The Last Rose of Summer
Also, car culture on the road to Forest Grove
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Wasting time
Today will be a day like no other. It will pass into a string of days, each of them unique yet largely forgotten. How should I keep track? Should I even bother?
There are so many days in a life. And at the end of life, looking back, not nearly enough days.
How will you spend your day, hour by hour? Are you aware of time’s passing? Do you, can you remember?
I know that each day I “waste” minutes, hours. I lay awake at night. I choose the easy path. I do things that don’t advance my being.
I could blame disability fatigue for my inertia. But I suspect we all let experiences glide by without resistance, whether we’re disabled or not.
Rather than get up from sitting—on the bed, the wheelchair, the recliner, even the toilet—I’ll reach for the phone, the tablet, a book. I keep everything I need at hand on my walker or in my wheelchair go bag.
Anything to distract me, to let me put off having to move.
It isn’t that I am wasting time, really. I am just not doing what I think I should be doing: the dishes, putting on my braces and shoes, going to the desk to write. Instead, I’m looking at email, doing a word game on the tablet, idly glancing at a newspaper.
Who’s to say what’s a waste, after all? A story in the newspaper could change my perspective, even my life. Sometimes television helps me unwind.
57 bus
The Trimet line 57 runs frequently from Beaverton to Hillsboro, then farther west to Forest Grove. I rode that bus to Hillsboro recently, and was struck by how little the roadside landscape had changed in the 40 or more years since I first saw it. I mean, there are new buildings and all, but the feeling is the same. A long, skinny chain of buildings linked only by geography and utility. Nothing that draws your soul or makes you want to tarry awhile.
Highway, lifeline
The Tualatin Valley Highway, Oregon 8, runs like an arrow through the flat landscape of Washington County, bounded on the south by short-line rail tracks.
There are hundreds of small businesses tucked amid the big guys. Most involve either food or cars.
The restaurants are diners, like the Reedville Cafe, or Mexican outlets—restaurants, food carts, groceries. There’s the occasional Asian offering, Chinese or Thai. Pizza joints but few taverns, though one convenience store offers “cheap smokes, cold beer.”
Lone outposts: Manila Market. Baghdad Gyro and Halal.
Just a smattering of coffee shops, including a single Starbucks, in Hillsboro, but many chain food outlets: Shari’s, Panda Express, Wendy’s, Burger King, Red Robin.
Plaid Pantries. 7-Elevens. A giant Goodwill.
No city for us
Between Beaverton and Hillsboro, the highway passes through two large unincorporated areas, Aloha (pronounced Ah-LOW-Ah, no “h” sound, by the locals), and Reedville.
These working-class neighborhoods are in unincorporated Washington County. That is, they rely on the county sheriff’s office for safety, Tualatin Hills Fire & Rescue for fire and emergency response, and the Beaverton and Hillsboro school districts for public schools.
Aloha, which is big enough with about 54,000 residents to be a “census-designated place” (CDP) by the U.S. Census, has its own post office. Reedville residents have a Hillsboro address.
Change and sameness
The businesses that line either side of the long strip that is the Tualatin Valley Highway reflect the neighborhood. Most are one story, many of them cinderblock, some topped by the clapboard mansard roofs that were popular in the 70s.
The biggest changes from the ’70s are mini-malls anchored by national chains: Target, Ross, Dollar Tree, Office Depot, Walgreen’s, Rite Aid, Safeway, Lowe’s. Those sorts of spaces line every urban highway in America, plain concrete buildings painted in earth tones, forgettable.
Reedville rabbit
There’s one iconic roadside attraction on the 57 line, the giant rabbit outside the now-closed Harvey’s Marine in Reedville. The reference is to the 1950 film Harvey. The rabbit wears a nautical cap.
American flags are everywhere, with especially big ones doing slow dances at the shiny new car dealerships.
Oddly, only a few gas stations. They are all Chevrons.
Medical clinics abound, but I only saw one church.
Car culture
Cars and car services line the TV Highway. Dealership after dealership, sometimes strung several together, most at the more prosperous Beaverton end of the highway: Ford, Chevy, Kia, Audi, Porsche, VW. Volvo. Mazda. Toyota. Hyundai. U-Haul.
Once you own the car, the highway has everything you need for it: Car repair. Body shops. Parts, stereos, campers and RVs, oil, transmissions, tires, car washes. Convenience stores with processed food you can eat or drink in your car.
I love one business name: Classic Collision. Is there any other type of collision?
Only a few billboards, but many public storage places.
All in the past
I remember Hillsboro from 50 years ago, a sleepy farm town. Milk cans on display on the sidewalk outside a farm equipment store. Minimal car traffic.
As a stringer, before I got hired full-time at The Oregonian, I reported out of the Washington County Courthouse. A genial undersheriff once bought me a coffee from a vending machine. I accepted it to be polite, then was roundly criticized by my companion, a veteran reporter who was showing me the ropes, for accepting a bribe.
