SOL3: Scheduling

            Part of today has been spent around events, one today, another possibly tomorrow, and a third for Wednesday.

            Today was supposed to be a movie discussion group. We see one or two specified movies on our own time, then meet monthly to discuss. But we’re a small group, and if two or three people can’t come, discussion is less interesting—and when weather gets involved... It was

supposed to start raining or snowing late afternoon today, so we decided to cancel. E-mail took care of this one.

            Tomorrow revolves around a friend who is in from out of town for a few days, and a mutual friend who wants to see her. Plus I have a theater ticket for the out-of-town friend I need to get to her because we can’t meet before the theater. So I arranged dinner, which we’ll order in, at the mutual friend’s home tomorrow evening. This required all technologies: phone and texting and e-mail.

            Wednesday is my regularly scheduled women’s group. But one person is not available, another hasn’t been heard from, and trying to reschedule has run up against our too-busy lives. Texting and voicemail is handling this one, and it’s still up in the air whether we will meet or not. 

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I’m participating in the 12th annual Slice of Life Challenge over at Two Writing Teachers. This is day 1 of the 31-day challenge.  It’s not too late to make space for daily writing in a community that is encouraging, enthusiastic, and eager to read what you have to slice about.  Join in!

SOLSC Day 10: Old Mail

Jack’s first e-mail account was with AOL, back in the days when you had to pay for it — and he never changed it. Of course, I have to close that account so it’s no longer a drain on the pocketbook. But first I wanted to download all of his Sent mail. He used to reread his Sent mail, and I wanted to see what was there.

            It took the computer know-how of my niece and brother to accomplish that last Monday. Today I started browsing. The old mail only went back to 2009 (I guess AOL only saved back that far), and it was fun to read the exchange of e-mails between Jack and our daughter when she was on a solo trip to Glasgow. Also an exchange from an English friend who attended debates organized as the Battle of Ideas; it used to have a New York partner called the New York Salon that Jack and I attended a few times, but it no longer exists.

            But when I opened some e-mails about my mother moving up to New York into an

assisted living apartment, I was overcome by melancholy. My mother had been living independently in Florida, but at 91, she’d decided it was time for more help, and she was willing to move back to the cold weather to be closer to me and my sister. Reading those e-mails only reminded me that she’d been much sicker than I had realized, and just a month after she arrived, she was dead. We had both been looking forward to long talks about memories — we’d even started, with my mother tellilng me her fascination with science began with a college anatomy class visit to an autopsy. There were so many questions that never got answered, one more life ending with an incomplete.