It never ceases to amaze me how little I know, especially when it comes to digital technology, a field in which I assiduously have tried to keep up because I felt it was key to surviving in a changing business climate. I learned HTML, Basic, a large number of software packages, the Pick operating system, and anything else that would help further my education or my career. But this week I hit another void in my learning.

Spent most of Thursday driving around looking at the river. My river. The Pedernales. It runs through town, under highway 281. A powerful amount of rain fell west around Fredericksburg and gathered itself to run down the foothills of the Llano Uplift into the river. In Fredericksburg, the river crested at 34 feet. It spread out and lost steam as it got to slightly flatter ground. But it still rose to 25 feet in Johnson City.

It’s a gray day in the country. I’ve had a day and night of slow and steady rain. So, far one inch has fallen. I hear tell more is on the way. I’ll let the rain gauge run until the event is done, whenever that might be. There’s a chance of showers all the way through Friday. This is going to be an oddly cool July methinks.

My small-town life has closed in around me once again. The party is over. The kids are off to their lives. Friends off to theirs. It’s me and the house and the cats, and the latter is company of the vaguest sort. It’s times like this when, if you had a partner and lost them, you miss them once again because there would be a recap to ease the transition. But that’s definitely water under the bridge, although not that much. In three weeks, it will be six years since my wife died. Sometimes it feels like forever and sometimes it feels like yesterday.

I’m having post-birthday thoughts. By most metrics, I’ve had a long life. I’m five years past the lifespan of the average US male, and one year away from how long most US women live. Mostly I think it’s luck and genetics. In fact, it’s probably all luck and genetics. I didn’t pick my parents, and I can recall two instances where death nearly came knocking but turned away. Both involved cars, and both were in my relative youth.

On the occasion of my eightieth birthday yesterday I had one of those revelations that sometimes visits me and helps bring my life into sharper focus. In this case it had to do with friends and how I view them. Previously, I’ve seen my life as a journey across the landscape of time, picking up friends along the way and losing some too. There was always this idea of having left something behind.

It’s sticker burr season. I think mine are sentient. I know the common ways they get into the house. Pants. Socks. Shoes. Pets. But we have no indoor pets, and I’ve found so many recently in the house that mine have to be traveling on their own. It’s either that or I’m being inordinately careless when it comes to my shoes and socks. I’m going with smart burrs.

I thought I was getting a new phone yesterday. I thought wrong. The phone was ordered in Houston. I was to pick it up at a local store just down the road. I arrived. It was there. The clerk scanned my ID and went to clicking on the computer. At the end, came the message to call home. He called. He talked. He handed me the phone. I talked. Then I was told I couldn’t have the phone, the transaction was flagged.

I’ve found myself sitting a bit too much lately, and I think it might be contributing to some of my back issues. I’m taking steps to rectify the situation. A friend’s daughter is helping me find a physical therapist, and I already have a good massage therapist. Now I just need to be my own get-up-and-go therapist and get moving. It also occurred to me, however, that in addition to dealing with an aging body, I might also be wrestling with a mild depression.

It may seem odd, but I’ve loved all the places I’ve ever lived. East to west, north to south, any place I’ve ever called home always brought something to the table. I imagine part of the reason for this is that I never heard my parents complain, although there is a chance I wasn’t listening. After all, for most of it, I was a child, just happy to be. The bottom line, however, is still the same. I remember my surroundings with fondness.

Yesterday, I was sitting on a patio listening to music surrounded by people, most of whom I knew and most of whom I’d only come to know in the last twenty years or so. There was not a single person in the audience that I had known prior to 2004, yet many of them are well on the way to becoming close, personal friends. And I had the odd thought that if a potted plant were sentient this must be how it feels to find yourself in a new garden in the fresh soil of new friendships.

But last night, as I lay in bed and the wine wore off, I revised the analogy because life is more like a river and I’m a stone tumbling along driven by chance and circumstance. There was the luck of my birth, my father’s move back to Texas, the discovery of my future wife in downtown Houston, and the chance party where I met the musician I saw yesterday. In every case I paused long enough to gather the moss of friendships on my downstream side before being pushed on down the channel.

