October Morning Walk

I just returned from a canyon walk, and there were surprises all along the way. Maybe because I walked in a direction the reverse of my usual route, I saw caves and curves I’d somehow never noticed, and everything seemed new to me, and delightful. The world is different in the morning anyway, still sleepy-eyed with secrets. I saw the long shadows of trees in the golden light, a lone cyclist riding up Coyote (once my regular routine), and fields of blonde grasses strewn with bones and branches. I sat on a log and ate my favorite breakfast–leftover pizza–and felt an almost embarrassing sense of well-being.

I decided to go back by going up and over a steep hillside, cross-country. This would have been a good time to use my walking stick, but I hadn’t brought it. The ground was uneven, with unexpected holes and dips, and the grass was slippery. I landed on my rear end several times, and even thought about simply sliding down, but I rose again and made my descent with tentative little steps, relieved when I reached the creek and found a place to cross into Sacate Canyon.

October is a month of anniversaries for me, both joyful and sad. Thirty-six years ago I married Monte, one of my life’s good decisions. But forty-two years ago, my beloved father died, and in some ways, I have never recovered. Yesterday I tried very deliberately to conjure him up, tried to picture him standing right here in my living room. I sat very still and closed my eyes and directed all my energies to inviting him here.

I wondered what he would think, if he showed up. I wondered what I would say.

I love you is all I could think of…I love you, over and over.

Maybe interspersed with I’m sorry, I’m okay, I have missed you so much.

But mostly I love you. Because, really, what else is there?

Alas, my father didn’t appear, and it hurts to know how hard it was to picture him. Oh, I certainly remember what he looked like near the end of his life, and I could vividly imagine just where he would be standing, over here by the window, and I somewhat evoked the effect of him, more shadowy than solid, but I couldn’t quite summon up a sense of him as a physical presence in this place he would have loved, and I couldn’t hear his voice anymore to know what he would say, and the more I tried to picture him, the more vast and undeniable his absence became.

My father visits me in dreams, but he won’t stand here in my living room. He is a force and a knowledge inhabiting my soul, and I don’t want to lose memory of his real-world presence, tender and strong, but I am oh-so-far-away from where I last saw him. For now, we seem to have settled on a different way of being together, meeting on an alternate plane, sharing an ethereal kind of space.

———

Then, a few minutes ago, as I was working on this blog post, my daughter sent me a text with a photo of my grandson Felix, smiling.

“He was particularly delighted by everything today,” said my daughter.

I immediately replied, “So was I!”

And it’s true. Wasn’t I just typing about the delights of my morning walk?

So Felix and I were on the same wave length today, and I feel a real bond with this baby boy I haven’t yet met, grinning into the days of his very first October with goofy delight and a sense of wonder. And as the great-grandson of my father, doesn’t Felix too carry some of the story and the love of that connection?

It’s a whole other way to look at October…not so much significant dates, but a now bejeweled with joys.

October is so pale here, compared to my native place, but I have found its beauty. A certain slant of light, the enchantment of brown fields trodden by cattle, the warm colors of stones. The winding road looked white this morning, dusty and sun-bleached, and everything was surprisingly still, and I felt that I belonged in this world.

I like being an early riser. I think I may start setting an alarm clock.

I love you. I love you. That’s still what I would say.

____

Meanwhile, as those calendar pages turn, I'm looking toward November 3rd. One possible scenario shimmers: the people rise up against this bizarre regime with a resounding and unequivocal landslide, despite suppression and corruption and lies and the constant stoking of hatred and fear, and it becomes the most significant day in the history of our republic, the day we truly stood up, took a hard look, and set to walking on the uphill path of righteousness and compassion and decency. ("You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one...")