Point of View: There in Spirit
The other night Mary realized she was missing the news. “That’s good news,” I said, knowing that for her but to think is to be full of sorrow.
(Keats said that by the way, not me, but I like it.)
We are, as this is written, about to be transplanted temporarily in the ersatz environs of Palm Springs, where one of our daughters is to be wed. The weather ought to be good. Of course, it’s good here too, as it’s been all winter, inclining one to stay put, but at the end of the day filial ties win.
In regretting an invitation to our college class’s 50th reunion recently, I said I rarely made it over the Shinnecock Canal anymore, and while that may have been a slight exaggeration it is true that I feel more and more at home at home. Bluebirds at the backyard feeders would make it perfect, but Bruce Horwith told me they prefer open areas such as you find around the airport and Napeague Meadow Road to the woods. We do have woodpeckers, though, goldfinches, flickers, nuthatches, and soon, I expect, irrepressible Carolina wrens that often nest in our flower boxes or in the outdoor shower.
There are so many moles in the front yard that it would take a weapon of mass destruction to rid us of them, and so they, making themselves very much at home, continue to fluff things up. Walking on our mossy lawn is like walking on a lumpy mattress, a not unpleasant sensation.
While I won’t be at the college reunion in body, I will be in spirit, in the form of a rather cheery essay on the passage of time. I should rail against it, but, for the moment, I can’t complain. And, as a result, I’ve begun to call myself the Pollyanna of the class of ’62. I told one of my college roommates that to remind me life was not all wine and roses I have a copy of Kafka’s short stories lying on my bedside table, and that, of course, I’d not yet read them.