We walked to school, mostly.
Weyerhauser School District #303.
It was a three-room schoolhouse,
two of which were classrooms,
four grades in each, and a third room
that we called a lunchroom.
I do not remember how that worked.
I think someone prepared food.
About a quarter of a mile south of the school,
on our way home, there was an almost unimportant bridge
across South Creek, an unimportant little stream
that once had wandered through the woods, going somewhere,
and that later wandered through the brush and uncultivated land
that even hardscrabble farming avoided.
Perhaps only two or three times in all of the eight years
I went to Weyerhauser Grade School, when the weather
was warm, and the water was high enough, in a little pool
on the downstream side, we stopped, peeled halfway down,
and jumped into the pool. Those were rare moments.
I recall, on one of those rare times, thinking about how old I was,
and calculating how many years it would be until the year 2000.
I would be, I figured, seventy in December of 2001. I knew,
because I went to Sunday School, that the number of our years
was three-score and ten, or a little more if by reason of strength,
and I was fairly certain I would not reach the year 2000.
I was not all that strong.
And here I am: seventy-eight years old today,
by reason of strength, just back from Origami,
a sushi restaurant in downtown Minneapolis.
Up to my nostrils in South Creek,
I had never heard of sushi or sashimi,
or Japanese mackerel, with the spine crisped,
or of Monk fish liver, or Sea Urchin.
I had calculated that, in South Creek, that
I would be dead about ten years ago.
It is so nice to be wrong.
Most of the good things come late,
after what you had hoped for came true.
I am perfectly content that the universe must wind its course,
toward something billions of years from now. I am content
to know that South Creek arithmetic came up short,
and that I have lived longer than I could have imagined.
The Creek and I, both, are what the earth does.
We survive, for a time, not really by reason of strength,
but perhaps by reason of accident or good luck.
It does not matter. Either way, it is summer warm.
Weyerhauser School District #303.
It was a three-room schoolhouse,
two of which were classrooms,
four grades in each, and a third room
that we called a lunchroom.
I do not remember how that worked.
I think someone prepared food.
About a quarter of a mile south of the school,
on our way home, there was an almost unimportant bridge
across South Creek, an unimportant little stream
that once had wandered through the woods, going somewhere,
and that later wandered through the brush and uncultivated land
that even hardscrabble farming avoided.
Perhaps only two or three times in all of the eight years
I went to Weyerhauser Grade School, when the weather
was warm, and the water was high enough, in a little pool
on the downstream side, we stopped, peeled halfway down,
and jumped into the pool. Those were rare moments.
I recall, on one of those rare times, thinking about how old I was,
and calculating how many years it would be until the year 2000.
I would be, I figured, seventy in December of 2001. I knew,
because I went to Sunday School, that the number of our years
was three-score and ten, or a little more if by reason of strength,
and I was fairly certain I would not reach the year 2000.
I was not all that strong.
And here I am: seventy-eight years old today,
by reason of strength, just back from Origami,
a sushi restaurant in downtown Minneapolis.
Up to my nostrils in South Creek,
I had never heard of sushi or sashimi,
or Japanese mackerel, with the spine crisped,
or of Monk fish liver, or Sea Urchin.
I had calculated that, in South Creek, that
I would be dead about ten years ago.
It is so nice to be wrong.
Most of the good things come late,
after what you had hoped for came true.
I am perfectly content that the universe must wind its course,
toward something billions of years from now. I am content
to know that South Creek arithmetic came up short,
and that I have lived longer than I could have imagined.
The Creek and I, both, are what the earth does.
We survive, for a time, not really by reason of strength,
but perhaps by reason of accident or good luck.
It does not matter. Either way, it is summer warm.
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