Sunny Pictures and Daughter Day Thoughts

Yesterday the wind blew in from the north. There were whitecaps on the lake. Although the temperature was in the 60’s it felt blustery to this southern boy. So we drove into Camden for blueberry pancakes at the Deli. Afterwards we stopped in the Smiling Cow, chatted with Meg and picked up some gifts for the kids back home. Pam got started on a new cross-stitching project while I was hard at work taking a mid-morning snoozle and an afternoon nipper-napper with Lucy. If this sounds to you like a boring uneventful day, then we can’t be friends. Today promises to be much more physically active. There will be fishing and kayaking. However, since it is currently 42 degrees, the aforementioned activity will have to wait. Yes. I am a thin-blooded southern wimp. Sue me.

I promised you sunny pictures of the place so here they are:

The view from the dock looking north.

The southern view.

The house and the lovely lawn.

The fire pit.

On to other matters. Ok, so last night I pulled up a social media account and was bombarded by photographs of …daughters. It seems that yesterday was National Daughters Day. The first thing that popped into my head was, says who? When did this happen? I don’t remember this actually being a thing. Was there a vote? I have nothing against daughters, mind you, its just that it felt a bit contrived and manipulative, probably a conspiracy cooked up by the greeting card companies—Big Sentiment. I will not be coerced into posting pictures of mine in this space. But I will offer a few words on their behalf. Kaitlin is about the finest human being I know, a brilliant teacher with a first rate mind and a heart full of compassion. She’s smart, witty and the best friend you could ever ask for. Sarah is my daughter-in-law who my son had the good sense to marry. She too is super smart and creative. She has the voice of an angel and makes the most beautiful charcuterie trays known to exist in the free world. Both of them are beautiful, accomplished women. But I don’t need a National Daughter Day to remind me of their worth.

We Made It

The trip took two days. Fourteen and a half hours. It was as uneventful as it could possibly be. When we arrived at Vacationland Lucy was ecstatic. Pam took a video of her excitement from which I captured this shot…

The girl is nine years old and still has hops!

Ok, so what’s this place like? It’s cloudy today so any pictures I take of the lake will not be representative of the beauty here. There is a big lawn that sweeps down a slope to the lake. We’ve never really had a lawn like this in Maine. Lucy loves it, a fence-less place for her to run free. At the edge of the lake is the fire pit, set on a ledge just a couple of feet from the water offering grand views up the lake. This place is almost at the extreme southern edge of Hobbs Pond…

Later today I will put the kayak in the water and paddle the circumference of the place to get my bearings. Pam will drive into Belfast on a grocery run. That’s what is known as the division of labor. In case any of you are thinking it unfair that Pam has to “work” while I am “playing” should remember that over the past two days I did 100% of the driving with zero speeding tickets, moving violations or fatal accidents.

The indoor accommodations are not what we have become accustomed to at Loon Landing and Summer Dreams. But in fairness, nothing could possibly be. Vacationland is much more what I would consider to be the average lake rental. The kitchen is equipped with “silverware” of unknown metallic origin. It kinda feels like metal but bends when you spread peanut butter onto an English muffin. In addition, there is no dishwasher on the premises, leaving us to ponder the cleanliness level of every plate, pan and utensil. All kitchen equipment seems to have been selected from the rejects of the home kitchen of the owner of the place. But, everything else is perfectly fine and acceptable. Our bed is king size and comfortable, the bathroom works perfectly. At the very top end of the positive ledger is this delightful weather forecast…

I cannot wait for those 46 degree mornings.

Tomorrow I will share photographs of the place in glorious sunshine.

October 4, 2023

I remember it like it was yesterday. I sat across a desk from the loan officer at F&M bank in Ashland with my Dad next to me. The dour banker stared down at me, Potter-like, over his bifocals as I signed my name on the papers. It was my very first loan, $5,000, enough to cover tuition and books for one semester at the University of Richmond. Dad was there to co-sign the loan since I was just a student with a part time job. I remember the strange confluence of emotions that accompanied the transaction, that giddy feeling of being a grownup along with nausea at the prospect that I might miss a payment and wind up in jail. I even remember the amount of the payment—$136.00 a month.

