Relative Something

Happy Summer Solstice, loyal readers! Here we are at the longest day, and it hardly feels any different than yesterday, when I spent more solo hours in a car in one day, traveling to a graduation of a grandnephew in Cambridge, MN, than I have done in a very, very long time. It wasn’t bad. A comparison could be made to spending hours on a lawn tractor mowing multiple acres of grass.

It’s a good thing there are so many hours of sunlight, allowing me time to catch up on mowing grass that keeps growing longer and longer due to the many hours of sunlight feeding it.

I struggle to find words to adequately describe how precious it is to arrive to see my siblings and their families with my mental health robustly free of the foggy, dysfunctional gloom of depression. The level of difference is something that no one but me can perceive, and it is a special joy to experience and recognize.

It’s wild to think about the reference we siblings have to each other at our current ages, having lived together as kids in our shared childhood environments.

As descriptions of aging bodies were shared, I found myself more invested in learning details of afflictions that could just as easily impact the shared genes in my body. It is often referred to as an “organ recital” when old folks get together and share the litany of degenerating physical functions that each one is coping with.

All things being relative, we can all be thankful that none of us is facing something worse. Blessings counted.

The visit was shorter than I would have wished, and triggered an urge to look for an opportunity to revive one of our multi-day gatherings. Let me just look at the calendar.

Never mind.

It was a heck of a lot easier when we just lived together at the farm called Intervale Ranch on the border of Eden Prairie and Edina, MN, back in the good old days.

Those were some fine, long summer days…

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