Yes, today I am a septuagenarian, seventy years old. (Please don’t say “seventy years young”—I find that too sticky-cute and somewhat insulting. I’ve earned my years.)
SEVENTY
FAMILY
CLEANING HOUSE, pt. 2
One day I only sorted a single box, the next day I powered through six. Negatives and family photos defy intentions. Nevertheless, I have made progress even during a “Very Bad Week.”
My upcoming 10k, diet, and writing. A body and a cherry pitter. Regaining control?
Continue readingCLEANING HOUSE, pt. 1
A few days ago I ran five miles and began sorting boxes. Gary emptied the attics last month. Six months ago I began running again. Two years ago I decided enough was enough and I would eat better and lose some weight. We began isolating from Covid in March 2020.
All the boxes stored in the north and south attic went into the largest bedroom. Then we emptied the huge closet in that room and everything from under the bed came out.
BLUE DOT
A friend of mine, someone I know only through our mutual blog posts and a handful of emails, the exchanges of notebooks and weaving… lives in a deeply red community of a deeply red southern state, the one blue dot in a red sea. She has found herself in situations where people say what seem such outrageous things that she is too flabbergasted to respond and in situations where she knows she is being deliberately baited. Walking around blue becomes an act of courage.
I get that.
This is probably not the best way to come back from a month of silence. I meant to write about wood carving and jam jars and a train ride, our bivalent booster and books. I’ve started that post. Instead…
LAND LINE
No one calls us. No. That’s inaccurate. We have friends in Canada who call sometimes to touch base and one of our sons often calls us during his breaks working from home, especially while he is on a walk.
Our younger son got us each a cell phone and pays our new phone bill, so the land line became a useless expense. Even so it took us months to cancel and unplug our big landline phones. We finally did last week. We dickered about who and how to alert this change. In the end, family. We figured most everyone everyone has my email.
Retirement, gray hair, gardening, beauty and telephones in no particular order—
Last week we saw this osprey land on the snag at the headland north of our home. Usually there is an eagle there, or a raven or crow. We had never seen an osprey there and my zoom struggled in the wind, shot from the north in the next beach. She flew right over us in a long lazy turn.
Continue readingPREVENTABLE
Some things are preventable, but we resist. Most of us use seatbelts, as required by law, and fewer people die in accidents as a result. Drunk driving went from a social convention to an affront against decency thanks to Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD). Today, most people call an Uber. But I just read an essay wherein the author bragged she’d driven only a few miles rather to a friend’s home rather than fifty minutes to her own home while drunk. People smoke despite knowing throughout their entire lives that tobacco products are poisonous. Some insist they need guns for protection despite statistics proving gun ownership make our lives less safe. We take unnecessary risks that are life-threatening not just for ourselves but for others. Isn’t it time for a little healthy anger?
Continue readingOBJECTS ARE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR
Before the oncologist spoke to my family, the nurse had already requested that certain procedures be stopped. Daily vitals and turning to prevent bedsores. “We don’t want to keep calling him back if he is trying to leave us,” she said. I sat beside his bed pretending to myself that I was studying for a History final while my brother and mother sat in the waiting room.
I was not studying anything but my father’s breaths. They came further and further apart. I could not help looking up when the pause seemed to go on for minutes. Sometimes I would say softly after a long intake of air, “It’s okay, Daddy, you can go.” He had already been in a coma for days when they chose to let him go.
Continue reading4FUN
Several recent attempts at reading have been… depressing? discouraging? demeaning? Delight might be what I am after. I am wide awake in the middle of the night. Eight hours last night, tonight just four? I don’t know, maybe it’s time for some serious funny.
Just now, our son Ian is making short films. (The ballet is at rest and he is between random gigs so keeping busy.) I came across this one almost by accident. He rarely tells us about shows he’s working on, and this video is delightful: “Harry Potter Can’t Blink.” (Honest, you want to see this.)
STILL, SHE CLIMBED
I have a photographic negative showing my grandmother, Fay Fletcher Jackson (before she married Gordon Keays Smith), standing on a Mount Hood glacier that mostly isn’t there anymore. This would be in the early years of the 20th century. She carries a small backpack because she is a very small person and wears heavy boots, thick leggings (no skirt), and a broad grin. She set no records, made no history, but she climbed.
That thing we do… remembering
IN & OUT of line
Yesterday, which was meant to be our day of rest before the drive to Portland, the Christmas tree leaked.
Unbeknownst to us the bucket developed a 1″ crack. Water leaked into the huge clay pot, which would have held it, but someone in a previous generation drilled holes in the bottom to use it as a planter. I had plugged the holes and for a decade it was home to a goldfish, eventually killed by toxic Chinese fish food. Gary had removed the plugs. Hence: water all over the floor while we were out walking. Thank goodness we had not gotten around to decorating the tree.
&PRIDE Press 