But I realized I was indeed hungry, so we stopped by Jackson 20 and they said, alas, they wouldn't be serving food until 5. We walked around for another hour, during which I saw two things I loved. I bought one of them: a decorative ceramic plate to hang on the kitchen wall. I passed on the other: a large oil painting, impressionistic, my favorite style, a cityscape of a rainy day, with reflections on a wet sidewalk. A few small brushstrokes of vibrant color became 5 ladies in kimonos on the sidewalk. I loved it, I thought it was a steal at the price of $1300. I didn't buy it, because I'm in debt after the remodeling, after all, and I have one more semester of law school to pay for and, and, I Do Not Spend Money On Unneccessary Things.

At 4 pm I was feeling tired and suggested we have a glass of wine at Jackson 20, then order food when they started serving at 5. I knew when I said it that drinking one glass of wine would change my perspective on life and open my wallet. This is a fact of which I've been aware for at least 20 years: when I've had just one glass of wine or one beer I become very nearly a different person. I lose the ability to do math or write code, and I buy things I like without worrying about the cost.

I've learned to trust this alternate me. I've never regretted a purchase I've made under the influence of a glass of wine. Some fundamental change in my brain chemistry makes me, maybe, someone I like better than my sober self. I tell myself I've worked hard to get a good job, by the sweat of my brow I can afford this painting, and anyway, anyway, it's a thing of beauty and I will love it every day forever. So after we'd ordered the food, before it arrived, I ran back to the artist's booth and bought the painting, and carried it back to the restaurant, where we'd snagged a small bistro table outside, and I leaned it up against the railing and we praised it while we ate. Then we loaded it into the back seat of the Jaguar, where it stood up well above the back of the car, and drove down the George Washington Parkway with the top down and the wind flapping the plastic wrapped around the frame, and it was probably the coolest pure moment of my life so far.

But I miss this place. Facebook is a step up from Twitter, but not a very big step. Although there are no limits on the size of entries, the feel of an ongoing conversation doesn't lend itself to lengthy posts. It's mostly one liners--at most a short paragraph. And it's not the place for introspection.

So this morning, here I am back on the blog. An hour from now my son Michael will toss his suitcase and backpack in the trunk of my car and I'll drive him to the airport. I'll pull up to the curb in front of Air Canada; I won't turn off the engine or get out. I'll pop the trunk, and Michael will get out, get his stuff out of the trunk, and immediately walk away, turning back toward the car just enough to wave goodbye.

At 2 am tomorrow morning, my time, he'll arrive at Narida International Airport in Japan, where it'll be 3 pm. Maybe I'll be asleep; maybe I'll look at the clock and try to imagine what he's seeing and feeling. He'll be in a strange place where he can neither speak the language (beyond disk one of Rosetta Stone) nor read the signs. He'll have to find his way to Tokyo, to an apartment management office, pick up keys, and find his way to the apartment he reserved a month ago. He'll have to find a grocery store and everything else one needs to get by. Soon he'll have to find Waseda University and the law school there.

And I won't be there help him, and I wouldn't be much help if I were. It's tough, for a parent. It's not the first time, though, nor the hardest. It never gets easy but it does get easier, and this time, Michael has bought a new camera and created a blog, and I'm looking forward to reading it very much.

The fruit of my labors, so far: just the squash--I didn't grow the garlic. The garlic is in the picture to give an indication of the size of this itty-bitty butternut squash, which was the first to succeed in my small patch. There are a few others still on the vines--larger and more traditionally shaped than this one.

Prescott, Arizona is a nice change from Alexandria, Virginia. Out of the dense green sauna, into the dry, low mountains of central Arizona. I enjoy the local wildlife. Quail are abundant here, as are geckos --my mother calls them Geicos, a triumph of advertising.

This afternoon we'll rent Marley and Me, the first but not the last dog movie we'll watch while I'm here. I saw it myself recently, but I'll enjoy watching it again because Marley could be my dog. Saint looks just like him: a 100lb field lab, exact same color, same face. And although my dog has outgrown some of the bad behavior--as a puppy he chewed furniture, rugs, shoes, and the woodwork--he still has Marley's energy level. Saint is a graduate of Olde Towne School for Dogs, but he's still a handful, and only real dog lovers can be called upon to feed him when I'm away.

