Mary Mckschmidt

Losses

Death, certainly, is the most permanent.
Like the time my older sister lost her kitten
to the teeth of the dog next door.

Or the morning he, who could no longer speak,
said goodbye to his wife with his eyes.
But I also have wept after witnessing

the mental and physical decline of ones I love;
at knowing I, too, am aging and life changes
are inevitable. I have experienced the betrayal

associated with harassment, discrimination, assault,
and the resulting loss of faith in humanity.
I am living with the heartbreak of seeing

the blue waters of a beloved lake blanketed green;
the sandy beaches I used to walk defined by pebbles,
impassable because of new rock embankments.

But the losses hardest for me to shoulder
are those caused by my own mistakes; when I,
usually speeding through life’s to-do list,

trample on ones I care for deeply;
when I harm and am erased from a life,
a wall created to keep me outside.

How I deal with loss is a matter of choice.
And since all losses can potentially tear apart
any peace of mind, I want to choose wisely.

I asked my husband his thoughts
and he was surprised I cared so much
about football.
___________________

This poem first appeared in Mother and my book, Miracle Within Small Things: A Mother and Daughter's Journey Through Loss and Aging, published in 2023 by Mission Point Press (available on Amazon and through independent book stores).The photograph of the female desert cardinal (pyrrhuloxia) was taken while hiking the mountains outside Tucson after the deaths of Dad and Lady, my parents’ dog. This summer, I sail out the harbor with Rubin and head north. I hope to photograph lots of birds.

Birdsongs

Two deaths in three days. A brother. A poetry friend. And yet, the robins, finches, cardinals, and chickadees are singing from the trees at dawn. Their songs remind me it is a new day rich in possibilities.

How do I want to live my “one wild and precious life?” *

*From the poem, "The Summer Day" by Mary Oliver (https://www.loc.gov/programs/poetry-and-literature/poet-laureate/poet-laureate-projects/poetry-180/all-poems/item/poetry-180-133/the-summer-day/)

Sharing Spring
by Mary McKSchmidt

As I was not there
to see the young fox
emerge from its den beneath
the neighborhood bench,
witness the inquisitive eyes
confronting the camera,
watch its black boots bound
across the sloping dune,
the white tip of its tail disappear
among the first reeds of spring,
a neighbor sent me a photograph.

Instead, I stood at a window
seven miles from our home,
one arm around my mother,
and pointed to the young maple
rising above the cattails,
its pencil-like trunk bending
under the weight of a furry body
plumper and more awkward
than a squirrel; tail flatter,
rounder than an otter;
inching too far up the tree
to be a beaver; a woodchuck,
perhaps, climbing
to the topmost branches
to nibble the first
of the lime green leaves.

____________________

Thanks to Rob Spaargaren for sharing the photograph of the red fox pup.

Watching Friends Downsize

My third-grade teacher told us to bring a toy,
something for someone who had nothing.

I remember kissing my doll goodbye,
a six-inch, blonde-haired favorite

given me by my godmother
whose name I gifted my imaginary child;

one graced with a wardrobe of clothes
each outfit handmade by my grandmother—

a rare gift from one with thirty-nine grandchildren—
a gift made more difficult by the tininess of the doll.

I remember placing my little girl and her clothes
in a shoebox and taking it to school the next day.

For decades, I have felt guilty about giving away
something that represented so much love,

saw it as a moment of childhood foolishness.
Only now, as I watch friends downsize, do I realize

love is meant to be given from one to another,
including to a stranger, a child somewhere

who opened a gift one Christmas morning
to find her first doll and a boxful of clothing.

In Our Cockpit
Celebrating decades of differences

He says our sailboat is like a cottage on the water.
I am drawn to the unknown that beckons from beyond.

He taught me to feel the wind on my face,
sometimes a whisper, sometimes a roar;

introduced me to the thrill of watching
the air fill the sails, our boat heel,

the hull slice through water,
the gurgling sound of the wash becoming

background music to an unspoken intimacy
as nature and knowledge propel us forward.

