Shouldn't…but Do

Scrubbing floors on hands and knees.  While there is likely a more chemically efficient means of floor cleansing these days, I am good with elbow grease.

Years of waxy build-up is the target.  A dull shell of plastic coated floor I did not notice until today.  One linoleum square gave way to the next, and the next…well, you know how it goes.

Clean, restored, almost like new.  Good thing to take care of the ground you walk on.

Lightning over the airfield delayed the flight.  A line of thunderstorms moving east.

Airports are interesting places.  Architecture that supports carriage of transient, generic humanity.  Generations daily enter, depart, and arrive – processed.

Delays are common, expected, and generally accepted among the strangers who temporarily populate airports.

One woman left Korea early that day, a young man returning to Amsterdam, a woman with moving vans arriving next day – all unique.  The tattooed man, the weary newlyweds returning from Italy – each story, with its quirks, a  coincidence with whom it is shared.

Strangers who boarded, waited, deplaned, and re-boarded now have an incremental understanding of a few of the stories that passed their way.  More willing to hoist luggage, step aside, spare a smile.  A common phenomena of human sociability.

Cheers went up at the gate as re-boarding was announced – camaraderie built only through the pressure of process and delay.  Something to that.

On adventure bent of late.

Look over there – a mountain to catch the sinking sun.  Spare trees, wind.  The younger generation throwing rocks.  Pine needles cross my palm.

Devastating.  But only for the good.  Hapless fragmentation under the onslaught of memory held in bone, wind, and tree.  I have been here before.  I did not realize it was a beginning.  I am here again, and this time, I am aware.

New energy, new ideas, young people who are not me.

An airplane overhead and for once – for once – I am happy to be grounded.

There are blinds on the windows this evening.  Light, darkness and the seasons have washed unimpeded through my  uncovered living room windows for two years.

I never intended to leave windows uncovered that long.  Divorce is all about dissolution, and mine drained away energy for big things and small things, like tending to windows.

Windows provide a view – both in and out, access to both bounded, and unbounded space.  As arbiters of view, windows admit or deny both the highly personal, and the naturally impersonal beyond our four walls.

Dreams of houses with doors unshut, windows uncovered, are common.  Lack of containment.  No discernment, only unrelenting exposure – unmediated nature.

The nature of things.  The blinds are closed this evening.

Poured rain today.  Any day is a good day for a walk with my children.  We were the only ones out.

Up the street, a tiny heap midroad, moving.

A young bird stricken, tail askance, eyes closed, head and feet still convulsing on the wet asphalt.  Maybe just hit by a car.

My youngest ran back for a shovel, my oldest and I stood guard – made sure no other car finished the business.

Gently and carefully conveyed back to our house and laid beneath a large spruce.  It opened its eyes momentarily, clutching its feet around grasses where it lay, as if perching.  There was nothing else to do.

Later, it was still and stiff.  Its life, and feet, had let go.  We interred it among the roots of the tree – maybe  someday it will rise with the sap of that tree, provide shelter, homes, and perches for those who might have known it.

Tonight a small flock of those dusty sparrows lighted briefly in the top of that tree – not usual.  Or maybe we just thought so.

We felt lucky we found it, got it off that rainy road. A small thing in a world that daily serves death, illness, joblessness, homelessness, and mindless cruelty.  We very likely made no difference to that bird – but its suffering, and its passing were part of a story that made a difference to us.

Email.

Met with the statement “You are invisible.”  Given the option to “Go visible.”

A lot there.  With a mere click, one can go from unseen, hidden, or simply ignored, to seen, consuming space, accounted for.

Magic.

My house is a standard split-level, not so big.  Looks like a lot of houses around here, nothing special to see.

With a few window frames to be replaced, my house has siding in need of power washing, and a driveway with a crack or two underway.  Carpet is bunching just a bit,  linoleum is tired.

My house is surrounded by a garden unlike any other in this burg.  Home to the wind and all that flies on it, hummingbirds,  monarch butterflies, a thousand flowers, and sometimes – if and unless careful, the Baba Yaga.

My house has a window etched with the crookedy script of  my son’s name, when he was six.  That and other windows are the same I looked out as I walked countless nights carrying my children when sick with croup, or just to see the moon.

My house is memory, and more is added to it every day, every season.

My house is mine.  I finally closed last night on refinancing that provides me the opportunity of paying  monthly until I am 81 years old. I am grateful.

My life has always wanted refuge, a place where doors close on the cold, and open to the warm – and temperature has nothing to do with it.

There was a parade of thunderstorms last night.  Lightening, rain, and sometimes a few stars illuminated my world  far into the night.  A perfect celebration.