Luxury Time

Dear Maria,

I hesitate to tell you morning temperatures have been in the low 60s for 3 days. Didn’t hesitate enough, huh? Look at it this way—oh, never mind.

What made me think of you—yes, there was a prompting. Isn’t that how it typically goes? Anyway, I was sitting out back reading and after an hour or so, the thought came to me that I was in luxury time, at my leisure to let the minutes evaporate in a sense. Time for me now nearly never seems to need a chokehold.

Which is what you seem to be struggling with, now that you have the time to sit and think, or to read, or to paint. Okay, maybe you don’t think now—yikes—is the time. I would argue, or at least suggest, now now now.

Maybe the tug of duties at home and at work keeps you from being able to just let the days be as they come. Perhaps being told a homecoming is in the offing within a month, maybe two, unbalances present and future.  

I don’t know. Nothing new there.

Thanks—I guess—for the link to the article on the lawsuit filed by Detroit students for not being taught to read. Of course, no inalienable or constitutional right exist to be literate, but we might hope that if so much money is going to be spent, then we damn well ought to at least make sure kids can read. But by gawd, they’ve got to keep going forward chained to the calendar of testing and grade cohorts.

Don’t get me started.

Lost the squash to the bugs, cucumbers are good, tomatoes and melons still developing. The rosemary—no surprise—and the lavender are thriving. The nursery has been plagued with mildew and fungus. I am attending to the damage.

Thanks for the kind words regarding my little volume now out in the world. Others, too, have been so very supportive, so very kind. Humbling. Heartening. My mother was very pleased, and so the rest is lagniappe.

Soak in the moment as you can. You will be back in churn before you know it.

As always, still,

srk