Aunt Eleanor's visit - it had been too long...it went too fast!

It was September 2019 when we last enjoyed a long visit from my great Aunt Eleanor. We're all a few years older, but had just as marvelous time together this go round (my parents only got in on the first evening of her visit before they took off for WV for a few weeks). We definitely hope that it won't be 3 years until we do it again. 

This will be a good exercise for me to write this reflection on our week together, which is a joyous celebration of food, family, stories, laughter, food processing, hugs, and so many sweet times. I hope it will be good for my spirit, which feels a bit laden with sadness this evening. In short, I've found myself reflecting a lot today on the systems and structures that have such massive implications for individuals. Whether it is the impacts of colonization or the implications of our culture that doesn't set up systems that enable and support people to stay within their family as they age and be cared for surrounded by loved one, I have found myself feeling grief move through me as I go about the tasks of my day. And I wonder how I can continue to support and be part of a different way of being in the world. With those thoughts milling around in the background, I offer this smattering of photos from our precious days together!

I'm not sure I could ask for an easier house guest. And, in all honestly, Aunt Eleanor is not really a house guest at all. She's family and she just slid right into the flow of things (or stayed smartly on the edges of the hubbub sometimes!). She did have a knack for disappearing sometimes and then after poking around for awhile I'd often find her just absorbed in taking in everything around here (tucked in the rocking chair in the corner of the deck was her best hiding spot)! She also spent hours reading our printed blog books, so I now have another source of encouragement to keep it up. It was funny to be working at catching up on the blog as she sat across from me reading an earlier year. 

One of the things I love about her visits, is she is not just visiting me. She gets to have time with each of us and then time with all of us together. On one of the first days, I apologized for how I was scurrying around and not able to just sit and visit all the time (it is, afterall, August on a farm). She said something to the effect of me not needing to think another thing about that. She seemed quite happy to occupy herself with any number of things or join up with us in what we were up to. I was mentioning to her that my parents (especially my dad) had expressed concerns before moving in about what it would feel like to live in a place with a family at a very different life stage - we are in the chaotic, bustling, loud stage...they are retired with no kids at home. The wisdom from Eleanor was that they will need to learn to act their age. :) I love that she was able to embrace activity or just sit while we zoomed around!

And we certainly didn't zoom around the whole time. One of the gifts of her presence with us was that it actually encouraged us to slow down and soak up times together. We did music on TWO evenings in the middle of summer. This is unheard of! And very welcome!! 

We savored many delicious meals together - including Kali's first cooking since returning from the Philippines! I had missed those meals. She treated us to a scrumptious pork noodle casserole that was a huge hit - using our canned pork in place of tuna.

Aunt Eleanor would share snippets from the books she was reading and that inspired at least one fun food experiment. I made a Dutch baby for the first time. I googled it as I took it out of the oven as I had NO frame of reference for what it was supposed to look like - it was just about right! There were no leftovers. Terah thought it was too sweet, so I might try it with less sugar the next time. But the rest of us enjoyed it, especially with fresh blackberries. I so often get in food ruts when life is full and schedules are complicated. So it felt like a treat to try something new together.

 

Now, that was not the only food experiment of the week. I had an email come through my inbox about an event serving locally made okra ice cream. Since Kali has been enjoying trying all sorts of new foods and seems to find it interesting to do so, I offered to try it out around her birthday. With Eleanor being a good sport about trying new things too, I figured it would be fun to do it while she was there. The report: Kali was the only one, really, that liked it. I tolerated a little but found it rather unpleasant! I was proud of my planning ahead as I also made black walnut caramel corn in case the okra ice cream flopped. I wasn't sure the rest of us would get any as Aunt Eleanor declared this her bowl. But she did end up sharing!!

Now lest you think my dear great aunt sat around, lounging while eating caramel corn all week, let me offer a more balanced perspective. On many an occasion, she showed up and plopped down at a cutting board or with a paring knife to offer her additional set of hands to the mix. I think she mostly enjoyed it, even when "wildlife" (the increasing number of bean beetles) were sometimes crawling on her. One day Terah wanted to call my mom to say hi and I had her on speaker phone. I mentioned that Eleanor was helping to chop tomatoes and she piped up that she had a ball and chain around her ankle. She's so quick sometimes. :) I promise we did not tether her in any way to the kitchen table. But she often stayed until all the veggies were chopped!

She also got in on the delicata harvest, which was a good one (5 bushels for us and a bushel for the pigs). I thought she was just going to "supervise," but it wasn't long before she was right in the patch with us. 

There was still a good amount of time in the evening for some collective lounging. We even introduced her to a Netflix show that Ivy had just told us about (very enthusiastically): Is It Cake? I don't think it's one I'm gonna get hooked on, but it does include some very impressive cake creating/decorating skills!!

I don't know if my kids always grasp what a gift it is to be able to have such close relationships with grandparents and, in this case, spending many days back to back with their great, great aunt. Eleanor was the only great aunt I had any close connections with growing up and it was limited to very rare visits to WV where we might take a walk through the pine trees just the two of us and her unforgettable letters. But this is so different. A week sprinkled with moments of marveling at the stars together, hearing stories about her childhood and mothering 8 children and fun snippets from her relationship with Joe before his death, and getting exposure to her sharp and witty humor. It's just delightful. 

As we ate ice cream cones last evening, I learned that she and Uncle Joe would stop for a cone with butter pecan ice cream in Elkins after shopping. They would share it but he would lick more of the ice cream and leave most of the cone for her! Would that little story ever have been imparted to us if we weren't there all licking ice cream cones together?

Yesterday I came upstairs where they were puzzling to read some of our chapter book out loud to Terah and Alida. As is typical of me, I was quickly yawning about every other sentence and struggling to stay awake. I saw Eleanor get her phone out and then happened to notice that she was puzzling but holding her phone up and a click would happen about every time I yawned. She was trying to catch me yawning. :) I haven't seen her photos to know how close she got, but it made me start laughing every time I started to yawn after that. It made me very pleased to see that I caught this picture of her with a pretzel in her mouth AND on her phone! 

We didn't get to do everything or eat everything together we might have wanted to. And she didn't get to sew our recliner since we couldn't find my mom's sturdy needle and thread. So we'll have to get another visit on the schedule soon. For now, I a little heart pang as I removed the walking sticks from each exterior door and put them back in their bin in the garage until they are needed again.