Accompanied now by flocks of cormorants,
the black flutter of an occasional monarch,

we have sailed together for decades.
I am at the wheel; he is trimming sails—

a communion that has brought us home after
being tossed as a balloon on eight-foot waves,

thrown on our side by gale wind gusts,
pounded by rain under lightning-lit skies,

swallowed by fog in the path of a freighter.
His calming presence evokes confidence

but skies seem hazier these days.
Is it climate? Is it age?

This morning, fishing boats glide across glassy waters
protected by the pier. But beyond the harbor lights,

a disquieting ripple speaks to waves fueled
by night’s winds, by the dawn’s building breeze.

Today, like yesterday, the same question.
Do we stay or do we go?

____________________

Photo is of Ludington’s harbor, where the first lines of this poem were written. This is our 45th season sailing together. I am grateful.

Parking Lot to Pier to Peace

On April 24th, I will be speaking about a lake I have loved since childhood. In preparation, I reread my book, Uncharted Waters: Romance, Adventure and Advocacy on the Great Lakes. My favorite passage was written at a time I worked in northern Illinois while Rubin, the man who makes me laugh, sands down the intense edges of my personality, and knows and loves me just as I am, ran a business in Nashville. Consumed by career, I lived on a sailboat in Winthrop Harbor for three years, hoping to bring balance to my lopsided life.

"Driving back to the boat each evening, I feel a sense of peace settle about me the minute I see Lake Michigan through the windshield. 'Hello, Lake,' I say with a giant smile. With that first step on the pier, I feel as if an angel is lifting all heaviness from my shoulders, freeing me to see, smell, touch, hear, and experience all the glory of life . . . all the joy in living. Accompanied by frogs, crickets, birds, and mosquitoes, I sit in the cockpit as the soft, black carpet of night becomes the backdrop to an ensemble of stars flickering across the skies until they near the lake’s horizon. Then blackness.

Only the moon dances on Lake Michigan. And her dance begins to awaken the buried dreams of a child paging through a book of poetry.”

To this day, I feel that same way every time I step from a marina parking lot to the pier leading to our boat. I hope you, too, have a special place on this planet—a place where you experience all the glory of life, the joy of living; a place where you can occasionally reassess your life’s direction. And be at peace.
____________________

A Lake Michigan Love Song: Caring for This Place We Call Home” by Mary McKSchmidt. April 24th, 3:00 p.m. at the Portage United Church of Christ, 2731 W. Milham, Portage, MI. Open to the public.

Mary Mckschmidt Author, Poet, Photographer

Caring for This Place We Call Home

For the first time in four years, I was asked to speak about Lake Michigan. I do not believe in coincidences. I immediately said yes.

COVID, family, age-related health issues, a deep resolve to make access to nature easier for the mushrooming senior population, and a need to replenish my own spirit sidelined my focus on building awareness as to the importance of cleaning up and protecting Lake Michigan and all the Great Lakes; of providing clean, safe, affordable water for all. But the stressors putting our water at risk did not get sidelined. If anything, they are worse. Why? The warming climate did not pause. And climate change exasperates everything.

If you sit on a bench on a regular basis, you will see the changes. More algae on murkier waters. More non-native birds. The disappearance of other favorites. Hotter days. The death of trees that have stood for decades. More days with higher, gustier winds. More intense rainstorms.

I believe doors are placed in front of you for a reason.

Thank you for joining me on this journey to care for our state’s natural resources while making nature more accessible to all, especially our seniors. As you will see, the two paths are intertwined.

For details about the presentation, “A Lake Michigan Love Song,” visit my website or “Events” on my page.

Yooper Benches
By Susan Carnes of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula

Dear Trolls,

We are the five benches that look south across Lake Michigan and the Straits of Mackinaw. If we were a mile east, we would be seeing Lake Huron. Only an invisible line and a magnificent bridge mark the division between two of the greatest lakes in the world. We are so proud to be here.

