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Month: September 2023

Ophelia Anxiety

Ophelia Anxiety

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Boards on the window, mail by the door
What would anybody leave so quickly for?
Ophelia
Where have you gone?

(from “Ophelia”)

 

“Ophelia” is a song written by Robbie Robertson, a member of The Band.  “Ophelia” was first released by the band called The Band on their 1975 album Northern Lights-Southern Cross.

If you are a fan of The Band, you know that Robbie Robertson passed away this past August 9, another sad loss.    If you grew into your teens in the late sixties and early 70’s, then music performed by The Band no doubt made up a part of the musical score of your growing up.  Whether it was the iconic Music From Big Pink in 1968 or the self-titled brown album, Stage Fright, or Cahoots or whichever, music by The Band was no doubt playing somewhere in your background.

 

But of course, this week we weren’t focused on an old tune by The Band named “Ophelia,” it was tropical storm Ophelia that got our attention in the Delmarva area, though the verse above seemed somewhat fitting for an impending storm.

 

I was still in bed Friday morning when Kim and I got the message via Messenger, a warning from my grandson Christian.

Christian is our family Hurricane Tracker.

I hadn’t planned on going anywhere this past weekend, and I hadn’t heard of any impending weather event.

But thanks to Christian I was made aware of a tropical storm named Ophelia heading towards the Chesapeake Bay.

I immediately went to the Woolford, Maryland weather forecast on the internet and read Woolford was smack in the middle of the Tropical Storm Warning.

Kim and I began to discuss our options as I pondered what to do.

Was there some unwritten rule that said you couldn’t let your almost 90-year-old mother fend for herself in a Tropical Storm?

I thought about the time I helped my dad put plywood over the windows on the river side of the house before a threatening hurricane came up the bay some years ago.

Then I remembered my dad paddling around the neighborhood when the water came up after Hurricane Isabel.

I envisioned the tide up over the bulkhead, the aluminum rowboat floating and banging up against the tree in the 70 mile an hour winds, and my 89-year-old mother out in knee deep water, her ninety-five-pound body getting knocked around in the white caps as she tried to secure the boat before it floated away…

Yeah, okay, so needless to say,  I got to packing.

 

So, after dinner on Friday evening after traffic died down but before the worst of storm arrived in our area, I headed out to the eastern shore to batten down the hatches and erase the image from my mind of my mother fending for herself in the floods, the wind, and the rain.

 

I have been in kind of a funk lately.

Summer is winding down, impending darkness in the coming weeks.

I wasn’t exactly sure what was going on, but it is not uncommon for me as the summer ends to get like this.  But then I heard of a theory worth serious consideration.

The Vice President of the United States introduced the threat of Climate Anxiety.

Yes, Climate Anxiety.

And according to the VP, it’s causing people to not want to have children and not want to buy houses.

Oh, my goodness, I thought.

That’s me!

That must be what I am suffering from.

I too don’t want to have any more children, but I actually attributed that to Daughter Anxiety but, maybe that is not so.

And I don’t want to buy any new houses either.

Yes, Climate Anxiety, I am sure that is the cause of my recent funk.

 

But, I digress.

So early Saturday morning I secured the four kayaks, the deck furniture, and the aluminum boat.  I took down the Steelers flag flying on the flagpole on the dock because the rope was fraying, and it was taking a serious beating. I didn’t want to lose it.

 

And then my mother and I settled in for whatever Ophelia was to deliver.

We watched the river.

We watched the wind intensity and direction in the trees and the flag.

We watched the weather on CNN.

We watched the Hallmark Channel.

We watched Fox News.

(That’s how I learned I had climate anxiety.)

And in the end, compared to other storms that visited in the past,

Ophelia was a yawner.

 

Ashes of laughter, the ghost is clear
Why do the best things always disappear
Like Ophelia
Please darken my door

(from “Ophelia”)

 

And I should say thankfully Ophelia was a yawner, because no one wants what could have been.

So, Sunday morning, three hours before high tide, with the water already over the dock, but comfortable that it wouldn’t get much worse, I dipped out and went back home.

I got to spend some time with my mother and was now able to substitute my daughter anxiety with the real culprit, climate anxiety.

Life was good again.

 

And speaking of daughter anxiety, I read this morning that yesterday was National Daughters Day.

Sorry guys, I missed another one.

But you know, I love you more than meatballs.

 

Postscript:

The happy photo of me and my little chickens above was taken many years ago, before they got together and traumatized me.

 

This is Christian’s Atlantic Ocean Hurricane tracking map (he has the Pacific too)
Sunday morning, three hours until high tide
Daughter anxiety

 

Ethan’s Guernica

Ethan’s Guernica

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On this day in 1981 Picasso’s Guernica, his anti-war mural, was returned to Spain after forty years of hanging in New York’s Museum of Modern Art.  Picasso had requested the painting not be returned to Spain until Spain restored democratic liberties in the country.

The subject of the mural was the brutal bombing of the town of Guernica in 1937, by the Nazi Luftwaffe, who were allies of Fransisco Franco’s right-wing Nationalist forces during the Spanish Civil War. Picasso was commissioned to paint the mural showing the horrors of war to be exhibited in the Spanish Pavilion at the Paris International Exposition in 1939.

