Tag: Simple Life

Simple Life

SIMPLE LIFE

Christmas Wishes

Peace on Earth and pickup trucks

By Jim Dodson

Late last summer, my wife Wendy asked what I want for Christmas this year. She’s a woman who likes to plan ahead.

Figuring peace on Earth and good will toward men were probably not in the cards, a couple options came to mind.

“A wheelbarrow and a new Chevy pickup truck.”

She laughed.

“You’ve wanted a new pickup truck for almost as long as I’ve known you,” she said. “I’m not sure either would fit under the Christmas tree.”

She was right, of course. “But if I had a new Chevy pickup truck,” I pointed out, “we could bring home a really big Christmas tree and all kinds of other great stuff.”

“I thought we agreed to start getting rid of stuff we no longer need or want,” she reminded me. “Not bringing more home.”

She was right about that, too. We are de-stuffing our house right and left these days. But an old dude’s perpetual dream of owning a new Chevy pickup truck doesn’t go away easily.

So, I asked what she wanted for Christmas this year.

“I’d like to go to a very nice hotel by myself for a night — and just do nothing,” she said.

I’ll admit, this surprised me, but it shouldn’t have.

Wendy is the most organized, generous, and busiest person I know.

She runs her own custom baking business, keeps the family finances, and does the bookkeeping for both our businesses. She also does most of the grocery shopping, regularly gives blood and platelets, and somehow keeps up with the secret adventures of our far-flung children. Someone is always asking her to do something — volunteer to make pies for church suppers or donate ten dozen exquisite hand-painted cookies for a charity fundraiser. Family, friends and neighbors routinely turn to her for advice on a range of subjects, and then there’s her egg-headed husband who can never find where he left his car keys, eyeglasses, lucky golf cap or favorite ink pens. Somehow, she can find these vital items within seconds — just one of her many superpowers.

That’s a lot of stuff to keep up with, I grant you.

Then there was her sweet mom, Miss Jan, who resided at a lovely assisted care facility in town but spent every weekend at our house. With her dementia growing more apparent by the month, Wendy’s focus on her mom’s comfort and needs ramped up dramatically. Daily visits and doctor appointments filled her calendar, which also included lunches at Jan’s favorite restaurants, and bringing her mom clean clothes and delicious dinners every evening, even as Jan’s appetite began to ebb.

No wonder she fantasized about a quiet night alone at a nice hotel.

“How about two or three nights at the Willcox Hotel for our anniversary?” I proposed as the date approached. The Willcox is in Aiken, South Carolina. It’s our favorite hotel, charmingly quaint, blissfully peaceful and located a mile from our favorite golf course.

She loved the idea and promptly booked us a nice long weekend. She even arranged for Jan’s kind caregiver to look in on her every day while we were gone.

Ironically, our anniversary trip to the Willcox didn’t come off because we couldn’t find someone to look after our three dogs and two cats for the weekend. It was the heart of the summer vacation season, which meant every kennel in town had been booked solid for weeks.

So much for a needed break.

Suddenly, it was middle autumn and life was speeding up dramatically. Wendy was busy baking for the larger crowds at the weekend farmers market where she sells her spectacular baked goods, and I was finishing revisions of my book on the Great Wagon Road, scheduled for a spring publication, and starting a new Substack column.

More importantly, Miss Jan’s condition was worsening by the week. Her physician advised us that she would probably be gone by Christmas.

Early on the morning of November 1, the eve of All Saints’ Day across the world, Jan quietly passed away.

Suddenly, what either of us wanted for Christmas was completely irrelevant.

Losing a beloved parent puts life in a different perspective. In Jan’s case, her quiet passing brought an end to suffering from an insidious disease that cruelly robs its victims of speech and memory. What’s left is a hole in the heart that can never be filled.

Jan’s passing also reminded us that we’re at a stage of life where material things no longer hold much magic. There’s really nothing more we need or want. Except more time with each other.

For Dame Wendy, the simple pleasure of the holiday is finding the perfect live Christmas tree, putting on holiday music, cooking for family and friends and doing small things that make Christmas feel special. Last year, she gave me a sensational pair of wool socks and a nifty garden shovel. I gave her a nice, fuzzy sweater and tickets to a concert at the Tanger Center, along with a jumbo box of Milk Duds, her favorite forbidden pleasure.

This year, I plan to give my amazingly busy wife two nights at the luxury hotel a few miles from our house, where she can put her feet up, drink very good wine, eat Milk Duds to her heart’s content and maybe find peace and joy in doing absolutely nothing. Miss Jan would wholeheartedly approve.

As for me, well, forget the Chevy pickup truck for now. But I figure the wheelbarrow is a cinch to show up beneath the tree.

Simple Life

SIMPLE LIFE

The Sacred Month

A time to go inside

By Jim Dodson

Long ago, I decided that November is the most sacred month.

To my way of thinking, on so many levels, no other holds as much mystery, beauty and spiritual meaning as the 11th month of the calendar.

The landscape gardener in me is always relieved when the weather turns sharply cooler and there’s an end to the constant fever of pruning and weeding, plus fretting over plants struggling from the heat and drought of a summer that seems to grow more punishing each year.

Once the leaves are gathered up, and everything is cut back and mulched for the winter, not only does my planning “mind” kick in with what’s to be done for next year, but the beautifully bare contours of the earth around me become a living symbol — and annual reminder — of life’s bittersweet circularity and the relative brevity of our journey through it.

The hilly old neighborhood where we reside is called Starmount Forest for good reason, owing to the mammoth oaks and sprawling maples that kindly shelter us with shade in summer and stand like druid guardians throughout the year, season after season. Beginning this month, the skies become clearer and the nighttime stars glimmer like diamonds on black velvet through their bare and mighty arms, hence the neighborhood’s name: a “mount” where the “stars” shine at night.

Of course, there is risk living among such monarchs of the forest. Every now and then, one of these elderly giants drops a large limb or, worse, topples over, proving their own mortality, sometimes taking out part of a house or a garage, or just blocking the street until work crews arrive with chainsaws. As far as I know, no one has ever been seriously injured or killed by our neighborhood trees, though the growing intensity of summer storms seems to elevate the danger. Lately, some neighborhood newcomers, prefiguring catastrophe, have taken to cutting down their largest oaks as an extra measure of security in a world where, as actuaries and sages agree, there really is no guaranteed thing. In the meantime, the rest of us have made something of a Faustian bargain with these soulful giants for the privilege of living among them. We care for them and (sometimes) they don’t fall on us.

