled on the carpet in the living and dining rooms, eating cold, fresh food like lettuce salad and ice cream. All were enjoying life without dust for the first time in a week. As the evening wore on, each dusty person would disappear for a while and then return from the shower, unrecognizable.

The impromptu house party was hosted by Sparkle, who’d just attended her first Burn and had taken to it like a fish to water. Looking around the room, I remembered her asking me about the principle of Gifting. “What should I bring to give away?” she asked me, referring to items she could buy in advance. I suggested she not bring anything for her first year, just enjoy the experience and know what to bring the next time.

Now, after one week in the desert, she was demonstrating that she understood the principle of Gifting perfectly. In fact, she also was helping us experience Radical Inclusion, Participation, Immediacy, and Communal Effort, more of the Ten Principles of Burning Man.

After showers and a meal, two of our friends had to leave that first night, driving through the night to the Bay Area. They got a lot of hugs to help them on their way. Four others took off the following day. But five of us stayed through the week, forming a sort of family group in the Sparkle House.

One evening, we descended on a laundromat together and took over 13 washing machines. Then we ate pizza, played games, and drew crayon pictures for each other at the Blind Onion. Another day, we drove to Lake Tahoe, where all five of us had to share one camera. We lived even more of those Burning Man principles, namely Radical Self-Expression (we sat around making jewelry from glass and wire), Decommodification (no TV!), and Radical Self-Reliance (cleaning all the dust off our gear). The grand finale was the Great Reno Balloon Race, which we all attended at the end of the week. Words do not do it justice — more photos are coming.

It was a magical time, a chance to experience intentional community outside of Burning Man. We’d only met Nick and Anneliese a few days earlier, but they were so easy to be with, it was as though we’d known each other all our lives. My connection to Sparkle was even more amazing. We’d known each other at school 30 years earlier, but had been out of touch ever since. When she arrived at Burning Man, it was the first time I’d seen her since we received our high school diplomas. Now she’s like a sister.

Eventually, we did have to leave and say goodbye to Sparkle and the kids. That was a tough goodbye, but we did not have to say goodbye to Nick and Anneliese. They went along with us to our next adventure.

To this day, people are still asking us, “How was Burning Man?”

“It was great! The best ever!” Barry and I say, in unison.

And, I might add, it’s not over yet. As long as there are Burning friends in my life, it might just go on forever.

As froggies go, he wasn’t very big. He was about an inch long, smaller than all but the tiniest plastic ones in the toy store.

He wasn’t plastic, though. He was real.

The day we picked up my brother’s car was a tough one for me. The car was the largest thing Stevie had owned, and although my job was to eventually sell it for his estate, I was emotionally attached to it. Standing beside the plain-vanilla Camry with the keys in my hand, I got a little teary-eyed.

That’s when the the little green guy appeared. He crawled out from behind the passenger-side mirror and looked at me with big round eyes. Did he know he was an omen, or did he think he was just a frog? Was he really a Froggie?

When he passed away, Stevie’s living room walls were decorated with paintings of beaches and lighthouses, and in the center hung his doctorate, double-matted, in a heavy gold frame. In the place of honor, right below the doctorate: His froggie collection. That’s right, froggies. I never once heard him use the word “frog.”

Stevie had stuffed froggies, glass froggies, ceramic froggies, metal froggies, and plastic froggies. Some were elegant, some were goofy. One of them used to make croaking sounds, although I accidentally destroyed that capability when I ran it through the washing machine.

The first one came from a coworker, 15 years ago. He had such fun with it, calling it “Froggie,” and making up stories about it, that others began giving him froggies as well. A friend of his mentioned a “Froggy Battle,” which sounded epic. Dad sent froggies for birthdays and Christmas, and I gave him Seattle-themed froggies. Stevie never bought a single one for himself.

He referred to them by silly names: Santa Froggie, Big-Mouth Froggie, Squeaky Froggie.

Stevie was very protective of his froggies. When I sent him a stuffed gorilla named Curious George, he wrote back, “Did I tell you that curious george can stay but that the Froggys and their extended family have eminent domain!”

