Happy birthday, Mom. You would have been one hundred one.
101
birthday wishes
GARY’S PARTY
We almost always walk north. We went out before 7am for our walk this morning, before a quick breakfast and heading for home. But later in the morning two of our grandchildren and a friend’s son played in the tide pools, looking at hermit crabs. (Thank you, RO, for sending this.) Our three grandchildren enjoyed the party. The youngest stomped her feet and grinned. Such fun!
It was Gary’s 70th birthday Sunday, yesterday (it was also Lily Tomlin’s 80th and John at the Post Office had one and Barry Gibb became 72 and the guy at the market in Lincoln City turned 29). We drove down the coast in the morning, stopped at a farmers’ market, took our time. We didn’t have all that far to go.
We have been to the Sylvia Beach Hotel a half dozen times, staying in different rooms and enjoying the peace. We bring books or read what is lying about in this literary inn. I bring knitting. We walk on the beach and sit watching the ocean from the topfloor “Library.” Gary gets into the guests’ kitchenette before dawn and makes a pot of extra strong coffee. Not quite routine, relaxing.
We had made our reservation for the Emily Dickinson room and planned to have a meal across the street. No internet, no television, the Sylvia Beach is a peaceful Victorian on a bluff overlooking the ocean. Across the street is a great restaurant. Gary is particularly fond of the chef’s wife and had a photo of the car her dad drove in Australia. That was the surprise he planned. He had no idea people were coming until we came out of his favorite hotel to go toward his very favorite restaurant Ove Northwest. There was a friend in the doorway across the street. What is Rick doing in Newport?
We celebrated with our sons and their families and some friends. It is amazing that I managed to keep the secret for six months.
Gary’d never had a surprise party. He was stunned. He kept saying, 
How did you do this? In fact, I’m not sure Gary had ever had a proper birthday party before this one. He never had a proper party as a child. He claims I threw him a party forty years or so ago when we were in college, but I don’t remember.
Gary is a self-effacing person, patient and kind under most all circumstances. He doesn’t ask for much or complain often. He loves cards and phone calls on his day. He smiles all the time but almost never for the camera. He was mugging for me this morning on our walk.
We’ll call this his first party. The very best. He could barely function when he began to understand what was happening. He just sat and looked stunned for at least an hour and Margaret kept his beer glass full. He was so surprised.
He says: Thank you. I love you.
[Gary has read this now and complains that I have failed to detail my craftiness. Okay, I was pretty crafty. I am so very grateful for the people who were able to attend or who called or sent cards. He deserved this.]
PASSING
I passed this mouse on the beach—mouse?— half-covered by blown sand.
There is a novel by Nella Larson called Passing, which includes racial passing by a character. There are other sorts of passing. Passing by, passing judgement, passing the mashed potatoes. A running dog passing another is called a go-by and it’s a good thing. Passing over, we die.
Years pass too, time passes. But not really. We are only here from instant to instant, only really here. Life is not a train headed in a particular direction and we are not riding a carrousel in circles. We are here, looking ahead at what we hope or fear might be coming, basing our predictions on what we remember has already happened.
Today is my birthday. I am 66. We have already established that I am not any number of “years young.” But back in May, I decided to track my daily activities. Looking forward, I thought I should plan more decisively for writing and reading and walking and eating, taking the medication for my thinning bone, and drinking enough water, limiting alcohol—all the things my mother would tell me to do if she were alive, even while she failed to follow her own good advice.
A new post on the Brevity blog urges us to consider how easily we are distracted, not just by the distractions of phone calls and tweets, but by the time required to process and recover from them. Set priorities, set goals.
Most of the project goals I established in January and June are coming along. I lost fifteen pounds and I am walking an hour a day. I have seen my writing published eight times this year, which is fortune as much as effort. The only control I have over publication is submitting my work. Mostly I submit—terrible term—to journals that publish a tiny fraction of the work they receive. They might print a dozen stories in a year and reject ten thousand. Just yesterday I earned my 100th rejection for my writing, and it was, in fact, a writing goal for the year, one I could control by submitting my work many times. Score one for me! I passed my 52-book reading goal for the year too. I have a story that might become a novel next month during NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). In that story nearly all visible life on earth other than plants and insects dies. One woman is left alone wondering how she deserved to survive and was it punishment for something she doesn’t know she did? Too much time passes for her.
The Washington Post warns about an massive drop in insect life and the birds and reptiles that eat them on pristine tropical islands. Is it the result of climate change which impacts insects much more dramatically than I supposed? Or is this the result of the use of pesticides and defoliants? Some Devil’s Triangle of threats? Researchers can’t explain it, but they’re worried. So maybe I have my prophetic story backwards?
Or perhaps what I was told about Australian people is true, that they see humanity as forever facing the past, walking backwards into whatever unknown comes next.
I am merely passing by.
IMPERFECT PATIENCE 