AUSTIN, Texas, May 27, 2005 — We can be a few feet apart, but completely in our own worlds. Doing activities together, differently. Near each other, immersed in differen entertainments. Thinking our own thoughts.

FFP was up today early enough to go off to the club and meet a 9:30 appointment to shoot some photos. But I don't think he went to the club. He was hitting the shower around 8:15. I told him that I was going to play tennis, that a friend was picking me up at nine.

So, of course, I got into my tennis shorts, a white polo, tennis shoes. (The shoes I only play tennis in.)

My tennis buddy calls. She has a meeting with the principal of her son's school for first grade next year. And the principal wants to change the time. She says we could play later. I tell her it's cool. What's it like to chase your kid's (or kids') education for twelve or even sixteen or more years?

FFP says maybe I'd like to go along for the photo shoot. I change to jeans, T-Shirt, different shoes. Since we are having trouble with one digital camera, we take a couple although, truthfully, we have trouble with the old one, too, with battery life.

We get to the shop where we are supposed to meet the folks. The help is inside but it isn't open. They let us in, though, and we wander around looking at expensive china and crystal and tiny Herend figures costing hundred bucks or more. There are the selections of well-off brides and grooms arranged for viewing. So not my life. (Although I did eventually get twelve place settings of fine china although less expensive than these. That was totally due to an old maid aunt who had ideas of the family escaping its dirt farmer roots.) The help says that the cars and people for the shoot will be there soon.

There is much ado and a pink stretch limo and a pink Escalade arrive. FFP has written articles about the shop owner and her daughter (Vickie and Jenny Roan) and their ventures which include this female-pitched limousine service. I shoot some pictures of the cars, the cars with the principals. The younger Roan is dressed in the uniform of the service which includes spike heels. Spike heels? I actually wore heels, um, well back in my teens and twenties I guess. A few decades ago. Never again. We crawl in the back of the limo for a minute. DVD player, bar, luxurious leather. Not our lifestyle. I could get used to it, though. I love to be driven. When we go to New York City we do treat ourselves to a car service for the trip to and from the airport. It's just a Town Car, though, with a few magazines in the back. Still we like to be driven by a competent fellow.

We go home. On the short drive to our house, FFP says, "I love doing my articles."

"You get to know a lot of interesting people," I say.

At home, I work on downloading, editing, optimizing the pictures. Both from today and from the party last night which we covered for West Austin News. That sets me thinking of the honorees from last night's second party (and some of the guests). People with enough money to make a difference. If they want us to have a dino park, have UT's Texas Memorial Museum have better displays, if they want to prop up the opera, get a foundation going for the ballet, they can do it. They can make a difference with their money and not in one spot or two. In lots of places. Oh, we can all do our little part. FFP and I have given bits and pieces. Two significant (for us) gifts to Ballet Austin and Austin Lyric Opera to help them have a building from which to operate. (When you hear about a concert in Preece Recital Hall, well that would be our contribution to the opera. Although I happen to know the smallish room cost more than our contribution with special quiet AC and accoustic design. This is known in the fundraising business as a naming opportunity.) But these people who we know well can really make a difference. Some other friends of ours are putting nieces and nephews through college, have funded charities around town with donations of seven figures. I envy them. Not their cars or vacations. Not their ability to have an expensive house. (Although last night's honorees actuall don't have an expensive house.) No, I envy the giving. My life has a taste of it. Like someone who gets to drink champagne and caviar once a year and loves it.

My friend comes to pick me up. As we ride to a park to play tennis (she isn't a member of the club but she could have gone as my guest today but they were full with a tourney) she talks about how she can't afford to send her three kids to private school. She has a Mercedes, though, and as we ride I think how nice it is and how I've never had an expensive car. I don't really want one, mind you. But it makes you think about how other people live. (What I'd rather do is have no car but ride in nice ones driven by the cute gal below, but that's just me.)

We play tennis. My friend is getting to be good. But she doesn't have much experience playing real games and her serve is inconsistent. So I win. But we have lots of rallies. At one point her knee hurts a little and I think she might quit, but she soldiers on. She tried running yesterday she says. There is a scar on the knee she points out. I've had my aches and pains, but I've avoided joint surgery so far. My friend is younger than I. We are all in a different place in life, with our life. Younger, older. Fatter, thinner. Hurting a little, hurting a lot.

After two sets (6-0, 6-1) I say we should probably give it up. There has been a little breeze and I have on 60SPF sunscreen but my skin feels kind of hot. Time to give it up.

Home again, I realize it's two o'clock. I haven't eaten anything. I heat up some chicken leftovers and make a spinach salad. I change to jeans and T-Shirt and put on my yard shoes and go out and put another soaking of oil and beeswax into the teak. The neighbors are arranging tables in their yard for a party. We are invited. So are all the parental units.

A repairman has come to work on our sprinkler system. He fixes a leak and he and Forrest work on the programs and testing various sectors. Forrest arranges for him to go to Dad's next week to work on his system. Managing a house, make that multiple houses, is a pain. I go inside. I fool around with this and that. I watch a game show off the DVR and some other stuff. I set up to record a mini-series based on a Richard Russo novel I read (Empire Falls) that is on this weekend. There is so much entertainment out there...all of us influenced by the programs and movies and WEB sites, but by our own unique mix of them.

I finally shower up. My hair is still wet when my dad shows up. It's the first time he's driven over here since his back was so bad. And he's had a big day. He picked up a lady friend and they went to church. They played games with their friends and then went to a movie and had a late lunch/early dinner at a chain restaurant. It was her birthday. Now he's going to the graduation party next door. I get my hair dry. FFP goes to pick up his parents. It is quite a production of careful steps, walker for Dad, cane for FFP's Dad to get to the house next door. We sit in the living room for a while and then move our gang out to the table on the screen porch to eat. They are celebrating their daughter's high school graduation and the birthdays of her grandparents. There are young and old and in the middle. Neighbors, classmates, old friends. The graduates younger sister has a friend and they are on the periphery, thinking that their 'time' is far away. They try to catch fire flies as do the younger children from the house next door to us.

After the birthday announcement, the grandfather says someone ask him how it felt to be eighty. "I said I didn't know...that I hadn't been eighty that long." What we are and where we are we experience as if looking at a landscape from a speeding train. We don't stop and see what it's like most of the time.

Our parents wear out. First Dad. He says his goodbyes. He has given the graduate a bit of money. He says goodbye and struggles with the walker across the grass to his van. He promises to call when he gets home. He doesn't. I have to call. He has also forgotten to bring his cell phone. (He isn't supposed to leave the house without it.) Sigh. It's like having children. But he does get home safely from his big adventure.

FFP drives his parents home. His dad's trip across the grass, feeling with the cane for what his vision won't tell him, struggling to move the bad kneed is worse than the one over. But they make it.

I go inside and scan a picture that his mother is going to give to FFP's uncle who is having a 90th birthday tomorrow. I can't imagine walking on Congress in the thirties. I can barely imagine myself, a toddler in the late forties and early fifties, finding myself on a blackland farm. FFP's dad remembers a lot of it so well as the recent article in The Austin American-Statesman reveals.

FFP comes back and we go back to the party briefly. Then back home. We watch TV and I try to read. I'm so sleepy. The two beers? The sun and heat today? I retire.