The Postscript

I know immigrants came for many reasons—to start businesses and escape oppression and to avoid starvation. But, as far as I know, my ancestors were in search of better dirt. And they found it.

I walk down the sidewalks, admiring these lovely houses, often at night, and sometimes I even peep through the windows. It’s hard not to when the windows are large and the lights are on. (My friend Verne calls me a Peeping Tom, and he may be just a little bit right.)

Peter doesn’t think the day of his birth is anything to celebrate. He’s happy to celebrate my birthday, but he says he should get to do what he wants to do on his birthday. And what he wants to do is not celebrate. So that’s what we do.

I was once told by a reliable source (my brother-in-law) that I must never get a fitness tracker because watching the numbers click up for every step I took would become a mad compulsion.

On a weekday, I was passing by the rectory. I didn’t know what a rectory was until I googled it and learned this was where the priests lived. A man in his thirties came out the door. He was not wearing a clerical collar, but I figured if he lived in the rectory, he would have to know what was going on. So I pounced.

We got the dock into the water. It was a little cattywampus, but it was more or less ready for another season. “I might need to get a kid to help me with some things this fall,” my dad said, as if this was a major concession at 92.

I remember the sweetness of Laura Ingalls Wilder describing Pa playing the fiddle by firelight in the middle of the Wisconsin woods, and I remember the horror of Hans Christian Anderson describing the house where the witch lived at the bottom of the sea, built with the bones of drowned sailors.

I have no idea how a goose landed on our balcony, 10 stories in the air. Landing on a narrow railing—even with a potted plant as a landing pad—demonstrates a kind of agility I honestly didn’t think geese were capable of.

In elementary school, I was never asked to jump rope. Jumping rope was popular when I was in elementary school, and I was not. I watched the girls jump and knew two things: I would never be asked, and I would be terrible at jumping rope if I were asked.

I think it’s important to celebrate the milestones in life. I don’t think a celebration needs to involve buying anything larger than a loon plush toy, or anything fancier than a plate of spaghetti with an old friend, but I think it’s important.

There is a principle in psychology which says that in order to slow time, you need more novel experiences. Childhood seems to last a long time because everything is new and everything is a first. As we age, we do more of the same things. This makes one day blend into the next, and one week into the one after that, and before we know it, ten years have passed without it seeming like any time at all...

I ran to the bathroom. “Put your head down!” But it was too late. Peter fell straight forward, like a falling tree. He hit the wall with his forehead, shattered the ceramic toilet paper holder, and knocked himself out. I am not great in emergencies, as it turns out.

I never thought much about how libraries work, probably because they work so well. No matter where I am, if I walk through the door of a library, I know more or less what to expect. The staff will be helpful. Everyone will be eager to answer any question I have. No one will be in too big a hurry to help. Everything will be pretty much as I remember it as an eight-year-old.

It was an old camelback couch, a loveseat really, but with wide, rolled arms. It appeared to be an older piece of furniture that had been restored. The fabric was crazy. It was a patchwork of burned velvet fabric in brilliant hues. It was the brightest, craziest couch I’d ever seen, and it was being sold alongside art and sculpture, which made sense, because it really was a work of art.

The interior of our apartment will set you right back to the 1980s. The Formica countertop has seen better days. I write in a corner of the living room and have exactly six inches between the back of my office chair and the end of the couch. Peter measured our apartment, and it is 400 square feet—and that includes a rather large bedroom.

I love ice cream. I have always loved ice cream. But I have noticed my tendency to eat it until my face goes numb and have avoided it. When I’m in Mexico, I walk by an ice cream shop every night, where I have bought ice cream before. It is good. So almost every night, I get to the ice cream shop, I pause, and I ask myself, “Should I get ice cream tonight?”

I stopped carrying dog treats because I feared that the downtown dogs (or their owners) might not welcome my treats. Maybe they were on a diet (the dogs, I mean). Maybe they had allergies. Maybe they would be suspicious of a strange woman doling out treats.

I was thinking there was really no point in complaining to your husband when you trip on the pavement. It might be your fault, or the fault of the pavement, or the fault of your shoes, but it almost certainly has nothing to do with your husband, and the odds are he is wearing sensible shoes.

When I divorced, one of the hardest things to accept was that I was going to lose this family I had been given in marriage, a family I had grown steadily closer to for more than 22 years. But that turned out not to be the case.

Every evening without fail, the street sweepers are out, sweeping every fleck of confetti and eggshell off the streets, a job that would be tricky under any circumstances, but is made much more difficult because the streets are made of brick and cobblestones.

Like a deeply dysfunctional relationship, my jade plants reward me for forgetting about them, neglecting them, and treating them badly. A near total lack of care and the lowest possible emotional involvement are disproportionately rewarded with growth. The guiltier I feel, the larger they grow.

Yesterday, I went with my mother and father, my aunt, my sister, and four cousins to meet with the funeral director. He was surprised. He had to scout up more chairs. 

It doesn’t sound like a lot. It seems like a pretty simple thing, actually, not a serious job assignment. It doesn’t sound entirely sensible, and it certainly doesn’t sound pragmatic. But I’m going to seek the good because this morning, it suddenly seemed to me that making a practice of seeking the good is a lot harder than it seems. And possibly, it’s more important than it sounds.

There are more books printed every day than anyone could possibly read. I have piles of books I intend to read, and the possibility of ever getting to the bottom of the pile seems remote. I am more than a little aware that there is no shortage of reading material.

I had visions of an endless line of Indian technicians—stretching as far as the eye could see—ready to write pleasant replies to a witless woman in the US. As I exhausted the patience of one technician, another would step into his place, producing an infinite supply of unfailingly polite and utterly incomprehensible technical jargon.