June 4, 2025 ‘A Day in the Life’

~ 690saintpaul ~ Leave a comment

At approximately 2:30am, the Heavens opened a window and threw a large bucket of water out over us. The deluge was short-lived, a thundering cavalcade across the roof and up against windows. I awakened, heard the sound and thought, ‘oh good, this will break up the heat’.

The heat yesterday was beastly. Not beastly like the reddened land, burning up, lung searing, bury oneself in crusted sand heat; that’s the temperature the southwest endures. Our heat, the heat in the northeast is the kind which makes one stand at the end of the driveway, arms akimbo and say things such as ‘huh’ and ‘wait until February’. It sets us back a step or two. We don’t fight it. We don’t join it.

My Mother admonishes us as children on our annual westward trek to South Dakota, ‘don’t fight it, it will make you hotter!’ We wail from the back seat, ‘but look, the entire box of crayons has completely melted!’ She nods. ‘Shhh…don’t move. It makes you hotter!’ We cry out from the back seat, ‘but the seat belt buckles are branding our legs!’ ‘Shhh…hush. Read a book, crank open a window, be quiet’.

In the living room, I look curiously out of the window. The street is empty. There are a lot of children in this neighborhood. They will come out later as the evening shadows draw down. I have not seen our neighbors who live behind us for days now, it seems. Then at twilight, I witness her with the dog and the family together creep quietly out of the house and head up the cooling sidewalk. The huge, white furry husky looks bedraggled and generally disappointed with life.

I move to the porch, wave from the corner railing and say, ‘Hello, how are you?’ ‘Oh’…she sighs heavily. ‘We are finding things to do’. I nod and chuckle. ‘Huh’ I offer helpfully. ‘Huh’ she responds in kind.

They wander quietly away, the dog still grieving his fate…

June 3, 2025 ‘A Day in the Life’

~ 690saintpaul ~ Leave a comment

I was asked by a six year old today if I had been young when I was five and I said ‘yes’ and since it was sort of a circular question, I asked if she had been young when she was five and she shook her head, ‘yes’ most definitely. Her six year old neighbor chimed in that he too had been young when he was five, so we were all on the same page.

But, in reality we were all trapped on a series of computer screens trying to ‘log in’ a group of children who knew most assuredly that their names were NOT ‘hand4097’ nor were they another combination of numbers which acted as passwords. It was more like a circular firing squad since the computer kept kicking children out of their ‘log in’ status because if they wiggled too much, the mouse got overly sensitive and could not handle it and the adults who built these computers for children had not figured that out. No horse sense.

The language test was in Spanish and English, so since everyone in the class had a Spanish surname, the adults guessed at language dominance. ‘Pick a language, any language!’

I decided it was better at this point to be five years old, so on the way home I bought a chocolate milkshake and I drank the whole chocolate thing because this is what a five year old would do…and I started thinking about where my crayons might be…

June 2, 2025 ‘A Day in the Life’

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I leave him alone…for one minute. I turn around. He’s fully engaged with another customer who just seconds ago was a complete stranger. Now they’re best buds. They’ve found each other with rapturous island radar. There is a loud rat-tat-tat in Spanish with appropriate hand gestures.

Reluctantly, I sidle over to the table, having abandoned all hope of exiting quietly with my boxed food. His girlfriend looks up at me. ‘I’m not Puerto Rican’. She smiles. ‘I’m not either’ I respond. Now she’s really smiling. She says proudly, ‘I’m Sicilian!’

(‘Here we go’ I say in my head). I’ve landed at the struggling corner of garlic pizza and ‘where introverts go to die’. I’m forced to step up my social game. I’ve had half a bottle of Coca-cola…and we’ve launched. Topics discussed: prices, food, furniture, healthcare, dementia, our jobs, getting an RN degree…I’m starting to fade. I move slowly back…in the direction of our table where there are boxes, soda bottles, wallets, phones…there is a final round of handshaking, best wishes, phone numbers exchanged…and he’s ready to go.

‘Are you going to help me carry all of this out to the car?’ I ask sweetly.

‘What? Oh, I forgot we came here to eat!’

I’m shell shocked into silence. I’m happy and exhausted. The pizza smells delicious.

Homage #5…

~ 690saintpaul ~ Leave a comment

Summer has begun tentatively…ever so gently. The fragile pink and white blossoms of the Japanese willow engulfing the porch railing, spread upward and outward and everywhere the wind blows and the rake pulls.

Someone tells me we need to trim them back and down…’don’t let the willow roots get too deeply embedded beneath the house’…a forewarning of years to come, bills to pay, crops to uproot…

For now, I wish to sit quietly on the porch, to experience being surrounded and buried in pink…let the roots grow deeply…let the wind spread the delicate pale rose petals…there is enough in the world no longer deep, enough wind spreading the indelicate…

May 31, 2025 ‘A Day in the Life’

~ 690saintpaul ~ Leave a comment

The most astonishing thing is the awareness of that weird moment when one interacts with someone who has no sense of humor.

A curtain drops.

The person’s energy is cloaked in ‘oughtness’, stopping directly and suddenly up against and behind an impenetrable wall.

It happens every once in a great while, this weird moment.

Whosoever chooses or can’t see the absurdity of so much of it all…

May 30, 2025 ‘A Day in the Life’

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I stopped off at the post office and upon approaching the counter, immediately noticed a steady sound of chirping and twittering and singing. It’s a lovely afternoon so I thought the sounds came through an open window. The clerk looked up at me and said, ‘The chickens are getting to me today’. I asked ‘What?’ She repeated, ‘The chickens are getting to me…all the noise. ‘It’s been a long afternoon!’

I chose…actively chose to continue this conversation by remaining in front of her. I put my package down. ‘Don’t you hear that?’ She looked at me. ‘Yes, I do’. I moved the package toward her. She realized I was searching for an explanation. ‘Since we’re in a rural area we get chickens and birds delivered every day for some of the farms…and turkeys, we get turkeys’.

(Why not? I thought in silence.)

‘Sometimes I turn on music and it drowns it out…but it just did not work today’.

‘Well’ I offered, ‘you could start boiling soup back there and that would make them nervous…shake things up a bit, settle them down…and they might be quieter’. I laughed. She looked fairly unhappy and said, ‘Oh, poor things’.

(In my head I thought…’Well, the chickens and turkeys aren’t getting to me at my job…or are they?)

I thought it was funny. She didn’t.

Birds and chickens and turkeys…what next? I fulfilled my postal obligations and left…definitely time to go home…