A Note from the Home - September 12, 2012

   The hallway outside the activity room was alive with activity Thursday. On one side some residents were lined up to have their blood pressure checked, and on the other side there was a line of residents waiting to take a memory test. It was shaping up to be a forgettable day, so I opted for the memory test. As I waited, a question that had been floating in and out of my mind floated in. Annie was there keeping an eye on things; so I asked her.

   “The maintenance man – the little guy who’s always riding around in a golf cart – what’s his name?”

   “That’s Terry,” she said.

   I thanked her and continued my wait. A few minutes later, I was looking across a table at a middle-age woman who told me her name and the name of the organization she works for. Then we got started. She asked me what day it was, the day’s date, the time, the season of the year, what sort of facility we were in, what floor we were on, and on and on and on. There were thirty questions on the test, and I went thirty-for-thirty.  Needless to say, I was one insufferably proud man as I went down the hall to my apartment.

   When I opened my door, however, I was washed away in the wave of humility that surged from my humble abode. Sure, I knew the day, the date and all the other stuff that lady asked. But did I remember the name of the woman who administered the test? No. Did I remember the name of the organization she worked for? No. But the most bothersome realization came when I tried to recall the name of the maintenance man. I couldn’t. I had no idea. And if I hadn’t asked James a day or two later, I still wouldn’t know.

   Then I started wondering about some of the questions. I knew the date, the year, the day of the week, the time. But what if I hadn’t? Would that be an indication of a failing memory? Or would it be the result of not needing to know? For me, anyway, the rhythms of life are very different here. For sixty-four years my life marched to the beat of the workaday world. Dad went to work. In time, I started school, and eventually I went to work. I haven’t worked for five years, but when I lived with Nancy, the tempo of life was usually dictated by her work schedule. Now I’m in an apartment by myself, with no job, and surrounded by people who are retired. The days are all the same. Oh, there are doctor appointments and this and that to keep in mind. But most of the time it isn’t vital to know the day, date or time. Of course, I knew all that stuff. It was Terry’s name I forgot. The one bit of information that was important enough to me to ask about, I forgot. Go figure.

  

   Four of us went to hear the Ft. Benning MCOE Jazz Ensemble Sunday. The event was sponsored by the Columbus Jazz Society and was held outside on the grounds of an Episcopal church. It was a wonderful night for an outdoor concert, at least for those of able to get seats in the shade. But even in the sun it wasn’t as hot as it has been, and the humidity was much, much less oppressive than it has been for a couple months.

   In its first set, the group played a few selections from the big band era, a few tunes from the sixties and seventies and a couple pieces that are familiar to jazz aficionados and few others. After taking a break, the band began its second set shortly before seven o’clock. After they played a song or two, Catherine said something about going home. If Catherine was ready, none of us wanted to force her to stay, and we left.

   I didn’t think of it until I was back in my apartment, but on our way to the concert and on our way back, Catherine talked about Peyton Manning, the Denver Broncos new quarterback. Catherine grew up in Tennessee. Manning played his college football at the University of Tennessee, Catherine said she hoped he would do well against the Steelers that evening. I think Catherine wanted to be sure she got home in time to watch the football game. Then Manning and the Broncos beat the Steelers.  There is no justice.

  

   As I went to get my mail today, Lynn was coming back with hers. We said “hello,” and then she said, “You have such a beautiful smile.” I hear that a lot here. A woman who lives down the hall has told me several times that my smile is an inspiration. The first person here to comment on my smile was a man who no longer lives at Covenant Woods. A week or so after I moved in, I was up in the lobby, and the man said, “What a nice smile you have.” I must have looked surprised, because he hastened to add, “I’m not coming on to you or anything.”

   There are some crabby people at Covenant Woods. But there are crabby people everywhere, and I am not the only person here who smiles. Yet, the smile that no one noticed in the Rust Belt seems to wow them here in the Sun Belt. It must have to do with the angle of the sun.

  

   I was looking at some old posts earlier this week and noticed on April 20 the wheelchair odometer had 792 miles on it. On Monday, the odometer reached 1,300 miles. Five months and 500 miles, almost all of which came while I was circling the building. That must say something about me, but I’m not sure what.

A Note from the Home - September 5,2012

Back in April and May, as I was settling in at Covenant Woods, I had hopes of crossing Woodruff Farm Road in my wheelchair and going to Publix. But for most of the day, Woodruff Farm Road’s four lanes carry a steady stream of traffic. And Piggly-Wiggly is just down the asphalt path. A supermarket, after all, is a supermarket is a supermarket. Why make a wild dash to Publix when I can take a leisurely stroll – so to speak – to Piggly-Wiggly.

   But Tuesday at dinner, Katherine said she had seen Eddie heading to Publix in her wheelchair earlier. Wednesday, Eddie was getting her mail when I went to get mine. Before I could say a word she reprimanded me for going to Publix.

   “I’ve thought about it, but I’ve never gone over there,” I told her.

   “When we were coming back on the bus, I saw you going down the driveway. Where were you going? You didn’t go out on the road, did you?”

   “No. I go down to the end of the driveway and turn around. I’m not foolish. Besides, I heard you went to Publix yesterday.”

   “Yeah, but when I go to Publix, I go down service road by the old K-Mart. Then it’s a straight shot across. I just wait for a break in the traffic and go.”

   “Well, that’s my plan, too. I just haven’t done it yet.”

   If Eddie can do it, I can do it. And Sunday morning, I did. At eight o’clock there isn’t much traffic, so crossing the road wasn’t a challenge, and I had no intention to buy anything. Like the chicken, the only reason I crossed the road was to get to the other side. But it turned out to be a rewarding little jaunt. A man got off his bicycle near the entrance to the Publix parking lot as I was coming across the street. I said “good morning.” He said “good morning” and kept talking. He looked to be in his mid-seventies.

   “It’s a beautiful day, and I’ve never felt better in my life,” he said.

   He’d had a stroke about three years ago and nearly died, he said. He was overweight and out of shape at the time, but since then he’s been working on correcting those problems. He asked me if I lived at Covenant Woods. I said I did.

   “You know Terry? He’s a maintenance man over there.”

   “The little guy? He’s kind of hunched over?”

   “That’s him,” the man said. “He’s the guy who stayed with me and made sure I got help. He probably saved my life. If you see him, tell him Jerry said hello.”

   Apparently Terry drew the short straw and had to work on Labor Day, and he was pitching garbage when I made my morning trip around the grounds. I told him what Jerry had said.

