Rainy and Cold With a Chance of Sunburn

I was heading for Swarthmore PA to see my friend Bobbie who tried to tell me it was going to be 49 and raining in that leafy little town but I guess I didn’t believe her. I showed up in sandals and a couple of flouncy, Cher-style angel-sleeved tops - only to be greeted by a day that was 46 degrees and raining so hard the goldfish in her Koi pond out back were seeking cover - and fish are already wet, you know? Lucky for me she lent me sneakers, some fat wool socks and a heavy sweatshirt which I wore the whole two days I was there, over not one pair but both pairs of the pants I had packed.

to lift our spirits We thought we’d go to Yoga and when it was over this nervy young class member came up to me and said she could see I’d been having trouble with this one pose where, with your legs wide open and knees locked you bend from the waist and yes, rest your head on the floor. She said she thought we should take a minute while she helped me get it right. Now the teacher had just told us when we started that she never lets people face toward the mirror since in Yoga the journey is supposed to be inner. She didn’t want us looking at ourselves, never mind having other people look at us.

I didn’t know WHAT to say to this young woman.

“Come, shall we try it?’ she said like some camp counselor. “Oh but look I'm not barefoot now," I said lamely pointing to the fat wooly socks Bobbie had given me and which I had just donned for everybody’s favorite part of Yoga when, right at the end of the class, you get to do Corpse Pose and pretend you’re dead for six or seven minutes.

“I’ll brace your left foot with my foot so it doesn’t slide,” she said brightly, and, dope that I am, I let her and I tried to DO the pose, and in that totally unbraced RIGHT foot starting slowly sliding so far from the midline I thought I’d break right in two like a wishbone. Instead - boom! – I fell clean over and saw my little skeleton clatter onto that hard wood floor like a stack of tipsy teacups, which caused the young woman to apologize quickly and and hightail it on out of there.

Bobbie was fuming. “Who did she think she was? We should report her!” she sputtered. Instead though, we went back out into the deluge, ran a couple of errands and went home to her house which was as dark and cold as crypt in that the 8^th hour of rain.

Then – sigh - I couldn’t get manage to get online and do the whole column writing thing that I’m paid to do and when I finally DID get on and wrote for a while and came here it was to discover that all my nice photos had one by one erased themselves. Then I called my spouse back home who said, “Nobody misses you, the cats haven’t even asked," which I know I’m supposed to know by now is code for " I miss you and the cats are suicidal" but still… Plus I spilled coffee all over my sweatshirt and had only my Gidget Goes Hawaiian get-ups and so was getting really really cold and also now my bones all hurt.

But Bobbie drew me a bath and she and her husband built us a fire. She made this amazing homemade food, lentil soup and rice pudding and a salad with many lettuces fresh from the garden, which we washed down with some fine wine except I decided to pretend I was in a Hemingway novel and so drank whiskey with lemon juice, and we were all in our beds by half past nine.

All this was on Tuesday. When we woke yesterday morning the sun was shining and some total SAINT out there in Internet World had read my plaintive query about why my pictures were disappearing and gave me some tips for fixing the problem, and I had a bunch of nice emails about this week’s column which I wrote in honor of a favorite teacher of mine, just deceased at 102 and Bobbie and I took a walk on campus and by 4 o’clock yesterday I was home again in Boston and sure the cats are a little sore but I think they’ll get past it and Bobbie has just now emailed me a photo she took that morning showing the Koi pool where the fish were so happy in yesterday’s bright sunshine I bet they were just about swimming tummy-up.

(This is the pool. Goldfish not available for comment.)