Sherpa

LL Bean makes a men’s robe that looks like something stolen from Obi-Wan Kenobi’s closet. I have several. They last forever. It’s a by-product of the days before Pup moved to town to take care of his Grand-paw. I learned never to emerge into the public part of my house without full coverage because one could never be sure a herd of teenage boys hadn’t taken over the house while I was sleeping. It was not unusual to find a kid asleep in my chair who I had never laid eyes on before. “who’s that?” pointing to a boy shape with a blanket pulled over his head. “That’s Wendel ” Pup would say as if it was the most natural thing in the world. “Why’s he in my chair?” “His mother won’t let him into the house after she’s gone to bed, it disturbs the dogs.” My house became the depository for unclaimed middle-class kids. I drew the line at girls. That rule was for my son’s comfort. There has to be a place where a guy can go to get away from that sort of thing. Besides the obvious complications, it gave the boys a safe retreat. No drugs, no booze, no girls. It was not because I was “uptight” but because that was the way my kids wanted things. This never seemed to be an issue. The house was always full of boys.

It’s been a long time since I had to worry about finding misplaced boys in my house but I still have the big robe habit. This morning I found one which is “Sherpa” lined. Poor Sherpa that has to climb through the mountains in an LL Bean bathrobe but it’s perfect for putting under my “traveling coat” and taking my coffee out to the breezeway to watch the sunrise while my eyes drill holes into the hillside across the lake. If I’ve fed the cat I might get 20 minutes unmolested before my nose holes freeze. Frosty noseholes are a bit of an issue because I got this mindfulness workbook I’m using to steel myself for the coming year and today it encouraged me to go do mindfulness breathing. This is all pedestrian stuff and hardly new to my tool kit but the designers of the mindfulness workbook didn’t take into account that the quietest most beautiful place for a belly breath might be only 28 degrees. One has to modify the effort.

There’s the setup.

This morning I woke up from dreaming I was doing yoga. I could actually feel the stretch in my back. This is curious because, under most, no let’s say all, conditions you could not pay nor threaten me with death to get me to yoga. In my dreams, however, I’m perpetually 21, never overweight or broken, and apparently really good at yoga. So I was receptive to the idea of a quiet breath on the breezeway and it was indeed quiet and beautiful. Aside from the neighbors distant hot tub shifting burble gears and an occasional osprey noise there was just the growing light.

17 years ago there was nothing but a hillside fuzzy with trees out on the other side of the lake. Almost before the ink was dry on the mortgage paperwork someone began building a house dead center of what was supposed to be unobstructed wilderness. I got busy with life and forgot to be annoyed by this. Eventually, it was just a thing that was there. When the trees down in the private park below us (the one we long ago gave up being a part of because the board wouldn’t dutifully pay the liability insurance) grew so big that you couldn’t see the lake anymore that house was the only thing to look at. When my parents commenced to their endangered species status and the j-o-b I hated took a powder I quit sleeping at night. Often I would find myself out there in the cold with binoculars looking at the lights on the hillside. You don’t really see anything personal over there, just the lights, but I used to use it as something to focus on when weather prevented stars or moon and it was too dark to know what terrible beasties might jump over the fence rail and claw at me. (See: feed cat before meditating)

The other day a real estate listing popped up for a million-dollar home in my area. Guess which house it was. Now I’m not sure why the AI thinks I’m in the market for a million-dollar home -ever- but it’s interesting to know I’ve paid a fraction of that to stare at the place for 17 years and somebody will pay a million dollars to have a view of my humble shack. I don’t mind being the poor relation. In fact, the guy up the hill behind us put in a gated community the year after we moved here and our status as the people “rich white folks” want to keep out is kind of a point of honor. If the world burdens the person across the lake to the point of insomnia they’re going to sit on the deck and stare at me. All that money to see me in my worn Obi-Wan Kenobi Sherpa as I wrestle with the cat and swig a rapidly cooling cup of Cafe Bustelo. I find that extremely amusing. Peek a boo.