The day opened directly under a severe rain with strong winds. From my tree house bedroom windows, I could see great gashes of lightening accompanied immediately by claps of thunder  The solar generator had to fill in for about 10 minutes until the compromised electrical grid returned to service.

The drama, particularly the lightening, made a fitting start to the 56th anniversary of Sallie Parker’s death by lightening. Since 1959 when Sallie was killed, this day more than any other commemorative event —  say my birthday, birthdays of my sisters, parents and children, wedding anniversaries, Victory over Japan Day (just kidding!) — has provided me with a moment to reckon. Though I can’t explain how, August 4th 1959 was life changing for me. Over the years, I have wondered how the events of that day have reinforced my hermetic nature, made me weary of close friendships, or otherwise contributed to my personality traits.

August 4th, because it ended her life, never became an important day in Sallie’s year. My calendar for this day now includes two other recurring but secondary events for me:  the birthdays of my step grand daughter and my brother-in-law. I’m grateful to them, though I doubt they know it, for the reminder not to sink into too much navel gazing on this day. Clearly, after 56 years, I no longer melt in misery. But the wound left by this loss is indelible — more profoundly permanent than the loss of husbands or even parents who lived long lives.

The day has cleared and calmed. Red-tailed hawks are calling instructions to their children as to how to catch the wind or circle the meadow for prey. Two pairs of Monarch butterflies who inhabit the meadow are likewise circling, but closer to the tops of the grasses and silently.

As the sun sets, I’ll go to the beach to join a memorial service for my friend, Cynthia. She got 63 more years out of life than Sallie, did but it would not be a mistake to say that she died too young as well.

Goodness! I barely had my bee keeper’s veil zipped on but I completely forget my art historian headdress.

Did you know that for $298.71, a very specific price I note, you can have a hand colored reproduction of Hans Memlings’ Adoration? A web search for images reminds me that the iconography of the Magi begins in earnest in the 15th century in the North and is everywhere in Europe from the Renaissance until the 18th century.

Here are a few images captured from the web. Botticelli, Perugino, Gentile da Fabriano, Corregio, and Murrilo are a few other artists that painted the Magi and whose paintings are reproduced on the web.

The sun at noon today was only 28.6 degrees above the horizon. Yet atop my bowl of cottage cheese at lunch sat the last of the tomatoes from the garden. In truth, I picked this tomato before I went to DC over 2 weeks ago.

Today was also the real start of the folly building. The town finally issued a permit. The building inspector approved the holes dug for the concrete footings. Thompson Lumber delivered the white oak beams. The builders showed up.

Also today I attended a lecture today on making a meadow. The lecturer said you should not attempt a meadow if you are a neat or control freak. I’d agree with the former but argue on the latter. A meadow is the direct result of a meadow maker intervening to prevent succession.

It would have been better to ask about the cloudy water before swimming for an hour.

“The chlorinator just kicked out on us last night. The water will be back to normal tomorrow.” This is America, so the Y official with this message must have considered the safety of the pool water when he allowed it to stay open. I had just finished swimming about a mile in the murky stuff, and I was wondering how I would know whether the sickness I was about to get was the result of the three black-legged deer tick bites I had recently received or swimming in what must be a polluted pool.

His comment splashed me back to Almaty, Kazakhstan, February, 2004. I was there working for three weeks so I needed to keep up an exercise routine. The Lonely Planet mentioned that the city had five 50-meter pools where, in Soviet days, Olympians had trained. Wouldn’t that be fun, I thought. I could swim in each of those pools. I knew without seeing it that my hotel’s pool would not be conducive to lap swimming.

Almaty seemed to be a swimming town. Even the hotel pool was almost lap swimmable.  Still, I asked the concierge where I’d find the pools listed by name but without addresses in the guide book. Her horror was palpable. “Oh, no, you will swim here,” she said that day and every day when I persisted in my quest. “Those pools are dirty,” she kept saying. “I have shower shoes,” I kept answering. She would not help me.

Thinking the problem was too many years on her part in a fancy international hotel, I asked the translators working with us for help. They knew the pools, but were no more eager to help me find them than the concierge. In desperation, I took a Swedish team mate who spoke some Russian to one of the pools I had found when exploring the city.

The building did not seem to be open, but we walked around to a side door that was not open but also not locked. Inside a woman was cooking rice in a steamer and washing the floor. How dirty can it be, I thought. No, the pool was not open; we could hear people inside. No, I could not just take a look. No, there was no other time when I could return to swim. NYET was the answer to all of Paula’s questions. Paula, too, gave up.

