by Claire Cook
“It’s just…,” Rosie finally said. “I’m lucky I can find the time to get out and walk every day. It’s such a busy season for me. I could do a day trip maybe, but that’s about it. Cape Cod Lavender Farm is great, and it’s right in Harwich. They’ve developed a new variety of lavender I’ve been dying to see. It’s a Hidcote called Harwich Blue, very dark, and it should be in bloom now. I’d like to buy plants to use in some installations anyway.”
Tess looked over at me and rolled her eyes. “Are you kidding?” she said. “You want to squander our hard-earned miles on a trip to Cape Cod? I mean, we could probably walk there for real in a day or two. And I’m not supposed to be a do-gooder, but it’s okay for you to drag us along on a work-related lavender-buying trip?”
We turned onto our side street shortcut, and Tess and I stepped up on either side of Rosie. “Geez,” Rosie said. “Tell me what you really mean, Tess.”
Tess put her arm around Rosie. “Sorry,” she said. “It just doesn’t sound like enough of a trip to me, that’s all.”
I don’t know exactly how it happened, but I opened my mouth and somehow I started channeling my Fresh Horizons certified small-group career coach, Brock. I turned to Tess first. “You might consider thinking it through again,” I said, “and taking some time to consider how that choice reflects who you want Tess to be as you move forward into the next chapter of your life. It’s important to give to others, but you also have to learn to nurture yourself.”
Then I turned to Rosie. “And if anybody needs a vacation, you do. So, take it. The work will still be there when you get back.” I shook my head. “Boyohboy, when I think back on all the fun I missed out on because of work.”
Rosie and Tess were both staring at me. “Whoa,” Tess said. “When did you get to be so smart?”
I WAS STANDING in my kitchen, drinking a big glass of water and wondering if it was too early to go to bed, when my phone rang. I jumped. Water dribbled down my chin and onto my T-shirt. I wiped my mouth with my T-shirt, since it was wet anyway, and checked out my stomach as I walked over to my phone. I’d been doing crunches every morning when I woke up and again after dinner. It might have been my imagination, but I thought my abs were possibly looking a little bit tighter already.
I was also using Tess’s weights to do one set of eight to twelve repetitions for each of my major muscle groups every other day, plus daily stretches on one of Rosie’s mats every day after we finished walking. Some days Tess and Rosie joined me, and some days they didn’t. The buddy system was nice, but I was fine either way.
My mother’s number stared out from my caller ID. “Hi, Mom,” I said. “Happy Sunday.”
“I don’t know what’s so happy about it,” my mother said. “Just wait, every day’s the same once you retire.”
“How’s the weather down there, Mom?” I asked.
“Who knows with all this air-conditioning,” my mother said. “Your sister and her family rented a house on Nantucket for the whole month of July. That doesn’t come cheap.”
“That’s great,” I said.
“Little Jimmy’s kids haven’t missed a day of work yet. They get themselves up and make breakfast on their own, too.”
“That’s great, Mom.”
“Kevin’s wife had her first checkup. No sign of twins yet, but she passed everything else with flying colors.”
“Great.” I gritted my teeth and got ready for my turn.
“So,” my mother said. “Any wedding bells yet?”
“Not yet.”
“Well, your sister’s flying me up for a visit tomorrow. I don’t know why I can’t go when they’re at their regular house. At least I know my way around the guest room. You could come visit them on Nantucket, too, while I’m there. And bring that boyfriend of yours. At least I’d finally get to meet him.”
“Sure, Mom,” I said. “As long as I can get the time off work. We’ve been crazy busy lately.”
After I hung up with my mother, I made a mug of tea and sat down at my computer. I Googled lavender. Even ruling out Provence and anywhere else we needed a passport to get to, I found a bunch of great possibilities for our trip. I read article after article, making a list as I went and rating each choice on a scale of one to five.
I traded my empty tea mug for a bottle of water. A couple hours later, I looked down at my list. Only one was rated five. I took some notes, saved a Web site to my favorites, and prepared my pitch for Tess and Rosie. I couldn’t wait to tell them about it.