We wait for you—24/7, 365. We stand sentinel, hoping you will stop and stay long enough to skip a stone and watch as the ripples and perhaps the chaos of your life dissipate. Let us bear your weight and hear your sigh of relief from the long drive. We invite you to come with your campers and trailers, your four-wheelers and snowmobiles. Come with your children, your parents, your cousins and dogs.

You might want to bring along something to dry last night’s dew or brush off the snow; touch us lightly before you sit, it it’s August and you’re wearing shorts.

Please come, have a seat and let the magic begin.

Sincerely,

Five Benches

(I am told "Yoopers" is a common name for those living in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, above the Mackinac Bridge. "Trolls" are those who live south, below the bridge. Mary)

Sunset Corner

In January, I posted a story about finding shade for one of Mother and my favorite benches. Situated on the Heinz Walkway overlooking Lake Macatawa, the west-facing bench was the only bench protected from the afternoon sun. We called it “Cottonwood Corner,” a place of peace and tranquility shaded by seven leafy cottonwood trees.

Sadly, disease struck, and summer leaves began disappearing. First one tree became a skeleton of silver, then the next. The city of Holland removed all seven last autumn.

On December 28th, I met with Andy Kenyon, Director of the Holland Parks and Recreation Department, to ask if the trees might be replaced. And quickly. Mother is 97. I did not want her last memory of Cottonwood Corner to be that of the stumps.

It took only two months for three small red sunset maples to appear beside the walkway!

Donning winter coats and gloves, Mother and I strolled along the path to welcome the trees. We talked about the hours of joy we hope to experience this spring while sitting on the bench watching the leaves unfold, the fishing poles dangle from nearby railings, and the boats skim across the water. Mother and I decided to rename our corner “Sunset Corner.”

So many reasons to do so.

It could not have happened—and happened so quickly—without the warm weather, a responsive team of city employees, and the support of so many who share our dream of making nature more accessible to seniors in Michigan communities.

Thank you.

Without Intent
By Mary McKSchmidt

It is thought she died of post-release mortality,
her 13-foot long, 1500-pound body
traumatized by what happened after
the hook was firmly embedded in her jaw.

I suspect the great white would have preferred
to die a natural death; not to have been dumped
at water’s edge by a Florida storm, dragged
behind a backhoe for two long miles, dissected
as a specimen for scientific learning.

I suspect she would have preferred
to have been born a bottlenose dolphin,
loved and forgiven for mistakes made
when she could not see clearly;
to have been accepted for the role
she played as keeper of balance
among the mighty predators of the seas.

I suspect she would have preferred
a more melodic song hummed at her passing—
not the famous two-note theme song
synonymous with fear.

As her body lurches through the sand before me,
I see the open jaws, rows of jagged teeth,
once white underbelly now pink with blood,
slippery gray skin shining silver in the sun.

But it is her eyes, black and piercing,
that prompt me to retrace the tire marks
and find the chaotic scene in the powdery sand
where she was discovered, lifted,
tied with a towline away from the sea.

I bow, for I suspect she did her best.
Isn’t that all any of us can do?
And prefer someone to notice?

for the Great White Shark of Navarre Beach

Facing the Unfamiliar
By Mary McKSchmidt

Abruptly, the asphalt ends,
the tires dust up dirt and stone
sending the white bug of a rental car
bumping along a one-lane track
threading through plywood shacks
that remind him of Deliverance.
Ahead, the path is swallowed
by a stream. No place
to turn around.

Google maps and reality collide.

II

I am alone in the Black River Forest,
defenseless, holding a camera
on a tree-rooted path that makes
hasty retreat without injury difficult.

Rustling along river’s edge,
something larger than a squirrel
stirs the underbrush. Suddenly,
without provocation, it charges,
feet scurrying beneath an armor of steel.

Instinctively, I take a step back.
“Do not be afraid,” I whisper to it, to me,
for the unfamiliar need not be frightening.

With its prehistoric-looking shell,
tiny eyes, pig-like snout, pointed ears,
long, ringed tail, it looks like an escapee
from the museum of natural history.

Singularly focused on finding food,
the “little armored one” rushes past me,
sniffing, clawing, digging the wet earth.

