. . . I'm younger than that now." Bob Dylan, My Back Pages. Someone recently asked me if, now that the Covid-19 restrictions are lessening (at least for now) if I would be shaving my "quarantine beard." I said no, why would I? "Because you look younger without it." Me: "You mean younger than 70? Why would I want that? Because that's what I am." I am not ashamed to be 70. As of now I am in good health (knock wood) and relatively good living conditions (wood again). I regard those 70 years as hard-earned, and that I have gotten here in the way I am is a blessing, if not a miracle. I am "young" enough to ride my bicycle regularly and to enjoy walks in the nearby woods. And skydive. I've adapted (mostly) to the digital age, but I did have the privilege of growing up in analog times, and to have gone through my childhood and youth without any major stressors; unlike say Gen-Z people, those who grew up in the shadow of 9/11 and now have to cope in a world and economy turned upside down by the virus (and now the BLM crisis on top of that, not to mention very real global warming). So in a way I have gotten the best of both worlds. I recall lyrics from Going Back, a Phil Collins song, via the Byrds: "But thinking young and growing older is no sin And I can play the game of life to win." Still, I do miss those younger days, when my life was simpler because my world was smaller. Letting them go is bittersweet. I'm thinking here really young, pre-teen, when that world began each morning in my parental home, and ended there, safely, each evening, with a lot of unfettered living and learning happening in between. So let's close here with another bit of Dylan lyrics, from I Don't Want to Do It, a little-known song recorded by George Harrison: "Looking back upon my youth The time I always knew the truth. I don't want to do it. I don't want to say goodbye. To go back in the yard and play If I could only have another day." But, anyway, goodbye for now. GL
So sang Simon & Garfunkel in their 1967ish song, "Old Friends." What a poignant line to a 17-year old. No way to comprehend such a thing. I recall when my father turned 70, he said, "well, that's my three-score and ten, the rest is all bonus." I heard and smiled, but in my self-absorbed way, didn't go any further with it. Never thought to ask how it felt inside to be at the point in one's life when it there's not much future left, and the past is what it was, no do-overs. Today I am 70, seventy revolutions around the sun, and wanted so share something of what it's like. And find I don't have much to say. Perhaps the most profound thing would be to say nothing, and mean it. But I can't do it. I have to speak, and the writer in me has to write something. I don't feel anything like my youthful conception of "old." I'm just me, maybe a bit resentful that this shelter-at-home stuff has intruded into my retirement tranquility, but basically the same. I feel maybe a bit of entitlement to be curmudgeonly or to take afternoon naps, because I "earned it," though that doesn't really mean much. I suspect Billy Joel was right, only the good die young. I avoided many of the risks of my era, such as Vietnam, by luck more than anything else. I survived rheumatic fever and a major heart attack, and the adverse stupidity of hitchhiking half-way across the country. And a lot of other things that, looking back, came so close. So I don't really feel so much of an achievement as simply a state of being. I feel gratitude, blessed, and, much as I try to quiet them, I feel pangs of regret for not having been or done what I know now I could have been or done. I also forgive myself, mostly. No profundity, except maybe this: listen to your heart, it's trying to tell you something. Don't blindly follow, but don't ignore it. Be as kind as you can, because that's what will matter more to you as you look back. Don't try to cling to your younger self, but appreciate it. And, as John Prine wrote, if you come across a lonely old person, don't just walk by, because someone is in there. Just "say hello in there, hello." I suspect, but I can't yet say for certain, there are worse consequences than death. That's what my heart tells me now. To quote Cat Stevens, "though you'd like to last forever, you know you never will, you know you never will, and the goodbye makes the leaving harder still." Thanks for reading this, for indulging an old, but not yet lonely, man.
