Category: Simple Pleasures

Early fall in the natural world

In early fall, one of my small pleasures is to go out on the lake in the early morning right before sunrise to look at the congregation of ducks, geese and swans on a small, newly-emerged island near our shore. They usually scatter when they see or sense me coming near. Once a heron took off into the foggy mist as I approached, and the vision of those grey, graceful wings flapping and disappearing into the foggy shadow floored me to the ground in awe. There was something a little eerie about that whole scene which could be used as a portentous setting for a Stephen King novel.

Right after that brief eerie moment, the sun started lighting up the sky and then proceeded to touch the treetops.

At the Stillwater Scenic Trail, walkers enjoy witnessing the trees turning yellow on the walking trail and many trees around the lake turning red.

In mid-September, the transformation was at its early stages:

Now in almost mid-October, the autumnal transformation is nearly in full swing:

Our lake in summer

Almost every morning this summer, whenever opening the bedroom window upon waking up, I would look out on the left to Georgiaville lake. Due to the obstruction of the many trees in their thickest summer foliage, I would usually be able to see only a small surface of the lake, but any glimmer of the water reflecting the morning sunlight or even of just ripples under an overcast sky would send me the signal that another day has begun. After my bathroom routine, I would then proceed to go downstairs to look at a bigger portion of the lake surface straight ahead from our small balcony and would soak in the view. Our lake has an almost daily visitor that has never failed to enthrall me: a misty ghost crawling, curling and swirling on the water.

Here is the ghostly mist in action in July:

Here it is again in August:

When J2 started school in late August, we would have to get up at 6am and get him to the bus stop around 6:45am. After dropping off J2, I would get back home to a quiet neighborhood in the cool morning air. I would sit in our little garden to soak in the quietness and enjoy the solitude. Then I would walk down to the lake to just be there by myself.

Princess Leia entered into our life and turned it to a new page

Our family life never felt the same after Liam, our blond Maine Coon cat, had been returned to his first adopted family in Lexington in the summer of 2024. We returned him so that we can downsize from a 4-bedroom house in Campbellsville, KY, to a 2-bedroom apartment in Bowling Green where J1 was attending the Gatton Academy for gifted students in math and science and where D opened his financial planning office serviced by Commonwealth. We also wanted Liam to be united with his first adoptive “mother” and with the other cats living in her house. He had been restless, trying to leave the house on several occasions, and had shown a longing for being around more creatures like him towards the end of his stay with us. In Lexington, he ended up being reunited with his brother and old friends, which made us happy although we were sad about not having him with us.

During that gap year in Bowling Green without Liam, we were extremely busy going through many kinds of transition. We were also in the midst of the preparation for our big move east. D especially was under tremendous stress due to the threat of lawsuit from the evil Edward Jones Investments while simultaneously working extra hard to retain good clients so that we would have income. I and especially D suppressed any nostalgic emotion we might have had about Liam or our previous stable existence in our cottage on High Street.

Liam’s absence was finally and acutely felt after we have settled into our townhouse in Smithfield, Rhode Island. D felt it the most, I believe, because he always feels very attached to pets whereas I am more attached to people in general. I did not grow up with pets in my original family in Vietnam, which conditions me not to feel a need for and a strong bond with domestic animals. Liam changed all that as he restored me back to good health and humor during my seasonal illness bout that autumn when he came to us. Not only did he spend time keeping each of us company everyday but his presence, innocence and playfulness contributed immensely to the coziness in our cottage on High Street. We simply adored him–his good looks, charm and sweetness.

Liam’s absence partly led to D’s depression leading partly to the near breakup of our marriage. As our relationship was on the mend in May, we adopted Leia. Three days after she entered our house in Smithfield, our life together turned to another page, a fresh new page showing “writings” of renewal and new domestic joys. Thanks to Leia, this new chapter of our life, when both our kids are much older and we are officially in middle age, promises a return to cozy conviviality in our home and hearts. Although Leia is not as fluffy and innocent as Liam, she is more playful, cuddly and affectionate with intelligent eyes.

A natural way to soothe the tense nervous system through a heatwave

We had a heatwave that lasted for 2 or 3 days some time this last June. Although most people here have air-conditioned homes and go to work in (sometimes heavily) air-conditioned buildings, I sensed people’s collective stressful anticipation of and suffering from the excessively hot temperatures outside. I myself was most uncomfortable physically during the ultra-hot days regardless of the existence of air-conditioning. Our home felt stuffy to someone like me who is not used to living in spaces constantly shut in and pumped with forced artificial air.

To help soothe my nervous system, since I’m hyper-sensitive to the collective stress and anxiety in my environment, and to ease my feeling of being shut in during those oppressive days, I decided to bring nature indoor. I would go down to our garden early every single morning to enjoy the fresher, cooler morning air and to cut hydrangea blooms for display in strategic spots in our home. The hydrangea blossoms were arranged and displayed where I would be most likely to not only look at them while passing but to gaze at and contemplate them as well. Something about the freshness and unspoiled beauty of nature that would always act as healing balm on my strained nervous system and weary soul.

 

Our late-spring indoor garden

Repotting these flowers in our home was tiring but gave me so much joy. I suppose this time I succeeded in exerting myself physically for beauty’s sake without damaging my health. It was a tremendous “win” that boosted my spirit, enhanced the look of our house and invigorated the feel in our home. I believe that, after many physical and emotional struggles throughout winter and spring, I finally achieved a sustainable sense of renewal by the end of this spring. It is fitting that my eventual triumph would be marked by the presence of flowers which are among my most beloved temporal things.

A spring moon

The faithful moon was my friend and witness through my tough winter and spring seasons filled with troubles and heartbreaks earlier this year. Just contemplating the moon would instantly soothe my weary soul.

