Guess what amazing thing is happening at my house right now? This has not happened in, I think, two weeks…
OUR WINDOWS ARE OPEN!
Yesterday evening the heat index was 100 degrees. Tonight the temperature is 70, low humidity, breezes wafting in the windows like angels’ breath.
We’ve had heat and storms and so have most of you. Our kids in Madison have sent pix of golf ball sized hail several times lately. Yesterday, on a walk, I passed a lovely ranch house with a PVC pipe coming out of a basement window with so much water spurting from it that I had to walk in the street to get past. Glad it isn’t my house.
I went for my walk early yesterday. It had stormed and rained much of the night. The slough behind our local Target was unpopulated by people but aflutter in noisy redwing blackbirds. It was so loud I laughed at the crazy birds who, I suppose, were laughing back at me.
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Today I met Kathleen for breakfast at Simple in Lake Geneva. If you happen to go there, don’t be afraid to order the Korean mung bean pancakes. She let me have a bite of hers and now I’m getting them next time. I don’t even know what shaved kimchee is, but it tasted fine on those pancakes.
We’ve been friends so long she remembers the boyfriend I didn’t marry and I remember her goofy adorable grammar school kids, one of whom is going to retire from their job in two years. Knock me over with a feather.
We talked about an emotion we both have often and poignantly these days. It’s that feeling when you watch your kids and grandkids (and great grandkids, I suppose, though neither of us have any). You see the great person they so fully are. At the same time you see the face of your mom or aunt, the skills and avocations of your brother, your uncles. You feel as if you are tipsily standing on some bridge now, and you alone understand that the same faces are on both sides. There’s nothing to do about it other than, I guess, talk to others who are walking cross this same touching, weird bridge.
I don’t mind getting older. But despite what they seem to be saying about us, it sure doesn’t seem like a dull, stable, boring place. It’s all moving under our feet.
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Oh, the turtle. Len saw it on the Drumlin trail. It was walking out of a swamp an from the looks of it, he or she was bringing a bit of mossy home with them.
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