I found inside a drawer." Jackson Browne. Actually it's an old cardboard box I've had for years, and my parents had for years before that, and my paternal grandmother before that. I've mentioned some of them earlier, but this is the first time I've really carefully perused them. Most of my father's WWII photos are unlabeled, though several have his penciled comments, like "this guy was in the tent next door," or "moving out with 60-pound packs" and so on. Still, the more I study them the more the mindset of this young man out adventuring comes through more and more clearly. I have some photos of my mother in her youth (she is still with us at a spry 94), and some have her distinctive handwriting on the back. I feel a sense of playfulness and vulnerability in those captions. "The Sgt. who lives next door drives this car for the colonel, and wanted a picture of it. Somehow I got in the way." Or one of her in her early teens, holding a cat, captioned, "Me and my kitty, S. Franklin Delano. The 'S' stands for smart, and he is." Other photos, though uncaptioned, have become clear to me, and I can put names to faces with reasonable certainty, spanning maybe 70 years back. The cars, of course are especially distinctive; there is, for example, a photo my mother proudly holding the infant me, and in the background a 1953 Plymouth -- in those years my father would get a new "company car" every year, which he was free to use for personal purposes whenever he was not out on the road getting bids for plumbing projects. I vaguely recall that car, specifically that is that pale green color of that era, and for the longest time I though each make of car had its own distinctive color. There is a photo of my sister at one year, gaping at the camera from the seat of an upholstered chair. There's something universal and timeless about every infant, but that chair and its slipcover, I cannot believe now it was part of my everyday life. Or the phones that sometimes show up, the old black phone without even a dial. All incidental background details look like a movie carefully set to look like the early 1950s. Only they are not a set, they were real, I lived then, but I'll be damned if I can even come close to imagining again what it was like. For the first time I understand that even if I could go back in time, I couldn't make it work. My memory has smoothed it all out, so that those memories don't jar irreconcilably with my present. And I truly appreciate L.P. Hartley's observation that the "past is a foreign country; they do things differently there." I realize now that, for the longest time, I unconsciously believed that I could, somehow, someday, some way, return to some of those times I treasured. But I can't. I cannot. That stone-cold realization hurts, hangs heavy on my heart. When memories become untethered wisps of recollection instead of real existence, something is seriously lost. It's hard to say goodbye to the past and really mean it. This time I do, and having done so I sit, blinking at the bright reality of the present, and realize what's gone. These days, this present time, is its own world of wonder and experiences for most of you, but it's not really mine. My reality was in those gone times, and now those are really gone for me. I sit here now in the cold shadow of existence, the light of the past extinguished forever. And also with a sense of freedom. I can look more easily into my own soul, and at the wider world around me. I find that exhilarating, this opportunity to learn who I really am, free of the context (and constraints) of a particular set of social mores. If that makes sense. After all, this is my 200th blog post, so I've tried to make it a good one. GL
I thought of Dave Mallett's lyrics yesterday (from "Garden Song") as I limped around, my torn meniscus apparently aggravated by my sitting in the lotus position as I meditated, so my knee hurts today. I noticed it twinging near the end of my morning sit, but I thought I could tough it out. Apparently a mistake. My existence in adverse juxtaposition. Just when I thought the yoga and sitting were working together and I felt almost like a yogi. Today I feel like Yogi Berra must have felt after a long day of catching for Whitey Ford or Don Larsen. (Old man analogy, I know). And I feel a tad disappointed. Brought down to earth, so to speak. Reminded that just because I want to be something, really want to be, doesn't mean I can get there without effort, or ever. Life, I'm learning, not for the first time, is a process of aspiring tempered by reality. I'm made of dreams and bone. Mind and matter. Gnosis and knees. Trying to be who I am without settling for less. Until I reach the point at which I stop trying because I finally am. . . .
Kind of presumptuous to suppose my absence was noticed, but nonetheless, here I am, back from an unplanned, unforced, unexpected leave of absence from most internet activity. Suffice it to say I was presented with an apparent situation that threatened to undermine a lot of my basic assumptions about life and values. Ironically, things worked themselves out in a manner I never expected, in a way that suggests either basic misunderstanding on my part or answered prayer. In any event, all has seemingly settled back into the old routine. Except . . . . I came to realize how utterly ungrounded I am and how easily I could be knocked off kilter by life. So I'm on a sort of mission to find that rooting; I say "sort of mission" because I'm trying, in a Taoist way, to find my way to doing by not doing. More simply, what I'm trying to find is the underlying value of myself in the world. For a time that meant almost no writing, instead quiet meditating, including yoga. I re-discovered the dilemma that so fascinated me in my undergraduate university days: "What caught my eye in the history of nihilism is that Nietchze, Sartre, and others wrote books; a most committed and disciplined use of time. The same drive that led them to experience the experience of nothingness seemed to teach them other values as well -- and without contradiction." Michael Novak, The Experience of Nothingness (Harper Colophon 1979) at viii. At least as of now, I think I am at that point, that I have managed to find the light that leads through the tunnel; at least until it flickers out.
