May-Day!

[Above photo: The shadow of a tree opposite my apartment.]

1 May 2022

It is a perfect day with a blue sky, small fluffy clouds in the distance, and—dare I say?—a warming sun. I’ve heard about April in Maine for years, “Mud month”. Since the snowfall was light this year, the mud isn’t a bother.  However, it has been tantalizingly warm for a day, followed by a week of cold rain and wind. Will Spring ever arrive? 

Nevertheless, the harbinger forsythia reigns in Portland at this moment and I suspect it may, by its sunny nature, have forced the cold air back into Canada. Last week I mistakenly praised as ornamental dogwood what are in fact magnolias. The magnolias I planted on Milvia Street in Berkeley were evergreen, with thick, waxy leaves and heavy, robust creamy blossoms. These magnolias are deciduous and the flowers, diaphanous, twist randomly.  Cherry blossoms have shed over the sidewalks like spilt milk.

I walked 45’ from the West End to the East End to meet my realtor, Stephanie. We closely examined a townhouse on Munjoy Hill that I inspected at an open house yesterday. It is perfect for me. The right size, nicely upgraded kitchen, bay windows in the living and master bedroom, lovely floors, a fenced patio in back, two parking spaces, and lots of storage in the basement. To make my offer attractive, and there will be many competing, I will liquidate virtually all of my savings so I can pay cash for it, enabling a quick closing. Then I’ll return to my bank for a small mortgage to give me a cushion.

It all makes me nervous. What if I get it? What if I don’t get it? I recall the Holmes-Rahe Scale, in which you accumulate points for major events occurring during a year: points for good things—-a promotion, an engagement, birth of a grandchild—and for bad—death, car accident, divorce, bankruptcy, arrest. A certain number of points predicts with some accuracy that a physical illness will ensue. I get it as I am stressed doing this process, sleeping poorly.

Then I talk with my students in Myanmar and my concern falls into a more proper perspective. On Tuesday one of the psychiatrists was on Zoom but in darkness. I assumed that she simply had an electrical outage, as is increasingly common these days of military misrule.  The reality was that in desperation someone had stolen the electrical transformer for her neighborhood and the lines leading to it. People are increasingly poor and copper can be sold. Two men in Maubin tried to time their theft with a scheduled electrical outage, but the current went back on and both were electrocuted. I doubt that Dr. Khin May Lwin will have electricity in her home soon.

I then feel chagrined to be stressed by whether I get this condominium or not. I’m in a lovely apartment and could stay here indefinitely. People in Ukraine, if alive and intact, may have no family, home, or city to which to return. One man’s nick is another one’s amputation.

And then there is the remarkable series of articles on Tucker Carlson in the Times. After he said that immigrants make our country “poorer and dirtier” his ratings shot up so that he has now the most popular show in the history of cable television. And the most racist, as the writers point out. They see him as the likeliest inheritor of Trump’s mantle. He has visited and celebrated Victor Orban, the Prime Minister of Hungary, for whose white Christian anti-immigrant authoritarianism Tucker seems well-suited. I’m sorry if I ever ate Swanson frozen dinners as a child.

Out my window I see a tall, heavy young woman in jeans and a red pullover repeatedly pitching a ball—Whiffle ball? Tennis ball? Surely not a hard or softball—to a young boy who has a good swing and knocks it across the field repeatedly. A short story begins to emerge in my mind—she’s a single mom, her young and unformed lover has left for greener pastures.  She, as countless other single moms do and have done, is trying to pick up the slack so that her beloved child will suffer less. Alternately, I recall the fun of pitching to my son when he was in Little League, practicing his batting on the playground of the School of the Madelaine near our home in Berkeley. He’s a fine athlete.