Life With Penny

Our trip took an unexpected detour when John got sick. Actually, he didn’t feel exactly right since deplaning from our overseas jumbo jet. Although we managed to enjoy our first two plus weeks as we saw various relatives, since then he’s been sick for almost two weeks and unable to do much of anything. To put it bluntly he is barely vertical and has only managed one or two excursions out. Mostly sleeping, often uncomfortable, the mild case the doctor called this is neither mild nor done with him yet, one week past the supposed end date. But he is definitely improving, only much more slowly than anticipated.
With that said, our other plans to visit my other sister and her husband, who’ve moved much further away, and stay with them for a few days, and also spend a night at one of my son’s houses in the north San Fernando valley, did not materialize. Although we did visit that son and his family on Sunday because we were picked up in the early morning by my daughter-in-law and she drove us home later that night. Basically though, John rested the whole day there. But if this had to happen during our trip, we were quite fortunate that we were here, as being with Penny at her wonderful house, so close to the ocean and many shops and restaurants and doctors is probably the best place for us, especially for his healing. There’s privacy here in this big house and in the surrounding, walled gardens. For me too, this welcoming place and the almost daily swimming, has been very therapeutic. That has a lot to do with the way my sister is. The whole home reflects her, not just in the way she has decorated the inside and outside, but the feelings she infuses everywhere. The plantings she has done are exquisite touches that are constantly preened and upgraded with regularity every season. They enhance what her landscape architect designed according to her wishes almost four decades ago. Inside too, the colors she chose for the walls and the style of the furnishings are both comfortable and perfectly suited to the style of the house. Her exuberance for life itself seems to show up in her magical paintings, completing the charm we feel the moment we get here. These paintings are so symbolic of her extraordinary connection she feels with the natural world. There are other paintings here chosen by my brother-In-law ages ago by some well known artists. All of these seem to blend together seamlessly with Penny’s work.
While my poor husband sleeps the days away, I’m wide eyed and bushy tailed taking in the incredible peacefulness and beauty that is all around us here. All of his suffering has nixed all of his plans for this vacation, while I feel renewed at a soul level just being here with Penny in the paradise she created with her late husband, Jim. There are photographs of most of our family members scattered throughout the house here that remind us of some of our happiest memories we shared throughout the years.
My sister is a survivor who made it past cancer in her forties and is living through something
similar now with grace, stoicism and optimism. I wanted to spend the major portion of our time here for that very reason but never would have imagined spending every night under this roof. But there are many things that have happened recently that I would have never imagined. All we can do is roll with the punches and keep looking ahead.
With another week left on this trip we are all trying to make the best of the time spent together. But soon it will just be Pansy, the cat, keeping her company and so we’re starting to express how much we’ll miss each other out loud. One thing is for sure. It won’t be easy leaving here or leaving her. But we plan on coming back in a few months and resuming our twice-yearly visits now that the mad mandates for John to be vaccinated here right off the plane have been lifted.
Life is good in Manhattan Beach now. Hopefully, it will get even better everywhere in the world for all of us. Even the earth will be healed from all the wounds It has suffered and life will be flooded with rainbows and unicorns and bliss again. I just know it.