An interesting thing has happened to me as I age. My paradigm of how I see the world has shifted. It started when I began wrestling with the idea that the sun didn’t actually rise or set. It was earth doing the moving, and I wanted to shift my language to say that. It continued to change when I realized, several months ago, that seeing was a passive activity. Light was coming to me. So, last night, as I did a three a.m. ramble and stood outside under the stars, my face turned skyward, I knew I was being bathed in starlight, in much the same manner as when I stand beneath a warm shower. Interesting feeling.

In this time of my disappearing, my aging, my eventual demise, I am not unhappy, depressed nor otherwise distressed. In fact, as I have been through all my other phases, my childhood moves, my sojourn in the Navy, my trip through higher education, marriage, children, and various career changes, I am excited for the opportunity. The past is very much the past, and now is what I have to live for, and I want to ensure it is time well spent. It is a chance to learn.

I felt myself enter into a new period of my life in November of 2023. It happened when I came down from Guadalupe Peak, exhilarated and tired, exhausted more precisely. I’ve mentioned this before and I mention it again because now, as usually happens with my new life phases, it’s coming into sharper focus. It’s the time of disappearing. And I think it’s a universal thing that happens to all of us as we age and make our way out the door or down the drain of life.

Fed the cats this morning and on my way back into the house found a Walnut Sphinx Moth hanging on the screen. What a nice set of wings. Swept back. Ornate. Didn’t seem to be the type of guy to flutter aimlessly around a lit light bulb. It disappeared at first light, or so I imagined. I wasn’t there when it left. I’m not sure what it will eat around here, we don’t have many trees it might like. I guess the little cherry tree might be considered a nut tree. We’ll have to see.

One of my gardens is freshly planted and the others are more established. In the established area beneath the big oaks, the vegetation is so thick it’s difficult to walk and I’ve given up going in after unwanted plant species. Mostly I work around the edges until the edges get established and I move the border. Occasionally, I move a plant from shade to sun as the border moves. I did that last year with two salvia greggi. They’re now flourishing.

I think I’ve really settled into this retirement thing. Granted, I’ve been at it for a while, and my wife’s illness and death threw a kink in the works, but life seems to have evened out. I write in the morning, run errands, and do yard work. Take yesterday. I wrote. Went and got a haircut. Had my oil changed. Stopped for lunch. Talked to a friend on the phone. Came home. Cleaned the pool. Watered a few plants. Took a walk. Talked to my oldest son on the phone. Ate a light dinner. In the end it felt like a successful day. A nice older man’s day.

In the time of blooming things, spring, I like blooming trees. The orchid tree is covered in white flowers as was the sandpaper tree (Ehretia anacua) early on. Now it’s the time of the golden leadball (Leucaena retusa). The latter has had a bit of a hard life in our yard. A young buck took a fancy to it early on, and wiped his velvet with it. Then the hard winds blew and thin limbs broke. But it survives, fenced, and now blooming, it’s bright yellow offerings.

Yesterday I met a fox. He walked right up the driveway like he was heading to the cat food for a snack. I spoke to him. He stopped and listened, then continued on his way. He seemed relatively unperturbed that I was out there. I followed him for a bit as he walked around the pool, sniffing as he went. Every once in a while he stopped and looked at me, but he never got in a hurry. He just went on about his business.

I’m like a dog with a bone, I guess, I find something and I can’t let go. Which means, as I dig through my life and find something interesting, I want to write about it even if it might be a topic that makes someone uncomfortable. That’s how I came to write about my wife’s dementia and eventual death. And that’s how I now come to write about politics. It’s a thing in my life, and it interests me even though I’m not a political scientist with tons of studies, and degrees to match. Although, in this day and age, when you can get a degree from a search engine, the latter means nothing.

I’ve had a good spring in the gardens and around the house. To prove it, I can barely lift my left arm. Now, it might be that I slept on it wrong, but it’s more likely something happened during a mulch bag lift or a turning fork throw as I dug up coastal bermuda. I  don’t know. But there it is. I went to use it the other day and it was painful. I think it’s a sign I need to slow down. Which is okay, because I’m a fan of slow, especially these days, my days of elderliness.

