I uploaded a new gravatar photo just now. It’s bothered me that my it’s over 15 years old. I don’t believe in dissembling about oneself at least not unless it’s near-Machiavellian. If done at all, dissembling should be done consciously and with purpose.
Once upon a time, I had a full head of very nice-looking curly hair:
Me. Hair. Do not mention heavy-lidded look. It was 1979, okay? Monroe, WA, sometime in 1979.
It got a lot shorter through the years, but 25 years later it still had a couple inches of nice curliness. However…I started to notice a bit of thinning at the crown. “I’m not going to be one of those men who clings to the idea he has wonderfully bushy hair when it’s really thinning and fading away,” says I. My hairdresser cried when I told her to shave off all the curls. “I want to look like early Paul Simon.” (BTW, Paul, look at how good you looked in the late 60’s. Now look at your shaggy-but-not-in-a-good-way hair. Take a hint.) My hair reflects where I am on the journey of life. So too do my increasing folds of flabby skin, the creases in my face, and the sinking of my eyes into their sockets. I paid a lot of years to get to 71. I don’t intend to look 80, but I’m not shooting for 55 either. So there.
I thought to make an extended metaphor about how life resembled a track event or maybe cross-country, how most of us spend the first 18 years getting in shape. When the gun sounds at 18, though, I ran into trouble because not all of us have those lovely first splits where the race seems to be a breeze and you think you could run forever. By 21, when I envisioned the first little twinge of pain, I realized that many couldn’t say that—for them the race becomes an endless drudge to be run, not at the front of the pack, but at the end of that solid bunch of runners who know they’ll never come close to winning this thing. And then I saw it isn’t a race anyway, and the metaphor petered out. If I apply this metaphor to myself I…
changed my event almost as soon as I signed up for it…
sat out the second lap…
signed up for a different event and changed that one twice before quitting the race again…
entered the original event chosen by 17-year-old me…
ran that race until I realized I just wasn’t suited for it…
trained for a different event and ran that one for a decade…
left that race, dreaming of the Perfect Event…
and fell into a nondescript event only to find my innate talents bloom
And that’s just the metaphorical telling of my career. What about love? Family? The experience of life? No matter. It was fun playing with that photo of my brother running cross-country when we both were young and naïve.
Father’s Day means less to me than many. My only children have been and are being cats. My relationship to the day runs one direction only, upward, to my progenitor. He left this mortal world more than a decade ago, but the memories remain vivid, accentuated by the passing of my father-in-law ten months ago. Life’s little irony, its bitter dessert: with every one of my years I understand him better; but this understanding always was for the Father in the past never for the Father of the now. Then he’s gone, and only the past exists. Unfairness salts this wound which never heals.
Growing up with this man my feelings differed, of course. How could they not? Once I became self-aware, our similar make-up combined with my contrarianism to make the sparks fly. This isn’t a truism. We argued and disagreed about everything. I remember these actual, real arguments, all of which went on for 20, 30 minutes, perhaps for an hour or more:
Does a body get colder or warmer immediately after eating? (I said colder, but neither of us had more than theoretical knowledge, and there was no Internet to solve things back then.)
If you learn a job applicant will be the second income for a family, should you favor the person who needs this job as the primary breadwinner? (He said yes, I said no. Back then the secondary income likely would be a woman’s, so the argument carried a deeper discussion about feminism and Women’s Lib.)
And one of my favorites: a yard should be allowed to go natural (said I); “you just don’t want to mow the lawn,” he said.
Father’s Day got diluted for him by the fluke of his birth date and the vagaries of politicians: it always occurred within eight days of his birthday. Take a look at that calendar over his shoulder. I used to hate Junes like that one. The third Sunday (and therefore Father’s Day) falls on the 21st. His birthday occurred on the 22nd. Two presents and two consecutive days I had to be nice to him. A year like this one, 2025, provided the maximum eight days of distance.
I used to commiserate with my brother (who took the photo above, I believe) about the monetary hit of birthdays and ‘parental recognition days’ in our family. Starting with his birthday on April 21st we ran through all the birthdays plus Mother’s Day and Father’s Day all by July 10th. In those 11 weeks he and I would buy five presents, an average of a present every other week. He especially hated June when my birthday (the 8th) smacked into Father’s Day (between the 15th and the 21st) and Dad’s birthday on the 22nd. And 18 days later came Mom’s birthday on July 10th. “The parade of presents, the meandering of money, the draining of dollars,…” —you get the idea. We didn’t have a lot of money back then; we bought our own presents, no help from Mom and Dad.