I might as well have been invisible.

III

Contrary to what my husband was told
by the fishermen while waiting by the car
for my return, the water moccasins did not
drop on me from the branches overhead,
the river path was not overrun with baby gators,
and I never saw or heard a single bear.

Maybe next time.

Whimsical Thought
By Mary McKSchmidt

It was a whimsical thought,
the kind that drifts
like a low-hanging cloud
over a marginal sea
still reeling
from last night’s storm;
the kind that
demands attention—
like the lingering waves
curling, crashing, flattening
the powdery white sand
alongside the unfamiliar road
cutting through
the long and narrow
barrier reef island.

Why not say a prayer for those
memorialized on benches?

it asks,
even before I see
the palm-thatched umbrella
shading a bench
overlooking coastal dunes
of sand and gravel.
Words etched on the back
of the green-slat bench
hard-stop my jog.

Carol Ann McBroom
Mum Artist Best Friend

Stunned, how could I not
sit on that first bench
and ponder the coincidence?
Remember the woman
I’ve called “Mum”
since our relationship reached
a level of profound intimacy,
who is an artist, best friend, but
whose name is not
Carol Ann McBroom?

How could I not
pray for both mothers
and their children?
personalize every bench
that followed,
grateful
for that one curious thought
that changed how I think
about strangers?

Differences

When she said she wanted
to hike the planet, he said

after an hour all trees look
the same; to which she said

the wildflowers, butterflies
and birds feed my spirit;

to which he said,
not mine. Instead

he chose to wait for her
in the car, reading a book

that never would land on
any of her many shelves

while she hiked trails
all leading back to him.

By Mary McKSchmidt

Writing poetry while jogging

not as far
not as fast
not as many days
but still out there
looking
listening
hoping I remember

Jogging in the Fog Christmas Eve Morning
By Mary McKSchmidt

Like the colorful ribbon of a balloon
partially buried in the sand,
or the aluminum edging of a beer can
tossed in the soft of a season’s first snow,
the flash of purple on a park bench
causes me to break stride, turn back,
pick up the unfamiliar card with overlapping
circles of orange and red.

Through the mist I see white letters
right of center—"D E B I T”—
and imagine a person reaching into a pocket
to buy gas, milk, a last-minute gift,
casually fi*****ng the lining,
panicking when there is nothing.
Searching the other pocket. Nothing.
Looking everywhere. Nothing.
Lost in the chilling dampness of despair.

I call the number on the back of the card,
learn replacements take seven days,
follow a triage of prompts that all end
“goodbye.”

Raised in a small town in a different era,
I stop by the police station. The door is locked.
Sign says closed for the weekend.

Frozen fingers trace letters where a name
should appear— “B I O L I F E D O N O R”—
and I remember sitting on a bench with a mother
watching her eight-year-old boy running,
how she no longer feared a fall, scraped knee,
a bleed that might lead to his death,
how grateful she was for donors.

I drive to the plasma center
hoping the card reaches the pocket
of one gifting Christmas every day.

I am told to destroy the card.
____________________
I call them “story poems”—poems I write to noodle through an unusual encounter or a bizarre experience. Examples include: To Somebody’s Father (6/14/22), Trying to Make Sense of Things (7/13/22), No Leisurely Stroll (8/15/2022), The Holiday Card (2/1//23).

This poem started out as a story poem but morphed into a “poem’s story”—meaning it wrote itself. I prefer happy endings, but the poem forced truth at every turn. It placed a mirror in front of an era that makes human connection so difficult, often impossible. Perhaps that is why I am drawn to benches—sitting on them, reading stories about them, adding more benches to parks and senior living spaces. Benches create community. And community is essential to one’s health. At least it is essential to mine.

Mary

A Bench Story from a Reader
Birthday Ribbons

Seven years ago, my little sister died very suddenly a week after her husband’s heart attack. We are a small family – just the two of us and our parents came as refugees in the 50’s. My sister and I were close – a kind of phone call every day close. She had a wicked sense of humor and our calls were filled with laughter and we expected to be old ladies together now that our families were launched.

