Melting Melancholy

We don't do as much as we used to do. But maybe can't is a more accurate word than don't. This, for example, is the second summer in a row we have not been able to spend a week in Stratford, Ontario, going to see nearly a dozen plays in a week at the Stratford Theatre Festival--something we had done for nearly twenty consecutive years.

We no longer hop in the car and drive to the West Coast--or the East--to see family, to visit literary sites, to visit Enid, Oklahoma, where I stare at the places where I used to live, go to school, play.

In recent years, Ill Health has raised his ugly, hoary head, and it seems as if I've always got an appointment with a physician somewhere. (Joyce has many such meetings, too. In fact, she's writing her next book about it right now.) And one of the permanent meds I'm on just saps my energy.

It can be depressing, this inability to do things I've (we've) always loved. Hell, my vertigo has gotten so annoying (and dangerous) that I have to be circumspect about virtually every step I take. (I recently posted here about a fall I took on Memorial Day in our son's back yard when I swung and missed at a wiffle ball floated my way by grandson Logan and was lying stunned on the ground, closely examining the grass, before I even realized I'd fallen.)

The other day we saw on the TV some shots of Monument Valley, one of the few iconic sites in the West I have not seen. I said aloud that I'd like to go out there this summer. Then realized that wasn't going to happen.

You remember in the old movies the technique called an "iris out"--when black appears at the outer edges, then closes and ends the scene with a blackout?

Well, that's sometimes how my life feels these days. The circle of light grows ever smaller, etc., etc.

Depressing enough for you? (Yeah, me too.)

So last night, after supper (and after Joyce had opened her birthday gifts from me) we drove down to Szalay's Farm Market in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park and bought some fresh corn for the week. Joyce also talked me into a jar of applesauce (didn't take much convincing). And somehow--miraculously--a couple of homemade peanut-butter cookies ended up in our bag. (I have no idea how that happened. Surely Joyce didn't shoplift!)

Home we drove, munching Evil Cookies, stopping at the Hudson McDonald's for Diet (!) Cokes (cancelling, of course, the effects of the cookies), then home. I read a little before Joyce came in (she'd been reading a Kate Atkinson novel in the other room), and for about an hour we lay in bed and streamed pieces of shows we like. I fell asleep with my arm around her ...

This morning, she (as is her wont) headed out to the health club; I walked over to Open Door Coffee Co., where I sipped their great coffee, read in a couple of different books, then, a couple of hours later, wandered home, where I baked some maple-pecan scones to take on Sunday to the 57th reunion of my Hiram High School Class of 1962.

While I was typing this, Joyce came down and said she was heading over to the Farm Market here in Hudson, about a block from our house. She loves the lettuce one vendor has.

And this evening we will join our son (whose birthday was on the 16th) for a birthday bash at a nearby restaurant--then back to our place for Goodies.

And as I type all of this--these past few paragraphs--I feel my morning depression lifting, floating away, disappearing into the haze of humidity that has been this week.

And I realized I would not for the world stand in Monument Valley, alone. Not when I can go to Szalay's with Joyce, when I can fall asleep with her beside me.


PS--It's her birthday today! The 50th one we have spent together!