   “I’ve been here nine years,” Terry said. “And I’ve been in a lot of those situations. I don’t remember each of them.”

   “He doesn’t live here. He was out riding his bicycle when I was on my way to Publix.”

   Terry thought for a minute. “You say his name is Jerry?”

   “I think that’s what he said.”

   He thought a little more. “Oh, now I remember,” Terry said. “It was at the flea market. He almost didn’t make it. He asked me to take him to the hospital. I said, ‘No way. If you go into cardiac arrest I won’t know what to do.’ I called 911 instead, and stayed with him until the EMTs got there.

   “Thanks for telling me,” Terry said. “It’s nice to hear that he’s taking care of himself and doing so well.”

   Talking to Jerry lifted my spirits, and Terry was delighted to get an update on Jerry’s health. For not buying anything, I came back from Publix with quite a lot.

  

   The best thing about being in a wheelchair is discovering how anxious people are to help. The worst thing about being in a wheelchair is discovering how anxious people are to help. A couple weeks ago some of us went to an organ concert at the River Center. Annie was the staff person for the outing, and she brought along her daughter Chelsea, who is in high school.

   When we got there, another resident - a very nice woman who is nearly thirty years older than I - who had been to the River Center many times, began directing me to the seating area for the handicapped. She delivered the directions with the expectation that they would be followed without question. She pointed to a space, told me to pull into it and she sat in the seat next to it. The next time I saw Annie, she told me Chelsea had watched the woman tell me what to do and wondered if she was my girlfriend.

   Friday a small group of us went up to Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta. I was able to wander around on my own for the first two hours. But after lunch, the place was so crowded I thought it best to fall in behind Evelyn and Richard and let them run interference for me. Evelyn is a kind and caring woman, but she's not afraid to take charge. She spent the afternoon telling me to go here and go there, and to go faster or to go slower, to be careful and to get over there before anyone else has a chance. I told Annie if Chelsea had been along on this trip she would have thought Evelyn was my mother-in-law.

  

   And the willingness of people to help those in a wheelchair is sometimes scary. One day last week while I was out for my evening constitutional, I ran into two residents who are known to tip a few, or perhaps several, now and then.

   “Hey, you’re getting some exercise,” one said.

   “I suppose my joystick finger is.”

   “You ought to go swimming, that’s good exercise,” he said.

   Covenant Woods has a small in-ground pool that is four feet deep, and the two men are there most afternoons.

   “I could probably get in without too much problem,” I told them. “But I’d never be able to get out.”

   “We’ll get you out,” other fellow said.

   Frightened by the prospect, I moseyed on. The next day, I was telling some people about the encounter, and Sue asked, “Did they say if they’d get out before or after they start drinking?”

   “I didn’t bother to ask,” I told her.

 

  

  

A Note from the Home - September 4, 2012

On our way to Target, Russell talked about life in the audio/video department of Barnes & Noble.

   “A guy came in yesterday; said he’d recently moved into a retirement-community-slash-assisted-living place,” Russ said. “You know, an old guy.”

   “Whoa,” says I. “A person isn’t old just because he recently moved into a retirement-community-slash-assisted-living place.”

   Russell took his eyes off the road just long enough to shoot me a get-over-it-you-old-fart glance before going on with the story. Russ and a woman were working at the counter, but the man insisted on speaking to Russ, and he insisted on speaking to him in a corner, away from the other customers and staff. The man said he had become friends with a woman at the retirement community, and she had invited him to her apartment a few times to watch movies. To reciprocate, the man had come to Barnes & Noble the day before and purchased a movie. A comedy; his lady friend likes comedies. That evening, the woman came to the man’s apartment, he slipped the movie into the VCR, they got ready to laugh, and then…

   “You have to sit through all the commercials,” the man told Russ. “But the movie finally started. And what do you think we heard when it did? A whole lot of moaning. That’s what we heard.”

   And, according to the man, it was all downhill from there: the moaning continued, foul language filled the air and everywhere you looked there were actors and actresses in dishabille. The movie was Bridesmaids.

   “I want to return it. And I want to know how I can find a decent movie. I don’t want a movie with a lot of moaning, foul mouthed, naked people.”

   Russ suggested he try the Marx Brothers or maybe a Cary Grant comedy. But the man, not wishing to be an old fogey among the old fogies, said he was hoping to find something more current. Russ pointed out that the film he was returning was the director’s cut of an R-rated movie, something he might wish to avoid in the future.

  

   Back at Covenant Woods, Al was waiting for the elevator as I headed to my apartment. He asked me if I had time to go up to his room and visit for a bit. If there is anything I have in abundance, it’s time, and I followed him to his apartment.

   An eighty-eight-year-old retired Army lieutenant colonel, Al fought in World War II, Korea and Vietnam, where his leg was injured. “It got all blown to hell,” Al said. “I was working for Westmorland at the time. And when I saw him in South Carolina a few years later, I really gave him hell.” With steel rods for bones and screws for ligaments, Al gets around as well and stands as tall as many men twenty years his junior.

   Al talked about growing up here in Columbus; a kid who preferred to be alone, who read poetry and spent a lot of time trying to make sense of the world. As soon as he had his high school diploma in hand, Al enlisted. After basic training, he went on to Officer Candidate School and from there he was stationed in Virginia. But he complained mightily about not being sent overseas. Eventually, perhaps to stop his carping, the Army obliged and sent him to join the fight in Europe.

   For the last few days, Al had been having balance issues. A day or two earlier, he fell in his apartment and had to struggle to get up. He’d gone to the doctor, but Al worried that the medication changes the doctor prescribed amounted to little more than tinkering. Then Al pointed to his forehead and said, “This is going too. I can’t remember shit anymore.”

   Al said he asked me up because he’s convinced he’s an old soldier who is about to fade away, and before he does he wants to find a good home for the things cluttering his apartment. “Take whatever you want, Tom,” he said, opening the refrigerator. “I’ve got three Ding-a-lings [Yuenglings] in here. You can have them.” I took a couple three-pound dumbbells, but said no to the stationary bicycle – I have my own balance issues – and countless other proffered items. But Al wasn’t through. Before I left he filled a bag with bite-size Dove bars, Reese’s cups, caramels, a jelly-filled pastry and a gingerbread man. I felt like a kid going home after a visit with the grandparents.

   I saw Al last night at dinner. If his health is declining, it isn’t obvious. And his voice was as strong as ever. “I gave the exercise bike to Ralph,” he said. “I haven’t been able to get on the damn thing for years.”

