Best Day To Be Alive

Those who know me best are not surprised to learn that I went for my morning constitutional through Waterford Estates. I like the canals and palm trees. I also like to see the dogs being walked in the morning sunlight. Those dogs look happy. They know that this morning, right now, is the best time to be alive. These are the good old days they think in their doggy way of thinking.

The people walking them sometimes enjoy the walk too, if they aren't engaged with their phones. They smile. They revel in the warmth of the sun on their skin. They love the aroma of pine in the air and they smile at the ducks navigating the water lilies and other nymphoids. 

I should probably stop here to explain to the uninitiated that nymphoids are a class of aquatic plants with submerged roots and floating leaves with small flowers that bloom above the surface of the water. Don't confuse them with nymphs, which are minor female nature deities in Greek mythology. Those little Greek goddesses are simply personifications of nature. Delightful to be sure but meeting one doesn't alter your life the way meeting the Morrigan might.

Well, now that I think about it, I suppose nymphoids like water lilies, can be considered nymphs because, for me at least, they do personify nature. Nymphs they are then. But not nymphos, please! Nymphos are merely and purely mythical. My word-correction software may think nymphos to be real things but no right-thinking person should.

Excuse me. I've jumped the rails again, haven't I? This little missive isn't about water plants. It is about dogs and the way they and all of Nature's children, except humans, realize that today is the best day ever to be alive.

To get back to it then, I was strolling the paths that line the banks of the canals when I spied an older gentleman walking the path on the opposite side. He looked to be ninety, if a day, and he was tall, thin, and withered. I imagined him to have been quite a striking-looking man in his day. 

There go I, was the thought that entered my head because I'm tall, thin, and go for morning walks to enjoy the benefit of sunshine and fresh air. But more than that, the thoughts in my head were actually about getting old and that I would gradually decline from my current tallish, thinnish, and moderately withered state until, placed side by side, you wouldn't be able to tell me from the gentleman walking toward me.

I don't have to tell you that these thoughts took some of the warmth from the sunshine and some of the freshness from the air. I didn't like it. My thoughts were in a darker place and forgotten were the happy, smiling dogs.

I don't know how much time passed, probably very little, when I looked up from the path to see that the old man had turned the corner and was coming my way. I prepared myself to give him an uplifting greeting. He probably needed it I reasoned. Perhaps I could make his day.

As we neared each other on the path, I put a smile on my face and opened my mouth to speak. Before I could decide on the most cheerful greeting, he spoke.

'Morning,' he said and he stopped in a socially distanced way.

'Good morning,' I said, 'how are you?'

'Never better,' he said. 'And you?'

'I'm good,' I said, 'thank you.'

'Let me ask you something,' he said, and without waiting for a reply he said, 'How old are you?'

I admit that I didn't expect this question at all and it brought me up short a bit. So I simply told him my age.

'I'll bet you have some aches and pains and think that you're getting old,' he said.

'You're right,' I said.

'Well, let me tell you something,' he said. 'I'm 89 and when I look at you I think if only I could be that young again. That's right,' he continued, 'you're a young man. I know you don't think of yourself that way, but it's true. You have a lot of life ahead of you and you can do anything you want with it. My advice is just to enjoy it--every day--enjoy it while you can. Today is a good day to be alive.'

At this point, I realized that the conversation had arrived at that spot where both parties know that all that needs to be said had been said. So I thanked him, wished him a good day, and we both moved on in our separate ways.

As I walked along the path, I reveled in the warmth of the sun on my skin. I enjoyed the aroma of pine in the air. I smiled at the dogs, I smiled at the ducks, and I smiled at the nymphs. I smiled because I realized that I'm living the best of days. Today is indeed the best day to be alive.

Water Everywhere

"How do you rate the new hygienist?" she said when I phoned home to report my whereabouts.

You will remember that we moved to the coast a while back and we're still interviewing the local healthcare providers; doctors, dentists, palm readers, and such. I have a few funny stories about them but this story isn't one of them.

"First," I said, "let me say that she really knows how to use that wand."

"You mean the ultrasonic scaler," she said.

"Do I?" I said. "The thing that vibrates and sends a stream of water into the mouth? Well, she's good with it. Doesn't sting the gums as much as my previous hygienist."

"But it still stings," she said. 

"It does a little," I said, "but the point at issues is not the sting but the flood."

"Too much water," she said.

"Let me be clear," I said. "It's not like one of those named storms that frequent the gulf coast. More like the ancient Great Flood that we hear so much about in those YouTube videos."

"It's biblical," she said.