Speaking of “soul,” no month spiritually embodies it better than November.

All Souls’ Day, also called The Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed, comes on the second day of the eleventh month, a day of prayer and remembrance for the faithful departed observed by Christians for centuries. The day before All Souls’ is All Saints’ Day, also known as All Hallows’ Day or the Feast of All Saints, a celebration in honor of all the saints of the church, whether they are known or unknown.

Every four years, the first Tuesday that follows the first Monday of November is our national Election Day, a day considered sacred by citizens who believe in the right to vote their conscience and tend the garden of democracy.

Congress established this curious weekday of voting in 1845 on the theory that, since a majority of Americans were (at that moment) farmers or residents of rural communities, their harvests would generally have been completed, with severe winter weather yet to arrive that could impede travel. Tuesday was also chosen so that voters could attend church on Sunday and have a full day to travel to and from their polling place on Monday, arriving home on Wednesday, just in time for traditional market day across America.

Like daylight saving time (which, by the way, ends Sunday, Nov. 3) some critics believe “Tuesday voting” is a relic of a bygone time, requiring modern voters to balance a busy workday with the sacred obligation of voting. For what it’s worth, I tend to fall into the camp that advocates a newly established voting “holiday weekend” that would begin with the first Friday that follows the first Thursday of November, allowing three full days to exercise one’s civic obligation, throw a nice neighborhood cookout and mow the lawn for the last time.

While we’re in the spirit of reforming the calendar, would someone please ditch daylight saving time, a genuine relic of the past that totally wrecks the human body’s natural circadian rhythms? Farmers had it right: Rise with the sun and go to bed when it sets.

Next up in November’s parade of sacred moments is Veterans Day, which arrives on the 11th, a historic federal holiday that honors military veterans of the U.S. Armed Forces, established in the aftermath of World War I with the signing of the Armistice with Germany that went into effect at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918. In 1954, Armistice Day was renamed Veterans Day at the urging of major U.S. military organizations.

November’s gentler sunlight — at least here in the Northern Hemisphere — feels like a benediction falling across the leafless landscape, quite fitting for a month where we go “inside” literally and figuratively to celebrate the bounty of living on Earth. In the Celtic mind, late autumn is the time of the “inner harvest,” when gratitude and memory yield their own kind of fertility.

“Correspondingly, when it is autumn in your life, the things that happened in the past, the experiences that were sown in the clay of your heart, almost unknown to you, now yield their fruit,” writes the late Irish poet John O’Donohue.

First shared by Squanto and the pilgrims in 1621, Thanksgiving was decreed “a day of public Thanksgiving and Prayer” on November 26, 1789, by George Washington. Then it was proclaimed a national holiday on the last Thursday of November by Abe Lincoln. Finally, during the Great Depression in 1939, it was moved to the third Thursday of the month by Franklin Roosevelt to extend Christmas shopping days. But for most folks, the observance of Thanksgiving embodies, I suspect, many of the things we hold sacred in life:

The gathering of families, memories of loved ones, lots of laughter, good food and friendly debates over football and politics.

I give extra thanks for Thanksgiving every year, especially the day after when some who hold bargain-hunting on “Black Friday” a sacred ritual thankfully disappear and I am free to enjoy my favorite “loaded” turkey sandwich and take a nice long afternoon nap by the fire to celebrate my favorite holiday.

2024 Department Simple Life

Simple Life

SIMPLE LIFE

October Dreams

The house on the hill that haunts my slumber

By Jim Dodson

During the decades we lived on a forested hill in Mid-Coast Maine, October’s arrival was greeted with relief and joy.

To begin with, it signaled the final exodus of summer tourists, who left behind their spending money in the pockets of local businesses. The cost of a seafood supper roughly halved and it was possible to venture into town to lunch with friends without being caught in a traffic jam. By mid-month, even the annual invasion of “leaf peepers” was drawing to a close.

On our hilltop, we watched the 500-acre forest around us erupt into a dazzling pageant-fire of golds and reds, and wildlife grew more active as the days grew shorter.

I remember walking down our long gravel driveway to fetch the afternoon mail with my toddler daughter, Maggie, and pausing to watch a flock of ring-necked pheasants calmly cross our path, spectacular creatures completely unconcerned by our presence.

The family of white-tailed deer that inhabited our forest could be seen most October evenings finishing off the last of the hostas, which I had strategically planted at the rear of our property to keep them away from the house in high garden season. We were often visited by beavers and skunks and, on one memorable occasion, a gangly, young male moose harmlessly crossing our upland meadow to the late summer bog where bullfrogs croaked at night. The fireflies were gone by then, replaced by the lonely cry of coyotes deep in the woods.

October is a time of serious preparation in Maine. For the last time of the year, somewhere around mid-month, I mowed the half-acre of grass that surrounded our hilltop lilium and put away my beloved John Deere lawn tractor until next spring. I also cut down and raked out several large perennial beds, and split and stacked hardwood for an hour each day, preparing our wood pile for the cold days and nights just ahead. October was the month of our first evening fire, something we all looked forward to.

The last warm days of the month were a bonus. We packed up a picnic and took the kids to one of our favorite spots, Popham Beach State Park, a spectacular 3-mile sandy spit near the mouth of the Kennebec River, where a short-lived colony was established in 1607. Popham was — and probably still is — the most popular beach in Maine. But, by October, the beach belonged again to the locals. Our children, far-flung and now in their 20s and 30s, have fond memories of walking out to the famous “Rock Island” at low tide and swimming in the ocean, warmed ever so slightly by the summer’s passing. On the way home, if the timing was right, we stopped off at our favorite seafood shack at Five Islands for fried clams and blueberry ice cream, even as its owner was preparing to shut down for the season.

The decision to sell our beloved house in 2008 was possibly the toughest one we’ve ever had to make. A year before, however, we moved to North Carolina, foolishly believing that we would simply keep our precious Maine house and return to it each summer. But, after letting it sit empty with only a caretaker looking after it for one full winter, it became clear that this was a recipe for trouble. Maine winters are tough on people and houses alike. We reluctantly decided to sell the place to a charming young couple from Connecticut who dreamed of making my dream house theirs.

