A friend asked me the other day about our beach walks. How far, how long, how fast? We basically walk north on the shore and then home, sometimes south too. If we can get over or around enough creeks and headlands, we might manage to get two miles north, four miles round trip. But it’s not that simple; we also walk into the rocky edges of the shoreline, east-west, up and down, over and over. I told her that when tides force us to walk on the highway we manage better than 20-minute miles. That’s not fast, but good enough. When I log distance, I mostly count North-South distance because it’s impossible for me to accurately record what our zigzag path covers.

Life is like that, isn’t it?

The inclination is to think of how I got from there to here as a straight line. In reality I am wandering all over the place. When I look backward to where my life started, that seems like a direct path to here. I always thought I knew where I was going, but no. While I was living my life, there was rarely a clear destination. Side trips, misadventures, experiments, mistakes all along the way.

I have intended for weeks to write about our year anniversary in lockdown—that would have been yesterday. It was the plan. I have actually enjoyed some aspects of the past year. I have learned how to take better care of myself. I wove a lot of shawls. I rewrote two favorite fictions. I was able to attend many events virtually that I could not have attended in person. But there are no fire-roasted peppers left in my freezer because September of 2019 is a long time ago, I was home all of September 2020 and miss the Saturday Portland Farmers Markets. I miss hugging my family. I miss visits with friends from out of state.

Things are looking promising today. And truly, this has been a good week, but ultimately yesterday was not an easy day. The past caught up with us. Thirty-one years ago yesterday my mother-in-law passed away. “Ann” (Alta) was a sweet woman with a childhood sad enough to beg disbelief. Her father sired perhaps twenty-three children with three wives. “He kept wearing them out,” Gary says. There were rumors of more children. When Ann’s mother died, the children were all given away, some quite literally on a street corner. “Orphan children need home.” This was share-cropper reality, this was Oklahoma in the Great Depression. Ann was never an orphan, but she was abandoned to foster care in a time of desperate poverty.

Yesterday was also the tenth anniversary of Fukushima in 2011 and the anniversary of a train bombing in Madrid in 2004. Wikipedia claims only one person died at the Fukushima plant, but 154,000 had to be evacuated from the disastrous radiation spill. The earthquake and tsunami that caused the plant breach killed 15,899 with 2,529 people still missing. The train bombing killed 191.

I meant to post yesterday, but then I didn’t. I watched the ocean, I watched the sky. I gloried in a busy week and focused on accomplishments instead of mourning. We talked to both of our sons yesterday. Our dear daughter-in-law Emily has gotten us appointments for covid vaccination for Monday. She said there were appointments for today in late afternoon, but she knew we are morning people. We hope to see her soon.

This week we have made tentative plans to see friends who are vaccinated, perhaps the end of next month. I completed our federal and state taxes online. I sought and gained pre-approval for a loan. I spoke to a former student who is a realtor about a tiny condo in Portland we have not actually seen in person.

The condo we are looking at online was beautifully remodeled as a pied-à-terre by an Idaho couple who have used it only a dozen times. The husband has cancer and now wants to simplify his wife’s future. Portland is a long drive from Idaho.

Like him, I am thinking ahead. Driving to and from Portland in one day—which we used to do at least twice a month—is not something we want to or could continue forever. It would be easier, at our age, to drive over, stay the night or two, and then drive home. Eventually the oneway drive will become difficult or unsafe. I want options. Gary claims to be in deep denial, but I have always been the advance planner. Gary is more here-and-now.

The loan officer I talked to said he never knew his grandfather who died at the age of fifty. As a result both he and his father are more careful about their health. He bikes and at 56 is fit. Like us, he’s been isolating for a year, working entirely from home. Looking backward sometimes bends our futures.

My mother was driving past the age she was safe on the road. The only reason she never hit anyone was pure luck. I know of two elderly people who were less fortunate. A local man was still driving in his eighties when he hit a motorcyclist on the highway—and I have always felt that his death soon after was at least partially the result of shock and guilt. A few years later, when my sons were little boys, my Honda was struck by an 80-year old driver. No one was badly injured, but it was a traumatic experience for all of us. Witnesses said she simply lurched straight out into traffic. That driver, like the local man, suffered no injuries but from their error. They probably should not have been driving. I don’t want to be a typical age-denying American.

I want to clear the path before me.

We walk. We eat more carefully—I regained a “normal” weight this week too and all my clothing fits. I want to fit my years. I look as far ahead as I can imagine but also know that our path is not direct, that we will wander, that along the way we will find marvelous things, that when I look backward and see where I started, the bulk of my journey will not have been along that imaginary straight path, here from there. We wander with side trips, adventures, experiments, and beautiful accident all along the way.

Though I like to think I have everything planned, the truth is closer to chaos. I cannot know where I am going.

In the mean time, I am weaving and writing and walking. There is now and there is future. This morning I read the news with less frustration than in recent years. Today, I will bake bread and “attend” a Zoom reading at Powells Book Store. Soon, I will read through the stack of books building at my bedside. Every day, I will kiss my husband, and in some near future, I hope to hug the rest of my family.

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