I Love You With a Song!

The Hamilton County Reporter

December 9, 2023

In the first days of the pandemic lockdown in 2020, my sister Emily reached out to our immediate family members with a request—she asked each of all five of us sisters to come up with an individual list of our ten favorite songs. Her plan was to create a master playlist made up of her children’s favorite people’s favorite songs to use around their home during their days of quarantine, a time that left us all unsure of when we would get to see one another again.

I loved this playlist idea from the moment she mentioned it, but I did not expect it to connect us in the ways that it did in the following days and weeks, as my sister updated our group chat with which songs were her children’s favorites, sharing photos of what activities and silliness they were enjoying while listening, their guesses as to which favorite songs belonged to whom. She shared the resulting playlist with the rest of us, and everyone began listening and enjoying, doing the same. I have long asserted that laughter and music are two of the best ways to connect people, one to another, and this activity for our family proved an excellent example of this.

I come from a large family filled with music and musicians. I can play guitar, bass, saxophone, and piano (all very mediocrely). I grew up singing in choirs and was a singer/guitarist in a local cover band in college. My childhood memories of our family gatherings all include music, of my aunts taking turns playing my grandmother’s baby grand piano while we all sang together during holidays, of all of us going caroling in the small town where we grew up together, of evenings spent with our extended family around campfires while the music of guitar chords filled the crisp fall air with family favorites.

As a result, it should not have come as a surprise how much this musical endeavor at the onset of the pandemic ended up meaning to me. The process of choosing ten favorite songs proved grueling. My sister refused to accept any more than ten, no matter how insistently we pleaded. My sister Cameron’s list came first, impeccably organized, as if she had it saved on her phone somewhere in her Notes waiting for this exact request to come at any time. My sister Isabel’s list trickled in, doubled back, changed, argued with itself, and I can’t be sure if it ever really came to full fruition, though I know we ended up with some version of some of her favorite songs. My sister Paige’s list came later, without warning, context, or comment. My sister Emily’s list never came, even though the entire thing was her idea in the first place, and all requests for her to provide a list were met with digital silence. My list? I sat down and curated it over the course of several hours, editing, changing, rationalizing with myself, before sending a list with a detailed explanation of each choice, explanations I doubt any of my sisters even read but instead probably rolled their eyes at. And if you happen to know us, then all of this will sound as though it went exactly as one would expect it to go.

I am a person who still has my entire historical collection of compact discs alphabetized by genre, all 435 of them, in one of those heavy, gigantic carrying cases from the late 1990s. I have thousands of songs in my digital music database. And I found out in attempting to make a top ten list that my favorites change and are fluid, according to where I am in my life, what I’m doing, who I am spending time with.

Eventually, I reached out to my own friends and some extended family members for their pandemic song lists, as well. One of them, almost four years later, still has not completed his list, as he sends the songs to me one at a time when he hears them “out in the wild,” as he says. I think he’s made it to six songs so far. These lists have changed over the years, and people have reached out and updated me with their changes over time. As it turns out, top ten lists are an excellent and surprisingly intimate glimpse into other people. Additionally, the myriad ways people go about curating and sharing their lists prove interesting, a study into human behavior and thought.

For instance, should you just choose songs that are the ones you purely enjoy listening to? Or should you choose songs that have distinct meanings, tied to a time or place in your life that was important to you? Do you choose songs that make you nostalgic or move you to tears? Or do you choose songs that you love to dance to the most or sing along to in the car? There are so many unexpected variables to consider in this process.

Art and music have always been touchstones for me. And this playlist proved a deep connection to my family, an unexpected and beautiful way we all reached for one another during a troubled time. To this day, the moment I hear the beginning notes of one of my loved ones’ favorite songs, I smile to myself and feel them reaching out across the miles of our busy lives, shortening the distance between us momentarily to say, “I love you with a song.”

Meghan’s List:

“Harmony Hall” by Vampire Weekend

“7” by Prince

“Soul to Squeeze” by Red Hot Chili Peppers

“Still Remains” by Stone Temple Pilots

“Baby, I’m Amazed” by Paul McCartney

“Warm Love” by Van Morrison

“Ants Marching” by Dave Matthews Band

“Avril 14th” by Aphex Twin

“River Flows in You” by Yiruma

“On Eagle’s Wings” by the Vincennes, Indiana retired St. John’s Folk Band

Miyu Christmas to All!

Life Along the Wabash

December, 2022

In the fall of 2019, a request was sent out to the staff at Vincennes University, where I was an English professor at the time. The university had a handful of exchange students from Japan who were not going to be able to return home for the holiday break, and they wanted to know if any families could host these students to let them experience an American Christmas season.

This is how Miyu became a member of our family. We were matched with our first ever exchange student by her campus advisor, and we picked her up from outside of her dorm a few weeks later on a cold, crisp, late November day during finals week. She was soft-spoken and polite, very shy. Would she fit in with us? Would we be overwhelming for her? Miyu was nervous, but she began settling in that evening as we ate dinner together. The next day, I offered to take her to the grocery store with me. Miyu’s English was good, but she had only been in the US for a few months, and no one in our family spoke Japanese. I decided that food is the universal language, and this would be a good way for Miyu and our family to bond—family meals. 

Miyu immediately took an interest in helping me make dinner each evening. She wanted to learn how to make American dishes. The kitchen was the central area of our home, and anyone coming or going from our home had to do so via the kitchen. Between our friends, Taylor’s friends, and eventually Miyu’s friends, our home was filled that December with food, friends, and music, the other universal language.  

As December moved along, Miyu helped me decorate the house and began joining me for Christmas shopping excursions. We drove around with hot chocolate and looked at the Christmas lights. We wrapped presents in front of the fireplace. And when it came time for us to start working on my extended family’s Christmas menu, Miyu was beside herself with excitement to help me. My family’s Christmas tradition is simple--to make a giant pot of my grandmother’s famous family chicken vegetable soup (see the 2021 Christmas edition of Life Along the Wabash for the story and recipe). And the rest of the menu? All baked family recipe sweets. This was what Miyu was most excited about.

She explained that in Japan, most homes do not have ovens. All meals are made on the stove top or eaten raw. As a result, Miyu had never learned to bake. So I got out my collection of old family recipes, and Miyu and I began going through them, as we were set to host close to twenty of my family members, and we were inviting Miyu’s dear friend Takumi. We eventually settled on our baked goods menu: apple pie, pecan pie, pumpkin pie, Grandma’s famous sugar cookies with sweet cream icing, and homemade pecan tassies. 

Two days before Christmas we got out all of the necessary ingredients and tools, put on our aprons, and Miyu and I went to work. We rolled dough, filled pies, battered icing from scratch. We baked, and we baked, and we baked some more. We listened to Christmas music, and we laughed, and we all took turns playing the piano by the fireplace and the light of the Christmas tree, and we filled our home with the perfect Christmas experience. 

