When you don’t have a fancy suburban lawn, but, instead, are responsible for mowing a rural yard, part of which was converted from a field, it is not unusual to get what people older than I have called “summer grass.” It is probably a short weed, but being green and not growing like a vine, can pass for grass. However, in late summer, when it has been warm/hot long enough to get the actual earth nice and warm and when there as been adequate rain, it starts fattening up its blades. Each blade of grass expands with water and when the blade of the lawn mower cuts it, the moisture spews out and pretty soon, you have a major green blob of clogging mush. Those fat blades also dull the mower blades quickly.

I think I am going to have to face it today. The last time I mowed, I cut the grass very short, too short actually, but I suppose there was a little AmeliaJake vengeance in my choice of cutting level. Then we did a a few days without rain . . . and I decided to push my luck. Frankly, from a distance, when it gets taller, it has a nice lush green appearance and as long as there is not mowed spot showing, it looks not bad at all. Up close it is a different story. I’m going to find out what chapter I’m on today. We have had some rain; I just don’t know how the height chips fell.

I will have to wait until after 12 to even consider getting started, though, because when you are between a river and a creek on a block of land the settlers called “the island”, the dew lingers forever. It will also be a mosquito repellent-wearing afternoon, and I think it will be one of weed killer application. It is cloudy right now, but I think  it is supposed to NOT rain. However, I don’t know if the clouds will stick around and trap in all the moisture. I may find myself in a pickle.

Gee, isn’t this interesting? I’m sure Donald Trump doesn’t have these concerns. Too bad I can’t go out there and arrogant it into submission. Say, I wonder who mows his head.

For someone who has always been considered to be a quick learner, I have certainly missed the mark on some important things.

When people are gone, they are gone. No matter how many times I open the big, heavy old wood door that leads into the kitchen that smells of the woodsmoke of my earliest childhood, no one is going to come around the corner. About five years ago, I wrote about being there, closing my eyes and letting the ghosts come out. I guess I thought that was enough, that seeing in my mind life as it used to be would somehow keep it from actually not being there anymore. My imagination is too good. The rooms are empty, despite the ghosts that I actually see now with my eyes open.

They are like clouds. Oddly enough, I can glimpse myself sitting there doing algebra homework at the big round table. I am a misty ghost, too. And what the place is now is just an empty place. I don’t know what took me so long to realize this; maybe it really started when I walked out of Room 420 at North Ridge Nursing Home on May 12th. I followed Kathryn’s last exit and on my way, I thought of Clara who had been there until January and was also gone. I think I had been seeing her ghost as well during the last few months. I couldn’t close that door and keep the room unused as if waiting for the past to come back.

Here we are contained in these small bodies, with our awareness in a small part of that body and we are capable of feeling utterly crushed. How can perception be so overwhelming? Maybe only some part of life goes on, or perhaps some of us just can’t grow old, can’t accept the passing of time.

Right now I could use a furry shoulder to bury my face in, but he’s gone too. I think, though, that maybe one more time, I’ll close my eyes and let his ghost come out.