Daydreams

Right now, my time seem to run one day into another. I have been helping friends can the vegetables from their gardens into stewed tomatoes, spaghetti sauce, and salsa. They want to try their hand at tomato soup today. We’ve also canned and frozen corn. In the days ahead, carrots, beets, and vegetable soup are on the canning menu.

The one thing that causes me pain is the leaning over the kitchen counter top to peel the skins from the blanched tomatoes. Inside I cringe, because I will be in the same position when I help the Ohiopyle Volunteer Fire Department in October. It is their Buckwheat and Sausage Festival. I’ve helped them for nearly fifty years, working my way up from dishwasher to frying sausage. Frying sausage is worse than cutting up the tomatoes. I’m in the leaned-forward position for perhaps an hour, but while frying, it is nearly eight greasy, hest-in-the-face hours of constant motion, flipping the patties.

There are very few days that something hasn’t slipped in to keep me busy. I sometimes dream of a week on the beach; a beach with sand at one end and a rocky stretch at the other. Perhaps it would have a small cottage where I can stroll and search the shoreline for flotsam tossed by the waves. I covet a spot where I can greet the early morning’s rising sun and not be stressed by appointments, the television, or even my cell phone. Somewhere that I can feel the cool morning breeze flavored with salty brine, then warmed as the sun rises and cooks the wet sand and seaweed, but I still have much to do at home. Small repairs, stacking firewood, and canning have laid a claim to my near future time. I’m not sure whether retirement was as pleasant as I thought it would be. My daydreams then was to read some of the books that I’d amassed, take an occasional college course (for fun and not to allow my brain to deteriorate), and to travel when I wanted. I manage to read a book, but my schedule doesn’t allow additional college, and my aging knees don’t permit me to sit in a cramped