So last Saturday afternoon …  my wife, son and I are sweating in the shade underneath our backyard deck, after triple-teaming the mowing and trimming in the high heat.

They ask me to come up with something fun for the evening. 

This never happens. 

They usually don’t trust me with The Decisions. 

Admittedly, my track record’s … spotty. 

Heat must’ve been fogging their judgement.

Sensing a fleeting moment, I brainstormed in earnest.

Found a movie I thought might fit the Venn diagram of our disparate interests — low-stakes, light-comedy with slapstick potential … no heavy themes or deep thinking required. 

Showing in Squirrel Hill at their delightful, restored (and air-conditioned) downtown theater none of us had ever been to. 

5:30 showing. 

About an hour’s drive away from where we were sitting and sweating at 3:30 in the afternoon. 

Gave us a good hour to get cleaned up. 

Ran the idea past the committee, along with a suggestion for dinner afterwards.

No violent objections.  

“Want me to buy tickets?” 

Nods.

“We’ll have to leave by 4:30. Everybody good with that?”

Before locking it in, I made each of them give me a verbal … like they do for exit rows.

So four-thirty comes. 

I’m showered, dressed and ready. 

Karry, too. 

I look out the window and see my son standing in the driveway. 

Changing his oil. 

I do a double-take.

Initiate seething protocols.  

Walk outside. 

 Say the dumbest thing I can think of. 

“You’re not changing your oil,” I say to the grown adult standing in front of me … holding a jug of oil. 

Which prompts the following exchange 

He: Be done in a minute. 

Me: It’s 4:30. 

He: It’s not going to take us an hour to get there.

Me: (clenching jaw, taking several seconds to locate the shit in my mind that I am losing …  before temporarily regaining the power of speech) There are few things I hate more than missing the start of a movie. Just sharing the fact of that with you.

I turn and go back inside. 

Seething level: roiling boil. 

I can’t help myself. 

The prospect of being late while waiting for others has always made me spiral. 

When my oldest was younger, I spent a lot of time spiraling. 

Oh, was he a dawdler. 

Among the greatest of his generation.

No amount of yelling or cajoling could ever make him move any faster.  

He kept time according to his own internal clock. Remarkably, he never let it stress him, either … no matter how much or how loudly it stressed those around him. 

Pretty much grew out of it by college, though. 

I hadn’t seen any evidence of it for years. 

So … finding him in the driveway changing his oil at Agreed-Upon-Go-Time … reminded me how awfully I used to deal with it when I was a younger parent.  

I knew (and remembered) enough to know that if I let Seething Protocols reach Def Con Hot Magma, the evening would not turn out well for anyone ….

And I could kiss any future contributions to The Decisions goodbye.  

It was at that moment that Jim’s letter caught my eye, lying on the dining room table.  

Had come in the mail that day. 

It’d been weeks since I’d since I’d heard from him, since I’d last sent him something I’d written. 

Knowing he’s in his 90s, and having come to expect his prompt (and extraordinarily wonderful) replies, I feared that maybe he’d been having health issues. 

So when I saw his familiar hand-writing on the front of the envelope while fishing the day’s mail from the box, it immediately sparked both relief and joy. 

Accompanying his letters are always recent poems he’s written. He writes them all out by hand, in near-calligraphic quality. Sends me photo copies. 

I keep them all in an overflowing manilla envelope in the top drawer of the desk where I’m typing this.  

He writes so beautifully and unflinchingly about his long life, about growing old. His verse bursts with both aliveness and ache, his words suffused with such wise noticings. 

I hope to someday write as well as Jim does in his 90s. 

While walking back from the mailbox, I decided on the spot to wait to open his letter … to give my Sunday something to look forward to.

But seeing it lying on the dining room table while feeling the minutes tick further and further past our agreed-upon departure, I could think of no better way to invest whatever time it would take for my son to shower and get dressed. 

So I reached for Jim’s letter like it was a life preserver.

Which it was. 

In every sense of the words. 

I was right … he had had a health scare. 

He wrote me from his bed at Washington Hospital, where he’d spent the previous four days in the care of doctors working to reduce the fluid in his lungs from his weakening heart. 

“Many tests, few new answers, long-time problem.” 

He was hoping to go home on the day he was writing me.  

Yet, as he always does in his lovely letters, he described the beauty he was finding in the world around him. 

Started by telling me how much he was enjoying the quality and variety of food they served him. And how grateful he was for the care and the company of the staff. 

And then, this …

“Jesus, talks of ‘The least of these,’ … helping, dealing with, the least, lowest of these.

Allie, hospital pusher of wheelchairs, lowest of lowest hospital staff, pushing me today … 30-33 years old, plain, drab reddish color uniform. 

My inquisitiveness, ‘Is Allie a short version of your full name?’ 

‘Yes.” 

Silence. 

‘Is your full name Alicia?’

‘Yes! You are the first person in my life to guess my full name!’

Amazed smile, new relationship … between lowly patient, and lowly pusher.

And another blessed, new friend today, to share my 91 years — of God’s gifts!” 

The weakening but still beating heart of a humbled soul still fully alive and leaning his flickering candle to the world around him.

His words immediately reminded me of my Dad, who, even when — especially when — he was at his most vulnerable, would go out of his way to make the people around him feel good.

“Boy you’re good at this,” I remember him saying to the hospice caregiver while she was changing the sheets in his bed with him still in it.

“You sure know your way around this place,” I remember him saying to the orderly whisking him in his wheelchair during one of his frequent hospital visits. 

To remain fully present to the world around you when forces are conspiring against you, even when you are at your most vulnerable? 

Well, let’s just say that there’s a lot to be learned from the Jims and Neal Riddells of the world. 

And from all those who keep time according to their own internal clocks. 

Jim’s words convicted me. 

Doused holy water on my Seething Protocols. 

Reminded me that there are far more dire circumstances than being a few minutes late to a movie. 

And, most importantly, reminded me to appreciate the blessings of our days. 

Of triple-tag-teaming the yardwork.  

Sitting and sweating in the shade.

Getting to choose.  

Watching the Greatest Dawdler of All Time … still perfecting his craft.

By the time Jim’s Saturday sermon finished reading me, I was as grateful as an old army chaplain for the variety of hospital food he would soon be missing. 

For the record, it was 4:43 when we locked the back door behind us. 

As I spied Peter’s car in the corner of the driveway, I pointed to the empty bottle of motor oil resting on the ground in front of its grill.

Said to my son what I imagined my Dad would’ve said. 

“Boy, you’re pretty good at taking care of your car.”

No heavy themes or deep-thinking required. 

Thirty-nine minutes later … we walked into the darkened and wonderfully air-conditioned Theater #4 at the Manor.

The opening credits, still rolling ….