My Retirement Party

I cannot resist a sign saying "Pond" with an arrow pointing the way; "pond" is one of my favorite words. It snowed yesterday, about two inches. It snowed four weeks ago, two inches. That is this winter's total snowfall. Today, a quartz-crystal, unworldly January day, about 31 degrees, I took my first real exploratory hike in many moons.

After months of calculations and arrangements today was the first day, after 50 years, I no longer have to work, although I will continue to work because I like it. So I'm not "retired," but merely began drawing on retirement savings, easing up a little. My feelings were quite new and mixed, as if this were not an end but a beginning. I phoned my sister to sort it out. She said God's timing is perfect.

"The money should be in your account at the end of the business day," the money man had said, music to my ears. Back at home, lunch. Then what? Ideally I'd give a party. Can't in a pandemic, and if you live on rural roads no guests will come to a party in January anyway. Yet I desired to do something special. Chose a hike at a once-familiar place not visited for more than a year, maybe two. Thought as I trekked about how a year from now I may fish in Missouri without a license. After half a mile of beaten trail mine were the only footprints in the snow. I saw the word "Pond" and the arrow and walked uphill to a pond with the sun thawing a thumbprint into its ballroom of ice.

It remained only to give myself a retirement gift. What I have (embarrassingly) wanted ever since somebody gave me an insanely delightful three-month subscription 20 years ago was a full subscription to Fruit of the Month Club. I couldn't think of any reason why this would be bad.

On the Beach

Never cared for taking almost all my clothes off by the waterside, joining a bunch of strangers similarly undressed and all either yelling or playing dead. Can't swim and don't care for tanning. Given a beach (I have seen some marvelous lake and ocean beaches) I, in long sleeves and long skirt or pants, will hunt for shells or fossils, or take photos, or watch birds or other creatures. This on the shore of the mighty LaBarque, at one of its bends, is my ideal beach. It's private, the sand is soft, its crystals rounded; it doesn't stick to my parka and winter hiking pants when in January -- secretly overjoyed that the wheel of the year is turning toward spring -- I beat the bushes to get to my white sand beach, look for fossils on the water's edge for a while, sit down, sigh, and lie down on the sand that contours perfectly with my frame, viewing the sky up through the bare trees. Then shutting my eyes. Ahh.

Did this two days ago and attracted a big buzzard that flapped noisily away when it saw I was alive.

Lost: One Appetite

Slicing into my favorite bread, freshly baked so as to tempt myself, I put the knife down, turned away. Nah, I think, I don't want it.

-Here's butter. Have as much as you like.

Don't want any.

-Here is your favorite vegetable soup: pepperpot, heated up nicely. Come on, you have to eat.

I don't feel like it.

-Can you smell and taste? Maybe you caught the Covid?

I can smell and taste.

-How about a slice of cheese on that black bread? No? Drive-through burger and fries -- your favorite junk food? Or just the fries. Or -- ice cream?

Couldn't face it. Can't imagine. The idea makes me queasy.

-There's a special-occasion steak in the freezer.

Meat, I definitely could not eat. 

-What's wrong?

Turmoil and violence in our country. For no good reason. Totally unnecessary. Meant to desecrate what so many of us love and honor and fought for, in some cases died for: democracy, the democratic process, our country's principles, our Constitution.

-Let's cut brush all day and caulk cracks in the walls all evening, and that will stir up an appetite for sure.

Call me back after January 20.

For the Love of My House

The Divine Cabin, love of my life, is not worth salvaging or renovation. Experts have told me this. It's expensive to maintain an 80-year-old largely neglected rental house and yard. I don't grudge the landlord's lack of interest in regular maintenance. They'll come running for anything serious, like the furnace out or a fallen tree blocking the lane. That's better than some.

Before

Yet intuition kept bothering me as I worked in the cabin's "office" and watched through its window the season's first ice storm, followed by snow. I'd been noticing a thick (can't get your arms around it) dead oak next to the house with a very long and hefty horizontal branch -- the tree's only remaining branch -- suspended about 20 feet precisely over the "office" roof. If ice snapped it off, it'd bring a neighboring tree's branch down with it, or the whole tree might fall, for a total of thousands of pounds of momentum to splinter one third of my roof and house.

If the landlord then said the damage was not worth repairing, I'd have to move, breaking both my heart and pocketbook. But they don't do (much) preventive maintenance, and right now the landlord is short-handed and their chief guy is in quarantine. Still, I know it's perilous to ignore a nagging intuition. Sometimes things are up to me.

It's hollow. On the right is my sneaker.

Although as a tenant I could have chosen to "Miss Ann" the landlord and make pestiferous demands for "Now, before the next snowstorm," I elected to hire and pay for a local tree service, called "Get 'Er Done," for removal. The estimate was yesterday. They'd need a lift (pictured above left, in action) and ropes and a crew. For me, peace of mind and disaster averted would be worth the money that by Divine grace I have earned and will spend for the love of my house.

So today after they started sawing, the tree team's boss knocked at my door and told me to come and see how rotten/hollow the branch was (see photo at left) and said they don't know how it hadn't fallen already.

After they sawed the tree trunk into pieces, stacked them, and left, I counted the tree rings: approximately 75. That places its genesis in the year 1946 or so. I am grateful to have shared 20 years living alongside of it, and for my intuition and my job.