Nightlife

Late at night the anxiety creeps into my belly. Restless legs tangle the sheet.  Damp hair clings.  Furtive glances at the glowing green light reveal the same time as last night, a repeat nocturnal performance.
I am not entirely new to this breach in sleep. I have not been on the Sandman’s list periodically since high school. Mid-terms, finals, wedding, birthing, crying babies, money, fights, allergies and every other common sleep demon jar me awake in the wee hours. Type A personality also requires playing out various scenarios in the middle of the night until satisfied that plans A through at least D are firmly in place. “Wonderfully spontaneous,” reads one feed back card after leading a women’s retreat. What a fake I can be!
Sudden sleep arrest and my dance with sheets and pillows begins. I lay there as waves of fear wash over me.  I live in a camper. I have no address.  Does that make me homeless? I roll over, punch the pillow and take a deep breath. My husband is ill. Mental illness lies in wait, threatening and menacing the life we have built.  Will tomorrow be a good day or a bad day? Kicking the sheets off now. Do we have enough in our account for the prescriptions and gas for the truck? Is a  big bottle of wine a week too much?  Mental note to take alcoholic test on internet tomorrow.  Cold sweat brings the sheets back up.  What if I gain ten pounds every year until I die? No fair, I walk a lot, I bike, I swim. I eat too much. The sky light over our bed shows the slightest graying of sky. I rise and make coffee.
Coffee cup in hand, I step outside into the world. It’s so quiet. I smell damp earth and last night’s wood smoke.  Birds take up their chorus in the spreading light.  Squirrels stare  me down.  The warm mug reminds me of the sweet friend who made it. We have been friends since elementary school. Then I think of other friends. I am not alone.
Sneaking back inside for the second cup of my daily allowance, I see that the dogs are awake.  They come outside with me.  Early in the morning we break the leash rules. No one to see us. A quick pee and they sit by me watching the morning roll in.  My mind wanders to grandchildren soon arriving for a camping overnight.  We have recently discovered the beauty of  toasted marshmallows and chocolate in an ice cream cone. Crying over sticky fingers only a memory.The camper door opens and my husband steps out. He is smiling. Last night’s fears join the sticky fingers. Today will be a good day.

*Why does the night makes more out of our fears than the day?

Fish Night

Fish Night

Rosemary and that other smell drift by his nose. His occasional forehead wrinkle warns me before he even utters the words, “Fish night?” My stomach twists and happiness fizzles. Why is he always disappointed on fish night? The agreed upon weekly dinner formula is three fish, one beef, one chicken, one vegetarian and one “other.”

I collect tantalizing fish recipes online. Cook-books line the shelf, dog-eared to pages with fancy fish. The fish market man greets me by name offering yet another recipe card featuring fish. The spice rack in my pantry boasts purple basil, funugreek, and a special curry blend. Experiments in olive oil infusions add “sciencey” flair to my kitchen counter. Good food, bene-factions of love to family and friends. Table lingering their gift. Like Napoleon Dynamite I offer a “delicious bass” as a token of my undying affection.

His idea of a fish supper involves batter and grease, preferably with fries and hush puppies. He confesses thoughts of food occupy better than 50% of his brain time. It used to be sex, but now his mantra goes something like this: Food, sex, food, family, food, dogs, food, work, food. Given a choice he will fill the pantry with white rice and pasta and the freezer with bacon and sausage. Fish wrapped in bacon stuffed with sausage served on a bed of rice with lots of butter irons out any wrinkle on his brow.

As newlyweds we were a perfect food match. I delighted in his savoring the prepared meals. He aimed to compliment, I aimed to please. No longer newlyweds, time marched on.

He tries. I am disappointed.

I like it. He does not.

He had a heart attack. I did not.

I am compliant. He is not.

We both eat the fish.

Latent autoimmune diabetes of the adult, type 1.5, has ravaged his heart, liver, kidneys, eyes and feet. He is 54. The dinner formula is an agreement of strangers – us, a doctor and a dietitian. They desire to keep him healthy, my desire is more complicated. Three nights is more than four nights on a calendar. Three fish nights keep his heart healthy, but it breaks mine. Three nights is a lot…for both of us.

