Yesterday was a rich day. I didn’t expect it––maybe that’s what makes it so dear. I started with an exercise class with my friend. We kalumped and kareened around trying to follow the more experienced members, then went off to have some of the best coffee in town at a little taqueria. Then I went to lunch with other friends, and we ended talking in that heartfelt and deep way friends will about life and its heartbreaks, its hard, unavoidable places. Then I took my grandson, all of eight, and a new cub scout, a Bear, to a community garden to go over his bobcat trail material. We sat under a full lime tree near a passion vine that had three monarchs going crazy and studied his salute and handshake and pledge. He was earnest and distracted by the butterflies. He assured me that he and Spencer had practiced the handshake at least ten times. He told me I was a good Akela (that’s leader). Then my love picked Julian Schnabel’s The Diving Bell and the Butterfly for our Saturday night flick, and the movie moved me so profoundly, the essential story, the acting, and the visuals, that I had to turn the TV off afterwards. I just didn’t want anything, a commerical, a lame show, some talking head who has nothing to say that makes anything any better, to spoil what I had just seen and felt. Based on a true story, the hero in the movie suffers a massive stroke and cannot move or speak, but he can still feel and see and regret and remember. I regret not a moment of yesterday: friendship, morning coffee, profound talk about difficult decisions, my grandson in the garden, witnessing a creative project that expresses in full depth the wistfulness of life, which is what yesterday was in all its glory, wistful and small-ly grand. My eyes closed last night on memories of the green of the garden and the orange of a butterfly wing. As the hero in the movie said, I have my imagination and my memories.
Karleen Koen — writing life 