. . . is the rarest and most precious of social accomplishments." R. Austin Freeman. All I can add is ". . . . ."
I've been doing a bit of binge-watching lately, focusing on BBC crime fiction. I like the British police in their checked hats and of course the accent. And having been to London lately, I like to look for things I recognize. And of course the quality is generally very good; though it does seem like they recycle the same actors over and over, so the are comfortably familiar. Anyway, I just finished the one available season of "River," which features a detective who all his life has sometimes seen what he calls "manifestations, not ghosts," which are images of dead or fictional people that look and respond to him like real people, but are not seen by anyone else. Well, he's investigating the murder of his long-time colleague, a woman, and she sometimes appears to him and either encourages or challenges him, but always enigmatically. The further he gets with the case, the murkier it gets, and the more he begins to doubt that his partner was the person he thought she was. Okay, anyway, he begins visiting a psychiatrist, a woman, on order of his superiors. As River gets to know her better, he shares something of his story but always holds back. Finally she asks him to trust her, and he says, "why should I trust you when the one person I thought I could trust (his dead partner) turns out to be liar?" The psychiatrist says "You can trust me because she's dead and I'm not." I wasn't sure I quite understood the logic there, but I was more concerned with something else. I think the psychiatrist should have said, "I'm not dead yet." Because she will be some day. I think the psychiatrist was repeating a fallacy we all grow up believing, that the world of people is divided in two, the living and the dead. Co-equal co-existing cohorts. Except they are not equal. Every dead person was once alive, and every live person will someday be dead. In other words, we're all at some stage of our journey to death, except of course for those who have already arrived. Life is not a category, it's simply a temporary phenomenon or station on the road. As I approach the end of my Biblically-alloted three-score and ten, I become more and more aware of the impermanence of life. Today I bicycled through one of our city's largest and oldest cemeteries, and saw a lot of familiar names on mossy or towering old tombstones, names that embellish our streets and buildings and so on. The more successful these people were in life, it seems, the bigger their tombstones. But so what? They never got to appreciate it. More than that, no matter how hard they tried, how good they were, how whatever, they still grew old and died (if they were lucky, since many tombstones mark lives cut short). I wonder at what point they realized that life is not ours to keep. There's also a spot in the corner of the cemetery, filled with rows of white stones, military stones, about 60 of them. All young men, in their teens or twenties, all born somewhere south of the Mason-Dixon line. They were Confederate soldiers, captured and brought north, and held in a military prison here in Madison Wisconsin. If you're at all into sports, you've probably seen the site of the prison -- Camp Randall, once a military base, now the site of the stadium in which the Wisconsin Badgers play football. Back in the early twentieth-century, the 1930s or so, a woman who'd been born in Baton Rouge Louisiana and transplanted north, noticed those lonely graves and began to tend them. She brought flowers on Memorial Day, and so on. Eventually the site became known as "Confederate Rest." and a local landmark. And when she died, she was buried with "her boys." I never see those graves, which I saw today, without a twinge of special sadness, these young men who died so far from home and family, and whose families never got to say goodbye. They were once alive and vibrant, and died before their allotted time. They must have laughed and joked, and loved, perhaps hated, honest or cheaters, nice or mean, just people like anyone else, like us, like you, like me. And now long dead. Everyone in the cemetery, Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, atheist, and agnostic, has passed over, and in one way or another has either learned some eternal truth, even if it was some last, sudden, realization that there is nothing more. Given all that, I'm not sure I would buy into the psychiatrist's argument that living people are more trustworthy than manifestations of the dead; I think the dead might be more likely to know more.