Despite this being my absolute favorite time of year with its leap into summer as the advent of June brings warm weather, the end of school and all the seasonal activities associated with it, and the chance to relax to a degree not permitted September through May, I run into these thoughts a bit more too. So many things become bittersweet with age. This continual discovery of more love for a man who’s gone remains one of the most important.
Eastern carpenter bee on scarlet beebalm. June 2025.
For a good handful of years I fought a war against carpenter bees. These large bees (1.0-1.5 inches long) bored perfectly symmetrical holes in the decking of our house. First I attempted to plug all the holes with caulk, twigs, anything that came to hand. Then I bought horrendously over-priced traps, only one of which did its job and for only one year. This year I gave up, waved the white flag, said, “you win.” They are vigorous pollinators: that beebalm looks long past its prime, but they keep working the blossoms for that last speck of pollen. They’re only antagonistic to each other, although they’re scary in the spring: imagine a bee as big as your eye and flying right toward it. They still leave little piles of sawdust around my deck here and there in the spring.
And I still have the trap up. It’s a sign of self-respect. I don’t want to appear as if I’ve cravenly capitulated to them. Call it a fighting retreat.
The deep blue one recently joined this bookshelf. June 2025.
I recently purchased a collection of short stories by the author of one of the blogs I’ve followed the longest, Bridgette Tales. That’s it up there, the dark blue one. I noted with satisfaction it has excellent company!
Every minute and every day you’re older. Any time you wish to, shout accurately, “Hey! I’m another year older!” to passersby. Their strange looks betray their misunderstanding: you are another year older from this same time one year ago.
Even so, humans seek meaning like water seeks its level. Today as I write this marks the time 71 years ago my mother labored to get me out into the world. It’s about an hour and a handful of minutes until that moment in the Pacific time zone where I was born. I’ve been pleased she did so about 99% of the time, which given its +/- 1% accuracy should be good enough for anyone. You can search this blog for the tag “aging” to see how I feel about these so-called twilight years. If death is sundown, then I don’t think I’m actually in twilight yet, but the sun has lowered itself toward my horizon of being. Despite attempting to live in the moment, I’m aware each day of the end of my life nearing, something which seemed nebulous just ten years ago. Perhaps I’m just seeking my level also.
Like the wild geranium which promises big things with those hand-sized leaves, then proffers flowers barely bigger than a 25-cent piece, we burst onto the scene, become self-aware, and agitate to “get out there” in our late teens, to make our marks on the world. What things we’ll accomplish! We flower, most of us, with little blossoms of achievement then spend the time between fruitfulness and the killing frost just…being big, green, and leafy, secure in our memories of having flowered at all.
One of the few things I miss about participating in the Facebook platform is On This Day, where the app would push up photos and posts you had ‘published’ in the past. The photos were a nice blast from the recent past. Unfortunately, they encouraged participants to repost much like the boorish cocktail party guest who wanders from group to group telling the same overly-extended anecdote which bores each group equally.
But y’all haven’t seen these, I think… (photos are from any June 4 through June 6)
The last of the roses. Choked out by invasives and my indifference, they haven’t appeared since. June 2021.Some red lilies ready to bloom. Frustratingly, they disappeared only for one to appear a year or two later in the midst of a garden nightmare. I blame squirrels. June 2020.These two white lilies bloomed for three or four years, through the date of this photo. After that they disappeared, but behind this location the RED lily suddenly appeared. Squirrel atonement? June 2020.Houston, my second time to work at the same client. It’s a flat landscape. The sun sets and everything wallows in a beautiful light. Taken from my hotel window. June 2019.
And on and on they go… I cannot tarry or I will post all night. Each day brings a look at the past five years of retirement, the previous eight years of consultant work, and the mundane world of “home weekends/corporate trenches” that was my world before.
Watching our newly landscaped front yard has become one of my particular joys this year. Where once there existed a lackluster lawn, pockmarked with chipmunk burrows—which I had to continually mow—now new plants take turns proffering flowers for the pollinators. The spicebush swallowtail butterfly shown above would have shown up better were not its wings fluttering madly as it sampled the scarlet beebalm flowers. Sharing the butterfly’s zeal were bees of all sizes: little ones that looked like flying sugar ants about a quarter-inch long to bumblebees and something larger which I haven’t identified yet.
As May ended and turned to June, fireflies appear at dusk to illuminate the plants. Shrubby St. John’s wort, below, seems to be a favorite of the Easter honeybee.
This spring has been a joy, watching our newly planted front yard bring forth blossoms we’ve never seen before. The one above, about the size of a standard marigold, tucks in by the front porch. Demure, perhaps, but eventually it can grow to small tree height if not pruned.
all the voices in my head 