Lessons Learned

My husband and I sold our home to become full-time RV’rs in July of 2014. We are in our fifties, the parents of three grown daughters, grandparents to four girls and one boy. Family camping vacations are some of the best memories we have. My husband’s early medical retirement prompted a lot of soul searching on how we wanted to spend this new phase of our life. We came up with a three year plan to live the camping life, we figured it would take at least that long to visit our list of top ten places to go. Good-bye yard work, broken dish-washer, homeowners association! Hello new life!
October marked the beginning of a six month stationary journey. Getting our “sea-legs” before hitting the open road. We parked our little home on wheels in a beach front campground in South Carolina. The winter home to Canadians, Pennsylvanians, New Yorkers (lots and lots of New Yorkers), and other Yankees smart enough to escape the cold and snow. April is the bookend to October. We are pulling up stakes, literally, and heading out for some road adventures. But first, a review of the things I have learned thus far…
1. Coffee tables are not a good idea in a space only eleven feet wide. Stubbing my toe elicits the f-word everytime.
2. Avoid food with other people’s pet hair baked in. In other words, do not sign up for every pot-luck the campground hosts. Added benefit: saving money by not feeling compelled to buy sweet Miss Betty’s hand-made sequined tee-shirts on sale at every pot-luck.
3. Cleaning supplies require their own budget line. Purchasing candles, wax melts, bio-degradable soap, and other fresh smelling cleaning supplies really adds up. Two hundred and ninety square feet with two dogs and a husband whose sweat smells like B.K. Whoppers with onions festers really quickly.
4. We are not good at corn-hole. Not familiar with corn-hole? Google it. There are such things as corn-hole tournaments, with t-shirts and everything.
5. People really do run meth-labs in campers. An almost certain meth-lab parked next to us for a little over a week. Strange comings and goings, lots of trash and the crock pot was on all the time. ( I know about the crock pot because they parked so close to us that I could see in one window. The crock pot’s little “on” light glowed orange day and night.)
6. White Boxers scare people. Our white Boxer, Snow, came in handy with #5, I felt safer. I have gotten really good at explaining to people that she is not a pit-bull, but if she was, I would love her just the same.
7. Coffee tastes better when camping. No explanation needed.
8. My husband is friendly, I am not. I always thought it was the other way around. This adventure has taught me otherwise. I am annoyed when people stop by to chat and I am trying to read or write…or drink wine. My husband initiates waving at passersby. If they should stop, he will further encourage them by asking, “where do you hail from?”
9. I do not like the phrase, “hail from.”
10. Negative is funnier than positive. See above list. Turning negatives into something you can laugh about really helps in almost all situtions. Positive things are just… well…positive.
I loved daily walks on the beach; salty air; roaring ocean; campfires; being outdoors, etc. But these things I already knew from vacation camping. I am an experienced vacation camper. Living full time in an RV with no other home is like, without a net, free-falling, no helmet , X-games extreme sport. I have a lot to learn. Looking forward to the journey.

Phoebe Jane

My Darling Daughter-in-Law,
By now you will have heard that I have took ill. Many come up to my porch to see the contrary old lady finally getting her justice. Just last week I had to toss biled water on a few of them. Gave me a laugh and did feel some better for a piece. I count myself lucky to make it out to my ol rocker and take the air for a good spell. However, I do find the breath in me comes harder at night and believe my time to be nigh.

I write to you now dear one some advice as I can’t be assured of seeing your sweet face again.

As you know my “dear” son’s father was reported dead of fever soon after leaving with his regiment. That rank smelling excuse for a commander came by not too long ago to chaw a bit with me. He again recollected how that May of 1861 my husband took sick at the first camp they set to. Fearing a spread of disease, he was forced to set him up on some folks eager to help our loyal sons. The commander tells me again the queerness of it being just the one fella to up and die and having left those at home in a state of well being. That first-rate raskal’s eye gleamed with knowledge, but for now he ain’t told my secret.

I have ever regretted that my son took so much after his daddy and their people. The devil does hide behind all that charm. If I had knowed it sooner I believe I would have warned you off. I reckon the devilment comes too late to be seen or we both would have turned out differn. The truth of it is, even the war came too late for me else I would not be setting here about to tell you the thing I did.

I woke up one bleak winter day just knowing it was him or me. I was much wearied of the pain that would split my head as the great ignorant hand would strike it. The laudanum dulled my caring but not my pain. Misery was no longer welcome in my house. Even the good Lord must see a thing must be done. Fasting from gravy on my plate I spilled it generously over your father-in-law’s meat. He was happy enough to eat it night after night, too greedy to figure it the source of pains that gripped him of a night. I stopped for awhile, guilt giving me a gripping.

War news was spreading and the 45th Infantry from our county was formed up. They were set to head east towards Richmond. I thanked the sweet Lord and his blessed Mama that I would be waving goodbye to my torment. His last night he come in, liquor on his breath. He left me with a shut up eye that stayed swolled up for weeks after he left out. I made him a heaping plate of his favorite biscuits and gravy.

I know you will find in my words some of your own plight. This is my advice to you…take yourself to church, pray some. Love up on your girls, praise God you ain’t got no boys. Then go out on the porch and call up all the sorrow you have in your heart, weigh it out. Toss that grief to the wind. Go on in the house and make you all some supper. I have enclosed my recipe for gravy.

