1. Just to give myself the illusion of some degree of luxury, a while back I ordered a new set of gray cotton sheets for the bed. In the world of bed sheets, I have no idea how 600 thread count cotton sheets stack up against other thread counts, but Debbie had bought a set of ivory 600 thread count cotton sheets earlier in the year. I liked them, decided to retire an older set of brown sheets, and so I bought the gray ones, laundered them today, and put them on the bed in anticipation of a night of fresh softness and comfort.
2. After taking a week off from performing his weekly Tree House Concerts so that he could focus on compiling a bunch of his poetry into a collection he'll publish, Bill Davie was back in action today.
I've probably mentioned that I don't enjoy drinking cocktails or beer alone. For Bill's concerts, I don't feel alone. I'm online with longtime friends I hung out with in Eugene and at Whitworth and so it's a fun time to mix a cocktail and enjoy it while my entire self beams throughout Bill's performance. Tonight I stirred myself a dry gin martini up. I poured from the fifth of Crater Lake Prohibition Gin I received from Kathy and Rob Harper and garnished my drink with two of the plump martini olives they gave me. It was a most enjoyable drink with a slightly more herbal profile than, say, Tanqueray gin. I want to make the Prohibition Gin last a while, so when I mixed my second martini, I switched things up: Tanqueray and brine from the jar of martini olives: a quick and easy and delicious dirty martini.
Bill rocketed out of the gates to start his concert with one of his hard-driving, slightly insane older songs, "Go". As the night went on, he played some, in his words, more "incantatory" songs, like "Notebook" and "Sway". Bill also played one of my very favorite of his songs, "Walk on the Day Before". That song is lodged in my memory, I hope accurately, with performances Bill gave in Eugene and elsewhere around Oregon -- at my house, Buffalo Gals, Smith Family Bookstore (Eugene Celebration), Allann Bros. Coffee in Corvallis, a coffee house whose name I've forgotten in Yachats, and other venues. I have many, many friends attached to those memories and two of them, Kathy and Loras, were once again on hand to hear Bill's concert tonight. "Walk on the Day Before" helped me relive great times with Kathy, Loras, Terrie, Janet, Bill, Terri, and others. Those were times I'll always cherish and I loved having them come vividly alive tonight.
Bill also read terrific poems by George Bilgere from The White Museum and a moving essay by Donald Hall from String too Short to be Saved: Recollections of Summers on a New England Farm.
3. Upon crawling under my brand new freshly laundered cotton sheets, I read two pieces from Donald Hall's book A Carnival of Losses: Notes Nearing Ninety: "You Are Old" and "Solitude Double Solitude".
Both essays explored things dear to me. Granted, I'm about twenty years younger than Donald Hall was when he wrote "You Are Old", but even at the age of 67, I am coming to grips with certain aspects of growing old, chief among them the growing numbers of things I've lost by now. I lost my golf swing and, with it, the game I once loved to play. I've lost both my parents and two brothers-in-law. It's been nine years, but I lost a dog I dearly loved. We lost two more dogs just in the last year and a half. I've lost much of my kidney function. I've lost the experience of sleeping through the night without interruption -- I make anywhere from four to seven trips to the bathroom every night.
I'm losing memories. A Little League teammate on IOOF, Rocky Schultz, turns 67 on December 30th and I can't remember if we were also Babe Ruth teammates on the Schaffer's team. I know Ken Carter was on Schaffer's. I know Ken and I both popped into the world at Wardner Hospital on December 27, 1953. Was Rocky, born three days later, our Babe Ruth teammate, too? It seems like it wasn't that long ago that I could have recited the entire starting lineup of Schaffer's -- but not any longer. So many things like that are gone, possibly recoverable, with others' help, but, for me, alone, gone.
There's more, but I'm going to switch to the other essay. In it, Donald Hall relishes the many hours of solitude he's spent in his life writing for a living. Until his wife, Jane Kenyon, died of leukemia, at age 47, in 1995, Hall and Kenyon lived the days of their twenty-three year marriage combining solitude with companionship. Each day they wrote, Hall at one end of the house, Kenyon at the other, in solitude. They lunched together, napped together, were afternoon lovers, and then retired again to their solitude in the late afternoon to work some more before rejoining one another for dinner and their evenings together.
Hall composed his essay, "Solitude Double Solitude" in his 80s, having been a widower for about twenty years. From time to time, the solitude he has cherished for much of his life descends into loneliness. He lives in isolation on an old family farm. He has fewer friends than he once did. His times of being alone are broken up by a friend Linda who spends two nights a week with him and by Carole who does his laundry and helps him with his pills.
Starting in September of 2018 until now -- and this will continue for a yet to be determined amount of time in 2021, I've lived alone in Kellogg for about 20 of the last 28 months. Debbie took a teaching job and then did some subbing in Eugene and she's spent several months helping our daughter's family in New York.
For about 16 of these 20 months living alone, I actively sought out activities and companionship: I went to live concerts, lectures, plays, high school basketball games, to Billings to see Hiram play with the President's Own Marine Corps Band; I went on road trips with Byrdman and Ed, hikes with Byrdman and once or twice with Stu; I took a week long trip to Oregon and another one to British Columbia and I spent a Friday and Saturday in Missoula to see a live concert and do some wandering around. Late in 2019, I began making trips to Spokane to meet up with Mary, Kathy, and Linda (we rode over together) to play trivia and I also met up with Mary and Kathy to see a movie, dine out, and hang out a bit.
Debbie came home for nearly six months in mid-March and we decided to stay mostly isolated together in the house.
Debbie returned to New York in August and I've been spending almost all of my time since then at home alone.
I've maintained an even emotional keel throughout this time. Any loneliness I might feel has been eased, in part, by the frequent contact I have with friends, almost entirely by electronic means, and by being in touch with Christy, Carol, and Paul regularly and by our decision that by taking precautions, we can enjoy family dinner together on Sundays.
But, I think the one thing I've done that's been the most rational, the most steadying is to accept my situation. For the first several months that Debbie was in Eugene, my support for what she was doing never wavered. But, I desired a different way of communicating with each other than what we were doing. My craving resulted in suffering, a suffering that didn't end until I quit trying to make things be the way I thought I wanted them to be.
So maybe I can add to my list of things I've lost or am losing as I turn 67 is the diminishment of my will, the quieting down of my craving for things to be other than what they are. With this loss of craving has also come my loss of loneliness and a much fuller appreciation of all I can and do enjoy in the solitude of my life. Accepting the limitations that I've decided to conform my life to in the last 9-10 months has meant living a much more peaceful life, more peaceful than when I would pity myself or feel frustration and anger that life was not conforming to my desires.
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