Snail Season

When you get to my stage of life you spend a lot of time thinking about seasons. I watched a nice movie the other day called The Last Rifleman, starring Pierce Brosnan as the last member of the Royal Ulster Rifles Regiment from Northern Ireland that landed in Normandy on Sword Beach in 1944. After his wife’s death, he “escapes” from his managed care facility to travel by car, bus, train and ferry to get to the reunion of his regiment during the annual D-Day commemoration. His passport is 17 years out of date and yet he scams his way over and into France without spending a penny, relying instead on the kindness of strangers. Whenever he is asked his age, he declares that he is 92 and three-quarters. The point being made is that unlike the young child that fractionalizes their years on earth to make themselves seem older, old people fractionalize their age to denote that they are aware that they could go at any minute and that they must keep each day precious. Indeed, he learns at the end of his voyage that he is last survivor of his regiment and hence, the last rifleman. Like the last rifleman, I find myself thinking in terms of final seasons and gravitating to movies like this that celebrate the latter stages of life. Just last night I watched yet another such film, also, strangely enough, with a distinctly British flavor (England being a country where growing old seems to be part of its persona). It was called The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry. Harold is played by veteran actor Jim Broadbent, who leaves his wife’s side (wife played by Penelope Wilton of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel fame) to walk the length of England (some 500 miles) to visit a dying friend in hospice. The story has elements of Forrest Gump, The Miracle Club and The Way, and it’s both a pilgrimage movie and a movie about plumbing the depths of your life before it is too late to do so…and doing it at a slow pace…one might say, a snail’s pace.

A common element of all of these movies is that the soulful struggle of the protagonist is usually driven by a sense that they have not accomplished anything, or certainly nothing noteworthy, in their lives and they want some act like a pilgrimage to fix that and give their lives meaning. The Walter Mitty life of quiet desperation seems to be a common theme as people age. And of course, a message that keeps coming through is the same one that Frank Capra exposed so well in It’s A Wonderful Life when Clarence, Angel Second Class (AS2) reminds George Bailey that no man is a failure so long as he has friends. However, in the case of Harold Fry and Artie Crawford (the last rifleman), the friends they have lost or are losing and those that they make along the journey are the ones being celebrated as their salvation. It’s no wonder, since they move at a very slow pace and have plenty of time for reflection. The added complexities are the imperfections and flaws of those friends that get revealed along the way and humanizes the whole entourage.

Despite the maudlin sentiments of these movies, there is something I like about these stories. It has less to do with the specific themes of aging and the quest for redemption and more about the fact that there is an actual human story attached to them. The Brits are not the only ones who know how to spin a story into a pleasing movie, but do seem to do it more reliably than others. Little ditty movies like Waking Ned Devine are so sweet and uniquely genuine that they have become favorites that I will watch whenever I see them them on. I compare that to what I would call “in your face” movies like Pulp Fiction or almost any Tarantino movie as well as most Martin Scorsese films. I admire them for their production value and sometimes even their storyline, but I honestly don’t much care to watch them over and over again. Meanwhile, more human interest stories like Moonstruck, Legends of the Fall, and The Shawshank Redemption are the ones that I never tire of seeing.

We are getting into that holiday season when I will start to keep track of my usual annual holiday movie list. Right now and in some semblance of order, we have to see Miracle on 34th Street, It’s a Wonderful Life, White Christmas, Love Actually, Elf and perhaps Christmas Vacation, The Holiday and Four Christmases. Every one of them is a human interest story in one form or another and with varying degrees of humor and fun layered on top. It is a seasonal ritual in our household to watch these movies, but I think I adhere to that more doggedly than does Kim. She gets preoccupied by Hallmark Holiday Movies, which I think is less about the story aspect that I enjoy so much and more about the feel-good that she likes. I’m not sure I can completely separate the story from the feel-good since they are so intertwined, but I do think there is a difference.

Today we are just puttering around doing odds and ends to get ready for the holidays. We are shoring up our plans for our various holiday gatherings and whiling away our time in a very pleasant yet casual manner. I am holding myself back from putting out the more visible outdoor holiday decorations since I think that has to wait until after Thanksgiving. It really is silly the amount of time we spend thinking about these things, much less out there doing them. What I have left to do outside is the two small lighted trees at the entrance that plug into the outlets where the regular entry lights live (always a challenge of reaching into a spider-infested hole in the stucco pillar) and fishing around among the light sockets, trying to plug into a socket plug that is less than stationary and that I cannot see, but have to feel my way around. Good thing I do it during the day time when I think (I should probably be more sure of this) there is no power running through those sockets. Once done I always marvel at how easy it is to have those light pillar’s at the entry that are on a timer, the whereabouts of which I have no clue about (maybe its a dusk-to-dawn light-sensitive switch?). Then there is the wreath to hang on the big terracotta pot next to the driveway. If you haven’t been here before, that is a massive (and I do mean massive… 6’ tall and 5’ diameter pot that was placed on that spot with a crane in years past). This pot is the front yard’s equivalent to my back hillside Bison statue…it is intentionally oversized to make a statement….”we are a pot-friendly garden here!” After that, there only remains the big Bell Balls on the Hobbit House, the red bow on the Bison’s forehead and the wreath around the leaping mountain ram’s head. And that’s the outdoor decor.

It rained last night and has threatened rain all day today. After the dry spell we have had here, that rain is a welcome relief, especially to the Hen & Chicks, Aeonium and Jade Plant succulents, which have been looking somewhat sunburned and drought-stricken despite the irrigation I have on them all. People who live in the desert see the transformation directly following a big rain, but I usually notice it only after a while of moistness. That seems different this year. I feel like the protracted dry spell has caused me to wonder about when the rains will come and rescue my needy succulents. Well, that time is now and this morning I even saw my first snail in a long time. He was small, so probably quite young, but snails don’t come into season unless they are pretty sure there will be lots of moisture available for them and then they finally come into season. Who knows if this was one little snail out of synch with his larger , more cautious brethren, or a harbinger of a new snail season. I am inclined to think that the analogy of snail season is not only appropriate in describing what’s going on in my garden, but also in life. When the pace slows down to a snail’s pace, as it does at my age, we tend to see more clearly and care more deeply, just like those wandering pilgrims. I think that just means that we are not just getting slower, but also getting more observant and perhaps more in tune with the world around us.