"That's one of looking at it," I said and I immediately returned to the main subject. This wonder woman, as I'm sure you're aware, will get off onto the subjects of wide-eyed cherubims [cherubins] at the wink of an eye."

"When she began working," I said just to get back to it. "it reminded me of the time that Johnny and the rest of the Maple Hollow crew ambushed me with spray-soakers at the water park. 

I was about 12 and more immune to the unexpected in those younger years. Still, getting about 4 or 5 soakers in the face will get your attention. I remember gasping and gulping and swallowing about twice the recommended amount of water. And yet, for some reason, I laughed. Can't imagine why now."

"I don't like the sound of that," she said.

"Tolerable," I said, "but then the thing progressed if that's the term, and when she put the vacuum tube in my mouth, I thought of the regulator that scuba divers use."

She opened her mouth as if to say something but I closed my eyes and persevered.

"You remember when we became NAUI-certified as divers we had to learn to clear our mask of water while still under the surface. Every time I tried to exhale into my mask to force the water out, I felt like I was going to drown."

"Just to be clear," she said, "we're still talking about the teeth cleaning and not getting scuba certifications?"

"Teeth cleaning to be sure," I said.

"Sounds horrible."

"Close to the end of the procedure, there was so much water in my mouth, I felt that I couldn't breathe. Suddenly, I remembered the time when, as part of a rite of passage at age 13, I was compelled to dive to the bottom of the lake underneath Armstrong Bridge."

Again, she made an effort to say something but I raised a hand to indicate that there was more to come and then let her have it.

"My mistake was spending too much time on the bottom looking for just the right pebble to prove I'd made it all the way down. Coming back up, I felt an urgent need to breathe, so much so that I thought I wasn't going to make it. I remember thinking, This is it, and that thought was followed by, Is this really all there is?

"Oh no! Then what happened?"

"The short answer is panic! I began pumping my legs and flailing my arms in an attempt to get to the surface as quickly as possible. I remember being aware of nothing other than the pain in my lungs and the bright orb hanging above me that seemed to call to me and keep me struggling toward the surface."

"Was there no one around to help you?"

"Oh, sure, the hygienist and dentist were there doing all they could and several assistants came running to see what all the fuss was about."

"You are!" she cried. "You are talking about teeth cleaning! You didn't really do all that in the dentist chair, did you?"

"Ms. Wonder! I'm surprised that you even question me. You know that I never mislead my public. You have every right to be skeptical, and I'll defend your right to do so, but yes, I did all that and more.

 Just you wait until it's your turn in that chair."

"I'm finding another dental office," she said.

Here Comes the Rain

It was what I expected, of course. Sure, the early morning temps were mild for August on the Carolina coast and cats were napping on the screened porch and I'd joined them for morning meditation, but the wet, gray sky was thunder-booming and lightning skittered about in the murk.

"There was a lightning strike nearby," said a familiar voice from somewhere in the kitchen.

As if on queue, big, fat raindrops began falling and the cats awoke and rocketed inside. 

"You startled me," I said. "I didn't know you were there."

"Not as much as a lightning bolt will startle you," she said. I knew this Ms. Wonder spoke soothe in all situations, so I gathered up my one-day-at-a-time paraphernalia and came inside.

"By the way," she said, "if you're out this morning, my meds are ready at the pharmacy."

Just as she finished that sentence, the sky became darker. It was as though the sun had given up the ghost and we were living in a wet, wild, and windblown world. 

"But I'd wait until the storm passes if I were you," she said.

Now, first of all, I didn't have a lot invested in this storm. In fact, I'd been watching these weather shenanigans with the same quiet air of a drama critic waiting for the curtain to go up.

Secondly, and if you're a regular supporter of this blog you already know, that I can't get enough of this woman's bouquet. I'm in awe of her glamor. I'm enamored. And when she expresses a wish, it's as though her dainty foot is pressed on the accelerator of my heart. When she becomes a damsel in need, I become her parfait knight.

It won't surprise you to know that when she said, 'Please pick up meds', I heard Princess Amy yell, "Run faster!" And so I replied, "I'll go now."

In an instant, I found myself behind the controls of Wind Horse and out on Ocean Highway, prepared to face any obstacle. Before actually crossing the river, I thought it best to have a steaming cup of Jah's Mercy and so I headed straight to Port City Java.

PCJ was a bust. The drive-through window displayed a sign reading, Closed due to shipping delays. No problem, I thought, Starbucks is a few blocks away but again, nothing doing; the line at Starbucks was backed up to Texas.

You'd think that Amy would have the upper hand now, telling me that failure was written in my stars, but I still smiled and sang along with Stevie Nicks on the radio. You see, the thunder was rolling away and the lightning had lost much of its pizzaz. The Niagra-inspired rainfall had become a light mist and the sky had recovered much of its Carolina blue. 