   And this afternoon, as I was touring the parking lot, Al called to say he some more stuff he wanted to bring down to my room. He brought me some sort of exercise devise with two pedals that you can spin with your hands or feet. I’ve used it a couple times today and used the weights three times. Come morning, I’ll either jump out of bed with the greatest of ease or be too sore to move. But regardless, I’m sure Al will be the same old contrarian he’s always been. He’s the crusty old guy I want to grow up to be.

   My gender-identification issues continue unabated – people are still having problems identifying my gender when they speak to me on the phone. I had a doctor’s appointment last week and arranged to be transported on the Covenant Woods bus. About 6:30 that morning, the phone rang, and the man on the other end said, “This is just a friendly to Mr. Harris that he needs to be in the lobby by 8:15.”

   “Thank you,” I said.

   “You’re welcome, ma’am. And have a nice day.”

A Note from the Home - July 17, 2012

While wondering through the parking lot Saturday morning, I met a Hispanic gentleman, clutching a cup of McDonald’s coffee.We talked about the weather for a minute, and then he asked if I had been in the military. I told him about my short, uninspiring stint as a draftee.

   “I thought that might be a service-related injury,” he said, pointing to my legs. “What happened?”

   “Multiple sclerosis happened.”

   “How long have you had it?”

   “Since sometime in the early 1990s, I guess. But until 2005 I thought I was just getting old.”

   “You married?” he asked.

   “Divorced.”

   “Can you cope with women?” he said.

   “What was that?” I asked, thinking I’d misunderstood him.

   “Can you cope with women?” he asked again.

   Convinced that I was confused by his accent, I answered with a puzzled look.

   “Cope,” he said. “You know, cope: C-O-P-E.”

   “I don’t know how well I cope,” I said. “But, I manage to put up with them.”

   He laughed, told me to have a good day, and went on his way.

  

   In April, a week or two after moving into Covenant Woods, I called the Emory Clinic in Atlanta to make an appointment to have my baclofen tank refilled. We made a date for July 18. A few weeks later, Emory sent a medical history form for me to fill out and bring with me to the appointment. Two weeks ago, Harold from the Emory Clinic called to ask some questions about my condition and to get the name and number of the doctor I had been seeing at the Cleveland Clinic.

   Everything was proceeding smoothly, and Russ had scheduled himself off on the 18th to drive me to Atlanta. Then there was a change of plan. Thursday, while I was Skyping to writing class, the phone rang. I didn’t recognize the number and ignored the call. After class ended, I picked up the phone and debated whether I should return the call or wait to see if the caller wanted to talk to me enough to call back. Then the phone rang. It was an Emory Clinic scheduler. The clinic needed to reschedule my appointment; the doctor I was to see would be out of town on the 18th. Would the 25th at 9:30 be OK? she asked. I said it would be, and then I called Russ to make sure.

   A quick look at my phone’s calls received seemed to answer the question of who made the earlier call. The calls weren’t from the same number, but the numbers were close enough that they probably came from came from the same office. But they didn’t come from the same person, as I discovered when the phone rang on Friday the 13th.

   “Hello, this is Lisa from the Emory Clinic, may I speak to Thomas Harris, please?” she said perfunctorily.

   “This is he.”

   “Oh, is this Mrs. Harris?”

   “No, this is Mr. Harris.”

   “Is Mr. Harris available?”

   “This is Mr. Harris.”

   “OK,” she said doubtfully, the way a person says “OK” when she is sure she is being lied to but can’t prove it. I’m used to callers mistaking me for a woman when they hear my voice, but all the others were kind enough to hide their disbelief when I said they were speaking to Mr. Harris. Lisa, though, was calling to confess, and that might have affected her attitude.

   “Harold called you a few weeks ago to get the name and number of the doctor you were seeing at the Cleveland Clinic,” she said. “He gave it to me, but I’ve misplaced it. Can you give me that information?”

   Without implying that I doubted her competence, I gave her Dr. McKee’s name and telephone number. Later that afternoon, she called back to say she had received my records. It’s amazing how quickly large amounts of information can go from here to there with a few clicks of the mouse.

  

   Two weeks ago, a group of us from Covenant Woods went to hear the Hotlanta Jazz Quartet. It is a Dixieland group, and a very, very good one. The drummer is from New Orleans, the banjo player/vocalist is from Montana, the clarinet/sax player is from Wisconsin and the horn player is New England. But they all ended up in Atlanta and have been playing together since the late 1990s. The fellow who did all the singing had a voice right out of 1930s. It was great.

   The concert took place at the Liberty Theater. If there is an auditorium in the Liberty Theater, I didn’t see it. The wheelchair access for the theater is through the kitchen, and from there I was led into a room that looked like a church basement. There was a platform for the band at one end, and the audience of seventy-five or eighty people sat at tables. A caterer was set up in the kitchen, selling barbecue sandwiches, hot dogs, French fries, soft drinks and beer.

    Because of construction around the theater, the Jazz Society will be meeting in the basement of a nearby Episcopal church for the next year. There aren’t many Episcopalians down here, but the Jazz Society has a beer license and is working on getting a wine license, which would make it tough for them to find a home in one of the more numerous Baptist churches.

   A week later, I got a nice reminder of that evening of jazz. Russ and Karen let me hang out with them Sunday, and among other things, they took me to a frozen yogurt place. While we were eating, the piped-in music piped in “Puttin’ on the Ritz,” a terrific song I hadn’t heard in years until the Hotlanta Jazz Quartet played it at the Liberty Theater.

  

   Bethany called yesterday, and we talked for over an hour. OK, she did most of the talking and I soaked up her enthusiasm, excitement and joy for life. The developmental specialist told her Hayden is ahead of where he should be in all areas for his adjusted age and ahead in most areas for his actual age. Last week, Beth sent me a short video of Hayden wearing her sunglasses. The kid is one cool dude.

   Yesterday at supper, Sue – who used to sell antiques and now does some writing – gave me some information about winningwriters.com’s contest for essays or fiction involving sports. The site also is also holding a contest for humorous poetry. They don’t accept previously published material, which eliminates all my extant sports stuff. Twenty-five or thirty of the best humorous poems from last year’s contest were posted, and they are all considerably longer – I mean really, really longer – than any I have written. But the contests don’t close until May 31, 2013. I guess that eliminates all my excuses.

   And one more thing in the things-are-looking-up category: at 7:45 this morning I went out for my morning constitutional, and for the first time since the middle of May it was cooler outside than it was inside in the air conditioning. It will probably be another couple of months before that happens again, but it was an oh-so-pleasant surprise.