Before I went to bed, I found a handkerchief I’d bought years ago, when my sister had dragged me along antiquing with her. It was made of thin white cotton, delicately threadbare, and it had an elaborate N embroidered in one corner, which was why it had caught my eye in the first place. I’d taken it home, washed it, tucked it into a drawer, and forgotten all about it.
I folded it in half and stitched the long side and one of the two shorter sides closed. I made careful stitches—maybe not Victorian sewing-circle stitches, but they weren’t bad.
I had a mushy habit of saving the rose petals from bouquets I’d received over the years, so I raided the ceramic bowl I kept them in and added some lavender from my garden. I also pinched some leaves off the potted mint plant on my deck, and took a minute to breathe as the scents mingled with the cool night air. I mixed them all together and added drops from a little bottle of lavender oil Rosie had given me. I had to substitute an ancient bottle of peppermint extract for the peppermint oil, but at least it still had its smell.
* * *
LAVENDER DREAM PILLOW
½ cup lavender buds
½ cup rose petals
1/3 cup crushed mint leaves
3 drops peppermint oil
6 drops lavender essential oil
Mix all ingredients and fill 6-by-12-inch rectangular pillow. Place over your eyes to encourage a restful, rejuvenating sleep, and to make all your dreams come true.
* * *
I filled my dream pillow and stitched up the remaining side. Then I crawled into bed, placed it over my eyes, and waited for my dreams to begin.
Day 15
13,001 steps
“OKAY,” ROSIE SAID. “WELL, THERE’S SLEEPY BEE LAVENDER in Connecticut and Daybreak Farm in Ohio, plus Peaceful Valley Lavender Farm in Pennsylvania.”
Tess blew out a puff of air. “When exactly did this turn into a lavender expedition?”
“Wait,” Rosie said. “I’m not finished. Those are all great choices, but my final vote goes to, drum roll, the Five Sisters of Lavender Lane. They’re up in Canada, in Kelly’s Cross on Prince Edward Island. It’s such a great story. Five sisters who’d led really varied lives—I’m remembering clinical social worker, bank manager, artist, legal secretary, and maybe an antiques dealer. Anyway, their parents were from PEI, and in their sixties the sisters got together and took over the family property and started a lavender farm called the Five Sisters of Lavender Lane.”
“That’s actually pretty cool,” Tess said. “Maybe we should drop the Wildwater Walking Club thing and start calling ourselves the Three Sisters of Lavender Lane. Or we could get them to adopt us, and we could all be the Eight Sisters of Lavender Lane.”
“I was just getting attached to The Wildwater Walking Club,” Rosie said. She stopped and tilted her head forward and fluffed up her damp red curls like she was tossing a salad.
“You know,” Tess said, “it’s really interesting if you stop to think about it. There could be women on Wildwater Ways all over the place leading parallel lives. We could start an online community, maybe do virtual walks from one Wildwater Way to another. Oh, wait, get this, we reach out to everybody who lives on a Wildwater Way, and we get to use their mileage, too. I might have to pull in a world map for this, but don’t worry, I know where I can order one.”
I’d waited long enough. “Okay,” I said in my best Fresh Horizons voice. “This is where groups start to fall apart. We’re losing our focus. We can do all those things and more down the road
if we want to, but for now, we’ll have plenty of mileage as long as we use our frequent flier miles, so we need to think about one trip for three people and not go off on other tangents.”
We walked through the seawall. It was dead low tide, or at least pretty close to it, so the water was anything but wild. But the good news was that meant all the best hard-packed walking sand was available. If I were still at Balancing Act, maybe I’d pitch a sneaker for beach walking. Little shields that kept the sand out of your sneakers when you walked through the dry, fluffy sand at the top of the beach? Or maybe tiny holes in the soles that let the sand drain back out, although there’d have to be a way to keep the holes from letting water in.