The timing couldn’t have been worse.

Thanks to a national collapsing housing market and the start of the Great Recession, the sweet couple from Connecticut failed to sell their house in time, and we wound up selling to a couple from Massachusetts, who got a sensational deal. The wife adored the gardens and the quiet of the forest. The husband, however, complained that the house’s exposed hemlock beams made the interior “look unfinished.” He also didn’t like the closets or the notches on the rear of the utility door that memorialized the growth of our four kids.

I nearly backed out of the deal, but finally signed because the woman loved the place.

I stayed out of Maine for more than a decade, joking to friends that it was too soon to return and risk never coming back. That hilltop, after all, is where I designed, built and owned my first house, got married and had my children, created my first garden, and stayed longer than anywhere else. If you are curious to see why it will forever own a piece of my heart, try googling “Zillow, Topsham Maine, 12 East Merrill Road.”

Looking back, however, coming home to North Carolina was one of the wisest moves we ever made. Over 17 years, I’ve had the opportunity to create four arts magazines, publish nine books, and make scores of new friends while deepening my oldest friendships. Moreover, during the past decade, we’ve fully restored a lovely mid-century house in my boyhood neighborhood, just two doors down from the house where I grew up. Talk about a spiritual homecoming.

Fortunately, Octobers here are also spectacular. The murderous heat of summer is finally gone, the garden is winding down for another year, the night skies are clearer, and Piedmont North Carolina kindles its own breathtaking pageant-fire of leaves.

But every now and then I have dreams about our old house in Maine.

Invariably, it’s October in this dream and I’m walking through the empty rooms of our old place, wondering what will come of it now that I’m long gone. You see, I never went back there to see it.

Not long ago, however, my savvy wife, Wendy, proposed a cure for my October dreams.

Next year, either in September or October, we plan to rent a house somewhere on the coast of Maine.

Who knows? Maybe when I’m there I’ll dream about our wonderful house and garden back in Carolina.

2024 Department Simple Life

Simple Life

SIMPLE LIFE

Worrying and Watering

For love of gardens and democracies

By Jim Dodson

A neighbor who walks by my house each evening like clockwork sees me sitting under the trees with a pitcher of ice water and walks over to say hello.

I invite Roger to take a seat and have a cold drink.

“It’s tough to keep moving in this heat,” he explains, sitting down. “It’s something, isn’t it? But your garden looks great.

How do you keep it so nice and green?”

“A lot of worrying and watering,” I say. “Sometimes you have to make tough choices.”

In one of the hottest and driest summers in memory, I’d decided to let my yard turn brown in favor of keeping flowering shrubs and young trees watered and green. As the late famous British landscape designer named Mirabel Osler once said to me over her afternoon gin and tonic, landscape gardening is a ruthless business, especially in a drought. Grass will eventually return, but no such luck with a shriveled shrub or a dead young tree.

“September brings relief, rain and second blooms,” I add. “I’m already in a September state of mind.”

He smiles and nods.

“Hey,” he says casually, “let me ask you something.”

I expect another question about the garden. Like the best time of the day to water your shrubs, or when it’s safe to fertilize or prune azaleas.

But it isn’t even close.

“I’m worried about America. People seem so angry these days. Why do you think Americans hate each other?”

The question takes me by surprise. I could give him a few thoughts on the subject: the woeful decline of fact-based journalism, an internet teeming with conspiracy peddlers, politicians who feed on polarization, the unholy marriage of politics and religion, and the sad absence of civility in everyday life.

Instead, I tell him a little story of rebirth.

In the spring of 1983, I telephoned my dad from the office of Vice President George Bush and told him that I no longer wanted to be a journalist. For almost seven years, I’d worked as a staff writer of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution Sunday Magazine, covering everything from presidential politics to murder and mayhem across the deep South. As a result of my work, I’d been offered my dream job in Washington, D.C., but found myself suddenly fed up with writing about crooks, con men and politicians. Bush, however, was an exception. We’d traveled extensively together during the 1980 campaign and had wonderful conversations about life, family and our shared love of everything from American history to golf. During our travels, Bush invited me to drop by his office anytime I happened to be in the nation’s capital. Unfortunately, he was traveling the day I turned down my dream job in Washington, but his secretary allowed me to use her phone. So, I called my dad and told him I planned to move to New England and learn to fly-fish.

“When was the last time you played golf?” he calmly asked.

“I think Jimmy Carter had just been elected.”

He suggested that I meet him in Raleigh the next morning.

So, I changed my flight and there he was, waiting with my dusty Haig Ultra golf clubs in his back seat. We drove to Pinehurst, played famed course No. 2 and finished on the Donald Ross porch, talking about my early midlife career crisis over a couple of beers. I’d just turned 30.

I told him that I “hated” making a living by writing about the sorrows of others, especially when it came to the increasingly shallow and mean-spirited world of politics.

“You may laugh, but here’s a thought,” the old man came back, sipping his beer. “Before you give up journalism, have you ever considered writing about things you love rather than things you don’t?”

Sadly, I did laugh. But he planted a seed in my head. A short time later, I resigned from my job in Atlanta and wound up on a trout river in Vermont, where I learned to fly-fish, started attending an old Episcopal Church and knocked the rust off my dormant golf game at an old nine-hole course where Rudyard Kipling played when he lived in the area.

I soon went to work for Yankee Magazine and spent the next decade writing about things I did love: American history, nature, boat builders, gardeners and artists — a host of dreamers and eccentrics who enriched life with their positive visions and talents.

I also got married and built my first garden on a forest hilltop near the Maine coast.

“I never looked back,” I tell Roger. “I’ve built five gardens since.”

Roger smiles.

“So, you’re telling me we all need to become gardeners?”

“Not a bad idea. Gardeners are some of the most generous people on Earth. We make good neighbors. Most of the country’s founders, by the way, were serious gardeners.”

I pour myself a little more ice water and tell him I’ve learned that gardens and democracies are a lot alike. “Both depend on the love and attention we give them. Especially in difficult times like these.”

Roger finishes his drink and stands up. “That’s something to think about. Here’s to September, cool weather and good neighbors,” he says. “Maybe by then even your grass will be green again.”