  

   

A Note from the Home - July 1, 2012

   The Old Philosopher, a retired Army officer, has as hard a time as anyone dealing with Frank, one of the younger residents. They exchanged words Friday at happy hour. The Philosopher told Frank to keep his voice down so he and Ed could have a conversation.  Frank said he wasn’t talking to them, and that The Philosopher should butt out. They went back and forth, got loud and broke into four-letter words. Then we adjourned and went to dinner. Later, I ran into The Old Philosopher in the hallway.

   “I know Frank has problems,” he said. “But damn it, he makes it impossible for anybody else to talk. It’s tough. I know. I’m starting to have problems with dementia myself.”

   He stopped and was quiet for a moment, then added, “And I’m not that old. I’m only eighty-eight.”

   There is a lounge area near the elevator and The Philosopher suggested we stop there and “bullshit.”

   “Why are we on this earth, Tom?” he asked. “Are we put here for some purpose? Does anything we do make a difference? Or are we just a bunch of chemicals? Do we matter? Really?”

   “I don’t know,” I said. “I wonder about that, too.”

   “I’m trying to find out. I’ve got a bunch of books upstairs I’m reading. I want to know why we’re here. Right now I’m reading Marcus Aurelius.”

   We talked a while longer and agreed that just because the human race is smart enough to build weapons capable of killing millions, perhaps billions, there’s no reason to believe we’re wise enough not to use them. Then The Philosopher took the conversation in another direction.

   “Tom, did you ever smoke marijuana?”

   “Once. In Vietnam,”

   “Did you like it?”

   “I can’t say. We’d been drinking beer, and I already had a buzz on. If the marijuana did anything for me, I didn’t notice.”

   “Well, if you ever want some marijuana, I’ve got it in the room,” he said. “Get yourself a pipe and come up some day.”

   About that time, a woman on her way to the elevator came by, looked at Al, grinned broadly and told me, “Don’t believe a word he says.”

   I am not sure if I should believe him or not. But last night, as we waited for the dining room to open, he extended the invitation again.

   As I said, it gets curiouser and curiouser.

  

   And it gets hotter and hotter. It was 104 in Columbus, Friday, equaling the all-time high. We had to wait until yesterday, when it was 106, to set the record. I’ve been out riding around every morning, but I’ve not been going out later in the day. According to Yahoo, it’s 103 at three o’clock this afternoon. On Thursday, however, the predicted high is a mild ninety-two, and I should be able to resume going out two or three times a day.

A Note from the Home - June 29, 2012

Russ picked me up yesterday and carted me off to Target and a natural foods store, the name of which I don’t recall. The great thing about the natural foods place is the selection of what in more traditional stores would be called junk food. I don’t know if the muffins, lemon cake and chips in the natural foods store are any healthier than those at Piggly-Wiggly and Publix, but they certainly taste as good, and often much better. Besides, it’s an interesting shop to spend time in.

   Not long after we got back, Catherine knocked on my door. A few weeks after I moved here, she gave me the skinny on signing up for activities.

   “Penelope puts all the activity signup sheets for the month in the book at one time, usually during the last week of the month before,” Catherine said. “There is only room for two wheelchairs on the bus, so you have to sign up early for the things you want to do.” Sage advice, indeed. 

   Catherine’s purpose for dropping by Thursday was to give me a brochure for the West Georgia Eye Care Center, where she goes for her macular degeneration. I don’t go back to the doctor I've been seeing until the middle of September. So, maybe this would be a good time to investigate other options.

   Later in the day, Judy, one of the cleaning ladies, stopped me in the hall.

   “Was that your son with you this morning?” she asked.

   “Yep. That was Russ,” I said. “He took me shopping.”

   “How old is he?”

   “He’ll be thirty-four in August.”

   “Wow. He doesn’t look that old. I figured he was a college student; maybe twenty-five at most.”

   Alas, she never said the words I was waiting to hear: “You don’t look old enough to have a son thirty-four.”

  

   Last weekend, I went to a performance of The Great American Trailer Park Musical, which was staged by the drama department of Columbus State University. Looking at the program, I noticed the choreographer had the same last name as Richard. I asked if they were related. The choreographer is his daughter-in-law and is a member of the CSU faculty.

   During intermission, I talked to Cathleen, whom I hadn’t met before. After we had talked for a few minutes, I asked about her Irish accent.

   “I came to this country sixty-one years ago,” she said. “But I go back every few years for a refresher course.”

  

   The air conditioning will be tested this weekend. The predicted high for today and tomorrow is 105. It will be slightly cooler Sunday – very slightly – when the thermometer is supposed to reach 102. I did go out for a couple laps around the building this morning, but whether I’ll do my usual two after supper remains to be seen.

   As strange as it might seem, there are times when a little less air conditioning would be welcomed. After the doctor finished looking at my eyes the other day, I called Dennis. He said he’d pick me up in about twenty-five minutes. My plan was to stay in the waiting room until Dennis arrived, but it soon became apparent that sitting in the exceedingly well air-conditioned waiting room dressed in shorts and a T-shirt was akin to spending a November morning at Ashtabula’s Lake Shore Park in shorts and a T-shirt. I went outside and sat in the sunshine until Dennis came to take me home.

  

   Bethany and Ken are now the United States representatives for Kahles, an Austrian company that makes gun sights. In what seems to me to be a strange example of corporate diversification, Kahles is connected with Swarovski, the famous crystal people. But anyway, Beth and Ken went to a shoot in Wyoming last week and made a favorable impression on all those in attendance. Beth was pressed into service as a range officer. Never having been at a shoot, I have no idea what a range officer does. But though it was her first time in that capacity, Beth was voted the best range officer at the shoot. I’m impressed.

  

   Skype is now far and away my favorite toy. It makes me feel like a real, honest to goodness grandpa. I got to watch as Hayden ate lunch the other day. He pretty much ran the show from his high chair, telling his mother what he wanted and when he wanted it. Mostly he wanted crackers and little puffy fruit thingies. Several times he seemed to look at his adoring grandfather on the computer screen. Once he reached toward him, and a couple times he even played peek-a-boo with him. OK, he was probably tired and just rubbing his eyes. But I’m an insufferably proud grandpa, and this is my blog, and I say he was playing peek-a-boo.

A Note from the Home - June 11, 2012

The other evening, I was talking to Lynn and Ed as we waited for the dining room to open for dinner. Lynn glanced toward the dry erase board on which the activities for the day are listed, walked over to it and did something, but I couldn’t see what.

