Queens Creek II

Here are more early morning shots from my back yard overlooking Queens Creek.

These were taken using the zoom.  This point is actually quite a ways from my house.

Well, Sister Susan and I survived the Nashville half marathon and thoroughly enjoyed spending time with our Soul Sister Lauren. Although we didn't turn in our best time, we also didn't turn in our worst. Considering I haven't run 13.1 miles since March 2015 and hadn't run more than six miles since then either, and also considering my insides were turned upside down quite literally in the car accident and subsequent surgery, well,...I'm not at all disappointed with my time.  It's all relative.

Speaking of relatives, we're spending Mother's Day over at Middle Sister's house.  She's fixing a great big feast, and all the rest of us have to do is show up.  That's my kind of festivity.  I'm excellent at showing up. It's one of the things I do best along with eating other people's cooking.

Speaking of other people's cooking, I am negligent in talking about reconnecting with someone I haven't seen since the 1980s.  He's in to aquaculture and grows his own oysters.  He also makes the best fried and roasted oysters I've ever had in my entire life. (And that includes my father's,) More on that in another post.

Last but not least, this weekend I had the privilege of hosting blog friends Meg and Angie at my house.  We thoroughly enjoyed our mini-reunion, which included a trip to Merroir, where Daughter has been working all weekend long.

Aside from nursing a dental problem, which has had me in a great deal of pain the past week, all in all life is great and things are going well.  There is a light at the end of the tunnel for Daughter, who is very excited about leaving for college this summer.  Son is taking his last exam of the semester this week and will be home for a short visit in a few weeks.  My favorite month of the year is here, things are green and the worst of the cold weather is behind us.

It's great to be alive.

Beginning and End

My Mother's Day started with Daughter delivering a poster-size dose of happiness that she painted herself.

Along for the ride was a balloon full of love.

Daughter is a child of few, carefully chosen words, so when she says something, she really means it.

She also went to the effort of framing some family pictures, which sounds easy but actually isn't when you live in Mathews.  Creation of this gift required a trip to Gloucester's Walmart, which is 15 miles one way from our house and approximately 2-3 hours of a person's life they'll never get back, when you take into consideration standing in line at the photo thingamajig.

I confess that I cried when she gave me this.

Son, who just finished up his first year at University of Virginia, called from the center of Tropical Storm Ana.  He's spending a few days in Myrtle Beach with friends before returning home for the summer.  I went to retrieve his stuff last Friday, and we had lunch together.  His Mother's Day present to me is he survived an entire year of college and earned A's and B's.  I'm very, very proud of him.

Baby Sis arrived early afternoon, and the Mother's Day festivities continued next door with our parents.  My father's offering for the occasion was a batch of his world-famous (if they aren't world-famous they ought to be) fried oysters and shrimp.  My mother made a world-class salad, mashed potatoes, asparagus and several desserts, and I grilled some salmon.  We ate and ate and ate and ate and then we ate some more very well.

(Yes, it's Mother's Day, and the mothers were cooking.  We don't focus on the details, we focus on the food.)

Just when I thought the Mother's Day festivities were winding down, my across-the-creek neighbor Ann called to say she was having a gathering and wondered if I might like to join in on the fun.

Would I?

Jon and Ann live at the house/property known as Clifton, which is rich in history here in Mathews. The property my family lives on once belonged to Clifton.  Any opportunity I've ever had to go over there has not disappointed.  Jon and Ann, South Africans in the sailing business over in Deltaville, know how to throw a party, and their friends are always the most interesting and fascinating people.

This time was no different.

I met sailors from Austria.  I met sailors from Michigan/Connecticut/Irvington.  I met for the second time a lovely sailing couple who now live on Queens Creek, my creek, just up the way from me.  We share ownership of the Queens Creek eagle.  Technically the eagle lives on their property, but he wades and ponders life down my end of the creek.  He's a much-admired eagle, this one of ours.

Anyway, the party at Jon and Ann's house, which took place outdoors in their back yard gazing right into the inside of my boathouse which clearly needs to be cleaned out Miller's Cove on Queens Creek, was filled with delightful conversation and exceptionally interesting people, some of which I now can visit since they're only a kayak ride away!

(Dear Queens Creek Neighbors Who Co-Own the Eagle, please stop in for a visit the next time you're out boating. Memorial Day weekend I'll be spending lots of time in my back yard, please drop by.)

Below are some pictures I took over at Clifton. Jon and Ann's house sits comfortably on the creek just behind the house below, which you pass as you go down their driveway.  I didn't take pictures of their gorgeous house, but I have admired this one for a long time.  I'll share a few more photos of this house later in the week.

All in all, it was a great Mother's Day.  

From start to finish.

Court House Scenes

Here are a few shots taken about a week ago from Mathews Court House.

Yes, Mathews has one.

Glancing out the window at Southwind Pizza

Southwind's interior

This weekend was rather uneventful, which is not a bad thing, although Friday was very full.  After a long day at work in Williamsburg, I drove to King William for Daughter's soccer game, which they unfortunately lost. I was so exhausted by the time we finally arrived home that I slept through a fox incident that occurred just outside my bedroom.