Found this in the Tao te Ching: “In the pursuit of learning, every day something is acquired. In the pursuit of Tao, every day something is dropped.” From Chapter 48. When I started off on my so-called Year of Tao, I wasn’t sure what that entailed. I thought I would probably read the TtC everyday (which I am doing) and gain more insights or at least a better sense of it or be confusingly impressed by it (one or another or two or maybe all three of which I think I am doing). I also thought I would be posting some thoughts on what I might be learning. That one, not so much. To even begin to pontificate seems pretentious. Like this for starters: How do I learn if the key is to “unlearn”? My younger self would have had no hesitation charging in with opinions, but I like to think I’ve learned much since then. But a lot of that learning involved moving myself away from following the Tao. Somewhere in the Bible it talks about putting aside childish things, and that's what I thought I was doing. Being a common-sense rational grownup. I was so proud to do it. But I begin to have doubts about my so-called adult learned self. Again, I think the Bible talks about being as a little child. (@paperbackwriter, you can flesh this out). And the TtC itself says, "The sage is shy and humble -- to the world he seems confusing./Men look to him and listen./He behaves like a little child." Chapter 49. Now I feel myself drawn back, without knowing how to come back. Certainly without being able to clearly articulate it. But here I go anyway. What the hell is mythical mystical master Lao Tsu saying? For starters there is trust in the way things would happen if left alone, a big thing in the TtC. Jung called it synchronicity. Or as one book back in the 19970’s proclaimed, “Don’t push the river, it flows by itself.” So I decided to sit back and wait. This morning I saw a book in my library, one I had bought long long ago, and read so much that the spine broke (of course 40 years might cause the glue to dry out in a paperback). Then Iput it away in a box with my other "childish things", to be unpacked only recently . The book is Zen Flesh, Zen Bones, a collection of ancient Zen and pre-Zen writings. (Zen being a cousin or descendant or sibling of Taoism). I opened it and found this as the opening story: A Cup of Tea: Nan-in, a Japanese master. . . . recieved a university professor who came to inquire about Zen. Nan-in served tea. He poured his visitor’s cup full and then kept on pouring. The professor watched the overflow until he could no longer restrain himself. “It is overfull. No more will go in!” “Like this cup,” Nan-in said, you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup.” So there’s my first glimmer of answer. My cup runneth over.
About 45 years ago I came across a copy of The Tao te Ching, the seminal collection of writings for Taoism. I was a student employee of my college library, and my task was to unbox new books, to remove the dust jackets, and to split apart pages not totally separated during printing. I had a whalebone knife (not sure if it was really whalebone, but it was called that and was in any event designed to slide through connected pages and separate them without tearing anything). I was surprised how many books needed this help; no doubt printing has solved this problem since then -- but then an awful lot of people never buy the print copy of anything anymore anyway. I picked up a coffee-table type book, wide, tall and thin, 81 short chapters, a new translation of the Tao te Ching, by Gia-Fu Feng, a professor of comparative religion and director of a Taoist meditation center, and illustrated by beautiful black-and-white photos by Jane English, a physics professor interested in the intersection of physics and Taoist thought. The book is allegedly a compilation of the thoughts of Lao Tsu, an ancient wise man who wrote them out before he went off to die, in or about the 6th Century B.C.E. I was intrigued by the opening lines: “The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao/The name that can be named is not the eternal name.” So I was holding a book purportedly about something that could not be described. Kind of made my brain hurt. I was apparently standing at “the gate to all mystery.” The final chapter was equally enigmatic: “Truthful words are not beautiful/Beautiful words are not Truthful/ …. Those who know are not learned/The learned do not know.” So it was a beautifully written book by scholars that therefore said nothing of value. Yet I knew it did. Made my brain hurt, but in a good way. Something deep stirred, and I was hooked. I went from there to the and Zen, and all the other Eastern religious and philosophical works that made up the literary collage of many liberal arts students of that turbulent era. I even worked with the I Ching, a mystical art that allegedly advises about the future by means of coins or yarrow stalks. I felt I understood something, but what was not sure of what. Then my life got complicated and I set it all aside as adolescent musings and moved