On the morning that the family was coming to celebrate Christmas, Miyu got up early with me. We put out the tables, covered them with cloths, arranged the centerpieces she helped me handmake. We set the kitchen island buffet style, made the giant pot of soup. Miyu was overjoyed when I asked if she would be in charge of all of the baked goods, arranging them on the trays, setting them up and presenting them, keeping the pies fresh in the warmers. And she took her job seriously and managed it all with flying colors. When everyone began arriving and heading for the sweets first, Miyu was so excited. 

But what we could not have possibly planned was that in giving Miyu the ultimate holiday experience that year, she was also giving it to us. We got to experience the magic of a first Christmas through Miyu’s eyes. And if you ask anyone in our family to share what our favorite Christmas was, we all unanimously agree that it was our “Miyu Christmas.” Miyu’s presence that holiday season brought an extra level of joy to every party of our lives.

On the night of that Christmas celebration, my husband and I sat down and had a talk. We knew that Miyu did not want to return to the dorms after the holidays, that she was looking into trying to find an off-campus apartment. I didn’t even have to get the words all the way out of my mouth before my husband said, “We’re going to ask Miyu to move in with us for the rest of the school year, aren’t we.” And we did just that. 

Miyu accepted. In that short time, during that magical holiday we spent together, Miyu had become a member of our family forever. It was as if she belonged with us all along, like our hearts had known hers all of our lives. Miyu was with us through that winter, through those early months of the pandemic, and into the summer. We spent so many evenings during those early weeks of lockdown making meals together in the kitchen. She grew confident enough to call her mom in Japan and get some recipes from her. She taught us how to make delicious gyoza and yakisoba, and we made special trips to the Japanese grocery store in Bloomington. We spent months bonding with Miyu in the kitchen, speaking the universal language of food, while Miyu learned more English, and we learned to speak some Japanese. 

We keep in close touch with Miyu and look forward to the day when she can return to visit us for another Miyu Christmas. And because I know she reads my articles in Life Along the Wabash—we miss you, our sweet Miyu, and we love you very much! Merry Christmas! 

Uncle Percy

Life Along the Wabash

October, 2022

When Percival P Parrot (Percy, for short) joined my mom’s family, he was a gift for my grandfather. Percy was a yellow headed Amazon parrot from a pet store in Olney, Illinois, and it quickly became apparent that Percy was not the family pet. He was, in fact, a member of the large Irvin family, the youngest of my grandparents’ children. 

Percy’s cage sat in the family dining room in the middle of the family home where my mom and her six siblings grew up. Because his cage sat next to the family telephone in a home where many of the neighborhood children congregated from around their Lawrenceville, Illinois neighborhood in the 1960’s and 1970’s, his vocabulary grew quite extensive over the years. And because parrots who talk often choose individual voices to mimic, Percy spoke mostly in the voice of my grandmother, Naomi, with an occasional octave drop into the lower registered voice of my grandfather, Bill. 

The whole neighborhood knew the famed talking parrot. Percy was a local legend. When he heard someone knock on the door, he yelled, “Come in!” When the telephone rang, he yelled, “Telephone!” Then he would imitate the person on the phone, “Hello?...Yes…Uh huh…Okay…Bye!” He knew the names of my mom and all of her siblings. Her younger brothers were proud when they taught him to yell, “Help! Help! Let me out of here! FIRE! FIRE!” which he followed with a blood-curdling scream resembling my grandmother’s voice, a trick which alarmed unfamiliar new neighbors on more than one occasion and even resulted in someone calling the fire department at least once. My uncles also taught him to cat-call girls with a loud whistle. He learned to laugh, sing along to several songs, and he was a relentless beggar when he saw anyone eating any of his favorite snacks. He learned to whistle and call for the dogs, and he often confused the cats with an impeccable, “Heeerreee, kitty kitty kitty kitty kitty.” 

When I was a little girl, Percy began coming to live with us in the summers. On summer mornings, my mom and dad would move his cage out onto the patio for the day. If it was a hot day, my mom might mist him with the hose as a special treat. And in the same manner that the kids all got to know Percy growing up in my grandmother’s home, the kids on Lake Lawrence who showed up by boat, bicycle, and foot at our house all summer long also got to know him, as many of their parents had during their own families’ summers.

We would gather around his cage and wiggle our fingers to indicate we wanted to give him a neck scratch, or we would move our faces close to his and gently blow on his face, giggling when he would open his mouth and stick out his tongue. But everyone’s favorite pastime on those summer days at the lake was getting Percy wound up enough to holler and talk and scream and sing and whistle and carry on with all of us, which he was more than happy to oblige us with for hours on end. 

Years later, when I was an adult with my own child, my aunt called me and asked if I wanted to become the first of my generation of our family to host Percy in my home. I settled him into the corner of the living room in my cozy townhome apartment I shared with my own five-year-old child, our golden retriever, and our cranky cat. And again, as the spring days gave way to those long summer days of childhood, the neighbors and their children all got to know him, the children coming over to play and howl with laughter as he learned their names and hollered “Help! Help! Let me out of here! FIRE! FIRE!” on the front stoop of our apartment complex.

Percy’s life was one filled with adventures in the homes of our huge family. He once escaped his cage on the patio and flew out to the sandbar about thirty yards from the end of our dock. I will never forget how fast my mom raced down the steps, kicked off her shoes, dove fully clothed into the water, and swam to rescue him as he floated on gently lapping waves letting out little nervous laughs. At my Aunt Melanie’s house in Bloomington he escaped through an open kitchen door and went missing for several hours. An entire search party spent the day walking the streets of the neighborhood calling for him. At dusk, my aunt was walking back to her house, defeated, crying, and as she approached her door, she heard a familiar voice from underneath a car in the driveway say, “Hello?” There he was, waiting in the shade for her to get home and let him in. 

Percy’s life was one full of love and family and adventures, but a lot of people forget that birds are still wild animals at heart. And Percy was as ornery as you might expect a sharp-beaked bird to be. I think every single one of us was at the receiving end of a Percy bite at least once, and he tormented our cats and dogs until they were all terrified of him. But he was ours, and we loved him fiercely and loyally, until the day when he passed away in his sleep. His age by then was an oft-debated topic in our family. He was in his 50’s when he died, but no one ever officially pinned down a date. Was he 51? 52? Or maybe he was 56? Regardless, he had outlived both of my grandparents, met FIVE generations of our family, and he had been a part of my life for all thirty years I had the pleasure of sharing the earth with him. We all deeply grieved his passing. We still miss him. And all of these years later, our family gatherings still feel like a part of the family is missing.

Every time I walk into a Thanksgiving or Christmas or Easter celebration, I fully expect to hear the familiar rustle of his feathers as he stretches his wings awake on his perch or the bird-version of my grandmother’s voice shouting “Help! Help! Let me out of here! FIRE! FIRE!” to a kneeling audience of the latest generation of children in our family, as they squeal and cackle with delight. Every time I glance around at the familiar faces of the rest of the family, I remember that my mom and her siblings had a bird brother, my Uncle Percy. 

A Lake Lawrence Summer

Life Along the Wabash

August, 2022

Summers have always been my favorite. I’ll never forget the first day of those summers on Lake Lawrence as a kid, stepping into the sunshine on our deck overlooking the lake, with the entire summer stretching in front of me, but still somehow knowing the end of it would roll around too soon.

