Where have all the buzzards gone?

     Where have all the buzzards gone? Long time passing. Where have all the buzzards gone? Long time ago...

     You may be wondering what's up with the sad Pete Seeger song. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a buzzard afficionado. I don't particularly like any of the dead-and-decaying-flesh predators. Creatures such as bottom sucking catfish and carnivorous maggots have a way of turning the stomach.  Goats I can tolerate, since they are more dumpster-divers than road-kill gourmands, but buzzards can make one a little nauseous. The image of some foul and sinister fowl dining on flesh-a-la-macadam is not an appetizing thought, but I do appreciate the cleanup job they do to keep road kill from over-running our highways. I certainly wouldn't want to be one, but I value their efforts and am mighty glad when they have finished off a lump of mashed up innards scattered across the highway. So naturally, I was distressed to discover that buzzards were falling down on the job on the backroads of South Carolina.
      It began with our regular drive down Highway Nine from Chester to Lancaster. One morning, Sissey and I  noticed a rather large and obviously dead creature lying on the edge of the road.  It appeared to be a swan, but due to it's contorted position, the exact species was hard to discern. It was brilliantly white, covered in feathers, and stiff with rigor mortis. It caught our attention because of it's size and the fact that swans are not exactly prevalent on Highway Nine. I may have been mistaken, it may have been an errant alabaster turkey escaped from some farm, but in our opinion it was a swan.  We noticed it again as we drove home that afternoon.
     The next morning, said bird was still lying deceased on the edge of the road.  And again, in the afternoon, the mound of feathers appeared undisturbed, ruffling only when caught in the draft of passing cars. For the next week, we watched that dead bird, just lying there on the roadside, intact but very, very dead. 
    Day after day, Sissey and I noted the bird's location and condition. It appeared to remain fully intact, unmoved,  and untouched. In fact, it didn't even appear to be rotting or decomposing in any way.  It just lay there, stiff and large and white and dead.
     After two weeks, that damn bird was still lying on the side of the road.  I was starting to get agitated at this point, because it seemed unnatural for that prime decaying flesh to just go to waste on the edge of the highway.  Not a single predator had nibbled or gnawed on a single feather. It didn't even appear that maggots were working from the inside to reduce the bird to a pile of fluff. It just sat there, day after day, dead, dead, dead.  It was uncanny.  It just wasn't right.
     Several days later, in the way that only happens on college campuses, the subject of maggots and buzzards came up in, of all things, geology class.  The professor had been telling the class a story of a road-kill deer her father had dragged home one day, only to discover when gutting the buck that maggots had taken up residence in the carcass well before he had claimed it. This led to a discussion of the decomposition of flesh and the creatures that thrive on rotting carcasses.
      At this point, the professor mentioned that her very favorite bird was a turkey vulture, aka buzzard. I know you may be thinking that is odd, that most people would choose something majestic like a peacock, or brilliant like a cardinal, or delicate like a hummingbird, but Ms. Martek loved the sinister and dark turkey vulture. It alarmed her that they seemed to be disappearing from the horizon. She searched for them on her daily commute from Columbia, kept her eyes glued to the skies and perused the edges of the interstate, but had not seen one buzzard in many weeks.  Not a single black wing spanned the skies. Not one scavenger scoured the highway.  Dead possums and smashed racoons, an occassional unfortunate deer, an unlucky squirrel or two....all tasty morsels left untouched on I-77 and Highway Nine, not a buzzard in sight.
      As a scientist, she was interested in why the buzzards were disappearing, where they had migrated to, what had caused their numbers to recede, when the decline began. As a commuter, I just wanted to know how that dead bird was going to get cleaned up off the road.
     We mentioned the dead swan to her and commented on the lack of buzzards disposing of the flesh. She, too, had noted the carcass and the fact that not a single vulture had arrived to begin the process of devouring the bird. We agreed to conduct a little informal field observation and note how long it took for the carcass to disappear.
      And then, one morning as we rounded the curve in the road, there they were. Surrounding the still-gleaming white feathers of the dead swan, a small group of no more than twelve black buzzards flapped and bobbed and pecked and pulled, devouring the premium-aged meat with determination.   Even as our car whizzed by, they barely moved out of it's path as they claimed their prize and scattered feathers across the tarmac. It was, I must say, a beautiful sight.
      We couldn't wait to get to school to let Ms. Martek know her birds had returned. Why it took so long for them to arrive, where they had been in the meantime, we will never know, but they had finally returned and were busy on the job.
      We still don't know why their numbers are declining, or if they are in fact disappearing, but it is obvious that turkey vultures are not as common as they were before. Is it because we are disturbing the balance of nature with our progress, our industry, our development, our claiming of the world as ours alone? Is it because we are polluting our skies and our streams and our lands with our waste and our toxins? Is it because we are disrupting the natural order of the world with our rapid pace of life, with our incessant consumption of it's resources?  I don't know.  I only know that I don't see as many buzzards as I once did, and if they leave us for good, we will miss them more than we ever thought possible. I only know that if there are no buzzards to devour the decaying flesh of the animals we have killed with our automobiles, the medians will quickly become foul cemeteries that pollute our commutes. Our scenic byways will reek of rotting carcasses and become congested with our road kill.  Not a pretty thought for our morning drive to school.  Won't go well with that cup of coffee in the console.
       Funny how important a nasty old bird becomes when it seems to be disappearing.