on to what I though was the “reality” of life. Two years ago I found my personal copy of that same Tao te Ching in a basement box, a yellowed paperback version that had suffered some water damage. I looked through it, recalled it, and set it on a shelf. But it stayed in the back of my mind. Then I rediscovered a book of mine by Carl Gustav Jung, an apologist for Eastern mystical thought (among other things, of course); the book was on synchronicity, e.g. meaningful coincidences, and I decided that those mutual rediscoveries were a synchronistic event. I also rediscovered another book, The Way of Chuang Tzu, translations of writings by the man who was the Plato to Lao Tsu’s Socrates. This was too much to ignore. I realize now where I was in relation to a study of the Tao; according to Lao Tsu, Chapter 41: “The wise student hears of the Tao and practices it diligently. The average student hears of the Tao and gives it thought now and again. The foolish student hears of the Tao and laughs aloud.” I was an average student, but this year I resolve to be more. I am now viewing the Tao through the lens of age, now that I am nearing my three-score and ten, and understand that this life is, at most, a temporary stopping point in some sort of mystery, and I feel that there is something in Taoism that offers some sort of resolution, or clarification, if not an answer, to those mysteries. So I resolve to study the Tao and its descendent, Zen Buddhism, every day, to practice whatever it is I discover in those readings, and to share some of what I feel I have found in this blog or in other writings. I know there are some who would say this study is error, perhaps dangerous error, and that Christianity offers clear answers already. I don’t doubt that this is true for them, but it doesn’t call to me. To me it seems, based on my cloudy understanding of things, that all religions stem from the same need to understand, but they go separate ways when it comes to details. I know there are Christian mystics and alleged Christians who reject the evangelical side of their religion, and who would not reject Taoism as a mystical mistake. People such as Thomas Merton, the monk who translated Chuang Tzu in the book I mentioned above. The Tao is what calls to me. In any event, I think and hope that one year from now I will have at least the rudiments of a better understanding of life, the universe and everything, a better answer than “42”.
Yesterday when I met my son's van that brought him home, the driver looked at me and said, "So you're growing it out, too?" I was confused until I noticed he was in the relatively early stages of a beard. I stroked my own face and realized I was a bit bewhiskered, with two or three days' worth of stubble. That's what it means to be formally retired, I guess. I often forget to shave, until some public contact is coming up, or until my better half strongly suggests it, or I simply figure it's time, on my own terms. I realize now how easy it is for single old men to get very seedy looking very fast. But, as I said, I have a wife and for that matter, since we married and had kids late, a youngish daughter, both of whom sometimes sort of keep me in line on such things. And my son has faint mustache and beard that need occasional trims. At the YMCA gym yesterday, I fell into conversation with a fellow retiree/workout person, and we were discussing some weighty philosophical issues (bear in mind that this guy had been a high-ranking public official with lots of political contacts and experience). One of our fellow cyclists talked to us a bit, then went off to swim, then came back and found us still talking. He kind of laughed at the way our time had gone by while he prepared to go back to work. Reminded me of a t-shirt I saw that same day, which said, "Warning -- Retiree who knows everything and has time to tell you about it." Another younger cyclist said on his way out, "Well, I guess I better go back to work and earn money to pay your retirement benefits." We nodded and said thanks. Not sure where I'm going with this. I retired for one reason -- I didn't want to die while toiling at a job I hated when I didn't have to; and when I was/am still healthy enough to do things. I never planned to simply sit around and grow older or grow a beard, and so far I haven't. I do recognize and appreciate the need and opportunity for an afternoon nap -- but I set an alarm. And my son keeps me busy and involved. I've joined the gym and work our regularly. I went skydiving. I've rediscovered and am re-reading the Tao te Ching (and figuring out that that younger me, who I was in such a hurry to leave behind, might have been on to something). I'm trying very hard to honor myself, ironically trying to do that by not trying, but by accepting. If that makes sense. Still trying to figure out what comes next. For now, though, I think I'll shave today, though maybe I'll leave the mustache, which I last had forty-some years ago, when I was a sort of stud-muffin. The wife will hate it, but then, I have time for that.
