A light at the end of the snowbank

I made it to Richmond on Friday, Dec 18, driving from Salem with no problems. Turned in my rental car, checked into a Best Western a half mile from the airport and settled in to see what would happen with impending snow storm. By Saturday morning, there were 6 inches on the ground here and triple that in many places in western Virginia and north of Richmond. Long story short, my flights to Dulles International and on to Frankfurt, Germany, were cancelled. Thousands of people were stranded in airports and I was glad to be in an hotel instead. Going online for change of reservation was not working so I took the shuttle to the airport and stood in line for over an hour in hopes of talking to an agent. Gave up when the snow started heavy again. Finally on Sunday morning I have been able to get rebooked out of here on Dec. 23, landing on Christmas eve morning. My cousin Dreama who lives near here has dispatched her husband to come get me in his 4-wheeler so I have been rescued from the hotel for the next few days.

A step toward making the new house a home

Thanks to a business trip to Virginia, I was able to take some extra days to travel to Blacksburg with a to do list for the new house. I was met there the first afternoon by our lovely realty lady, Charlotte. She transferred all the keys to me and we chatted while sitting in the floor of one of the carpeted rooms. My emotions were running high because I knew I had entered the "last time I'll ever do..." phase of ending my career and starting a new life. It would be somewhat easier, I said, if I could just stay in Blacksburg right now and not have to go back to Germany at all. I would get to skip all the hard goodbyes if I could just stick my head into a hole in the four acres of forest surrounding the house and pretend. Unfortunately, that cannot happen.

Instead, I checked into a hotel and set about working down the list.

Flooring...two rooms from dreaded wall to wall changing to cushion vinyl in the art studio and hardwood in the office. The choices and possibilities were way too overwhelming to handle without a pro to help me out. Finally that one could get checked off.

Landscape...It was an adventure just finding the place in Ellett Valley on a road that should have been named Lost Hollow. I arranged for the millions of leaves to be removed from the limited grass areas of our house and made an appointment with a designer to meet me at the house the next day. Thousands of dollars will be invested in these two projects! Luckily, the house is in excellent condition and not in need of anything except furniture and us.

The nice thing about a town like Blacksburg, is that a network of trusted people is in place and accustomed to doing things for people with empty houses. Charlotte goes the distance with us and will oversee the floor work, the winterizing and be one of the three people entrusted with a key in order to check on the house until we arrive in March. We will then oversee the landscaping ourselves and, of course, the painful arrival and placement of our furniture.

The great room may become my favorite part. As the sun passes from end to end of the back of the house, it floods the huge windows and draws bright blocks of light on the oak floors. A camping chair placed in one of the warm pools affords a perfect view of the forest behind. No house breaks into the portrait of nature. The local deer disappoint me by chosing never to set foot on my land, despite the fact that everyone tells me they are everywhere. I assume that will change about the time the new landscape is placed, offering a new buffet of tastes and smells for them to explore. Though I really want to grow flowers in my retirement, I imagine the garden will be confined to one of the two decks, high out of the reach of the pretty munchers.

After a busy week of buying supplies, asking about cell phones, televisions, cable connections, propane, personal property taxes, etc. I headed back to Richmond only to find myself awaiting a huge snow storm and wondering if I get out of the airport in time tomorrow to connect to my flight in Washington Dulles. It is Dec. 18th and flying promises to be a real challenge between the weather and the holiday travelers. If I were ever a boss again, I'd promised never to make my people fly in December unless it was totally unavoidable!

The forecast in Blacksburg is for 17 inches of snow; Richmond about 10. Bill reports that Germany is not much better; even colder and snow on the ground already. Even Italy and England expect the white stuff. Looks like the tough winter predicted has started. I hope all the trees keep standing at 931.

We are homeowners

Today marks the first day of our owning a home. The mountains of paperwork are done. We are relieved. Now we must make our way through the next few months it will take us to actually move there. One of many steps to our new way.

Trying to catch up and find a house

After Bill and I finally felt recovered enough from the car accident to travel, we went to Virginia in September to attend my mom's family reunion and do some serious house hunting. Bill had done some hunting in May without me and the two favorite houses from that trip were still on the market. We found a nice long-term stay efficiency for the two weeks and set out every day to look at houses in Floyd and Blacksburg, Va. Interesting, we started and ended with the two favorite houses we had on day one. After looking at way too many places, we settled on a lovely wood house on 4.5 acres of forest. Wood floors, wood ceilings, lots of glass inviting the outside in, three fireplaces and lots of space. It reminds me of my house in Germany and was the only house that got a big "WOW!" out of me from the moment I stepped in the door.

Throughout the hunt, each day was stressful. We really wanted to be in little Floyd but found nothing there that did it for us. The people were amazingly friendly, it was chocked full of art and it was tiny enough to walk to everything. Known for country bluegrass music, it is a small town that has remade itself into an amazing sort of new age music and art mecca. More than one resident told us it is special and we believe them. Every time we go there we will probably wish we lived there! Every day we came home knowing we still hadn't found the right house.

