A Beauty Night

Dear Maria,

A hot sun this morning while I pushed around the mower, the air thickening, and what’s coming is how summer goes around here—you know it well. The viburnum, pittosporum, and ligustrum out front are growing as if bamboo rather than shrubs, and the birds more and more are keeping still in the middle of the afternoons.

The other evening while walking out of Barnes & Noble, I could relish a coolness that may not be here for us much longer. The sun was well down, and contrails being dragged apart were illuminated, and two jets barely showed themselves as silver flecks against the sky. The nearly first quarter moon, too, was overhead. It was, as I recalled a friend’s way of putting it, “a beauty night”.

He would also tag the times when we helped each other out as “doing a friend”. Me, helping retrieve his tractor from nearly toppling into his pond or dragging it out when hung up on a berm. He, bringing his chainsaw over to help clear a big pine fallen across my drive leading in from the paved road.

Certain coded phrases developed between us that said more than would be understood by a stranger. “Scott, there’s something I’d like you to take a look at with me.”  Uh-oh. That meant changing from school clothes into real work clothes. And boots, for sure.

Back in the day. Sort of.

Oh, I decided against buying any books now that I am trying to come to grips with what to do this time around with 50 or 60 box loads and if—if—they are to move with me.

Almost forgot—I read that koi may live to be 100 to 200 hundred years old. All I could think of was the dumping of koi out in a Colorado lake—dumb move, of course. But imagine great-great-grandchildren standing on a dock feeding those same fish. The state is going to try to get the koi out of there, but still….

Just think about a baby koi and the year 2215.

Or don’t. Think about summer plans instead, beating the heat, getting the kids out of the house.

Be well. And maybe our paths will cross soon enough.

Yours, srk