The Postscript

Jade is one of the new people I have met while spending time in Mexico. Jade used to be an eye doctor. But after retiring from medicine in her 60s, she decided to do something a little different. I’m pretty sure—no matter how much time I gave you—you would never guess how Jade now spends her time.

If having more refined tastes means I stop noticing bougainvillea, I’d be happy with the tastes I have, even if I never understood much poetry. Because it seems to me the ability to notice the beautiful in the ordinary is more important than recognizing the unusual.

Optimism can be clumsy. It can be ham-fisted. Disappointment and grief and setbacks and bad news and failures are all very real things, and the optimist’s impulse is to sweep them under the rug in record time.

A couple of weeks before our 10th anniversary, I suggested to Peter that maybe we should have a party. It was at night, so Peter was mostly asleep. I have found this is a good time to spring new ideas on Peter.

Peter and I will celebrate our 10th anniversary this week, which doesn’t seem possible for two reasons. First, because it cannot be possible that ten years have passed since we got married, and second, because it cannot be possible there was ever a time I was not married to Peter.

At this point, my cat, Felix, was alerted to the fact that something out of the ordinary was occurring and joined me in the bathroom. He surveyed my posture on the floor somewhat disapprovingly. “Mama, this lying on the floor is not a good look,” he informed me as he sniffed my eyes and mouth. I agreed.

I used to feel the need to apologize to my hair stylists, “I’m good at doing some things,” I would insist. “Growing hair just isn’t one of them!” The hair stylist would work away for long minutes, and at the end, I would get up from the chair and there was no hair to see on the floor. It was as if the entire thing had been a pantomime involving scissors.

Felix learned that if he got up enough traction in the carpeted bedroom, he could skid down the polished wooden floors in the hall, zoom across the living room, ricochet off the wall, and land on the couch, all in a matter of seconds. Our entire condo became a giant cat racecourse.

I thought as long as the bakery was writing “HAPPY BIRTHDAY” on the cake, they could just as easily write “HAPPY BIRTHDAYS!” followed by “22 & 91.” Then I could put a single candle by each age and simplify the whole complicated (but mandatory) candle-blowing-out procedure.

My grandmother lived to be 100 and outlived all her old friends. So she made new old friends. By the time she passed, many of her friends were closer in age to her children than to her, but she always seemed to have someone to talk to. And that is what matters.

Anyone who has tried to properly scrub their ankles while standing in a shower should save their skills and become a yoga instructor. Or a stork. It is not physically possible. There are creative ways to get one’s feet clean, but the ankles suffer in a shower. And before anyone tells me it doesn’t matter because ankles are covered by socks, I’d like to point out that this could apply to a lot of other body parts. It’s a slippery slope. If we’re going to be okay with dirty ankles, what’s next?

Instead of sharing a house with several cats and a rotating cast of dogs and birds, Felix is the only nonhuman in our house. He plays games with Peter and gets snacks several times a day. He talks a lot and has two people who listen to whatever he has to say, even if it is just his regular announcement of when he is going to have a bowel movement—which I’m sure is newsworthy as far as he is concerned.

It was not my intention to be so amusing, wearing the car wash dress. From a certain angle, it looks pretty stylish. It was some designer’s idea of a good look, and because I wear a smaller size, I can usually fit into these ill-conceived but affordable cast-offs I find on the internet. Not all of them work out. But I am delighted when I can cause some unexpected merriment simply by showing up in an $11 used dress.

There’s a story Stephen King tells about his first novel, “Carrie,” my more frightening namesake. The novel, to hear him tell it, was in the wastebasket. (This was in the days when documents were made of real paper and went into actual wastebaskets.) His wife, Tabitha, pulled the pages out, brushed off the cigarette ashes, and read them. She thought they were good. She encouraged him to continue. He did, and the rest is history.

In the U.K., many folks still use stones as a measurement of weight and, while I’m not a fan of getting too much information, this seems like taking it a little too far. A stone is equal to 14 pounds. Ignoring the situation until I had added on the equivalent of a retaining wall seems like more deliberate denial than even I could manage.

There is a reason there are so many songs about going home for Christmas. Many of them are from decades past, in the heyday of movie musicals. I imagine it must have been a challenge for songwriters, sitting around a swimming pool in Los Angeles, penning lyrics about snow falling and sleigh bells ringing and Christmas trees.

Felix races to the kitchen so fast his paws spin in place for a moment before he gains traction. He purrs so loudly I can hear him from the next room, as Peter assures him this is the most tuna he has ever received. (It is exactly the same amount every night.)

There is nothing wrong with our kitchen table. It’s heavy and round and built for the outdoors, so it did not start its life expecting to be a kitchen table. That is not a serious problem. But it occupies a large percentage of our small kitchen and has awkward legs. And so (because I have a far-too-busy brain), I had been agitating about this table.

The whole thing started with Reacher, an exuberant 75-pound Belgian Malinois, and his American expat owner, Anita. The Belgian Malinois is a dog often trained for search and rescue. You might have seen videos of them scaling walls. Peter never saw Reacher actually climbing any walls, but he never doubted his ability to do so if the need arose.

I had been putting off going to the dentist. I knew I needed to get work done where my gums had receded, and the enamel no longer covered where it was supposed to. I’ve been told over-exuberant toothbrushing contributes to this condition, so I’ve been trying to ease off. But I don’t really think my toothbrush is the cause. I’m just getting old.