Stevie was in rare form with his thoughts about a February event called GroundFrog Day, in which a bullfrog by the name of Snohomish Slew offers his weather “frognostication.” He wrote:

“Snohomish Slew and I could become very good friends although as long as Mr & Mrs Froggie are around they cannot be replaced by an upstart tadpole from who knows where who can barely speak froglatin and does not see his shadow cus he probably don’t have one!! Plus he makes BAD predictions and as anyone knows…when you’re frozen like he was you are usually braindead upon arrival!! I guess I’m kinda hard on Slew this morning but ya gotta be kind of jealous towards someone who gets to live in a place called Flower World!”

At Stevie’s memorial, we displayed all the froggies, and afterwards, family and friends could choose one to keep as a memento. I ended up with more than my share of Froggies — Bendy Froggie, Spitting Froggie, Playskool Froggie, Sparkly Froggie, and a bunch of tiny plastic ones.

With Stevie on my heart, you can imagine what I thought when that live little frog climbed out from behind the car mirror, looked at me, and climbed back into his hiding place again.

I am sure that there are people who find frogs on their cars all the time. I am not one of them. Until that day, when I picked up Steve’s car, I had never in my life seen a frog on a car. So I had a name for this little guy: Omen Froggie.

Omen Froggie was tucked safely behind the mirror when we drove the car to town for dinner. There was no sign of him when we came out of No-Name Pizza. Was he still in the mirror? Was he chowing down on pizza scraps? Was he hopping around Beaufort?

It was on the way home that he reappeared. At 55 mph, he decided to make his move. “Look! Froggie!” said Barry, who was in the passenger seat. Our little friend had crawled out from behind the mirror and was now clinging to the passenger window. With his tree-frog toes spread wide and his skin blowing in the wind, Froggie was enjoying a perilous — surely terrifying — joyride. “Hang on, Froggie, hang on!” I cried. I was a very distracted driver, paying more attention to the tiny passenger on the outside of the window than to the other vehicles on the road.

I didn’t want Omen Froggie to go flying off along the road and get killed. He was a Very Important Froggie, and I needed to return him to the boatyard, where he had come from.

Or had he come from the boatyard? Perhaps he had come from another dimension! Maybe he just popped into this universe to let me know Stevie was keeping an eye on his car. And me.