Good thing she didn’t report me to the editors. I might never have gotten a job there.
Hillsboro is still the seat of county government, but now it is a city of burgeoning apartments, huge developments like Orenco Station, and clouds of prosperous urbanites whisked to the suburbs by Westside light rail.
The old Hillsboro exists, if at all, in the dusty aisles of antique shops—no, scratch that—antique malls.
The last rose of summer
My husband, Robert Jaffe, remembers childhood summers spent at a resort in Haynes Falls, N.Y. He and his mother escaped steamy Brooklyn for two months, joined by his father on weekends.
Rather than the Jewish resorts in the Catskills, they chose a place with lots of Irish-American vacationers. Evenings were spent around the piano (sometimes Robert’s father, Mac Jaffe, would play). Often in harmony, they sang old-time Irish favorites:
“When Irish Eyes Are Smiling” “Heart of My Heart” “I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen” “The Foggy, Foggy Dew” “Danny Boy”
And then there was “The Last Rose of Summer.” The music, most commonly in the key of D, is set to words by the Irish poet Thomas Moore (1779-1852). You’ll get the drift from the first stanza:
’Tis the last rose of Summer,
Left blooming alone;
All her lovely companions
Are faded and gone;
No flower of her kindred,
No rose-bud is nigh,
To reflect back her blushes
Or give sigh for sigh!
Here is the great soprano Lily Pons singing this soulful song with characteristic verve.
Now the year rolls on to October
From my apartment, set amid sky and trees, I see birds flitting in the greenery. For several weeks they have been invisible, resting and molting, growing new feathers.
I can’t see their nests in the trees. That’s how birds keep their families safe. Just a whisper of feathers amid the leaves. And then, stillness.
All fall now
When the leaves fall, the sparrows fly. The sky changes then. Clouds keep secrets from the sun, Shadow the earth below. Scurrying creatures, Running in fear: Rabbits and voles, Foxes, chipmunks. Hearts beating, rapid, Sharp breaths. The hawk, the owls, With frenzied focus— Straight, lethal claws, Claws that can snap a neck, A backbone. Talons of death. All things flee in fall, The animals, The leaves, The birds. What is left: Leaf mold, Spent pinecones— Once living matter, Now ground to dirt. Fall rains Wash away the new soil. Tree roots Are grateful.
I ended this poem with a passive construction, something I would usually advise against. But here, it is fitting, as the season of passivity is upon us. Winter demands acquiescence. It expects us to lie supine, our bellies exposed, accepting the tragedy and the solitude of the season.
Winter silence, all sounds muffled in cold and snow, descends as the bird song ceases and destructive fall winds blow themselves out. All is buffered by snow and stillness. Downed branches, trees, leaves become the food of the forest as it eats itself.
Sunflower, fading to fall
This sunflower is molting, too, its yellow core giving way to brown seeds. Soon the whole plant will be brown and blown, its annual adventure over.
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Hanging up
I’ve been noticing how folks end phone calls. So far, the most common phrase is “buh-bye.” Older folks sometimes say “bye-bye” like they did when they were children. Other variations:
“Bye now” (which I favor)
“Talk to you later”
And, common since the ’70s, “Have a nice day.”
Does anyone just say “good-bye” anymore?
October is coming
It’s here, actually. Just a few scant hours from when I release this posting.
Good-bye (or buh-bye) to September’s theme of colors and seasons. October’s is “home and away.” I’ll be writing about disappearances: kids to college, leaves from trees, Canada geese from the skies. And things that bring us home: comfort and longing, yearning and fulfillment. Would you like a recipe? Two?
Death and life
Death is a fact of life here at assisted living in Rose Schnitzer Manor. This week we mourned a receptionist who died too early, shortly after cancer took her husband. She was an authentic person, prickly at time yet warm, and dedicated to us residents.
At the service, we read from Marge Piercy’s “Kaddish”:
Blessed is light, blessed is darkness, but blessed above all else is peace.
As we move past the equinox into the season of darkness, these words breathe comfort into our longing. They eased us as we mourned. I’m going to post them in my apartment and return to them often.
Take care this week, beloved. The dark is coming, but we are strong against it.
—30—
Such melancholy writings I am reading on Substack today. Yours still has a joy in the fading of September. Frankly, I'm glad this September is gone. Death surprised me throughout the month; thus I'm feeling very mortal for the first time in my life. Your piece reminded me that death is change, the fallen trees feeding the "forest as it devours itself." O.M.G. what a phrase. I loved your descriptions of the highway communities and how the small places blend in with the big guys. Somehow they prevail. As will we.
That rabbit! That's very cool. I recently read an account of someone who traveled Rt. 66 ..... full of roadside attractions I'd never heard of. I think a lot about time and the choices, too..... But, I, too, think some of the things others would say are "wasting" time (or too still) have value. I'm not sure we have to fill every second with "work" of any form, even work we enjoy.