Reflections about 2023

We spent our second winter in Georgia, January through March. Waynesboro, Georgia is remote and a virtual food desert. The people were friendly enough, but one could feel the Donald Trump and Jesus Christ vibe. The weather sure is nice. Nothing beats getting up in the morning and checking the weather app and seeing the temperature in Colchester is, maybe, 15 degrees on a cloudy January morning, and then comparing the weather to southern Georgia, where the temperature might rise to 60 degrees with sunny skies. It's good to be the king.

We contracted an Airbnb for 2024 while we there in March of 2023. This time we will stay in North Augusta, South Carolina across the Savannah River from Augusta, GA. We start our journey south on Thursday, January 4, 2024.

The most rewarding thing I did this year was taking a road trip with Jeanne, starting in upstate Wisconsin and driving through the upper peninsula of Michigan, then down to Ann Arbor. Jeanne is a second mother to me. She is seventy-eight and she has lost some of her vigor, but she has always been a bright light in my life, and I fear her passing.

Her love sustained me through the darkest times with my mother, her sister. She taught me by her example that adversity is survivable. In fact, surviving intact is only possible if one does not interpret the incoming shells, the trials and tribulations, as missiles directed at one’s very being. But rather, the incoming is nothing more than the manifestation of a weak mind lashing out at the nearest target. Of course, she never said this specifically, but it was implied, and I intuited it by observation. Later in life I familiarized myself with Stoic exercise to better judge my perceptions.

Traveling with Jeanne on the heels of attending Cousin Doug’s daughter Kathleen's wedding was about reconnecting. It also allowed me to check some geographic boxes that I did not even know needed checking. We spent a lot of time traveling through Michigan as a family when I was a kid; that is until my dad left.

Jeanne and I had some "Yooper" staples while swinging through the U.P., walleye, smoked whitefish, and smoked salmon. We walked Lake Superior's beaches and we both noted the unusually hot temperature. We were there the first week of October and it was 80 degrees plus. Walking the beach back in the day, even during high summer, one would wear a sweater or a light jacket. At least that was the way it was when I was a kid. In an 'old school' October, a light jacket might not be enough. We never went in the water above our ankles or our calves, because Lake Superior was always too darned cold.

Once we were in the Lower Peninsula, we traveled West down the outside of the mitten to the Sleeping Bear Dunes. Back when the earth cooled, when I was a Boy Scout, I camped there with my troop. This is, by far, one of my fondest memories of scouting. Although we boys froze our tushes off, we had a blast climbing up and running down the dunes to Lake Michigan. Visiting this year helped me savor those memories from so long ago. No running up and down the dunes this time.

Jeanne waited on a park bench while I hiked up the dune, stopping along the way frequently. I left my shoes with Jeanne and walked barefooted with my sweatpants rolled up like clam diggers above my calves. Hiking in the sand is real work. Some of it was hard packed, but most of the sand was loose and my feet turned this way and that as I strove to gain traction. Once reaching topside, with its fairly flat sandy surface, I walked along the wide crest in somewhat firmer sand.

I made it about one mile and a half on the trail and got a clear view of the lake from on high before meeting a return hiker who informed me that it was another mile and one half to the downslope that drops to the beach. That burst my bubble; I do not know what I was thinking. This old body was not running down that far away slope to the water’s edge anyway. Not happening. I think I might have said "shit," and promptly turned around and made my way back across the flat top of the dune and down the slope to the parking lot instead. No harm, no foul on that beautiful sunny October day. For several days thereafter, my calves were wrecked. They still hurt a week later.

The next day we had a wonderful dinner with Aramenda and her family in Ann Arbor. I have not seen her kids since 2018. Five years is a long time in the life of a child. My only visit to their Michigan home was on my Magical Mystery Tour in 2018. The girls were in elementary school then; they look so grown up now.

As a student growing up in the Detroit suburbs my school classes visited the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) from time to time. Diego Rivera painted his paean to the Labor movement there, literally on the high walls of the Garden Court. His murals depicting the American automotive worker remain the museum's largest draw; and visiting was my last thing to do the morning I left Michigan.

Touring the museum was another box to check before I made my way home across the isthmus that separates Detroit from Buffalo, New York. The love of Rivera’s life was the artist Frida Kahlo, who famously hated Detroit; at least that is what is reported. As a sign of her contempt (my guess), she pulled all but one piece from DIA, and that piece is on loan. I have always admired her. I could not leave without gazing on it; it is a tiny thing, barely bigger than the attribution sign.

This has been a good year for me. While the world threatens to self-immolate, I continue to find peace in my family’s love and the love and support my few and dear close friends. I am most thankful for my evolving and always loving relationship with Jill, my life partner. Our journey together celebrates a thirty-year mark in June 2024. The thing I wish I had done better this year was to master my temper. Work in progress. On the list for next year. Seriously.