My birthday is two months from next Friday. I will be 74, the age my grandmother and also her elder daughter died. When my mom turned 80, I teased her that she hadn’t expected to live that long. She laughed and said it was true.
SEVENTY-FOUR
COVERS
cover yourself I’ve got you covered that’s a great cover you’ll need cover
June was an eventful month, and I have a few photos to prove it. My MFA residency happened in Forest Grove and I went by a few times. We both caught a cold (tested) which caused us to miss our dental appointments, but we were healthy for our yearly medical. I am eating better. So is Gary. Both of us lost a couple pounds.
It was hot in Portland, mid-90s while we were there. It was also unusually hot at the beach for a couple days, high 80s. The heat at the beach is troubling. We’ve lived here since 1979, and hitting 80° used to be an extraordinary event. We prefer the cooler temperature. This past week makes me feel things how are changing.
An elk ate apples in the garden across the street and then I ran past it twice yesterday on the beach, a rabbit grazed the yard, and the raven couple have a youngster big as them.
CHOOSING THE BEAR
It is widely reported that given the theoretical choice of meeting a man or a bear in the dark, most women will choose the bear.
Men are justly offended by this report. Women take a breath and nod.
Last Friday morning, Juneteenth, Ron Charles (former WaPo book editor) wrote about the exploitive relationship of Thomas Jefferson with Sally Hemings, who was 16 years old in Paris and younger than his daughters when he got her pregnant. Yeah. Awful. There is no evidence, no signed contract or other document, that she chose to begin her relationship with the much older Jefferson, but that is the story. [DNA testing of her descendants proves the relationship.] As a free woman, why would anyone have chosen such a relationship?
Was Jefferson the bear?
Continue readingBUSY DAYS
June is ridiculously busy, which is not something I can say about most months. Most months my busy is entirely self-inflicted. I read, sew, knit, run, post online. Scrub floors. Gary and I drive to Portland and home from Portland, we walk across the city or walk five miles north on the beach. [We did this recently. Once. Ten miles round trip. Probably not again.]
START HERE
My goal was to post once a week on Fridays. I had posted randomly, sometimes a few times in a week, sometimes a few times in a month. It seemed to me that reliability should count for something. Mostly often, I plan ahead; sometimes I write a post at the last minute. Like today.
LOOKING AHEAD
I have a cold and our building fire alarm woke me just after 4am this morning. I would have liked sleeping a bit longer. But since I was up and a neighbor sent me a link to his father’s obituary, I looked up my father’s obituary and found my grandfather’s obit and naturalization paper (I was 8 when he died, which explains why I have so few memories of him) and my great grandmother’s obit from 1918 in the Daily Astorian. He was 75; she was 60. My other great grandmother, Rosetha [Stiles] Pride was 90 when she died. The last time I tried searching for family, I didn’t get far. Now, if I cared to, it seems I could easily trace my entire family. Instead, I’m looking forward.
It’s hard to write about my recent decision without being depressing or sounding depressed. I’m coming to terms. A much more talented friend declared they were done writing, but they still write. A longtime friend sold their loom. Other friends purchased century plots. Someone moved into a retirement home that also offers assisted living. Planning ahead. My husband and I bought our little condo in a Portland neighborhood where we can walk everywhere, a place with view of sky, an elevator building with no requirement to climb stairs, a place where grocery stores are walking-distance and groceries can be delivered, where local restaurants are across the street and around the corner, and we talk to people in the building. Life goes on; sometimes differently. This is our next life.
Continue readingCAT POPULATION
I was reading an upbeat story about a species of dove native to a Pacific island that had become extinct in the wild since 1972 due to human activity and human-introduced species. Cats are often cited as the cause of the birds’ extinction, but the real damage to the birds’ survival had been domestic sheep that destroyed their habitat, explained a scientist with Mexico’s Institute of Ecology who is leading habitat restoration efforts on the island. The cats merely finished off an already decimated population. What is missing may be another cause, too often ignored: human-introduced rats.
CONTROL
On Monday, Gary and I covered at least ten miles. I ran two of them. Wednesday I ran three miles and we walked. I scheduled a 3-mile run for this morning, but Gary wasn’t feeling well so I went out alone. I’d decided to run two miles instead of three. How many did I run? One. I came home and worked for a while, and then I lay down. I felt rotten too. We tested for Covid and that was negative, and we’re feeling better after hot showers.
I generally introduced assignments with a story, so here it is: Before we married, and while we were both students at the University of Washington, Gary and I managed a once-notorious apartment building in the University District known locally as Big Pink. The FBI and the Seattle Police came several times while we managed the building, but the last of the prostitutes had just left before we moved in, and the last drug dealer accidentally set fire to his kitchen soon after, so he was gone soon enough. This was in the early 1970s, and my memory is not entirely reliable, but what I’ll write what is still vivid and accurate.
WILL BOB FOR AGATES
On beach runs, I cannot resist the amber agate, striped limpet, or rare bit of glass. I circle, bend to pluck them from the ground, and bring them home. I pile stones on the coffee table, line limpets on the kitchen counter, and upstairs too, beside the sink and on either side of my computer—the irregular translucent quartz and smooth flat ovals of jasper and agate. The baby sand dollars. Eventually, they find their place in bowls and jars. A couple of decades ago I collected more than a dozen Coach bags by bidding on Ebay. I carry a flat red bag on weekends. I pack another large bag for overnights. But there is also the brown bag I bought for my first teaching job. The rest were pointless accumulation. My mother would have understood.
101
Happy birthday, Mom. You would have been one hundred one.
IMPERFECT PATIENCE 