I was sure that the morning was going to be topping after all because I was running an errand for the Wonder waiting for me at home. I pointed Wind Horse toward the Brunswick River bridge and rode into the open mouth of the dragon that is Wilmington.

For several minutes as I headed toward the bridge, my thoughts were submerged in the movie playing out in my mind. Princess Amy had staged one of her coming disaster stories but halfway across the bridge, despite Amy's dramatics, I became dimly aware that something rummy was going on outside the car in my peripheral vision. 

I turned to look downriver and was surprised to see a solid-looking black wall of a monster storm heading my way. It was whipping up a substantial wake and threatening everything in its path with frequent lightning. The earlier storm outside the screened porch had been nothing more than a messenger, sent to prepare the way for this baby. 

By the time I parked outside the pharmacy, the storm was at its nastiest. Princess Amy, who'd been watching the storm developing, had mixed feelings about the whole thing. As a spectacle, she enjoyed it immensely. She liked thunderstorms a lot. The only thing to spoil the event, in her opinion, was that I wasn't out in it.

"Go, go, go!" she screeched and I immediately went out into the rain wearing shorts, a Hawaiian shirt, with no umbrella.

I returned to the car, squelching as I walked, and I was disappointed not a little. You see the news about Wonder's meds being ready had been vastly overrated. They weren't ready. Still, I knew that a bookstore with a coffee cafe was only a few blocks away and that gave me hope. 

I've heard it said, and perhaps you've heard it too, that you can't buy love, you can't buy happiness, but you can buy coffee. It speaks volumes, doesn't it? I felt that all I needed was to zip into the bookstore and the day would be transformed. Feeling absolutely bucked, I zipped, and much like Lucifer, I fell from heaven to hell when I found the cafe closed due to shipping delays.

Now, if I know you at all, by this time you're thinking that the Universe has a sore spot when it comes to yours truly. And if that's what you think, then who am I to disagree. But you can't really blame the Universe for feeling that way. After all, I've been nothing but stubborn trouble since I was so high. With the exception of taking care of a few needy cats, I've done scratch to justify my existence.

I decided to phone Wonder before heading home. I got her voicemail. I told her that I was heading back toward the Shire and might possibly stop at the Belville Port City Java. Text me if you want coffee I told her. She phoned back right away.

"Yes," she said when I answered the call. "Please bring me a latte and you'll be happy to know that the sun is shining here."

"Ah, Wonder," I said. "The sun always shines on you. I can't wait to be there and I will be there as soon as I can find a way out of the dragon's bowels." 

I was pretty full of myself when I heard that metaphor come out of my mouth. Not bad on the spur of the moment I thought. My mood was lifted substantially. You might say that I was catapulted into a higher dimension just thinking about being back home with Poopsie, cats, sunshine, birdsong, and the rest of the amenities. To think that I'd turned a little summer shower into an end-of-the-world threat made me laugh.

I remember thinking, in a light-hearted sort of way, that here was another case of just one damned thing after another. Nothing to be done, of course, other than taking life as it comes, and life was currently still raining in heavy traffic on Oleander Boulevard. Sunshine would have to wait.

No Good Way to Tell You

You probably think there's never been a spot for happily ever-after-ing than here on the Carolina coast. And who could blame you? It seems exactly the spot. Until it isn't, of course. Take yesterday for instance.

"If self-improvement were easy," said Ms. Wonder, "then we'd all be perfect, wouldn't we?" She said it between sips of lemon-ginger tea while sitting near the rhododendron, on the southern side of the screened porch.

"Despite all indications to the contrary, I'm constantly working to become the best me that I can be," I said. "And it's not so simple as Deepak and Oprah would have you believe."

"I know," she said. "But I think you sabotage your efforts with worry about problems that may or may not happen." 

 "Let me tell you something," I said. "I may worry but I don't quit. I keep plugging away at it. Hoping to store up enough points to come back as a cat in my next life."

"But you seem to look for problems that don't exist."

"Well, isn't the anticipation of possible downsides a good thing? It helps to be prepared, doesn't it? Consider Napoleon in Cairo."

"I don't want to consider Napoleon," she said, not in Cairo or anywhere else. You consider Napoleon on your own time."

"I just wanted to point out that Napoleon didn't have to contend with sewer harpies. Harpies aren't Greek pebbles and you can take my word for that."

"Sewer harpies?" she said.

"Sewer harpies," I said.

"Creek pebbles?" she said.