 

Today is also Grandparent’s Day.

We didn’t have a Grandparent’s Day when I was a kid.  According to the internet, Grandparent’s Day was made official in 1978 as the first Sunday after Labor Day by then President Jimmy Carter.

I think relationships with my grandparents when I was young were a bit more formal than today. In fact, in my family, when we referred to them we always used their last name as in Grandma Rosch or Grandpa Christiansen.

All of my four grandparents lived in Oceanport, the town I grew up in.

I have written about my father’s parents, my Norwegian grandparents Sophie and Carl before.

My grandparents on my mother’s side (Rosch) lived right across the street.  Technically their address was Main Street but the back lots of their property were on Willow Court, the street I grew up on, and right across from my house.  My grandfather William H. Rosch however died in August of 1960 at the age of 75 when I was just four years old.

But I have nice memories growing up to adulthood with my three grandparents.

 

Kim and I are grandparents too now.

We have three grandsons, Cameron, Christian, and Ethan.  I have written about them many times as well. But maybe not so much about Ethan.

 

Ethan is six.

He is very headstrong and determined but gets a little frustrated at times.

Recently at school, he and his classmates were assigned the task of drawing a self-portrait.

Ethan also happens to be very good at drawing, a talent that seems to run in my family, my grandfather Carl was an oil painter, my father worked with pastels, and my siblings are talented artistically as well.

However, Ethan apparently didn’t approve of being assigned the task of drawing a self-portrait.

As a result, he took on the brutality and the horror of being asked to do such a thing in a very Picassoesque way.

So, as all the other kids in the class drew their images as you might expect them to, Ethan created his Guernica, expressing his raw feelings on the matter.

And as his proud grandfather, I thought it was brilliant.

Happy Grandparents Day!

The class self portraits, Ethan’s is top right
Isn’t he cute? He had his first baseball game this weekend.
Ethan’s Guernica
Picasso’s Guernica
Ethan, Cameron, and Christian
This is the End

This is the End

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“This the end, my only friend, the end…”

“The End.”

Jim Morrison wrote that song by The Doors.

I often find myself singing that line when I feel I am nearing the end of something.  A good vacation, a good bottle of wine maybe, or as it was this week, the end of another summer.

A post popped up on my Facebook feed on Labor Day that was the top thirty songs of the week of September 4, 1970.  The week of September 4, 1970, was significant to me because it was the week that I started high school.  My first days at Shore Regional High School in West Long Branch, New Jersey.

Labor Day in 1970 was September 7.  My first day of high school would have been September 8 since schools at that time always remained closed until after Labor Day.

Hard to believe that was fifty-three years ago.

Back then we only got new clothes twice a year, at the start of school and at Christmas.  And it didn’t matter how silly those bell bottoms looked as you went through your growth spurt, you had to wait it out.

I was fortunate (I guess) to have finished most of my growing early.  I weighed 110 pounds when I started high school and 120 pounds when I graduated.

I also got a haircut to go along with those new school clothes and a new beaded necklace.

And that would be another end for me, the end of haircuts, well at least for the next four years. I didn’t get another haircut until sometime after I graduated high school.

The number one song that week of my first day of high school was “Spill the Wine” by Eric Burdon & War.

 

The photo above was taken by a neighbor on the last Sunday evening of the last unofficial weekend of summer, Labor Day weekend.

The end.

The unofficial end of summer.

I was fighting it a bit, trying to squeeze in some last-minute fishing as the sun went down. Kim and I were leaving early the next day to beat the holiday traffic so this was it for me.  And just before the bait ran out, in the darkness, I snagged a keeper.

It was a good weekend, we ate crabs with friends, did some kayaking, rode our bikes to Taylor’s Island, and found a new place called Palm Beach Willies to take a break from cycling.

And I got to fish a little.

 

So, with the end of some things, there are often new beginnings.  In September of 1970 the anticipation of high school, meeting new friends, learning new things, and experiencing growing up outside of my familiar boundaries was high.  And I guess, since it was the early 1970’s, so was I at times.

Now fifty-three years later, the unofficial end of summer doesn’t have that same level of anticipation of something new and never experienced.  Those familiar boundaries are back, but this time they don’t feel so confining,  more comforting really. And who knows what new and unanticipated life change might be waiting in the next season.

I haven’t written anything to share since the end of June when my dad died.

This is the first time I have felt motivated to write.

So hopefully maybe that is the end of that.

 

The week of September 4, 1970, the number three song on the list was kind of a silly song in my opinion, a song by Mungo Jerry called “In the Summertime:”

When the weather’s fine we go fishing or go swimming in the sea

We’re always happy, life’s for living

Yeah that’s our philosophy

 

Life’s for living, we go fishing, we’re always happy?

Maybe it wasn’t so silly after all.

 

And, this, is the end.

 

Postscript:

After all those years of singing that line from The End, I decided to visit the lyrics for the entire song and Lord have mercy, I wouldn’t recommend doing that.

 

Kayaking on Fishing Creek