April 2026. I am most content with life when regularly writing about its past, present and future. Yet, for three months now, words have failed me; the page or screen before me remains blank. I find something, anything, to otherwise occupy my time. Today, this must change…right? Even in my increasingly circumscribed (by age, energy, desire) life, there’s so much to think and say and share about this time and place. My home, family, and friends, constant sources of activity and pleasure. Books and stories, real or imagined, told in many forms, enrich my life every day. A trip here, a visit there, an entire planet of geography and history and literature to be shared… I am so fortunate.
First things first…speaking of the pleasure of sharing! I have a fine new great-granddaughter named Leila. She’s healthy and amazing and, her father says, quite loud. I was thrilled by the advent of this new person in the family, and filled with happiness for parents and grandparents and other immediate family members. But it didn’t feel particularly up close and personal to my life. Too many years removed, too doubtful of the time to know her well, too far away with travel increasingly awkward. So, I was relatively satisfied with a distanced joy concerning the big event.
But now. As I see the photos of her morphing into her own self before my very eyes, I’m feeling the pride and excitement and eagerness to know her that I felt way back then with Leila’s mom. And she’s definitely her mother’s daughter, so like her… It’s nice. Anyway, I’ll see her before too long and, even though I am more than a little awkward with small babies, I’m sure we’ll come to be friends.
Let me cautiously approach blogging in general before my often-stated love of writing proves as elusive as it’s been these past months. No expectations of myself for any topic worthy of an audience. Simply some words to record life being lived, this overcast day in Albuquerque, feeling, well, droopy… probably as good a descriptor as any. I’m watching Ken Burn’s Civil War, after finishing The American Revolution. Having spent way too much of my reading time since dt’s inauguration on the great wars of the 20th century, their casts of characters, causes, bloodshed, and desperate aftermaths—I thought it an interesting idea to return to the 18th and 19th centuries and our very own continental wars and bloodshed and desperation. Damn men and their never-ending greed and violence.
What else? New living room carpeting. That’s exciting. I’m told old ladies trip over area rugs. Not me I say. That’s why I’m a treadmill-regular at the gym…so I can walk properly. It’s amusing in its own way, all of the things that stop working ‘properly’, as birthdays come and go.
Travel blogging will resume on a Denver trip for a Paul Simon concert with friend Bob. And there may be serious Minnesota time this summer. And climbing Kilimanjaro in the fall. Feeble joke attempted!
I herein state my intention to resume blogging.
The focus will be, at least to begin, a project called Decades. More next post.