Tuesday, January 14, 2014

being late

If I'm on a plane or a bus and I see that we're running late, I shrug my shoulders. Nothing I can do about it. It will be as it will be.

But if I'm driving or walking, I struggle and I fret. I'm in control, after all. If I'm even later than late, it's my fault.

I have an 8 o'clock morning appointment. Stupid, right? Who makes such early appointments when their day follows no schedule and can easily accommodate a later time? Worse: today is the day of snow. The kind that grinds rush hour traffic to a halt. A fifteen minute drive turns into a forty-five minute trip and so I am late and panting and as anxious as I knew myself to be in the years that I rushed to be at work on time.

There is no lesson here (except maybe to pay more attention to weather forecasts). But I remembered the agony of rushing. And again I felt the privilege of retirement.


Breakfast was (therefore) late. Nearly noon by the time I returned for it.


farmette winter-7.jpg


And after? Well, I needed to go back to tapes I had of my father's recollections of his childhood. He had insisted on creating this record five years ago and now, nearly a year after his death, I finally play them again. No, not an easy task. But each time I listen to my parents, I hear something new, even if it is a repeat of a known to me story. So I listen. For several hours. Until Ed comes up from the sheep shed and suggests we go on a brief shopping expedition to Walmart. (Always fun exactly because it is so terribly not fun.)

The snow flurries pick up again and the winds howl.


 farmette winter-12.jpg


It is a good night to come back to the farmhouse to a hot pot of homemade chili.


farmette winter-15.jpg

4 comments:

  1. Walmart??!?? That is kind of funny. Why not give in to the weather just a little bit and stay home with a stack of books...the kind of books you didn't have time to read before retirement? I read The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt in that lovely lazy week of vacation after Christmas, and I highly recommend it. NYT Top 10 book of the year, for the sake of corroboration.

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  2. ,.,and by the way, I love those blown glass chickens! My daughter-in-law, the botanist/naturalist/earth mother, is thinking of raising some chickens, I'm thinking what a great gift these would be for her.... Why do they make me feel happy? They do.

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  3. Walmart and a snowstorm. You two are having way too much fun, no? So now we have your rain, but warmer rain to be sure.

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  4. I'd call them chooks but I love them too. At least snow makes good photos. It's hard to photograph heat. 43,41,41 and 42 here this week (that's 109,105, 105 and 107 in Fahrenheit). Jean

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