   “I erased an apostrophe that shouldn’t have been there,” she said, when she rejoined us. “That stuff really bothers me.”

   “You and Lynne Truss,” I said.

   Truss is an English writer who has been known to go about correcting the punctuation on signs. Several years ago, she gathered her ideas on punctuation in a book titled Eats, Shoots and Leaves. The title is from an  English majors’ joke about a cute panda that eats shoots and leaves, and his gun-toting brother, who goes into a restaurant and eats, shoots and leaves. I would have given Lynn my copy of the book, but it didn’t make the cut when I was packing to come down here.

   I sat with Lynn and Ed at dinner, and William was also at the table. About halfway through the meal, William turned and started talking to a man at the next table. I don’t know what they were discussing, but, over and over, William asked the man, “Where’s it at?” The more he asked, the more exasperated Lynn became, until she finally said, “Right before the at.”

   “Were you an English teacher?” I asked.

   “I’m sorry. Is it that obvious?” she said. “I shouldn’t be so persnickety, but I can’t help myself.”

   I told her to go ahead and persnick. I was enjoying it.

  

   Friday, a group of us got on the Covenant Woods’ bus and went to lunch at The Market. Ellen, a feisty woman who will turn eighty this year, dominated the conversation. Among other things, Ellen was upset because one of the women who went to dinner with us last Friday told Penelope she was shocked that Penelope had chosen to have the mystery dinner at a restaurant that serves alcohol. As Ellen went on about this woman, I realized that she was the lady who sat next to Roger, the new general manager, and across the table from me. Roger had a Bud with his meal, and I had a Guinness. I hope she noticed that both of us drank responsibly.

   Sue was also at The Market with us. A new resident, Sue was an antiques dealer, and in the last few years she has been doing some writing, mostly fiction and memoir. She hasn’t published anything, but she’s entered some regional writing contests and done well.

  

   A few of us went to the Columbus Lions’ indoor football game, Saturday. While we waited in the lobby for Penelope to park the bus, Helga and Russell got into a science vs. the Bible discussion. Russell, who has all the physical attributes needed to play Santa Claus, including the beard, came down firmly on the side of the Bible. The conversation was short and without rancor, and neither Helga nor Russell changed their position on the matter one bit.

   No one at the Columbus Civic Center Saturday fanned himself in an effort to offset the heat. But many people, myself included, wished they had worn long pants and a sweatshirt. I haven’t any idea why the air conditioner was cranked up so. I wonder if the Lions were trying to put the crowd into a proper football mood by making it feel like November.

   As seems to be the case with every professional sports event these days, the people in charge did everything they could to keep the decibel level in the triple digits. Between the recorded music, a high school band drum line, and a public address announcer who spoke in a yell and never shut up, every second was filled with noise. Why? Shouldn’t the game be enough to hold the fans’ attention for a couple hours? Or should I accept the fact that I’m getting old?

  

   I talked to Beth Thursday evening. I could hear the enough-already tone in her voice when she talked about all the rain they’ve been having. And I could hear the excitement in her voice when she talked about the chicken coop she and Ken have built, and the huge garden they are working on when the weather cooperates. And, most importantly, I could hear the love and excitement in her voice when she talked about Hayden. Bethany has always been full of life, and now she is enchanted by the wonder of life as she and Ken watch Hayden grow.

   And Russ is quite a guy. He spent several hours Wednesday chauffeuring his old man. I like to think he does it out of love and respect. But, when he is the chauffeur, I have to use the manual wheelchair. So it is possible he does it because he enjoys pushing me around. On Wednesday, he pushed me around Target – which he and Karen call Tar-jay, in the manner of Hyacinth Bucket on Keeping up Appearances, who pronounces her last as “bouquet.” I needed a few things, but my real purpose for shopping was to be a doting grandfather and get a few gifts for Hayden. I found a couple books, which I hope he will enjoy. And Russ and Karen dropped in Friday evening to pick up the package for Hayden and take it to the post office.

   Whether it was skillful parenting or dumb luck, the Harris kids turned out pretty good, and I’m proud of them.

  

A Note from the Home - June 2, 2012

Went fishing Friday.  I thought I was going fishing on Memorial Day, but being a doofus of some repute, I was mistaken. One mistake, or even a slew of mistakes, does not make a man a doofus. To err, after all, is human. But, I was in possession of all the salient facts, and all I had to do was think about them for a moment and I would have known that Monday wasn’t the day of the fishing trip.

   You see, I knew the fishing trip was scheduled for June 1, and I knew Monday was Memorial Day. Somewhere along the way, I became convinced that Monday was June 1. That is a run-of-the-mill mistake, one any human, even one with an astronomical IQ, might make. But I also knew that Monday was Memorial Day, and that Memorial Day is always the last Monday of May. A lesser nitwit armed with those facts would have said, “Something is wrong here. I better take a look.” As a world-class nitwit, however, I overlooked all that until the day before Memorial Day. Someone asked me Sunday evening if I was going fishing on Friday. Yes, God worked in mysterious ways to keep me from being memorably embarrassed on Memorial Day. I’m sure the woman at the desk Monday morning would have found it impossible to stifle a guffaw or two, if, after cooling my heels in the lobby for an hour, I’d asked her if the fishing trip had left without me.

   As things turned out, I was spared embarrassment on Monday only to be embarrassed on Friday. The day started without incident. Everyone was in the lobby at the appointed time, and we all got on the bus and headed to Florance Marina, a state park on the Alabama side of the Chattahoochee River. The sky was overcast and the air comfortably cool. I had no difficulty getting the wheelchair onto the pier. And once there, despite the narrow walkway, I managed to maneuver it without ever once coming close to taking an unexpected dip.

   The ranger gave each of the non-fishermen in the group a bamboo pool, and Dennis, the bus driver, distributed worms. The river, the woods, the egrets, the cranes, and the hawks soaring high above, soon had me lost in reverie. Then someone yelled, “Where’s Helga?” I turned to look, and in the process the reverie turned to embarrassment when I knocked my quad cane off the pier. The ranger was nearby and tried to help, but the cane slipped beneath the surface before she could grab it. On the way to the bottom, however, the cane got tangled in my line and, with a little help from the ranger, I reeled it in.