A nice September morning, mostly clear skies dotted with brief showers, drops clinging to leaves before making their way earthward. Birds busy and chittering at the birdbath and feeder, chipmunks darting about beneath, shouting at each other in their squeaky little way. Then nothing. The lawn looks odd without its transient accoutrement. Breezes sound unnaturally loud as they rustle through the leaves, and the raindrops fall with a noticeable plop. A moment later I see him. A large red-tailed hawk, perched nonchalantly on the highest feeder, calmly surveying the terrain. He looks regal as an eagle. I take a few photos through the window and edge out onto the screened porch. He keeps his pose, but I suspect a slight movement, suggesting he is taking me into account. I slowly open the door and he just as slowly rises with a push of wings, and flies onto a nearby utility wire, from where he openly studies me, then resumes his pose. I take another picture, he lowers his head a notch, takes a quick shit that reeks of disdain, and flies off into a copse of trees. The lawn and feeders stay deserted for a good 20 minutes longer, until the first small birds flitter back, the chipmunk edges out of the flower bed, the first squirrel makes a first foray. Ten minutes later all is back to the usual. But now I know what they know -- that there is always someone watching from somewhere, and it's best to be on guard.
The other day I was walking in the woods and saw a pair of adult turkeys staring out at me from behind a tree, through the brush. I shot a photo of them, and put it on Facebook, captioned "Turkey Lurkey." Turkeys lurking, get it? Anyway, I thought it kind of clever. The phrase kept running through my mind, and I gradually recalled where I'd heard it. In the kids' story about Chicken Little, who had convinced herself the sky was falling, and ran through the farmyard telling all the animals, including Turkey Lurkey and Loosey Goosey and such. From that I remembered how much I had loved that story as a very young child and vaguely recalled the warm feeling I had when my mother read me the story. Fortunately, my mother is still alive, at 96, and I called her to share the memory. At first she didn't recognize the story. But as we talked, she did, and described the book the story was in and how I had memorized most of the stories, which she would read me every night, and how I would never let her skip or change a word. I was the first, and at that time the only, child. Because my brother came when I was three, and we moved from there when I was three, I know that memory came from that age. Those were the days before most people had TV, and, living out in the boonies of western Nebraska, there were no TV signals anyway. Dad had a sales route that kept him away from home most weeks, Monday through Friday. Mom and dad's hometown of Omaha, and all family, were 500 miles away and long distance phone calls were costly. "So," my mother said, "it was just you and me in the evenings, with nothing to do but read." From there she began describing her sitting beside the borrowed crib I was in (in those days before the recall police people passed such things down), how it came with an accompanying toy chest, both of which were painted a pale green. Suddenly I saw those pieces of furniture as though they were in the room before me, and felt her nearby assuring presence. We talked for a good twenty minutes, sharing our versions of those evenings. And without realizing it until later, I found myself with a strong sense of closure. How wonderful to bookend our lives together, with stories of how we found comfort with one another during those long evenings, and for just a few moments I felt once more the wondrous warmth of a new mother's love.
Ever since my parachute jump, I’ve occasionally basked in the kudos and even sometimes awe from friends and acquaintances, like Facebook and extended family. Even my college daughter’s boyfriend was impressed. Or said he was. I don’t especially seek it out, but I don’t mind and I’m not above subtly working it into a conversation, like in response to a rote greeting like, “So,what’s new?” I was in my spinning class and talking an acquaintance who is becoming a friend. He’s gray-haired but a few years younger than me, and in great shape. We usually park our exercise bikes next to each other. Ask about work, weather, sports. You know, the cautious way guys develop a friendship. Anyway, I worked in the story about the jump, and he said “Wow.” Then, “Your first time?” And I said yeah, and asked if he’d ever done it. “Yes,” he said matter-of-factly, “when I was in the army. 48 jumps.” No basking for me that time. But I appreciate the fact that he didn’t scorn my accomplishment.