I listened to a podcast recently in which Susan Cain was discussing how certain kinds of people experience sadness and happiness simultaneously during joyous moments, that these people are described as “bittersweet.” It’s similar to feeling nostalgic for an event while experiencing it for the first time. I am one of these people, and this was exactly how I felt often during my days on the lake during my childhood summers, though I would not have the words for it until well into adulthood.

We traveled in packs and spent hours upon hours upon hours swimming all over that lake. We had two large islands where we built sandcastles, played “chicken” on each other’s shoulders, pretended to be mer-people, choreographed synchronized swimming routines and pretended to be in the Olympics. We loaded boats with supplies and played house or “castaway island” or built forts and climbed trees on the sandbars. We found fossils and shells and any variety of “archaeological” artifacts. We packed picnic lunches on paddle-boats and fed leftovers to the bluegill.

Across the lake was an old abandoned dance pavilion from the late 1940’s and early 1950’s. The bathhouses and hot dog stands were long gone, but the neglected and overgrown concrete dance floor structure still stood, albeit in a state of disrepair, a ghost of our parents’ childhood summers spent on that same lake. There the pavilion stood, just waiting for us to pretend a variety of make-believe worlds into our imaginations’ existences. We invented secret passageways and alternate universes.

We rowed boats and paddled canoes to the lagoon and took turns daring each other to jump into the slimy lily pads. We picked purple, white, and pink water lilies and took them home to our moms, amazed each morning when the flowers would re-open in the kitchen windowsill bowls where our moms placed them in the sunshine.

Our house was the most popular congregation point, because we had two trees which leaned out over the water with branches perfect for climbing, balancing out across them, and leaping together, squealing, into the cool water of the lake below. Someone’s dad fastened a giant rope swing from the tallest branches of the tree and built a platform between the two trees from which we could take turns swinging on the rope out over the water. There was nothing like that first swing, wind whipping through your hair, sailing across the surface of the lake.

We all had boats and bicycles which served as our summertime transportation, our freedom, our means to going on our adventures. And we all learned how to water ski and knee board and tube behind neighbors’ boats. As the day would give way to dusk, the toads and frogs would begin singing us towards the shore, sounding the alarm it was time to go in. Each of our moms had a specific method for calling us home for dinner. Our mom used the dinner bell—a giant, deep iron bell, mounted atop a pole at the tip of the hill behind our house that overlooked the lake. Sometimes we pretended not to hear her, in order to buy ourselves just a few more moments together, but as her calls for us became more impatient, we would inevitably say our goodbyes for the night until the next day. And the next day. And the next. Until summer gave way to autumn.

Recently, I heard a reference to “core memories,” those poignant memories which shape each of us into the individuals we grow up to be. One of my most vivid core memories is of a summer afternoon, after a rainstorm. I was wearing my familiar yellow lifebelt and swimming alone, which was rather unusual. I had made my way out to the sandbar, and the sun had begun to set. I stood waist deep in the water, the sun’s reflection resting atop the tiny lake waves. I could not have been older than ten or eleven years, and I’m sure my mom was keeping a close eye on me from the living room windows of our house, but I felt like I was the only person left in the world. I felt the whole summer in that moment, the indescribable depth of childhood summers, how special and fleeting they must eventually become in the grand story of a whole life. And I felt feelings much too big for words—awe, humility, the unmistakable heartbreaking joy of a magnificent summer sunset, but also the unmistakable heartbreaking joy of a knowing that it, ALL of it, would give way to adulthood. The bittersweet knowledge that I would stand on that island as a little girl in a lifebelt dumbfounded by the beauty of summer a last time one day, without knowing it was the last time. I remember standing, frozen in this state for what seemed like hours, trying to memorize it, wanting to stay there in the middle of that beauty forever—feeling nostalgic for summer, while experiencing the inexplicable joy of it in every cell of my little child body.

What I came to know about that day is that something in me shifted. I became more aware of savoring the time I spent on that lake on those long-but-never-long-enough summer days. Before that day, time wasn’t important—oh sure, I felt it pass. But I didn’t have the KNOWING of it passing yet, what it meant, how it would lead those experiences to become distant memories. I did not know then, but it’s a knowing I would feel every summer, in fleeting moments of dumbfounding summer wanderlust tugging at my heartstrings. It’s a knowing I still feel today when I visit that lake, all these years later. It’s the knowing of a life’s worth of too-short summers and beauty too fleeting to be fair. It’s the knowing of spectacular summer beauty immemorial. And as our Indiana summer gives way to fall too soon, as the kids return to school and sports and schedules, may you pause and savor these last breaths of summer.

The Bittersweet Spot

Life Along the Wabash

April, 2022

Several years ago, when my daughter was in high school, a friend of mine sent me a link to a blog article by a mother who wrote about a special time in parenting she referred to as “The Sweet Spot.” This time, she claimed, was the time that came AFTER the stressful toddler years but BEFORE the stressful pre-teen years. She claimed that this was a small cushioned parenting window during which the kids had some independence but were not yet facing the challenges that inevitably come with middle and high school.

I remember reading this and agreeing, wholeheartedly, that the author was on to something. By this time, my daughter was deep in the angsty teenage years, trying desperately to discover who she might want to become and how she might be interested in going about that. There were a lot of hairstyle explorations, friend group adventures, questionable clothing choices, bad music, and SO. MANY. MOODS. Parenting often felt like tip-toeing through a minefield. I definitely sometimes longed for “the sweet spot.”

During “the sweet spot” of parenting my daughter, I was a young mom working my way through school. My experience of motherhood was filled with challenges and setbacks as a single mom, but the JOY—the joy of all of it is what I remember the most.

During those precious years, the two of us, our golden retriever Ozzie, and our grumpy cat Tabitha were a family adventuring through the world from our humble little townhouse apartment on Eric Avenue in Vincennes. And we had so much fun. Eventually, I met my husband who would become her stepdad. Our lives morphed and changed together, but I always felt like there was an extra special bond between Taylor and me, thanks to those years of single parenting and all of our experiences—from building forts with the neighbor kids in our backyard and spending long days at Lake Lawrence, to learning to snorkel and swimming with dolphins in the Bahamas, to traversing the cold, seal-laden beaches of Oregon or the sunny beaches of Florida—my kiddo and I enjoyed life together and made an incredible treasure trove of memories.

The pandemic entered our lives during the spring semester of Taylor’s senior year of high school, but we made the most of that time together, too. We celebrated graduation on our front porch surrounded by socially distanced friends and family. That summer, we rented a house in Saint Augustine, Florida for two months, relaxing and spending hours at the beach or at my sister’s house with her family, hanging by the pool, escaping the Florida summer heat. Taylor stayed home with us and completed her first year of college online, and eventually opted not to attend a Florida school to major in Coastal and Environmental Science, but instead to take some time off to work full time and decide what she wanted to do next, carving her own path into the world. And then…Taylor moved out.

And as soon as she did, I started feeling a feeling I can only describe as “homesickness.”

