MISADVENTURES OF A 21ST CENTURY SENIOR

 

MISADVENTURES OF A 21^ST 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.[1]

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[1] May 9, 2021