As time was running out, we gathered all the paper on all the houses and did a process of elimination. By time we were done, only Blacksburg houses remained and went down to three, two and one. We went back to 931 again two more times, made an offer which was accepted on the first round and now it's just a matter of all the paperwork and the signing. Strange, all the looking was so stressful, but once we narrowed it down to one house, we were both relieved.

First step taken. Now, how the heck do we really get it all together and get there??

Things get worse

On Saturday, Aug. 1, Bill and I arrived in little Oberweissenbrunn, Germany, to visit our dear friend Gerlinde. After a brief visit at her apartment, we headed over toward old East Germany to see one of the checkpoints and a sculpture garden dedicated to the reunification, visited an East German city in the process of getting better since the wall came down and then headed home to Gerlinde's apartment. It was a lovely, interesting day. We stopped for dinner on the way and continued homeward.

In the village of Sondheim, everything changed. Gerlinde was driving the speed limit on the priority road when suddenly, from the left, came a speeding car immediately into our path. From first sight to impact was no more than a second. We hit the car on the passenger side and pushed it across the intersection. The air bags exploded in a cloud of dust and smoke filled the car. The noise was awful. Within seconds Bill was out and pulling me out of the front seat. I felt paralyzed from the impact of seat belt and airbag which was about three feet across. By this time everyone from the houses had poured out to help people. Bill and I were laid on the grass and Gerlinde was okay enough to be walking around, perhaps because her airbag was a lot smaller and she had the steering wheel to brace on. Four ambulances and a helicopter came in minutes, along with three doctors and all the EMT folks. I know this from others because I could only see stars. Both drivers registered zero on the breath test. The other driver told the police he had stopped at the yield sign but we all swear that could not have been the case. Gerlinde heard a young boy say they had many accidents at that intersection, but never one with a helicopter. The fact Bill and I are American spread quickly and I heard several people talk about it around me. A nurse trainee from the house nearby was really nice to us as were others.

Bill was taken in the helicopter to a new hospital in Meiningen, the old East German town we had visited earlier that day. They thought he had internal injuries and put him in intensive care. Gerlinde and I were taken to Bad Neustadt to a very nice modern hospital. We were both x-rayed and Gerlinde sent home. All this began around 7:30 pm and it was after midnight before everyone was tucked into a room wherever they were. One lady from the other car was hospitalized, too, same place I was. I had spine x-rays the next day, and later a CT scan. My right knee and left foot took hits and were x-rayed. Fortunately, none of us have anything broken. Our bruises were extensive and dark across our chests and stomachs from the seatbelts and airbag and we found more every day on other body parts. Bill had no internal injuries, thank goodness, stayed in the hospital until Monday and I got out the next day. Gerlinde and her family were our guardian angels through it all and folks from work have been calling as the word got out. Our good friend Wally drove the three hours from Kaiserslautern on Sunday and helped drive Gerlinde between the two hospitals which were about 20 miles apart before driving back home that same evening. He also took some things home for us from our heavily packed car.
After getting out of the hospital, we stayed at Gerlinde's place moving slowly, comparing aches, pains and bruises. The police came to interview us and the insurance declared her car dead. An article ran in the local paper with a photo of the crash scene and cars. Gerlinde, though covered in big bruises, constantly took care of us, great friend that she is. The day after I got out of the hospital, Bill drove us to see the intersection where it all happened. We quickly met one of the folks who helped us on the scene and she was very eager to share information with us including giving us a copy of the newspaper article. We were very surprized to see no skid marks on the pavement in the intersection and a total of four Yield signs at the intersection where the car had come out in front of us.

We were three or so hours away from Kaiserslautern and needed to see if Bill could drive us home the next day. I still had my cast on my left arm from the Italy experience so I couldn't help drive. This was the week it was supposed to come off. We left the next day, driving slowly and stopping a couple of times. We checked in with Gerlinde by phone at the halfway point to reassure her we were okay and again when we reached home. She was so relieved we were okay that she started crying right away. She felt like it was her fault, but I assured her it was not.

The next day, my cast gets removed and I try out my driving skills in the village for the first time in two months. Doctor appointments and therapy sessions became a part of our lives until last week when we declared ourselves tired of it all and stopped going.

All in all it was an experience we do not wish to repeat and are all grateful to be up and around no matter how painful we feel and funny we look. As I write this, we all still have after effects from the crash; lingering aches and pains, lingering thoughts of the sight and sound of the crash, lingering fears of other cars on the road.

A cold July

It's 9:30 a.m. on July 18. The room is dark and chilly. Just a few minutes ago I could swear I saw some sun. Sigh. Be glad. It is not raining. I did say it is July, didn't I? For over two weeks now it has been raining, gray and cool nearly every day. A patch of bright sun makes me rush to the balcony to sit knowing it will not last. I yank off my tee shirt and pull up my pant legs to expose as much skin as possible for the few moments of pleasure and vitamin D. I know it won't last. It doesn't.

