Two Topics: Things that Make me happy & things that make me sad

Just sitting on the porch after a delightful dog walk with a neighbor lady who walks with us every day. Also every day, after we drive our neighbor home, my dog, UMA and I sit on the porch and enjoy the trees and the breeze for half an hour.

Today, I was especially enjoying the walk and the porch because early this morning I had to go to Cooper Med on Brace Road for a blood test and urinalysis - annual. I always dread it partly becaue I can't have my tea and muffin first thing in the morning as I am accustomed to doing. Also, even though the blood test doesn't really hurt, those techs are good at what they do - I DREAD IT. Even a week or two before my appointment, I begin to dread it. And I have to change all my morning habits. I have to get up extra early to get the dog walked before I can go anywhere and I can't take my heart pill until after the tests so I have to get there early or my heart will ache.

So today, as a treat and reward for getting up at 7:00 and getting it all done by 10:00, I got a croissant breakfast sandwich and latte' at the Station, in Merchantville. When I got home, Uma got a second walk with the neighbor which I followed with a porch sit in the gloriously cool and fresh Spring weather we are enjoying today. And sitting there, I felt happy and I thought of the things that make me happy - not in order of importance but in order of immediacy: My House - the actual longest romance of my life, My Porch, My dog, and my cats who love me, welcome me home and keep me company, A delicious meal from The Station - and especially since I don't drink coffee anymore the occasional treat of a latte' sends a caffeinated jolt of energy and well being through me. I am soothed knowing I have my sister as a strong right hand in my declining years and good company too, My friends such as my dog-walking-neighbor all of whom make socials events out of ordinary days. It is wonderful to have them to talk to.

THINGS THAT MAKE ME SAD - DEATH OF AN OLD FRIEND Yesterday, I received an e-mail that an old old friend from my far distant youth had died on Friday night driving his truck with his dog in the car. The dog wasn't injured, but Tom Nicholas must have had a stroke or a heart attack His brother-in-law is a high school classmate of mine and his wife was a year or two below us in Merchantville high school, so Ron Williams, the classmate and brother-in-law, got in touch to let me know about Tom's passing. His wife got in touch with my ex-husband.

Because I hadn't seen him over the years, I never saw Tom get old so he will be forever in my memory as the young man he was when I knew him most in the 1960's and 70's. He was my ex-husband's best friend and probably ONLY best friend as neither of them were particularly outgoing or friend- making. Tom went to PCA and he was the first artist I ever met and he often showed me his paintings. He was also a poet and each year he sent me hand drawn Christmas cards with haiku poems on them. He lived as a hermit in the forest of Northern New York, up above Plattsburgh. He built his own cabins. He had had one or two lovers over the years but he was a difficult man, needy, demanding, and not particularly accommodating. My ex-huband, and I often stayed in his hand-made and beautiful woodland cabins over the years before our divorce. I have baskets I made from birch trees in the forest up there. I would sit and weave baskets while we all smoked pot and lounged around along a stream or in in a small sun-lit pasture in the woods. I have a perfectly round stone that I found in a stream one day when we were hiking and crossed a rocky, fast flowing, clear water stream. It is PERFECTLY spherical.

This is one of the things that happens when you are my age - 78 - old lovers and old friends die and remind you that your time is nearly up. Someone recently mentioned a box in which you and others put mementos that have meaning and send it to another group which does the same and after it goes around to several groups, it comes back and goes on display. If I did that, I would put in the box that perfectly round rock and think of the stream and of Tom Nicholas. The dog was taken back to the shelter from which Tom had adopted him, sadly. I don't know anything more about the story - who found the truck with the dead man and the dog, whether it was heart or stroke that killed him, whether he will be cremated or buried. I may never know that chapter. I may never know anything else about any of it.

Happy Trails, Tom, wherever yours may be old friend. Tom wrote spontaneous haiku so here is one for him:

Old man dead behind the wheel at the roads edge Bright green Spring and yet an end.

wrightj45@yahoo.com