       When will we ever learn, when will we ever learn? 

The Love Stump

     I love college.  After our first full day of classes on Thursday, we were rewarded with a three day weekend.  The first day of school was an unremarkable event, but one that left Sissey and me with the feeling that we  needed a quick recharging before the frenetic pace of full-time academia kicked in on Monday. The reliable and time-proven solution was to head to the hills--those wonderful smokey-blue mountains of North Carolina--and escape the heat of South Carolina and the looming prospect of the sophomore year.  We threw our backpacks and duffle bags into the car, loaded up Mr. Big, threw in a stack of books and a hamper full of goodies, and set our sights on the Blue Ridge skyline.
    We arrived Thursday evening to temperatures that were twenty degrees cooler than what we had left at the base of the mountains. We were loving life in the hills, loving the lack of humidity, loving the prospect of three glorious days. I was loving the freedom from schedules and commutes, and Sissey was loving the reunion with her friend, Bonnie, who had just returned from a three month stay in the Florida Keys and was spending the weekend with us.  Life was good, and we were loving it.
     The first day was rainy and sleepy, and we spent it hunkered down under blankets on the couch. The roads were so fog-laden that even a trip down the parkway to get groceries was a risky endeavor, so we survived on Orville Redenbacher popcorn and 900 channels of satellite movies. 
     The cold front blew out during the night, and Saturday dawned brilliant and blue. We set our sights on a picnic and headed off for the woods and trails of the Moses Cone National Forest.  Settling on a table by a creek in  one of the parks, we unloaded our hamper and cooler and spread out our feast. We did a number on a bucket of extra-crispy chicken that would have made the Colonel proud and finished it off with some Ghiradelli brownies my mother had sent with us.  Something about eating in the woods by a stream made our appetites hearty and our meal even more delicious...we were loving that meal.
    After we finished our dinner, Sissey and Bonnie headed for a stroll in the woods to work off a couple of extra biscuits they had ingested.  I stayed behind to wipe up the crumbs, gather up the trash, and stash the meager remnants in the car. After finishing my chores, I planned to head down the path in search of Bonnie and Sissey.
     An elderly couple had spread out their picnic at the table next to ours. We had nodded hellos to each other upon first arriving, had spread out identical buckets of chicken, and had finished our meals at about the same time. They had lingered at their table as I packed up our basket, but as I returned from my car they got up and began to walk along the path directly in front of me.  At the creek's edge, they stopped and appeared to be gazing at the surrounding scenery.  The husband stood quietly by the side of the path, his hands tucked into his pockets, as his wife  slowly walked  along the trail.
      I could tell by the way she tarried along the edge of the creek, her disposable camera dangling in her hand, that she had something on her mind.  I stopped and knelt by the path, pretending to be interested in a cardinal flower blooming along the creekbed, trying to give them time to move ahead of me. Instead, she headed in my direction, swinging the camera by the strap attached to her wrist as she glanced back at her husband. As I watched her approach,  I suddenly understood the hidden message she was trying to send me.
     I waved hello and asked,  "Would you like for me to take a picture of the two of you?"
     The woman instantly heaved a sigh of relief and broke into a smile.
      "Oh, that would be wonderful," she replied. "Are you sure you wouldn't mind?"
     "Of course not! I'd be glad to!" I said. "How about down here by the creek with the meadow in the background?"
      The couple, clearly used to a lifetime of walking in tandem, smiled and held hands as they moved into position by the rippling stream. They struck a pose in front of Boone Fork Creek, comfortably leaning into each other, arms around each other's waist, and laughed as they said to me,
    "Today is our Fiftieth wedding anniversary!"
     It made my heart smile when I heard that.
     "Oh my! Congratulations!" I began. "That is quite an accomplishment in today's world. I'm so happy for both of you! Fifty years, how about that! That is just wonderful!!"
    I was thrilled to be part of their celebration, to be the only attendant of a couple that had been married for fifty years. They had chosen to celebrate their golden anniversary with a simple picnic along the picturesque banks of a  mountain stream, hesitant to ask a stranger to record the moment with a single picture.  It made my heart smile even more to be the one that captured that milestone in the marriage of this unknown couple; I was honored to have walked into the midst of their golden celebration and even more honored to have been asked to perform the simple task of snapping a picture. 
     I took several snapshots as the couple smiled and posed along the banks of the Boone Fork.  They had been embarrassed to impose upon my time and were oblivious to the joy I was receiving from being the only participant in their golden anniversary.  I congratulated them on their enduring marriage, commented again on the rarity of fifty year nuptials in our modern world, and handed the disposable camera back to the couple. With a smile still on my face, I ambled down the path in search of Sissey and Bonnie.
    I found them several  turns down in a mossy grove of trees and ferns.  As we sat on the stump of an old fallen tree, watching the creek as it rippled and churled over a rocky ledge, I told them about my encounter with the golden couple.  We rejoiced for them  and saluted their fifty years of love as we rested in the peaceful quiet of the forest.
       When the late afternoon sun began to dance  through the leaves of the birch and the pungent smell of galax  began to rise in the air, we  rose from our perch and headed back to the car. As we walked along the trail, we each looked for treasures Mother Nature had hidden in the woods.  I spotted mushrooms popping through the spongy floor of the forest, their red and yellow caps pushing arrogantly up through the mossy ground. Bonnie spied tough, leathery ferns sprouting agressively from the decaying humus of former vegetation.  We watched as delicate little lady bugs and graceful grandaddy longlegs teetered and swayed along the edges of the fronds.
   It was Sissey, however,  who discovered the greatest treasure of all as she wandered through the woods.  From her side of the path, she yelled out to us,  "Come over here! You have to see this!!"  Bonnie and I quickly headed to her location as she grinned and pointed to a moss-covered tree stump embedded on the forest floor.
    "Can you believe it? Look at what I found!" she laughed.

     And there it was, a perfect heart-shaped stump, covered in tender green moss, glowing in the light of the afternoon sun.  New life was sprouting from the decaying remnants of the fallen tree, as if to prove that love cannot die. It was the perfect symbol of enduring love.  It was the perfect ending to our unplanned celebration of a golden wedding anniversary, as if the forest were proclaiming that love endures all things, can be found in the strangest of  places,  and is always waiting to be discovered.
    "I found it!" she proudly declared. "I found the Love Stump!"

     It had been a lovely weekend, a lovely day, a lovely picnic, and a lovely celebration. To top it all off,  Sissey had discovered the greatest treasure of all. She had found nature's purest expression of enduring love.
     She had found the "Love Stump."

THE LOVE STUMP!

    Ah yes, life was good, and we were loving it!

