The Afternoon Trinity...

Three things happened as close to simultaneously as I can imagine any three things happening in this particular plane of reality:

Pradeep appeared unannounced and unexpected – already halfway through char-grilling a few ears of sweet corn – in the back yard after an extended visit to Chennai to participate in his cousin’s second wedding.

The neighbor across the street – the British woman who resides in the whitewashed house where Mr. Van Cleeve used to live – chased a black-tailed deer out of her front door by waving her ironing board and slapping its tip against her flooring.

And – like a dull sucker-punch – it occurred to me that – although I almost certainly won’t recognize it in passing – a moment will arrive in the years to come after which I’ll never make love to a woman again.

And in the instant after experiencing this disjointed trinity, I didn’t know whether to wave at my prodigal WWOOF’er, let out a loud belly-laugh at the hilarity of the deer scenario, or lean heavily against the kitchen counter and ponder how I’m likely to feel on the day when I realize that all the passions of youth have left me behind.

After brief indecision, I realized that the best option – the only option, really – was the belly-laugh, was indulging in the one simple response which could unify three things which seemed so disconnected.

And so I laughed until my stomach cramped, laughed until – as the gut-wrenching convulsions began to subside – I remembered something relevant which my buddy Father Domenici confided to me – years ago – during a sticky autumn night of ouzo-fueled carousing through the streets of Portland’s Old Town.

“Farmer,” the staggering defrocked priest quietly slurred. “It seems that life leaves us no better option than to laugh. It is that or to pass the years sobbing…”