Edges of my Life.

It was the turn of the season and half the leaves had fallen and the low hills and valleys still blazed with color but the sun had lost its bite and now shone soft and yellow during the last warm days. I pottered in my garden, a man of retirement age not yet ready to lay down, I pottered and I contemplated and moved things around, stones and  branches and pulled, uprooted Bishops Weed and made compost piles and felt the earth and thought about planting garlic. I think he first commented on the garden and how the yard had changed since he'd delivered groceries to the old woman who’d lived upstairs. She worked as a caretaker at that retirement home on the hill when it was a hospital.  What happened to her?" he asked.  “She died a while back”, I said.  "You retired?”, he asked and I had to think about that again and realized that in many ways I was and I answered affirmatively but noted I still did a few things. I was hanging on I guess and winter is coming. He...

The big man who lives next door is called Stanley. He stands six foot six tall and weighs more than three hundred. He looks like a retired wrestler. He walks on the balls of his feet, light and smooth like Jackie Gleeson used to dance.  Stanley lives with his wife Dona and his grandchildren. Nathaniel is a mixed race boy and Alisa is growing up fast becoming a woman. Their mother is there sometimes but she lives across town with her latest boyfriend. Stan and Dona  tend her children because it’s better that way since their daughter has some issues. When they first moved in I was a little shocked because they were not our kind of people at all. It seemed like they’d dropped in from some hillbilly community or maybe a trailer park. They were loud and always had a cigarette in their mouth and the German Shepherd was usually on a chain out back; sometimes cowboy music played on the radio and Stanley was frequently under a car fixing something or other. Once he strung a heav...