“…like water, life moves in waves that are mostly akin to normal tides, coming and going the same regular way we move along our everyday baseline routines. Some of our life-waves are gigantic and crash hard… Then there are those that rise like a surfer’s dream, higher and higher to be ridden with joy and pleasure…”
“The contender arrives at the start of the event believing in the possibilities, and more often than not goes home without “winning.” The contender is a lost name, over time. Who ever remembers even those with the silver or bronze medals, much less no prize at all?”
“From low in the eastern sky, the waning crescent moon shone into my window at 3:18 this morning. After an hour, I decided to get up and have a good long visit with this moon. It beckoned me, first through the eastern window from my bed, and, once I yielded, through the south-facing glass slider door by the fishpond.”
“I need you to prepare ahead of time for your worst day. If nothing else, please—today! right now!— go out and assess how easily emergency crews would know that they have arrived at your address. Will people unfamiliar with your place be easily able to see your street number from a distance, night or day, rain or snow?”
“Over the years, I have driven ambulances and fire trucks, and hauled lots of fully-packed horse trailers. I can go forward or backward, no problem… Lately, I have realized that driving has been sort of a life coach. That is, the many lessons of the road can and do often inform my approach to various situations that life throws at me. Driving on ice is one of the best teachers.”
“Weary of the stay-at-home routine of the past almost two years, my traveling shoes recently begged for a little adventure. The clamor for something to do got loud enough that I finally yielded and packed them and a weekender bag. I decided to check out the northern Michigan area near the town of Petoskey. A good book on tape made the 190-mile drive feel brief.”
“It’s been since September 15, more than two months, so it is time at last to write about the heartache of letting go of my beloved Amazing Grace, aka Mayzie… Gosh, that German shepherd could be frustrating! I liked to describe her as my “high functioning autistic ADHD dog,” because truly, that girl was special. Yet even so, how could I not be smitten by her perpetual eagerness, her happy manner, her insistence that it was time for a break when I’d been working too long or intensely?”
“November! Already? Ahhh, November. To me, the arrival of this month is like smelling cookies in the oven—a happy, tantalizing thing. I welcome November because of its urgency, prodding those of us living in the northern realm to finish preparing for winter and come inside out of the chill air… Another reason among many: November hosts my favorite holiday: Thanksgiving. Two of my favorite things, in one word: Thanks. Giving.”
“Every morning, I trudge out the side door of the garage and make my way across to the rain gauge posted at the edge of the nearby field. My rain gauge is more than yard art. It is a tool, because the precipitation it measures goes beyond mere curiosity. I have a job to do: to measure and report to a national database what amount of rain or snowfall has arrived to nourish my little patch of land in the past 24 hours.”
“The topic of risk has been hot lately. Maybe it is age, maybe it is experience, maybe both, but it seems as if people are more cautious nowadays. This is simply an observation, said without judgement, but it makes me wonder: where has all our courage gone?”
“It’s gonna happen. You and I and the person across from you at the diner: we are all gonna die. It’s only a matter of time. For a few years now, one of my jobs has been as a Medical Examiner Investigator (MEI). The more I assist families in the wake of the death of a loved one, and the closer I get to my own Date of Demise, the more I ponder what my aftermath can be like in terms of the body my soul will be leaving behind.”
“All year, day by day, I’ve torn a page from the 365-day calendar that was a Christmas gift from my brother. The topic? Moths… Before this, I would have said a moth is a moth is a moth. But I feel changed by 2021's daily glimpse into that world, if only because I am driven to wonder, “who came up with all these crazy names?!”
“What would it be like to be slammed by two Category 4 hurricanes in two weeks? Ask Honduras. On Nov.3, 2020, Hurricane Eta arrived, with Hurricane Iota hard on her heels, arriving Nov, 17. Worse, the hillsides were already saturated from an already record-breaking storm season. Oh, and it was of course the middle of the pandemic.”
“Here, I’ll just say it: I love the Olympics. I just do. I love the Olympics so much that even when we couldn’t afford our own television in the summer of 1984, we rented one for the two weeks of the Los Angeles Olympics.”
“I have always loved flying… There’s something magical about gazing out dreamily, letting the landscape below serve as a motion-picture screen of terrain and geography. I muse about the people down there. Who are they? Are they happy? How are they doing in these times?”
“A man I knew years ago named David Rankin once wrote, “ I refuse to wish away the winter.” I am reminded of his poem whenever someone complains about the weather. How can we really justify wishing away what we have right here, right now, before us? The easy things are a comfort, true, and deserve appreciation. The harder stuff? It always has its own gifts and lessons.”
“[After] starting the final load of laundry… I heard an uncharacteristic thumping sound and fretted distractedly that maybe the washing machine was going on the fritz. “I wonder what that is,” I thought… Something must have fallen into the dirty pile, maybe. As the muffled “thump, thump” continued, my curiosity was nudged a couple of more times, but only vaguely… Stupid washing machine...”
“I found myself on the high plains of north-central Montana, near a town called Choteau… the Freezout Lake Wildlife Management Area. With its 11,350 acres under state management, it is host each spring to more than a million migrating birds of some 200 species.”
“The second week of April celebrates a group dear to my heart: 911 dispatchers. They are the ones you’ll talk to if/when you are in the throes of a need for emergency assistance. At that moment, surely, your heart rate will be elevated, you will feel an urgent need for help, and you will be grateful for that calm professional who answers your call: the dispatcher…”
“I journeyed out of my cocoon this week, all the way across town to the Grand Rapids (MI) Frederick Meijer Gardens, where the annual “Butterflies Are Blooming” event was in full sway. Touted as the “largest temporary tropical butterfly exhibition in the nation,” it is, indeed, a rite of spring no one should miss.”