I became a mother at the age of 20, and I became a single mother at the age of 22. My entire adult life, everything I know of adulthood, has been spent being a mom. So many decisions I made were from a position of necessity and requirement. I certainly never minded this, but I have to be perfectly honest about the void this has left with my child out of the house. And a lot of that void is a mental void—a giant space of mental time where parenting and logistics and responsibility used to be housed for this other human, this beautiful, creative, wonderful human I was gifted to raise and guide into adulthood—and now she is there…ish. There-ish enough that I have this nagging “homesick” feeling where taking care of her full time used to reside.

But that nagging feeling is accompanied by a freedom and opportunity to do…well…whatever I want. And this? Well, this is “The Bittersweet Spot.”

One day last week I was talking with my husband, and I mentioned that now I just have all of this time and that I can dedicate it to us. My husband said, “Meg, we have always made ‘us time.’ This new time is for YOU.”

Yes. Yes, it is. And if I’m really honest, this is as terrifying as it is awesome, but I want to be very clear—it is both. It is scary, but it is beautiful and wonderful and so much fun. I have had two of the most amazing career opportunities of my entire life in this last year, and I finally feel like I’m on track in the right career direction, instead of sort of biding my career time, getting by. My husband and I have gone out dancing and listening to jazz music until 2 o’clock in the morning and slept in to our hearts’ content. I’m going out with friends, making new friends, and hitting the gym twice a day. Maybe I’ll take up painting. Who knows?

I’m watching from the sidelines as my child finds herself, and I am finding my new self in the process—not the mom or wife or employee—but the ME, the Meghan. And in those moments of homesickness for a previous time and place that doesn’t exist in our lives anymore, I try to remember that we are both deciding what we want to build next. She is learning about college credits and vehicle maintenance and relationships, and I am learning about making choices for myself because they are what I want to do instead of what I need to do. I am learning to keep my hands off and my heart on and to listen without giving my opinion unless it is asked for. I am getting to know my grown child in new ways and falling in love all over again with the adult Taylor is becoming.

I’m here—being the mom she needs me to be now, instead of the mom I have always been. I’m in this bittersweet spot, and I have to say, I’m gradually finding it more sweet than bitter.

Happy Galentine’s Day!

Life Along the Wabash

February, 2022

For the “Love” issue, I want to write about a very special holiday dedicated to love, one that falls in mid-February, but it’s not Valentine’s Day. It’s Galentine’s Day.

Galentine’s Day is on February 13th, and it is a day for women to gather together and celebrate friendship. That’s it. Easy peasy. A day for gal pals to appreciate gal pals (and honorary gal pals). Fans of the show “Parks and Recreation” will recognize this holiday, of course, as it is a Leslie Knope original. I love Leslie Knope (and the fact that I wore a Leslie Knope identification tag on a lanyard at every Wabash Valley Progressives event I ever attended without anyone noticing it was Leslie, not me--which I’m still pretty proud of). 

Yes, thanks to our dear friend Leslie, Galentine’s Day is the best fake holiday on the calendar. (International Talk Like a Pirate Day is a close second and takes place on September 19th each year, in case you want to celebrate that one, too.) Galentine’s Day began as a waffle brunch for gal pals, but from there--well, today, the possibilities are endless.  

So what made me decide to finally, in the eleventh hour with a deadline looming, scrap my first three and a half articles and write about this? My gal pals, of course.

Last week, on a dreary winter’s day in southern Indiana, I met and shared lunch with three of my own closest gal pals at Graze coffee shop. All of us were in the same town for the holidays for the first time in years, and we left our husbands and children and families at home and made a point to meet. Years ago, when that coffee shop was Vincennes’ own Old Town Tavern, we closed that place down dancing and drinking beer and chasing boys into the wee hours of the morning. And on this particular day, the venue looked very different, and one might argue the women did, too, and we were drinking coffee instead of beer, but we closed that place down again, then proceeded to stand on the street outside to continue our after-party, much like we did in the days of our youth. 

For that three hours, we shared and laughed and talked and got too loud and shushed each other and cried and laughed some more. We all grew up together. Our parents also grew up together. Our grandparents all knew each other and went to the same church. Our histories and our roots are intertwined and run deep. All of us are related, either through blood or marriage. And no matter how much time passes or how many miles are between us, these amazing, beautiful women are always there, somewhere, ready at a moment’s notice to share my greatest joys and deepest sorrows and biggest laughs. 

One of us just moved to St. Louis from Hawaii, one lives in Colorado, one in Florida, one in Vincennes. One of us has a grown daughter, one of us is pregnant with a very unexpected baby on the way, one of us is a mother to three kiddos, and one of us is a newlywed. Two of us have been divorced. All of us are married. One of us is a teacher, one a pharmacist, one a designer, one a nonprofit developer. Two of us have lost a parent recently, and one of us a brother. All of us love our dogs like crazy. One of us usually does far more talking than the other three, and no one cares. And together, we laugh. A lot. So much. And it’s wonderful. 

And that afternoon with three of my favorite women in the whole world, I felt my shoulders relax and my heart fill with a joy that only girlfriends can bring. We drank obscene amounts of coffee and shared updates and talked about our hopes and dreams and plans, about our husbands and children, about our parents and siblings, about our jobs. We gossiped a little bit (but only a little bit), because we’ve reached an age where we know life is too short to spend it talking about other people when we can be sharing our souls with one another and laughing until our sides hurt. We know responsibilities and distractions are going to drag us away from one another and that the world is a place right now where we can’t be sure when the next time we will all be able to travel and see one another again will be, but we knew we had that moment, that three hours of time, to make it count. 

Since that afternoon, we’ve texted more than usual and chatted on the phone. We’ve made plans to meet up again, COVID and families and responsibilities permitting, sooner rather than later. We’re checking in with each other more often. And the reminder has made me reach out and touch base with all of my other special girlfriends near and far, too. Because friends are just so important. And as I’ve gotten older, our friendships have changed, but these women are my constants, my true norths, my gentle voices when I need to be gentle with myself and have forgotten how. So this February, the month of love, I want to wish a Happy Galentine’s Day to my gals, to Katie and Leah and Brittany, who will kill me for writing about them, to my other lifelong touchstones--Anne and Shea and Elizabeth and Vicki and Mandy, to my Monday night girls, to the girlfriends I’ve lost touch with, to my new girlfriends, Keri and Patty and Tylyn and Janelle, who I know I get to take with me from this point forward in my life, to the girlfriends I’m forgetting, and to the girlfriends I know I will get to love who I have not met yet. Happy Galentine’s Day to my girlfriends and to yours, too. May you celebrate with waffles and coffee and laughter and Galentines! 

A History in Food

Life Along the Wabash

December, 2021

In December of 2019, I had the privilege of hosting my family’s Christmas. This was the first time in more than forty years that our family Christmas was not hosted by my Grandma Ruth at her home in Mount Carmel, Illinois. That fall, shortly before the holiday season descended upon us, my grandmother announced that she was tired of hosting Christmas and that she wanted me to do it instead. This meant that I was going to oversee the McFarland family Christmas, but more specifically, the McFarland family Chicken Soup.

