HOW QUICKLY LIFE CAN CHANGE!

This was going to be a very different holiday season from past years when Cary and I had gone to Nepal for the better part of November and December. Instead, after visiting Nepal and South Korea, Cary headed to China to teach English to Tibetan monks and, in turn, study Tibetan, and I went off to visit my other daughter, Martha, in Colorado, and get some sunshine and mountain hiking. Whatever happened, we knew it would be an adventure. It was!

Photo by Doug Hammond

Kissing the Manitou Springs bear

For the first two weeks Martha and I visited some lovely places near her home in Manitou Springs, with 14,000 ft Pikes Peak rising above us. We went on interesting, relaxing walks in old Colorado City, and strolled among the red rocks of the Garden of the Gods. Glorious vistas! Then we enjoyed a joyous family Christmas with grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Click on a photo to enlarge.

Garden of the Gods

Martha leads the way

Can you see the iconic Kissing Camels?

Up close!

How quickly life can change! Was it the higher altitude and the dry climate and the extreme cold? No. I’d been here before and I was no stranger to winter. I began coughing uncontrollably and as the New Year approached, multifocal pneumonia exploded in my lungs. On January 2nd I found myself in the emergency room needing oxygen, gasping for breath. Happy New Year! Cary rushed back from China and after a week of skilled care from the doctors and nurses at the Grandview Hospital, she and Martha pulled me back from the brink, which is what it seemed to me. I learned first-hand what devotion and love look like. Credit also goes to Doug Hammond, Martha’s partner, whose sense of humor and endless stories, especially keeping things light after the pipes froze in the kitchen (no blame…it was minus 3 degrees), added a feeling of adventure to my personal almost-disaster.

The three musketeers leaving for the airport, oxygen and all.

Then we had the hurdle of flying back to Seattle with a portable oxygen concentrator that required lots of airline paper work. No small feat. God bless Cary for handling it all! I hope none of you ever has to deal with this. She got us back to Whidbey Island and dealt with all the deliveries, company visits and pick-ups, like a veteran. Now I’m almost back to normal and have one salient word of advice: Never let a cough get the best of you, and stay away from pneumonia!

On the bright side…spring is popping up all around me. Hailing from the frigid East Coast, it’s always a miracle to see flowers blooming in February.

First daffodils of spring

Orchids in the dining room

Snowdrops in the cemetery

Of course, Whidbey’s rain helps a lot. Cary has already started bok choy, lettuce, and peas for early spring planting. The earth is waking up. I’m so enjoying the radiance of the sun, and everything seems more vibrant. It’s great to be alive!

The one thing that our island children are missing, however, is our plethora of feral bunnies…the result of escaped 4-H domesticated rabbits from the Island County Fairgrounds. Some people loved them…gardeners and farmers called them pests. But children found them adorable and couldn’t get enough of feeding and chasing them. I spent lots of time photographing them. A catastrophic pandemic of Rabbit Hemorrhagic Disease suddenly wiped them all out last summer. Langley, the Northwest Rabbit Capital, just wasn’t the same.

But, just last week on my daily walk I spotted a small tan rabbit scurrying across the field. Hmmm, could it be? Take heart, children, they’ll be back. Yes, it made me very happy.

I was also very happy to welcome my old friend and theater buff Arpie Maros, whom I have known since the days when he and my children were in high school together. He’s a talented actor and singer and the owner of Ahrre’s Coffee Roastery with two locations in New Jersey (Westfield and Summit). He also combines his charm and talent hosting house concerts with touring singer-songwriters. Be sure to visit his website: www.ahrre.com

Arpie comes to the Northwest four times a year to visit his friends, and see if the sun is shining. Ha ha! I’m one of the lucky ones.

Oh Meg! What do you think is going to happen next?