Halfway Done

October has swept in with its blazing flourish, its browning, crumbling, scything sweep, making the cheeks ruddy and the shoulders shiver, remembering the heavier garments that have hung ignored for months, the articles of garb we don’t want to use but for which we are grateful when we take them up again. And now, in the middle part of the tenth month, we are grateful.

Our neighbor arrived Friday night with his loader and attacked the enormous pine tree that has reclined in his pasture since Palm Sunday since he hoisted it off our shared fence and dropped it on his side. Mrs. Orr and I reminisced about the day of gales when the tree tumbled to earth, missing our house by nineteen feet. A neighbor across the valley told me some time later that he had actually seen it fall. He told me that the wind twisted it like an unseen hand had been trying to twist a weed from the ground, and that the thing tottered for just a second before crashing down beside our house. Our neighbor, who owns the property adjacent ours, had showed up the next morning and set about moving the tree from the fence and then repairing the fence to prevent his cows from escaping. He told me that day he would take the tree away and burn it along with the other large burn pile at the far end of the other field. And so he made good on his words, and took the monster to the far area. He was attacked by yellowjackets hidden in the ground beneath the tree while attempting to move it, and stung in several places on his face and neck and hands. And now the tree is gone, with little trace of its ever having stood there. No more pine needles covering our front garden. No more piles of pine cones to be raked and collected and burned. No more vast shadow to the north. Like a man who was born, lived in a certain place, grew weary and old, and then died, the tree is now memory and afterthought.

We went yesterday to a town one state over and ate a light lunch in a favorite coffee shop, then browsed in an antiques mall, then got a soft-serve cone from a lovely little restaurant for the trip home. The remainder of the weekend has been spent reading and watching old movies and romping — as best we can romp — with the canine twins. The weather must be inciting them to mischief, because they have been quite a handful the past two days. I settled Jinx’s hash temporarily by putting his hated sweater on him. But then he brushed aside the humiliation and managed to wreak havoc across house and acres.

While in the car, we were listening to a local radio station that plays standard and Broadway tunes. A song came on and we listened in attentive silence, and I turned to my wife and asked, “Do you know this song?”

“I’ve never heard this song in my life. But I like it.”

And I liked it, too. and so here it is for you.

October is halfway done. Our lives are probably much more than halfway done. But they are our lives, and we’re damn fools if we don’t enjoy them as best we can. My wife said some very profound things the other day about gratitude and happiness, and I wanted to quote her here, but I cannot bring the memory back and remember the words. But when and if I do, I will quote that little Texas girl.

Rest well, dear friends.

~ S.K. Orr