69. Pop

I call Pop out of his room for some fresh biscuits. He says, "Getting up early really takes it out of me." He went to a doctor's appointment this morning. I don't go through the old song and dance about how the problem may be that he goes to bed so late, at two or three in the morning. He is not going to change. But he does look like he takes a beating when he only gets a few hours sleep, and I worry that it gives old age a chance to take him down.

70. Racing the Rain

I look out the window and see the trees being lashed about hard in the winds. It is shy of five o’clock in the late afternoon. I was planning on mowing at seven, but it is heavily overcast and relatively cool, and I am awake enough to appreciate that this would be a great opportunity to knock out that mow, if only I can hurry and beat the rain, if it does ever rain. It’s worth a gamble.

As soon as I step outside I can immediately feel the slightest precipitation on my skin, and if I were not so determined to get this chore done, I would have found grounds to reverse course and put off the work for another day, as I am usually happy to do. But I am geared up, and I figure that all I need is a good thirty minutes of fairly cooperative weather and I can do it.

And I am really moving out there. It’s like I am still in my twenties. The way I am ducking to pick things up from the ground and rushing back to the mower, and cutting to and fro across the yard, I am positively simian in my agility. The rain started to pick up its pace when I had only about a half-dozen rows to cut, and I just ran the mower up and down, before the grass got too wet. I did not even have time to empty the mower bag in the end, but I got the chore done.

This was actually a great experience for me, to feel so youthful, even athletic, but I am paying for it now, as my body registers its protest and threatens me with a dire warning if I persist in such foolishness.