Jinxaversary

It’s hard to believe that it’s been an entire year since I wrote this post. The spotted menace awakened us this morning with his usual antics, and I thumped him and pounded him and rassled with him and then I sang him a “Happy Jinxaversary” song to the tune of the overture from William Tell. Ever the astute critic, Jinx showed his appreciation by trying to pull my shirt off of me. After he ate, we went for a walk. We were standing on the side of the road when our cattleman neighbor drove past with an enormous bull in a cattle car, headed for the Saturday auction. The bull looked out through the spaces in the trailer, looking right at Jinx and me. We stared after him, and then Jinx looked at me as if to say, “Poor fellow.”

Re-reading the post from a year ago, I smiled at my perception of the panic over the Chinese virus, and I smile even now with a certain degree of smugness, because my family and I completely avoided ever becoming worried about the situation, recognizing it early on as a massive manipulation experiment.

I also smiled at my description of how green everything was in the natural world, because it is exactly the same today. When I walk up into the woods behind the house, everything is brown and dormant, but when I look down at our back yard, it looks like Ireland, a little emerald isle.  Speaking of Ireland, we learned last night of a singing trio of Catholic priests, two of the three being brothers, and enjoyed a few of the songs they sang. Here is one of them:

The green daubs are everywhere…the slender wands of the willow tree, the yawning, stretching daffodils, the Virginia bluebells up on the slope of the thicket, the wild green onions just out there in the yard, the branches of the forsythia. It will be just a short hop before the sound of lawn mowers will purr across the hills, and the watermelon scent of fresh-cut grass will fill every inhaled breath.

The time changes back to Daylight Savings Time tonight, which means no more long evenings of books and music in the soft lamplight. The longer daylight hours will mean finding chores and tasks outside, and seeing the twilight glow in the western sky even at 900 pm.

And then the first day of spring is a week from today. And then after that, Easter. I can almost feel the earth whirling in its daily circles. I can almost sense its course around the sun. I can almost perceive the motion of the solar system in its trip around the universe. All things move as they should, and they come around like the seasons, and they go forth in a straight line like arrows, and they hide from me whenever I grasp at their sleeves and sense how mysterious they are and try to get them to stop, to pause, to explain themselves to me. But they never do, and I stare after them as I stared after the cattle car this morning, wondering how this will all end up.

The day is beautiful, and my wife is beautiful, and Jinx is out roaming the hillsides we call The Baskervilles in search of rabbits and adventure — God grant that he find no skunks — and my heart is full of gratitude.

Jinx, you are a singular delight. Here’s to you, boy.

~ S.K. Orr