On the flight here from San Francisco I read this poem by S.P. Somtow, in "Armorica", the 2nd book in the Riverrun Trilogy. I offer it to my son.

At the End of the Forest

And so, at last, I left the darkling wood.
I came to the cave where I had left my mother,
The hearth I loved, the bed in which I'd dreamed
Of these adventures.

I came upon my kinfolk
As they supped, telling old tales to warm their nights.
I said, "Mother, I have returned, with gifts
And stories, conquests, jewels, and a bride;
I have slain man and dragon; I have ravished
Maiden and crone; I have lived dangerously,
Stooped, beastlike to drink water from the stream,
And quaffed celestial manna from gold goblets."
My mother said, "My son, take out the trash."

"But, but," I said, "what of my lurid tales,
My battles and my witty conversations
With saucy knights, my exploits the bedroom?"
"Yes, yes, my dear, but first, go wash your hands,
Or you may not sit down to sup with company."

Only that night, when I lay down to sleep,
Did she consent to hear my tales of woe,
Of joy, of passion, courage, and survival;
And then she wept full sore, because the son
She loved had been through so much suffering.
Then she did kiss me gently on the cheek
And say, "The places you have been, the conflicts,
The fierce encounters, and the nights of passion,
These places all are marked upon a map;
The map is called The Human Journey.

"So,
Although, my son, you have traversed the world,
And conquered love and death, and grown from child
To man, there is another thing to learn:
Your journey is the journey all men make,
An exploration of the human soul;
And I am still your mother.

"Let me kiss you,
And tomorrow I will bake you a fresh loaf
Give you a new condom and clean clothes,
And you shall venture forth again.

"The journey
Is forever."

So, I planted some herbs in a couple of large pots outside my front door, and I planted some winter squash seeds alongside the house. Now I have things I must remember to water, but I'm better in the garden than I am in the kitchen -- I have a houseplant that I've had for 17 years -- so I'm optimistic that I'll have herbs right outside the door all summer, and a nice crop of butternut squash at summer's end.

I cooked for myself tonight, which is something I frequently feel inspired to do and usually regret. I made an Indian dish--Aloo Ghobi. I've made this dish maybe a dozen times, and I've burned it every single time. When it comes to cooking I have attention deficit disorder: if I think I can wait five minutes before stirring something again I sit down with the laptop and twenty minutes later (if I'm lucky) I remember I have something on the stove. I can reliably make pasta and soup and that's about it. Oh, and toast--I can make toast, too. Which is apparently proof that I have sufficient skills to survive. My mother is still in the rest home following her second hip replacement surgery. She's getting occupational therapy, and recently had to demonstrate that she could make toast. If you knew my mother, you'd laugh as hard as I did. If, that is to say, you knew her history regarding toast. My mother has no more patience with cooking than I have.

Hurray for Daylight Savings Time.
I love Daylight Savings; I love long evenings. Going on DST every year feels like coming out of a dark tunnel. I feel like I have a life when I come home from work and there are still hours of daylight left. I play outside with the dog every evening, I sit on the porch.

The Devil's Chore.
I spent a couple of hours pulling ivy yesterday. English ivy has metastasized in my yard--it's everywhere. Pulling it out is backbreaking work. Bend, pull, bend, pull, bend, pull, pull, pull so hard that when it gives way I stagger backward. Then bend, pull some more. I filled four large lawn bags and if you don't know where to look you wouldn't know I'd done anything.

Deja vu all over again
Those of you who have been reading this blog for at least a year will know that this time last year I was in Prescott, Arizona, staying with my mother, who had just had hip surgery. Sometime within the next few weeks I'll be going back out there for the same reason. Same surgery, same hip. The joint became infected. They had to go back in, take out the prosthetics, clean it out, and put in new prosthetics. Poor woman! I don't know when, exactly, I'll be going. My mother is in a "rest home" (a lower level of care than is provided in a "nursing home", apparently) getting physical therapy. I'll go out there when they send her home. So, I'll be spending another couple of weeks sitting with my laptop, watching DVDs of movies about brave dogs finding their way back home. The only cool thing about this whole episode? The place she's in right now, the therapy she's getting, they call it "rehab". I get a kick out of telling my son "Grandma's back in rehab."

