What’s the New Leaf You’re Turning Friday Round-Up

Bumping along is an almost irresistible occupation. It is so comfortable. So easy. It doesn’t require wearing pants with a zipper. And, if you’re a certain age, say, mid-70’s, no one expects you to do much more than bump along. No one looks askance at an old lady bumping along with her old man, both up to their necks in thick hoodies adorned with last week’s spaghetti stain. It’s all so cozy. But I am pushing back. Time to turn over a new leaf.

I want to buy a new suit. I got rid of all my business suits a few years ago. Pants suits with slightly flared legs – blue, brown, black. I’ll never wear these again, I thought, cinching up my oversized sweatpants. Well, I couldn’t if I wanted to since I’ve shrunk nearly two inches since my pant suit heyday. The pants would flop on the floor like a toddler’s too big pajamas. I’d have to hitch them up with safety pins.

The man being interviewed on the radio says that he thinks of death all the time. Until just recently I thought of aging all the time. And I mean all the time. I’d open my eyes and look out the window at the sun rising across the way and think, ‘I can’t believe how old I am.’ And then would ensue an entire day of my age hanging on me like $5 drapes from Walmart, hot and scratchy and ugly. Suddenly, that’s gone. I’ve crossed over to a magical, flower-strewn, twinkling, ageless existence. Which is why I need a new suit.

Now, the interviewer is asking another man if he’d decided what he wants served at his funeral. I’ve already thought this through so I’m feeling very prepared and on top of everything. I want really decent donuts and hot coffee served in red mugs. And then people can take the mugs home and put them next to their national park souvenir mugs and never have the heart to throw them away.

We are putting an air tag on Swirl. He often wanders into the woods at one of the dog parks we go to that is unfenced but a few days ago, he kept going, crossing railroad tracks, and trotting into a subdivision where a young couple found him and texted us while we wander around the park looking for him. I was down along the creek, mud up to my ankles, confident that I’d run into him, see him in the distance at least and then I decided that he was gone, had probably run into the street and already been killed and I started planning my life without him, a task I knew would come one day but not this soon. But I’ve been ready, I guess, and then the text. When we picked him up several blocks away, he was wagging his tail and nosing around the strangers, like he’d moved on without us. I don’t understand.