Not long after that came more college loans from the Charles B. Keesee Fund, then my first car loan for a two year old VW Scirocco. One year after getting married Pam and I bought our first house for $87,500. Our interest rate was a cool 13.75% and the $900 payment felt terrifying. There would be many more car loans, mortgages and home equity loans to get my kids through college, plus a business loan to purchase an office condo. Somehow I managed to avoid debtors prison.

But in a mere 15 days on October 4th, 2023, while in Maine, I will make my very last mortgage payment. It will be the first time I have been totally debt-free since I was 19 years old. 

It will be a time of celebration but also nostalgia. All of those loans. Hard to believe. I never took out a single loan for anything that I have regretted. Educating my kids—best money I ever spent. Buying my home—great decision. Even buying that hideous cranberry-colored minivan back in the day—a necessity with two kids.

Being debt-free will be great but it will also feel a bit weird. I have spent all of my life under the heavy weight of financial obligation. To a very large degree it has been my single most powerful motivator. It has driven me to succeed since failure to live up to those obligations would have been catastrophic for my family and my reputation. It simply was not an option. I’m wondering what it will feel like to live without the weight. Maybe it will diminish my drive. Perhaps I will flounder without financial urgency. Maybe I will start looking for some new place to spend money.

Wait. I know.

I need grandchildren.

Vacationland

The excitement is starting to build for our next Maine adventure. We leave this Friday morning for our as yet unnamed Fall trip of 2023. There are a couple of things about this upcoming vacation which make it unique. First of all, we will be staying at a new camp on a lake we haven’t been on since 2016. The name of the place is Vacationland and it's on Hobbs Pond. It features a really big back yard that slopes down to the water along with a fire pit right on the edge of the lake…

The observant reader will have no doubt noticed that the gas grill on the expansive back deck features 5 burner elements. Also, I’m loving that two seater swing down at the water’s edge. This lake is closer to Camden than almost every other place we’ve stayed, only a 15 minute drive. The closest general store is in the town of Hope just a few minutes down the road.

The second thing that makes this trip unique is that for one of the three weeks my sister Linda and her husband Bill will be with us, along with Paula and Ron. Bill and Linda have never been to Maine so we get to be their tour guides for the week. Nothing makes us happier than introducing people we love to this amazing place.

Wait…what does this place look like on the inside? Almost forgot…

Yeah, I’m thinking we will be happy here.

Pick Your Poison

Pam and I wanted to try a new restaurant that had popped up on the ever expanding complex of shops and stores that have metastasized on Broad Street, west of Short Pump. Wood and Iron, its called. As we drove out there Pam asked this question, “Why are they constantly building more buildings out here when there are so many empty spaces in the buildings that are already here?” This is what is known as a rhetorical question and it is unanswerable. First off, the word they in her question is instructive, referring as it does to the faceless, nameless developer behind each new project that carves itself into the landscape. My only answer was something like, “Why, indeed?”

When Pam and I first moved to Short Pump, there wasn’t much out here. Thirty nine years ago there was Short Pump Elementary School, that auto repair shop with the crashed airplane lodged in its roof and a couple of general stores. Now, its a mass of retail stores, strip malls, restaurants and gas stations. And that crashed airplane was finally laid to rest several years ago. But the question remains…why has there been such an explosion of construction. Well, this is what commerce does, it expands. Some will call it progress. Some will laud the convenience of having practically everything you could ever want or need within ten minutes of your house. This is true. Convenience is convenient. But in the new era of online shopping, I can buy virtually everything offered by every store in greater Short Pump from the comfort of my sofa—buck naked. Aside from the horrible mental picture I just painted for you, it does make Pam’s question all the more relevant.

