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COLUMNS:   Another Day in the Country

Guest columnist

It’s the routine that saves you, as you get older. You’ve done things a certain way for such a long time that you can do them without thinking.

I used to watch my old friend, Shawzee, do his morning routine.

“If it’s a good routine, it serves you well,” Shawzee would say as he would shave carefully, grimacing into the mirror, carefully running the razor slowly past the wrinkles that had appeared from his ears to his mouth over the years.

At 90 he would say, “Maybe I should do something about those wrinkles and get a face lift.”

I laughed. He was serious. He was surprised by my reaction.

“Isn’t it a little late?” I asked, still grinning at his vanity.

“It’s never too late until it’s over,” he countered.

Once he was shaved, he splashed on aftershave — I liked that about him, he was always dapper and well groomed. By the bathroom sink, he had a little bottle of Windex. The next step in the morning ritual was to spray his glasses and polish them to a fine shine.

Then came the shirt, the suit pants, the tie, the jacket and finally his shoes — also polished to a high shine. He’d put on his watch, make sure his billfold was in his pocket, insert the hearing aids, don his hat, and laboriously climb onto his motorized wheelchair (which he called “The Cart”) and he’d head out the door to another day of adventure.

Shawzee lived in a retirement center on a main drag and once again, he had his routine. After breakfast, he’d head toward St. Helena’s main street. On the way, he’d snitch some roses (he always kept little scissors in his pocket) from the bushes growing close to the sidewalk of some California stranger’s yard. He’d deliver these roses to women that he would see, and liked, downtown — the waitress at the restaurant, the gal who owned the dry cleaning establishment, any woman who caught his eye. He was always a ladies’ man.

I have a routine, of sorts, in the morning. I pull on shorts and a tank top — work clothes for a summer’s day. Slide my feet into sandals and squint into the mirror. It’s slap-dab with some kind of face stuff for moisture, a little lipstick, and a quick brush through the hair and I’m ready for the day.

As water heats for my tea, I eat breakfast, sitting at the kitchen counter. And while I eat, I do a Sudoku puzzle. That’s the routine.

Tim got me started doing Sudoku puzzles years and years ago. His older sister would save them from various magazines and bring them to him; he got a whole book of them finally. He said he was easily amused.

At first I was curious, just watching him noodle through the puzzle. And then one day, he handed me the back page of an old “National Enquirer” and said, “Try it!”

I was hooked. I loved them. It was so relaxing because for the 15 to 20 minutes that it took to do the puzzle, my mind was occupied with nothing else.

This became our routine —especially on weekends when Tim was better at eating breakfast. He’d fry the bacon and eggs. I’d do the potatoes and toast. He would grab a Pepsi for what I called “his fruit group” and I would take my tea to the table. We’d eat our breakfast and do Sudoku. By this time, he had difficult books and prided himself in doing the hardest of hard puzzles — some of them 12 to 16 sets across.

Me? I did the easier ones.

Triple T would chide me, “Why don’t you challenge yourself?”

“Because I don’t like thinking that hard early in the morning! I want it to be breezy and fun while I sip my tea.”

Breezy and fun — these past six months have not been! However, I’m still following my routine.

The book I’m using is called “White Belt Sudoku,” meaning it’s one of those easier ones. When Tim got sick, he started sharing the book with me. When I turn pages hunting for a blank puzzle, I see his familiar squiggly numbers filling squares, especially toward the back of the book where he thought they were more difficult — he was saving the easy ones at the front for me.

Yesterday I came across a page where he’d started a puzzle and not finished it — so unlike him —but he was losing the struggle to concentrate as the tumor grew in his brain. Sadly, I run my fingers over the familiar handwriting that stops mid-line.

I take another breath, turn the page, pick up the pen (“A sign of your bravery,” he’d say, “to do Sudoku puzzles with a pen”) and turn my mind to the familiar routine of counting, on another day in the country.

Last modified Sept. 3, 2009

 

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