Spring blooms

I have been obsessed with weather news lately. My own experiences living my life and observing the shifting moods of other people according to weather events have led me to believe that human beings’ emotions and behaviors are more fundamentally affected by climatic elements than we are aware of or are willing to admit. I started thinking about how weather phenomena affect our bodies, emotions, psyche and life activities 20 and a half years ago in Missouri, USA, when I went to the hospital to give birth to J1. The nurses there told us of a curious phenomenon being that many women would go into labor during snowstorms. I myself notice that there are usually more ambulances rushing on the street whenever there are inclement weather events such as heatwave, thunderstorm or snowstorm.

I especially noticed weather’s effects on people’s health and emotions while living in Kentucky where summer is hot and humid and winter is usually unpredictable. During summer in Kentucky, the atmosphere always feels heavy due to the oppressive high humidity, and the people themselves would look heavier in their bodies as well as appear to be in a bad mood. The air would feel thick like transparent soup and the community would suffer a health slump. All my health problems leading to anxiety and depression started during summer 2018 during such a collective health decline. The summer mood of people in Kentucky would always correspond with the weather which would usually be stale and stagnant.

Along the same vein of how weather controls human health, emotions and behaviors, earlier this year, as the winter cold gradually gave way to a warmer spring feel in the air, the heavy burden of my marriage crisis started feeling lighter on my heart and mind. As the trees and flowers started coming back to life, D and I both felt that our relational wounds were on the mend.

As the sunshine became stronger and nature resurrected, we started doing what we do best: walking together hand in hand to witness the beauty of nature around us. We walked together on our lake trail to see the pine trees coming back to life and the saplings pushing their ways upwards through the earth. We took longer walks around our neighborhood and area to notice the budding of wildflowers or the flowering of plants in people’s gardens. In this area, spring showed off such exquisite flowers as peonies, rhododendrons, azaleas, irises and some others.

We especially took a delight in noting the budding and flowering in and around our own little garden.

My foolhardy attempt at starting a hopeful Spring and my miserable failure

About two months after D’s mental and emotional breakdown and the near collapse of our marriage, my physical and mental health deteriorated visibly. In March, I was no longer the spunky, sweet, super-loving and all magnanimous wife who was deliberately over-affectionate and overattentive so that my husband would be saved from committing a grave sin of breaking his wife’s heart and of breaking up a family. Our family was saved and our marriage survived, but my health, both physical and mental, was falling apart.

It was a typical New England winter of times gone by. Recent winters had been mild, but January and February 2026 were brutally cold and snowy with grave financial and emotional consequences for many folks. A three-day blizzard dumped more than 3 feet of snow in Rhode Island; we are now still paying in installment a surcharge for the snow removal service we used six months ago. Even though we had to dig ourselves out at one point because our yard care/snow removal company didn’t show up for many days in a row, they still charged us a large amount above what we usually owe them for the monthly maintenance of our grounds.

What a dismal, heart-breaking and expensive winter! What a bleak beginning to the year! My happy spell that had started around the Fall of 2025 was completely broken when January 2026 came around. In my despair, my heart ached and I missed the cottage on High Street where our family used to be together happily. I questioned our decision to move out of Kentucky. We worked so hard together as a team to move our whole family out of the stagnant environment of that small town where nothing happens. And we were so over-the-moon with our new home and environment last July. How did things go so wrong after we achieved our objectives and arrived where we wanted to be?

Did we anger the Gods by having left behind everything and everyone we used to know and count on? We had had to be secretive about our plans because of the toxic nature of Edward Jones (if they had known of D’s intention to leave, they would have made it impossible for him to be employable) and the dysfunctional dynamics of D’s extended family (they constantly quarreled among themselves and are not trustworthy). Still, should we have just stuck it out with everything and everyone that was familiar? Should we have not taken the leap into the unknown that we believed would be better for our family? Were we disloyal and deserved to be punished? Did they whom we used to care about turn out to be vengeful and treacherous? How to live? Do we dream and strive to do what is best for us or just submit to the flowing current of society constituted of other people’s whims and wishes? Do we try to rise above mediocrity or just go along with the majority? I still don’t have the answer.

By Easter, I had started suffering from dysfunctional uterine bleeding as a physical response to excessive stress. I thought I was only having a longer-than-usual period that is quite normal during perimenopause. After I had gone for a doctor’s visit and got a prescription, the bleeding stopped and I felt a small surge of energy. With more energy, I wanted to do something to try to uplift my spirit above the gloom and doom I had lately succumbed to. I wanted to see beauty and something colorful and positive. With Easter on the horizon and the fluttering of Spring’s first breaths, my thought turned to flowers.

So, on a windy Monday during one of D’s business trips to Kentucky, I ventured out to buy flowers from Dave’s supermarket and pots from Home Depot to try to create an indoor Easter garden. Little did I know that my body was still very weak from the bleeding and that over-exerting myself physically outside in the wind would lead to a relapse. The day after my indoor garden had been planted, the bleeding resumed with even more intensity than ever before. I was forced to lay flat on the couch for many days on end, which led me straight to depression. Instead of feeling uplifted as I had expected, I was completely miserable. All because I wanted to plant and see pretty, cheerful flowers in my home so as to ward off the winter gloom in my heart.

Here they are — the flowers I paid for dearly with my health:

By Saturday morning of that week, it was clear to me that my bleeding was not going to be controlled by me just resting on the couch. I called my doctor’s office but they refused to call me back. I ended up having to call random doctors’ numbers, hoping that one of them would call and guide me as to what I needed to do. A doctor from North Scituate called me back and advised me to go to the emergency room at the Women and Infants’ Hospital in Providence. I called our kind neighbors Lauren and Barbara to ask them to help drive me there.