Recommend

Comment

Email this article

Print this article

Get news alerts

RSS Feeds

Share Digg Mixx Linked In Facebook Twitter Delicious

In order for there to be stunning, athletic men riding waves, there must first always be teenagers grappling with their long bodies to find a special skill and hone it.

His wetsuit hangs off him—two of him could fit in there. His feet are magenta. He has emerged from the ocean to exchange his surfboard for a boogie board; he drops one, grabs the other and then, pausing briefly to talk to the girl who is filming the action from the beach, bails back into the undertow.

Do not let the “off-season” keep you indoors. Staying indoors is more dangerous than ever with the advent of the internet. It has drawn people from hobbies and corroded relationships. Plus, the more time you spend outdoors, the more likely you are to see marvelous things. These marvelous things help balance the terrible things you might confront while “surfing” the web.

My brother Dean is very busy at this time of year, because potato consumption goes up around the holidays, and he’s scheduling shipments. He was working outside when his phone rang, and so he stopped moving to answer it. When he did, a sparrow landed on his boot. Dean looked down at the odd bird but barely had time to contemplate the sparrow’s chosen perch before a hawk swooped right in after it and snatched the sparrow away. Explaining everything.

Dean gasped, kept his composure and, after he hung up, as if he’d been holding his breath, let out an exclamation in response to the wild encounter.

We arrive in December with but one substantial frost and with leaves yet to fall. Seed catalogs begin to arrive, and I cannot say I welcome them. The suppliers I take seriously are the most difficult to draw from the post box: season extenders, improved marketability and pictures, tons and tons of pictures that show fields in their photogenic prime. Cover to cover, they cause my pulse to quicken. At this time of year, I would prefer the banal gloss of high-end mail order. I fish one from the post office recycling bin as antidote.

I don’t want to shock anyone by becoming nostalgic, because if I am, it was unintentional. The models are hard, the clothing impossible, and as I descend the steps into the drizzle of a mild day, I suddenly remember the dollhouse in the post office. It was a Christmas tradition. It was handmade, delicately made, true to life, but miniature and thus inexplicably engaging for children.

There were differences, of course, like the bearskin rug that was fashioned from a real mouse. It was this clever device that indeed kept many hands like my own out of the small interior. Really, you did not need to touch the display: Staring, as your mother got the mail, was enough, and probably all you had time for.