Your ever loving and not long for this world mother-in-law,
Phoebe Jane

It is true that my great-great grandmother was Phoebe Jane Ward, born Dec. 10, 1838 and died on Christmas day 1916. Her first husband Mr. Cox died of fever soon after heading off with his regiment. She later married my great-great grandfather Mr. Sheppard Lee Daniel, civil war veteran. The photo is the home of my great – grandfather Benjamin Ward Daniel, the son of Phoebe and Sheppard, Phoebe died in this home. I made the rest up.

The Magic of Plums

When I was a girl I worshiped my grandmother. Lillian Lucille Adams Lee, Mama Ceile to me. Salon styled hair with a curl on her forehead just so. Skin so Soft and Roses Roses (Avon’s top seller in the 60’s) wafted in the air about her. Sleeping-in at her house was allowed and I often woke to the whispered cussing peppering her stories on the phone with her sister Jewel. The first sign of my stirring removed the pepper and added more sugar to her conversation. Shortly, the call would end.

Long summer afternoons spent at her house in Georgia were some of the best days of my girlhood. There was a lot to explore and if I got hungry there were the plums. My memory tells me that her plum trees gave fruit from April until September, books tell me that is not possible. Magic is the answer. Tight skin holding back sweet sticky juice just waiting to explode with that first bite. Rivulets of plum juice stained my arm from wrist to elbow. Even now a good plum will transport me back to a sun-warmed picnic table piled with the little round beauties. Magic.

I am now the grandmother. I like to believe I am styled in the fashion of Mama Ciele. I do have her ample and soft lap. I am known to whisper swear words within earshot of my little grands. I do not smell like her, I waft my own scent of lavender and patchouli, my generation’s signature smell. I had plum trees for a short while.

It took three years and 6 plum trees to finally yield a small crop of plums. Three trees died, three thrived. For one glorious week my granddaughters came to stay with me. I let them sleep in. They explored and gorged on sweet plums. “Dress-up” was the favorite game. I tucked them into bed each night and then stood listening to their little giggles and demands of more pillow room. That week added to the magic memories floating before me each time I indulge in the fruit of my childhood.

I had to say good-bye to the plum trees and the vision I had of grandchildren coming home to Ma Kay’s house (Ma Kay, that’s me). I have traded that life for one on the road in an RV. Traveling in an RV was a guilty dream I have had for years. The freedom from daily family obligations, the freedom to reinvent myself if I wanted too. The freedom. I never thought to realize this dream. The ties that bind are too strong and I love my ever-growing family fiercely. Fate intervened with a solution. An excuse for hitting the road. An excuse to help with the guilt of telling my mom we would be leaving the house next door to her. An excuse that came at great cost to my husband’s health.

So here I sit, reminiscing the past and looking forward to this summer. In less than a week we will be camping near three of my grandchildren. They will be spending their spring break with us in our RV. We will explore, have new adventures and who knows maybe find a plum tree. Magic!

Walter Benjamin Daniel

My daughter and her family are visiting Washington DC this spring break. They will be visiting the usual must sees in DC and the surrounding area. I am excited for them, my grand-girls are ten, seven and four. I think even the four-year old will be impressed by the things she is about to see. I remember going to the 1965 World’s Fair in New York city and I was only four. I wish I could go with them…

One of their stops will be Arlington National Cemetery. It will be the first time my daughter and her family will visit the grave of my father.

He died eighteen years ago on March 22, he was buried March 31, 1997.

My Dad, Colonel Walter Benjamin Daniel United States Army, Silver Star recipient, Vietnam War Veteran passed away in his 57th year on my youngest daughter’s birthday. Nine days of progress style memorials beginning in Georgia took place before he finally reached the Chapel at Arlington. He was honored at each stop by the many brothers at arms gathered during his 31 years in the Army. He left behind a small family, his wife, a step-daughter, me and three granddaughters. All three granddaughters belong to me. His funeral family entourage consisted of me, my step-mother and step-sister. We were exhausted. We had done a good job of listening to countless “hero” stories that needed to be told by those who were there. Each tale found us hanging by a thread as the embarrassing and unseemly tide of tears threatened.

We rode in a black sedan behind the caisson carrying my dad’s casket. We passed tourists as we processed to the grave site. Many stopped and saluted. My step-mother, the hardest hit by the nine days of mourning rituals that demanded stoic patriotism, began to tell us that we could all be buried in Arlington if we wanted. Apparently there is a tradition of burying spouses and children with the veteran. One on top of the other. Nearing hysteria after the heart wrenching ceremonies we began to laugh. Grateful for tinted windows of our sedan we laughed at the image of each of us stacked on top of my dad in death. We laughed until we finally cried.