Tag: Mary Oliver

Increasingly, “Once in a Lifetime” Probably Applies

On By Peter WatkinsIn 20222 Comments

Dear Will:

Several months ago, Dana and I decided to celebrate our vaccinations by throwing on our masks, venturing out from our pandemic bunker, and going to a movie. In a theater! It was both disorienting and exciting to be doing something so familiar that nevertheless seemed new and foreign after so much time away. We were welcomed by a freshly trained, chirpy kid at the ticket counter who asked if either of us was over 60. I assured him that we were not. “Actually,” my wife corrected, “we both are.”

Wait. What?

It gets worse. Soon thereafter, I tried to justify this brain-lapse to my daughter Bryn. “I wasn’t trying to pretend to be younger than I am. It’s just that I’d never been ‘carded’ like that before and it caught me off guard. There has never been a time when the answer to that question could possibly have been yes. And since when did they make the senior citizen cut-off so low, anyway? I thought it was 62, or 65, or whatever.* Besides, I turned 60 only a few weeks ago, so it’s an innocent mistake.”

“Actually,” my daughter corrected, “you’re 61.”

So, to recap: Apparently, at some point during the pandemic, I became (ahem) a “senior.” It’s like something out of a Hemingway novel: How do you become an old guy? “Two ways. Gradually and then suddenly.” Your head goes bald and your beard turns gray one hair at a time, and before you know it gray is white and you can’t remember how old you are.

Sixty-one, or so I’m told. Barring a tragic encounter with a deadly virus or a moving bus, that means I’ve got maybe 30 more years to play with (give or take). I still have thousands of meals left to eat and untold hours of television and movies ahead of me. Cut back on those hours a bit and I’ll be able to read hundreds of books as well. There’s plenty of time, in other words, to choose both bad restaurants and good ones, true art and mindless entertainment, classic literature and low-brow page-turners. On those fronts, I can still be sloppy with my choices and no big deal.

But I have only so much adventure currency left in my account. Realistically, how many more backpacking trips will my knees and back let me get away with? Eight? A dozen maybe? Twenty if I’m really, really lucky? Likewise, between now and the last one, how many far-flung vacations will we be able to eke out of our savings and creaky joints, and which ones will they be? Every choice to invest time and resources and energy into something memorable also represents countless alternatives that we simply will not get to.

So, no pressure or anything, but when it comes to those extraordinary, “you should have been there” experiences, increasingly the term “once in a lifetime” probably applies. If I follow my urge to one day walk across Scotland, it might ultimately mean that I will have to skip the Fjords altogether. I’d better choose wisely, is what I’m saying, lest I squander one of my remaining adventures on something kind of lame. I would hate to get to the end of my life and say, “Well, I never made it to Waikaremoana, but that week in Fresno was . . . well, it was kind of a dud, wasn’t it?”

I don’t mean to pick on Fresno. I’m just more aware now of my diminishing opportunities, and I want to get it right. Even at this moment, I’m pondering my options for this summer. Do Bryn and I follow through on our threat to hike the Sawtooth Wilderness Loop? Can I also take Seth up on his offer to return to Mineral King so he can see firsthand what Bryn and I loved so much during our backpacking adventure there in 2019? And what about that trip to the UK that Dana and I had to postpone because of the pandemic? For now, the primary limitations are time (I do still have a job) and money. But sooner than I like, my spirit may remain willing for this kind of thing even while my flesh is becoming too weak to tag along.

Meanwhile, I keep hearing the voice of the poet Mary Oliver in my head, and it’s getting louder: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” Such a good question. Ask me again in a couple of years, and I’ll show you pictures. By then I’ll be [checks driver’s license] . . . 63!

PW

* Turns out that the actual cut-off at our favorite theater is 55. We’ve been overpaying for years and didn’t know it. No doubt because we look so young and nobody bothered to ask. Right?

Feeling the Joy

On By Peter WatkinsIn 20203 Comments

Dear Will:

We have this delightful, irresistible friend who likes to say that she is a “certified joyologist.” She’s kidding, but if you met her and heard her infectious laugh and saw the way she infuses a room with positive energy, you would have no reason to question her claim.

Given the chaos and disruption of 2020, we figure we could all use a little more joyology in our lives. A lot more, actually. As the poet Mary Oliver has written, “joy is not made to be a crumb.” Rather, she says, “if you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it.”

All right. We’re game. ‘Tis the season, after all, when joy shows up on billboards and t-shirts and any number of gift bags (shopping bags, for that matter). Looking back on this year-like-no-other, there have been plenty of things that have brought us joy in spite—and sometimes because—of all the rest. So in this season of giving, we’re giving in. To joy.

