The Drop Out

Though I have completely dropped out of the life I lead my email still cheerfully delivers missives I used to live by. LinkedIn, NASDAQ reports, NIRI surveys and other sundry notices that tell me the life I left goes on without me. Occasionally I open one and read the daily market report, what company is reporting stellar earnings, who is making their mark in the world of investor relations or what the latest trend is for dealing with activist investors. The endorsements on LinkedIn are interesting, considering I haven’t been in touch with most of those kind folks in almost two years. It all seems so foreign and far away from my little corner of the world. Today my biggest news items were when the bottle shipment will arrive and did the ads go in the Peterborough Players program looking like I expected. My world is full of a different minutia, but full nonetheless.

I feel such a sense of relief when I look at the simplicity of life. There is an apartment complex across the road from the store. It’s an attractive red shingled, two-story, L-shaped affaire. My mom rented a one bedroom flat there before she left Peterborough for Arizona. I think of her when I look out at it though she didn’t live in the part I see from my window. What I do see a tenant whose simple routines are integral to the fabric of the day. She is probably in her late sixties, smokes but mostly outside the screen door if the weather cooperates. Her cat is a luxuriously large, marshmallow and butterscotch tabby. She sets up a special table for him/her in front of the screen door; I hear the garbled sound of a television and sometimes see the flickering screen.

The woman is probably on disability and ambles with a definite list to the right. The first warm day, she emerged with a bucket and fishing pole. I watched as she walked slowly to the river that cuts through the heart of town. The leg from the MacDowell Dam has two falls that break the rush of water to the Contoocook River. I’m sure she sat on a bench in the little park and tossed in a line. And I’m going to guess she’s a good fisherman who knows exactly what she’s doing.

I sit out on the deck, surrounded by bird songs at the end of a long day, iced tea in hand and a piano solo drifting down from the loft. The breeze is chilly on my bare skin as the light fades in the sky. I tell myself that I know what I’m doing too…