Well, You Got Something

      Heading back to South Carolina on Sunday afternoon, Sissey was in a less than stellar mood. It made for a very long drive, each mile punctuated by her snippy comments and snarly remarks.  Perhaps it was because summer was drawing to an end, perhaps it was the extreme heat and smothering humidity, perhaps it was having to leave her brother and father and home behind, perhaps it was the nervous anticipation about beginning another school year, but whatever the cause, our gal was not in a good mood.
      I kept asking every couple of miles, "Sissey, what's the matter?"
      "Nothing," she would grumble.
     A few miles latter, I tried again.
     "Sissey, are you OK?"
      "Yes," she growled.
     And finally, "Do you have something wrong with you?"
       "NO!" she barked.
     "Well, you got something," I shot  back, knowing this would bring a smile.
It did, she had to laugh, as I knew she would, because that one little line contained  the gift of humor, the ability to make us smile in the most intense of situations, and the secret that could make us laugh at ourselves. It was a gift innocently given to our family by a homeless man, four little words that he hurled at my daughter one Friday morning as she served him coffee.    
    Every family needs a good motto, and we came about ours naturally. It was ascribed to us by a perfect stranger, not of our own choosing, not a saying we would have originally selected,  not necessarily a flattering description of the Daly clan, but it was an apt one at best and we were graciously claiming it as our own. Quite simply, it suited us, and we couldn't have come up with a better motto if we had paid the scribes of old Scotland to select one for us. The words that landed on our familial foreheads were so honestly hailed, so spontaneouly spoken,  that we had to name them and claim them and adopt them as our own.
    It happened one Friday morning during a school service project in the basement of a church. St. Peter's Church is an historic inner-city congregation located next to the capital of Virginia. It was dedicated in 1834, making it the first and oldest Catholic Church in Richmond. The cathedral was built on a street named Grace, which seemed to foreshadow the natural expectations that God's goodness and mercy would be bestowed upon those who knocked at His door. Over the years, the inner-city church participated in a homeless feeding program, a multi-denominational organization which provided Richmond's local homeless residents the opportunity to enjoy a free hot meal, a warm place to sit for an hour or so, some friendly conversation, and the ministrations of a multitude of cheerful volunteers.  Each church selected one day a week to host the program, with Friday being the day of honor for St. Peter's.
  Sissey attended a small private school in Richmond called Northstar Academy. The school had been created to provide a quality education for students with a wide variety of disabilities, and it provided a safe place for children whose lives were complicated with disabilities that often made them the target of bullies, teasing, ridicule, or ostracism at other schools.  We laughed when Sissey arrived home after her first day there and announced, "I love this school. Everybody there has issues and we all just talk about'em. It's no big deal!" It was a relief for her to finally be at a school where she wasn't the only one that was "different."
     Northstar Academy was dedicated to giving their students the most normal educational experience possible, even while dealing with issues as complicated as Cerebral Palsy, Fragile X Syndrome, Asperger's, Autism, Down's Syndrome.  For their very first time, these "different" kids were now playing on the basketball and soccer teams, were selected as cheerleaders, were elected Class President and Homecoming Queen, were running clubs and holding fundraisers and attending proms and making friends.  These students were not only being nurtured and loved, they were also expected to give back to the community, albeit a community that had often rejected them. It was an important part of the educational package for the students to recognize that they had the capacity and responsiblity to be contributing members of society. Community Service was a big deal, and it was required of every student before they could graduate.
