TakeYourMedicine

I’ve been in and out of a funk for too much of the summer. I’ve been trying to sell my house since spring with only a couple of tire-kickers showing any interest. My beloved Doc will probably retire soon, and I’ll be looking for other work. I haven’t done anything remotely vacation-ish this summer; I’ve just been working to maintain the house that swallows up what money I make. I don't even live there anymore.

After a particularly difficult night, which followed a perfectly miserable day, I felt that this morning called for some sort of intervention, some effort at a boost. I downed my meds, ate a proper breakfast, and decided that my Maddie-dog and I would begin our day with a hike at a local wildlife preserve.

The trail starts with a loop around a pond. There, perched on a folding chair, was a fellow with his fishing pole. He was a barrel-bellied guy wearing a cap that said, Born to fish, forced to work, and a t-shirt with a rainbow trout on it.

“What do you get from this pond?” I asked him.

“Not much.” He shrugged. “Fishin ain’t catchin, anyhow.” He waited for us to pass and then chucked in his line.

It was a beautiful morning, but my heart was heavy anyway. I’d had a discouraging interview with a new real estate agent yesterday. She’d presented me with a lot of data as to why my house wasn’t selling. What was the point? I’d been wondering. The house is about all I have that’s worth anything. I’d changed to her office in hopes of more innovative marketing and had instead been advised to lower the price—again. It seemed that it would never sell, that I’d be stuck in New England forever, that I’d have too little with which to build my house on the Oregon coast. Buzzard luck.

Still, Maddie and I plodded along, one foot in front of the other. We slipped through the dappled light that the sun cast through the trees, climbing. Just what I needed, I knew. Push, push. Let those endorphins kick in.

Later, as we came back to the beginning of the trail, our fisherman was still there.
“Just what do they stock this pond with?” I asked him.

“They don’t.” he said, meaning the Fish and Game people.

“So, do you ever catch anything?”

He lifted the lid to his bucket. In it were three big bass. “I think the guy at the bait place put some in. I’ve gotten big perch here, too.”

For someone who didn’t depend on catchin to be fishin, he was doing all right.

When I got home, another wave of depression rolled in. I called my friend Robin to push past the loneliness. Our conversation picked me up enough to get me out the door and into the office. I spent a fair enough afternoon doing some work, then headed for the garden to weed the roses.

There’s a sign in our kitchen: “When the world wearies and ceases to satisfy, there is always the garden.” I sank the garden claw into the devil grass that invaded the rose hedge, worked in handfuls of blood meal, and soaked the shrubs. Ahhhh. Maddie chased after the ball and finally sank into some shade on my neighbor’s lawn while I worked.

Finally I looked up to find my darlin’ watching me. “Did you forget about the show tonight?”

I had. For a moment I thought I wanted to stay with the rest of the roses, but this was Ruthie Foster in an outdoor venue where lots of little kids would be running around and tangling themselves in the hammocks near the stage while their folks got some music. Ruthie Foster from Texas playing some blues. The roses would be there tomorrow.

God, she was good. The publicity compared her to Aretha and Ella. In Vermont, the whitest state in the union, I think that means She’s black and she sings really well. Whatever the labels, she was great. That sweetness, that range, that intensity set me free. She played a great guitar. She did a nice little riff on her church back home, the Amen Corner, the preacher, her uncle’s piano playing--funny and kind. I bought both her CDs.

I think I need to focus more on what I do have: someone who reads me poems morning and night, songs that sail the summer breezes, roses that bloom, are pruned, and bloom again, friends who trigger my laughter, even a good guitar of my own to play.

From satisfaction in these things will come whatever buckets of bass we need.