Estivate Now!

Okay. We all -sooner or later- estivate. It's natural. No shame. This is the 21st century, and we live not so very far from Esalen. Even so, to discover (stumble upon would be more accurate) an honored house guest who though an adolescent, is from a (presumably) good family, well brought up by positive role models, abandoned to a biological imperative right there in our ivy like some…some mammal for goodness sake! The air temperature was about 90, but I mean, really! All I can tell you is that it was a quite a shocker. Thank goodness Beverly wasn’t home. Of course I didn’t make a scene that would embarrass our guest (Roxie is her name) but just as though such things happened every day and were in the normal household routine, I calmly approached her without being noticed and in one fluid motion pulled her from the dirt and gently carried her to bed, placing a blanket over her whole body including her head. (I had been instructed by her parents as to the appropriate response, though I never dreamed I would actually be called upon to react to this situation which I had regarded as a highly unlikely contingency.) She then proceeded to sleep the whole night through and was up the next morning as though nothing had happened at all. No mention was made of the previous afternoon and I placed her in the morning light and brought her a breakfast of fresh strawberries and a little left over sweet potato (which she loves and never gets at home.) We’ve never spoken of it to this day although I see her with some regularity since her parent’s live one street over. In every other respect she was an ideal guest and I look forward to her next visit.



Roxie and Her Parents Tim and Katy