MISADVENTURES
OF A 21ST CENTURY SENIOR
May 6, 2021 was the second anniversary of my husband’s
death. I had been reflecting on how many
recent widows there are in my community. Also, I watched a Hallmark movie where
the characters sent up Chinese wish lanterns to celebrate an event and I had experienced
that the New Year’s Eve after Mike’s death with some of my neighbors. I decided to order a package of 20 lanterns
and invite all the recent widows and some neighbors who had also lost loved
ones. Because of the recent pandemic, and given the finite number of lanterns,
I kept the invited group fairly small.
We started out the evening with drinks and snacks on the
deck, and as the sun began to fade, I grabbed the stack of packaged lanterns
and handed them out. We fumbled with
removing the packaging and preparing the individual lanterns for lighting and
found they were bigger than I had anticipated.
As the sunset grew darker, we moved to the lower portion of my yard,
near the lake, to send up our lanterns. Rather than the spectacle of several
lit lanterns being sent aloft at the same time, we ended up sending them up one
at a time because of the difficulty of preparing them. It took 3-4 people to get each one
aloft.
The first one was released a bit too soon and ascended too
slowly. A slight breeze from the north took the free-floating lantern into the
nearby tree, where it wedged and proceeded to burn out, partially burning the
lantern as well. It fell below to the
pergola, but luckily was finished burning when it landed. One by one, our lanterns were sent up, mostly
performing beautifully, and were inspiring.
A couple more chose to wedge themselves in the aforementioned tree, but
all in all eleven lanterns lit our hearts and spirits that night.
The next morning, I took my leaf blower down to the pergola
and blew the first carcass off of the pergola.
The two remaining lanterns said they preferred their resting place in
the tree, and having errands to run, I left them there, while also pondering
how I would get them down.
That evening, I couldn’t see either lantern from my vantage
point on my upper deck. So I walked down
to look and found they had both decided to move on. I searched the area and saw one wedged behind
two opposing rock outcroppings in the dry lake bed. Ah, I thought. I can walk over to the neighbor’s yard where
the slope into the lake bed is more gradual and retrieve the errant
lantern. And so it began.
I stepped off and found my water sandals sliding, then
running down the incline, and of course, they took me with them! “This incline is a lot steeper and deeper
than I realized,” I thought. And then, I
realized I was moving too fast to put on the breaks and I was approaching the
wet, boggy, growth in the center bottom of the lakebed. “Well, I’ll just keep running until I reach
the other side,” I thought. That was the
moment my left foot hit and bogged down into the slimy mud, my foot
disappearing below my ankle. My right
foot stepped past and bogged down and I found myself falling forward face
planting (and belly flopping) into the black slime and green reedy growth. I
lay there for several seconds wondering if I might have injured myself and
feeling the suffocation of high banks on either side of the lake, and me at its
bottom. Then, I moved my hands to push
up from that prone position and they and my arms sank further, up to
mid-forearm. Finding purchase finally on
some rocks I pushed up and considered my predicament. I’d lost my left shoe when I fell but I saw
it only partially submerged as I reached for it, my right foot exited the
slime, but without its shoe. Nuts. I had
spent good money for these very comfortable shoes, the newer pair that I’d
bought. So, I reached my hand down into the black, slimy, bog and found the
shoe and brought it up full of mud (this sandal has a rather closed toe, so it
was literally filled!) I turned and
started slogging my way out, barefooted, with my muddy carriers in my hands,
then hit the rocky gravel.
Two things occurred to me then, at the same time. One, I wouldn’t be able to get out of there
barefooted. Two, the bottom of this lake
is granite gravel, but I’d been rolling and stomping around in very slimy black
mud. Where did the black bog come from? Ah, deer, cattle, and other woodland
creatures and bacteria washed into the lake by recent rains. I looked at what I could see through my mud
spackled glasses and muddy strings of hair dangling over my fact, at the mud
that covered my hands up to my elbows and feet up to the ankles. As well, my
shirt front and yoga pants were soaked in the stuff.
My skin began to crawl as I tried to wipe out as much of
the mud from my shoes so I could walk over to retrieve the errant lantern. Doing so, I turned and started slip sliding
in my shoes as well as on the tilted granite towards a place where I could get
myself out of the pit. The top of the
bank was above my head the whole way, so I picked a spot to try balancing my
way out, and fell again. I sat down then
to consider another route. I looked at
my neighbors’ houses and neither of them showed any signs of life. As I pondered my next move, one neighbor saw
me and asked if he could help. By that
time I had turned around on my hands and knees and begun to claw my way to the
top, slipping and sliding. He saw what
was in my hand as I emerged, victoriously, from the dry lake. “Why didn’t you call me to get that for
you?” Keep in mind, I had watched my
daughters and grandchildren foray this same path Easter weekend, down and back
up with no difficulty! “Because I
thought I could do it!” I shouted. I was
humiliated thinking what I sight I must be, only later realizing he was looking
into the sun and didn’t realize the full measure of my embarrassment!
I sat on the edge of the pergola deck, wheezing, coughing,
gasping for breath and vowed never again to pretend I could climb those banks
as I did twenty years ago to bring up rocks for landscaping. I made my muddy
way to the back porch and turned on the hose to wash the mud off my feet and
shoes so I could go in my house. I
intended to tiptoe to the closed garage, strip naked and leave my muddy
clothing in the washer and run through the house to my shower. While I was hosing off, the same neighbor
came around the house and said “by the way, Julie, there’s a Fedex truck in
front of your house!” I didn’t expect a
shipment of anything so I had to stop and check on my way to the garage. My package was an early Mother’s Day present
and I laid it on the counter unopened to make my way to the garage. I have never, in my life, been less
interested in opening a package!
20 minutes later, showered and dressed in nice crisp, clean
underwear and clothing, I went to the kitchen, poured a most generous and
well-deserved glass of wine and made my way to my porch perch to ponder the
wonders of life.
