There's been another Fall. Is this a wake-up call? Maybe so. It was Fall #3. Fall #2 was not so much a game changer but close enough to qualify for a seat on the bench. Fall #3 counts as an engraved invitation to the legion of octogenarians. Join up? Hell! You're a member already, champ, like it or not. No bumps. No bruises. No blood. Nothing mortal. The only wounds being existential. And Ego.
And the knowledge that I was once someone else, the result being I had to find a different way. The old ways are no longer working. I've been floundering around for too long with feelings I'd rather not have. It's spring, and there were times I didn't want to be here.
Change is a a pain in the ass. So what? A good friend, now gone, once told me "It's a good life if you don't weaken." If something is that important, do what y'gotta do to get it. There is something that important to me, something that important, yes.
When I awoke this morning about six a.m. a mild Spring rain was falling.Who walks in the rain on purpose? Gene Kelly did it, but gimme another name. And he got paid a lot of money to do it. I thought of my grandson - normally one of my first thoughts of the morning - and how my son and daughter always take him out to play when the weather is right. i.e, not raining, not too hot, not too....you name it...not too...I could feel the darkness beginning to seep into my morning thoughts, and I did not want it there. I wanted it somewhere else. Gone. "You are not going to monkey wrench my day, sucker!" So, as soon as I heard my grandson scurrying around, I told his father to dress him for the rain, and out we walked. Past Goat Hill. Up our mountain. Rain in our faces. The two of us, not looking for puddles but to feel what it must be like to be a tree or a flower or a little animal taking cover under a leaf. We smelled the air, and, even though drops went up our noses, it stayed clean and sweet as only new morning air and no other can. We checked out a cherry tree I planted last week, one that's supposed to bear first season. As Jamie's grandmother said,"Paper never refuses ink", so I'm jollying it along on a daily basis to keep its spirit up. My plan is to keep Dorian jollying with me. Last year I planted an oak tree for his first birthday. It's now taller than he is and sprouting. Taller even than me. He knows it as "Dorian's Acorn Tree".
"Dorian, listen."
I wanted him to hear the different sounds rain drops make depending on where they fall: the plop of a drop on a crisp maple leaf; the drip off the needles of the spruce; the deep sound when it bounces off the mountain laurel; the hiss it makes dancing on water; the way birds don't fly or sing; when animals stay in bed. After a while, tired of the botany lesson, he found the most perfect puddle of all time. With every stomp my day became a little lighter, a little more doable, ready for whatcha got. I've learned that grief has no bottom. I don't know that I'm ready for it.
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