10 a.m.
The water hurrying past sounds like a rapid-rhythmed ocean.
After what was certainly a discouraging week of losses for them, the frogs last night resumed their singing. Probably they are different frogs, from far upstream, and my frogs serenade the goats grazing near the creek the next place west.
My ex-father-in-law in Iowa writes that he's begun treatments against cancer. He's--what, 85?--but this alarms me. He's so alone. I am the only one who writes but for the occasional curious grandchild. All his progeny fled long ago. We've exchanged letters for three decades. He tells me stories from his childhood, provides recipes for bird suet and perfect compost and deer repellent, send photos of his fabulous vegetable gardens and flower beds, proposes marriage once or twice a year, keeps me abreast of how many days it's been since he took a drink (this time). Wails in pain and bewilderment over his lost family.
I charm him with my moves around the country, the remote places I choose to live in. Scold him a little for his relapses. Mostly I just receive his missives and respond "Yes, yes, I understand. I love you, too." Because I do, although I never volunteer my phone number.
Poor Harry! who lettered in journalism and served on a battleship in WWII, came home and married a chubby girl with a two-figure IQ who gave him four babies at five-year intervals, all far away now. He stays in the family home and keeps it ship-shape, neat as a pin, makes gardens that are the pride of Estherville, brags about how many starlings and feral cats he's shot from his back porch with his .22. I'm not so sure they're particularly feral, these unfortunate cats, well within the town limits. Harry loathes cats. And he knows how this activity infuriates and disgusts me.
The entire 30-year friendship based on the 10 minutes I spent in his presence in 1972. My husband Bruce was unwelcome in the family home because he refused to cut his hair. But I arranged to meet Bruce's ill-tempered right-wing dad privately to introduce him to his first grandchild, our son Josh, then 8 weeks old, because I wanted Josh always to have a strong connection to his fathers, and because it seemed an important ritual. So one rainy autumn morning I walked 12 blocks to the little white clapboard house on South Eighth Street, and Harry stood in the gloom at the far side of the living room and accepted Josh, who was dressed in his best little white-and-navy sailor suit, and who immediately began to scream, and kept his temper and spoke quietly to the baby, and then gave up and handed him back to me. We said little, I standing at the front door in my coat, ready to flee, Harry somber and passionate--he'd have been 50 then--his black eyes boring through me as he tried to size me up, this daughter-in-law from Los Angeles (another planet) about whom he knew nothing. And Josh screamed louder and louder until our tentative chitchat became impossible and I had to leave.
Poor Harry, who still doesn't get what a tyrant he can be. He's always been a fighter, never much of a lover, and he's got through all these 80-plus years only to go through this alone. I'd put my arms around him if I could reach that far.
12:31:42 PM 
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