So, I decided to test an hypothesis that has been brewing in the fertile soil of my warped imagination which is—despite the endless choices offered to me in Short Pump for shopping, eating and entertainment, which buildings do I actually patronize? How many of the 2000 stores and shops have I ever actually entered, and how often do I do so? With the handy assistance of my credit card statements over the past few months, here is what I have found for the time period between August 15th and September 15th:

Publix in Short Pump Village—13 visits

Various restaurants—12 visits

CVS, corner of Cox and Broad—4

Sunoco gas, corner of Three Chopt and Church—4

Lowe’s—2

That’s it, the sum total of institutions that I have visited more than once in the past 30 days. There were a few other places where either Pam or I visited just once:

Jiffy Lube

Flagstop Carwash

Cutz for Guys

Staples

Dog Crazy Groomers

Judging by this list, Pam and I are most interested in…food. We spend most of our time and money either buying groceries to make food, or going to places where they cook it for us. In this way I don’t think we are different than most people. Of course the above lists only include places where there is evidence that we spent money. Obviously there are other places we go frequently and spend no money:

Hope Church—8 visits

Hope Thrift store—three visits

My office—20 visits

So, the question remains, why the endless construction and expansion of choices? Pam and I might not be good examples but the answer is because its what the people want. Developers don’t spend their money unless they can do so for a handsome profit. Businesses don’t expand unless there is substantial evidence that such expansion will be profitable. If you are one of those people constantly decrying urban sprawl and complaining that there are no more beautiful fields in Short Pump filled with grazing cattle, I would suggest that you stop buying stuff. Oh, and don’t complain if you have to wait an hour and a half for a table at your favorite restaurant after the board of supervisors changes the zoning laws to prohibit new construction.

Or, if you’re really fed up with all the convenience/congestion of Short Pump, move out to Fluvanna County or Louisa. I hear there’s virtually no congestion and you have to drive twenty minutes to pick up a prescription. 

Pick your poison.

One Seat. No Waiting.

A camp came up for sale on a lake we love in the Mid-Coast area yesterday. Pam sent me the link apparently because she hates me. It was a very tiny, run down, dilapidated shack measuring 250 square feet. It featured this bathroom…

What’s the asking price, you say? $390,000. But at least we wouldn’t have to scrub the toilets.

Yeah, so…we are never gonna find a place to buy. That’s ok though. At least the places we rent have indoor plumbing.

On a side note, I woke up this morning with a headache for the fourth consecutive day. The previous three days it went away after a cup of coffee. Not so today.

On a second side note, my wife is the hardest working woman in Short Pump. For the past three weeks or so she has been juggling chainsaws like an ace. First, she has spent countless hours working on stuff for the Home Owners Association of our neighborhood. Along with that comes her job of creating wedding invitations for a dear friend of ours, a job that requires long hours on artsy websites doing God knows what late into the night. Then yesterday she went into school to start setting up her classroom for her job as an interventionist at an elementary school. She is a phenom and the best thing about it is…she has no idea that she is a phenom. If you know her…you know.

Grateful

Every morning when I open my iPad there’s a picture displayed from the vast archive of photographs stored in its memory. This morning it was this one…

I took it in late September of 2017. It might have been on our first extended Fall trip to Maine. Pam is standing on the deck at Loon Landing in the late afternoon preparing to cook dinner. In so many ways this is quintessential Maine-Pam. There she is in her red flannel shirt, wearing slippers and an apron, head tilted to one side with a fist on her hip—the way she does when I annoy her by taking her picture. The sun is beginning to set, its light becoming powerful as it shines across the water bathing the house in yellow. There is no railing on the deck to block the magnificent view, just beautifully manicured flower boxes along the edge. Every year the boxes are different, Carolyn May’s creativity and imagination on display.

The reason this photograph is so special is that it captures something important. This is my wife at rest and at peace. There isn’t even a shadow of worry on her face, just a contented and playful smile. There is no place on earth she would rather be, nothing she would rather be doing. I get to do this for her twice a year now. Of all the investments I have made in my life, there is none that produce returns as beautiful and valuable than this.

It is said that modern humans know the price of everything and the value of nothing. In most cases its true. But not this. The value of these experiences far outstrip whatever it cost ten fold. In eleven more days we will do it again. We are so grateful.