Through the years, I had tried on multiple occasions to get my grandmother to write down the recipe for her Chicken Soup to no avail. “It’s not a recipe I can write out, Meghan. You just have to feel it and KNOW IT while you’re making it,” she told me.  

Words do not exist to explain just how special this soup is. My siblings and I have shared dreams we have had about this soup. If we are sad, or lonely, or sick--all of us long for some of Grandma’s Chicken Soup. It’s comforting. It’s delicious. It’s love in a bowl. It’s practically a member of our family.

So a few weeks before Christmas, I had occasion to go see Grandma while her older sister, Wilma Jean, was visiting. Wilma Jean, 94, and Grandma, 92, spent the afternoon cleaning my grandma’s house, dressed in blue jeans and a t-shirt, hair done, makeup on, scrubbing the kitchen floor when I arrived on that November day.

“Okay,” I began. “Tell me, once and for all, how do I make the chicken soup?”

And finally, after years of asking, she and Aunt Wilma Jean began sharing, and I began writing.

“Well,” Grandma said, “start by boiling some chicken and then shredding it.”

“How much chicken?” I asked.

“Enough for everyone who will be there,” she said. “Then add some cans of tomato sauce, but not too much. You’ll want to have saved that water you used to boil the chicken, and maybe add some Swanson’s unsalted chicken broth to it, too.

Then you might want to add some water to--”

Wilma Jean interjected, “If you add water, you will also want to add butter to it, thicken it up, make it less watery.” Grandma’s eyes darted to her sister, then back to me.

Grandma said, “Don’t put butter in it. That’s ridiculous.”

“I always put butter in it, especially if I add water to it,” Wilma Jean told me.

“Well, Meghan asked for her GRANDMA’S chicken soup recipe, not her great-aunt’s recipe,” Grandma snapped at her sister before continuing, “so, no butter, Meghan Rae.”

I glanced nervously at Wilma Jean, who grinned and whispered, “Just put that butter part in parentheses, and then you’ll remember it was me who said that part.”

Grandma continued, “Next, you cook and cut up some potato, some chopped onion, some chopped cabbage, some sweet corn. And you cook it all in the pot until it’s done. Then, you serve it.”

“How much of each of those ingredients would you say you use, Grandma?” I asked.

“Enough for the number of people who will be eating the soup, honey,” she said. I realized this was the best I could do. I had already gotten further than anyone else had ever managed--the two remaining Schofield sisters had just bestowed the “Chicken Soup” recipe onto the next woman of the family, the one who was going to host more than 20 family members for Christmas. And that sounded like a lot of soup.

But I had a rough draft of what this recipe might look like, so the day before Christmas, I started in and got busy working on perfecting this soup.  I got out the skeleton of a recipe I had been given, and I just slowly started building and creating and adding and then evening out and stirring and chopping and tasting and adjusting. As I was doing this, I realized why this recipe had never been written down.

It's not meant to be written down, not in the typical fashion. This recipe is special because it is made with love and creativity and artistry. Each of us who makes it puts our own spin on it. Grandma only uses Swanson no sodium chicken broth. Wilma Jean adds butter to the water. I added extra pepper, because I like to give it a teensy bit more zing flavor. The point is--there isn’t a way to write down instinct, to write down tradition and genetic intuition.

Soup is nourishing and restorative. And this chicken soup from our grandmother that my sisters and I have been known to take pictures of and send to one another, a comforting digital bowl of soup on a tough day, this dish is not just a soup recipe. It’s a cherished family heirloom to remind us of the stories of our ancestors and to pass along to our own children.

As I began making that soup for the first time, my hands were remembering a tradition my heart already knew. I was creating the bridge from one generation of our family to the next. I went to work, eyeballing and adding this and that “to taste,” trying it out, changing on the fly. I can’t tell you how I made that soup that day. But I know that it felt important to be doing it. I know that I was performing a sacred dance with my hands in that kitchen, one that the women in my family have known clear back to their days in England in the mid-1800’s.

And I know that when my family sat down to eat that soup that day, no one compliment could have meant more to me than Grandma’s, when she tried it, looked at me, and said, “I’m glad you used my recipe and didn’t put that butter in it.” She gave me a knowing grin, one that only she and I understood. And we sat together, quietly enjoying our Chicken Soup.

The Big Four-OHHHHHH (no)!

Life Along the Wabash

October, 2021

Two years ago, for my first article in this magazine, I wrote about turning 38 and celebrating for 10 days. This year, leading up to my big whopping 40th birthday, I made a new rule. Years that end in 0 get a whole decade of celebrating. A-HA! See what I did there?

As an English major in college, I remember studying Romantic literature--more specifically, the way that the Romantic authors used the seasons to represent the phases of life, and as lives were considerably shorter during their era, the 40’s were considered the “autumn” of one’s life. Perhaps because the year is 2021, or perhaps because I am an optimist with good genes, I do not believe for one moment that turning 40 in August has begun the autumn of my years. I am excited about being in my 40’s. As one friend keeps telling me, “40’s are the new 30’s.” But I disagree. The 40’s are going to be so much better than my 30’s…or my 20’s…or any other decade, because this life, every life, has every reason to just keep getting better and better.

Oh sure, I ruptured a disc in my lumbar spine last Christmas and feel those twinges from time to time, and 20 years of massage therapy has left my wrists and fingers a bit achy here and there. My friends and I have actual conversations about mattress firmness and trade tips on tending to our houseplants. We sit on porches and sip Topo Chico Mineral Water instead of the beer we used to imbibe. When we go to the beach, the days of spritzing ourselves with olive oil and baking in the sun have given way to over-sized sun hats and SPF 50 sunscreens. And when we make plans, they’re lunch and coffee dates sent via email with calendar invites for easy remembering.

Some might say 40 has found me a little more absent-minded, and I suppose a case could be made for this. Last week, I left the house twice and made it to the end of the drive before realizing that, though I had gotten fully dressed, I had forgotten to trade out my bathroom slippers for real-world shoes and had to go back. Two days ago, I tore my car apart looking for my key fob, muttering under my breath, sweating profusely in the hot sun, before finding said fob tucked safely in my sports bra…which I was wearing. But the truth is that anyone who knows me at all knows that these are things I easily would have done in any of the other decades of my life, as well.

So what DOES 40 mean? It means I am finally comfortable in my own skin. It means I worry less about what people think of me and more about what I’m doing for myself and others and if I’m being kind (spoiler alert: sometimes I’m not). I worry less about my plans for next weekend and more about the future of the planet and of my children and potential grandchildren. It means I cry a lot more easily, often at beautiful things, like the sunset that inexplicably and unexpectedly broke my heart in the best way in the parking lot of the local grocery store without warning last week.

It means my conscience has grown and expanded with greater responsibility and regard for others, so I pick up trash at the beach, even though it isn’t mine. And one evening last week, in an unfortunate series of events, I lost a pile of my dog’s poop in the dark on our walk and felt so guilty that to make up for it the next morning, I picked up several piles of random dog poop around the neighborhood just to even the proverbial score a little.

