Skip to main content

What We Have Not Earned

"Is there," I asked myself rhetorically, "anything that is
more fun than preparing food for the two of us?"

The thick-cut pork chops are on the counter, dry,
adjusting themselves to the salt and pepper.  The sherry
and sherry vinegar are measured out, waiting to deglaze
the pan when the time comes, and the veal and barbecue
sauce is sitting in line, for last-minute gravy.

Honestly, there are other things!

We have just come back from a fine trip to see two sons;
four nights in Portland, and four in Tucson.  And please
do not tell them, because it has nothing to do with them,
but we do love to come home, see that technology
and our neighbors have kept the house warm and dry,
calling for the cats to let them know we are back,
building a fire in the stove, and pouring ourselves a drink.

We are homebodies!  Why not admit and enjoy it?

We are growing old together, Mari and I, and we enjoy that, too;
not the ways in which our bodies have gotten stiff and stupid,
but doing it together.  "Hey!", we say, "Help me up off the floor!
I tipped over!"  We tip over together at the spectacle of it.

We love our friends at the Coffee Shop in South Minneapolis--
and please do not tell them this, because they are really
interesting people--but we do truly enjoy the mornings when
we stay home, make better coffee, read two or three newspapers
together, telling each other what we are quite capable of
reading for ourselves, and having a light breakfast, not so much
because we need breakfast, but because we like doing it.

"Want to go to the library with me?" Mari asks.
"Want to go to the grocery?", I say.  We want to.
Mari says, "groshery", and I say, "grossery", because
she is grosh and I am gross.  We understand that, too.

I think that blowing snow, even when the wind blows it back,
is fun.  Mari says she is tired of grading exams, and wants
to clean the kitchen floor.  We have our wants and fun.
We think about it, and laugh at ourselves for being stiff and stupid.

It has been a long time since we have wanted to bundle up
and go out to a bar with friends, however nice the friends.
We love bars, and good beer.  We love friends.  But we love
not bundling up and going out, and bundling back home, more.

I like looking out the window, and seeing how the snow
has flipped a wing down from the arbor vitae tree across the street,
not because it harms the tree, but because it is interesting.
"I love the way Annie crosses her front feet!", Mari says,
watching one of our cats.  She laughs when our other cat,
Orphan, refuses to move when Mari wants the same bed space.

It does not take much to amuse us.  We are a simple folk.
A couple of cats.  A warm house.  Each other.
Everyone should be so lucky!  It is luck.  We haven't earned it.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Friends-- My step-father of 35 years died this morning. His name was Conrad Royksund. He was 86 years old. He was born into poverty on a farm near Puyallup, WA. He was the first member of his family to attend college and earned a PhD from the University of Chicago. He paid his way through all of that by fishing in Alaska. He spent his professional career as a college professor. I met him when I was just 3 years old and don't actually have any memories of my life befor e he was in it. He was intimidatingly smart, funny as hell, and worked his ass off. He taught me to meet people with kindness and decency until I was certain they could not be trusted. He taught me to meet ideas with carving knives until I was certain they could. I will remember him as one of the bravest, most curious, and funniest people I have ever met. He left this world with a satisfied mind. We are so grateful. Dan Hubbard
1 comment
Read more

Caliche Busters and Government Work

When I was young and both stronger and smarter than I am now, I put my might and brain to work doing nothing useful, unless it might be thought that hand/foot/eye coordination might come in handy.  Those were skills to be learned and practiced.   I found an iron bar our grandfather had shaped in his blacksmith shop.  He took old car, truck, or wagon axles, and made tools from them for digging post holes.  He sharpened one end to a tip, and the other to a blade.  Washington State, like many places, had a hard layer of soil, probably created by water and limestone, or some such materials, that made digging holes a miserable chore.  The bar chipped through the natural concrete so that a shovel could take it up.   I found Grandpa's iron bar, and since I was young and dumb and strong--or so I thought--decided to punch a hole down to hardpan and ultimate truth.  I knew how to do that.  Raise the bar vertically with both hands, and then slam in straight down.  On the second try, aimi
Post a Comment
Read more

The Sea is Rising

Let us just step back:  two hundred and fifty years ago, or so, the ships of England and Spain had drifted onto a whole new continent, as they saw it, from far north to a savagely cold south; pole to pole, as if there were such things. Millions of people already lived here, some of them still hunters and gatherers; some of them very wealthy, indeed!  Gold and silver stolen from the southern Americas funded Spanish and English dreams. There was land, lots of land, under starry skies above, rich land, and oil and coal and iron ore.  The whole western world learned how to build industries not on simple muscle power, but on steam and oil.  We farmed, too, of course.  All we needed was cheap labor--slave labor from Africa, mostly, so the ships came with slave labor.  Chinese labor built railroad beds where there had been rock cliffs. Europeans, long used to killing each other for good, religious reasons, brought their religious savagery with them.  Even when all they wanted to do w
Post a Comment
Read more