I grieved for her and ached for her. There is no burial plot to visit, nowhere to talk to her of my sadness. Until……

Across the street from my home, at the Women’s Park in Chicago, a memorial bench to a friend, surprised me one day and I immediately made arrangements to honor my sister. Now I have somewhere to visit my beloved sister, to decorate the bench with ribbons for her birthday, to clean around it so others can enjoy the beautiful spot comfortably.

The bench has lightened my pain.

M.O. of Chicago
____________________
Thank you for continuing to share your bench stories. Even if I am not sitting next to you on the bench, I am with you. As is everyone who reads your story. Mary

Congratulations to Mary Mckschmidt and Jane McKinney on this nice article, written by Mary, in the Holland Sentinel News about their book, Miracle Within Small Things, and their efforts to replace trees in the park that had been removed due to disease. With the help of the city of Holland and proceeds from the sale of their book, Mary and Jane were able to buy shade trees near their favorite park bench, providing shady respite for seniors and all visitors to the park. Well done, Mary and Jane! Here's a link to the article: https://www.hollandsentinel.com/story/opinion/columns/2024/01/14/my-take-finding-shade-for-cottonwood-corner/72205703007/

Angels’ Breath
By Mary McKSchmidt

In the middle of another night, awake
listening to the endless chimes
of the grandfather clock announcing
from the living room downstairs
that another fifteen minutes of sleep are
forever gone, consumed by a mind that refuses
peace, that insists on reliving every
mistake, that worries incessantly
about tomorrows; in that abyss of despair,
I hear a brush against the window
pull back the covers
to face winter’s chill
and discover ice crystals
clinging to every branch
in the forest as if
the angels
are inviting me
to play.

https://www.hollandsentinel.com/story/opinion/columns/2024/01/14/my-take-finding-shade-for-cottonwood-corner/72205703007/

My Take: Finding shade for Cottonwood Corner While Mother is in her 98th year, this spring we plan to once again stroll along the walkway to a favorite corner, shaded by maple trees.

A bench story shared by one diagnosed with cancer

The Mourner’s Bench
By Dirk Hollebeek

I don’t consider myself much of a joiner but recently my wife and I joined a book club, my first but not hers. There are a lot of Reformed pastors and teachers in the group, and so, the first book selected was The Blood of the Lamb by Peter De Vries, an author I had never heard of let alone read. I would later hear him compared to Paul Schrader. Both are artists deeply acquainted with the Reformed subculture and critical of it, using novels or film as their preferred expressions.

The Blood of the Lamb is perhaps best described as a semi-autobiographical work of fiction. The main character, Dan Wanderhope, grows up in a Dutch Calvinist household in Chicago only to reject that religion, just like De Vries. Don and his wife have a child named Carol who contracts leukemia, mirroring De Vries’s actual daughter. The disease’s diagnosis, subsequent treatment, and dooming complications form the second half of The Blood of the Lamb.

In the penultimate scene, Wanderhope enters the hospital carrying a cake inscribed with Carol’s name, meant to celebrate her impending discharge after achieving remission. Instead, Wanderhope witnesses Carol’s release of a different kind, as result of a rampant infection that consumed her in a way the cancer was unable to do. Her blood, once full of cancer and then temporarily and terminally full of germs, choked her body of life. As he speaks his last goodbye to his daughter’s body, he whispers simply, “Oh my lamb.”

Wanderhope goes outside and finds himself opposite St. Catherine’s church. Remembering the boxed inscribed cake, he removes it carefully and, finding his target, hurls it full force at the crucified Christ statue on the church’s exterior. It hits Jesus’s face squarely. As the cake and frosting dribble down the stone Savior’s body, Wanderhope slumps to the worn front steps, not to repent or pray, but to rest before continuing onward.

Wanderhope does go on, and the days and weeks pass, but he and De Vries remain steadfast in not looking to the divine for healing, hope, or peace. The concluding paragraph of the book begins with “Time heals nothing–which should make us the better able to minister.” It goes on to suggest that all that suffering can bring is a shared experience and subsequent comradery but nothing else. “How long is the mourner’s bench upon which we sit,” Wanderhope ponders, “arms linked in undeluded friendship, all of us, brief links, ourselves, in the eternal pity.”

