Where did SIX years go?

Six years since the previous post--who says that Life is Short? To me, it is very long, and just keeps going on and on and on.

   The family situation has settled into one of no one talking to anyone, contacting anyone, which works a whole lot better than the previous sixty years of pretending. Expressions like "Time Heals All Wounds" have lasted because they are so true. Let a few years go by, and whatever was bothering you fades into the distance behind. It is difficult to admit that your siblings are not good people, but once you are able to admit it, you are free to move on.

    This summer has been interesting because I do not have a car/truck. I sold my truck in June, and have been looking for a replacement. Until one is found, and this will be a challenging task, because it must be perfectly lovely and extremely cheap, look for me on the sidewalk. I may be looking for a car for decades...but being a "walking person" has opened avenues of understanding for me. Now I know what it is like to depend on your feet, and on bus transportation.

    Walking at least two miles a day has caused my feet to feel sore each afternoon--not painful, just sore, but being able to go into the heated pool helps. Waiting for buses, there's the rub: You have to time your activities so that you are at the bus stop, but, most of the time, the buses are late. This means that you must have something to do while you wait. Some of our stops do have covered benches, but most feature the hot Florida sun, with nowhere to sit. I have learned to find shade near the stop, and wait in that shade until I see the bus, then hurry to where the sign is. Once I did not hurry fast enough, and the bus driver did not stop. It was raining, too. Riding the buses builds character through the humiliation. Fortunately, the rain, here, is not cold (but it does make you wet, so that when your bus, finally, does come, you freeze in the air conditioned cabin).

    Most passengers are very poor, very shabby, and very unappealing. They represent a world that I, seldom, enter, and that makes it an adventure, every time. One bus I ride goes by the County Jail, and I have seen women, some with toddlers in strollers, get out there: they are so young, and I feel as though I am watching sadness and failure, especially in the babies. They have no chance, and had no choice: they are going to spend their lives on the margins of society. Their dad was in jail when they were born. That has to be worse than losing him to war.

   This has been a very fast six years. A friend told me that the decade between sixty and seventy flies by, and he is right.