This year’s “May Gray” in the Southwest Corner has doubled down. Almost the entire month has closed the window of perfect weather. The marine layer has come in earlier, stayed longer and returned earlier. We’ve had numerous May days with no sun burning through the clouds. Clowns like me have lived here long enough to recognize our complaining about Southwest Corner weather is akin to complaining about the opposition scoring a run when your team just won a national championship.

Still, not being used to this, we can get down. Quick. So as i walked out today as the sun was rising even though i could not see it, i stopped my morning routine to look at Maureen’s roses in the front side yard:

i continue to prove i am not a graphics guy, but i think you get the picture, in this case pictures. Regardless, when i looked at Maureen’s roses, i pretty much quit complaining about May Gray.

May of a seacoast town
is dark, gray and dank until
the sun burns through
the marine layer;
morning is the time
to visit the coastline
gray and dank before
the sun burns through;
nary a soul but you
walks the beach;
a large black dog runs
up to the incoming tide,
barks furiously at small waves
crashing down,
then retreating fast away
to repeat the frenzy
again and again
while you walk away
along the south facing beach
toward the west
and the sea,
always toward the sea.

Begun Thursday, May 18. Finished this afternoon.

i should be finishing up Chapter 2 of my serial A Tale of the Sea and Me (For Sam). i should be posting a Democrat column from my “Notes from the Southwest Corner.” i should be posting another “Murphy’s Law” guffaw. i should be activating my new bluetooth transponder so i can play my ancient non-bluetooth devices, like phonograph players, CD players, cassettes, and eventually reel-to-reel tapes — as i disdain using Apple music or others because i want to listen to my music, not what they think i would like to hear. i should be organizing stuff in my garage, clothes closet, and garage. i should be cleaning and polishing my shoes. i should be cleaning the interior of my car, close to the last U.S. non-sports car with a standard transmission.

But no.

The seemingly unending string of curmudgeonly thoughts loosely tied together kept coming. It began when i saw a beautiful young woman…except she had fake eyelashes. To keep it nice, i will say like she looked like an anime from some video, but not pretty. Definitely not as attractive as she would have been with her natural lashes.

From that thought, it was easy to move to my great dislike of women, young or old, wearing jeans that cost absurd amounts of money with torn sections, which my mother would have fixed with patches. But i’ve ranted about that enough.

My travels took me to the cleaners, a return trip. A day earlier, i had retrieved two pairs of dockers pants, one blue and one khaki. When i got home, i discovered the blue trousers had been pressed with the crease in the traditional front, but the khakis had been pressed with the crease, if you can call it that, along the seam. i queried the woman at the counter. She explained the khakis were considered “casual” and that meant they should not have a crease.

i noticed a bunch of folks, young and old, but not as old as me with hair different than what was natural. Men had corn rows, toupees, or shaved sides, or shoulder length, or, heaven forbid, man buns. The women expanded on that and both had the colors of the rainbow, their choice. Remember when hair was black, brown, blonde, or auburn (remember auburn?). Nearly all had tattoos somewhere, often many wheres.

i was about to explode into damning all artificialities on or added to our body parts. Then i thought about my teeth and my friends.

You see, when i was nine, i took a header off my bike onto the sidewalk while on the way to a baseball game. That is a long story, but the short story is half of one of two front teeth was no longer part of my dental makeup. At the time, dental cosmetics had not reached its zenith and for about seven years or so, i had one silver front tooth — why am i thinking of “The Ballad of Cat Ballou.”

But my best friend, and my second best friend growing up fixed that in the winter of my junior year in high school. Henry and Jim, aka Beetle, and i went out to a frozen pond in February to skate or something, without skates of course. We would run through the snow to the pond’s edge and jump with the goal of making it to the other side standing up and unscathed. Somewhere in this endeavor, i did not make it to the other side and took another header, this time on the rough ice of the pond.

i got rid of that silver tooth…and what remained of the original one. Henry and Beetle deposited on the front steps of my house. i think my mother realized the real culprit and never chastised the Harding boys. The good news i got a bridge with a tooth that looked pretty good. For someone totally void of compassion, i delighted the next week when playing in a JV basketball game, the kid guarding me left the court to throw up because he was staring at a face with a tooth missing and scars that arched from his mouth up to his ears on both sides, looking like a small version of “The Creature from the Black Lagoon.”

Then, this guy pulled out into an intersection, ignoring the stop sign around midnight and i caught him flush with my Volvo, Another front tooth bit the dust…or rather bit the steering wheel, and the bridge was then for two.

And while i was executive officer aboard USS Yosemite, a cook from the wardroom mess brought me a fresh pear. i was pleased, leaned back in my office chair and took a bite. The pear was so fresh, it was hard. When i bit into it and tried to pry it from my front teeth, i was successful in pulling out the bridge and one of the anchor teeth along with the pear.