I related to a great deal of The Blood of the Lamb. Like Carol, I struggled with illness as a child. De Vries’s descriptions of inpatient pediatric hospital wards, while set in the 1950s, mirrored my experiences in the late ‘70s, from the roommates to the playrooms to the whispered conversations between doctors and parents just out of earshot but not from view. And when Wanderhope narrated the events that led to Carol's leukemia diagnosis, I read those sections aghast and open mouthed, occasionally wiping away tears. I had been diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML), early in 2018, and after achieving remission, received a bone marrow transplant later that spring. In the days before my AML diagnosis, I shared Carol’s experiences of fatigue, fevers, headaches, and general malaise that are more typically associated with colds and the flu. The blood work results reported by the real doctor in my life and the fictional one in Carol’s changed everything.

There is a knowledge gained from being an oncology patient, a knowledge no one willingly chooses. A knowledge about how time, priorities, and expectations shift with just a few words over just a few seconds. Suddenly, life becomes not about plans or a future, but merely about survival. As De Vries puts it, “The future is a thing of the past.” Survival is everything. Surviving the cancer, surviving the treatments, surviving the complications. Surviving damning statistics. Surviving. It is harder than it sounds.

At the beginning of my treatment, the nights were usually the most difficult as I would wake up randomly with a variety of symptoms. It might be nausea, pain, or discomfort. Early in the chemo, I would wake with the common side effect of night sweats. Gown, diaper, sheets, blankets, completely drenched, and I would wake with a start because I was shivering, teeth chattering. On the worst night, it happened twice. Each episode was another obstacle to overcome by calling the nurse, drying off, and changing clothes while the sheets and blankets were being switched, settling in, and trying to warm up again. I would shiver for half an hour under a pile of blankets before I would start to warm and then kick them off so as not to overheat and become even more nauseous. Sometimes that would work and I would sleep the rest of the night. Sometimes it wouldn’t, and I would start another day of chemo and struggle exhausted.

However, most sleepless nights were not caused by these conditions but by a restless mind. The emotional and spiritual battles that raged equaled my physical battle for life. In the dark, partly illuminated by the various screens of monitors and pumps, I would look out the window and wonder. I have come to understand why humanity has historically been afraid of the dark. Everything is a little more overwhelming in the silent darkness. Numbers, percentages, and survivability statistics are more jagged in the dark. I would despair over the starkness of facing a life-and-death disease full in the face.

I thought of those who face life threatening disease alone. How do they manage? It’s lonely enough in a crowd of supporters. And with faith. At other times, I would remind myself that there is nothing I did to deserve this disease. It was not a reckoning, a judgment, or a curse. It is cancer. Savage, faceless, merciless. It does not respond to emotion nor demands nor pleas. I did not bring this on myself, or on my family or my community. It simply descended on me.

Every person who has heard the word “cancer’ as part of a diagnosis has walked the road of denial and rationalization. There is a relentless outpouring of self-defending anecdotes and comparisons (even if never uttered aloud) to demand leniency. But all the defenses, all the best excuses, don’t matter. Rationalizing doesn’t shrink a growth, and reasoning doesn’t change blood counts or pathology reports. Cancer doesn’t care who or what you are. Speak all your evidence, demand all your rights and entitlements, share your unfulfilled dreams. And be prepared for silence. Cancer isn’t listening.

It wasn’t listening to Peter De Vries or his daughter, Emily, the inspiration for The Blood of the Lamb’s Carol. She died in 1960 after struggling with leukemia for two years. I have always maintained, even on the worst days of nausea and/or sudden and irreversible incontinence and/or nerves being damaged by the chemo with a sensation of burning flame and/or a fatigue so deep that I felt glued to my bed, that it could be worse. Worse, for me, would be if cancer had happened to my wife, Stacey, or one of our children. It is precisely this scenario that De Vries experienced and shares through Wanderhope–facing the worst possibilities, struggling to hope while being surrounded by sick children and their stricken but imperfectly enduring parents. As an adult patient, I was spared the charade of perpetual positivity that oncology parents must exude, save when our children would visit. De Vries had no such luxury.

