Bob

Tamar called Friday afternoon. I should have noted that it was odd for her to call during her work day, but I’m just always so happy to see her name on the phone screen that I didn’t stop to think. But it was a sad call. Our Mom’s cousin, Bob Bookchin, had died. Mom was an only child, so her cousins were more important to her than cousins are in many families. As I wrote to Bob’s wife, Marilyn, Bob was a particular favorite of ours when we were kids and remained a favorite as we all aged. He is the last of Mom’s biological family that I was close to. There are still many relatives on that side of the family, of course, but none that I have clear childhood memories of, none that I’ve been close to as an adult. Bob had been ill for several years, and we’d thought he was at the end of his life a couple of times, so it was not a shocking passing, not the kind that takes your breath away. But I am never quite ready for death.

Bob led a good life. He was kind, funny, intelligent, and accomplished. From all I could see he was a great husband and father, and he was certainly a great friend to Mom and all of us. I think the only bad thing that could be said about his life was that it was too short. But like Joe, Bob took illness in stride, and lived as fully as he could in the face of it. So much is gone now of the childhood world I lived in and the adult world I shared with my parents.

I took my sense of loss out for a walk in the late-summer afternoon. Asters and touch-me-nots bloom along Gulf Road. Last weekend I saw only one aster, but today there were too many to count. In Amenia, asters sang that unwelcome turning towards the end of summer. Once the asters bloomed, you could count the days to the start of the school year. I didn’t hate school, but I loved Amenia with its peace, its beauty, its laziness, its freedom, and its complete lack of peer pressure. I belonged in Amenia, there was never any question. Middle school and high school, not so much. In Amenia we were always in mixed age groups. Bob and Marilyn would come up for the day, and with our Bubbe we would be three generations together, sitting in the shade, swimming, laughing together over dinner. But back at school, the days were dominated by my age mates. It still seems like such a bad arrangement to me. And the asters, pretty as they were, were such an unwelcome reminder of the approaching end of summer.

This has been our first summer on Sunnyhill, as we were in California nearly all of last summer. The days are long here, but already noticeably shorter. The sun rose far towards the north on Rowan’s solstice birthday, but it is already rising much further towards due east now. In a couple of weeks the Glimmerglass festival will be over as will the baseball camps of Dreams Park. Most of the tourists will be gone, and parking will be plentiful and free again on Main Street in Cooperstown. The merchants will do their reckoning to see if they earned enough to make it through the winter. Our tribe of goslings have grow to some fifty nearly full sized geese, with adult feathers. Their parents are still a little bigger, but not for long. The parents of the families that joined forces for day care on the neighbors’ pond still put themselves in the lead and at the end of the mob, and on guard duty at the edges of the flock. But they don’t worry so much now that the youngsters can fly. When Charlie and I walk down the hill they’ll guide the flock away from the road, but it’s unhurried and usually with no more than soft honking. We’re not much of a threat to birds that can fly.

Summer has been full and busy, and even a little productive – and there’s still more to come. We saw an excellent Traviatta at Glimmerglass, and a Showboat that I thought was just okay. We have one more show this week, the premiere of an American opera, Blue. We’ve been to several fine concerts and have one more in the series. My work at Temple Beth El has moved forward steadily, and we are nearly ready to share our plans with the congregation and start working in the fall. Jay and Mike have made big progress in the barn and garage, and winter will be easier to manage this year with cars parked inside. The hill is all mowed, and the fence is gone. The Augusts and Sheila have visited – our first California guests, and I made one short trip out to San Jose.

I find myself looking forward to fall, and even more, to winter. Here, with four real seasons, each one so clearly looks ahead to the next. Plants are fruiting and animals are fattening. The corn is fabulous. It’s the work of the summer to prepare for the winter. For me, the days are just getting shorter, but for Bob, they are over, and Marilyn will face this fall as a widow.