It Is Something To Have Been Attached in Everyday Ramblings

This is the meadow we walked through last Sunday. The Osprey nest is out of the frame but out in the open on a platform built on a pole. The river is on the left behind the trees.

The first time I ever really clearly saw an Osprey fishing was on the small Caribbean island of Providenciales in 2002. I hadn’t turned the corner and become a bird watcher yet then. I was lying on a beach chair by myself on this most stunningly beautiful beach reading a book and looked up and saw this huge dark bird swoop in and grab a fish out of a clear turquoise wave that was breaking just ahead of me.

I didn’t have a camera yet then either. At dinner I asked the dive boat captain sitting across from me what kind of bird it could have been. He took me out on his boat the next day and while the divers were down we watched the wildlife on the water including a friendly dolphin that then followed us back to the dock.

Very auspicious.

That experience sealed the deal and I have a special affection for these gorgeous large fish eating raptors. Hard to believe that was 12 years ago now.

I copied out the front piece quote from The Hare With Amber Eyes last weekend. It is something Proust wrote for Charles Swann to say…”Even when one is no longer attached to things, it’s still something to have been attached to them; because it is always for reasons which other people didn’t grasp…”

I think intimacy can be defined as both knowing and honoring the reasons the people we love are attached to things. :)

Late in the afternoon yesterday I read my 750 Words post from last year on the same day. It was the day we had Stella’s cancer diagnosis confirmed. It was also the day I had my stitches removed from the second time they went after the odd growth on my upper back. I wondered then if Sammy could possibly make it a year because I knew I had to put Stella down.

He almost did, tough guy.

I miss him in all sorts of unexpected ways. I realized that when I send cards to friends and family I had become accustomed to sending them just not from myself but from the cats too.

Along though with the missing is the huge relief. That he is at peace and not in discomfort and relief that I don’t have to all the seemingly one hundred things I had to do each day to accommodate his care.

In the evening yesterday in the mild late summer light I walked the hilly 5 mile loop up behind my place and was amazed at how marvelous and effortless it felt.

My oldest sister was able (after 10 weeks) to take a proper shower a few days ago.

One of the gifts of aging is the dawning of the concept that it really is the simple oh so human things that bring us such joy.

Talking at a work meeting about seeing West Side Story in a theater as a child yesterday, the person I was talking to said; “You are so dating yourself!”

I am. And that is just fine.