There are eight snack paks of sugar free pudding sitting on the top shelf in my refrigerator. They have been there at least a year and a half. I could begin to measure my life by the amount of time that passes and no one touches those orphaned treats. I bought them for my diabetic mother when she was living with us, and this coming July, it will be two years since she moved into her own home. The pudding paks still live in my refrigerator.
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At first, I mistook him for a white box, a discarded traffic hazard in the middle of the left hand lane on Highway 21, something that had fallen off of the back of a pickup truck. The car traveling toward me swerved to miss him and crossed the double yellow line into my lane about 100 feet in front of me. It was the day after Christmas, about 7:30 p.m. Mac and I were returning from dinner with my mom, my sister and her family at Johnson Creek Tavern.
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Rain drenched the South Carolina lowcountry the day before I turned fifty. Maybe the sky cried the tears that would have otherwise melted my heart if I had let them trickle from my eyes, saddened by the passage of time yet grateful for my state in life.
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One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life: that word is love. – Sophocles
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A few weeks ago, 60 Minutes aired a segment on the plight of honey bees. Rarely do things bother me on television or in movies but the journalistic content of this story stayed with me, disturbing my psyche and my sleep. Recently, the fact that honeybees are not returning to their hives has been brought to my attention over and over again and I am unsettled by this coincidental chain of events and the subliminal message.
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I. The Message Upon arriving at the Chicago O’Hare International Airport during my most recent business trip, I took notice of one of those miniature billboards on the wall in the terminal corridor. This one was an Accenture advertisement with a life size picture of Tiger Woods trying to chip a golf ball out of tall, yellow grass. It was as if he sliced a drive and it left the fairway for a hay farmer’s field in the Midwest.
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Having a pet in the family rounds things out. That’s not to say “pet-less” families are asymmetrical or deformed in any way. It’s just that having a dog or cat around brings out an aspect of a person or a family that is otherwise hidden, hibernating in folks’ character. There is a love and a great friendship that blossoms between man and beast in a way that isn’t really evidenced in love shared with another human being. It can be more trusting, less risky. I don’t admire people that treat their animals better than their next-door neighbor but I am affected by the quiet companionship between a devoted canine and a loving master.
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I read an article this past Labor Day weekend and it noted that autumn is a lot like beginning a new year because it signals a new phase or a period of renewal in our annual journey. Kids go back to school, companies reassess their year-end fiscal positions and a seasonal shift in our wardrobes takes place.
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I don’t know why, but the other day, I remembered that I used to chew on my pencils when I was in grade school. I used to love taking a brand new #4 pencil, especially forest green pencils with “Duquesne Light Co.” stamped on the side (my dad would bring these home from work) and crunch down on them leaving teeth marks up and down its sides. Maybe the thought was subliminal – kids starting school, tax free shopping days, my distant learning paper due – and it surfaced in thoughts of new packs of pencils lifted from a company storage cabinet.
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“Everyone has polyps,” my buddy said, laughing on the phone. I called her this past week to let her know everything seemed okay after an outpatient procedure at the Surgery Center. “Just so that’s all it is. But a polyp, no big deal.”
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