Last evening we each had a bowl of sticky rice and we shared a couple of sushi rolls. After supper we walked a mile or so down the beach alongside the bay. It was a warm evening and the tide was in. We saw paddlers, swimmers, and a row boat cross in front of a sailboat anchored off shore. After our walk we came home and enjoyed a serving of cherry cobbler with vanilla ice cream before tackling a few chores and doing a little reading before heading to bed. I think the cherry cobbler was the last of the fresh cherries from our tree this year. We’ve still got lots of cherries in the freezer, but I don’t think there is a bowl of cherries in the refrigerator for snacking any more. The blueberries and raspberries are coming on strongly, however, We can pick more than we can eat every day now. And blackberries are not far behind. You can find a few ripe berries on the bushes and they are loaded with berries that will be ripe in a week or so.

As I stretched out on the bed, I thought to myself how much of my evening would have been difficult for me to predict even a few years ago. Certainly, had I been asked 50 years ago what my life would be like in the future, I would not have predicted living within walking distance of the beach, knowing how to roll sushi with fresh fish for supper, or even having access to strawberries, cherries, blueberries, blackberries, apples, plums and pears fresh off of the trees and bushes in the yard. I wouldn’t have predicted that we would visit our son’s farm nearly every day. I wouldn’t have predicted that we’d have a son who has a farm.

I didn’t think of retirement much during my working career. My life was full and fun and my work was meaningful and I was occupied with day to day living. For a long time I simply assumed that my life would lead me back to Montana. When we went to seminary in Chicago, I expected it to be a brief foray away from my home state. When we accepted our first call to serve churches in North Dakota, I thought “four years or so and then we’ll move back to Montana.” When our careers took us to Idaho and then to South Dakota, I expected that we might one day find a little place in the mountains to retire.

And when it comes to cooking, food, and diets, I’ve always enjoyed eating different things and learning new recipes, but there is a bit more time for planning and cooking meals in our semi-retired lifestyle. I did go into the office at the church yesterday for a brief time, but I didn’t put in a full day of work. There was plenty of time to pick up a bit of fish and plan a meal. What I didn’t expect when I imagined what my future might be like from the perspective of a few years ago, is how much we would blend the old and the new.

When we were first married we would occasionally eat rice in a casserole, but we didn’t own a rice cooker until after our children were raised. It took hosting exchange students from Japan and being able to make two trips to Japan ourselves that refined my taste for rice. On the other hand, the cherry cobbler recipe would have been familiar to my grandmother. I doubt that my grandmother ever ate sushi. She certainly wouldn’t have had dried seaweed nori in her pantry as a staple.

Around fifty years ago, I set up some goals for myself. I imagined what I would accomplish at five year intervals. I don’t remember all of the goals that I set, but I have frequently looked back with laughter at how little of the reality of life I envisioned. I achieved the goal I set for the first five years. My second or third goal, to have published my first book, didn’t occur until decades later. In the goals I set, I didn’t even think of having children. And children became such a big part of my life that I cannot imagine it without them. How could I not have thought of that when I was planning my future?

Like others, I had no idea how much time, energy, and commitment would be involved in raising children before they came into our lives. I didn’t know how much it would change our priorities and shift our goals. I couldn’t imagine that living close to our grandchildren would be much more important than what place we would live in retirement.

This morning, I’ll have farm-fresh eggs for breakfast. At sometime during the day I’ll probably stroll through the garage at the farm and check in on the chicks in the brooder. They’re getting almost big enough to move into the barn and a few weeks later they’ll be out in the yard. The meat chickens grow quickly and are only around for a few months. I can remember being in high school and thinking that getting chicks raised took such a long time. Now, it seems like a very short span.

I can already tell that it is starting to get dark a bit earlier in the evening. A month’s time makes a change in the length of the day here in the north country. In another three months we will have lived in this house for a year. The seasons pass much more quickly when observed from my point of view.

Some things change a lot. Other things don’t change very much at all. I need both change and stability in my life - sushi and cherry cobbler. I don’t think our menu choices would surprise our grandchildren. Then again, I don’t think they can imagine what foods they will be eating fifty or sixty years from now. I hope their lives have as many wonderful surprises as mine has offered.