Close to thirty-five years ago, on the night before our wedding, Bill took his son Bill J. Into the laundry room for a DIY haircut. Let\u2019s just say that back then, our financial situation was far different than it is now, and home-grown haircuts saved money. Partway through the process, the guard on the end of the electric clippers came loose and fell off. My Bill uttered a very ungentlemanly word followed by these. \u201cLooks like you\u2019ll have to wear a hat.\u201d If you were to get a glimpse of the wedding photos, you\u2019ll see Bill J. sporting a small but prominent bald spot just over one ear. All these years later, since Bill J. is mostly bald, that wouldn\u2019t be such a big deal, but back then it was.<\/p>\n
So this morning, in the shower, the last vestige of my February manicure\u2014complete with Big Apple Red polish–came off. I\u2019d had the manicure done in advance of the Tucson Festival of Books\u2014which was cancelled. I was going to have it done in advance of our Disney Cruise\u2014which was also cancelled. After that all nail and hair salons went into Covid 19 hibernation where they remain as of today.<\/p>\n
For days, Bill has been threatening to steal one of my scrunchies and turn the hair at the back of his neck into a man bun. So after breakfast today, I took scissors and comb in hand and gave him my first-ever haircut. I grew up with my father wielding a clippers and giving my brothers buzzcuts on Sunday mornings before Sunday school. (I never remember seeing a single bald spot.)<\/p>\n
The good news is that Bill and I are still speaking\u2014at least so far. The hair cut isn\u2019t perfect by any means, but it\u2019s done, and the birds outside who are busily making nests will have some soft tufts of curly gray hair to join the floating tufts of cottonwood in constructing the lining to shelter their chicks.<\/p>\n
So what did we do this weekend? We had socially-distanced grilled steaks on Sunday with our daughters, our son-in-law, and three of our ten grand-kids. (For all you Covid 19 contact-tracers out there, that means 8 people total on 1.2 acres. I don\u2019t believe our actions posed a threat to anyone else.) It was too cold to swim, so the kids played Bocce Ball down in the lower part of the yard. While they were here, Audrey harvested the last of my rhubarb, and then Colt and Celeste cut it up. By the way, that\u2019s what Bill and I had for breakfast this morning\u2014rhubarb pie.<\/p>\n
As for yesterday? I stopped off and delivered one of the pies to Colt and Jeanne T.\u2019s place, and then the Colt and I went bowling. No we did NOT go to a bowling alley. They are still closed, but Colt is a top-notch bowler who has really missed being able to bowl. His bowling coach had brought over a set of used and battered bowling pins. We set them up on a deserted stretch of sidewalk on the school grounds across the street from my daughter\u2019s house. Colt used a bowling ball that is long past its prime and far lighter than the ones he uses now. He bowled. Grandma was the pin-setter (Pin-monkey is the proper term.) and ball return machine.<\/p>\n
It was fun. Bowling uphill on cement is different from bowling in an actual house. (That\u2019s what people-in-the-know call bowling alleys.) He was only good for about fifteen throws. Not wanting to overdo it, we quit after that. As we were packing bowling pins back and forth across the street, I was astonished at how heavy they are. When it came to carrying them, three was my limit. We waved to people walking along on the street. We chatted with the guy across the lawn throwing a tennis ball for his exuberant black lab. We didn\u2019t wear masks, but again, we endangered no one.<\/p>\n
As for the rest of the cold, rainy weekend? Bill and I spent it in the British Isles. No, we didn\u2019t go in person. That would definitely be considered inessential travel. Instead, we spent it watching a BBC series called Walking Through History on Amazon Prime. There are three seasons, all of them hosted by a presenter named Tony Robinson. Each segment is made up of four days of walking in a designated area and focuses on one particular incident or series of incidents that took place in that neighborhood. We both learned a lot we didn\u2019t know, but we also saw a lot of familiar places.<\/p>\n
Years ago, while on a Rick Steves tour of the UK, Bill and I encountered a bunch of back-pack carrying walkers while we were visiting Hadrian\u2019s Wall. That was when I first became aware of the huge and complex network of walking paths that crisscross the whole country. The segment on Stonehenge reminded me of a Sunday morning in the summer of 1970 when my sister and I walked from our hotel in Salisbury to Stonehenge because we were too cheap to hire a cab. The segment on Cromer in Norfolk reminded Bill and me of the five days we spent there with two other couples. We stayed in a time-share condo overlooking the English coast. The condo contained a fold-out hide-a-bed which collapsed with astounding regularity, but the restaurant next-door served the best Dover sole I\u2019ve ever tasted anywhere.<\/p>\n
I was surprised to learn that the rebellion that led to King John\u2019s signing the Magna Carta\u2014what is now considered to be the cornerstone of our democracy\u2014was in large measure a political hit-job on the king and on some of his minions who happened to be overly-enthusiastic tax collectors. We learned that Queen Victoria\u2019s visits to Scotland, less than a hundred years after bitter bloodshed between the Scots and the English, laid the foundation for the tourism industry that is such an important part of Scotland\u2019s economy to this day. I loved learning about the walking trails that meander over hill and dale. I loved seeing the canals that were such an important part of the Industrial Revolution. And I was surprised to learn the fate of the Bronte sisters. I was aware there were three of them. Somewhere in the back of my head, I had always wondered why three such talented women wrote so few books. Walking Through History gave me the full story of their tragic deaths from natural causes all at terribly young ages. Oh, and I saw a view of the home in which Daphne du Maurier was raised.<\/p>\n
These days we\u2019re all familiar with the idea of fake news. The views of Mr. Robinson, striding along through all kinds of weather carrying nothing but a small backpack just don\u2019t cut it. For one thing, a camera crew was already stationed near wherever he was so he could march into view and then march right out again without so much as missing a stride. At the end of each day\u2019s fifteen mile hike (I\u2019m pretty sure he didn\u2019t walk the entire way each day!) we always saw him checking into some small hotel in some quaint little town\u2014still with nothing showing but that little backpack. From all the costume changes along the way, I\u2019m pretty sure he had a whole crew carrying camera equipment, sound equipment, and luggage around for him, but that doesn\u2019t matter. I enjoyed the trip, and it made me wish I had started doing my steps years earlier than I did.<\/p>\n
All in all, it was a memorable Memorial Day. But one final note. If anyone would like to see Colt playing Amazing Grace at his father\u2019s grave in the cemetery in Cle Elum, please send me a request at jajance@me.com. I\u2019ll be glad to send it to you. He plays his piece and and then stands quietly while someone out of sight in the distance plays Taps. The bottom line, of course, is that\u2019s what Memorial Day is all about.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Close to thirty-five years ago, on the night before our wedding, Bill took his son Bill J. Into the laundry room for a DIY haircut. Let\u2019s just say that back then, our financial situation was far different than it is now, and home-grown haircuts saved money. Partway through the process, the guard on the end […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5,133,165],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2098","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family","category-health","category-traveling"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3nsBA-xQ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2098","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2098"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2098\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2104,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2098\/revisions\/2104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}