Spring and Summer of 2020 had great weather. It was the one aspect of life this year in which we had no complaints. Autumn hasn't been as good. We've had some rain, a lot of wind and it got cold in September. Not Minnesota cold, but cold. We had our first frost the other night. In a year in which every day bleeds into the next and time seems to be standing still, it was quite a surprise to see the park out my window covered in the early morning shine of a light frost. Most of the trees out that way haven't turned yet.
In dry years we begin to see change in the trees in August. As the last few years have been nice and wet, the color has been showing up later. This year, by mid September, all we had was that golden bronzy-ness under the green that tells you it's not high summer anymore. On the 15th, I left town. I took my mom to Margy's cabin. Margy and Jeff have been building a new house on the property Jeff inherited from his Dad. For 49 years the only structure had been an old A-frame that Jeff and his Dad had built from a kit (they probably got it from Sears. For those of you under 40, Sears was the 19 and 20th century version of Amazon.) An A-frame is the most inefficient use of space ever devised by man. It also had no windows so when you were inside it, you may as well have been on the moon rather than a beautiful wooded plot near a beaver pond. The new house fixed everything that was wrong with the old one. Margy's plan was that they'd build it slowly and do as much of the work as possible themselves. She thought it could be their hobby for the next 5 to 10 years.
Then came the Wuhan flu.
With nothing else to do, Jeff went to work on the cabin.
Here's what you need to know about Jeff: once he decided golf was fun, it took him one year to break 80.
The cabin in the woods is finished. Okay, they'll spend forever thinking up and implementing new improvements but it's finished. Every fixture is in place, all the trim is up and it's quite spectacular. Margy had been sending us photos of the progress all year.
We all knew Dad would never see it in person. As hard as he'd worked on his physical therapy and as strong as he'd gotten since his fall, the shutdown erased all of it. No one can spend 5 months doing nothing and stay strong. At 93, trying to recover from a broken neck, there just wasn't time to try. Even if he hadn't had the heart failure he experienced back in July, or the final pneumonia, he'd have to have lived to be 100 just to make up the strength he'd lost since March and even that wouldn't have made him strong enough to make the trip to Margy's.
But Mom could do it, so we did.
At one point, a whole slew of us wanted to go to the cabin with mom. We thought "Party at the new cabin!!" But Margy put the kibosh on that plan. "I just want to spend a week with my mom without having to plan another Floopin' Funeral!"
I guess that's fair.
But I got to go because Mom couldn't do it alone. She's spent the last 2.5 years at Dad's side, which means she hadn't gotten much exercise herself and of course, none at all in the last 7 months. She got the clearance to make the trip from her doctor and off we went.
The plan was to do nothing. Just eat, sleep, talk and watch movies. Total decompression from the stress, worries and grief of the summer. Heck, of the last 2 years. Dad didn't sleep well so that meant Mom hadn't had a good night sleep since March of '18. At the cabin, she slept 9-12 hours a night. She felt GREAT.
We read books, talked, ate, did needlepoint and sat and stared. It was the perfect vacation. Jeff came up and cooked for us every night. Oh, the best part of Margy's cabin is that it's less than an hour from their house so travel is not a detriment. It's a completely different world, practically out the back door. Kind of like Ty's spread is the perfect place for us to get out of Crazytown (the city formerly known as Minneapolis).
We were there for one week and on our return, discovered that Fall had come to Minnesota. It's beautiful but the weather has been cold and windy. It's gorgeous, especially when the sun comes out but the wind could strip the trees prematurely. I hope it stops.
In more exciting news, Katie and Adam bought a new house! They had pretty much shelved their house hunt because they couldn't agree on what they wanted. Katie decided to just start fixing up their current house, since they were going to live there awhile. They rebuilt the back deck, gave the place a fresh coat of paint, ordered new window boxes...it's a delightful house! And their back yard is second to none.
Almost on a fluke, after visiting friends in a suburb Adam had refused to even look at, they stopped at an open house and after one look, bought the place.
It's beautiful!! The house had everything they wanted, is considerably bigger than their current home and the back yard is just as nice as the one they're selling. Turns out, they're opposing list of "must haves" for their new house was really just a different way to describe that feeling you get when you know you're home. This house may not have checked off every box they thought they needed but when they were in it, they both knew they had found 'home'.
And it's 13 miles closer to me than the old house, so that makes me very happy, indeed.
In even MORE exciting news, Zack and Sara got engaged!
We are all delighted with this, as we Love Sara and think she will make a terrific addition to the family. She has made Zack much more fun to hang out with and he was already one of our favorites.
In short, September saw 2020 turn a corner for us. It just goes to show, every cloud has a silver lining and even in times of 'plague' and stupidity, good things happen.