Although, at this point, I think I’m in calm enough water that I doubt I’ll get much further down the stream. I’m probably too heavy and the river’s lost interest. But that’s okay. Lots of people and pieces of my past lives are still with me, and this place and time is invigorating. These fourscore years have brought me much happiness, and if my past experience is any indicator the future portends well, and I am anxious to see it come.

I stayed home for most of Independence Day. Read. Worked in the yard. Talked to the cats. I think you can call that independence. When the sun set and the time came, I walked into town for the fireworks. I arrived just in time to hear the end of our national anthem and see the evening sky begin to light up with a colorful display of pops and bangs. I expected more people, but there may have been other vantage points.

Independence Day. Alleluia. The day we threw off the yoke of British tyranny, and a bunch of guys prepared to be hung if it didn’t work out. Luckily, for them it did. We celebrate by popping off fireworks, so it will be noisy this evening. I might walk into town to see what the local folks have planned for the main event. I can see it from my yard, but it’s better close up.

There’s a plant growing in the middle of my driveway, with tiny, tiny white flowers, each touched with a dab of yellow, bunched around a lavender seed. You can see them on your hands and knees quite easily. I have no idea what prompted me to look closer, but I did and now I can’t unsee it. It’s attractive, and I believe I’ll try to grow more of it. It’s called Texas Frogfruit. It will fit right in with the Straggler Daisies, also known as Horseherb, that occupy most of my yard.

It’s always the same. There is the injury. There is the acknowledgement. There is the recovery. Tuesday night my calf was screaming. Injured in my sudden retreat from the unexpected appearance of the red wasps, it wanted to bear no weight. The next morning it was tender, barely walkable, and I visited the clinic to ensure the damage was routine. This morning, what felt catastrophic on Tuesday, feels more or less normal. There is soreness, but I am ambulatory.

I believe my body has decided enough is enough. On the day I finish a course of meds for hip and shoulder injuries, I pull a calf muscle getting away from a wasp nest I accidentally disturb. The hip had me limping for the pain it fed into my lower back. Now I’m off to limp for the lower leg. I’d say it doesn’t seem fair, but I’m fairly certain fairness has little to do with it. It’s just my mind making promises my body can’t keep.

Chasing fame. It’s an odd passion. But it occurs to me that everything I’ve done in my life has been in service to that notion. From the first newspapers I sold as a child to Marines at 29 Palms through every job I’ve ever held since, I’ve either sold or helped to sell something. That’s what companies do. They want to be famous. Known. And they want people to give them money. Anyone working for them, in any capacity, helps to fill that mission.

As always, there’s more to the story. Yesterday’s dip into grief showed me how close it lies to the surface of other people’s lives. I lost a loved one who was loved by others, in ways big and small. Their loss is no less grievous than mine. A heartache is a heartache no matter how it comes to be. It is easy to forget, as I go about the business of healing, that my suffering might be carried by others. Of course, it also means it is not my burden to carry alone, and that helps.

Yesterday, June 27^th, would have been my 56^th wedding anniversary. If my wife had lived. Unfortunately, she passed away two months after our fiftieth in 2020. It’s strange the day of the anniversary should have passed unnoticed, while the day after brings back a flood of memories and one or two tears. But that’s the way grief works. When it first comes to visit, it sits with you all day, every day. Then gradually you grow apart, until finally you’re only bumping into one another at random times, in random places.

There are times, when for no clear reason, I find myself plagued by something poking me in a finger or a toe, and I have no idea how it got there. It only hurts when I bump against it, and it takes real work to find the source of the irritation. Sometimes it’s easily removed with a pair of tweezers or a finger, and sometimes it just stays there to fester, harden, and eventually go away. I think there are a lot of spiritual things like that. Little irritations that you discover by accident when you bump into them. They’re hard to spot and harder to remove and cause that little bit of annoying trouble that reminds you the problem is there, maybe to be fixed, maybe not.