Omen Froggie did not fall off the car. He made it safely back to the parking space where we’d found him. I took a picture of him sitting, serene, on the roof of the car. And after that, I never saw Omen Froggie again.

~~~

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When I was growing up, I thought it terribly unfair that I didn’t have a grandmother. I envisioned white-haired grandmothers as the source of all kinds of good things, like cookies, presents, and sympathy. When a friend’s grandmother tried to poison me during a sleepover in the 7th grade, I figured that was an anomaly.

One of the first things I learned about Barry was that he had a cookie-baking grandmother. She used to send the most amazing, gigantic boxes at Christmas — a panoply of homemade sweets that included fudge, cherry bites, and icebox cookies, each one individually wrapped, with love, in plastic wrap. But what I enjoyed even more than Grandma’s cookies was her sparkle.

The first time I met her was at Barry’s mother’s 50th birthday dinner at a Columbus restaurant. I was working the night shift, so I took a longer-than-usual dinner break to attend. After a meal of rich pasta, bread, salad, and cake, Grandma turned to me and said, “How about coming back to the hotel with us for a little spumoni?” I was stunned. How could this crazy family put ice cream on top of all the other food? I was stuffed! But Grandma persisted. “Just a little spumoni?” I didn’t want to offend her, so after she asked several times, I finally agreed.

When we got to the hotel, she and Barry’s grandfather pulled out a cooler and, to my surprise, champagne glasses. She meant Spumante! For a toast! When I admitted my confusion, we all just laughed and laughed.

In the decades since then, every time we get together with Grandma, there’s a lot of laughter. Growing up in the Roaring 20′s, she has a unique perspective. She lived through the deprivations of Prohibition, the Great Depression, and the second World War. She would tell us stories about about her huge, crazy family, and we’d stay up into the wee hours, talking about everything and anything. She was the ultimate hostess, not just plying us with food and drink (“I can’t eat another bite, Grandma!”), but making sure everyone was having a good time.

When she visited Seattle in the late 90′s, she made a lasting impression on our sailing friends. Bill Brown would complain at great length about “those damned blue-hairs;” why couldn’t more seniors be like Barry’s Grandma? He started a tradition at every gathering, raising his glass and saying, “Here’s to Loraine!” Puzzled friends would say, “Who’s Loraine?” This would give Bill a chance to tell them just how cool Barry’s Grandma is. Then we’d have another toast, and everyone would join in, no matter what they were drinking: “Here’s to Loraine!”

Grandma is pretty down-to-earth, so her passion for reading tea leaves comes as a bit of a surprise. She’ll make a pot of loose tea and pour us each a cup with the leaves floating in it. When we’ve sipped all but about a teaspoon, we swirl the cup carefully to drain the remaining liquid and turn it upside-down, resting on a spoon in the saucer. She can do this perfectly every time, with just the right flick of the wrist. The rest of us are complete klutzes, pouring all our leaves into the saucer, or dumping tea on the tablecloth. But when it’s done right, you can pick up the teacup and find clumps of tea leaves in the bottom, forming recognizable patterns. Or not-so-recognizable.

We take turns peering into each other’s cups, studying the dregs of our tea. “Is that a bird?” “Maybe that’s some kind of fish.” Near the end of the session, when our imaginations are getting tired, the amateurs will say, “I can’t make any sense of this one at all,” but Grandma still sees a tree or a flower and can interpret their meanings.

Of course, if the tea leaves seem to be forming a computer, a cellphone, or a satellite, we all scratch our heads and wonder what’s in the future. That’s because the guidebook she uses was published in 1922.

A few years ago, when she read her own fortune, Grandma kept finding crosses, which mean someone you know is going to die. She stopped reading the leaves for a while, afraid of what the cup might tell her. It’s tough to outlive your husband, your siblings, and most of your friends.

These days, Grandma’s a little less prone to late nights. She gave up baking cookies over a decade ago. But she’s still reading tea leaves and living on her own at almost 100. She still has that sparkle.

A couple of weeks ago, we had a 50th anniversary celebration for Barry’s parents, and because Grandma doesn’t travel, we held it in the Michigan city where she lives.

Barry’s sister had done a fantastic job of decorating the restaurant’s tables, and at the last minute, Barry and I added a bottle of champagne and sparkling cider to each one. When the restaurant set stemware at each place setting, the tables gleamed with reflected light. But what was this? The “head” table, where the original guests from the 1961 wedding were seated, seemed to have something extra.

You guessed it — that’s where Grandma was sitting! She hadn’t been to a party in many years. Now she seemed to have found some reserve energy, and she was the life of the party. How many parents get to attend their children’s 50th wedding anniversary? It was pushing her limits, and she’d be tired the next day. But there she was, sparkling away.

And that is what Grandma does best. The champagne is optional.

Vero Beach is a very clean, pristine little town. Careful zoning prevents high-rises as well as any other ugliness. There are large, beautifully-landscaped homes owned by wealthy retirees as well as tidy smaller ones, where the hard-working younger set lives.

In addition to these neighborhoods, there are gated communities, protected from unwelcome riff-raff by fences and walls. These condo communities have additional rules to prevent unsightliness and untoward behavior by their own residents: No rollerblading. No pickup trucks. No open garage doors. Speed limit 10 mph. No soliciting. No one under 55. Pool chairs must be completely covered by a towel. No pets.

