Yesterday I signed up on autopay for Medicare. Today, after my swim at the pool, I couldn’t get my socks on and gave up. I stuck bare feet into cold rubber boots.There is also a wet dog on the couch and I don’t care. This is 65, so far.
It is raining buckets, as a friend said in a quote for an obituary I wrote this week for her husband. The rain did not have anything to do with his death, he’d been ill a while, but rather why they settled in Haines. They had been living in Ketchikan, the rain capital of the world, and his wife was working in Haines on cruise ships and every week she’d call him and report it was sunny here and it would be “raining buckets” there. It was an easy move. (The sun will come out tomorrow as the song goes…)
Which has nothing to do with Mark. He was a great guy, a southern gentlemen in the best sense of the word. “A humble man with a lot of accomplishments” as a friend said. He captained oil tankers and liked John Prine and fishing for King salmon. He got along with all his neighbors very well. Left, right and center.
Of course when these things happen—deaths—I mean, friends rally and a few of us shared a nice salmon dinner, fresh King and Sockeye, garden lettuce, and Chip made ice cream. It made us feel better, and it was easier to write the obituary with the ice kind of broken on the topic.
Which is a long way of saying that the sock situation is not an omen of my decline. I just made the wrong choice for post-swim damp feet— tight knee-high compression socks I usually use for cycling. They were the only ones that were clean. (I told you I have been practicing letting stuff go and apparently laundry took one for the mindfulness team.)
The bears are the big news. They seem to be everywhere, breaking into unoccupied cabins on this side of town and causing all kinds of damage. But no one has caught one (or more?) in the act. The other day when I pulled in the driveway with a truck full of groceries there was a bear on the porch. A small black bear with a white blaze on his chest. I thought it was a Newfoundland dog at first, and then was so astonished that I forget to be afraid. I opened the door and hollered “Hey! What are you doing? Get out of there,” and he looked at me and hopped over the bench and skipped into the woods. Rather than feel scared, I laughed out loud.
I take this as a good sign. A metaphor even.
I have another obituary to write, for an elderly former resident who was born a “hardscrabble” Idaho farm boy, and whose mother smuggled booze from Canada in July wearing a fur coat to hide the bottles in order to pay for dental care for her nine children. His son and family met me at the Rusty Compass coffee shop to share stories. We laughed and talked about the old days here when there were sawmills and an Elks club. When we still had enough King salmon to host a derby.
After we finished up and cleared the table, he said it was good to talk. I concurred. We don’t run with the same crowd. The last time we had such a long sit down was back when I was being recalled from the assembly and we were on a radio show together. He was supposed to represent the recallers, but chose not to rise to the bait. I appreciated that. Yesterday, we again agreed that it’s better when neighbors with differences get along.
This morning, after reading a litany out loud to the dogs and angels (Lord, hear our prayer…),I silently read a poem by aeon ginsberg (no caps in the name or anywhere) titled “anyways im radicalized now” . I learned that to “brick” something makes it not work. “Bricking” renders certain technology inert. Another worry. Sigh.
But then I opened up a Mary Oliver book on the windowsill and there was this: (from a poem called “Heavy.” ) A coincidence? I’m choosing to believe otherwise.