   Then I went back to reverie. But after just a few minutes, it was disturbed by a tug on my line. It was a fish, not much of a fish, maybe five inches long. The ranger said it was a brim. I began thinking of myself as the brim reaper. The other brim must thought that too, because they and all their aquatic friends avoided my line the rest of the day. Several other residents managed to land a brim or two, and one fellow hauled in four. They were all about the same size as mine, but when Penelope called Dennis to ask who caught the largest fish, Dennis said I did. He must have been thinking of the cane. In any event, when I got back, I received a mounted wooden fish about ten times larger than the one I caught.

  

   Friday night I went out to eat. Every few months Penelope arranges a Mystery Dinner. The mystery is which restaurant did Penelope make the arrangements with.

   This time the mystery restaurant was The Loft. It’s downtown, near a lot of the Columbus State facilities, and most of the people in the place where younger than Russ and Bethany. But the food was great – I had grilled salmon – and so was the Guinness.

   After we’d stuffed ourselves and were waiting for Penelope to bring the bus around, a woman in our group came over and asked me for my name. I told her, and she introduced herself and the gentleman she was with to me. "We're living in sin," she said. C’est la vie; they’re very nice people, and, let’s face it, sin isn’t always a bad place to live.

  

   The highlight of the week, however, was Thursday, when I Skyped to writing class. I spent last weekend getting some stuff together for a book proposal, which included a number of Russell’s drawings. I scanned the drawings, and e-mailed them to Suzanne, along with the cover letter I’d written. She wrote back with a list of things to improve my letter, and nothing but high praise for Russ’ drawings. And Thursday, Suzanne showed a couple of the drawing to the class.

   Is there anything sweeter than listening to other people praise the work of your kids?

A Note from the Home - May 25, 2012

Yesterday, on my morning jaunt around Covenant Woods I came upon Richie and his bulldog, Buddy. Any time Buddy spots the wheelchair, he pulls Richie over to it. Buddy and I get along, but we’re hardly close friends, and I doubt that he would bother with me if I didn’t occasionally drop food into the nooks and crannies of the wheelchair’s undercarriage. Buddy has found a few morsels on the buggy and is ever hopeful of finding more. He looked and sniffed, but didn’t find anything yesterday.

   But a woman, probably in her late twenties or early thirties, and her daughter, seven or eight, I’d guess, found Buddy. They had been visiting the woman’s grandfather and, judging from their outfits, were on their way to a swimming pool. The girl looked hopefully toward her mother, who asked Richie if the girl could pet Buddy. While the girl bonded with the dog, the adults talked about the weather for a few minutes.

   “Boy, you really have an accent,” Richie told the woman, as she and her daughter headed toward their car.

   “No I don’t,” the woman said. “Down here, you guys are the ones with accents.”

   Well, she was half right. Richie was born, grew up and lived much of his life in New England. And it doesn't take a trained ear to divine his Yankee heritage. I, on the other hand, speak English as God intended it to be spoken and do not have an accent.

  

   Last night at dinner, Lisa was remembering, and Herman was forgetting. Lisa’s sister died a few days ago. Lisa was born in Austria, married a GI, and came to the United States in the late forties. Her sister, and the rest of her family, remained in Austria.

   “We used to play school,” Lisa said. “My sister was older than me, and she was always the teacher. We had a lot of fun.”

   And Lisa remembered her father telling them stories. And she remembered beauty of the Austrian Alps, and going out to play on snowy winter days.

   “My husband was stationed in Germany for four years, and we were able to go to Austria and visit my family often,” she said. “And I used to go back to Austria every year, but I can’t do that anymore. I don’t get around very well.

   “My husband died twenty years ago, and I miss him. I wish I could go to Austria for the funeral, but I can’t. It’s sad. But, I’ve had a good life.”

   Herman and Joyce have two small dogs. Because Herman worries that the dogs aren’t getting enough to eat, he usually takes most of his dinner home for them.  Joyce worries that the dogs are eating too much, and that Herman isn’t eating enough. Several times during dinner Joyce leaned toward Herman and said something. Each time she did, Herman ate a little more of his dinner, until he had eaten it all.

   “You must have been hungry,” Sharnell, the server, said when she came to clear the table.  “You didn’t save anything for the dogs.”

   “We don’t have any dogs,” Herman said.

   Taken aback, Sharnell looked toward Joyce.

   “I told him we didn’t have any dogs so he would eat his supper,” Joyce said.

  

   Bethany called Tuesday. As usual, she was full of excitement about life, and sometimes in her excitement, the words came faster than her thoughts. In the background, I could hear Ken making little comments. Then Beth blurted out, “I’m married to a smart ass.” I told her that was only fair. After all, Ken is married to one too.

   That afternoon, Russ had to pick up some things at the supermarket across the street, and while he was in the neighborhood he stopped to see the old man. By the time he left, I was ready to write an angry letter to the people at the automotive department at Sears in the Ashtabula Mall. Not that it would do much good. The Sears in the Ashtabula Mall has closed.

   A week before I came down here, I took the Aveo to Sears for an oil change and asked them to check the brakes. Then the guy went out to check the mileage. When he got back, he said the tires weren’t worn funny, so the brakes were probably good. I asked him to check them anyway because we were going be pulling a trailer. Apparently, he didn’t. The brakes started acting up last week, and Russ took it to Sears down here Monday. The problem was the front brakes were rusted. “You bring this car down from up north?” the guy asked Russ.

   Fortunately, the brakes lasted this long. But I hope the guy at the Sears in Ashtabula is still looking for a job.

A Note from the Home - May 17, 2012

According to Richie, I am younger than all but two residents of Covenant Woods. It is often inspiring to go about in a world filled with my elders. Eleanor, Al and Ed are lively octogenarians and nonagenarians. Both the men smile ever so slightly as they watch those around them, as if knowing that much of what the rest of us worry about is stuff and nonsense. But if someone needs a hand, they are there. 
   Yesterday, as I was going to check my mail, a woman in the hallway was struggling to get up from the bench where she was sitting. I asked if she needed help. She told me to maneuver the wheelchair so she could get a hold of it and try to pull herself up. That didn’t work. Then Ed came along, and with the flair of a dashing young man, and with a twinkle in his eye, he took her hands, pulled her up  and walked her to the elevator.

   Eleanor has a limited number of stories, which she tells again and again. But she takes so much care with her appearance, you know she hasn’t lost touch altogether. She complains often, but her complaints are justified – most of the time. 
   I’m not sure how old Lisa is, but she’s old enough to be my mother. I know that because she is planning to go up to Atlanta this weekend to celebrate her son’s sixty-fifth birthday. Lisa has trouble remembering what she did five minutes ago. But when she talks about the past, of her husband, of her children growing up, of her relatives in Austria, she does so with such affection, you know she has had a very, very happy life.