      For many years, thanks in part to the guidance of the very catholic Dean of Students,  the senior class had chosen to participate in the inner-city homeless feeding program  at St. Peter's Church.  So each Friday, they loaded into the school's blue and white mini-bus and made the trek downtown.
    Upon arriving at the church, the students greeted the familiar faces of the regular homeless clientele, then donned latex gloves and hair nets and headed to their work stations.  Some served hot food from the large stainless steel servers, some rolled napkins and silverware into neat little bundles, some handed out plates or filled glasses with ice or prepared the salt and pepper shakers. Everyone had a job to do, and Sissey was the coffee girl.  Her particular chore was to sit at the coffee table and cheerfully hand out cups while also keeping  the creamer bowls filled with powdered dairy product and the sugar bowls replenished when necessary. True to her nature, she took the job seriously and was adamant that the creamer and sugar never ran low. 
    Part of the irony of cerebral palsy is that the harder you try to make your muscles complete a fine motor skill, the harder they work against you. As Sissey scooped sugar and creamer out of the plastic storage bins to fill the small bowls, her hands would tremble, part of the "palsy" that gives name to her condition. Of course, with shaking hands there also comes spillage, so part of the powder ended up on the table and not in the bowls, which was not a big deal for most of those at the homeless shelter.  It was a free meal served by volunteers, after all, and most people were just happy to be there and to have the prospect of a hot lunch.
     But oh, there always has to be one in the bunch that has to make a big deal out of everything.  One particularly scruffy fellow, perhaps a little irritable due to lack of proper nourishment, perhaps just not a pleasant person to begin with, but whatever it was that plagued him, he was not happy with our gal's performance at the coffee table. 
     He sauntered up to get his free cup of joe, watched her trembling hands scoop his requested sugar and cream into the mug, then he snarled at her," What's the matter with you? You scared or sumpin?"
    "No sir, I'm not scared," she replied with a smile.
    "Well, what's the matter with you?" he growled again. "You got a NERVE PROBLEM?"
     "No sir, " she answered. "I don't have a nerve problem."
     "Well, YOU GOT SOMETHING!" he yelled as he grabbed his coffee and stomped off.
     Oh, you just had to laugh. And she did.  By the time she arrived home from school, she could barely tell the story without laughing till tears streamed down her face. We all laughed, laughed until we cried, laughed until we almost wet our pants.  Then we had to call everyone we could think of and tell them.  What a genius of a man, an indigent from the streets of Richmond, an unknown soul we will never meet again, but the seer into the deepest part of the soul of our family.  His pronouncement of 'You got something" summed up our entire lives, our entire world for that fact.
    "Oh, mom, he was just so right," Sissey proclaimed. "We've all got something!"
     The fact that our family motto was ascribed to us in a church sort of made it holy, as if it had been bestowed upon us with God's blessing, so we embraced it heartily and happily and with great gusto. And now, barely a week goes by that something doesn't happen, or that someone in this big ole world doesn't do something, or that someone doesn't say something-- I can guarantee you  that just something will happen that makes us all stop, scratch our heads, pause for a second and then say with a great big grin, "Well, you've got something!"
    So Sissey's got something, and this week  it happens to be the "back to school blues." Tomorrow will bring issues of it's own, and she will deal with those with the same grit and determination that have gotten her this far, and when things get a little dicey, she'll just have to laugh and realize, we've ALL got something.