It means that my husband is my best friend, my home, my soft place to land, and that my girlfriends are my village of warrior superheroes. It means I’m the mother of a grown child who is making difficult life decisions and that I don’t agree with all of them, but I have the grace at 40 to let the people I love be their most authentic selves. It means I finally know what we are talking about when we talk about holding space for one another and loving people right where we find them. And it means that life is full of hard decisions and that the goal is to choose the right kinds of hard and to be gentle with ourselves as humans who always have so, so much to learn, which can frankly feel pretty unfair.

40 means I have given up and just started letting the dogs sleep with me, because life is short, and my dogs love me beyond reason. 40 means my recent change in career is one I made because I wanted it and have finally learned to go after what I want with the same ferocity and heart that I hope my daughter learns to exhibit far sooner in her career than I did. 40 means I have some free time to feed my soul and mind and embark on new creative projects for no other reason except that I think interviewing strangers on their porches and taking their photographs sounds wonderful.

40 means that instead of listening to the words of the Romantic poets and seeing these years as passing seasons, I will listen to the French philosopher Albert Camus, because to me, 40 means that, “within me, there is an invincible summer,” and the little girl on the lake who loved the water and reading and writing and playing and collecting fossils and telling bad jokes and gently catching lightning bugs and singing and dancing and wandering in nature is still very much alive and well and can come out to play in the warm sunshine unabashedly and with the wilding of four decades of womanhood, ready to celebrate.

 Meghan—Mother of Geese

“Life Along the Wabash”

August, 2021

One morning in April, I was sitting at my desk in my home office looking out the window, when I witnessed something special. One of the three geese couples on our pond had a surprise to share with the other two geese couples who live here. There, in between Mama and Papa Goose, in a perfect little row, were five fuzzy yellow puffs of wobbly, waddling babies, working their way to the water. As they approached, the other two geese couples hurried to the edge of the pond to meet them. Joyful honking ensued, as Mama and Papa Goose introduced their babies. I stared through the window, witnessing this precious secret ceremony.

Over the next several weeks, Mama and Papa Goose marched the babies all around each day, teaching them the world. Everyone knew them. Other geese families began cropping up on the ponds, but I could always spot that original family.

One evening, I heard my neighbor out in the yard yelling at the stray cats and hovering over something hiding behind a bush. I ran out to see what was happening and helped shoo the cats away. My neighbor bent down and picked up a distressed gosling, scared, panting, eyes wide, but she seemed to understand that we were helping her. We walked around for forty-five minutes looking for Mama and Papa Goose.

When we finally found them, Mama and Papa Goose spotted us with their missing baby and made a beeline for us with the other geese siblings racing behind them. As they got close, we bent down and released the gosling, who took off running full speed for her family. The reunion was noisy and sweet--they pecked at her and inspected her to make sure she was okay. Then they stunned us both. Mama and Papa Goose scooted the baby over to her siblings, then turned, walked towards us, and began honking. Not the usual warning honks, with the hissing and spitting--these were different honks. “Oh my gosh,” my neighbor said, “are they…?” She trailed off, and I finished her sentence, “…they’re thanking us!” And they were.

The following afternoon, I glanced out my window and spotted Mama and Papa with their babies heading straight towards me. The family grazed in the grass, then settled the babies in for a nap under the window. Mama Goose waited until her family was all dozing, and then she came and looked directly through my window, straight at me. Our eyes were locked. I stared back at her, this strange and mysterious creature. Then she joined her family for their nap.

They returned the next day. And the next. And the next. They napped under my window each day. It was a shaded area, safe from the heat of the sun. Papa and the goslings would all settle in, curling into themselves and tucking their beaks to take a snooze. And each day, Mama would wait, then come to the window to look in at me, as if she were saying, “We’re here. Keep an eye on us, please.” And after each nap, before they left, she looked through the window again before waddling with her family to the water.

The baby geese are nearly grown now, almost indistinguishable from their parents, except that they still travel in the same formation--Mama in front, Papa in back, and the four kiddos in the middle. I miss the quiet and peace of their daily naps. Mama still watches me when she sees me. She holds eye contact with me when I come and go in the yard, and I softly greet her, “Hi, Mama,” half expecting her to nod in understanding.

It isn’t just geese I have had such experiences with. We had a rabbit at our house in Jasper years ago who hopped up on the deck and sat with me each morning while I drank my coffee. We had a possum who used to visit me on the front porch late at night. And readers probably remember the skunk with whom I shared my popcorn last summer. Animals are special. They have so many secrets, so much to teach us, to share with us if we take the time to let them.

As I was finishing this article, I was reflecting on why I have always had a connection with animals, specifically birds. Then I got a text message from my mom, my human Mama Goose. It was a photo of three tiny ducks in her bathtub. Her next-door neighbor saw their mom meet her end, so he chased down the ducklings in the median of the highway, loaded them in the car, and took them to my mother, unsure of what to do. He assumed she would know. And she does. I do, too. And chances are good that if we were to ask my daughter, she would know, too.

Scientists believe geese fly in their recognizable “V” formation for two reasons. The first is that it conserves energy. The birds take turns in the front, leading the way, creating glide and lowering resistance for the birds behind them. Once the leaders of the formation get tired, they fall back to let the rested birds take the lead. The second reason is to easily keep track of every bird in the group, making sure they stick together and are all safe.

So many people complain about geese--that they’re “nasty,” “messy,” “noisy,” “rude.” One could argue geese and humans have those traits in common.

Yes, I suppose the best and worst thing about geese is that they are, in fact, truly and unapologetically geese. But I think it is the same with people. The worst thing about humans is that we are, in fact, truly and unapologetically humans. It is also the best thing about humans. And if we would take the time to watch and learn from the geese, to practice flying in our own “V” formations, making one another’s journeys easier, we would surely be better for it.

 No Couch Potatoes Here

“Life Along the Wabash”

June, 2021

Today I got a call from IKEA as they were scheduled to deliver a couch.

I have not had a couch since we moved. I finally picked out the PERFECT one. I purchased matching pillows (gray and white with embroidered birds — yes, birds) and began waiting anxiously for the eventual arrival.

The couch was scheduled for delivery while my best friend Anne is visiting. I had envisioned the two of us curled up at either end, legs tucked up under us, petting my dogs, and catching up for hours, discussing our youth, our families, our funny memories, our children, our marriages, our parents, our lives, on this perfect couch.

But today IKEA called to say they oversold part of my couch and can’t get it back in stock. As a result, they plan to refund me for it, but still deliver the rest. The guy blurted all of this out, then said, “So, do you understand what’s happening?”

“Yes,” I said, “I think I do. Let me tell it back to you and see if I have followed along. On Friday, when you are supposed to deliver my couch, which I already paid for, you are instead bringing me one half of a couch, refunding me for the not-present other half of the couch, and then leaving me with one half of a couch to sit on. Is that right?” I asked.

“Yes, unless that’s a problem,” he said.

“Well, sir, I don’t want one half of a couch. I want one WHOLE couch. I know the Swedes are trendy, but I’m pretty sure even THEY don’t lounge around on IKEA half-couches, ya know?” I asked.

