Sun Goes, Rain Arrives

I remember, years ago when I began teaching The Call of the Wild (mid-1980s) I read in the final chapter (when Buck and John Thornton are heading into unknown territory looking for a fabled mine) this passage:

They went across divides in summer blizzards, shivered under the midnight sun on naked mountains between the timber line and the eternal snows, dropped into summer valleys amid swarming gnats and flies, and in the shadows of glaciers picked strawberries and flowers as ripe and fair as any the Southland could boast.

Strawberries in the Far North? Seems it’s true, as the image above confirms.

And now, much older, I’ve begun to see the symbolic qualities of things ...        

 ***

Right now, I’m sitting in what I call “Venue Two”—one of the two places (besides bed) where I spend most of my time. It’s just started to rain. It’s about 1:30 p.m. 

Venue One is the place where I spend most of the morning. In the family room (toward the back of our house), in an easy chair. I read the New York Times online; I text a little doggerel to my family each day; I read fifty pages of one of the books through which I’m journeying.

Venue Two is in the front room, on the couch, where I read The Plain Dealer and the Akon Beacon-Journal online. (I read the replica version of the three papers I’ve mentioned.) The only old-fashioned newspaper we read is the Sunday New York Times. It’s a long habit we can’t break; it’s a long habit we don’t want to break.

It’s been sunny the past week or so—sunny and warm (even hot). In other words, wonderful. The sidewalks have been full of people walking and jogging; the streets, with people bicycling. It’s thrilling for me to watch—thrilling and depressing. You see, I can’t do any of that myself anymore. No walking, running, cycling. I have a hard time even getting from room to room. Falling is no longer a distant danger; it’s so near that I can smell its vile breath.

Joyce now does 95% of the work around the house; I’m pretty much useless. The things I do do she has to assist. I still bake bread and scones only because she assists me. Although I can prepare my own breakfast (a scone and Keurig), and although I prepare most of my own lunch (a piece of sourdough toast, a cup of yogurt and blueberries and sliced strawberries), she does 90% of the suppers (it used to be just the opposite). For going on two years now, I haven't grilled outside, something I used to do frequently each spring, summer, and fall.

My exercise—which used to feature cycling and working out on machines—now comprises walking to the next room, slowly climbing upstairs, descending even more slowly downstairs. It's a situation that is not likely to improve. I'm invariably dizzy, and no doctors (and I have seen a lot of them) can figure out why. I have a walker that I use, but it doesn't help if I start to fall. I'm down, and that's it. I’ve been to the ER three times in these Covid months.

I am grateful for many things, Joyce the most. Without her I could not be home—I probably shouldn’t be home. She won’t hear of the alternative.

I am grateful for our son and his family, who come up to see us every couple of weeks. We can’t  go down there any longer. Too dangerous.

Oddly, I’m grateful for Facebook, for it’s via that medium that I keep touch with so many who have been so kind to me over the years—in boyhood, in my teaching career, and in all sorts of other ways.

But the sky is definitely darkening.

**

And this what that passage from The Call of Wild has got me thinking about. Our lives resemble those Yukon strawberries and other vigorous summer life there.

Before our lives—darkness and cold and ice.

Brief moments in the sun.

And then ...