I stopped along #101 in Santa Rosa forty-five years ago to photograph a partial solar eclipse, then headed to Sutter Hospital where Jadyne was to be induced.
John Rowland Buchholz, 45
Fourteen years ago I repeated the process with a different passenger. Jennifer wasn’t induced, but she did give birth on February 26th to Susanto. The whole event was captured by Rachel, who broadcast it through Skype to Andrew, who was sitting on a sofa in Kathmandu.
Jennifer and Susanto Tise Geen, 14
Both birthdays were non-events for the principals yesterday. Susanto and family were exhausted from having contracted the norovirus while in Rome; Kim’s plans for John were curtailed by her sickness. too.
And me? As anniversaries pass I am reminded that many years have gone by, that time has its way with us. My friend Gail Bray posted this on FB, a reminder to appreciate the here and now.
I am “embracing the journey,” noting that adding swimming, walking, gardening, exercise of any kind, into my day feels good. I appreciate the friendships I have with people who are on that same journey. I try to focus on whatever I’m doing, from spending two minutes brushing my teeth, sweeping leaves off the sidewalk, savoring the first sips of Peets Major Dickason blend in the morning, solving Wordle, editing an image, relishing a well-crafted sentence or two in a book, enjoying Saul Steinberg’s New Yorker cartoons, brushing Stella, putting on a clean pair of LL Bean flannel-lined jeans straight from the dryer, taking a minute to sit quietly, listen to Molly Tuttle’s “Goodbye Girl,” writing stuff like this in my blog, and avoiding all “coulda, woulda, and shouldas.”
I’m also enjoying doing something I’m not doing. Drinking. For many years I’ve had at least one alcoholic drink a day. Often more than one. Jadyne and I occasionally drank a bottle of wine in one sitting, beginning before dinner. In February we began to have one drink every other night. We’ve both cut down the drinking. I feel better when I don’t drink. I also don’t need the feeling that alcohol gives me.
Two weeks ago we were charging the Tesla at 99 Ranch and I wandered across the street to a cannabis dispensary and bought ten gummies, thinking that maybe having one of those would bring back the feelings that alcohol brought without drinking the alcohol. I asked for a low dosage beginner’s pack, which contained ten gummies at 10 mg each of THC. I ate one last week. Mistake. I hadn’t smoked in almost forty years, and the good feelings I remembered from a hit or two from a joint were replaced by something unfamiliar—incoherence and compromised physical abilities. I wanted to get off the train. Not enjoying this. It led me to tying the two, alcohol and cannabis, together. They both alter perceptions, provide an escape of some kind, or in train terms a siding, a departure from that part of me that I can manage well enough and enjoy.
From Walden, “Shams and delusions are esteemed for soundest truths, while reality is fabulous. If men would steadily observe realities only, and not allow themselves to be deluded, life, to compare it with such things as we know, would be like a fairy tale and the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments.”
Other bits and pieces. Daffodils, hellebore flowers, ribes buds, rain, promises of spring.
When we picked up Jennifer, Andrew, and family from SFO Jadyne climbed into their van. “It won’t go,” she wailed. “I can only coast.” I walked over. “You need the key,” I said, “to turn the engine on.” (That’s what six years with an electric car does to you). Beyond that we’re flummoxed by much of new technology. We wanted to buy a baby gift at Target yesterday. We couldn’t find the mother’s name on the registry. “Did you scan the bar code on your email?” said the helpful Target lady. “????” “Where were the instructions?”
Do other people just simply know to do this? How did they learn?
(Oh, they’re just old, thought helpful Target lady. We don’t expect old people to know stuff like this. That’s why we’re here.)
And we got invited to the baby shower from neighbors we don’t even know, couldn’t pick out of a lineup. Why? Miss Manners, help!
Over the last couple of years I’ve rediscovered the pleasures of reading. The last twelve months I’ve tackled some biggies—Moby Dick, Anna Karenina, War and Peace, Don Quixote, and to punish me further, am now engaged in 1250 pages of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.
Reading has taken the place of shooting. I’m editing photographs that I’ve taken, but during Covid I spent hours at Aquatic Park, in gardens, learning new techniques, experimenting with upgraded software. And I didn’t read that much. Now I am.
Little things I’ve learned over the past weeks:
If you lightly spray coffee beans before you grind them the coffee is richer
If you leave your bed unmade for a couple of hours, the freshly made bed becomes more sanitary
Wait thirty minutes after your last bite before brushing your teeth, giving saliva a chance to break down and soften food left in your mouth
I’ve been thinking about me and my body. Religions talk about body and soul. I’m not thinking of the me as a soul. It’s just the me that my body carries around inside it. A line from a poem that awakened me to this: The poet is taking a bath. She says about her body, “I look down at it from inside my face.” From inside her face. Her face is part of her body. The looking isn’t. It comes from somewhere else, the part of her that the body carries.
We have love-hate relationships with our bodies. Advertisers focus on the latter and make things that lead us to believe will make our bodies better looking, more sexually appealing. Hint: It’s a scam. Of course there are things that do make our body better—eating the right foods, exercise, sleep, and bathing. Those do work. Better than extensions, false eyelashes.
I’m not tackling beauty products, although I’m grateful that Jadyne has never used them. However, if applying makeup or coloring your hair or the host of other things you can do to your body makes you feel better about yourself, then I have no quarrel with that.
I don’t like to wear clothes with advertisers’ names on them, but I have worn Giants hats and jerseys. I don’t put bumper stickers on my car. I’ve never thought of my body as a billboard, either, or a moving canvas. No tattoos.
I have come to appreciate my body. It takes me where I want to go, including up and down hills, flights of stairs, into and out of cars. It swims a mile a couple of times a week, I refer to it in the third person, as me is carried around inside it. I’m glad it knows how to swim. It knows how to eat. I treat its teeth with floss, toothpaste, caring for it as best I know how. Not always. I give it too much ultra processed food—Kettle chips, Dots pretzels.
My body knows how to adjust to changes. “The New Normal” is a fluid expression, one that Chris Anderson used when one morning I woke up with tinnitus. That new normal continued with a hip replacement, plastic surgery, a broken ankle, psoriasis, various cuts, bruises, and blood blisters. There are many more new normals to come, adjustments to make, accommodations to accept. My body is doing the best it can, and for that I am grateful.