The Sophomore Years....

     And so, the second year begins.
     It seems impossible, but a year has passed since I first began to write about  the journey my then-nineteen-year-old daughter and I were getting ready to embark upon--a four year adventure that would be called "College". Our voyage would be more like "College with a Twist," which sounded like a pretty awesome cocktail but was actually a plan we had formulated to help Sissey navigate towards a college degree. It was going to be a rather unique experience and one heck of a ride.
    The plan was to:
A. Move to South Carolina with a mound of luggage the size of a small mountain,
B. Reside with my parents on a temporary basis while proceeding to take over the entire upstairs of their home,
C.Enroll Sissey in classes at the University of South Carolina-Lancaster and drag me along as her school- appointed scribe,
D. Matriculate as quickly as possible so we could both return to life as we formerly knew it.
     To top it all off, we brought along for the ride our teacup poodle, Mr. Big, simply because he was spoiled rotten and cried pitifully whenever we left him home. Plus, he had a really cute wardrobe that would be perfect for all campus functions and he loved car rides, school, fast food, long naps, and students of all kinds.  He absolutely had to come with us.
     We arrived in South Carolina on a typically hot and moist August evening. I quickly unloaded the car and we spent a sleepless night trying to get settled in before nervously heading out for classes the next morning. We left Mr. Big crying in my mother's lap, drenching his polo shirt with tears only a bit smaller than ours.
   We had become accustomed to travelling a different path in life ever since Sissey's premature birth twenty years ago, when she and her twin brother had decided to arrive in this world three months before their scheduled due date. She had made her debut into the world in shades of blue, all two pounds of her, a silent but wide-eyed and observant baby.  After her first gasping breath was made possible with the assistance of tubes and oxygen, after her blue blood had warmed to pink flesh, after she was safely tucked into the incubator that she would call home for the next nine weeks, after  I poked a trembling, sterile hand through the port to touch her cheek for the first time,  after her first grasp of my hand with fingers the size of toothpicks, after this rocky and tremulous start to life,  I knew we would be travelling some very exciting and unchartered paths together. I looked at that fragile wisp of life so determined to survive and vowed to take her on one heck of a trip around the globe as soon as she got out of there.
     Sissey graduated from the NICU when she topped four pounds. Having finally been released to the haven of home, she was reunited with her brother, and they slept and ate and played and  grew and began to explore the world around them. He quickly toddled off to life as he would discover it, a typical little boy delighted with dirt and bugs and trees and  sticks.  She, however, spent her toddler years not exactly toddling; instead, she crawled through life while embracing the mystery and joy and glee of each new discovery in her brand new world.  A physical disability resulting from her pre-term birth did nothing to diminish her curiosity with the world around her, a world which she was still very much enthralled with and engaged in, even though she orbited on a different path. 
     We all survived the fascinated exploration of toddlerhood, the wonder of pre-school, the wide-eyed awe of elementary school, the horribly uncomfortable world of middle school, the drama and tears and hormonal surges of high school. Finally, with two seniors in one household, we lived through two proms and two Baccaluareates and two graduations and two post-graduation festivities, surviving the year while barely clinging to our sanity. Her brother packed up and headed off to college, but suddenly, Sissey's orbit seemed to stall after she crossed the threshold of graduation and faced the rest of her life, the unknown future, the grown-up world.  Unsure which path to take next, she took a year off to work, mature, grow in confidence, plot her course, and stash away twelve paychecks with the strict frugality learned from her tight-fisted mother. The planning year passed quickly, the options were weighed,  the applications were mailed,  the decision was made, her bags were packed, and she was ready. As for me, I was still clinging to the pre-school years, thumbing through old scrapbooks, fingering remnants of years gone by, and wishing I could spin the world backwards.
