Maybe the last summer

I was talking to a friend today who has a serious, incurable illness. She has been fighting it for as long as I have known her and does so with a grace that I could only hope to emulate. Not to say there aren't bad times - or more precisely - times that are horrifically worse than others - but throughout it all she has maintained a focus on the here. The now. The possible for the day.

But today, for the first time, she talked about her impatience with others who don't have time to do things that are important to her. Not in a whiny, "I never get my way" way, but in a steady voice that matter-of-factly stated that she was aware that this might be her last summer and she didn't want to spend it mowing the lawn and doing other mundane things. She wanted to eat ice cream and walk on the beach and she didn't want to do it alone.

Yes, she said, she was aware that none of us know when our end will come, but with an illness the size of Texas always hovering nearby it's harder to kid yourself that you are immortal. She doesn't typically fixate on her mortality, but every day brings her closer to it. That conversation was a sobering reminder that "living" - however each of us defines what brings us joy - is the operative part of our life as we walk inevitably to the end of time.

Routine

When I was growing up I watched my mother who was born in the 10th year of the 20th Century, do the same thing every day. Probably much the same (with different specifics) as her mother before her.  My mother got up, fixed breakfast, worked around the house (cleaning, sewing, cooking), fixed lunch, worked around the house (cleaning, sewing, cooking), fixed dinner, sat in the living room watching TV and sewing, went to bed and repeated everything the next day. At least this is what it looked like to me - a routine occasionally punctuated with trips to the grocery, church, getting her hair done, visiting relatives or other things that bored me to death. Where was the excitement? Where was the newness? How could anyone possibly be happy with a routine life. And when I asked her about doing something novel, she'd say "later." Over time I stopped asking. She had made her choice.

Fast forward 40+ years and I find myself doing exactly what she did but with my own set of 21st Century activities. I can't easily visit relatives since they are all either deceased or disbursed around the country. And when something threatens to break my routine, I often say, "later." My routine is my meditation. I wonder if hers was too?

A rabbit in the garden

There is - big surprise - a rabbit in the garden. He (I refer to it as a male) is wreaking a tiny bit of havoc on the new plants. Snipping them off at the ground it seems. Or perhaps he has a partner in crime.

He's tiny and quite tame. Almost as if he had been an Easter bunny let loose, but is really too small for that. I can walk right up to him and shoo him away before he moves a muscle. Perhaps he thinks if he's still as a statue I can't see him or will consider him yard art.

We've set traps in all the gardens, which by the way are fully fenced but I think he's still small enough to squeeze through. Another few weeks and he won't fit. But if he's caught before that he'll be relocated to a new neighborhood (I've requested this of my gardening gang, and hope they will oblige and not turn him into Hasenpfeffer.)  Despite his havoc, I think he's too cute for dispatching any other way. If I get a picture of him in the next day or two, I'll post it. Then I'll be gone for several days, and surely by the time I get back he'll be in his new home.