First the Mourning. Then, the Work

When I wake mornings, I look out the window and across the street at 'my' trees first, which are not mine at all except in the sense that we come to think of as ours all  the things we truly love. I see them bare and bony right now, though they toss with buds in spring, and are all ruddy at the top, like kitchen matches, in the fall.Watching them yesterday as the sun edged up over the horizon, I saw something I had not noticed before: cast into perfect silhouette by the horizontal rays of its rising light the familiar peaks and gables of my own house, sewn like Peter Pan’s shadow onto their barky breasts.It startled me, as a reflection caught and given back to us in passing shop windows startles; and it reminded me of something, elusive at first, but then coming clear: Old photographs taken at the dawn of my life, in those dear quiet days of the corduroy overalls and the very-early suppers.I have these photos, as everyone else does, piled in a shoebox, recording us children costumed for some school play, or rosy-cheeked in snow. And in many of them, more than our photographer-grownups ever intended, appear, lying in the foreground across the swath of green lawn or white snow, the shadows of the grownups themselves, with the hairdos and hats of another era, heads inclined and shoulders hunched in concentration over the small magic boxes of their cameras.They thought to record us. I see now with keener eyes that they also recorded themselves.Thus do we sense the light press of our presence in the world, I thought yesterday when I woke: intermittently, and almost by accident.But we are in the world, and we can do more than we think.Watching the outpouring of emotions here on the internet stands as testimony: we can rid our society of gun violence. We can make the world safer. Think of the saying widely attributed to Margaret Mead: "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."This next week: the mourning. Then, the work.

Sex and Men

I’m shootin’ the breeze with a coupla older guys I see in the course of my weekly rounds and don’t they start talkin’ about women:“So here’s the deal,” says one. “Women in their 20s and 30s will sleep with you on the fourth or fifth date.”“That’s true!” says the other, “but with women in their 40s and 50s it's a WHOLE  different thing.”“Right. Women in their 40s and 50s if they'll see you at all - bang! - it's right to bed on the very first date!”“Plus! They're very aggressive!" says the one. "They're always slidin' phone numbers across the bar to guys.”“I had a woman do that with me just last night!” says the other.Meanwhile here's me in my highly married state and what do I know? My last date took place when Three Dog Night was the hot new band.So I ask a question:“Why do you suppose that is?”“Why? Because the younger ones are still playin’ the game. And the older gals are DONE  with all that crap,” says the one.“They’re grownups” says the other. “If they see something they want, they go after it.”“Exactly,” says the first. And suddenly I feel like Margaret Mead, only not short with the weird hair of course - that's old Maggie at the top there -  but in the sense that she was an anthropologist. Were these guys reporting an actual phenomenon or was this just a kind of performance on their part, some sort of joke like God made in designing baboon bottoms? I do seem to remember hearing that the Samoans who Mead wrote about later said they made up half the stuff they told her just for laughs and maybe these guys were doing that too.Who knows?  I’m sure no expert - except I do know that however ‘willing’ these older gals may be, on that deep, deep level that not even speech can’t touch men are hard-wired to want to do one thing and that is  to pass on their DNA  - which leaves our 40- and 50- year-olds either singin' the blues or sighin' with relief you tell me.And speaking of singing can we ever tire of this? Ann Renfroe's take-off on Beyoncé's All the Single Ladies?[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaruNs_7okY]