Evidently the fox was terrorizing my outdoor cats on the balcony outside of my bedroom.  The sounds that come out of this animal can wake the dead, so I'm not sure how I slept through it all.  But Son took our dog outside and scared him off.  All returned to normal. (Whatever that is.)

Saturday I did some yard work.  Saturday evening, after a brief but ferocious storm blew through, Baby Sis joined us for our neighbor's retirement party, which was a blast. Mother's Day Sunday was very calm and very quiet; I slept all day took several naps and watched my favorite movie Pride and Prejudice (the BBC version).  My mother fixed us all a delicious dinner of ginger-coated salmon and one of her world-famous salads.

So, that's it.  A fox, a storm, a visit from Baby Sis, a party, some napping and a great meal.

Not a bad weekend. And now that I think about it, not so uneventful either.

Now it's back to work, where unfortunately they do not condone napping.  Darn it.

Mother's Mother

These were taken one recent morning

when I happened to glance eastward as I was getting dressed for work.

The entire scene changed within what seemed like seconds.

This last one looks nothing like it did in real life.  One of these days I'll take that photography class I've been meaning to take.

But it's amazing how things work.  If I hadn't glanced for no reason at that particular moment, I'd have missed the few moments the sun was saying hello.

A similar event happened to me Thursday night.

It all started Wednesday night, actually, at Daughter Maria's soccer game against West Point.  I took my perch high in the stands as I always do to better absorb all the sights around me, including the game.  One person leaning against the fence on the sidelines caught my attention.  For the life of me I cannot explain why I was staring at him.  He looked like another Mathews parent except I knew it was someone different.

The whole first half of the soccer game passed by without event.

Then, for no particular reason at all, the pieces of the puzzle fell in place.  I recognized this individual from my years at UVA.  His name was P. Diggs, from West Point, and I met him at a fraternity party at UVA.  We clicked because in those days before internet and social media, it was unusual to randomly meet someone from a small town in your area.

So that mystery had been solved; staring could now cease.  There he was along the sidelines, all these years later, at Mathews High school of all places, cheering on his son who plays soccer for West Point.

Fast forward to Thursday evening. At the dinner table my son Sam announces that he needs three pictures of himself (baby, toddler and middle school) for the impending graduation ceremony in June.  "When do you need them by?" I asked.  Naturally, his response was, "Tomorrow."

Rifling through boxes and boxes of old photos buried away in my closet, I happened upon a letter my mother's mother--my favorite grandmother--wrote me when I was in college.

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October 1983

Mrs. Bernice Jones
PO Box 732
Gloucester, VA 23061

Dear Janice,

Saturday I walked to the Safeway store and got this tablet so I could write you a letter.  I could hardly get back as I was so stiff.  I don't know whether it's old age or a little bit of everything.

I hope you are eating well.  Don't eat too much spaghetti as you will get fat.

Did you see the West Point Diggs?  Be sure you don't go on any wild parties.

You will be home in four more weeks.

Middle Sis and Baby Sis have been playing basketball.  Winning games.

The weather has been bad this week.  I haven't been out very much, so I am waiting to see some sun.

Write and tell me what you have been doing this week as this is the only news I get.

Be  good to yourself.  

I love you,

Nanny

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There is one more piece of information I need to share before I attempt to tie all this seemingly random information together into one less-than-random package.

Thursday morning--after the soccer game where I saw "the West Point Diggs" mentioned to and by my grandmother more than 30 years earlier--I made a last-ditch effort to transplant one more batch of daffodils from a section of the field that my mother says came from this same grandmother in Gloucester.

So, let's recap.

Wednesday I randomly see someone from college, 30 years later at a soccer game at Mathews High School, where the chances of me running into someone from college are nigh on nonexistent.  I spend most of Thursday morning transplanting my favorite grandmother's daffodil bulbs to my yard.  Thursday night, my son drops a bomb at the supper table that he needs three photos of himself from childhood, and I race to the closet and start digging.  One of the first things I (randomly?) see is a letter from that same grandmother--who asks about the very same fellow I happened to see the night before at a soccer game.

When I read the letter, I burst into tears. The combination of having spent the morning moving bulbs originally from her property to finding a letter written in her own handwriting talking about the same person she and I chatted about all those years before just hit me like a tidal wave.

None of this may make sense to anyone else, but it makes some sense to me.  That grandmother and I always had a special connection.  Perhaps this sequence of events was all coincidence.  Perhaps it wasn't. Perhaps Chesapeake Bay Woman is finally losing it.  Perhaps she's fortunate enough to have made a connection, however briefly, with a grandmother she adored.

Either way, one of the greatest gifts I could receive this Mother's Day weekend is that of reading her words in her handwriting to me.

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p.s. I love you too, Nanny. And I miss you very much. Also, I took your advice and don't eat a lot of spaghetti.  But I do eat too many chips with salsa.  Oh, and I did attend a few parties in college, only one or five of which could be categorized as wild.  The wildest thing I do now, you'd be happy to know, is jump up and down at basketball and soccer games cheering on your great-granddaughter. Now with a cowbell, which just arrived in the mail yesterday, much to your great-granddaughter's chagrin.

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Happy Mother's Day to everyone--including and especially my own wonderful mother who is also called Nanny by my son and daughter.