     And now, college. College? College! Who knew how that venture was going to turn out! I was 27 years out of my last educational foray, Sissey hadn't cracked a book since high school graduation, and we had no idea if either one of us would be able to handle the transition to campus life. We were facing a blank canvas, an empty journal, a story waiting to be written but with the ending still unknown. It was terrifying and exciting, a sweet and salty cupcake waiting for us to take a big bite.With our bags packed and our backpacks ready, we left our Richmond world behind. We moved back to my hometown, full of anxious anticipation, unknown roads rolling out before us, nervous excitement and energy churning in our guts, both wondering what the year ahead would bring.
     Sissey's life was about to start shifting in extremes.. She was transitioning from a small, private school of just under one hundred students to a large public university of several thousand unknown faces. More than that, she was transitioning from a city of over a million residents-- a city full of malls and museums and movie theaters and monuments-- to a small rural town of several thousand families, most of whom had known each other since birth, had gone to school together since kindergarten, and whose social circles were already tightly knit and closely formed. Worse than that, there was not a single Starbucks in sight. All were daunting lifestyle changes, all were studies in opposites.  She was leaving behind  life as she knew it and was delving into a new community, a new culture, and a new campus.  I was leaving behind not only my home but also my husband, a son at UVA, my  standard poodles, my friends, my church, my community, and my social life. I was jumping head first into a world I had graduated from almost thirty years ago, and I was not getting any younger in the process.  I did not, however, feel like I was walking backwards.  This was a journey forward if ever there were one, and I was excited to see where the road would take us and how this jaunt would turn out.
     Life had been an incredible trip up to this point, full of twists and turns, joy and heartbreak, laughter and tears, full of unknowns and imponderables, impossibles and unbelieveables. It had been the best twenty year adventure I could have ever imagined, never would have asked for, and wouldn't have traded for all the diamonds in Africa. It had been a wild, roller coaster kind of ride, with us slowly ratcheting up each steep hill one clickety notch at a time, always knowing we were about to plummet over the top and couldn't turn back, screaming with delight as we gripped the bar and held on tight, finishing each ride gasping for breath and with a wind-tunnel smile plastered across our faces, vowing never to do that again. That's how life should be lived, how we had lived it so far, and the next climb up that ratchety hill would be no different. This hill was simply called College, and we were determined to finish the ride and roll into home with a Cheshire cat grin plastered on our face and a sheepskin diploma clutched in hand.
  I invited an unknown audience to share this journey with us by posting our adventures on the internet, and I have been overwhelmed by those of you who have chosen to follow our simple life. I brought my daughter into a community I had left years ago, and that same community quickly embraced her and absorbed her into their world with love and encouragement, leaving me smiling in her shadow. It's good to be home, it's good to be in college, it's good to have this time with my daughter, it's good to experience life's changes,  it's all just good.
     I hope you will stick with us as we enter the Sophomore Year, the second phase in the Home Bound College Project. Strap on your seatbelts, grab hold of the safety bar, and take a deep breath. The roller coaster ride is ready to begin, and we're not quite sure how it will end.

