Dead Letter Department #132

weather report

We’re in a grey and drizzly patch, before the sun & heat come back, and I am doing my best to revel in it, to feel lucky when friends in other places are struggling under the weight of massive heat waves. The joke around here is that summer doesn’t really start until after the Fourth of July, so it’s coming, but this morning it was just me and the grey skies & the hummingbirds in the fuchsia for garden coffee after breakfast.

I’ve been working on the garden, putting in a couple of things I always wanted to have, filling the new planters next to the steps, weeding out & remulching the bed where I put the new bare roots roses in the spring in the hopes of giving them enough sunlight to be happy. The nasturtiums by the back gate are beginning their orange glory & my single sungold tomato plant has produced a number of tiny green nubs which will hopefully eventually become full fledged and edible.

I think I’ve finally managed to work out some sort of more reasonable schedule for caretaking & work—creative work in the early morning, which is the only time it really feels like my brain works properly, still fresh from sleep, chores for my mom and as many appointments of hers as I can bundle in the afternoons, side gig in what’s left of the afternoon, yard chores after dinner. The days still feel too full, and I don’t get as many stretches of uninterrupted time as I would like for any one thing, but I am at last making progress on multiple fronts. The new project is starting to wake up, creep into playlists and television watching, start to possess other parts of my life where it can churn away until the next time I sit down to work on it.

One of the big house projects has been helping my mom do a massive clearout and reorganization, something between Marie Kondo & Swedish Death Cleaning, to get her home more in line with her current needs. Part of this is about accessibility, with the walker and less physical flexibility, and part of it is about actually making space for what’s she’s into these days, as opposed to having an archive of past projects & passions. To be frank, I thought she’d find it moderately emotional; I did not think I was going to struggle as much as I have with sorting through the past, watching her let go of things she doesn’t think she’ll do again. I feel like there’s a massive cultural pressure to only see old age glancingly until we’re in the weeds of it ourselves or with people we care about, and it leaves us—it has left me, anyway, unprepared.

We went to the Juneteenth celebration down at Maritime Heritage Park, purely by coincidence, since I didn’t think we would be able to park close enough for my mom to get there. It was great, tons of booths of crafts and local businesses, an MC trying to get people to dance followed by praise dancers, which I’d never had the pleasure of seeing perform before, and a fry bread stand. Eating fry bread with honey in a park on a warm day while people dance and sing around you is really one of the great possible summer pleasures, and I cannot recommend it more should you have the opportunity.

reading room

I have been extremely fast & loose in the library free books section lately, to the point where I’ve had to talk to myself sternly about growing piles & actual reading speed to keep myself from going down those stairs when I pick up my moms many large print mysteries every week. But is it my fault the pickings have been so good?

I just finished Butter, found on the free shelves, by Asako Yuzuki, translated from the Japanese by Polly Barton, which I thought was going to be about a serial killer seducing & murdering men—and it was about that, but also about what it means to be a woman in a society with impossible, ever tightening standards, the cost of bucking body image standards, what it means to learn how to feed yourself and the people you care about underneath all of that weight. It also made me crave butter, preferably with rice and soy sauce, in a way that was positively uncanny.

Next up is Mirror Dance, another Lois McMaster Bujold book, since J has delightfully also fallen deep down the Vorkosigan well with me & we’re getting to talk about it in semi-real time, and then another collection of Didion essays, since I’ve been trying to spend leisure time at least partially thinking about style, with so much of brain occupied with plotting these days.

one good thing

Sometimes a man is in need of a small bag of emotional support Cheetos. I love them too much to have big bags, because I would eat more than I actually enjoy eating, and therefore I know various places in my neighborhood where the small bags can reliably be found, including Elm Street Market. I was just pulling into a parking place in front of the market when I heard a sort of low thud, and my car rocked back and forth. At first I thought I’d hit a sign or something (not out of the question), but then I realized that the car pulling out next to me was the culprit, so I scampered out & waved down a very confused looking woman.

It was evening; she was tiny, I am a short but very wide man, so I did my best to project friendly calm as she got out and we both looked at the cars.

“I think you might have hit me,” I told her, doing my best to sound as non-accusatory & it could have happened to anyone as possible.

“Oh no, the sun was in my eyes,” she said nervously, so I said, “Oh sure, of course, just let me make sure there’s no damage or we’ll have to exchange information,” and then for some reason, probably my own nerves, instead of doing the assessment in my head like a sane person, I pointed out to her the various body damage my car already had, saying, “Well that was already there, and so was that, and that, but I don’t see anything new so I think we’re fine!”

We were both so relieved, me about the cars, her that I was not some weirdo with nefarious intentions in the parking lot, and her dog, an enthusiastic white lab who had been hanging half out of his window for the entire interaction, that I finally stopped poking around at the side of the car & came to say hello. His name was Pickles, and we could not have been more delighted to meet each other.

Thank you as always to my subscribers, who pay for the hosting fees that make sending this newsletter to you possible, and to the Real Mail subscribers who give me a reason to send things in the mail. More soon, and in the meantime may your own library free shelves be bursting with things you’d never have found otherwise.