The sun was up there somewhere this morning playing games. Will I won’t I? Some drops of rain teased and then took off. But we are promised a river in California this week. I guess we don’t have plain old rain anymore, just rivers and ninos. The weather gurus are having a slow day. Clouds are back but they don’t have any zip, just barely moving the water in the faux lake in our condo complex. I might just be bored or need a nap. Or both.
I had great plans for today, put my life in order, find some file folders without already unreadable labels, go through the loosely organized “What to do when she goes” stuff I have been collecting for my children, get rid of the duplicates and put what is left in what I hope is final order. But I have said that before.
I think it is the weather that is troubling. We skipped summer in this corner of California, the highest temp in the low 80’s and that lasting only a few days. It has been pleasant, sunshine, a few clouds, a few days when it stormed but no day when I need that warm jacket in the back of the closet.
Growing up in New York the change of seasons was dramatic, and my favorite as a kid was the onset of fall. I miss the end of summer in the Bronx, tired of games, done with whatever fights and feuds had run their course and détente ruled the land. The air was cool, a bite to it and school was in sight as we speculated on classes and teachers, mostly complaining but secretly excited. Throughout my life, that change of seasons and the anticipation of the new classroom has been a function of the summer’s end and school’s emergence, the real start of the year for me.
The start of school meant new clothes as the ones pulled out of our under the bed storage confirmed growth we ignored all summer. Now I still clean closets and toss a few more post retirement, post pandemic blouses but I’ve no lessons to plan, no eager students to inspire and the remaining clothes will do just fine for the limited duration of my existence. Sometimes what we miss isn’t really there, we have blurred the edges, and left out what we can’t or don’t want to remember.
Those days are gone, my academic memories getting dimmer with time. I apologize for meandering, but it is that sort of day. No objectives were met and my life is still unorganized. Three people I called have not called me back. I suspect that naps are to blame and I will be forgiving. For today.
I think you're going through what so many of us in our 80's are experiencing. Instead of getting older and adjusting our activities gradually, we dropped into a gap of two years or so. Now we have to adjust our new selves to a world also changed, with no framework to fall back into.
I reread it and concentrated on the wrong part.
Read it tonight and perceived depression. I don't know what to say. Nancy is probably correct in what she says but that doesn't or help you feel better. I don't know. I feel sad.