One of the unexpected legacies of Buddy’s death is my current inability to go into our backyard. He is buried behind the hot tub, where at his passing, I conducted a graveside ceremony. The internet is an impressive place when one is faced with becoming a Doctor of Divinity A.S.A.P., and true to that statement, I found a touching eulogy upon the loss of a beloved pet. While I could barely deliver it without choking up, the eulogy included a line asking God to care for your pet in death as you had cared for him in life. Every time I have walked into the back yard since June 4, I have thought of this request, and I have cried. In addition to plunging me into great sorrow, it has plunged me into a theological crisis. I find myself talking to God as if He were some divine petsitter, for if God were to care for Buddy in death as I cared for him in life, he needs to know a few things. But does an omniscient god really need a reminder to give Buddy his glucosamine supplement on the regular? Or that the dog panics during thunderstorms? In my world, He apparently does. So I cry for Buddy, and I cry for my hubris, and as a result, Chris has taken out the trash almost every night for the last 76 days.

Rather than tending the garden, I have spent a lot of time looking at it from the kitchen window. I have discovered two things lately. First, I have a pet squirrel. I blame my sister for that one, since she gave me a Squirrel Buster bird feeder for my birthday. I, for once, followed the installation instructions, and the feeder has successfully busted squirrels. The problem is that there is a small squirrel who apparently calls my backyard her world, and newly busted, lacks for food. She sits every morning where I can see her from that kitchen window. She looks sad. She looks hungry. I reciprocate by looking like a very soft touch, and I go aside and scatter seed especially for her.

(My pet squirrel. I call her by my daughter’s name, because I call my daughter “Squirrel.”)

The second thing that I have discovered is that someone has been playing the Barry White channel 24/7 on the outdoor speakers, for there has been a population explosion of birds in our backyard. I have counted two female cardinal juveniles, one male, and a number of small sparrows, brown thrashers, and chickadees. All of this avian youth leaves me with a single question: How do birds mate?

Apparently — and I have the internet to thank again — they have a cloaca, an inner chamber that ends in an opening through which either sperm or eggs are discharged. The female bird moves her tail feathers; the male perches on top; the birds rub their cloaca; there is an exchange of bodily fluids; and then they share a cigarette.

Undisturbed by my interruptions, in a yard left to grow unfettered in a hot and rainy season, in the seven birdhouses scattered around my city lot, the birds have gone absolutely wild.

I watched the fledglings most of the weekend as I painted the kitchen. Other people have people that they call to do home repairs. Chris and I are not those people, for at some point early in our marriage, we decided that we would do everything ourselves. During a visit to the Golden Gate Bridge, I read a placard that said that a paint crew is always working on the bridge. It feels that way in our home sometimes, for I am always painting something. On Saturday, with a fair amount of arthritis and inflexibility, I found myself climbing like a mountain goat to reach a high spot. It reminded me of a night in 1997, with a fair amount of fecundity and lax joints, when Chris found me 8 months pregnant, standing on a kitchen stool, painting and crying that the house would never be ready for a baby. Yet it was.

It hit me that this go around, the refurbishing of the newly empty nest, may be my last D.I.Y. hoorah. Will I really be scampering up to awkward spots when I’m 70, paint brush in hand?

Maybe. Maybe not.

I have found that it is easier to accept growing older since I quit coloring my hair. On a good day, my hair grows at a glacial pace. Continents have drifted apart faster and the NBA season has ended more quickly than my hair grows. Yet magically, after only 15 months, I woke up one morning and could pull back what was left of my colored hair to be greeted with my real hair, which looks like this:

I like it. When I look in the mirror in the mornings, I am no longer confronted by a woman who looks like a terribly weather-beaten 35 year-old. No, I am confronted by a woman who looks 50. It explains why my knees hurt. Why the skin around my eyes crinkles when I smile (and even when I don’t). It allows me to feel more confident in almost everything I do, for I have clearly been doing everything for a pretty long time. When you have grey hair, if you haven’t learned what you need to know by now, it’s on you.

My hair-induced bravery extends to the coming week. My daughter will be postponing college and working again for several months in Montana. She wanted to fly home and take her car back with her. Can I come with you? I found myself asking. She said yes, and in 12 hours, we leave.

I am nervous, for so much could go terribly wrong. But I am far more excited. The two of us will be driving 2200 miles in a Mini Cooper over eleven different states. We will see family. We will see the arch in Saint Louis. We will stay in a room in a Frank Lloyd Wright house in Kansas City on Wednesday night. We will establish that South Dakota actually exists. I will have 33 hours of my daughter’s company in a very small car, and when she is 50 and I am 81, I have no doubt that we will still speak of this trip, probably while I’m painting the living room.

I have stared out the kitchen window this summer long enough to know one thing: Life goes on. I have looked in the mirror at my newly grey hair to know another: I can do this. I can take to the open road and see things I have never seen and be confident that I will know what to do if something goes wrong or even if (miracle of miracles) everything goes right. Adventure calls, friends, and with a small suitcase in hand, I am ready to answer.

ALC