Dear Cyndy,

It's my aging memory, and nothing else, that should
be held responsible for the delay in my answer to
your last letter. I'm much aware, when I write "our
days are rather monotonous", that monotony is a
matter both of perspective and of value. When monotony
is broken by a frying pan dropping on ones toes, I
suppose monotony should be deemed a desirable condition
rather than the obverse. I very much hope your foot has
recovered from that insult. Please keep me informed.

As for monotony's being a matter of perspective, the
uniformity of yesterday was interrupted when I found that
I couldn't find the set of keys, the key to the old car,
the key to the older car, and the key to 174 School Street
that I customarily wear on a string about my neck, like a
child not otherwise to be trusted with objects of value.
Admittedly duplicates, the loss was hardly a catastrophe
that would have kept us marooned in the backwoods of
Virginia or locked out of the house in Belmont; but nontheless
a disquieting symptom of memory lapse, of unreliability and
domestic irresponsibility. 

I searched everywhere, under the computer keybord, on my father's
imposing walnut desk with its immaculately polished surface
and - even twenty-three years post mortem, - its untouched,
unemptied drawers. I searched the bedroom's dresser and bedside
table.  I looked on the kitchen counter and beside the microwave,
and downstairs in the basement garage, in the shop and in the
laundry room. I even excavated the washing machine, if perchance
the keys had been laundered out of my trousers' pockets.

In the end, I had no choice but to capitulate. On our next trip
to town I would have another set made, no not duplicates but
triplicates or even quadruplicates. No cost is too great, I 
mused to myself, if it effectively compensates the faults of
senility. Then Margaret went into action. She does not give up
so readily as do I. It was too embarrassing to ask for a list
of places that she searched, but it was not long before she
appeared on the porch where I was now trying to find consolation
in writing, the rather smudgy string with its three keys dangling
from her fingers. She had found them, - where else - but on the
ground next to the left front door of the car, where they had
dropped from my mindless hand after having been removed from the
ignition switch on our return from grocery shopping.

All of which goes to show that monotony is not necessarily to be
disdained.  Stay well, enjoy the summer, and give my best to Ned.

Jochen