Here I am again trying to make sense of the political turmoil, which may not be turmoil at all for a lot of people. I suspect because some people think it’s totally out of their control anyhow, so why worry about it, or they’re happy with what’s going on, because they agree with Grover Norquist, who famously said, “I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.” Which means they probably think Reagan had it right when he said the government was the problem.

It was a dark and stormy night. A porch chair blew into the yard. The wind made unholy noises. The house creaked and moaned. It was a disconcerting evening since the house is clad in stone and has always felt sound and sturdy. I longed for a wind gauge, but I’ve long since given up on electronic weather stations. And this all happened in advance of the red and yellow on the radar that said, here comes the rain. In the end, I trusted the construction of the house, and found sleep. And when I woke, there was rain, and the house still stood.

I went to get a document notarized the other day and met a woman who knew my great-grandmother. Making polite conversation she asked where I lived. When I told her she started talking about Ms. Cammack and Ms. Pruett who used to live there. She knew them because her folks ran the grocery store just down the street in town, and that’s where they shopped. It’s the first time since I moved to my dad’s hometown to ever meet someone who knew his grandmother. Surreal.

I took down my bird feeder. It went from being a high end place for titmouses, wrens, cardinals, and the occasional painted bunting, to being a dive bar for sparrows with raucous comings and goings and food on the floor. I’m going to investigate other options, but for now I want peace on the porch. I’m leaving the bird bath, because everyone needs a drink and a good dousing and it’s fun to watch the birds flop around in the water, and I imagine it will be ever more popular as the summer wears on. I’ll be back with food but I just need to find the right feeder style.

Commerce. The bane of all artists. The pit in which they must slog. How to do what you love and make a living. It’s a conundrum. Early in my life, I took my love of words into the world of in-house publications in the oilfield, traveled through the world of book publishing, and eventually ended up editing drilling and completion manuals. It wasn’t Dickens, but it raised three kids and gave my family a good life. Early on, I tried my hand at science fiction on the side and did some magazine freelancing, but eventually they slid away.

Wow. I just had a moment. Prepared my coffee. Hit brew. Stood looking out the window. Realized there was no cup. Whoops! Inexplicable madness? Nope. Distracted. I realized I’d made an error setting up a product in my storefront, and each cup ordered was costing me money. Not a ton, but enough. I’m not looking to become an oligarch with these mugs, I just want to publish a book. I’ve been busy this morning making corrections.

I’m in an odd spot. I write this blog almost every day. And it’s free. And I feel like I know almost all of my readers, and I consider them to be my friends. This happened because the first posts were basically Facebook posts. Then Facebook decided to add a blog type feature, and I started using it. Then they cancelled it, and I moved to an independent website, GatewoodPress.com, set up a business page on Facebook, and voila, the blog continued to appear on Facebook. I did this to facilitate the publication of my book in 2021, The Caregiver’s Tales: The Long Goodbye, about my wife’s dementia.

It’s a lovely day in the neighborhood. It was windy yesterday and not so lovely. But it’s still now, and cool and that feels good. Springlike. Our need for rain continues, but I am beginning to despair. We have the month of May and most of June before the official start of summer. I’m afraid, however, we’re going to be in for a goodly stretch of hot and dry with only occasional showers. We need a monsoon.

The stage lights have dimmed. The building is empty. The show is over. My tour is done. It was fun. It started in Austin and ended in New Braunfels. Two stops. Two stages. Two days. There were no trucks, no crew, no dancers. It was just me and my guitar and my kit bag. I sang my songs to mostly appreciative audiences. It should be noted there were other people on the bill at every stop, so I wasn’t ever close to headlining. Still, there I was. On tour.

Well, the big couch is gone. Off to a place of charitable giving where I hope a family will find a place for it. It was made by Bassett so I think there are a lot of years left in it. Meanwhile, my front room looks airy and open as planned. Next up will be the old entertainment center. It’s sort of sectional, which means the top, housing the TV, can come off. The TV will go on the wall. The bottom will continue holding my electronics and the top will get the turntable and pictures.