Practicing to Walk Like a Heron

Ron Howard’s on the Cover of AARP

63 Ron Howard’s on the Cover of AARP And I’m old. The light through the window comes from somewhere even older, and as it lies across this scrap of legal tablet I wonder what it would say if we still lived in the days when we listened to a world where everything spoke: rain, rivers, the night sky, each leaf, every shadow. Maybe the light would tell me to walk into the day, find a place to sit and see what the wind brings through the trees. I’m surprised knowing I want to stay this old. Ron Howard will always be Opie carrying a fishing pole, happy to say, “Hey, Pa,” “Hi, Aunt Bee.” The worm he pulled from the earth drags along the river bottom. Ron Howard is just past halfway to old. Sometimes sentimental is our way of holding on. Sometimes it isn’t. After her husband died, my grandmother bought one of her town’s first televisions. “They’re good company,” she said when The Cisco Kid, Video Ranger, Ed Murrow, Kukla, Fran, and Ollie came to stay. 64 Ron Howard’s on the cover of AARP. I’ll skip the article about him and the one on how to survive in today’s economy. I will do the crossword. The light from this one sun will last all day. Tomorrow my wife and I will canoe on the river. We’ll let the current carry us. When we we’ve floated far enough, we’ll use our cell phone to call Tom, who will help us hoist the canoe to the car’s roof. The three of us will drive the back road home, night settling over the fields of winter wheat, maybe a doe and her yearling standing in the moon-deflected light. ...