The rain keeps everything a brilliant green and beats my potted flowers into submission. I watch my succulent jade plant standing in a water-filled tray and know she doesn't like wet feet. I go out on to my bedroom balcony to try a one-handed rescue with only limited success. Bill will have to help get the tray gone from this large and heavy specimen.

My gardening is greatly limited this summer by my still casted , but healing arm. This week the full cast gave way to something called a Munser/Munster/Monster cast which allows me at last to bend the elbow but still restricts side motion of the forearm--a telling sign of just how badly I had trashed the wrist. (Each person who mentions the cast pronounces it differently, but the well over six foot technician doing the cast says it is named after the person who designed it. He tells me it is his favorite kind to make because it is a challenge--"let me know if the saw burns going around the curves." Saw? This is a going on cast, not a coming off one.)

This cast looks ordinary white instead of the patriotic red,white and blue of the last one (I'm sporting number four); however, it holds a secret revealed only in darkness when it glows brightly all around. It reminds me of a movie of a forgotten name but a long-remembered scene in which two people go for a romp in bed in a totally darkened room. The woman asks if he is wearing protection.

"No."
"Well, go get it."

He leaves the bed, rummages around and you hear the opening of the little package, a crackle, a pop, and he turns to walk back to the bed--something you know only because you see a brilliant blue glowing "stick" wobbling through the air as he gets confused in the darkness and fumbles to return to his now questionably ardent lover.

Of course, this has nothing to do with gardening and wet Julys.

In spite of my handicap and the now fading belief that we may move at any moment I want some flowers blooming in my yard. Bill helps me select and plant some ornamental sweet potatoe vines in dark purple and bright green, some purple lobelia, some white something and does all the lifting to get them potted. I act as scooper of very small amounts of dirt and director of placement. "A little more to the left, please." "Oops, my little Deruta, Italy, born terracotta lamb has lost an ear. Can you glue it back on?" Arrangement complete, my gardening is done for the season.

Requiring no effort at all is the amazing moss supported in nearly my entire yard. Rainey Julys appeal greatly to this impossible-to-mow plant. The yard is surrounded by enormously tall, swaying pines with a foreground of mixed deciduous trees including a somewhat deformed but lovely birch. Shade rules three-quarters of the turf, creating moss about four inches deep and making it a perfect place for the little voles to burrow around looking for whatever it is they eat. Walking on the moss is akin to stepping on green foam rubber. I wonder if I step on a vole.

I have house guests this weekend and they are finally waking up. It is time for me to supervise the making of breakfast.

A new way

My first blog entry. I have mixed emotions about this process. Not exactly clear where I'll go with it, but I think it is all a part of being on the brink of something life changing. I have been working very hard for nearly 43 years in a job that pretty much defines me as a person; a job that consumes far more of my life than it was ever intended to; than I ever should have allowed. A job that in recent years and months has caused me to make the word "overwhelming" a frequent part of my vocabulary.

"I feel overwhelmed."
"The workload is overwhelming."
"The stress is overwhelming me."
"The hours overwhelm my personal life and I get nothing done for myself."

I need to make a change--the kind that terrifies me because of its immensity. I need to retire, to move, to slow down, to find a new way of knowing and seeing myself. I remember the last time I sought a new way of seeing myself. It was tough, painful, scary and lonesome in the early '90's when I turned my life upside down by moving alone to Germany. It turned out to be an enormously positive and rewarding experience. Today's search for a new way will take me back home to Virginia as a retiree; older, wiser, less frightened and not alone. A wonderful man I met in Germany is now part of that rewarding experience, giving me courage to step out into the unknown along with him because he has been living that same life of stress and other's expectations.

Sometimes the way forward is strewn with pitfalls. Earlier this month while working a project in Italy for my public relations job, one of those pitfalls shoved me right over on my face into the asphalt outside an hotel as our group headed to dinner for the last night in a beachside town near Pisa. While my face went unmarked, my left wrist broke and my knees took a beating. Several friends and co-workers went without dinner to stand beside me in the busy emergency room to which a well-worn Italian ambulance delivered me. Several hours later I had been X rayed, bones set (think injured cowboy, leather strap in teeth and straight whiskey pouring down my throat, none of which I had), and casted in enough solid plaster to make the nearby Leaning Tower stand a bit straighter--something I now was having a hard time doing. I knew my immediate future was taking a new way quite different from what I had been imagining.

After a fitful night under the care of a well-qualified, mother-of-seven friend of mine, I was helped into public presentation in the breakfast room where I answered questions from my co-workers and strangers not on scene for my spectacle. Most of us would reconvene shortly at the nearby Pisa airport, our project completed, heading home. Some of us would find that return difficult.

Placed in a wheelchair in hopes of getting priority boarding, I was, instead refused even the right to board due to my recent injury. Too dangerous for me they said. After exhausting the rental car options at the "aeroporto," myself and two others were taken back to the military installation on which we had been working for days. There, the funny and warm rental car manager who had been enjoying a rash of great business from our project, provided us with a BMW and wished us a safe trip. Thirteen hours later, we rolled into my driveway at 1:30 a.m., Sunday, June 7, exhausted and ready to be home.