Personal '60s #2

[Norma photo]
One internalizes eras. Back in my 59th year I realized my personal 60s weren't far off and it struck a chord deep within me, so I retired and haven't done a lick of work in three years. I feel better already.

There is a picture in my previous post of me in an oak in the 1960s --an era, a time internalized. The picture in this post shows it is also a time externalized. I now resemble the tree more than the young man in the old photo. So I let people climb me and sit on me, but only nearly weightless people like my grandson, Noah. We watched him today while his brother won a spelling bee. Looks like the Time Ghost (or Zeitgeist, thanks Austan) is correcting my genetic inability to spell a word the same way once.

Noah sat on the 60s in our old back porch. The 60s read him the funnies, with special attention to Mark Trail by Jack Elrod. Andy, the Saint Bernard, jumps on the bad guy even though all the guys, good and bad, in Mark Trail look like Mark Trail with different hairdos --sometimes very subtle differences-- but Andy always knows. When he jumps on them, the bad guys always say, "What th'...oof!"

Noah said, "Oof !"

We looked out at roses, iris, lavender, lamb's ear and an airborne speck enlarging from the woody end. A mockingbird arrived at the bird bath. Noah watched it splash and drink. He watched it flutter onto the pumphouse roof and go "TWEET". Noah pointed at it. He said, "Weet?"

Bird launched into his song, his catalogue of imitations. And I told Noah what they are and what it means to all sorts of birds that visit the yard and listen to the mockingbird's report: dove-coo means lazy cats that leave low nests alone; tree frog means good bugs in abundance and few snakes; owl-hoot means minimal egg-mouse disasters; percolating quail announces no dog. So maybe this is a good place to live.

I tell little Noah about the mockingbird much as the oak tree once tried to tell me about the infinite divisibility of time.

Time.

Hello Futurepeople!