Late last night I went out on the porch to assess the weather and admire the crickets, shouting their heads off. In the midst of all that darkness and commotion, I saw one lone firefly.
Flash
flash
flash..
it felt like he may have come back to meet old friends, not realizing that summer was surely over....
Yesterday we had surprise company, people we've not seen since they moved away nearly 30 years ago.
They had to tell us who they were. The little girls are now women in their 30s. They are living in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, right on the border with Canada ..She has apparently forgiven me all my sins and is now about to become my best friend. Cognitive decline will do that, and I'm not going to remind her.
The husband asked about the maple tree (he was working up here at the time) he backed his truck over, my new little tree. He remembered that vividly. I invited him to take a look.
I've noticed that the people who last longest seem to be the ones that just keep moving forward, anyway.
They may make those funny stand-up noises, or they use a stick to get around those tricky corners, and now and then (like me) they lapse into either the Walter Brennan git-along gait, or the Tim Conway "thousand year old man" shuffle. sometimes simultaneously.
But the magic key is: we keep going. If we can't do as much, we still do some. If they can't reach, they get the tongs and the good step stool. And most importantly, they know when to ask for help, and when to say, "no, no, I'll be fine." and they are.
Wear out, or rust up.
Due to all the rain we had this past month the larger trees are beginning to loosen their grip on the side hills above the driveway. My husband spent most of yesterday moving what must have been a 50 year old oak out of the road. I got to help.
These are trees that were saplings when we first moved in up here, and now they are big enough to come crashing down across the road. From the looks of things, it would appear that there's enough wood in the trees that have come down to keep us busy for the next year, and warm for nearly as long, once they're 'repurposed". My inclination is to leave them where they are, as part of the order of things (which sounds pretty good, but it actually translates to a whiney "I really don't want to do this") and let them turn into hollow logs for sleeping quarters, and hosts for mushrooms and such.
On a more or less literary note, I finally finished up the Sue Grafton alphabet series. Since I had the last ones and still unread, I decided to read them all one last time ; when I start a series like this I usually will mark the date each book was finished, so I know where I am in the series, and I was surprised that it had been maybe ten years or longer for any of them. I was also surprised to see how much I had forgotten, except for certain scenes in each; and just as surprised at the endings as I was the last time around.
However. As the series progressed the books became longer, and more complicated. More and more characters in each one. And the last one, "Y is for Yesterday" just left me reeling with all the characters and the shifting allegiances. I just plain stopped. I had no idea who had done what to whom, or why. I was majorly disappointed.
Chillier now. And the sun is rising later, setting long before Im ready for it to happen. Yeah, yeah, I know, get over it. It'll be back next year. =)