Or maybe I’d come up with a sneaker to make you feel like you were walking the beach when you weren’t. Maybe instead of a gel insert for cushioning, it could have a sand-filled insole.
“Don’t stop now,” Tess said.
Rosie took a little skip in the sand to catch up to us. “Yeah, come on, you’re doing great, Noreen.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Okay, Prince Edward Island would be a nice trip this time of year, especially if we took the ferry from Portland, and I’d love to meet the five sisters. But you need a passport to get into Canada now.”
“You know where I stand on that,” Tess said.
“Anyway, I think I have something even better.” I took a deep breath and let it out. “The Sequim Lavender Festival.”
“What’s a squim?” Tess asked.
“It’s a town in Washington state,” Rosie said. “It looks like it should be sea-quim, but it’s pronounced squim. You know, that’s not a bad idea. It’s the lavender capital of North America. I hear that festival is fabulous.”
I’d learned a long time ago in team meetings that conviction could be contagious, so I made my voice sound really excited. “It’s the perfect trip for us,” I said, “and I know we’d have a blast. It’s the third weekend in July, so the timing would work. I think we’ll have enough frequent flier miles to get all of us to and from Seattle, even though it’ll probably take double what it would if we’d booked our flights earlier.”
“I hate that,” Tess said. “It’s such a rip-off. Especially to go to a place called Squid. They should at least change it to Calamari.”
“Squim,” I said. “It means ‘quiet waters.’”
“Ooh, sounds like a good time,” Tess said.
“Wildwater meets quiet water,” Rosie said. “I like it.”
“We can rent a car and drive from the Seattle airport.” I looked at Rosie. “You’ll have a couple weeks to get caught up on everything.” I turned to Tess. “And it’ll still be a while before the school year starts. And it’s really just a long weekend, so we won’t be gone for long.”
Neither of them said anything, so I kept talking. “Thirty-five thousand people from all over the world attend the festival, and eight separate lavender farms participate. Buses take you around to tour them all, so we don’t even have to drive, once we get there.”
“With thirty-five thousand people, you probably can’t even drive,” Tess said. “Plus, we should walk. That’s the whole point.”
I ignored her. “There are different demonstrations at each farm, everything from growing to cultivating to products made with lavender. Plus fields and fields of lavender and lots of other things like beekeeping, pottery, and craft demonstrations.”
Tess pretended to snore.
“And there’s a street fair going on at the same time, with a hundred and fifty different craft and lavender booths, plus music and food at both the fair and the farms.” I closed my eyes for a second and tried to remember what I’d read last night. “Grilled lavender pepper sausages…sundried tomato lavender barbecued chicken…lavender lemon sorbet…white chocolate lavender raspberry cheesecake…honey lavender lemonade…lavender black currant champagne.”
“Lavender black currant champagne?” Rosie said.
I went in for the kill. “Oh, and we can also tour six award-winning artisan wineries while we’re there. It’s part of the festival.”
Tess stopped walking. “Wineries?” she said. “Oh, I am so there.”
“It sounds perfect,” Rosie said. “I can’t wait.”
“Okay,” Tess said. “I’m almost on board. But how about we fly to New Orleans first, drop off the journals, and then continue on to Squid?”
“No way,” Rosie said. “It would tack an extra day to either end, and I’m already pushing it time-wise, even without a detour. Why don’t we just invite your teacher friend to meet us at the festival, and we can give her the journals there? She could probably use a break, too.”
“You’re completely missing the point,” Tess said.
“Why don’t you go then,” Rosie said. “You can meet us in Sequim when you’re finished. Noreen and I will be the two hotties at the bar drinking lavender black currant champagne.”
“Thanks a lot,” Tess said. She walked up ahead of us, and Rosie and I gave each other a look.
“Sorry,” Rosie yelled.
Tess turned around. “You know,” she said, “I’m just trying to make a difference here. My own daughter will probably never speak to me again, so I guess I thought…”
“Did something happen between you and Hannah?” I asked.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Tess said. She turned and started walking again.
