The Best Cake Made Both of Us Sad

Last night’s rain has drained the air of all but blue. I am outside listening to the singing of birds. The Daniel Boone National Forest begins at the tip of my fingertips, while civilization spreads the opposite way. My sons are in the house playing a board game, one I played with my brother as a child, but one of the boys gets mad and the laughter stops. As the sun rises high the heat douses the singing of the birds.

I am left soundless—feeling as if I should enter the house and settle the kids or enter the woods and revive the birds. Instead I remain marooned in the shade. Today is that rare day when I’m content to sit in the sun and straddle the boundaries of my life.

Earlier this morning I watched my children sleep. Their bodies lay in such abandon, sprawled across the sheet, a testament to the safety they feel at home. I kiss their cheeks knowing that they will never remember it but hoping that the ghost of my kiss will carry throughout their days. The children cheer me up and give me light. Sometimes I lie beside their warmth and worry about my future life after they leave home. Where will I find moments of joy? Who will make me smile and hug me tight? How will I live in a house with no laughter? Perhaps it will be like the woods in winter—occasional visits from the birds who sing briefly and alone.

Last night I talked to Arthur on the phone. He tells me he is lonely. His friends are dead; he’s outlived them all. He is back-up man at his temple in order to make a quorum for a minyan, and he sees some people then. They are all retired. They look at their lives and examine what they’ve done with them. One man says, I’ve made a million dollars. Another says, I’ve made two. Someone else has a yacht and a place in Florida. Arthur claims none of these. He says that he is shrinking.

The cabinet doors of his kitchen no longer bang the top of his head. He spent years walking into the doors from his blind side, then getting angry at his wife for leaving them open. At last, he says, old age has made him safe from himself in the kitchen. His body is drawing up, shriveling in advance of death. As he becomes smaller, so does his world, the places he goes—a deli, his backyard, a bakery.

Yesterday at the bakery a woman cut line in front of him, but he let it go. Another woman did the same thing, and he said that he was there first, and the worker apologized. She hadn’t seen him standing there. Good thing Arthur says to me, that she didn’t say I was short.

I laugh because this is a reference to his having once knocked a young man to the floor of a bank for calling him short. It occurred ten years ago, the day before a visit to Rita and me in Iowa. He was running late. He was nervous about the flight. He told the story with shame and humility but secret pride. At age seventy he could still take care of himself. Now, at eighty, he cannot. The last time he tried to kneel he was unable to rise. He cannot run and he cannot punch. His bowels treat him unfairly. Waw, he says, it’s no fun, this getting old. No fun at all.

The key to understanding Arthur is knowing something of myself. I can never be truly happy because I mourn everything in advance—the wilting of flowers before they bloom, children leaving home, the end of each season while still at its apex. I enjoy the sunniest of days while bemoaning that there are not more of them. The same is true of food and sex. Every meal is the finest, which means there will never be another. The last time I made...