What a week. We got several perfect days in a row up here and I got to be home for them. It was fresh and sweet in the morning, balmy in the afternoon and cool again in the evening which turned into long suppers on the terrace where we talked about Jack Kerouac and how he was a year older than my mother who died a couple of years back at 85. Jack Kerouac was apparently old and cool before cool had even come to the Midwest where we grew up. He died in 1969 at the age of 47, the same age I am now. He lived a whole life in the time it has taken me to get here and here is hopefully nowhere near the end. I love this bit. I wonder if he did.
In Vermont we eagerly look forward to soft summer nights come late spring or early summer. No matter. They are what keep us going from February til May, the thought of eating supper outside in slow meandering conversation and bare feet with a deck of cards, and maybe a sweater for after dark. If this were southern California where paradise was normal, we would dread its interruption. Instead we accept our allotment of perfection and look forward to it and bask in the bliss. It’s fabulous. We can’t get over it.
We finally got the grill back where it belongs and there are flowers in all the pots and lightbulbs in the old lamp on the terrace. We linger over supper and pretty soon the candles come out, coffee gets made and no one feels the urge to go inside and let it end. I can’t remember a spring I have loved as much as this one.
This week also had its share of horribillia…a woman with a sensate deficit should not have to endure health insurance companies, forms, printers without ink, cars without gas, and accountants who want records lost in the shuffle of moves and inattention. These things make her forget to put the flour in the strawberry rhubarb mix and then have to pull of the pretty lattice top, fix the filling and piece the top back together. Then the poor tired addle brained woman mailed a stack of client papers to the wrong accountant, left half of her groceries in the cart, and there was more but you probably get the gist.
But in that same week, a nice woman at a Vermont company explained the insurance morass, a friend printed junk on her printer, an accountant said well okay how much did you pay for it let’s just use whatever you remember, and another friend had a gas can. So in the choice category I pick being grateful for the friends and the nice lady and the accountant.
Because it got up to 80 degrees today, our fourteen year old had his first slow dance, and right this minute there are about a million stars twinkling above my house. Winter will inevitably come back, kids will break your heart every once in a while and we are all gonna be dead a long time. In the meantime I plan to string together a bunch more of these sugary pie soaked days and be grateful for the bits of bliss along the way. Bliss after all is fleeting.
Come to think of it, it’s not even midnight yet. I think I may just go back outside…..