On Time and the Beatles

Is it true that there’s no death? That we’re all still as young as these lads from Liverpool? It sure seems that way now because here come the crocuses,  thrusting their little mouths up into the light like baby birds eager for breakfast. It just makes you feel hopeful.Yesterday I took Uncle Ed out. He’ll be 90 this year and at five-foot-three  and 230 lbs. you could say he’s on the heavy side. You look at him and think “Heart attack!”  Then you remember he gets down on his hands and knees every week to scrub the kitchen floor and so what if he got stuck in that position when his back went the time he was replacing a nut at the base of the toilet bowl. He’s 89. And he has a very big tummy, and he was on his hands and knees, replacing a nut at the base of the toilet bowl.On the little urban pond we drive to every day we look at the seagulls perched on the ice melting away fast now like manna at noontime. “How do their fannies not get cold?” he asks. “I have no idea, let’s Google it” I say. I peer down into my smarty-pants phone and wonder how to frame the question. And we feel like a couple of Second Graders there in the sun. Maybe like these fellas above in the youngest picture I have ever seen of them, or like the earth right now: so full of possibility. So full of life.