If only all the world were like this day...airy, bright,
cool, surprise of an earliest hint of fall, a gift. The windows are open,
the porch door too, and breezes turn the fans a little faster.
The other morning, I wandered into an old neighborhood about
a mile up the hill; I hadn't walked it in a while. It's as quiet as ours
and the houses are as variously aged and designed and inhabited, but the
gardens are more precious and wonderful to tour on such a day. My
favorite is a small cottage only sometimes lived in...the woman who owns it
won't sell it (I think she thinks of her life with her husband there), but
often stays nearer her son on the other side of the country. Or so I
hear. She has growing along the curb the most curious pretty ground
cover...her garden helper told me the name once, but I've forgotten now.
There! I'm showing my age ("these young
people!"). It brings me back to a teenaged memory: my
great-aunt decrying the antics of the early ‘sixties "troublemakers"
on the summer street (only singing and partying). When I protested, my uncle
chided me for being rude to her. Some things don't change by generation,
do they?
Speaking of age, three friends from my college years...friends
of my youth, as Alice Munro aptly entitled one of her stories...came to visit
me from their more northern homes. Nine of us still keep in random touch, but this was a treat! I imagined where to take them in the few days they'd be here,
what might entertain them (walks through campus? art? gardens? shopping?),
making lists, making menus, collecting flight information, making small gifts
they could remember this visit by. True
to form, they had also thought of gifts to commemorate our years and interests.
We didn't do half the things I'd planned, as short visits
go, but we talked around the table, on the streets, in the car, of old days and
people, of course, but also sharing our present tenses and dipping our toes
into the future. We're all 80 (one almost) this year; it seems a turning point
to take note of (if not the only one) in life.
We are so far
mostly healthy, in varying degrees, still ambulatory, with interests that keep mind and body
afloat. We work or volunteer, travel or tend to family. Interestingly, we
all have different takes on 80...some worried by it, some seeing it as a time
to take hold, some (like me) finding it freeing. For one of us, age doesn’t
compute: “I feel like 60, not 80!”
Then there are all
those things, sight seen and unseen, nearby and far out of reach, that change
what comes, what is. We keep up as well
as we can with those.
Here’s the last time we were all except one together (that's my mother, at the top right, hosting us). I think about such friends I’ve made along
the way and what it means to be gathering still...here, there, anywhere…a reminder of who one was, but also who one has
become...the same but different, a little worse for wear but better too. We
are already planning next year’s reunion.
In a few days, September...officially Fall in most
places. Here, leaves already fall (from little rain, I’m afraid), and
mornings appear with that mist that signals change.
As season by season dashes
by, we also keep in touch with a hope that change comes for the better.
