Things I'll Miss

I'm reconciled to the idea that death comes to all, but nevertheless, there are a few earthly things that I'm genuinely going to miss.

Is there anything more wonderful, when you've been out early in the morning in the rain or in a heavy dew, and your feet are wet and cold, than returning home and putting on clean, dry socks, especially those excellent white cotton ones that they sell at Costco?  Definitely a moment that makes life worth living. And also: purchasing, opening and playing a new music cd -- preferably one that you've thought about acquiring for a long time. Another: watching young healthy athletic people run down the street, especially women with long ponytails a-bobbing. Also: the perennially pleasurably sound of a bat (wooden, not aluminum) connecting with a high, hard one. Rum raisin ice cream. A well-made glazed donut. The sight of the first soft, red peony of the year just as it breaks the ground. The waxy pink flower of the tamarack, always a surprise. My Swiss Felco #2 hand pruner (which our cousins across the sea call it a secateur), a friend for many seasons, which fits my hand perfectly and which if you give it an occasional oiling and sharpening, cuts absolutely true. The sound of rain on an uninsulated metal roof -- and also like the clickety-clack and pinging of the roof on a cloudy day when the sun comes in and out and the roof alternately expands and contracts -- it's an all-percussion symphony. The old downtown of an old city that I'm visiting for the first time. A one-year-old boy or girl learning to walk, at the stage when the strides are of unequal and inconsistent length, the child hovered over by admiring young parents, she with a hand outstretched, he recording the moment on tape; the child the center of the universe, thoroughly doted upon, as is exactly appropriate. A deep, luxurious weekend afternoon nap, so profound that when you wake up you don't know, for five seconds, where you are or what day it is. A sleep so deep that somnus imago mortis kicks in;  nothing more satisfying: the kind of thing that makes a guy want to live a few more years.

Comments

[CKNC]

I would add apple blackberry pie. Yum!

[Otis J. Brown]

Beautiful.

[Jim Hermanson]

An auspicious catalog of the sublimely quotidian, Doc. I thank you deeply for this. Well done.

Better, much better, than any "bucket list."