It’s always a trade-off I was told by a co-worker a long time ago, and it’s largely true what she said, the most recent example being the glorious unfurling of the trees and plants in which we take heart even as the wind-blown sticky pollen that coats our cars and throats and nasal passages prompts me to say, to those who look askance, “Don’t worry — cough, cough — it’s just the pollen, not Coughid.”
Covid worries and pollen aside, I can think of nowhere else I’d rather be at this time of year. It seems as if everything is well-attuned. Of course, it won’t last. Soon, all too soon, we’ll be fed up with the traffic, tired of bumping elbows, surfeited with summer, but for the moment I sense that all’s well, and that, somehow, we who’ve overwintered here deserve to be so blessed. Doubly so in my case, for in the merry month of May Mary was born.
I dare not think what my life would have been without her, a sad one, a lonely one, I think. She is the straw that stirs the drink, the cat’s meow. Her great gift, as pointed out to me once by one of her former Friends World students, is her ability to make people feel good about themselves. She can deflate egos too, if needed, lest you think she gives without stint, to her detriment. The world needs more, many more, of her, people who genuinely care for others, but have good shit detectors, who won’t abide oppression, or pretense, or falsity. How many do you know who are true blue?
How many do you know who are true blue and witty to boot? It doesn’t get better than that.
Surrounded as she is by journalists, it is evident that she, a lover of humanity yet skeptical, would have made the best reporter. Her glasses are not rosy-colored as are mine. She digs deep, she keeps me on my toes. She holds me, Cap’n Blithe, to account.
I learn from her, I laugh with her. As I said, it doesn’t get any better than that.