Ninety years strong

     What do you call a 93 year old woman who still cleans her own bathrooms, plants a massive garden, cans and freezes enough vegetables to last several winters,  provides all the maintanance and  upkeep on her own house plus her childhood home, and  hosts a family reunion each year for 80 to 100  relatives?  In this part of the cotton patch, you'd call her Aunt Virginia. You'd feel lucky to know her, you'd greatly admire her, you'd try to emulate her, and you'd have plenty of stories to tell about her. 
      Virginia Spence was a red-headed spitfire whose Irish parents immigrated to America the old-fashioned way-- legally. They worked hard to earn their American citizenship and then instilled a work ethic in their brood of twelve that would shame most modern day Americans, if shame were still a recognizable emotion. They were everyday Americans who worked tirelessly, lived honestly, served patriotically, gave selflessly, saved frugally, worshipped dutifully, loved deeply, and built America into a nation you could be proud of.
     Virginia married Henry, a Dutchman from Wisconsin,  and they settled down in the house they built on the Spence family farm. Their home was quiet and orderly until the day a noisy family with four little kids moved into the house two fields down-- kids who quickly discovered the excitement of living next door to a couple who had no children of their own. We spent every day running across those fields to bang on their screen door, hollering to ask if anybody was home, begging them to let us come in. It was a treat to enter a home where children were still a marvel, where quiet and order had never been upended by a pack of rowdy youngsters.  They let us plow through their home, run wild through their yard, explore their barns and woods and fields, climb their trees, pick their flowers, and dig in their gardens. We held screaming contests in their front yard, yelling our heads off to see who could be the loudest. We chased lightening bugs under their pecan trees and dared each other to go to the cemetery in the woods where the Spence clan rested in peace. We stomped through their cow pastures and swam in their creek. We cut every Christmas tree we ever had from the woods behind their house and built secret forts out of the old cedar branches afterwards.  We asked to eat supper with them or spend the night with them so often that they finally decided they had to either shoot us or adopt us. Thankfully for us, they decided to adopt us as their own, and the family bond was forged.
     Each summer, they dragged us across the country on vacations with them, took us camping and hiking, taught us to plant and grow our own vegetables, remembered our every birthday, celebrated every holiday with us, and loved us like we were their very own.  Aunt Virginia and Uncle Henry have been part of our family for so long now that I forget to remember when they weren't actually kin.
    Of course, they have real relatives, the blood kind that you don't get to pick but you have to put up with anyway and try to love in spite of it.  The remaining descendants of the original dozen gather yearly on the old family grounds to feast, catch up, swap photos and stories, and reminisce.  And now, it's August, and in several weeks upwards of 80 real Spence relatives will be arriving at Aunt Virginia's home for their annual family reunion and picnic.
     It's a lot of work for anyone, especially the over-ninety crowd, but she has hosted this gathering for many years, loves doing it, and goes about it with the Irish-American work ethic her parents taught her at an early age. To prepare for the influx of cousins, she and Uncle Henry engage in a pre-reunion regime that is exhausting just to describe.
      First, she cleans her own home. Top to bottom.  Spit and shine clean, the kind where you use elbow grease and can see your reflection in tabletops afterwards. Every corner is cleaned, every cobweb and dust bunny unsettled, every nook and cranny polished. Next, the Spence family home gets the same treatment. It is opened and aired from top to bottom, creaky old windows sliding up to let dusty air escape. Every bathroom is scrubbed, every bed stripped, every dish in the kitchen washed, every utensil polished, every floor waxed and buffed.  She has Uncle Henry running all over creation with a whole separate list of chores. Walls are repainted and windowpanes washed. Tables and chairs are set up on the lawn, tents are erected, grass is cut, trees and hedges are trimmed, and kitchens in both houses are stocked with casseroles and cakes and pies. This takes place every year, without skipping a single step or taking a single shortcut. It's the Irish-American way, and it's how she does things.