"Oh, for heaven's sake," I said. "You know the reference. I'm talking about that ancient Greek life coach with the stutter."

"Demosthenes?" she said.

"If you insist," I said. 

"He cured his speech impediment by talking with pebbles in his mouth," she said. "And he wasn't a life coach. He was an orator."

"I don't care if he was an orator or a computer programmer," I said. "Bet me that he didn't swallow some of those pebbles from time to time and then think about giving up his dream and becoming a shepherd instead." 

She stared at me in silence for a few and I reckoned that I'd found a talking point.

She said, "As long as people have been trying to improve themselves..."

"How long is that?" I said.

"Never mind how long," she said. "The point is that everyone meets setbacks and failure. The key is to learn from our mistakes and move on."

"Learning from mistakes is like trying to explain a Zen koan," I said, and I was feeling pretty full of myself because it seemed that I was on a roll. You would have thought the same if you were there.

"Alright," she said. "Look... journaling is said to help by forcing us to arrange random events into a coherent story that explains the lesson. Doesn't your writing do that?"

"Have you read my blog?" I said. "My stories aren't coherent. The harpies throw so many detours my way that writing never gets me to where I intended. Most of the time I end up in the ditch"

"Just don't give up," she said. "Do it for me." And she placed her hand on my shoulder to indicate something. I'm not sure what she intended, but it made me feel better because it reminded me that we're on the same team.

"It just never seems to get better," I said. "No matter what I do. It's depressing. It's demoralizing."

"Just keep trying," she said. "And whatever you do, don't stop writing."

"What?" I said. "Do you mean I should forget about becoming a shepherd?"

Mom's Book of Death

'Poopsie,' I said. 'You remember Mom's Big Book of Death, right?'

Apparently, she didn't because instead of a nod or some verbal reply she simply raised the right eyebrow and looked at me with a stoic expression. Is that the phrase I want; stoic expression I mean? Meaning that she doesn't show what she's feeling.

'Oh, you know,' I said. 'It's a notebook where she wrote the names and dates of the recently departed.'

'But it was also an address book,' she said. 'She kept phone numbers and mailing addresses there too. If I remember correctly, she also kept stuff like her medical appointments, verses of scripture, and other notes. I wouldn't call it a book of death. Maybe a personal organizer.'

'Why do you take these things away from me?' I asked. 'I come in here with something interesting to talk about and you turn the unique into the mundane. Maybe you'd like to hear about my latest flea bite. I've been bitten so many times I may develop superpowers.'

'I'm sorry,' she said. 'Did I take something away? I didn't mean to and I assure you that I don't want to hear about flea bites. Do remember to spray yourself when you rescue stray dogs, I don't want you to bring fleas back into our house for the cats to deal with.'

'I'm being lectured now,' I said. 'I think I'll forget the Book of Death for now and go for a drive along the seaside.' 

'Yes, do,' she said. 'Do go for a drive. That will make you feel better but first, tell me all about the death book. I want to hear from start to finish. Don't leave out any details, no matter how small. I'll bet you hold me spellbound.'

'That's better,' I said. 'The right tone and attitude. I can imagine Josephine saying something similar to Napoleon. But first, it's not the death book, it's the Big Book of Death. It's important to get these things right.' 

'Of course,' she said.

But wait. It occurs to me that you may not have read the blog post entitled, Work in Progress, so let me provide a little background. My mom was the keeper of the Big Book of Death until her own passing a few years ago. 

As soon as Mom learned of the passing of a friend, a family member, or a celebrity, she wrote the person's name and the date in the book. I put the book in a safe place after Mom's passing. Click on the link below if you want to read the first post, but not now for heaven's sake. Read this one first.

'I wondered what happened to that book,' she said. 'I haven't seen it in a while.' 

'I haven't even thought of it for a long while,' I said, 'but April is the birthday month of Mom and my sister, Delores. It's the month my sister died too. I suppose my thinking of the book is related to all that. Just guessing of course. There's really no way to explain the workings of my brain.'

'At any rate, the thought that came to me was that I should write my mom's name and date of death on the last page of the book. Sort of making the whole thing complete, if you see what I mean.'

'Good idea,' she said.

I thought it a good idea to so when I got back home that day, I took the book down from its shelf and turned to the last page. Imagine my surprise when I found a note that my mom had written for me on that page. She must have expected me to do exactly what I had decided to do and then find the message.

She wrote, 'Won't it be wonderful over there, having no burdens to bear, and especially when Genome and family get there.' 

So there you have it. My mom's last message to me. I suppose it can be summed up in, Hurry up and get over here. And that makes me think of that previous post where I record my conversation with Death, himself. Click here to read it: Work in Progress