My Back Yard

It’s a sunny, cold day. The sparrows are frolicking in our heated bird bath, which I topped off with water earlier today.

The temperature got well above freezing today, but it didn’t make much of a dent in the thick crust of ice in our back yard, driveway, or sidewalks. I’m afraid the thaw is only making matters worse because the melted snow will turn to ice.

I worked with the ice chipper to break a bath to the garage. Freddie, the friendly squirrel, rewarded me by coming over for some peanuts, which she’ll take from my hand. That made me smile.

A cute cat video!

I lugged my manual typewriter to Tokyo, Singapore, and across Australia.

I’d needed a typewriter for writing up my Ph.D. thesis research in Tokyo. On my way to Japan, I’d traveled with it as a carry-on. No problem.

But on my way home from Tokyo I planned to spend a few weeks traveling the Pacific. A typewriter would get in the way.

I wanted to ship my typewriter home. But the shipping companies told me it was too fragile to survive their care. I could have sold the typewriter to an expat. Such transactions were routine in the community of foreigners living temporarily in Japan. Indeed, the color television that I’d shlepped from apartment to apartment inside the Yamanote Line’s ring had a pedigree that went back to a senior professor of Japanese history. But my parents, who had given the typewriter, a hand-me-down from their office, were horrified by the idea of my abandoning it. Thus, my typewriter enjoyed multiple flights as well as the train trek from Perth to Sydney.

The age of the typewriter was ending as I wrapped up my thesis. Although I typed my first chapters, I produced the final version at a terminal tied to the university’s clunky mainframe computer.

Within a couple of years of graduating, my husband and I bought our first personal computer, accessorized by a daisy wheel printer. My typewriter soon receded into my closet. But we’d been through so much together that I couldn’t get rid of it.

Today I can’t deny that my typewriter is an anachronism. I was about to put it out on the curb for garbage pick-up. In fact, I had it at the front door for my husband to put out last weekend. He didn’t get around to it. And now I’m glad that he didn’t because I read in today’s Boston Globe about a man who sells and repairs typewriters. I’m hoping my machine will find a new home at that store. Even if it gets cannibalized for parts, that’s better than going into a landfill.