simple things

I didn't have my sunglasses this morning (left them in the car last night) so I know the light was different as I walked back to the house after swimming. And maybe that is why the leaves on the bougainvilla looked soft and green, the pink blossoms teasing me with their crinkled petals.

On the tv show, Sunday Morning, my favorite part is always the last two minute video of nature. Today they showed sea anoemenes (sp?) off the Washington state coast. They glittered under the shallow waters. It was reassuring to see water not stained by oil slicks, for a change.

Yesterday we took Dad out for lunch and to a Saturday matinee--Tom Cruise's summer action flick. Dad really enjoyed the movie. With his failing eyesight, I am not sure what he can or cannot see, but he sat on the edge of his seat almost the whole time. He insisted Jay Leno played a bit part as a mechanic in one scene and while I know it wasn't Jay, the illusion of it gave him additional pleasure, so maybe it was Jay Leno to him and that's okay. He lost one of his Cascades swimming and pokers buddies the night before and it was an unexpected death, so to see him lose some of that grief in the frivolity of Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz riding a red Ducati on the streets on Spain, surrounded by (computer generated?) spike horned black bulls--well, to see Dad joyous was the best part of the afternoon for me.

After a roller coaster week with my ankle and Aron getting a piece of metal (from work) in his eye, I cherish the simple things on the weekend. We went to the Desert Diamond Hotel Casino last night--I wanted to walk a little and at 97 degrees in the evening, inside AC is a requirement. The cost of the adventure was $10.00 on the stingy slots, but there are other kinds of payoffs. As we waited for a loooooong train to pass on Prince, I noted the various countries reprsented by the stacked cargo: China, Italy, Japan, Korea, Switzerland. I tried to imagine the thousands of stories pressed within the cargo--what the products were, who made them, who guided the cranes to put them on the train (from the ships), who navigated the ships...endless possibilities of stories. And then, at the Casino, they have a pretty nice lobby museum of Tohono O'Odham crafts and ancient artifacts. And again, my mind imagined the artists, the women who wove the baskets, the men who played games, the ancient ones who painted red ocre on the pots that were used to feed children and elders.

So it's the simple things that can keep stories rolling in my head. It doesn't have to be the front page story or the headlines in the news. Instead, it can be the tiny yellow sea creature, swimming by a fern, living in an underground universe humans haven't yet completely destroyed.