“Life Moves Pretty Fast. If You Don’t Stop And Look Around Once In A While, You Could Miss It.”
—Ferris Bueller
6.16.23
Over the last few mornings, Peg's sent me a daily clip of a song from Shazam, with the genres ranging from country to indie folk to classic lounge tunes. I'm amazed at the breadth of her selections, all united by a theme of love and happiness with the other. They're about us.
It's a kindness from her, a way of saying she's thinking of me without being mawkish. With the same goal, I bring her flowers whenever I return from the grocery store. Lately I've had to make several small trips to Wegman's, and Tara is starting to smell like a funeral parlor. Maybe next time I should bring back her favorite champagne.
I try not to overlook these little loving lagniappes, to take nothing for granted. It's a predictable, profound change of perspective, as I prepare to travel to Texas in a few days for what may be my last visit with a very sick Mom. My blood pressure is down. The things at work that only days ago kept me up nights have faded; I stiff-arm the needy clients whose desperation I'd started wearing as my own. None of it particularly matters all of a sudden, for them or for me. They can't see it, but their perspective isn't shaped by this lens of impending loss.
Yesterday I told a client I was unavailable for a call because of a meeting that would last all afternoon beginning at three. I told another team of lawyers the same thing when they insisted we needed to get on the horn together that afternoon to wrestle through discovery responses. Then I drove over to the Corning Country Club, met Peg, and played nine holes of golf that, for me, were pretty remarkably good.
Or maybe they weren't. Did it matter? I was riding around in a golf cart ruminating about life in a spectacular setting, with my beloved P. All those corrosive moments at work are for the purpose of enabling these moments, which seem awfully finite lately. They always were; it just took the grave illness of my mother--the best friend, confidant, and protector of my childhood--to see that.
On the topic of finitude, tomorrow is Saturday, and P and I have been invited by friends up to Watkins Glen for the Waterfront Festival, which features the Cardboard Boat Regatta. We won't be participating directly in the race, although it sounds like fun; rather, we'll lounge around on their deckboat, sipping a little wine and never leaving the slip. What a wonderful way to enjoy the spectacle of the regatta; our Roman progenitors would approve.
I missed the festival last year, trapped in trial preparation in Florida that pretty much swallowed the summer of 2022. Peg got to attend, however, even sending me a photo of her with a flirtatious, hirsute gentleman she met in the parking lot of the marina.
I try not to think of the fact that I can only account for one paw. Or maybe that's his mitt on her back. This jealousy thing is unhealthy.
And yes, Florida friends, she's dressed for upstate New York in June. It's 59 degrees out there right now, with a forecast high of 64. Your escape from climate change lies just over a day's drive up I-95. Y'all come. The food's lousy, but the countryside is beautiful, and the locals may be dull but they're also some of the kindest people on the planet.
That paper mache contraption next to Peg's friend is the point of the day's exercise. Each year multiple teams drop their gaudily decorated paper vessels into the frigid waters of Seneca Lake, and attempt to paddle their way across the marina before their ship dissolves into unseaworthy goo, dropping them screaming and laughing into the water. All begin their voyage with hope, but few arrive.
There's a metaphor in all that, hiding in plain view. Our physical vessels are starting to take on water, P's and mine, and Mom's seems ready to return her to the deep. And yet we still keep paddling, and need to remind ourselves to laugh a little instead of paddling harder. It's an absurd journey, after all, with an outcome preordained by the fragility of our hull. Might as well hug each other hard and enjoy the moment, rather than worrying about crossing the finish line a winner, or crossing it at all.
Comments