Showing up

It was birthday walk day for my friend Dorothy. She is one of those people who shows up - she showed up the week after we moved here 25 years ago, she showed up the morning my mother had a post-surgical stroke and the highways were closed and there was no immediate getting to "there" from "here". She has showed up over these past three and a half years: tea in china cups on the top of a hill at dusk, hankies - a lot of hankies, calls on birthdays - mine and his, getting up at wtf (except she wouldn't use that kind of language) o'clock to go rowing with me so I would go, and walking, walking, walking.

She shows up for each of the women in the birthday walk group. Each of us, in our own time, have been the total one-on-one focus of her attention. Some days we are The Lame Ducks, some days we are Redbreasted Mergansers (find Hannah Main van der Kamp's poem for yourselves). Today, we all walked, drank coffee, and laughed and laughed. There is nothing quite like the mating antics of mallards, playing with The New Recording Device, grandchildren and children stories, a visit to this place (think "hardware store for artists real and wannabe"), and playing and playing with possibilities. We stood on the street like 13 year olds after school, not yet finished with what we wanted to tell/listen/laugh and walked one another to front door, to car, to other car. Finally, the three of us who live on this side of the lake, drove away.

Heading up Bridge Hill, two eagles drifted along the cliff edge. They were so close we could see the feathers of their wing tips, each wing stroke a breath.


Still breathing