Worrying times

Not all days are diamonds, even when Margie and I get together and the weather is perfect, as it is now. Sometimes our hour or two is all laughter and wisdom, and sometimes it’s not. I was gloomy when we met, partly the troubles of my grandchildren and great-grandchildren in Arizona, which I don’t want to go into; and partly because trouble is coming to Portland this weekend in the form of a dangerous crowd of armed fascist, racist right-wingers threatening to cause harm. Margie heard me out, sharing my concerns. I drew diagrams on napkins to clarify relationships, both in my family and in the political scene in Portland. It’s frightening. Journalists are arriving from all over the country to document what will unfold.

Then I asked Margie how she’s doing, and she said she’s boiling with frustration. She misses Tai Chi, hiking, swimming, and all the physical activities that gave her adult life energy and delight until she reached ninety, stopped driving, and had to adjust to diminished energy. She’s feeling life contract and grow smaller, and on this day, she was feeling a bit like Dylan Thomas wanted his father to feel. Not resigned. “Old age takes courage,” she mused soberly. “It’s harder than it looks.”

As we walked back to her place from the coffee shop, I mentioned that my local grandchildren had been to the redwood forest for the fourth of July holiday. That reminded Margie vividly of her first adventures in nature. A city girl born in the Bronx, at the age of ten she went to a settlement camp in the woods, and she discovered nature. “It was all miraculous,” she said, as we made our way slowly along the concrete sidewalk. “It was smells and sounds, textures and colors I had never seen before. It changed my life. I was a child of nature, and I didn’t know it till then. What a revelation.” As she said that, we reached her twelve-story building. “I can still be there in my mind, and I do still spend many hours in nature, even when I can’t go there in my body.”