Now, Positively Identified

Tuesday is a school day.  Waiting for the bus at the top of the hill, 7:00AM turning into 7:07AM my daughter had a recollection that the bus driver had said, “see you Wednesday.”  The New Paltz school district must have a strong Italian contingent.  Why are schools and busses there getting two days off for Columbus Day?  This would mean I'll now be driving her over to school. 

Before 8:00AM I dropped her off.  I should have simply used the facilities there at the school, but instead I wished her well and figured I’d manage at the gas station, which I would need to visit now before the trip back over to Ulster County.  Sometimes we can will away the pressing need to relieve oneself.  Ignore it and it will go away.  This morning, will alone, was proving an insufficient tonic.  Parked as I was in front of a pump I filled the car first and then dashed into to the little kiosk office to ask where the bathroom was.  He provided me with a large elbow pipe from some legacy plumbing project, which had a key wired into it.   Back around behind the vacuum pumps, in the room, door closes and with it there is no light so I painfully reopen the door, search and find the switch and then, finally allow my body to do what it has been demanding be done.

My mom’s just around the corner.  I thought I’d pay her a visit.  I drove up, tried walk in the front door, but they’d locked it overnight.  I walked around the back.   Perhaps they were on the porch, but neither the screened in porch or the yard deck had them anywhere to be found.  I thought of calling and ringing the door, but suspected they were still enjoying a slow morning’s rise and I drove off back home.

Later that evening, after taking my daughter to an eye exam with the same ophthalmologist who’d worked with my grandmother, something my daughter had a hard time imagining could be true, we drove back up Route 9, and swung by my mom's place for the second time that day.  She was thinking dinner but we were late and the Mrs. had indicated she had already made a dinner so we insisted it would be a short visit.  This is all possible when you see family regularly now, instead of once or twice a year. My step dad had an envelope full of leaves he’d collected at our place from the other day, now positively identified.  I looked at one stem with its now dry, yellow, concentric leaves, and peered into the card before its place in the envelope:  a White Ash.  That’s a tree name I know but haven’t thought of in a while:  Ash.   This saw tooth leaf belongs to an American Elm?  Cool.  And what’s this big fella that my wife and I were so intrigued by?  I have never heard the word “Catalpa” before.  Have you?  The Northern Catalpa looks like it will have some fetching flowers come spring time.

Tuesday, 10/15/19