I went by myself to another, what appeared to be much smaller, pool. Surely this was not one of the 50-meter Olympic pools, but my time in Almaty was running out and by now I had a small vocabulary and some questions written in Russian with which to ask about swimming. The door was open. Women attendants wrapped in layers of black were in abundance as were young girls getting ready to swim. Encouraged, I started asking about swimming. I got the usual string of “nyets.” Finally, one attendant slapped a postage-stamp sized piece of paper printed with several lines of Russian — centered, I remember — into my hand.

“Dermatologist,” the attendant said in disgust at my thickheadedness. “Woman doctor,” a young swimmer said. Suddenly “dirty” meant not the locker room floors but the unchlorinated water.

Things may have changed since 2004. I went back to check the Lonely Planet — this time online — to see what it said about swimming in Almaty. Five pools mentioned previously have been reduced to one recommended one. Check out that last line “No medical certificate…”!

Lonely Planet review for Rakhat Fitness Swimming Pool

And right here in the US of A, I was swimming in water with a broken chlorinator — whatever that is.

I did not get sick. But, the Y pool closed for six weeks to replace the old filters with a new system that does not depend as much on chlorine to keep the pool clean. The water is decidedly more appealing, smoother if that’s possible, but I still wear shower shoes in the locker room.

It could be a parlor game, if people still played those: describe the person whose clothes are hanging on the line. Not to mention that hardly anyone hangs clothes on the line to dry anymore either. The clothes hanging on my line recently attest to a certain 20th century, East coast gentleman.

The clothes came from a trunk my father took to the Pacific in World War II. The trunk has been in a shed at my summer house for a long time, but not since Armistice Day. If the clothes now in the trunk crossed the Equator, they were under consignment to an American clothier.

The clothes he stored in the trunk were ones he would need when he came for a visit. Work clothes of course, because he was an unstoppable inventor of clever solutions to house and garden problems. Handles perfectly positioned on the guest house stairs where there is no hand rail or a section of an old 8 x 8 beam with 2 6″ galvanized nails hammered in its end to keep a hose at an ideal height and in position as it entered the vegetable garden, to name two.

He liked to travel light, so the trunk also contained various clothes he knew he might need but did not want to pack: summer pajamas, two polo shirts one with his Princeton class of ’41 reunion emblem, a mock turtleneck, a Brooks Brothers blue button-down dress shirt, uncharacteristically florid boxers, very characteristic shorts in khaki and navy, a couple of hats, Nike tennis shoes converted to work shoes.

I had not thought to check the pockets before putting the clothes in the washer. After all, my father is dead so his pockets must be empty. But no, a pocket in a pair of shorts had a cotton handkerchief. My father, who never used a Kleenex, could always produce a handkerchief from his pocket. A pocket in the work shorts had a small piece of sanding cloth, not sandpaper and not steel wool, but something in between. Like the handkerchief, it was something he was going to pull from his pocket to use.

A pair of cuff links also went through the wash. Cuff links? In a shirt of my father’s? Brooks Brothers, blue, button-down, each bespeaks my father. But I only remember cuff links in his tuxedo shirts and those were small and button-like linked by a chain not bold, chunky squares of enamel with a hinged post. He did not wear jewelry — not even a wedding band.

He did sometimes buy clothes at thrift stores. A tall, good-looking man, my father followed protocol in his dress and always was impeccably dressed, unless you take away points for thrift store pants that were not quite long enough. Maybe this dress shirt was in the trunk because it was “extra” — picked up at the Johnnycake Center not on Madison Avenue in NYC.

I’m going to keep a pair of long work pants because I can use them. I’ll keep the blue Brooks Brothers button-down collar dress shirt as well, but more as a memento than to wear. I hold that handle on the stairs and run the hose between the galvanized nails. It’s Father’s Day, and so my parlor game.

The letter from the attorney for my father’s estate and trust explained a number of matters in paragraph after paragraph. Then wham: “[your] life expectancy will be 18.6 years.”

Eighteen point 6 years! I better do everything I ever wanted to do. I can no longer overlook getting my affairs in order. I made an appointment with my haircutter. “Can you cut my hair short in the back but leave it long-ish on top?” As a result, I have SHORT hair.

First experiment in these final years of my life is with looking like a man (my father?) or a high powered woman (Christine Lagarde?).

My similarities with Christine Lagarde, besides the hair cut, might start and end with the fact that we both receive monies on a regular basis from a Bretton Woods institution. Christine Lagarde’s letter from her father’s attorney would offer her 31.3 years of life (as a French woman her life expectancy is 3.7 years longer than mine and she is almost exactly 9 years younger than I am). Likely I have more in common with my father, although we now know his life expectancy exceeded what the IRS expected by 24.65 years. If those are the tables my Bretton Woods institution uses, my genetic heritage may upset the pension fund calculations.

So how many more hair cuts do I have time for? Send in your suggestions for other models, but note that I’m over Lady Di. Also there is the matter of supply. So far I have enough hair to cut, but my life supply of hair is a further unknown.