The Alpha and Omega of last week

This was a foreshortened week since we went off early Friday to Omega where we were teaching our annual weekend Memoir Lab course.  We used to call it personal narrative since we include autobiographical fiction, but ‘personal narrative’ seemed to confuse people. It was a workshop of 37 people.  We have developed ways of handling large workshops so everyone gets personal feedback, so the size doesn't bother us or the participants. This was a lively group and went well.  Omega is on a lake near Rhinebeck in the Hudson River Valley – off the Taconic.  We gave been teaching there for at least 15-16 years, maybe more.  Therefore we know the immediate area very well.  There is a tiny cabin where we are put up every year. This year getting around was hard for me as my left knee, injured years ago in a treatmill accident at what was at that time a very run down gym with a leaky roof, has been acting up lately and I was hobbling around with a lot of cursing and moaning. The weather here is spectacular, not too hot and not humid.  Dry and sunny and with a gentle breeze today. Last night around 8 we had a thunder storm and the power went off for a while.  Today the internet is wonky and I can’t teach my doctor because the Outer Cape Health Service phone is out.  I keep calling and getting an assortment of useless messages from Verizon.  Can’t get through to make an appointment. Before that, we started seriously harvesting what tomatoes the chipmunks haven’t yet bitten into.  Also the first beans.  Tomorrow I have to harvest the remaining beets.  I also have to write my annual High Holidays poem – Rosh Hashonah is terribly early this year, just after Labor Day, so I’m late getting it in, probably too late for publication. It snuck up on me. My BFF Elise is coming up this week again, but this time she’ll stay with another friend Lilly, who lost her husband this spring.  I read my kaddish at his memorial service.  It was a second marriage for both of them and this time, a great and happy marriage for a change.  When people are truly joined, losing a partner is even harder than it usually is.  I’ll see Elise and Lilly at dinner there and most likely another time. Have to check with Elise.  She just decided to come up.  She was here staying with us in midJuly. This is Monday – usually I write my weekly blog on Saturday or Sunday morning, but we didn’t get back till last night from Omega.  Driving there, we were held up for almost two hours by an accident that closed the Mass Pike.  The debris had been cleared by the time we got on the Pike, but the traffic was backed up for probably twenty miles.  A long skinny parking lot. We stopped at Wrentham Outlets on the way. The only day of the year I ever enter a department store is the day after Christmas, but we hit the outlets a couple of times a year.  I needed a new frying pan, some underwear and Woody needed socks.  Not very glamorous but I didn’t feel like any serious clothes shopping. It isn’t clothes I need right now.  It’s time!  They don’t sell that.