2024 Department Simple Life

Simple Life

The Quiet of Nature

In an increasingly loud world, maybe we should be still and listen to nature

By Jim Dodson

It’s two hours before sunrise and, per my daily morning ritual, I’m sitting with my old cat, Boo Radley, in a wooden chair beneath the stars and a shining quarter-moon.

Today’s forecast calls for another summer scorcher.

For the moment, however, the world around me is cool and amazingly quiet.

It’s the perfect moment to think, pray or simply listen to nature waking up.

In an hour or so, the world will begin to stir as folks rise and go about their daily lives. Nature will be drowned out by the white noise of commuter traffic, tooting horns and sirens.

But, for now, all I hear is the peaceful hoot of an owl somewhere off in the neighborhood trees, the fading chirr of crickets and the lonely bark of a dog a mile or two away. Amazing how sound carries in such a peaceful, quiet world.

Ah, there it is, right on cue! The first birdsong of the new day. I recognize the tune from a certain gray catbird that seems to enjoy starting the morning chorus. Soon, the trees around us will be alive with the morning melodies of Carolina warblers, eastern bluebirds and the northern cardinals. What a perfect way to lift a summer night’s curtain and herald the dawn!

Unfortunately, it’s a sound that Earth scientists fear may be vanishing before our very ears.

On a planet where many are concerned about the impacts of global warming, declining natural resources and vanishing species, it seems to me that noise pollution and the disappearing sounds of the natural world might be among the most worrying impacts of all.

A recent article in The Guardian alarmingly warns of a “deathly silence” they claim results from the accelerating loss of natural habitats around the globe.

The authors note that sound has become an important measurement in understanding the health and biodiversity of our planet’s ecosystems. “Our forests, soils and oceans all produce their own acoustic signatures,” they write, noting that the quiet falling across thousands of habitats can be measured using ecoacoustics. They cite “extraordinary losses in the density and variety of species. Disappearing or losing volume along with them are many familiar sounds: the morning calls of birds, rustle of mammals through undergrowth and summer hum of insects.”

A veteran soundscape recordist named Bernie Krause, who has devoted more than 5,000 hours to recording nature from seven continents over the past 55 years, estimates that “70 percent of his archive is from habitats that no longer exist.”

As quiet natural places are drowned out by the sounds of freeways, cellphones and the daily grind of modern life, fortunately, a nonprofit group called Quiet Parks International is working to identify and preserve sacred quiet places in cities, wilderness areas and national parks, where all one hears — for the moment at least — is the beat of nature, the pulse of life in the wild.

“Quiet, I think, holds space for things we can’t verbalize as humans,” the group’s executive director, Matthew Mikkelsen, recently told CBS News. “We use silence as a way to honor things.” Quiet, he notes, is becoming harder and harder to find these days, even in the most remote wilderness or within the depths of the national parks. “Every year we see more and more data to reaffirm what we’ve known for a long time — that quiet is becoming extinct.”

Perhaps because I grew up in a series of sleepy small towns across the lower South, places where I spent most of my days wandering at will in nature, I’ve been groomed to be a seeker of natural silence and quiet places in my life.

The first decade of my journalism career was spent in major cities, embedded in the cacophony of busy streets, which explains why I bolted for the forests and rivers of northern New England the moment I had the chance to escape honking horns, blasting radios, screaming sirens and even background music in restaurants, a personal annoyance I’ve never quite fathomed.

Perhaps I’ve been spoiled by traveling in France and Italy and other ancient places. There, cafes and bistros are generally meant to foster a relaxed, slower pace of life through the auspices of good food, lingering conversations and woolgathering as one watches the harried world pass by.

It is no accident that I built my first house on a hilltop near the coast of Maine, surrounded by 200 pristine wooded acres of beech and hemlock trees. On summer evenings, my young children and I could hear the forest coming alive with sounds and often saw and heard wildlife — whitetail deer, pheasants and hawks, a large lady porcupine and even (once) a young male moose — gathering at the edges of our vast lawn where I created feeding areas of edible native plants for our wild neighbors. On frigid winter nights, I put on my Elmer Fudd jacket and toted 50-pound bags of sorghum out to that feeding spot by the edge of the woods, where deer and other critters could be seen dining in a moonlit night. The eerie late-night sound of coyotes calling deep in the forest reminded us that we were the newcomers to their quiet keep.

One reason I love the game of golf is because golf is a two- or three-hour adventure in nature where the simple elements of wind, rain, sand and water provide an existential challenge to mind and body. As a kid, I learned to play golf alone, walking my father’s golf course in the late afternoon, when most of the older golfers had gone home. I came to love “solo golf” at a time of day when the shadows lengthened and the sounds of nature began to reawaken creatures great and small.

Golf courses, like libraries, are meant to be quiet places — which makes the recent trend of golf carts equipped with digital music systems particularly bothersome to a lover of nature’s quiet sounds.

Pause for a moment and just think what one can do in the quiet:

Read a good book.

Admire a sunset.

Rest and recover.

Take an afternoon nap.

Watch birds feed.

Write a letter.

Talk to the universe.

Say a prayer.

Grieve — or feel gratitude.

Think through a problem.

“In quietness,” says the book A Course in Miracles, “are all things answered.”

My heart aches when I hear that the world’s natural places may be going silent.

A world without nature’s quiet sounds would be a very lonely place.

Hopefully, we’ll learn to listen before it’s too late. PS

Jim Dodson can be reached at jwdauthor@gmail.com.

2024 Department Simple Life

Simple Life

The Belle of Star City

May her light shine on

By Jim Dodson

“I think you are really going to enjoy your Great Aunt Lily,” my dad says cheerfully. “She’s quite a colorful character. I call her the Belle of Star City.”

It’s a warm July morning in 1964. We are driving through the Blue Ridge Mountains to Roanoke, where I am to be dropped off at Great Aunt Lily’s apartment for the weekend before my parents take my brother, Dickie, on to church camp, then head to a newspaper convention in Hot Springs, Virginia.

He explains that Lily is my grandfather’s beloved youngest sister, a strong-willed beauty who spurned several suitors in rural Carolina before fleeing to Washington, D.C. There, she worked for years as a stage actress and theatrical seamstress.

