05.11.18

Well, we made it through our birthdays with champagne and chocolate, a pint of great beer enjoyed in sunshine along the roaring Spokane River, and an all-around festive celebration together.   I don’t know how many times I heard myself repeating that old joke,  “well, it’s better than the alternative”, to old friends who were kind enough to call with birthday greetings.   Don said that it seems like everybody’s coming down with a terminal illness these days.   I just finished Barbara Ehrenreich’s book, Natural Causes, in which she talks about the certainty of dying, and in her signature sarcastic voice, she humorously reminds the reader of how little agency we actually have in the cellular role of our aging.  In my own meager version of control, I have a habit of pre-emptively preparing myself for the next big change I see headed towards me–putting myself in peril of missing the present moment.   Family and friends often point out to me how many times I’ve said, “this could be my last great decade”, but really, you never know.

It was pouring rain when we drove over to Spokane and it has been raining hard on most days since then.  There are rumbles of thunder and an occasional flash of lightning in the night.  I look up at the sky and cannot believe all those water-laden towering clouds can even hang in the air.  It seems to defy gravity.  The rivers are swollen with flood warnings, and the dock now hovers over the rising lake.  It has been magnificently beautiful and just the kind of spring we need, in hopes of staving off August forest fires.  But, you can’t control the weather, either, so we just never know.