So how did these two grubby sailors from Flutterby, who are used to living in a boatyard, fare in pristine Vero Beach for five months?

We stayed in compliance easily, because nobody had thought to write rules about the things Meps and Barry will do.

One day, the neighbors found the front yard of Dad’s house completely full of soggy camping and kayaking gear. It was spread across the bushes, and Barry had tied clotheslines between the palm trees and the garage for our dripping jackets and pants. These remnants of a messy and disastrous Everglades camping trip were just a harbinger of the chaos to come.

Luckily, nobody had written a rule against our soggy gear display. There is probably a rule agasint drying laundry, but it was not enforced.

Next, we tested the waters with a small project, refinishing the oars for the dinghy. I took them over to Dad’s backyard one afternoon. He wandered out of the house to see what I was doing, and he pulled up a chair to watch as I set up my sanding station. There were no sawhorses, so I compromised by propping the oars across a couple of folding chairs. Then I got out my random orbital sander and my red earmuff-style hearing protection. The sander is LOUD, especially since its bearings are in bad shape after all the fiberglass we’ve used it on.

Before I put the earmuffs on, I said to Dad, “I’m going to make a lot of noise now. You might want to go back inside.” “That’s OK,” he responded, “I’m way over here.” He was all of six feet away.

I just shook my head and started up the sander. The noise and sawdust didn’t phase him at all, and he kept me company until I finished the first oar.

Evidently, the project didn’t phase the neighbors, either. I’d just proven that his gated complex could handle a little bit of sanding, Meps-style.

After the oars were sanded, we suspended them in the garage and painted them with multiple coats of epoxy and paint. I worried that the fumes might get into the house, but it was well-sealed. None of the neighbors complained about that, either.

Then we went shopping with our friend Ann, and on top of her big Mothball van, we piled enough plywood and dimensional lumber to build a freestanding wooden lofting floor in the garage. All the sawing, screwing, and hammering still didn’t raise the ire of any neighbors, although Dad started grumbling about the loss of his garage for the car.

Over the next weeks, Barry set up first one, then two sewing machines in the garage. He made paper patterns and transferred them to fabric. Then he stitched them into sails, working late into the night. He closed the garage door at night to keep mosquitoes at bay, which helped keep us in compliance with the no-open-garage-door ruling. We were pushing that one.

We admired Mothball so much, Ann left the van in our care while she sailed her boat north to Maine. That was wonderful serendipity, allowing us to move vanloads of battens and yards across town without renting a truck. The longest battens are 18 feet, and they only stuck out of the van eight feet!

But surely, in the next phase, the neighbors would complain. They hadn’t written any rules against sanding aluminum or doing epoxy jobs in the driveway, but they probably should have. Any time you see your neighbor wearing a full-face respirator, he’s probably doing something he shouldn’t.

By now, the neighbors were blase about the stuff happening at Dad’s normally quiet, tidy house. They didn’t peer curiously into the garage any more when they walked their completely controlled pets on leashes. I’m sure there’s a rule about that. I wonder if that’s why one woman walks her cat on a leash.

Finally, all the irritating, rule-breaking projects were done. I posted a couple of ads on Craigslist and Freecycle, and obliging people came and took away all the lumber. One man was building chicken coops, and the other was building rabbit hutches. I doubt Vero Beach allows such critters; they probably came from outside the city limits.

We returned the borrowed sewing machine to our friend Linda. We loaded the tools, paint, and epoxy into plastic bins that would fit aboard the boat, along with the carefully-folded sails. The sewing table we carried back inside.

Then we stood back and looked at the garage, ready for Dad’s car.

There was no sign of the mess or noise that had completely taken over for almost three months. In fact, the garage looked better than before we’d arrived! Barry had installed a couple of ladder hangers for working on the battens. Now Dad’s ladder was neatly stored on them, instead of leaning precariously against the wall.

I breathed a sigh of relief.

We had made a BIG mess, and we had cleaned up all of it. This was in keeping with the biggest rule of all. Not a Vero Beach rule, or a condo complex rule, but a family rule: Do not mess up Dad’s house.

Someday, Dad will see our picture on the front of a sailing magazine. He can show his friends, saying “Look! These sails were made in my garage.” I have my fingers crossed that he’ll conveniently forget the sawdust and noise and chaos, and just remember my favorite part: How much we enjoyed his company for five months, the messiest Snowbirds in Vero Beach.

When I was born, my brother Stevie was 12. He told the family that Margaret was too long a name for such a little baby, and he proposed the nickname Peggy. It stuck for 17 years (I changed the spelling to “Peigi” at age 11). Now you know where the “P” in Meps came from.

Stevie passed away suddenly on April 16th. He was a kind, gentle soul with a great sense of humor. Losing him is like losing part of my name, part of my identity.

In the photo below, he is the tall, handsome athlete. The miniature person, looking up at him adoringly, is me. I’d just learned to walk.

Stevie’s funeral and a celebration of his life will be here in Vero Beach in mid-May.