Reflections on Summer 2013

A little late to post here on my blog, but with the doldrums of winter starting already, I thought I'd post my reflections on Summer 2013 (written in September)...

“Dinner is served!”, Mom proclaimed as she placed a meal of chicken casserole, sweet potatoes and her version of salad on the table.  We all gathered around and I started the conversation off.  “Well, before we get into how everyone’s day was, I have some things I’d like to ask,” I began.  “I need to write my annual piece on how my summer was but instead of MY memories, I want YOUR memories.”  

“Dad,” I continued, “Why don’t you start?  What is one word that you would use to describe your summer?”  My dad pondered for a second, at first a little blankly and then with finger pointing to the air he said, “MAAHH-velous”.  Jake rolled his eyes and said, “Mine was Supercallifragilistic!”.  I surveyed the rest, my Mom said, “Short!” to which Ron exclaimed, “I was going to say LONG – I had the kids all day every day!” and Emma finished us with, “Funtasticalious!”

“Ok everyone, what about your favorite memories from Summer 2013?” I asked a new question.  The answers began pouring in.  “Going to Florida with Ron.  We could golf every day,” Dad said.  Ron answered, “How many times did we actually golf, though?”  Dad laughingly replied, “I said we COULD golf everyday”.  My Dad was really thinking about this and kept going, “We had such a nice time on that trip, good food, good project work, it was cool every day.”  I said, “I notice you didn’t say good company.” To which we all laughed.  

My Mom said her favorite memory was the Cedar Point trip she and my Dad took with the Grandkids and my sister.  Emma said her favorite memory was watching her brother play baseball, and of course riding her bike.  Ron said our Pool Party with all our friends was his best memory and Jake summed it all up with “getting fro-yo at Yo Bubbs!”.

 

By this point, the group was ready for a new question and much to my surprise, ready to participate.  So I asked, “What are you going to miss the most about summer?”  My Mom promptly replied, “Seeing my Grandkids and my Kids, including my kids in law, Ron.”  Emma said she’d miss the long days and sunshine, to which my Dad replied, “Yes that and the heat!”  Ron said he was going to miss shirking his responsibilities and Jake said he would miss swimming the most.

I didn’t share my thoughts and feelings as the interviewer but I will in my final report.  I started the summer with one goal, to enjoy every moment.  I feel like the summer of 2013 brought me the most simple joy that I’ve had in a summer in quite some time.  I slowed down, worked less, paid more attention.  I listened to my kids more and tried to reach out to friends as much as I could.  I went for day trips to visit people we’d been promising to come see for years and made each day count.  The weather was beautiful and each day I was reminded that these are my good old days.

All in all, I think the summer of 2013 was about spending time with family and friends and when we all summed it up over a meal, it felt right, if not a little bittersweet to say goodbye to it for a few cold months.  Now, to make the most of autumn…

Encounters with Venus

Today, June 5, 2012, Venus will orbit between the Earth and the Sun.  This event takes place once every 105 years; the last time it occurred was 1907, the next time will be in 2117.  These events, and many others, tend to make me think about history – both personal and world history.  I do tend to look backward as much as I do forward and wonder about how things were before my time, and what will occur in my lifetime and after. 

In 1912, my oldest grandfather would be born – today he would be about to turn 100 years old.  When the Venus event occurred in 1907, his father, Irwin Miller; was 22 years old.  He was living in Chicago, ready to make his mark on the world.  I doubt that Irwin knew the Venus event even occurred; maybe there was a small write up in the Chicago Tribune but he was more than likely working or just not paying attention to such things as astronomy.  My family comes from working-class stock so I’m sure being a practical, meticulous young man, the son of German immigrants; that he was busy, head down, trying to make it through each day as he aspired to achieving the American Dream.

This celestial event has given me pause to think about Irwin Miller, my Great-Grandfather whom I had the pleasure of knowing, appreciating and loving for my first eleven years of life. I, of course, knew him as a 95 year old man, but here I am pondering his life at age 22.  What must his life have been when Venus last made her appearance?  I assume that he didn’t know about the Venus orbit between the Earth and the Sun but did he note the turn of the century that he witnessed at 15 years of age?  

Being born in 1885, he was surely aware of that event; he witnessed the birth of the 20^th century.  When I was a child and I thought about my great-Grandfather being born in 1885 I was amazed that someone could watch the world pass from one century to another.  What he must have seen and felt as the Great War was breaking out and he had two small sons at home!  He moved his family to where our family came to be ‘from’ sometime in the 1920’s; by then adding a daughter.  Irwin saw many things:  Moving from Chicago to St. Joseph, Michigan; World War 1, the Great Depression, the New Deal, World War II, the birth of grandchildren, the death of a grand-daughter after a long battle with leukemia, the Korean War, the death of his wife, my great-Grandmother, and so on and on.  Happy times, sad times alike - he saw the passing of one century to another.

I think about my great-Grandfather because it strikes me that not only do we have this once-every-105-years planetary event that makes me ponder what was happening in my roots 105 years ago but very nostalgically, I reminisce about the fact that I, too, have seen the turn of a century.  I saw a new century AND a new millennium dawn.  I laugh sometimes at the Y2K scare and I struggle sometimes to help my children understand the years that started in “19” instead of “20”.  I was married in the year of the new Millennium – Y2K itself.   

           My great-Grandfather lived through historic events; and so have I.  I was in 5^th grade when President Ronald Reagan was shot, I remember the fall of the Berlin Wall, I was watching live TV when the Space Shuttle Columbia exploded mid-air, I attended protests for Apartheid in college, wrote letters to the President about Desert Storm, watched as our soldiers went from peace to war in the early 1990’s, saw the dot-com bubble, I have a friend that was in the Twin Towers the day the planes crashed into them and I saw the turbulent years that followed.  We straddlers of these centuries, my great-grandfather and I , have much in common.

          All these thoughts – comparing what is happening today to what happened in the past – the parallels between the two are entertainment for my brain.  I put like against like as I think back in my family history and try to figure out what was going on 100 years ahead of my time.   

          I wonder what stories my children and their children will tell of their old grandmother that lived in the 20^th century and the 21^st century.  Surely they will be amazed of all the events that happen in my life, like I revel at what my great-grandfather must have seen.  It shows us, we small humans, how big our universe is when one minor event for Venus can envelope 105 years of our history at a time.  How much will happen before the next encounter with our friend Venus?