Shouldn't…but Do

Doorbell just rang.  I do not know how many of you remember Walking Man – but there he was, on my doorstep.

Walking Man has been walking for years.  A solemn, silent presence in my neighborhood and on my walks as I  tread the same streets as he.  Years passed and despite the silence, now and then I got a smile, then a greeting – and some time ago, I learned his name and began striking up conversation.

Walking Man turned out to be a highly intelligent high school senior.  His interests are not like others, he knows it, but that is okay.  He walks.

Today he hand-delivered an invitation to his graduation open house and I was as proud of him as I could be.  His hair was shorter in the picture on the card, his eyes could be seen and I commented on their blue blue color.

Graduation.  Walking Man is off to university, hoping for some scholarship money still to come in.  School is expensive, but it is where he needs to be.  I will go to his open house with my children and we will see off this nice young man who once was a stranger.

He is a good man, I hope he has a good life.  I will miss him.

Read Full Post »

A deft twist, pull, twist, wrap, snip.  Movement through space as elegant as any performance artist.

Stitches.  Note to self:  If you tell your child to aim the baseball at your mitt – do not put the mitt in front of your face.

Read Full Post »

I saw the clouds and saluted the sun.  I saw a big tree and an old man. I saw a vole jawbone.  A rusting but ready field tiller atop unhewn soil.  I saw an ornamental plum, half filled with leaves and  neon purple blooms.  I saw cars and sky, I saw a gas-powered model airplane spewing a blue plume across a field where light was falling fast.  I saw families, and baseball, I filled some pots, I planted some seeds.

It hums – this world.  Extraordinary, vibrant, the world out there.  I have been looking the wrong way.

Read Full Post »

Drizzle brings out the best of spring.  Unearthly toned greens, laden lilac bushes as purple as wine.  Even the beguiling scent of blooming viburnum does not dissipate in  moist air.

And a worm was trying to cross the road.  Not a small worm, but a a good 9″ nightcrawler.  Easy size to make the catch of the day – or become the catch of the day for nesting robins in the area.

With no company, it looked a bit odd there, a quarter of the way across the street and definitely not headed for safety.  Life is like that –  get up a head of steam and keep on going, even when safety, or comfort, is not assured – as it never is.

On rainier days when my children were younger we undertook  Worm Patrol,  rescuing wrigglers facing certain doom in gutter-fed pools of water.

Had to admire the goals of this fella, if it had goals.  But it was facing doom just as sure as those long ago wrigglers.   Without benefit of height, I doubt this traveler could appreciate the hazards it faced.  Present perspective counts more  than where you start out  – or end up.

I relocated that worm to a lush spot of what looked to be well-aerated lawn.  Maybe it cursed me for thwarting its endeavor – we cannot know.  Life is like that, too.

Read Full Post »

The maple trees are thick with seed helicopters this year.  Like leaves they blanket trees, and will soon blanket the ground.  One tree  releases thousands.

Seeds of ideas, abundant, ready to fly.  The wind rises. Soon, soon.

Read Full Post »

Faucets, hoses, switches.  Regulation.

In recent weeks, the bathroom light fixture once or twice refused to illuminate.  It gave up altogether yesterday.  My bathroom has no window, a barbarous feature that cannot be helped.  Lack of light means immersion in darkness.

The Neighbor, bless her soul, stood side by side with me on the bathroom counter last night, taking down the fixture  – connecting, reconnecting – lit by goose neck lamp.  She lost a sandal at one point, I had both shoes on, never did figure out the hygiene angle.  And Neighbor?  Apologies about forgetting the circuit whilst you were wiring – happy you are still with us.

Culprit was the switch – should have known.  Flipped off one too many times, decided it was done, leaving that most personal of spaces in a house – the bathroom – dark.  But unlike faucets that swamped, or fixtures that drained energy for years, this was a quick fix.  Cheap too – $.89 at the local hardware store.

When off, light switches deliver and rest in darkness.  When useless, they do the same.  Trick is knowing the difference.  Hard to be personal in the dark.  Let there be light.

Read Full Post »

April Fools Day.  Who is the fool?  One who deceives, or one who believes?

The adage fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me defines culpability.

Not a fan of April Fools Day.  Life brims with personal irresponsibility – senseless validation of individual drives and feelings through invalidation of the reality of others.

No one, particularly me,  needs another day dedicated to it.

Read Full Post »

In these parts, this was the winter that wasn’t.  By tomorrow morning the vernal equinox will deliver spring.  Already a cacophony of frog and bird songs fill the air,  pussy willows bloom along with forsythia  and neon green weeping willow foliage sways like sea grass.

Overhead today I witnessed a startling sky and cloudscape the likes I have not before experienced.  Startling not for appearance but for visceral presence and immediacy.  As if a door, a cleverly hidden corridor through which something more was possible.  Present long enough to catch the thought – but not its measure.

But clouds change quickly and soon the Cowardly Lion was a stone throw from the vertebrae of a prehistoric marine animal arcing down the vault of the sky.  Curiouser and curiouser.  I do love spring.

Read Full Post »