He stepped inside, closing the front door behind him. She could see he had another one of his stupid grins on his face.

“Where’s the stuff I sent you to the grocery store for?” she asked.

He toed the floor and said, “I didn’t get it.”

“Why?”

“I ran into this old woman who sold me this magic device,” he said, holding up a plastic red button mounted inside a silver-gray ring with white-raised lettering that read “easy.”

“You gotta be shitting me,” she said, “That’s a toy that you can buy at one of the office supply stores for less than ten-bucks.”

“I know,” she said. “But she claimed it was magic. Jus’ make a wish and push the button. I haven’t use it yet. I wanted you to be the first.”

He set it on the counter in front of her. She picked it up, turning it over in her hands.

“And if it doesn’t work? What then?” she asked.

“I go find the old woman and get our money back,” he answered.

“Yeah, right,” she said.

“Jus’ give it a try,” he prodded her, “Make a wish and push the button.”

She looked down at the piece of red plastic and pushed down on it. A deep masculine voice spoke from the thing, “That was easy.”

She looked up where her husband had been standing. A wisp of curling white smoke hung in the air where he’d been a second before.

“Yes,” she smiled, “That was easy.”

As I sat at the breakfast table, sipping my morning’s coffee, I opened the Facebook app on my cellphone. My heart dropped and shattered at reading the post from his sister, that her brother Bobby had died. And while I ought to wait a couple of days to write this, I sorely need to get it out of me before I fall apart.

While I never met Bob Harrison personally, that’s to say so we could shake hands, I did know him through FB, becoming ‘friends’ shortly after he published the book, “Because of Annie,” in 2013. Therefore, it would be so easy to run the ‘stats’ of an ordinary obituary, like:

“Bob was born March 18, 1948 and passed away September 20, 2020. He graduated from Del Norte High School in 1966.

As a youth, Bob spent most of his time fishing the Smith and Klamath Rivers. He was an avid motorcycle racer, winning several hundred trophies, and picking up the high point trophy for the most wins in a year at the Oregon State Championships, Grants Pass in 1967.

Following high school graduation, Bob enlisted in the US Air Force in 1966, serving his country for 24 years. After retiring, to Wichita, Kansas, in 1991, he and his wife owned two successful antique stores. He is preceded in death by his wife Annie Elizabeth.”

But, like other friends, there is so much more…

Both of us being authors and from the same small county, Del Norte, in Northern California, he reached out to me and we immediately hit it off. Then I learned that his youngest sister, Terri and were of the same graduating class and that is younger brother, Tim had graduated a couple of years ahead of me.

Bob’s story was special to me (and many, many others) because he had suffered a great heart ache, followed by an even greater heartbreak. His wife, Annie passed away in 2010, after being diagnosed with blood cancer.

In his book, he described the agony, the grief and the recovery he’d discovered. And even after “Because of Annie,” was published, Bob continued to share himself with others as both a caregiver and as a writer. Here’s a link…

In early 2016, Bob was diagnosed with cancer. Prostate. He battled through it, even sharing the newer discoveries he’d made along the way, coming out both spiritually stronger and physically healthy.

Then early in 2020, Bob underwent surgery to repair a defective heart valve. Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement. In his usual way, he wrote about the entirety of the operation, before, after, even maintaining his hallmark positivity.

Bob’s upbeat posts were one thing I looked forward to reading, not only because of what he had to say, but because of how he said it. He will always be an inspiration, not only as a writer, but as a damned fine human being. His FB bio sums him up best: “Life is about Love and Being Loved. There is no other option.”

Thank you, Bobby…and give Annie a kiss on the cheek for me, please.

Pessimist: “The glass is half-empty.”
Optimist: “The glass is half-full.”
2020: “I pee’d in the glass.”

The high pitch of a child’s laughter, a scream and multiple voices, followed by fleeting shadows darting between the slats of the blind and from in the front of the house, told much of the tale. The clear skies and sun of a Saturday morning had brought the neighborhood kids out of their homes.