I usually find fascinating, even upbeat, things in the world around me, and try to capture (and sometimes share) them in my writings and blog entries. Because the world is full of beauty and surprise and wonder. But also filled with the sort of realizations that burst through clouds of illusion, like an owl swooping down on a rabbit contentedly grazing. That particular thing hasn't happened here, yet, but it certainly could. The rabbit thing, I mean. But one of my illusions, or rather misperceptions, has met a timely end. I more or less presumed that I am simply one of many on this journey through life, a flawed but mostly okay character, making all these circuits of the sun, season after season, and all is mostly well, always has been and likely always will be. Now, though, I'm drifting, maybe wallowing, in a river of regret, a feeling no doubt exacerbated by the current Coronavirus and all the uncertainty it brings. Popular thought, true enough, is that with age comes wisdom. I look back over a long life, happy memories, old friends who are mostly gone now, one way or another, newer friends, lost loves, lost opportunities and found ones. I have all that. But wisdom also brings sorrow, the realization that I don't have the ability to go back and fix my mistakes. Especially with my own children. I see kids now and all the fresh wonder they bring to the world, and I wish so desperately I had taken more time to share that with my own, to be there simply to listen and laugh, reassure and encourage. Many times, I'm glad to say, I was there. But sometimes I was simply busy or preoccupied, Sometimes I was simply selfish. Only now can I see through the lens of time and reflection, and I see so many times I was absent, physically or mentally. Not only see, but feel deeply. To be honest, it's not so much for what they lost that I mourn, as it is for what I lost, or, rather might have had. The kids got by, they've grown, and I even have a grandchild now. Sometimes we share old times, sometimes they have forgotten things I recall, and I can't recall things they talk about. But we find common ground, and we are mostly comfortable in each other's company and memories. I don't mind stepping aside and letting them take over the world I'm leaving, and I'm reasonably certain I will be missed, in a good way. My secret sorrow is not for them, but for me. I didn't know then that all the things they said and did, and the support and understanding they sought, was not a demand on my time. It was a gift offered to me, an opportunity to rediscover the wonder of the world, and to gain a deeper understanding the joys and disappointments and beauty of life. A chance to become a deeper and gentler person. It's good that I know this now, and, God and the coronavirus willing, I still have time to revisit our shared pasts, and to make a few amends. But it's so, so, saddening that I cannot go back and simply hear what they were trying to tell me then, and let them know I heard. That chance is gone and will never in this lifetime return. I suppose, in my new role of old man, that I should close this rumination with an exhortation, so here goes. If you have, or will have, kids, please see them for what they are, gifts of spirit, and take the time to really be with them. Grab it while you can, the chance won't come again.
Nothing of any significance today, just a bit of bemusement. I've worked hard to keep our backyard creature-friendly; there's lots of ground cover, and only the barest minimum of lawn care (e.g. weed and feed) on the half of the yard nearest the house. The other half I mostly leave to itself. And we have no domestic predator, that is, no dog or cat. So we have the rabbits I've mentioned before (they annoy me by eating down the hostas), and a plentiful resident supply of chipmunks and ground squirrels. And of course the "real" squirrels, who bound through the yard once in awhile. A hawk who sometimes settles into the small tree near the house, no doubt helping to keep the munks in check. I have two bird feeders, homemade wooden platform feeder in which I put sunflower seeds, and a plastic tube feeder, which I fill only with safflower seeds, because squirrels don't like them. They hang from separate, black, iron shepherd's hooks, beyond jumping distance from the cherry tree. Ideally, it's a little world of trickle-down economy: the birds eat the seeds, but not carefully, so the chipmunks, rabbits and squirrels clean up the fallen food. The squirrels do find a way to get at the sunflower seeds in the spring and fall, but other times they pretty much leave it alone. And I can sit in the screened porch, and write, and glance out at my little Eden. Problem is, the chipmunks and ground squirrels do like safflower seeds, and have discovered how easy it is to shimmy up the shepherd's hook and chew away the plastic tube to get at the safflower seeds. They also vacuum up the sunflower seeds from the platform feeder. Not playing the game by my rules. I tried to keep the chipmunks at bay by opening the back door when I see them on the feeders, causing them to jump down and run away. But that's a rather ineffective, time-consuming (wife would say time-wasting) and ultimately futile effort. They lurk in the ground cover till I go back in, then resume their nefarious ways. Even I know I have better things to be doing. But it annoys me. Anyway, yesterday, after the chipmunks brazenly and continually broke the rules, I decided I'd had enough. There are no baffles that fit around these thin poles, and if there were it would mean spending more on the project than it is worth. Electrifying the poles would be costly and cruel, possibly dangerous. So I went to the hardware store and bought a small jar of commercial lubricating grease, which I smeared on both poles. And . . . . this morning I have had the distinct pleasure and great amusement of watching the chipmunks look up the pole and begin to shinny up, only to slip and slip, then slide back down and slink away in confusion. Makes me happy. Now if I could only figure out a nonlethal way to protect the hostas from the bunnies.