everyday ashen beamings

Driving my dad across town this morning I felt the clouds’ ashen oppression. He was in pain. Blame rested with a company, whose representative had not been sympathetic when explaining that their cream for soothing his terrible neuropathy was on back order.

 

I was sorry and said so, but I had no further contribution available for the situation.

All I could think about was my growing impressions regarding their senior living apartment complex, which employs so many younger people, and how this industry is unsustainable. One thing that brought this up was realizing I am the same age my mom was, 27 years ago, when she was diagnosed with stage four breast cancer. That in itself is mind-boggling. Mom had surgery the day after Bill Clinton was elected. So ancient history, and yet only yesterday.

The second recognition came after a friend, who teaches at the university, shared that fellow teachers are being let go, due to plummeting college attendance. “People don't choose to have babies,” she said, “and we can’t sustain schools the same way anymore.”

Twenty-seven years from now, I realize, there will not be an elderly care industry like we’re seeing today. The numbers won’t support it. Not that I was counting on anything. Honestly, I’ll be quite surprised if I make it into my seventies. This is just my health history talking, but to my mind it’s not morbid. And I know we never know.

I know it really scared me to hear those years ago about my mom’s cancer. And I’m very thankful she went through surgery and treatment and was healed.

Mom fervently asked God to let her watch her grandchildren grow up. Would I be so intent in her shoes? I love the grandchildren we are accumulating (one by birth, and others coming along in ways I will share about at an appropriate time).

I don't tend to worry that they will miss knowing me into adulthood, but I can understand where Mom was coming from. I think I'm more like my father. When things hurt, I'd rather tell stories. After Dad and I finished his errands this morning he reminisced, as we drove along West 2nd Avenue, about selling door-to-door there when he was very young. He sold pads to keep moths out of closets as well as a toilet bowl disinfectant. He earned a nickel for every sale. He'd then treat siblings and other neighborhood kids to an afternoon swim at a pool on Franklin Boulevard. (Franklin is now the main drag in front of the university, with hotels, restaurants, and an arena.) The kids could swim for an hour for 10 cents. When time was up, they had to get out and stand in line to pay for another hour with another dime.

Dad's stories as I drove him home ushered the sun from behind the clouds. We were both hungry. He met Mom in the dining room, while I took a few groceries up to their apartment and then came down to say goodbye and head for home. Another story in progress with a fellow resident, Dad's face beamed, and I loved hearing his laugh.

The sunshine lasted for my return drive and nearly burned the clouds away.

a busy descent of leaves

With tree branches hastily baring themselves, I drive, sometimes multiple times a day, between our home and the senior "independent living" apartments where my parents now reside. Tim's dad and sister live on the same floor, neither one currently able to use their car, and my folks just sold their van. They all have help to get around and receive prescriptions, but I am handy when needed, and this is good autumn work for me.

Plus, I listen as I drive to Prayers by the Lake, poetic offerings of a 20th-century Orthodox saint, Nikolai Velimirovich (the link shows other books by him). Born in Serbia before WWI, Bishop Nikolai earned multiple doctorates in places like Switzerland, England, and the US, but he loved simplicity and contemplation. I am savoring each prayer for the second time around as it plays on CD, my hard copy of the book waiting at home beside my place at the table (with many other titles, as always).

After a spate of cold, clear weather, heavy fog moved in and remained. Days later, it finally lifted.

While I can't truthfully say I love rain (there are wet, stormy moments I find enchanting, but usually rain is to be endured), I do love the fog. Muted sounds and colors, moisture hanging around in a subtler fashion.

The other morning I rolled our recycling bin past the south side of the house and came upon a yellow rose. It endured last week's frost to blossom under the fog's gray ceiling amid brown thorns.

Love is like a rose amid thorns. It surprises, and it persists. I can't manufacture love, but I can enter into it. I can be drawn outside my door by the way love shows up again unexpectedly in afternoon light on the leaves.

I have recognized there are six essays I've had published, at one point or another, that ought to be appropriate for the collection of essays I'm working on. This collection might begin with Living on Love, something written long ago but still relevant.

Marriage is, after all, a surprise. It's a journey to a foreign land, the realm of the other person. It involves pain and struggle. But light on the leaves is still light on the leaves, a wonder and a gift. I am grateful for 40 years and counting and all the wonders therein.