Fog so low and thick the past two days it feels like night by mid-afternoon. A lost, red-tailed parrot roamed the neighborhood, looking for a friendly shoulder to land on.
The day before yesterday I watched a Monarch butterfly visit our pumpkin vines, which are huge. The day before that I had tea with a friend in the garden -- that day was sunny, and she reminded me that a few years back I made plum jam from the tree were sitting under.
She brought me a peach pudding she had made.
Tonight news from my daughter in the East Bay that her sunflowers are blooming.
Yesterday, after lunch with my three teens, I bought the oldest of them an early birthday present -- an 80 pound punching bag. Then we cut a small rectangle through the sheetrock to reach an ancient wood beam, where we could secure the metal unit holding the chain to the bag with long screws.
It took us multiple tries before we got it right, and he was able to borrow a power drill from a neighbor -- otherwise we never would have succeeded. He showed a quick and practical mind when the bag disconnected twice from the unit, and reduced the number of parts, eliminating the problem.
He impressed me in the process.
His great grandfather and grandfather were good at such things -- practical things, carpentry, home repairs, and the like.
I'm terrible at that stuff, which has always been an area of low self-esteem as a result. Why did the pragmatic gene escape me?
Yet, over the decades, many times I've been able to fix things, somehow, when I've been able to stay calm and patient long enough, often with the assistance of one of my sons.
They all know the routine. Dad gets very tense and almost angry, fearful and frustrated that something is broken or not working or needing to be repaired. He can't seem to understand any type of instruction manual, no matter how clear or well-written.
He is close to freaking out.
All three boys, by contrast, have the ability to stay calm and think clearly. They don't fight the demons that first started visiting their father when he was about five, trying to help his grandfather, failing, and being rejected by him as a result.
Instead they have to fight their own demons, the ones that started showing up as they dealt with their own father's many weaknesses.
It goes on like that, you see, generation after generation. We are often our grandfather's sons (or equally forcefully, not), much more than our father's. A similar thing can be said about girls.
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