“I suppose she was something of the family’s black sheep, but a delightful woman. You’ll love her.”

Though I fear I’m simply being dumped for the weekend on a boring maiden aunt, my old man turns out to be right.

Lily lives alone in a gloomy Victorian brownstone on Roanoke’s First Street, in an apartment filled with dusty antiques and Civil War memorabilia, including a Confederate cavalry officer’s sword she claims belonged to a Dodson ancestor who fought at Antietam and Gettysburg. There are also exotic paintings of classical nudes and wild beasts adorning her walls, including the stuffed head of an antelope, a gift from her “favorite gentleman friend” who passes through town every winter with the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus.

On my first night with her, Lily — a large-boned, blonde woman, endlessly talkative, swimming in White Shoulders perfume — takes me via taxi to a Chinese restaurant in the Market District, where we dine with a snowy-haired “gentleman friend” she says was once mayor. He talks about the recent Kennedy assassination and makes a half-dollar coin appear from my ears, pointing out that Roanoke is called Magic City.

The next morning, Lily takes me to breakfast at The Roanoker Restaurant, a legendary diner where she knows everyone by first name. After that, we are taxied up Mill Mountain to have a close look at the famous Roanoke Star. The cab driver, Ernie, is a Black gentleman with a gold tooth and quick smile. Lily explains that Ernie is a true “Renaissance man,” a part-time preacher, former Navy cook, full-time house painter and her “dearest gentleman friend in the world.” Reverend Ernie is also her “business partner,” who occasionally drives her to estate sales and auctions to buy artwork and antiques, which Ernie sells to collectors, splitting the profits with her. The Confederate cavalry sword is one of their recent “finds,” which she hints might someday pass my way. This thought thrills me.

On the Sunday morning of my visit, we attend a small red-brick church to hear Reverend Ernie preach, followed by lunch at the historic Hotel Roanoke, the planned pick-up spot with my folks. Naturally, Lily knows the waiter, who brings me something called a “Roy Rogers” and her a small crystal glass. After we order our lunch, Lily discreetly removes a silver flask from her purse and pours herself a bit of ruby sherry.

She looks at me and asks if I’d like a taste.

I say yes.

She asks how old I am.

Twelve, I lie, giving myself an extra year.

She slides the glass across the table.

“Just a small sip, dear.”

During the two-hour drive home through the mountains, my folks are eager to hear about my weekend with the Belle of Star City. I tell them about her gentlemen friends and the interesting places she took me, and even mention the Confederate cavalry sword she promises to give me someday.

My dad glances at my mom. “I told you she’s a colorful character,” he says. “Glad you enjoyed her. But here’s the thing . . . ”

He reveals that Great Aunt Lily is about to lose her home and move to Raleigh into a special-care home due to what we now call Alzheimer’s. Lily is scheduled to move around Christmastime.

“In the meantime, sport, she’s coming to stay with us around Thanksgiving.”

My mother chimes in, “And since your bedroom is the bigger bedroom, sweetie, we’re hoping you won’t mind giving it up to Aunt Lily. You can bunk with your brother. It’ll just be temporary.”

Four months later, Lily arrives with a large wooden trunk and her sewing machine in tow. On the plus side, she tells me stories about famous men she’s known — the actor David Niven, golfer Sam Snead, Will Rogers. Even better, she keeps boxes of Lorna Doone cookies hidden under bolts of fancy cloth in her trunk, which she shares with me. One afternoon as we are having our daily cookie conversation, I ask about the sword. Lily gives me a blank look, then waves her cookie dismissively. “Oh, goodness, child! I gave that silly old thing to the church auction ages ago. I think I paid 10 dollars for it at a yard sale up in Fincastle.”

Predictably, as Christmas Eve approaches, my clean-freak mother begins to lose her mind over our private cookie sessions. My father says all Aunt Lily needs is a good hobby. So, he sets up her sewing machine and she goes to work behind closed doors with her machine humming for days.

It turns out to be quilted, floral potholders. Two dozen quilted, floral potholders.

“Lily thinks you can sell them in the neighborhood for Christmas money,” says my dad.

I am mortified. Two pals from my Pet Dairy baseball team live on our block, and so does one Della Jane Hockaday, who I hope to give a mood ring.

“Look, sport,” my old man reasons, “Aunt Lily is here for only a couple more weeks. Just let her see you go down the block selling them. You’ll make an old lady who has just lost her home very happy. Lily is very fond of you.”

So, I grit my teeth and do it early on a frosty Saturday morning a week before Christmas. To my surprise, I sell a half-dozen $5 potholders and make thirty bucks. Years later, my mom lets slip that she’d phoned every woman on the street to grease the skids, including Della’s mom. The next morning before church, my dad and I drive the remaining potholders to the drop-off box of the Salvation Army store.

He gives me an extra 20 for my trouble and insists that I tell Lily, if she asks, that her beautiful potholders sold out in just one morning.

But Lily never asks. Not long after the New Year, my dad drives his aunt and her big wooden trunk and sewing machine to the special-care home.

I get my bedroom back and never see Great Aunt Lily again.

She passes away in the springtime two years later.

Every time I drive through Roanoke or eat Lorna Doone cookies, I think of her with a smile. PS

Jim Dodson can be reached at jwdauthor@gmail.com.

2024 Department Simple Life

Simple Life

When Losing is Winning

Seeing the world through missing glasses

By Jim Dodson

“Oh I have been to Ludlow Fair. And left my necktie God knows where.” – A.E. Houseman

The other day, I lost my latest pair of expensive eyeglasses. Sadly, I seem to lose my spectacles on a regular basis. My wife, Wendy, jokes that she keeps a running account with Warby Parker.

Just for fun, I made a rough count of eyeglasses I’ve lost over the past 23 years of our marriage. I gave up the count after six, which happens to be this year’s total alone. At least one of those pricey pairs of specs was never found. It vanished into the magical Land of Lost Things without a trace. Of the remaining missing five, Wendy found two pairs in the pockets of old work shirts and a third in a sports coat I haven’t worn since Christmas. The fourth pair turned up in a rose bush where I was doing some early spring pruning. The fifth and final missing pair — my hip, whiskey-hued tortoiseshell sunglasses — finally revealed themselves in my golf bag, where I left them two weeks ago.

