Playing for Time

***

It’s past 9am and the streetlights are still on, best kind of morning . Rainy, drippy, dark, leading one to think the day holds nothing pressing so why hurry? The coffee too is dark and deep, breakfast was glad-making for the tummy, and Kim’s at home, ensconced at his computer, having declined to make the trek out west for PickleBall this morning. We have a couple of projects that might keep us occupied today every bit as much as we want to be, the kitchen’s fully supplied with foodstuffs, and there’s no chance of flooding between here and the liquor store, so all is well. Oldies like their evening aperitif. The Royals, who’ve had a good run lately, play again after lunch today unless it’s raining in Kansas City at game time, so that sounds cozy. And in case you thought I meant THOSE royals… nah, can’t get into it, it’s all kinda silly. “My blood’s bluer and far more inbred than yours, so I win.”

By choice I’ve had lots of at-home hours over the past couple of weeks, which sometimes affords too much time for overthinking, which leads to remembering stuff, which leads to all the feelings. Society continues to be ridiculous and the shenanigans can get to a person, know what I’m saying? A lot of people I once counted on to be the adults in the room can’t get a handle on this era for what it is, which is incredibly depressing and distressing, so my aim every day is to stay juuuuust tuned out enough to avoid the sturm und drang of the labyrinth itself. Some days are more successful than others.

Have you thought about this… the thrill of aging almost inevitably means our core support group grows ever smaller through natural attrition of every sort, which leaves us more and more out here on our own. It’s a shocking realization at first, until you understand that the total independence and personal freedom you’ve always craved is HERE now, so do something smart with all that. Do what you want, say what you mean, what can happen, they take away your birthday? The older of my two grandmas, my dad’s mom, kept up a correspondence with cousins her age, eight 2nd-generation German-American women who maintained a “Round Robin” notebook filled with news, updates, and photos, sending it around until everyone had written in it, at which time they started it around again. She read pieces of it to me over the years until finally it was just her and one cousin left to communicate… and then just Grandma, who at past 95 was the last to leave. She told me she was never so lonely as during those years when there was no one left who remembered who she’d been before she was old.

My mom, on the other side of my genealogical chart, was the third-eldest of nine siblings, so I grew up as part of that big family, taking for granted it would always be there. Oh, my sweet summer child, your naiveté is endlessly touching. The world doesn’t stay static for a second and neither do people. Notwithstanding things like bloodlines, DNA, identification with a tribe, and backup in a fight, families don’t remain static either. They grow, they morph, they move, they move on. I’m now the second-oldest family member of my generation, and from this vantage point the terrain looks entirely different than I might have imagined when I was one of the littles. I look around at who’s still here and see an assortment of people I don’t know, never actually DID know except in the context of being related to each other and thus somehow extra-connected to each other’s well-being. Now we’re mostly strangers, which was always going to be the outcome if we ever started being ourselves with each other. And now we’ve done what we unconsciously do out there in the general population… we’ve mostly reduced each other to our politics and drawn lines of separation, a phenomenon maybe none of us intended. We always were a diverse bunch, but that knowledge was obscured by loyalties and what we knew at the time as love. Since we grew up and away as a family entity, reality has reigned more and more supreme, and that’s no doubt a good thing since sentimental delusions take us precisely no where good.

**

Life is simultaneously simpler and more complicated than we want it to be. A simple affirmation, or exhalation if you will, might go something like this:

I’m a breathing being on planet Earth, with the power to be kind and almost no other,

with especially no power to fix anyone but me.

My grandmas both lived past 95, a space of twenty years from where I am now. What will I do with those two decades should they be allotted to me?

**

A sweet thing happened this morning… I saw David returning to the nest so I went out onto the balcony. Darleen must have just left, as he was still standing on the railing, so I spoke to him in soft tones and he didn’t move a feather while I peered over his shoulder. I’m happy to tell you that there are indeed TWO eggs in their barebones little nest and all seems well, even as they take turns hunkering under the ferns while the rain falls. These Dove people are cool.