   But there are times when the view from my youthful vantage point is just a little frightening. The other day as I was taking my after-dinner stroll in the wheelchair, an older couple, standing in the middle of a parking lot, was asking a staff person to help them find their car. I didn’t hear much of the conversation, but I heard enough to know they had no idea where they had parked. When I went back inside, the woman who had been assisting them was in the lobby, and I asked her if the couple had found the car. She said they were about ten feet from it when I went by. The couple had apparently pushed the wrong button on the electronic key, and when the door wouldn’t open they assumed it wasn’t their car and got discombobulated. Once the car was located and the doors unlocked, the couple got in and drove off. They must have remembered where they were going and how to get back. At least I haven’t heard any rumors of missing residents.

  

   I left the Pittsburgh area in 1974, but through the miracle of the Internet, the Post-Gazette is never far away. With a lineup that includes Gene Collier, Reg Henry and Samantha Bennett, the P-G leads Cleveland’s Plain Dealer in columnists with a sense of humor by a score of 3-0. This comes to mind because a week or so ago a good friend suggested fishing might be an enjoyable diversion for me. Then, right on cue, Reg Henry wrote about his experience at a fishing camp. It sounded like fun, especially the part about the men sitting around drinking beer, boasting, telling jokes and scratching immodestly. The problem with drinking beer these days is my legs hardly work at all, even when I’m sober, and I need my legs when Nature calls, which she does often when I drink. Of course, laughing at the people drinking beer can be more fun than drinking beer and laughing with them. I’m beginning to think that’s why Dad was such a happy teetotaler.

   And this morning, Samantha Bennett writes that while attending the National Society of Newspaper Columnists in Macon, Georgia, Governor Nathan Deal made her an honorary lieutenant colonel. I’m hurt. I’ve been in the Peach State for almost two months, and Governor Deal has yet to acknowledge my presence or name me so much as an honorary buck private. What’s the deal, Deal?

  

   Fishing and the outdoors kept popping up this week. Penelope, who sometimes pads her thrice-weekly activities announcements with one-paragraph biographies of new residents, called the other day to ask what I did before I came to Covenant Woods. After we talked about what I had done, she suggested something I might want to do: go fishing. She is putting together a day of fishing in early June. I forget the name of the place where this will take place, but she said it’s wheelchair accessible, very pretty, and that there will be a picnic lunch. I told her to sign me up as long as I’m not required to catch my lunch.

   Then there was the writing assignment Suzanne gave us. Suzanne doesn’t really give us assignments; they are writing prompts. In her words, they are assignments “should you choose to do them.” This week one of the suggested assignments was: “Hunting: the weapon, the kill, the camaraderie. What do women have against that? What are women deliberately missing? What gives them the same complex experience?” Well, that’s a story I’ve already written. Sort of. The story includes the weapon, the kill and the camaraderie, but none of the sexual stereotypes. It is the story of Bethany shooting a bear, which appeared in the Star Beacon on July 23, 2008, a few weeks after the bear met its demise.

  

   Now back to Penelope’s call. When I told her about my work with mentally retarded adults at Ash/Craft, she said, “No wonder you seem to be so patient with people.” That happens all the time. I tell people what I did for a living, and they tell me I must have superhuman patience and understanding. What they don’t know is, it’s easier to work with people who are mentally retarded than it is to work with people who act as if they are.

  

   The printer I ordered arrived yesterday. Alisha brought it down from the mailroom in a shopping cart. When I saw the packing box, I had visions of the printer that had looked so compact on Amazon being too large for my apartment. Alisha set the box on the floor, and I stared at it for five minutes. When I finally opened it, I discovered, much to my relief, that the packing box was large enough for several printers. They had to kill three or four trees, I’m sure, to get all the paper that was stuffed around the printer. Too bad they didn’t use those sheets of plastic with all the little bubbles. I would have had months of fun popping them. Russ is coming over tomorrow to help me set up the printer. He’s a good kid, and I’ll buy him dinner.

A Note from the Home - May 12, 2012

Strange Encounters of the Geriatric Kind

  

   As I headed out for a spin today, Al was coming in from lunch. I didn’t catch the name of the restaurant, but he said the mackerel was good.

   “What’s your name?” he asked. “I keep wanting to call you Bob, but I don’t think that’s it.”

   I told him my name. Then he asked where I was from, and I gave him the Readers’ Digest condensed version of the journey that began in Bethel Park, went through Ashtabula and has  brought me to Columbus.

   “I was born here, and I grew up here,” Al said. “Then I went into the military, and I was stationed here a few times. Now I’m back here. I should have gone to Savannah or Fiji. Fiji’s an island in the Pacific. I always wanted to go there. Maybe I will go there. Everything I need will fit in one bag, and I’ll just leave the rest of my stuff in the room. Somebody else can clean it out.”

   He laughed and then asked me where I was going. I told him I was going to do a couple laps around the building. “Be careful,” he said. “And don’t be going down the drive all the way to the road.” I said I wouldn’t. But I lied.

  

   I sat with Henry and Joan at dinner the other night. Henry is tall and looks younger than his eighty-some years, but most of the time he’s confused and isn’t sure where he is. Joan is in a wheelchair, but she is alert and likes to laugh.

   “Are we going home tomorrow?” Henry asked.

   “We are home,” Joan said.

   “We’re home? I thought we were on the ship.”

   After waiting a minute or so, Joan turned to me and said, “He thinks he’s on a cruise.”

   I asked her if they’d ever taken a cruise. She said they had gone on ten, maybe twelve over the years. I said I’d never been on one. She said I didn’t know what I was missing; they had really enjoyed theirs.

   “Did you like the cruises?” she asked Henry.

   “Yes,” he said.

   “What did you like best about them?”

   “I could take them or leave them.”

   “I said, ‘what did you like best about them?’”

   “Everything.”

   Joan laughed half-heartedly. You could see it in her eyes; she appreciated the humor in the situation, but she also knew the most important person in her life, the man she loves, her best friend was slipping away.

  

   After I finished my meal and was headed out of the dining room, I stopped to say hello to Eleanor and her tablemates.

   “How are you?” I asked Eleanor.

   “Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve been better.”

   “How bad can it be? You’ve got your chocolate ice cream.”

   Eleanor loves chocolate ice cream. Everyone knows she loves chocolate ice cream. Her preferred dessert is two scoops of chocolate ice cream. The waiters don’t bother to ask Eleanor what she wants for dessert unless – heaven forbid – there is no chocolate ice cream.