That’s three.

Then after retiring a piece of food, in spite of my flossing, hung up in crevasse next to an anchor tooth. the anchor tooth eroded.

So now i have four false teeth in front, held in place by that bridge.

i then considered all of my friends. There are very few who haven’t had some body part replacement, knee, shoulder, hip, ankles, etc.

Therefore, i think it might be a tad hypocritical for me to rant about artificial body parts. Because without such medical marvels, i would make Billy the Kid look like a dentist office ad.

During all of this deep thought, i picked up my pants at the cleaners. When i got home i discovered they were pressed along the seam without a crease in front. When i returned to our cleaners, i asked why. It seems my pants are “casual pants” that do not get a crease in the front. i’m guessing i’m supposed to go out with women who wear torn jeans that cost around $200.

It is not happening. My wife will not wear torn jeans.

And so, i must admit, i am a relic. i no longer can fit in. i am fine with that. i don’t recall any phase in my life where i really fit in.

But i do regret what we have lost. Remember back when (for those that can). We dressed up every Sunday and for any big event. We wore shirts and ties and no one, no one wore sneakers — in fact, you only wore sneakers on athletic courts. We didn’t go out without our shirts tucked in. Women wore skirts and looked great, attractive but not suggestive.

I think we took more pride in how we looked. We didn’t go for easy and relaxed. We went for pride in ourselves…i think.

Either is not bad i guess. But i am from a different place and a different time. i’m sort of glad my momma sewed patches on the torn parts of my jeans, that i don’t look like Billy the Kid with fewer teeth, and folks, i gotta let you know you will never see me with false eyelashes.

In 2015, Steve and Maria Frailey invited us to join them for a “glamping” trip to the wineries in Warner Springs, a farming community in the northeast San Diego County high desert. It was marvelous. The Shadow Mountain Winery is a wonderful place.

The first vineyard at the winery planted in 1945 is named “Old Gus” for the original owners AuGUStus and Helen Mase. Steve wanted to take a photo of us in the old tub next to the vineyard. We both laughed and hopped in. When Maureen finally realized it could be construed as being like the Viagra commercial on television at the time, she was embarrassed. i love it.

i could not figure out how to share it as a memory on Facebook, even though it’s a great memory. Thank you, Steve.

Tomorrow is one of those days again. i do not like, rail against institutionalized holidays honoring folks and things. i like to choose who i honor when and not be dictated into doing it on certain days. But hey, i am one of this crowd and would be even more out of place if i didn’t pay homage as dictated, although i try to ignore most. But one of those mosts is not tomorrow. No, not tomorrow. There are a certain bunch of people in my life whom i would never ignore.

Mothers.

There have been many of those wonderful women who are not mentioned here due to space limitations. There are my three aunts: Naomi Jewell Martin; Evelyn Prichard Orr; and Bettye Kate Prichard Jewell, the other mother to me and many others even though she never had children of her own. There is Nancy Orr Winkler Schwarze who was the first woman of my generation of Prichard children to have a child. There is my sister Martha and her daughter-in-law Abby. There is my sister-in-law Carla and her daughter Kate. And many others. Then, there are those who have been and are very close to me.

Blythe. She is a special mother. i am always thrilled to hear of her talk about her son, my grandson Sam. She’s doing this mother thing right.

Then there is this woman who has yet to have a child of her own, but is a remarkable second mother to many, many children. Sarah. She had special relationship with Sam, her nephew, much like my Aunt Bettye Kate with me (and others), that other mother.

And then there was mine. Estelle. She could be and often was tough with me, holding me to task. But i earned her need for being tough. Maureen often comments about how i must have been a handful for my mother. And not once, never, did i feel like Estelle did not have unconditional love for me, her daughter, and her other son.

Kathie. i can hardly write this without crying. Her love for her daughter and then her grandson, my daughter and my grandson, was never ending. Many of my decisions, including agreeing to a divorce, were based on knowing her unconditional love for our daughter, and knowing that love would make things all right…and they were. She left us too early, but her love is still around.

Obviously, i have saved this one to last. i failed in finding a photo of her, Sarah, and Blythe together. My organization in photographs is as bad or worse than my disorganization in all things. But she is the mother to both, second to Kathie in Blythe’s case, but unconditional for both, and for that matter Blythe’s husband Jason and our grandson Sam. She always brings joy to me when i watch her convey that love to her children.

All of these women are different in many ways. But there is one constant, a mind-blowing unconditional love for their children. The mother-child relationship has no boundaries when it comes to love. i feel lucky to be around that love.

May all of you mothers out there have a “Happy Mothers Day.” If anyone, any event or thing, deserves a dedicated holiday, it is you.

Bless you.