Busy in the slow lane

     Judy is playing Ashokan Farewell on the dulcimer, a hummingbird is thrumming at the edge of the deck, and the little boys in the corner house are giggling and laughing in their swimming pool.  Welcome to  to summer in the slow lane at our house.

Grandmother's rug

     I arrived home from Rehoboth with three small  rugs that my grandmother  designed an had made in China in the 1930s. The beige ovals with bamboo leaves had covered the living room floor of the house I grew up in.  They lived in my houses in McLean and Falls Church until I moved west, when I gave them back to my mother.  This summer my sister Eileen was ready to get them out of her ironing room, and I was eager to have them back home. But how to get them from Maryland to Oregon? The five Sullivan sisters went into action.  Vonnie and Eileen talked about shipping, but Rose suggested that maybe I could check them as luggage on the plane.  Three different pieces of luggage?  No, Rose the geometry teacher figured that we could roll them together and still conform to Delta Airlines' luggage guidelines. "If they give you a hard time," declared Florrie," tell them it's your prayer rug." We all trooped over to the Fed Ex store, where  I got to see Florrie in action.  She charmed the clerk into packaging the roll securely for under $10.  Delta accepted the  rugs without question, and they arrived safely in Portland. When I took them to be cleaned I was  lamenting the worn spots on them.   The nice man at Atiyeh Brothers said, "In our world, that makes them interesting."

Judy and autoharp buddy Holly

     Judy was unable to go to the annual Willamette Valley autoharp weekend because navigating the physical plant  would have been too strenuous in the summer heat.  I drove one of the performers out to the camp, and was flooded with the outpouring of love and be-well messages to take back to Judy.  One fine player is dedicating her performance of The Happy Wanderer to Judy.  Judy still got to see some of her good friends; they  came in from Forest Grove for an evening to have dinner with her and to jam.

Lisha and Kathe

    Kathe and Lisha came to visit from their sheep farm in Colorado. We stayed pretty close to home during the four days they were here, eating the Trader Joe's food that they introduced me to.  We planned to have another day with them when they returned to Portland from a wedding in Ashland, but Kathe had caught a cold that she didn't want Judy exposed to.  So we visited briefly in the driveway, and they went on to a motel.  Judy gave Lisha a drum she had made years ago.
     Judy has long made a practice of finding the right person to whom to give a thing that she is ready to give up.  Nowadays, though, she is doing more of that. "I'm giving things away so you wasn't have to," she says. The drum went to Lisha,  the satin blouse to Donna, the silver flute to Midori, the quilting squares to Roxie. The framing hammer with which she had built a house went into the bag for the church rummage sale, but I pulled it out.  The right person for the hammer will appear.

Judy with her framing hammer