RECIPE FOR A DELICIOUS AUTUMN IN MAINE

I don't know if it was that we got just the right amount of rain earlier in the year  

or if the temperature was just right or that we are just some of the luckiest people in the United States right now.....but the fall foliage this year is just absolutely breathtaking, spectacular, almost beyond words.


As I was driving home last night, and being the lover of cooking that I am, the thought popped into my mind that all of the trees look like God had these big seasoning bottles from up above and sprinkled cinnamon, cayenne pepper and dry ground mustard all over the trees.  The burning bushes are the most brilliant candy apple red I've ever seen.

The mixture of colors makes the artist in me salivate with eagerness to get my watercolors out! 

I figure if we threw in some apples and sugar, and added  nice flaky crust over Maine....we'd  have a yummy warm autumn pie that was spicy, sweet, exotic and just about perfect.  If you don't live here....I'm sorry you're going to miss it.  I hope you have a beautiful autumn where ever you are.   It's no wonder this beautiful time of year leads right into the blessed time to be thankful.     
                                                                                     

                                               

"Just before the death of flowers,
And before they are buried in snow,               
There comes a festival season
When nature is all aglow."

Author Unknown

Home Sweet Home

After 45 years of living out in the middle of 40 acres way out in the country, in Texas,  my Mom (85) and my Dad (87) have decided to move into town to be nearer to the grocery store, nearer to the doctor/hospital, nearer to shopping....and they seem to be taking it well.  

Actually much better than I am taking it.  Don't get me wrong, I am truly overjoyed that they are making this move.  I live so far away from them--miles away--states away that I worry about them being way out in the country behind three country gates that have to be unlocked and opened *(by hand).  They've loved and thrived on their privacy.  I've been happy for them to be where they've wanted to be and to have been able to have lived like they've wanted to live.  But, as the years have slipped away and although they seem to be in relatively great shape for their age, they are beginning to show signs of age and frailty.  The kind that living out in the country isn't always kind too.  The maintenance of a country home, a water well, the inconvenience of distance from anything or anyone is not so tough to take when one is younger.  


My folks have never been, are not, and never will be quitters.  The fact that they've lived so many years out in the country doing all their own work and maintenance is proof of that they are not afraid of work.  But they are also sound of mind and realized, more so recently, that if both of them took ill, living out there all alone would not be in their  best interest....and they care very deeply for each others health and welfare.  


In just a few days they will celebrate 63 years of marriage and they still rub each others feet and hold hands.  They are and always have been my measure of true love.


The last few years we've heard them talk about "someday we won't be able to live out here"....but (even though we were glad those thoughts had crossed their minds), we never pushed the issue....knowing, hoping, praying that in time they would come to their own decision of when the time was right.  And that day did come.....I think perhaps when the well broke down and they had to finally hire someone else to fix it....it was probably one of the last straws and then they were both feeling not quite up to par.......and they must have lovingly looked at each other one evening and said..."it's time".


As though through a miracle, by the grace of God, almost unbelievably, the housing area on the base where my Dad retired (a base that is now closed and almost non-military) decided that instead of tearing down all the housing, they would lease the homes.  How perfect!  Right across the street from the grocery store they have shopped at for 45 years, within 2 blocks of a Walmart and other shopping, 30-40 minutes closer to the military hospital they go to....but (another miracle) a huge new hospital is being built right on the base about 2 miles from their new home.  They made the decision and signed a lease that week.  I'm sure they must have felt the smiles from here to where my sister lives and all the way in between.  Likewise they probably heard our sighs of relief.

They've said many times in the last few months that they wished they had made the move several years ago, but that housing wasn't available then and the prospect of all they things they had to dispose of was just too overwhelming.  I undeniably believe with all my heart in the thought that things happen for a reason and God lets them happen at just the right time.  I know he's always watched over them and me........and I believe that sometimes it's just almost unexplainable the mysterious ways He lets things happen....his wonders to perform.


And so the task has begun.....slowly.....ever so slowly of sorting through years of treasures and memories and having to choose what's truly important and needs to be carried to the new home, what makes you look at each other and say "Why? What were we keeping these for? How?  How did we accumulate so much 'stuff'?  


My sister and brother-in-law, niece and nephew and John and I have each gone to help....but for the most part it is their task.....because it must be.....it's their life that they alone can sort through and make decisions on and it must be done in their time.....as slow as that might seem.  In the end it will be best that way.  They will not feel forced into the move, they will not be forced to give up something they might have wanted to keep and were talked into shucking.


When I went back recently I had moment of tears for the things they can't take with them...the home they built from the ground up, the heart in the sidewalk my dad scratched into the wet cement with the words Lee loves Jane, all the trinkets Mom had in each of her theme decorated rooms (the mardi gras room, the spanish room, the jungle room), the years of hard work and joy they had living there.  I wept for those things.....that they couldn't take with them.  But when I got there and saw the frustration of the task before them I realized as much as they loved that place it had become an albatross around their necks that they could not wait to get out from under....so we worked like banshees to help them get some of the work done.


Slowly they are moving, each day a few steps more.  


I always thought and often talked about wanting the old house and land....it was my dream to inherit it or buy it from them.  It was where I went when I had breast cancer and for 8 months it was my refuge from what seemed at the time a dark and dismal world.  I had lost my husband to a long slow illness and then been diagnosed with cancer a week later.....and that place was my life line that helped me hang on......so tranquil and healing out in the middle of nature and God's wilderness with the love of my folks wrapped around me to help me hang on, to bring back my health, to make me see the possibility of life and happiness again.  I thought then what a beautiful retreat it would make for cancer patients to recoup.  But as the years have gone by, I came to realize the huge amount of responsibility and work it took to live out there and life took me other places.  I know in my heart though, that I will always miss that place (even though I never lived there as a child, I didn't grow up there, I only visited and gained back my health there).....I know I will miss it and for years to come it will seem strange to go to Texas and not drive out there and open that big gate and the second gate and the third and walk into that eclectic house filled with love.  


As you get older and your folks get even older and the folks of your friends start to pass away, you can't help but start thinking that someday God will take them home too.....I think about that a lot.....and I ache with sadness and the tears flow..... but when that happens, the sweet man who shares my life with me reminds me that he wishes his folks were still alive and that I should not be sad, but should be filled with joy that my folks are still alive and that most importantly they love each other and they have been so blessed to have lived as long as they have on their own out in the privacy of God's country just exactly they way they wanted to live.


Now they've made a decision to move on to another phase of their long and love-filled life together.

When the final things are removed from the old home and the final papers are signed for someone else to take ownership.....I'm guessing that day will be sad for them....but life will be so much easier and much simpler (at least in my mind)...they will have to adjust to having someone live right next door to them...they will have to adjust to the noise that living in town brings.....that you don't hear out in the country.......but they will realize quickly the joys of convenience ........and they will once more be back to a time when they felt safe.....living in military base housing as they did for so many years before Dad retired.  

In some strange bizarre way it will almost be like coming home.......my prayer is that God will bless them with several more years of a wonderful life together and we will all come to know this old "new" home as Home Sweet Home.


Father Time is not always a hard parent, and, though he tarries for none of his children, often lays his hand lightly upon those who have used him well; making them old men and women inexorably enough, but leaving their hearts and spirits young and in full vigor.  With such people the gray head is but the impression of the old fellow's hand in giving them his blessing, and every wrinkle but a notch in the quiet calendar of a well-spent life.  ~Charles Dickens