   “Let me tell you something,” Eleanor said. “My momma didn’t like chocolate. We never had any chocolate in the house: no chocolate candy, no chocolate cake, no chocolate ice cream. Nothing. The only time I could have chocolate was when we went to my grandmother’s. I never lived in a house where there was chocolate until I was over twenty years old and living on my own.”

   And that’s why Eleanor has two scoops of chocolate ice cream every night.

  

   Realizing that someday I too will be old, I try to adhere to Mom’s admonition to treat my elders with respect. Sometimes it’s difficult. I was in the laundry room the other day, listening to the washer ca-chunka, ca-chunka its way through the cycle when a woman walked in. There are four washers in the laundry room; two of them were in use. The woman looked over the situation and announced that the washer I was using was her favorite, and she wanted to use it.

   Being the patient man I am, I said it would be available in a few minutes. Being the impatient woman she is, she cozied up to the washer and drummed her fingers on it. After several minutes of drumming, she turned to me with a look of concern and said, “I’ve never known this machine to take so long.” I told her a watched washer never completes the spin cycle. Then she started to lift the lid of the washer. “Please leave that alone,” I said. “It’s almost done.”

   A few minutes later, it was done, and she stood by the washer as though to make sure I didn’t get up and put my underwear through another cycle just for the heck of it. “I need to get up there to get my wash out,” I said. She stood still. I told her again. She moped her way to a chair while I emptied the washer and dumped my unmentionables in the dryer. Then she put her laundry in the washer she’d been waiting so long for and went back to her room. She must have realized the error of her ways. When she returned it was with some donuts, and she offered one to me. That night at dinner, she made a point of saying “hi” to me as I was going out.

  

   Monday evening I went to a performance of the Columbus Community Orchestra. The orchestra, which is sponsored in part by the school district, is a mixture of high school kids and older musicians, many of them doctors from the area. Twelve doctors from the group call themselves DNR and they did the last third of the show by themselves. And just two of them, one playing saxophone and the other the guitar, did “Here, There and Everywhere.” If you closed your eyes, you would have sworn you were in a smoky club somewhere.

 

  

A Note from the Home - May 9, 2012

Thursday morning, the writing class met at as usual at the Kingsville Public Library, and I was there. Not in person, of course, but via Skype. For some reason, they couldn’t see me, but I could see them. I felt like Miss Francis, or whatever her name was, on Romper Room. “And I see Suzanne, and I see Jeanne, and I see Chuck, and I see Katie, and I see Gitta.” They were all Do-Bees, which is what I think Miss Francis called the well-behaved children in the television audience. I was a Do-Bee too, or maybe I wasn’t. They’ll never know; they couldn’t see me.

   Sometimes technology is a pain. But it is a wonderful thing when it allows us to be in the company of people nearly a thousand miles away. The only thing I couldn’t experience firsthand were the goodies Gitta brought to class. I could have had goodies of my own. I planned to have goodies of my own. I even went to the store Thursday morning to get goodies of my own, along with a few necessary items. But when I got back to the apartment, I discovered I had remembered all the needed items and forgotten the goodies. How’s that for misplaced priorities?

  

   Since moving here, I’ve thought a lot about Jesus’ comment to Peter: “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” There’s no doubt my body is ready for a place such as Covenant Woods. My mind, though, believes I’m capable of doing all the things I once did. This is always frustrating and, at times, disheartening. Fortunately, I keep getting reminders that life is full of possibilities, and the secret is to concentrate on those things I can do and not worry about the things I can’t. And anyone who thinks I’m in need of a good swift kick in the backside, please feel free to administer it. I might wince a little and go off in a huff, but give me an hour or so, and I’ll be fine, and I’ll thank you for your sage advice.

   James, one of the maintenance men, dispensed some sage advice the other evening. He was sitting on a bench among the trees that edge the parking lot, waiting for the final five minutes of his shift to tick away, and I was making my post-dinner inspection of the grounds.  We got to talking, and pretty soon he was telling me how important it is to keep busy at things you enjoy doing. “My wife and I found that out when the kids starting getting older,”he said.

   James told me about his garden and how big his tomato plants are getting and how they’re covered with buds. “You like tomatoes right off the vine?” he asked. I told him I surely do, and he said he’d bring me some when they ripen.

  

   Now and then at dinner I sit at the same table as Lisa. She was born in Vienna, and married a GI soon after the end of World War II. “The Nazis were gone then,” she says. “But the Russians were trying to move in.” Her husband stayed in the Army and served in both Korea and Vietnam before he retired. He and Lisa must have had a terrific life together. She sometimes looks up from her plate and says to no one in particular, “My husband has been dead for twenty years, and I still miss him.”

   I forget how many grandchildren Lisa has, but she has said enough times for me to remember that she has eight great-grandchildren. To make sure that her kids, their kids and their kids’ kids all get a birthday card in a timely manner, Lisa makes a point of going to the card rack when she’s at the store, and if a card strikes her fancy, she’ll buy it. She gives the cards to her daughter, who lives here in Columbus, and who keeps them and keeps track of all the birthdays. When a birthday approaches, the daughter has Lisa over and they go through the cards so Lisa can decide which one is most fitting for the person about to be a year older.

  

   When I went to check my mail yesterday, a woman I don’t recall seeing here before was also getting her mail. She asked about the T-shirt I was wearing. This T-shirt, like almost every one I own, I told her, was payola, a gift from the organizers of an event I covered for the Star Beacon, this one, the Pyma-Laker 5K. She said she’d never heard of the Star Beacon. I told her that didn’t surprise me. Then she said she used to do some writing for the New York Times. I told her, I had heard of that paper. After her stint with the Times, she went to England. She didn’t say what she did there, but whatever it was it must have brought her into contact with royals, because she said she had to do a lot of bowing. By then, the hallway by the mailboxes was full of people, and she had to be somewhere. Too bad, but maybe we’ll run into each other again and have a chance to talk more. She can regale me with stories of New York and London, and I can entertain her with tales of Ashtabula.

  

   It’s raining this morning, a steady, gentle rain. The kind of pleasant rain you can lose yourself in thought as you walk in it. Which brings me back to the spirit being willing, but the flesh – or in this case, the electric wheelchair – being ill suited for a walk in the rain.

   It’s cool out, and I’ve opened the sliding door. I can hear the rain as it falls on a small tree nearby, and there are a few birds chirping. Maybe I’ll go over by the door and lose myself in thought.