It’s A Legacy Thing

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There are so many things that could be considered legacy things that you couldn’t even begin to categorize them all.  An ordinary legacy thing is something that is, well, ordinary.  The things that are often overlooked, taken for granted, summarily dismissed until something brings your attention back to them, then they become a thing. The ordinary legacy things are always there, always useful, always within reach, until they’re not.

There are legacy thing stories in the everyday tangibles like my screamin red coffee cup or park benches and in the intangibles like birthday parties or on and on.  The choices are endless.

Rather than expound on them in print I thought it might be fun to explore them through video like my screamin red coffee cup.  Not only do I love typing that but I could say it a million times too.

For those of you who receive these posts by email you’ll have to click through to the site in order to see the videos or hear the audios until I figure that whole thing out.  I’m sure it will be a legacy thing at some point.

I expect you’ll enjoy my two cents in two minutes and I’ll not hear the end of it.  Please comment away to make this interactive, I’d hate to see my audacity go to waste!

 

A Callahan’s Mom

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Today it was all about the hot dog. And beer…birch beer. And a piece of the past that we shared so many years ago as a young family growing up in Bergen County. For Mother’s Day we dined at Callahan’s Hot Dogs. Not brunch, no cooking, no fuss just a hot dog, well not JUST a hot dog it was Callahan’s after all. The snap, the flavor, the birch beer, the music it just all came together like a time capsule broken wide open. It was simple, it was heartwarming, it didn’t include my father but enough trains passed by that we were pretty sure he was on one of them. It’s what she wanted to do for her day.

Sometimes you get there. Sometimes a father’s daughter can learn to appreciate her mother because a little dog comes along and makes her into a Gramma. The mistakes aren’t forgotten but they are relabeled into something more palatable, something more relatable.

The reliance has become endearing especially when you find yourself saying you did the right thing, out loud. Me: no it wasn’t the IRS calling. Me: yes do call the police to report it. Me: see even they said you did the right thing. Now it counts…

Most of all you admit you don’t know what you’ll be like when you’re approaching 86 years old. You admit you’re glad that you own the dog she loves as if it were a grandchild. You admit there may be more similarities than differences, our feet don’t touch the ground. It’s a start albeit a small one, no pun intended.

There is gratitude in the passing of time that allowed all things to come to the point where regrets are over taken by small moments. Like receiving the proud sticker that said Callahan’s Mom from the original owner’s grandson who called her Gramma, day complete.

Happy Mother’s Day from a father’s daughter…

Sitting on a Park Bench

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There is something about a park bench, not the eying little girls with bad intent kind of something, but something wistful.  Seems no matter where I am if my camera is with me there inevitably will be a picture of a park bench among the images. Because, yes, I am that crazy “chair loving” woman and a bench is simply a larger version of a chair. But that aside it’s the more public experience that draws me closer, I can better explain that attraction.

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I had the pleasure of enjoying a lovely lunch with friends on a park bench yesterday at the NY Botanical Gardens. Lunches brought from home that become warmed by their confinement in a day pack just taste better. The sun was shining yet it was still nice and cool, the people watching wasn’t too distracting and all the better because the view was breathtaking. As Lincoln once said, every blade of grass is a study.

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I was reminded of the custom of carving one’s initials in a park bench to cement the moment in time. This image from a bench tucked away along the side of a lake.

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I was further reminded of a place I once ran to for some much needed solace that was neither too far nor too close to my home. It was a tiny sanctuary in the middle of my town, around a bend. But even in its smallness the pond and the wildlife it attracted calmed my otherwise chaotic life for a few hours.

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Sharing a bench with someone has led to many a discussion of things both worldly and mundane, of good books and the beauty that often surrounds a well-placed park bench.

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Several years ago it became a custom to dedicate park benches to local parks in someone’s honor. In their name many wonderful and heartfelt inscriptions have been etched on benches. And while those are wonderful I tend to look for the more…truthful…humorous…stop you in your tracks dedications that make you laugh out loud and entice you to sit where this person sat.

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If you need a break in your fast paced, stressful, hair pulling day, find a park bench, grab a hot dog and start the day again. It’s worked for me.

 

Ghost Gardens

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In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt. ~Margaret Atwood

I couldn’t take it another minute, I had to get dirty. I had to make my way to the nursery, not the big box store where they wouldn’t know a frost date if you paid them, to look around… I had to venture into the greenhouse passed the sign that said STOP it’s too early to plant these to see what I could see, to smell the fertilizer and take in the rows of color.

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I have to be in my garden, my tiny little piece of land with shitty soil and no sunlight, in order to fully recover from the winter.  There is only so much I can do now, no tilling or turning or mulching in or pulling volunteers or dividing or sowing seed is necessary anymore. And it’s the anymore part that sometimes gets to me.  Sits me down on the step to wonder what ever happened to my lovely Oaktree Garden?

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This was the second time this year I became nostalgic about my once upon a garden. The first time was during an episode of Parts Unknown: Detroit with Anthony BourdainIn all the ruin that has become Detroit there are “ghost gardens” in and around the abandoned mansions that once were manicured to perfection.  And I wondered what ever happened to my lovely Oaktree Garden.

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Himself mentioned once that it still comes back each year.  Perhaps Sydney Eddison, Horticulture magazine, was right when he said, “Gardens are a form of autobiography.” Perhaps I, too, have left a ghost garden. That thought gives me some solace even though I believe it may have come back with a lesser vigor.  It is no longer tended with the blood sweat and tears that came from the life and frame of mind that conceived it.

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On that same street, right next door is another beautiful garden that I truly hope endured.  My friend and fellow gardener, Harumi, could make anything grow.  She was generous with her knowledge and her cuttings.  I remember to this day the dew on her lady’s mantle and the lilacs and wild iris.  And Benno’s vinca!!!

It occurred to me that ghost gardens are all around us, there is a tiny tulip that comes up on the other side of my porch each year, planted by someone that received it for Mother’s Day.  Same with the two or three hyacinth that come up along another porch in our complex, of course I had to ask…

I wonder if Jeanette’s garden comes up on Woodside Avenue in some form or another with its rhubarb and pumpkins and gladiolas.  I wonder if anything finds its way to the surface from my Grandmother’s garden on Taylor Street.  The fruit trees are gone, but I’m sure the hosta and lily of the valley have remained.  I hope…

I was comforted to look around my tiny little garden space to see the hosta peeking through, the redbud is about to bloom and the wild ginger has sprung back to life.  There is hosta in the front, too,  along with the sedum poking through and the wild geranium and columbine and sweet woodruff.  I’m a bit worried about the hydrangea but worry comes with gardening…

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When I move on from Stowe Lane I believe I will leave behind yet another ghost garden, somehow solace comes in knowing; we come from the earth, we return to the earth….And in between we garden.