Tent on the Porch

I went to a 60th birthjday party over the weekend, and what I was stuck with was the amount of  want that people were openly discussing.  One woman, whose husband was on the other side of the room told us that they have been apart for almost 20 years and that she wishes  they would either come back together or go their own ways.  She said the time is at hand for the children are grown.  He lives two states away and can't come to grips with his dependency on the bottle, although he has worked as a physician throughout his career

They come together on weekends a couple of times per month.  She feels lonely now that the children are up and out. 
We felt their pain.

Early Sunday morning, a young woman--young is a comparative, who is a teacher  met me with her dog out on our walk.  She began by celebrating the day , because it was cool and dry and beautiful, but then she mentioned that she was going into work next week to set up her classroom, and the following week was onto vacation, so this was her last week of summer and she needed to try and get some alternative speach therapy  for her son.  She mentioned that her son has autism of some form and Governor Christie had cut the program that provided her family with 1000 dollars of speach therapy per year.   Earlier I had learned from her husband that a change in their medical insurance program had restricted his ability to get medicated for his specific type of arthritis. 

She wanted to know why ?  What could I say, no revenue sharing, and why not --all I could think of  was the Middle Eastern Wars without end and without limit on spending.  I felt her pain.

Yesterday, my mother in law who has been sick for awhile started talking about the inevitable end as her heart valves narrow and evern increasingly run the risk of failure.  And kind of letting us know that , which we already knew, she does not know when but her time is nearing.   She was gentle in her approach, and my wife laughed , she laughed a little too hard, as if to say that no , don't say that, you are not to go there.  She laughed because although she knows her mother is on the down hill side, she wants to hold on a little longer. Although her mother can be tough to deal with at times, she does lover her mother and life without a mother who is loved even with faults can be lonely.  I felt my wife's pain.

So  when I got home, I did the only thing that I thought would help my rapidly dropping mood.  I set up my tent on the porch. .  A couple of friends listened to my dream of riding the 185 miles of the C&O Canal towpath from Cumberland Md. to W ashington DC in the Fall.  So I had my tent out and sitting in its bag.  So when I set it up I was thinking about the trip, I did so on the porch and then I did what seemed like the only thing to do---I crawled into it and escaped.  My wife came out on the porch and laughed. She was hysterical, her laughter eased our pains.