Splendor in the Grass

Email to me from my dear high school friend and college roommate, Terry Bell.

This morning I took my regular 130 mile round trip visit to see my mother.
Up I-5, I-205 and I-84 to the Wood Village exit and then right, up to Cherry
Park. Her home is just across Cherry Park from Reynolds High. As I zipped by 181st, Mt. Hood was dangling from, or rising into, the sky. A wispy cloud extended the sides of the upper mountain at about the 7,000-foot level, and below it was hazy enough to erase the lower part of the mountain to give the impression that Hood was
ascending with a few foothills into the high, thin air.

A kind of bittersweet sense of familiarity. This is the same view we saw
hundreds of times as we neared our high school homes. And now I am doing
it again for what may be many many more times at this other end of 40+
years, visiting the very sad lady I knew who lived in my home when we were
all younger and more vital. A sense of longing and loss, the melancholy
that slips in when I try to reconcile who I am with who I was. Sometimes a
feeling of self-pity for being old, but also with a feeling of mild hope
because I'm not old enough to see the end as perhaps my mother does. Bittersweet familiarity.

Also another way bittersweet. Do you remember the feeling of open road,
open window and going, on your own in your (father's or brother's) car to
places for the moment new and unknown? Exhilaration and sweet freedom!
Wordsworth's "splendor in the grass, glory in the flower" that comes with
every youth's experience of springtime, when the blood is up and the wind is
in the face. All is green with spring in Oregon. And yes, Don, you may
even slip in your metaphor of the beautiful "love in bloom", the iris photograph, at this point if you are feeling so inclined.

But, the bitter is also present. No matter how I try to make it happen, I
can't find the same thrill in experience as I did in those earlier years. I
remember riding my bike in Lacey, Washington with my pointing fingers curled
over a baseball bat across my handlebars. It was almost perfect-the wind,
the light stress of the legs, the speed. But there was one hindrance to
perfection: the baseball bat that made my grip on the handlebars awkward. I
decided I could do this again without the baseball bat and find utter
perfection. But I never did. It was a perfect moment, even though I didn't
recognize it fully.

Still, there is joy to be had in small experiences as we live on. (Thanks
for your flower.) On the way home, I put on a tape (ABBA Greatest Hits) and
turned it up as loud as I could take it (until my ears were bound to age
another month in less than an hour) and pretended to let the wind blow my
hair back. "Pretended" because the only way my hair blows at all is when I'
m facing downwind and my comb-over blows up and my side hairs blow out.
Nevertheless it was a perfectly imperfect moment.

I've had a lot of these kinds of emotions recently. Some because of our
recent reunion, some because I am revisiting our old stomping grounds off
182nd more frequently than I really want, and some for other reasons.
All-in-all, I don't get too depressed, but I am really good at Melancholy.

Terry Bell