On Friday’s Lisa-Jo from the blog The Gypsy Mama gathers a group of bloggers to sing our hearts out together for 5 minutes.  It’s not really la-la-la-laaa! singing, but we log into our blogs and write for 5-minutes on whatever one word stirs in us.  This week Lisa-Jo chose: COMFORT

We are officially old. My husband asked me if I wanted to go for a “drive” last weekend. I smiled, thinking of Hank and Edna, our octogenerian friends—now gone for a drive beyond this world.

“We are officially old. We’re going for a drive. Not anywhere specific—just a drive,” I teased.

“Well at least we aren’t going to watch road construction,” he quipped back.  I smiled. Hank had told us of the fascinating outing. Driving with Edna—who never got to drive after she fell asleep at the wheel and about robbed them of a few years-worth of drives—out to the site of the new four-lane expressway. There they sat side-by-side. Two and a half feet between aging bodies that remained curious and fascinated with the small things that were big things. But they were one.

We drove around the lake where honey runs. It was overcast and cool, not hiking weather, just two and a half feet from each other. We shared curiosity and fascination with the small changes that have come with a season changing, the beauty of how dark the bark on the tall pine looked from all the rain. The airy, fine needles hovering overhead. What a beautiful grove of pine. A cathedral, taking my breath away.

“Look how dark the trunks look against the green, honey.”  A stitch is pulled through the fabric of our love. One more memory to continue the two-become-oneness we’ve been given.

We wind round and down through the trees, tracing the contours of the land within us. We topped the hill and see two young guys sharing a cigarette. Hmmm, I think.

“Long-boarders,” my guy says.

I smile. The professor. The grown man, the one who holds me and comforts me when things seem so big and overwhelming, or get going too fast for this woman to line it all up into neat little rows. This man is still boy. One who tucked a skateboard under his arm and slammed the door behind him to roll around town.

“How do you tell the difference?” I asked about the skateboards.

We turned onto the road to one of the rustic campgrounds. That’s what fascinates my man, the rustic, the remote—he’s a mountain man at heart. We cruise down the road and he remarks about what’s disappeared since they paved this new fancy road through here.

We turn around and cruise back past the skateboarders who’ve snuffed the cigarette out on the pavement and have risen to their  feet.

“Are they really going to skate down these hills? They’re crazy, I’d be sliding across the asphalt out here.”

We cruise down the big hill and take a place in the small five-space parking lot at the bottom where the road curves sharply and heads back up a hill and around a corner, disappearing into the woods.

We hear a wild yell, but miss the streak racing past us. We crane our necks but catch only a glimpse of the first skate boarder as he disappears round the corner at the top of the next hill. This time we’re ready. We fix our eyes on the top of the hill ready for the second guy to come screaming down the hill. He rockets by and we both feel that feeling of going fast, of utter fear and unforgettable exhilaration. Together.

And then he puts the truck in reverse and we climb the hill in the wake of the screaming, speeding, are-they-crazy-or-what skateboarders.

“At least they were wearing helmets,” he says.

We are old. We are sewn together with a million stitches of the ordinary.

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No fixing typos.
No correcting grammar.
Just raw, real and writing about: COMFORT.

Thanks Lisa-Jo!
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