She’s a force of nature

 Yes, of course, we all know that Jennifer is a force of nature, but today I speak of Julia Myhre.

Julia flew out from Salt Lake City where she is studying for an MBA at the University of Utah to spend her week-long October break with us.  It’s the first time we have ever had the privilege of spending such an extended period with her alone.  What a delight.

The Aylestock family treasures a long tradition of making apple butter in the fall—a sweet thickened sort of apple sauce cooked down from raw apples in a massive copper kettle over the course of an entire day.  Having been grafted into this Aylestock tradition over 40 years ago (long before our marriage), my experience would say that this requires the labors of at least two or three whole families who contribute to the huge task of peeling, coring, slicing and dicing bushels (usually five bushels—like 150 pounds) of several varieties of apples to garner the final 11.5 gallons of apple butter which are jarred and divided up amongst the families.  

Julia fears no task and gathered a group of friends to make apple butter last year.   Undaunted by the prospect of her final result being compared to that of the memory of years gone by, she moved ahead strengthened by Voltaire’s maxim: Perfection is the enemy of good.  Her 2020 batch was declared a success by the matriarch of the clan and has been enjoyed throughout 2021.

When Julia finally locked in on visiting this week, we began to strategize for making apple butter, but colliding calendars prohibited any possible collaboration of families.  Again undaunted, Julia assured me that “Yes, we can!”  She managed to persuade her former housemate from the Greensboro Fellows Program, Bethany, to join up for the project.  And so she began to plan—a new apple peeler arrived in the mail.  We downsized our project and bought two bushels (Golden Delicous and Winesap) from Crazy Harry in Elkins.  Julia and Jennifer peeled and processed all the apples last Sunday.  Monday became Apple Butter Day.

Roughly five hours were spent stirring the apples in the copper kettle over the crackling fire with the seven foot long wooden paddle.  The final process of measuring the thick brown paste into boiled mason jars—Jennifer and I completely missed it because of a Neurosurgery follow-up appointment in Morgantown.  That appointment was as close to perfunctory as we could have hoped.  Jennifer did get to glimpse some images of her brain scans which she had not previously seen, but mostly the young neurosurgeon wanted to talk about her six week neurosurgical rotation at Mbarara University in Uganda.  We left with lots of reassurance that Jennifer is on an excellent trajectory in recovery—but also a reminder that her recovery may take up to a year.

We returned to find 36 jars of apple butter (the final tally totaled 4.5 gallons).  And Julia and Bethany added their own touch with a hints of ginger and nutmeg added to their batch—time will tell how the clan will judge that.

But beyond apple butter, every time I turned around Julia was baking sourdough, scones, or cookies.  She washed, she cleaned, she scrubbed.  She did a beautiful puzzle with Jennifer and Bethany (check out https://www.libertypuzzles.com/about —thanks to Bill & Sheila Marty!). And lots of walking and talking…

Jennifer continues to make progress.  The walker has been relegated to the garage.  She still holds on to a hand or arm of someone when outside walking but inside she moves around completely independently. She has grown more steady and more confident.  She attends Physical Therapy twice a week in Bridgeport.  Her therapists there are wonderful.  They astutely observe her weaknesses and then hone in with lots of creative exercises to strengthen and stabilize her.  They had her hopping over the rungs of a rope ladder laid on the ground this week.  She pedaled a mile on the stationery bike in 8 minutes. She bends, balances, lifts, steps…

With regard to her eye, she is now spending a couple of hours twice a day unpatched.  While before, she could hold her conjugate gaze for a few seconds, now it is for several minutes.  So there are longer and longer periods for which she has “single vision.”  She managed to read a few pages with binocular vision this week.  That is major progress.  

One final prayer request.  Jennifer has had persistent diarrhea since her discharge from rehab.  That’ s nearly three weeks.  She’s had a complete battery of stool tests which have all been negative.  It seems to be resolving — but very slowly.  She still has loose stools at least once or twice a day (down from 5-6x).  It’s draining.  We are hoping that this completely resolves this week.  The next step would be a gastroenterologist— which we’re hoping to avoid.