Day #25: Egg salad and aging

Today, as I’m moving toward the end of this writing challenge, I have nothing.

As I considered what to write, I felt the pressure of “Oh god, I have to make this good and interesting for the reader.” My next thought was, “No, I don’t. I started this for me, to write whatever, but to write.” I still feel the push and pull of those two ideas as I proceed.

I’m eating an egg salad sandwich, the outside temperature is 80° at 8:15 p.m., the air quality is 154 — “unhealthy,” I’m assuming from the continuing wildfires. I’m not whining, I’m just writing down the facts as they come to me.

A neighbor has been building a trash heap, and the last thing I saw on the top was a mattress (I think). I smelled smoke just now when I let out the dog, and it was stronger than the Canadian haze in the air has been.

I hope they aren’t burning that pile. It never occurred to me that they might, until someone I know confirmed the possibility, even the likelihood. It’s awfully close to their buildings (and not far from mine), and to an assortment of vehicles on their property and to the trees on the property line. (Now I am whining.)

The hollyhocks continue to open, and the colors are striking in early morning when the sunlight hits them straight on from the horizon. No blooms yet from the Turk’s cap lilies. Soon. I can see the cheerful black-eyed susans out the kitchen windows.

A longtime friend just pointed me to Facebook and to photos of my high school’s class of 1973, which very recently had their 50th reunion. That was the year before my own graduating class, but I knew many people in that group.

No one looked familiar. I could only put faces to names for the few I could read a name tag for. Everyone looked so old, all grown up!

I remember how we were in high school, all fresh faced and enthusiastic, ready to change the world. And now they, and I, are on our descents. I mostly forget how old I am. I feel sad for all of us.

Who thought it was a good idea to create us with an expiry date, so that our bodies would wear out, become frail, break down, give up, even when we aren’t ready to?