   At age 90, several months before the scheduled reunion,  Aunt Virginia injured her back while cleaning and needed  surgery to repair a few disintegrating vertebra. The orthopedic surgeon announced that as a general rule, he did not operate on 90 year old backs, but when he met Aunt Virginia, he had no option but to procede with surgery. His exact words were, " When I heard that a 90 year old was coming in for a consultation, I thought it would be for pain management and perhaps some therapy, but when Virginia told me what her activities were on a daily basis, I knew I had to fix that back. I couldn't let someone as active and alert as Virginia face the rest of her life in a wheelchair." She sailed through surgery, some rehab, and was back in action in time to get the spring garden planted and the house put in order before the August reunion.
   Last year, she faced a bout of cancer on her leg and developed a lesion on her toe that ate the flesh clear to the bone. She required several rounds of radiation treatments which left her a little exhausted and spending most of the day in a wheelchair. With the upcoming reunion  only weeks away, time was running short and there was much to be done. Knowing that she would not let me just show up to help, I gave her an early birthday present, one she could not refuse--the gift of cleaning her house and helping her get ready for the reunion.  One particular chore was weighing heavily on her mind.
     Being still confined to a wheelchair, Aunt Virginia had been especially worried about getting the long  hall floor polished, the one that ran smack dab through the center of her house.  I told her not to worry, I'd be glad to give it a polish. When I offered to help, I was thinking that I would squirt some Mop-n-Glo on the floor and give it a once-over with a Swifter. Not the Irish-American way, I soon learned.  First, the rugs had to be rolled up, the floor swept and vacuumed and mopped, then a coat of wax  had to be hand-applied.  I tackled all that and thought I was finished, until Aunt Virginia told me I needed to come back in three days after the wax had hardened to do the buffing. 
     Three days later, I arrived to find a monster machine waiting in the hall, big buffing pads ready to whir up and down the hardwood. It was actually kind of fun, running that stainless steel buffer up and down the hall, trying to hold on without being vibrated to death.  I visualized it as a cellulite-reducing exercise, convinced the vibrations of the machine were just melting away globs of fat as it shook every inch of my body.  I buffed that baby to a shine that would put a bowling alley to shame. Made me want to pull a Tom Cruise and glide across the floor in my socks and underwear while belting out "Old Timey Rock-n-Roll."
     And now, at age 93, while once again preparing for the upcoming August reunion, Aunt Virginia took a major tumble while cleaning the shower. She slipped on some soapy tile, knocked her head on the way down, and crushed her shoulder and elbow. It's been a bit of a set-back for her reunion regime. Black and blue, she is back again in her wheelchair, damaged arm dangling by her side, waiting for another round of visits to the orthopedic surgeon. I pray it is the same one she had before, and that he can put her back together before her company arrives.  She has things to do, mind you, and needs to get busy.
  We called to check on her this morning, and she was wheeling around the house doing some one-armed cleaning from her wheelchair. I've always been told a little hard work never killed anyone, but that has got to be painful.  I have no doubt, however,  that when the crowd rolls in for the August gathering, the house will be in perfect condition and the cupboards will be stocked, the beds will be made and the porch will be swept.
     So what do you call a 93 year old woman like that? A woman who for nine decades has never slowed down, never sat down empty-handed, never left a chore unfinished, never shirked a responsibility, never taken off for a little "me-time," never once thought she should call it quits? A woman who is ninety years strong and as alert and independent and active as an 18 year old? A woman who won't let a little thing like a few broken bones or a touch of cancer slow her down? A woman who in her nineties still plans a year ahead for the next family reunion which she will be hosting?
      I call her amazing, an inspiration, a dynamo, a role model.
      I call her Aunt Virginia.