Dame Wendy’s theory to explain my penchant for losing my glasses is that I have so much on my mind — i.e. deadlines, books to read, garden stuff, my aging golf swing, the general state of the world, etc. In short, there’s little room remaining to remember where I leave things that I don’t particularly deem essential.

My explanation for this perpetual problem comes from my being nearsighted and only needing glasses to see objects in the distance, including, but not limited to, golf balls, birds at the feeder in the yard, street numbers, the fine print on billboards, UFOs and interesting cloud formations. When I’m reading, writing or examining something up close, I typically remove them and — apparently — forget where I put them down. Out of sight, out of mind.

All of this invariably has me pondering lost things in this world, including people.

We Americans are obsessed with winning and losing. The worlds of politics and sports are the most obvious examples. One presidential candidate calls people “losers” and insists that America will cease to exist if he isn’t re-elected Commander in Chief next November; while the other declares that democracy is doomed if his opponent somehow wins. Meanwhile, billions of dollars from wealthy team supporters flood our college sports, where winning is the only name of the game.

Up on Wall Street, meanwhile, where predicting winners and losers is the holy writ of American commerce, we watch the record Dow rise as if we’re running with the bulls, staying one step ahead with the nettlesome awareness that what goes up inevitably comes down. As the gap between the haves and have-nots ever widens, we associate wealth with winning and poverty as a stubborn inconvenient truth. Jesus, after all, said the poor will always be with us. He also asked what profit it is for a man to gain the whole world, but lose his soul?

Sometimes being lost or losing is the best thing that can happen to you.

Last year, I lost 40 pounds and have never felt physically better. I’ve even managed to give up (mostly) my gifted baker wife’s unearthly delicious cookies, pies and cakes, though I draw the line at giving up her lemon-ginger scones and a daily large chai tea latte.

More than once I have been lost on America’s country back roads in some of the most beautiful cities in the world, only to discover wonderful people, places and things I would never would have encountered otherwise. One of the sad truths of our GPS-equipped smart phones is that we can never truly be lost anywhere in the world these days unless the juice runs out.

Losing one’s fear of those who don’t share our opinions, tastes, gender, lifestyle, religion, race or brand of politics can be a courageous and very healthy thing, quite possibly the first step toward regaining the kind of social civility that could heal this divided country and bring us all a step closer together as Americans.

Many years ago, due to my work and strengthening faith, I even lost my fear of dying by choosing to believe that each day is actually a reason to feel grateful for being alive — even on so-called “bad” days when nothing seems to go right.

Losing a loved one to disease or tragedy, on the other hand, exists in a category all its own, though the passage of time and memories can often be an unexpected path to healing and awakening. I lost both of my parents more than two decades ago, yet today I seem to hear their wonderful voices and wise words clearer than ever.

My mom was the one who stressed the importance of losing one’s fear and judgment of others in a multi-hued world where everyone is different, a value system I saw her live every day of her life. It’s something I aspire to but admittedly still struggle with at times. Forever a work in progress, I suppose.

My dad was a fine baseball player in his youth and, later in life, became a terrific golfer. Following in his wake, I was something of a hotheaded kid who hated to lose at either of those games. It was he, however, who pointed out that my boyhood sports hero, the great amateur golfer Bobby Jones, said he never learned anything from winning a golf tournament.

In truth, it took me many years — and no shortage of lost games and golf matches — to appreciate my old man’s belief that being a good loser is, in fact, the road to someday being a gracious winner. When I was about 10 years old, he placed a framed copy of Rudyard Kipling’s poem “If” on my bedroom wall. I can still recite my favorite passages by memory.

And I don’t even need glasses to see the timeless vision of these words.

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or walk with Kings — nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,

And — which is more — you’ll be a Man, my son! PS

Jim Dodson can be reached at jwdauthor@gmail.com.

2024 Department Simple Life

Simple Life

Poorman’s Guide to Domestic Bliss

Even unconditional love has its conditions

By Jim Dodson

Wives, does your husband suffer from RRBS, also known as Recurring Refrigerator Blindness Syndrome?

The symptoms are relatively easy to diagnose. Your husband is making himself the first locally-grown tomato sandwich of the season and opens the refrigerator in search of Duke’s Mayonnaise. He scans the refrigerator shelves for three full minutes, increasingly agitated as he shifts jars of pickles, and containers of mystery meat and cottage cheese hither and yon.

Finally, after shifting the contents of the entire refrigerator around and even checking the vegetable and meat bins for the missing mayonnaise, he straightens up and loudly declares one of two things:

“This is ridiculous! I know we have mayonnaise! I saw it in here yesterday!”

Or, alternatively, with a wail of wounded resignation, “Honey, where’s the G#%@* mayonnaise? You said you just bought a brand-new jar this week. Someone must have taken it!”

Commonly, what happens next is the victim’s wife calmly appears, opens the refrigerator, and, within seconds, presents the aggrieved spouse with a fresh new jar of Duke’s Mayonnaise. Turns out, the mayonnaise was partially hidden behind a carton of orange juice last used by said victim, apparently in plain view only to the average female person.

If you live in my house, this happens on an almost daily basis.

Yes, I suffer from Recurring Refrigerator Blindness Syndrome.

But I am not alone.

There are untold millions of us out here who suffer instantaneous blindness whenever we open the refrigerator in search of condiments, cold pizza, leftover mac-and-cheese or the last piece of chocolate meringue pie.

Moreover, according to the National Association of Endangered Domestic Tranquility, refrigerator blindness isn’t the only condition that strikes the average married American male, placing undue stress on relations with wives, visiting mothers-in-laws and elderly aunts.

Tranquility experts cite a commonly related condition known as DAS or Dishwasher Avoidance Syndrome that afflicts an estimated 87 percent of men married an average of 10 years or more. DAS is defined as a chronic inability to correctly load and unload (much less operate) a German-built dishwasher without proper supervision by someone familiar with the machine’s standard operating procedures, typically a married person of the female persuasion.

Sufferers generally avoid this normal everyday household task by poorly hand-washing dirty dishes and used glassware whenever the domestic partner is out of the house, not only resulting in suspiciously spotted dishware, but unnecessary use of precious water. A related inability to operate the average clothes washing machine and reach into a clogged garbage disposal have also been documented in some cases.