There were many moments during 2020 in which we suddenly, unexpectedly felt joy. Moments like these:

  • When hundreds of my co-workers agreed to voluntary pay-cuts so that no one would be laid off or furloughed (not a bad place to work, right?)
  • Before: 90-mile commute on the 405. Now: 30-foot stroll down the hall (pants optional)
  • Working with a puppy asleep at your feet (panting optional)
  • Hearing the sound of neighbor children lost in imagination on a cool, summer evening (love that)
  • Knowing that many doubters wear masks anyway for the sake of the rest of us (love them)
  • Sitting together—just the two of us—on the patio outside of Rubio’s (first night out in months)
  • Making new friends of old neighbors while walking Nacho, the least-disciplined dog in Orange County (work-in-negligible-progress)
  • Eavesdropping while Dana tutors one of her students (who knew math could be so fun?)
  • Texting with Seth during the Lakers’ Championship in Quarantine (perhaps even better than the championship itself)
  • Watching more movies AND reading more books (how is that possible?)
  • Trading in Dana’s two worn-out knees for a couple of state-of-the-art titanium numbers (to match her titanium hips)
  • Cheering in the early dawn as our beloved Brentford Bees came THIS CLOSE to the Premiership (best season ever)
  • Sunday evening Facetime Poetry Hour with Bryn (how else would we know about Mary Oliver?)
  • All of us avoiding COVID-19 (so far)
  • Seeing a resounding affirmation that democracy still works (so far)
  • First tour of Luke and Tyler’s first house (quirky and delightful, just like the house)
  • Spending a distanced weekend with Bryn and Seth at Silver City Mountain Resort (before they were chased out by the fires)
  • Celebrating the Dodgers’ first championship since before any of our kids was born (catharsis)
  • Looking on as Nacho disembowels yet another squeaky toy (no blue dragon is safe)
  • Studying Engineering from home while enrolled at UCLA (correction: no joy in that for Seth whatsoever—he’s moved back to Westwood)
  • Eating Guerilla Tacos during the Worst Drive-in Dance Concert of the COVID Era™ (Date Night!)
  • Witnessing the selflessness of medical personnel and other essential workers (angels and superheroes)
  • Meeting the brand-new baby of our brand-new friends who arrived only a few months ago as refugees from Afghanistan (you’d love them too)
  • Sitting down to compile this list (and there’s more where this came from)
  • Thinking about friends like you (corny, but true)
  • Celebrating the birth of Jesus (Joy to the World!)

Here’s hoping for even more joyology in 2021.

PW

Photo by Anthony Asael

Watch, Now, How I Start the Day

On By Peter WatkinsIn 20183 Comments

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Dear Will:

For Christmas, my daughter Bryn gave me a homemade coupon for a hike and a burger. Now I love a good hike and a burger (especially with one of my kids), so I couldn’t imagine a better present. But there was a catch. The hike was to the top of Mount Timpanogos. In Utah.

If only that had been the ONLY catch. In order to collect my free meal, I first had to fly myself to Salt Lake City, then BEGIN our hike at 1 a.m. “so that we can be at the summit at sunrise.” Then, of course, I had to cover 7.5 miles to the 11,749-foot summit, with an elevation gain of 4,580 feet. Which is fine if you live at altitude, but not-so-much if you live, like I do, at 190 feet. Not good. Oh, and I’m an old guy with the fitness of a console television. So there’s that also.

Well, the day unfolded about as you would expect. The higher we climbed, the harder it was to breathe. I wobbled and wheezed, stumbled and stammered, shuffled and puffed all along the trail. Although I threatened several times to fall off of the mountain, I didn’t, and somehow I crumpled onto the summit around 5:30 a.m., a good half-hour ahead of schedule. Bryn was delighted.

On the summit itself, the vista was spectacular. Facing west, we looked out across Utah Lake and the vast Salt Lake valley; to the east, the view stretched past Sundance and Deer Creek, out and over the Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest. As the sun appeared in the far distance, the eastern sky became awash with the reds and oranges of early morning.

On any other Friday, daybreak would have arrived and I’d have missed it altogether. But on this Friday morning, exhausted though I was, I got the full benefit of the rising sun. The moment brought to mind the words of Thoreau: “Only that day dawns to which we are awake.” But there on the summit, Bryn (and poet Mary Oliver) said it even better—a fitting invocation to start this or any day:

Hello, sun in my face.
Hello, you who make the morning
and spread it over the fields
and into the faces of the tulips
and the nodding morning glories,
and into the windows of, even, the
miserable and crotchety–

best preacher that ever was,
dear star, that just happens
to be where you are in the universe
to keep us from ever-darkness,
to ease us with warm touching,
to hold us in the great hands of light—
good morning, good morning, good morning.

Watch, now, how I start the day
in happiness, in kindness.

PW