Rosie and I caught up with her. “Listen,” I said. “I really think the best way to do this is to mail the journals. I’ll help if you want.”
Tess shook her head. “I know, I know. I’m always trying to save the world, and I really could use a weekend that’s just about me. And fun.”
“Exactly,” came out of my mouth, exactly like I was my small-group career coach, Brock.
Tess sighed. “But after we go to Sequim, we have to do something about world peace, okay?”
I HADN’T GOTTEN around to doing my homework, so I tried to make up for it by getting to Fresh Horizons South early. I wasn’t sure whether to sit in the small-group career coaching room and start writing my life story, or go into the office and try to get my hands on the career coaching DVDs. Maybe homeschooling was a better option for me. The more I tried to imagine it though, the surer I was that they’d still be sitting, unopened, on top of my DVD player a month from now, collecting dust along with my unwatched copy of The Biggest Loser Workout.
Since I hadn’t ever actually signed up for the small-group sessions, maybe it wasn’t too late to change my mind. I could just walk into the Fresh Horizons South office and register for twelve hours of private career coaching. But what if Brock turned out to be the private career coach, too, and it was essentially the same, just with more individualized embarrassment?
I stood in the hallway, surrounded once again by kiddie-size lockers, and tried to think it through. Maybe I’d just walk the cement block hallways for a while and get the rest of today’s mileage in, and then go home. The deal Tess, Rosie, and I had made this morning was that, assuming we could find a hotel, we’d agree on the best flights to Seattle and book them right away while we could still get seats.
Then we’d be honor bound to walk at least 10,000 steps a day each between now and when we left for Sequim. We were walking a little over half that on our morning walk, so we’d either have to add another loop together, or pick up the rest of the slack individually. I’d been doing pretty well for the last few days, but I wanted to make sure I didn’t backslide.
“A quarter for your thoughts,” a male voice said behind me.
I jumped.
“Sorry.” One of the scruffy guys stepped up beside me. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“That’s okay,” I said. This was the guy with the lighter hair. Dick?
He held out his hand. “Rick,” he said.
I shook it. He had a nice handshake, firm but not bone crushing, but also not one of those wimpy handshakes some men use with women, as if they think you’re too delicate to handle
a real handshake. A handshake like that is a big red flag.
“Hi,” I said. “I’m…”
He smiled. It was a warm, friendly smile, backed up by good eye contact. And nice eyes, too, almost cat green. “I know, Noreen, but you’re contemplating Nora, and Gloria’s definitely not going to fly.”
I switched into flirt mode, just so I wouldn’t get rusty. “Impressive. Have you been taking notes or something?”
His smile got bigger. “Only the important things.”
“So, what’s your recommendation? You know, in the name department.”
He let go of my hand and shook his head. “Boy, I don’t know. I can barely decide what kind of coffee to order at Starbucks these days, not that they make it easy. I like Noreen though.”
“Thanks,” I said.
We just kind of looked at each other. “So,” I said. “How was your après small-group coaching session tennis match?”
The smile was back. He was looking a little more put together with every smile. “I killed him,” he said. “Ever play any Wii sports?”
I shook my head.
“Come on,” Rick said.
We walked right past the Fresh Horizons South door. At the end of a long hallway, we stopped at a door with a sign that said SOUTH SHORE SENIOR CENTER LOUNGE.
“This can’t possibly be good for my post-redundancy self-esteem,” I said.
“Shh,” Rick said. “I just have to make sure nobody’s using it.” He looked over his shoulder, then turned the doorknob carefully. He gave the door a little push and stuck his head inside the room.
“Coast is clear,” he said. He reached in and flicked the light switch, then held the door open for me.
“Oh, right,” I said. “Make me go first.”
I tiptoed in. I was expecting card tables set up for bingo, but it was a real lounge. Padded red leather, or at least red leatherette, banquettes surrounded black button-top tables. A whole row of red recliners, with cutouts in the arms to hold drinks, no less, were lined up facing an enormous flat screen TV.