In addition, studies conducted on the average suburban American male reveal at least two other common stress-inducing habits that take place outside of the home.

The first is LGLP or Lost Grocery List Phenomenon, generally affecting mature to elderly husbands who volunteer to go to the store for their wives with a list of a dozen essential items and return hours later with chips, salsa, three or more frozen pizzas, a six-pack of craft beer, the wrong dishwasher liquid, a set of half-price blinking Christmas lights, four Tahitian patio sconces, a tub of rainbow sherbet, Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s Guide to Home Auto Repair (sixth edition) and only four of the 12 items on the original list, which was somehow lost in transit to the store. An unsupervised return to the store is sometimes undertaken with a revised shopping list safety pinned to the sufferer’s sweater.

Finally, there is the all-too-common domestic problem of UHIC, better known as Unfinished Home Improvement Complex, an affliction in which various do-it-yourself home projects have been sitting idle, unfinished or simply forgotten since the first Obama administration. This includes, but is not limited to, half-tiled bathroom walls; toilets that don’t properly flush; mountains of pricey hardwood mulch left in the backyard so long they’re sprouting young trees; doors that never quite close; suspicious sounds beneath the house; the broken doorbells; half-installed home security systems; and driveway sinkholes.

Curiously, in the interest of saving time and money, the typical victim of UHIC routinely stalks the aisles of Lowe’s or Home Depot, dreaming up ambitious new home improvement projects that will make home life easier but don’t stand a chance of ever being completed.

Yes, wives, you know these conditions all too well.

Sadly, there’s no known cure for any of these domestic maladies just yet. But there is hope in the form of a newly created self-help grassroots organization called Building Better Husbands, designed to afford hard-working wives like you the opportunity to network and share creative ideas on how to make their homes happier places and spouses more thoughtful and responsive. Look for chapters forming in your neighborhood soon. BYOB (or two).

A final word to my fellow sufferers.

This Mother’s Day, fellas, let’s give the little lady of the house a break by picking up the slack on normal domestic duties, finishing those pesky home projects, even reading the appliance operating instructions and learning to go to the grocery store only once without a list pinned to your golf shirt.

Meantime, it’s probably best to avoid calling your wife “the little lady” or, for that matter, never ever asking me to put my hand in a clogged garbage disposal.

Some old habits die hard, I guess. PS

Jim Dodson can be reached at jwdauthor@gmail.com.

2024 Department Simple Life

Simple Life

The Ever-Changing Garden

May the work never be done

By Jim Dodson

The spring gardening season officially got underway this year with the necessary removal of a 70-year-old red oak tree that threatened to fall on my garage office. Being a confirmed tree hugger and septuagenarian myself, I felt for the old boy having to come down. But I’d probably have felt worse — perhaps permanently — had the old fella decided to fall on my office with me in it.

Such is the fate of an ever-changing garden, which is a redundant phrase since every garden everywhere is ever changing, if only by a matter of degrees. Any gardener worth his mulch will tell you that the work is never finished. There’s always some new problem to contend with or a fresh inspiration incubated over dark winter days to finally put into motion. We are, as a result, forever incomplete gardeners, revising and learning as we go.

In my case, this year has been all of the above — new problems, fresh inspiration and learning as I go. As the result of the day-long operation to remove “Big Red,” as I called the elderly oak, half a dozen young plants just awakening from their winter nap had to be dug up and set aside so the crane removing the tree could navigate a path across my backyard garden, churning the ground up as it went.

I took this as a sign from on high that it was time to make several big changes in paradise. The first move came on the east side of our house where a trio of formerly well-behaved crape myrtle bushes were suddenly running amok and threatening to blot out the sun. The task of digging them out of the cold January ground proved the wisdom of Robert Frost’s elegant aphorism that the afternoon knows what the morning never suspected — i.e. that some tasks that were easy in the morning of youth prove to be monstrously difficult in the afternoon of age.

Still, I’m nothing if not a committed bugger when it comes to getting my way in a garden. After several hours of intense work with pick and shovel, all under the watchful eye of Boo Radley, the cat who suns himself in that particular part of the estate on winter days, the monstrous shrubs finally came out and I went in for a much-needed lunch break, muddy but triumphant.

“My goodness,” said my wife, stirring soup. “Who won the fight?”

You see, back in the “morning” of my gardening years — that’s five different gardens ago, by my count — Dame Wendy always found it highly amusing that I treated garden work like a full-contact sport, where blood of some sort was inevitably shed. In those days, I was so into clearing trees and rebuilding the ancient stone walls of a vanished 19th century homestead that once existed where our new post-and-beam house stood, I rarely noticed cuts, bruises or even gashes that needed a stitch or two. In those faraway days, all I needed was a long hot soak in our 6-foot Portuguese clawfoot tub, plus a couple cold Sam Adams beers to put things right.

These days, in the metaphorical “afternoon” of life, the cuts and bruises are fewer and the cure for sore muscles comes via a hot shower, a change of clothes and a nice afternoon nap with the dogs — though I have been known to wander outside just before the dinner guests arrive and get myself dirty all over again.

I think my sweet gardening obsession comes from a long and winding line of family farmers and gardeners, abetted by a childhood spent in several small towns of the South where I stayed outside from dawn till dusk, building forts in the woods, climbing trees, damming creeks and digging earthworks under the porch for my toy armies. More than once, I had to be hauled out from under the porch for church with my “good” Sunday pants streaked with red clay.

My mother, poor woman, nicknamed me “Nature Boy” and “Angel with a Filthy Face.” Worse than death was having her spit on a handkerchief to wipe a smudge of soil off my cheek as we entered the sanctuary.

Despite the damage from removing Big Red and heavy winter kill in both my side and backyard gardens this spring, I’m always nicely surprised by the resiliency of my suburban patch. One day, I’m looking at a bare perennial bed and the next, dozens of green shoots are coming up. The daffodils never fail to rise nor the cherry trees bud. The hosta plants miraculously return. The dogwoods burst into bloom and the azaleas erupt in technicolor glory.

This annual choreography of springtime is a nice reminder that we human beings do the very same thing. Nobody escapes hard winters, actual or metaphorical. The weather of life beats everyone down at some point or another. But slowly and surely, we re-emerge as the days lengthen and the sun grows warmer. Soon the sheer abundance of blossom and green makes a body forget the cold months of unseen struggle to get here.