“No, I bet they don’t,” he chuckled. “So are you saying you want refunded for both halves of the couch?” he asked.

“Yes, sir, that is correct. I want refunded for a whole couch, and I want zero one-half couches delivered to me,” I clarified.

“Okay, ma’am, we can do that. Have a great day,” he added, thoughtfully.

And now the couch saga I thought was finally coming to an end appears to be just beginning.

I have been here in Florida since the second week of March, and because my family has unfinished business in Indiana, I am flying solo with my two dogs. I have been to multiple furniture stores, shopped online, checked Target, Home Goods, World Market, Ashley Furniture Outlet, Jacksonville Futon Store, and on and on and on, before finally finding the couch I fell in love with at IKEA. I went back to IKEA three times before finally making a move on the couch. A couch is a big commitment, after all. It’s the centerpiece of the living area of the home — where a family congregates.

So here I am again, a woman without a couch. But as I sat on my patio this afternoon, drinking a cold Topo Chico, watching a nearby molting lizard slowly and methodically peel away his old skin and investigating the latest monarch caterpillar preparing her silk, spinning and sticking it to the edge of the wooden beam that runs across the patio, I began thinking.

What if I don’t need a couch? What if I just don’t get a couch at all? Who says we have to have a couch in the first place? What even is a couch? Is a couch a want or a need? What have I been doing since moving to Florida without a couch?

I have taken countless walks on the beach in the evenings, searching for shark teeth and letting the cold Atlantic Ocean sneak up and soak the hems of my pants.

I have walked the dogs to the pond to sniff the turtles. I have watched the geese hatch their spring goslings and take them to the water’s edge for their first swims.

I have watched egrets and wood storks and ospreys and cranes and ducks come and go. I mistook an anhinga bird at the edge of the water for a water moccasin late one night and nearly lost my mind trying to get back in the front door of my house.

I have named the giant snappers “Grandma and Grandpa,” relocated four monarch chrysalises to safety. I have walked my dogs around our neighborhood. I have made a new friend and gone on a blind friend date. I have watched the full moon rise over the ocean at high tide. I have graded essays on the patio to the tunes of the spring peepers singing the summer into existence.

I have gone to concerts, taken a water taxi ride at sunset, walked the streets of Old Town Saint Augustine, strolled the St. John’s River, picked up trash on the beach at Matanzas Inlet, watched my nephew play baseball, drawn pictures with my niece. I’ve been living an active, happy life just fine without that couch. Maybe this is secretly the answer — a key to a more active, healthy, happy life.

So this evening, when I picked up my friend from the airport and brought her to my house, we didn’t curl up at either end of the couch and chat for hours on end. We sat on the patio in deck chairs as the warm sunshine faded into purple dusk, letting a cool northeastern Florida breeze join our conversation. We went out to eat at a cool new Mexican restaurant in town. Then instead of heading home to a couch, we drove to the beach, took off our shoes, rolled up our pant legs, and waded through the waves — giggling, talking, sharing. We went for a drive along the ocean on the way home, then played with the dogs for a while.

Who needs a couch anyway?

The Bird Shirt

“Life Along the Wabash”

April, 2021

Recently, in a weak moment as I was scrolling through Facebook, up popped an ad for a button-down shirt. This was not just any shirt. This shirt was covered in midwestern bird species. Now, two things occurred to me simultaneously as I stared at the screen. 

The first was: I cannot succumb to a Facebook ad. 

The second was: I have to buy that shirt for myself right now. 

Just last week, some friends and I were discussing the odd phenomenon that as women approaching a certain age (40--the certain age is 40), we are finding ourselves becoming increasingly interested in birds. This is not to say that I have not always loved birds. I grew up in the country on a lake, and I watched in awe each spring as goslings and ducklings hatched and took to the water with their parents. I’ve always thought birds were pretty, nice to watch, but as I’ve gotten older, something about them has grown increasingly more attractive. And I’ve seen many women noting similar sentiments, putting out bird feeders, watching hummingbirds, noticing cardinals visiting more than usual, specifically since the debut of COVID-19 last March. 

I remember being a little girl in third grade at Arlington Elementary School and reading the Judy Blume “Fudge” series together as a class. We all howled with laughter when Fudge’s teacher asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up, and he replied, “I want to be a bird.” But now here I am-age 39, and frankly, when I grow up, I think I might want to be a bird, too. 

So no, I don’t know what it is about women and birds, but I have a theory. Culturally, birds represent freedom, and I read several articles about the increased responsibilities of women during the pandemic. Many sociologists and experts claim that women in this age demographic are already overwhelmed with being wives, mothers, and career women under “normal” circumstances. Since the pandemic, women have been charged with extra housekeeping that comes from having a family at home full time. They’ve been working from home, homeschooling children from home, and may also be facing the added responsibilities of managing aging parents in the midst of a pandemic. Combine all of this with the constant worry and general anxiety wrapped up in all a global pandemic has to so generously offer, and it’s no wonder women might be drawn to these animals right now--creatures that can literally just up and fly away from everything. 

So since I can’t grow up to be a bird, and I can’t just fly away from stress, a bird shirt, in that moment as I was scrolling Facebook that day, seemed the logical next choice.

The woman in the photo for the ad wore it well--sleek, drapey in the right way, sheer, advertised as “light linen,” in a blue shade with lifelike bird prints adorning it. It had a collar, cuffed sleeves, was tucked loosely in the front of her jeans, with cute strappy brown sandals on her feet. She had a perfect tan. The ocean was in the background, and she leaned, laughing, against a wooden deck railing, sunglasses on. And I bought the shirt. 

Then I waited. 

Finally, last week, two months after I ordered it, there it was in the mail. I opened it, and I stared. The shirt in front of me surely had birds printed on it, but the background was a much paler blue. The sleeves were not cuffed but looked instead like the seamstress had run out of material and just sewed a seam at the end of it, just above the wrist. Around the back of the shirt, just below the shoulder blades, was an inexplicable line of slightly ruffled cinching from armpit to armpit. The material is decidedly not linen, but rather thick polyester, reminiscent of black-out hotel drapes. It looks like the Vincennes Executive Inn donated their curtains to a mid-90’s Clark Middle School home economics class, and some poor student with lofty visions and abysmal sewing skills tried to make a baby-doll dress, got frustrated, quit at the waist, and resigned themselves to a C- grade for the assignment. 

I sent photos of it to my friends. I posted it on social media, and I was stunned. Opinions varied, but one thing was for sure--people had strong feelings about this shirt. People made suggestions. “Make a couple of throw pillows out of it.” “Cut off the sleeves and make it a beach shirt.” “Make some face masks out of it.” 

Some people loathed it. “Oh. Oh no.” “It looks like something my grandmother would have worn, but not in a good way.” “It’s less hideous on…but still hideous.” “Discard.” “Demand your money back.” “It’s awful.” 

But then…there were others. “I kinda dig it. Great colors.” “Keep it! It’s cute!” “I’m sorry you all hate it, but I love that shirt.” “I think it’s cute. Big Jessica Day from New Girl vibes.” “I’m not kidding. I would totally wear this shirt.” 

