This date annually in Japan is a national holiday. It is known as Respect For the Aged Day. When I'm visiting my North Carolina home in mid-October I will attend my friend, Trudy Martin's birthday party. She will be 109. The party will be at her home where she has lived before I met her when I was six. She is on zero medications. Thirty years ago we began saying Trudy will outlive us all. Since then she has outlived her son-in-law and not only all of her friends but several of mine. I don't know why they call 50 "middle age". Fifty is only middle age if you live to be a hundred. I doubt I am at the pivot point of the teeter-totter.
I do wonder sometimes how close
to the falls I'm swimming and
just don't hear the roar, the water
draping over the edge
like a towel rack, me trying to touch the bottom
of a riverbed titled forward.
-- rLp --
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