In the end, he finds nothing to bring solace but a metaphorical bench upon which humanity can and should sit to commiserate and minister to one another. Not in faith, but in sorrow. And not in belief, but in loss.

I find the image and idea of this bench compelling for its invitation. For its honesty. For its openness. Particularly as the bench in my mind is a ragged old bench, repurposed from beams and iron spikes that held another function centuries ago. They now have been painstakingly assembled by the master carpenter, a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief, to comfort people in their time of deepest distress. It is a mourner’s bench large enough for the world, small enough for me. And you. A place for all to join.

____________________
Photo and story provided by Jeffrey Munroe, author of the new book, Telling Stories in the Dark: Finding Healing and Hope in Sharing Our Sadness, Grief, Trauma, and Pain, and editor of the Reformed Journal, where this story first appeared. The Mourner's Bench was posted with the permission of the author, Dirk Hollebeek.

Finding Shade for Cottonwood Corner

On a bench shielded from the afternoon sun by seven cottonwood trees, Mother and I watched the parade of boats, birds and people alongside Lake Macatawa for years. The only bench on the south side of the lake offering such protection from the afternoon sun, it was a favorite. We called it “Cottonwood Corner.”

Mother wrote a poem about it titled “Peace and Tranquility”—for surely the bench offered that to all who paused along the Heinz Walkway to savor a summer afternoon.

And then one October day, the trees were gone. Several showed signs of disease last summer—so we were not surprised. But we were crushed. Without shade to protect eyes increasingly sensitive to light or paper-thin skin susceptible to cancer, how could we enjoy the lake?

Thanks to the many people who have read our book, Miracle Within Small Things, or heard our story about the importance of making nature more accessible to seniors, we had money to replace the trees—to save one of the few shaded benches in the area. But how to make it happen?

I have heard from several people it took years and lots of frustration to get their cities to add a bench or a tree—features they were willing to fund to honor a loved one. And then I heard from others, it was easy. The difference—Chicago, Saugatuck, Muskegon—have an online donor application process in place to manage requests.

Holland does not.

Fortunately, Ken Freestone, a former city council member, came to our aid—setting up a meeting with Andy Kenyon, the director of the Holland Parks and Recreation Department. In less than a minute, we had our trees—new maple trees that will be planted along the Heinz Walkway this spring!

As Holland is in the final two weeks for public comments on the Parks and Recreation Master Plan, if you live in Holland or have ever visited its many parks, please send an email to Andy at [email protected] prior to January 12th.

Message: Please adopt an online donor program to make it easier for people or organizations to donate senior-friendly benches and trees to our parks. It will help make nature accessible to everyone, regardless of age.

It’s a message that should go to all community governments across Michigan and the country.

While Mother is in her 98th year, this spring we plan to once again stroll along the walkway to a favorite corner, shaded by maple trees. Peace and tranquility are always welcome gifts.
____________________
THANK YOU to all who purchase our book and provide presentation stipends to hear our story. The monies will continue to fund shaded benches in Michigan communities—hopefully a goal made easier by community online donor programs.

A special thanks to West Michigan Garden Clubs including the Petal Pushers of Kalamazoo, Carnegie Garden Club of Paw Paw, Three Rivers Club of Little Garden, Thornapple Garden Club of Hastings, the Village of Appledorn, Freedom Village, Hope Academy of Senior Professionals, the Saugatuck Woman’s Club, Wedel’s Garden Center of Kalamazoo, Reader’s World Bookstore (which stocks our book), the Herrick District Library (which selected our book as a 2024 Book Group to Go book), as well as individuals who have made private donations. Please, come see our trees in 2024—and enjoy the view from a shaded bench you helped make possible!

Mary Mckschmidt Author, Poet, Photographer