Ugh--remodeling
I'm having some long-postponed work done on the house. I'm not talking about adding an addition or a gourmet kitchen or a marble bath here; I'm talking about pulling out 18-year-old carpet in the basement family room, and the vinyl tile under it, and the asbestos tile under that, sealing a drain in the floor (!?) properly, and putting in a "floating" engineered hardwood floor. The basement has never flooded, but before I had the backyard graded a couple of years ago the carpet became wet several times during heavy rains. And then we got a puppy, and, well, you get the picture. It was downright unhealthy. The basement is really more of a "downstairs" than a basement, since the house is on a slight hill and you walk out from the basement into the garage. The downstairs family room is where the TV and computer are, so it's where we spend most of our time.

Remodeling, cont.
And, at the same time, I'm finally getting the kitchen remodeled. The main portion of this house was built in 1950, when houses were divided into small rooms. This house had a small square kitchen and a small square dining room. At some point, probably in 1965 when an addition was built that added a new living room and dining area, the wall between the kitchen and the old dining room was taken out (mostly). The two rooms still had separate flooring (more 18-year-old carpet in the dining room), and in no way looked like one "big" kitchen. Now it will. It's not a major remodel--all the appliances will stay where they are, but the floor and cabinets will be new.

Formica makes some nice-looking laminate countertops
Let this forever be remembered as the Formica economy, as opposed to the granite economy of the past decade. Which brings me to...

Retirement? What's that?
*sigh* Back in March of 2000 it looked like I'd be able to retire by the time I was 60. Today, I have less than half the retirement savings I had then, not bothering to account for inflation, even, and I'm nine years closer to 60. Today, I can't foresee a time when I'll be able to retire. There are things I want to do: meditation retreats, volunteer tourism, riding camels in the desert, and so on. I decided this year that I'd have to find a way to do it all while I'm still employed, which means saving up the leave that I accrue at a rate of 24 days a year. The company I work for doesn't have sick leave or family leave or any of that--we get "comprehensive leave" which is supposed to cover it all. So 24 days may sound like a lot but it doesn't feel like much; I mostly use it up a day at a time for this and that. I made a New Year's resolution to save up leave until I had a month, then I'd go to Africa and volunteer at one of these places. Then my mother had hip surgery again. I have 11 days of leave accrued right now, and I'll spend 10 days of it with her. So it goes.

I despised Christmas letters until I started writing them myself a few years after my husband died. I was prompted by the thought that there were a few people, my husband's former colleagues, who might be interested in knowing that Michael and I are doing okay. I realized last year that I was sending cards to some of them long before receiving cards from them. I was getting cards in mid-January, which can mean that they hadn't planned to keep me on their list, but felt obligated to respond after hearing from me.

Assuming they were genuinely concerned right after my husband died (three weeks before Christmas, 1999), enough years have gone by for my son to have graduated from high school, then college, so there is no longer any need for concern; no need to keep the memory of the whole tragic episode alive. And yet... any widow can probably tell you that at the funeral, there's this sort of reception line, like a wedding but not. Everyone comes and hugs you and says "If there's anything I can do, let me know."

It's just words. I mean seriously, do you think I could have called one of my husband's colleagues and said hey, I need someone to mow my lawn, how about it? If you do ask someone for help or advice, the answer boils down to "Pay for it." A dozen people told me to hire an attorney (including the friend who is an attorney, who wouldn't answer my tax-related questions himself), which I eventually did. But having said it, having said "If there's anything I can do..." placed a burden on the conscience, I suppose, that they will carry until I lift it.

So I cut back the list this year. I sent a whopping ten cards: six to relatives, three to friends, and one to the only colleague of my husband's whose card, and letter, arrive well before Christmas every year. The rest of them--the ones I dropped off the list--may well feel a tiny weight lifted from their shoulders when they realize they haven't heard from me this year.