The Off to College Moon
Sunday gratefuls: Ruth. Ginny. Janice. Flannel. Cool mornings with a hint of the wheat harvest in Nebraska, the Aspen leaves beginning to consider gold to celebrate the season, Wild Neighbors readying themselves for mating. Heat no longer dominate. At least for now. That .4 PSA, may it go lower and yet lower, ye unto undetectable. Laughter. Joy.
Sparks of Joy and Awe: Ginny and Janice
Kavanah: LOVE אַהֲבָה Ahava Love, affection, intimacy; from אהב to bring/give to another
One brief shining: Joanne and Alan both came forward, smiled a smile of relief after our breakfast when I got the news of my lowering PSA, asked for hugs and got them there in front of the Parkside as Debbie watched with her kind Whippet eyes, her graceful black and white body alert but comfortable with her human companion nearby, tender times in fractions of minutes.
Have a hankering, maybe even a yearning for a Whippet now. After I met Debbie, from Cheyenne, Wyoming, her human said, Buck and Iris, Emma and Bridget, Hilo and Kona each came to mind. Their muscled, athletic bodies. Their love of the chase. Of running for the sheer joy of it. Of introverted Emma walking out to the end of the fallen Cottonwood, surveying our yard from its height. Of fleet Hilo looking back at me as she took off away from the fence she’d just mastered. Of Buck with a squirrel in his mouth, confused. What do I do with this? Delicate Iris. Strong Bridget and Kona.
Little Hilo, the smallest of them all, nestled under my armpit each afternoon for our naps. Sweet, kind dogs. No meanness in them. Small enough that I could manage them. So torn about getting a Dog or Dogs. Yes. No. Yes. No. Could I even be granted Dogs? At 77.
Leaning into the idea right now.
Just a moment: On Baseline Road, across a heavily protected bicycle lane, I turned into the neighborhood known as Willville. In one of its newest towers, 700 students, sits Ruth’s first floor room with three freshmen residents: Ruth, Rayne, and Atoshoka. Ruth has a loft bed while the other two sleep on floor level beds. The room, from a picture Ruth showed me, is narrow, barely big enough for one imho. There several other towers. Willville houses thousands of UC Boulder students. It requires a bike or bus ride or walk to get to the main campus.
I took her to the Dushanbe Tearoom, a gift to Boulder from its sister city of the same name as the Teahouse, the capital of Tajikistan. She ordered genmaicha and I had a white silver needle tea. We sat outside near a branch of Boulder Creek, very narrow, up which Catherine, our waitress, said a scuba diver swam a week or so ago. Odd, even for a college town.
Ruth’s eager to get to work. She sees herself as academically inclined and I agree. She’s at the university for knowledge and training in studio arts. Not an MBA. Not an engineering or science degree, but a BFA.
Oh, the first days of college life when the world and life opens wider and wider. Of course there’ll be bumps and scrapes, why wouldn’t there be? But they’re part of the broader education.
So exciting for her. And for me.