Though I am an unapologetic fan of winter — my best season for writing, thinking and planning new adventures in the garden — the happiest time for this incomplete gardener comes when I see what managed to survive the winter and has come back with new vigor and surging optimism. Such sights make my old fingers itch to get gloriously dirty.

This spring, there will probably be a new garden shed surrounded by ferns where Big Red once stood, and old Boo Radley will have a new perennial garden full of flowers in which to sun himself on cool summer mornings. I may even finally finish the cobblestone pathway I started last year.

The job in a garden, you see, is never done. And that’s just the way I like it. PS

Jim Dodson can be reached at jwdauthor@gmail.com.

2024 Department Simple Life

Simple Life

Coffee with God

Faith beneath the stars

By Jim Dodson

Every day between 3:30 and 4 a.m., I take a cup of coffee outside to an old wooden chair beneath the sky where I sit, look, listen, think and pray.

If you’ll pardon the expression, it’s something I’ve done religiously for at least two decades, regardless of season and weather, bitter cold or bright summer night. Fog, rain, snow or sleet — almost nothing keeps me from my early morning rendezvous with the universe.

I call it coffee with God.

Between you and me, it’s probably the only time in my day when I can be assured, with the faith of a mustard seed, that I and the world around me are reasonably OK.

Between God and me, you see, it’s something very personal.

After sipping coffee and eyeballing the night sky for a bit (I’ve seen several shooting stars over the years, probably a few UFOs, too), I listen to an app on my smart phone called “Pray As You Go,” a daily scriptural meditation produced by the Jesuits in Britain.

That puts me in the mood to chat with God about whatever is on my heart or mind.

Sometimes it’s worries about the state of the world, which always seems to be coming apart at the seams and can clearly use as many healing prayers as it can get. The news out of Israel this year has been like watching the Old Testament come to life. It’s eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth until everyone is blind and toothless, as Mahatma Gandhi supposedly said. Dear God, I ask, will we ever learn to give peace a chance?

Sometimes it’s thoughts and worries about our far-flung children that occupy my coffee time with God. One of them is always up to something that tends to keep the old man up at night. The good news is, they’re all smart kids with very good hearts. I have faith they’ll figure it out in time. They may even learn that praying is good for the soul, and usually works wonders. Some atheists even pray — just in case.

Most of my morning prayers, however, are focused on simple gratitude.

I give thanks for my amazing wife, our good-hearted kids, and the possibly undeserved good fortune I’ve enjoyed in this life. I often give thanks for other things great and small, including, but not limited to, unexpected blessings, birds at the feeder, good Samaritans, golf buddies, wise book editors, phone calls from old friends, rain for my garden, our crazy young dogs, our cranky old cat, afternoon naps and people who say thank you.

Meister Eckhart, the 13th century German mystic and priest, said that if your only prayer is “thank you,” that will be enough.

I rarely ask God for stuff, except maybe a little help finishing a book or finding patience with idiots who run red lights or drive too fast through the neighborhood. The world is moving much too fast. The truth is, I probably need to slow down, too.

Critics of faith like to say there’s no such thing as a personal relationship with God.

They argue that we human beings are simply a collection of random molecules floating aimlessly through a cold and empty universe. I’ve lived long enough to know that’s simply not the case. I can’t, frankly, think of anything more personal than a relationship with a divine source whose name is different in every language but the same in loving spirit.

This probably explains why I’ve naturally felt God’s presence since I was a little kid growing up across the rural South. In the absence of playmates, I spent most of my time alone outside immersed in nature, looking at birds and bugs, taking hikes through the woods, building forts, watching clouds pass overhead, listening to the love songs of the bullfrogs and the crickets, reading adventure stories on hot summer days beneath shady trees. I never felt alone for an instant. In fact, I felt accompanied by a large and loving presence that clearly cared for me and probably kept a sharp eye on whatever funny business I was up to.

Maybe this is why Jesus was so keen to have little children come near him. As we age, we lose that sense of natural wonder.

It also may explain why, as an adult, I’ve never been terribly keen on public praying, even the lovely prayers and familiar creeds we recite at church every week. They’re written by other well-meaning people and meant, I suppose, to help us catch God’s ear.

Between us, I don’t think God has a hearing problem.

Besides, as Jesus advises in Matthew 6, when you pray, go into a dark closet, shut the door and pray in secret, for God sees you and knows your heart and will openly reward you.

With coffee in hand, I like to think of my early mornings outside beneath the stars — which are always there, even if you can’t see them (kind of like God) — as my own great, big private prayer closet. No need to even shut the door. The world at that hour is normally so dark and quiet that I can whisper to God about anything on my mind. And the strangely wonderful thing is, God whispers back.

One of the worst things that’s happened to faith and prayer across the ages is the unholy marriage of religion and politics. Both are manmade institutions that thrive on telling people what is the correct thing to believe, and what isn’t. Often, when the two get together, all hell can break loose for anyone who dares to believe differently. Near as I can tell from many years of whispering to and being whispered to by some large and loving divine source, God is probably not a member of any particular denomination, sect, tribe, religion, political party or NFL booster club.

I happen to be a follower of Jesus, but find deep inspiration and comfort from the prayers of every faith tradition, a reminder that we’re all just ordinary folks down here on an ailing planet trying to help each other find the way home.

One of my favorite books is called Heaven on Earth: Timeless Prayers of Wisdom and Love by Stephanie Dowrick. I found it a decade ago in a London bookshop and have probably purchased half a dozen copies since to give friends who regularly pray — or ought to.

It’s a marvelous collection of prayers from every spiritual tradition.

One of my favorite prayers comes from the ancient Bhagavad Gita: “Whichever God you worship, I will answer your prayer. Whatever path you take, I will welcome you.”

Funny how similar that sounds to Isaiah 41: “Do not be afraid, for I am with you. From wherever you come, I will lead you home.”

Easter arrives on the last day of March this year, a month named by the Romans for the God of War. Easter’s message is one of rebirth and forgiveness.

I pray it’s time we forget war and find peace at last. PS

Jim Dodson can be reached at jwdauthor@gmail.com.

2024 Department Simple Life