“Are they playing in our driveway?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he said.

“Why?”

“Between our driveway and the neighbors driveway, we have the best jump for bicycles and scooters in the neighborhood.”

“What if one of them gets hurt?”

“They’ll be fine.”

“Well, go out there anyway and tell them to stop, to go play someplace else.”

“Why?”

“In case one of them gets hurt and we get sued.”

“They can sue all they want, but you can’t get blood out of a turnip.”

“That might be true, but I still don’t want to be sued.”

“But listen that, all that laughter, that shouting, the carrying on, I think it’s worth the price of a suit.”

“You’re too much of a romantic for our good,” she sighed, knowing to argue her point any further was hopeless.

He smiled, knowing she was right.

Today is day 187 of our state’s shutdown and it’s been murder since day one.

Lizzy Warren took an axe and gave her career forty whacks. When she’d seen what she’d done, Kamala Harris gave hers forty-one.

There are two kinds of tired; one requires sleep, the other requires rest.

Ethel sat in her rocker on the porch of the old folks home, watching as the little girl raced her kick scooter up and down the sidewalk. As she watched, she felt a twinge of jealousy come to her mind knowing that as a child she never had such a toy to play with.

At one time her Papa had be a successful farmer, raising milk cows and growing hay. When she was about six, that all changed with the crash of Wall Street and the Great Depression.

There was never enough money for fancy things.

By the time the depression ended, Ethel was an older teen and the idea of toys had long since passed. Then came the attack on Pearl Harbor and she joined the Army, becoming a nurse.

She didn’t have time to think of toys until she began a family of her own. By then the idea of playing with one of her girl’s dolls or tea set seemed unbecoming and she refused to do so.

Now, she was old, alone and vaguely envious of the child laughing and carrying on as she raced by the open porch along the wide sidewalk. Then Ethel felt sad for herself, for not having played more when she was younger, and now it was too late.

“Is it too late?” she asked as she answered the call for dinner.

That evening, as she looked out her bedroom window she saw the little girl’s scooter laying against the sidewalk in the gutter. An idea took hold in her as she planned to go out after everyone was in bed, and try kicking the scooter up and down the street.

Quietly, Ethel slipped out the front door and down the steps. She shuffled along the walkway to the scooter, picked it up and pushed it up and down the street.

Finally, she stepped on it and gave a gentle kick with her other foot and found herself gliding down the street with easy. Back and forth she kicked, enjoying the breeze created as it blow in her face and flitted back her gray hair.

Eventually, Ethel grew bold enough to coast back and forth on the sidewalk, taking delight in the gentle dips downward and then up as she passed over the rounded curbs of the driveways. Then it happened, she was on a flat stretch of sidewalk when she lost her balance and fell hard to the cement, bouncing half way into a yard.

There she lay, hip shattered and in pain through the remainder of the night and morning hours where a neighbor walking her dog found her. In those intervening hours, Ethel floated in and out of consciousness, certain her Papa had come to visit, stroking her head and holding her hand.

Hours later, as she lay in a hospital bed, she heard, “Whatever was that old woman thinking?”

She smiled as Papa came to her bed side, soon leaving hand-in-hand with him, a little girl once again.

I don’t need to meditate. I have dogs.

Over the last 185 days of self-isolation, social distancing and collections of face masks, I’ve watched as my blog readership has dropped off. I did the unusual things to help refresh interest, like slowing my daily postings, changing the name of my blog, reformatting and even changing subjects.

None of it helped.

Finally, I stepped back and looked over the entire situation: people are simply suffering burn-out when it comes to visiting blogs and other media platforms. After all, there is only so much we can take in before our mind begins to shutdown or search for other avenues of ‘escapism.’

So with all this in mind, I have concluded that the only thing I can do is continue writing and posting to keep my mental health on track. Perhaps by returning to my own ‘normalcy’ of writing and posting as often as I like, I will be helping someone else come into their own ‘normalcy.’

With all this, I say screw ‘new normal,’ the ‘old normal’ was never really busted…