So I sent it to my daughter--the true test. She replied, “I love it. It’s beautifully tacky.” I told her I didn’t think I could bring myself to wear it. She said, “Brown twill shorts, sensible sandal, brown handbag. A pop of color if you’re feeling fancy, maybe yellow, red, or blue. Wear it open over a tank. The possibilities with that shirt are endless…if you’re not a coward, Mom.” 

But here’s the thing--I think, when it comes to this shirt, I am maybe, just maybe…okay with being a coward. Maybe I have reached the age at which women suddenly become interested in birds but not quite the age at which women liberally wear whatever their heart desires without fear of judgement. The shirt is hanging in my closet--but not in the normal “going to wear it” part of the closet. It’s in the “Meh, keeping for a rainy day or a ‘dress in your favorite bird print’ get together” part of the closet. Time will tell. 

 Grandma Ruth

“Life Along the Wabash”

February, 2021

When I was a little girl, preparing to visit my grandparents’ house, I remember packing my little red and silver hard-shell suitcase, the front of which had a picture of a little blonde girl packing her own suitcase, and the words “Going to Grandma’s” printed across the top in big white block letters.

Later that night, bathed and ready to wind down for the evening, my sister and I would stand, poised side-by-side in the bathroom, ready to each receive a tiny puff of Grandma’s Estee Lauder Beautiful powder; I can still smell it. I remember how cozy and safe I felt falling asleep in the big thick sleeping bags in the living room while my grandparents watched “I Love Lucy” or “Mr. Ed” with us on Nick at Nite.

My grandmother still lives in the same home she did on the day I was born, a home she has refused on more than one occasion to move out of, despite our best efforts to relocate her closer to at least one person in our family. Little about her house has changed. In fact, little about Mt. Carmel, Illinois, itself has changed over the years. On a recent visit I drove through the Mt. Carmel City Park, a definite crowd pleaser for me and my siblings and cousins as we grew up. I could almost hear my grandmother worrying relentlessly as my grandfather encouraged her that it was okay to let us sail across the park on the zip line or climb for hours on the old army tanks that still sit in the middle of the park. And I will forever laugh when I remember my grandmother playing whiffle ball, running the bases with the bat proudly held up in the air, shouting “I’m gonna win!” Never mind that she had clearly been tagged out somewhere between first and second base. It didn’t matter to her, so long as her grandkids were doubled over laughing uncontrollably.

Some of my favorite memories of all time are of my grandmother with her two sisters, Naomi and Wilma Jean. Naomi, the oldest of the three Schofield sisters, passed away several years ago, but Wilma Jean is 95 years old, recently beat COVID from the comfort of her home in Indianapolis, and was featured on the Indianapolis news a couple of years ago when she retired for the third time. Naomi and Wilma Jean often came over to Grandma’s house on Saturday evenings when I was little — the men would retreat to watch boxing in the living room, and my sister and I would sit in our nightgowns, knees tucked up under our chins, listening to our grandma and her sisters giggle and share stories from when they were little girls themselves. They would start laughing until they couldn’t stop, tears rolling down their cheeks, gasping for air in between jokes. One sister would tell a story, another sister would insist it never happened, the third sister would lean down to whisper funny secrets to my sister and me. I don’t know who had more fun — the three elder sisters or me and my sister watching them.

On lucky Thursdays when we were on summer vacation, my sister and I got to go spend the night and have a special treat. My grandma got her hair done every single Friday morning until COVID shut down the world in 2020. So on Thursday nights in the early 1990’s, she would let us come over and “style” her hair. She would sit with a towel around her neck in a chair in the middle of the family room, and my sister and I would take turns combing her “platinum blonde hair” (this was, after all, the color her hair stylist told her that her hair was, a joke I would not understand until years later). We would style it into mohawks and crazy side parts, then stand back and admire our work and burst into peals of laughter while Grandma innocently pretended not to know what was so funny.

From convincing my sister and me that she was going to wear a bikini swimsuit to the city pool to venturing onto the neighbor’s yard trampoline with us, my grandmother had a knack for getting talked out of her comfort zone by her granddaughters. And she always pretended to be doing so begrudgingly, though she fooled no one with the charade. If it made us happy, she was overjoyed to do it.

I have much more serious memories of my grandmother, too.

I remember when my grandpa got sick, and it became obvious that he was not going to be with us much longer. I remember that grandma greeted her grandchildren at the hospital every single visit with a warm smile and a reassuring hug. And I remember her strength; I remember that on the morning of his funeral, I woke up to find grandma quietly folding and putting away his clothes. I know that her heart must have been breaking into a million pieces then, but she got up, got dressed, put one foot in front of the other, and went forward, bravely and with that determination I am fortunate to have inherited from her.

Grandma is my kindred spirit. She is the touchstone of my family. I see so much of her in me, and I am grateful. I remember how people constantly talked about how much I looked like her when I was little. Afterwards, she would jokingly take my face in her hands and say, “Meghan, take a good look at this face. See how pretty you will get to be when you’re an old woman?” And then she would laugh and laugh, but I would secretly feel proud. I know that I look like her. I see it in old photos. I love those old photos. And I know we have similar hearts, and I love that about us, too.

I love that my daughter Taylor has grown up with her own list of memories from GG’s house. I remember being so nervous to tell my grandma that I was pregnant with Taylor. I was young, unwed, in college. I think I asked my dad to tell her for me. And I remember that she called me after he told her. When I heard her voice on the other end of the phone, I began to cry, and she calmly said, “Oh Meghan, I know you feel scared and sad right now, and I know this wasn’t planned, but you have nothing to be ashamed of, do you hear me? I already love your sweet baby, and I know you will be a wonderful mommy. Just think! I get to be a great-grandmother!” Months later, when grandma finally got to take Taylor into her arms and meet her for the first time, I knew their love would be special, and I was right.

When I got engaged to Jamin, grandma and I spent long drives to and from shopping trips, talking, woman to woman. She talked candidly with me about marriage and raising children, about mistakes she felt she had made, or regrets she had. I got to know Ruth McFarland, the woman and the human, not just my grandma, but one of the best friends I will ever have. And I realized in these last 20 years, through these talks, just how much she truly misses grandpa, that he was her best friend, her buddy, and that one day, when the two of them are reunited, the celebration will be one for the history books.

But I’m glad that, until then, I’ll have the chance to keep building memories and to hear her wise words. The lessons I’ve had the chance to learn from her are ones I surely could not have learned any other way. And I want to thank her for all of it, for the fun memories, for the example of grace and integrity and kindness and good humor, but most of all for the unconditional love she so readily and willingly continues to give to all of us.

The pandemic has been trying for grandma, as it has separated her from the family she loves so dearly. But we have managed, with front porch visits spaced six feet apart to masked errand runs and chores around the house. Our phone calls are more frequent, and each time we talk, she ends the phone call the same way she has for the last 39 years. “I love you, Meghan Rae.”

And each time I hear those words, my heart soars with the hope and joy of the time we have left together and of the sweet love that only a grandmother can give.