We spent last weekend with friends at their lake-front home. Given the state of the drought in New Mexico, it’s a meadow-front home this year. The water that would fill the lake was released downstream. I didn’t mind the altered view at all, in part because at dusk a herd of female and juvenile elk moved out of the tree-line and onto the meadow. Bill set up the telescope on the deck and we watched the slow, grazing procession. The elks’ daily trek brings them from the Jicarilla Apache reservation onto New Mexico Parks & Recreation land, making them as safe from trophy hunters as any wild animal can be in the American West.

Off and on during the weekend we talked about retirement – Alane’s and Bill’s, and mine. They cut their final ties to work last year. I will finish up in July 2014, if all goes according to plan. For them, their retirement is ideal. They live in their northern New Mexico home from April to November, and move to their house in Sun City West, Arizona for the rest of the year. Two very different lifestyles, both of which they love. When I try to imagine myself in either place, I falter on my own Goldilocks conundrum. Sun City is too social and busy and their rural retreat is too remote and quiet. I need to figure out what is just right.

Sheila would like to live outside the city – and I think I would, too. But not too far out. I would like to rest my eyes on fields, trees, and 50 shades of green. But I want organic grocery shopping in town. I want to hear birdsong more often than I hear traffic. But I want a library close by. I want to watch storms roll over the hills and hear the thunder echo through the valley. But I want medical services within 30 minutes of home.

One thing we’re considering is scheduling vacations over the next couple of years in places we might like to settle. Huge swaths of America are already ruled-out, which limits our choices in a good way. We are not living north of the 37^th Parallel, which is roughly at the northern edge of Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina. It cuts California in half right around San Francisco. While I could settle in Portland or Seattle or actually any East or West Coast northern maritime region, Sheila, with her Mediterranean nature, would need to be on Prozac to survive the chilly, gray, rainy climate.

Cultural activities—and more importantly—cultural attitudes matter to us, too. Any community that says with pride that it is the “buckle of the bible belt” won’t work for us. I’d like a college nearby, for the performing arts and drop-in classes. A local historical society would be good for me. A cineplex, a mall, a Thai restaurant close enough to go to without having to pack a bag seem important, too.

So, just at the moment we think that a semi-southern small town or the far-suburban edges of mid-size city might work. We’ll plan a few vacations to explore our choices.

I learned last week that a friend’s mother has cancer. She is quite elderly and the prognosis is not good. I was told of her illness via a text message and I expressed my sorrow for her and my friend by text, too. With that exchange, I started thinking about the ways in my lifetime we learned of deaths and our customs for delivering our condolences.

When I was young, people would place a wreath on the front door of the deceased’s house to signal that the residents of the home were in mourning. I remember my father wearing a black band on his coat sleeve when his father died. At the end of 7th grade, my friend Libby moved to Laos with her diplomat father and French mother and grandmother. Several months after they left, I received a stiff card, bordered in black, printed in French, that announced her grandmother’s death. The Philadelphia Inquirer called us when my father died to get details for his obituary. I subscribe to a magazine that includes brief articles on the passing of women who have been active in — and loved by — their communities. Over the years, I have received word of family, friends, and acquaintances passing by personal visits, letters, telegrams, phone calls, and emails. I see memorial messages on Facebook now.

In the past, when I heard of a death in my community, I went to the family’s home or wrote a note or sent a sympathy card. I’ve made phone calls, brought casseroles, written eulogies, boarded pets, attended wakes, viewings, visitations, funerals, and celebrations of life.

I thought when I began to consider this subject that I might fall into the notion that there are right ways to honor death; and that our modern, technological ways are not the right ways. My grandmother might have thought that a telephone call or a printed sympathy card was unfeeling and inappropriate. My mother was even more Victorian than her mother, and I am sure that text and Facebook condolences would have appalled her.

But I believe that however we learn of someone’s passing, and however we acknowledge and commemorate it, the support we bring with our attention, affection, and assistance is what matters. Not the manner of our communication, but the message that we care and that our world has dimmed a bit by the loss.

A friend asked me, “What gives you pleasure?” At the time of her asking, I was gloomy because of yet another example of my inability to understand why people will stab each other in the back, throw each other under the bus, stir up shit. I felt like I was back in high school. My friend was, kindly, suggesting that I get out of the dumps and on with life.

Rather than immediately considering my pleasure index, I spent a few hours plotting clever revenge scenarios. When the fun of that wore off, I started trying to identify what pleases me, as my friend had suggested. It was harder than I expected to get started, but once the first brick tumbled, I was able to come up with a satisfactory list

I started looking at pleasure on Friday evening, while on a recumbent bike at the gym. Sheila was on the bike next to mine, beating herself at solitaire on her phone. I had the set called Favorites playing on my iPod. I realized I was enjoying myself as I listened to the Black Eyed Peas singing “Let’s Get It Started.” So maybe music was a pleasure for me. One style of music, though? No, the Favorites playlist includes George Gershwin, Jimi Hendrix, Bally Sagoo, Gary Clarke, Jr., and Gary Glitter among many, many others. So then I wondered why music makes me feel good. This led me to another discovery.

I like remembering the past and anticipating the future.

Music takes me back — to the first time I heard the song or, for songs I haven’t heard before, to a sense memory of how songs like that song make me feel. Rhythm is big for me. The strong beat in “Rumour Has It” turned me on to Adele last year. The insistent rise and fall of the clarinet in “Rhapsody in Blue” made me buy my first non-rock LP when I was 13. The piano coming in on the snare’s ride in Brubeck’s “Take Five” had me hanging out at the smokey, divey One Step Down on M Street when I was 18. So, music is transport to the past. And my past was generally pretty pleasant. Or, for those times when it wasn’t, I’ve made my peace with it.

Music doesn’t really figure in my thinking about the future. For me, there has always been music; there will always be music. What pleases me about the future is planning. Planning trips, planning gardens, planning parties, planning anything. I like figuring things out. I like planning more, usually, than I like doing. For travel, the destination is fine; getting there is a pain — scheduling, choosing, calculating is terrific. When I was much younger and had bouts of insomnia, I would put myself to sleep by planning a house I would build someday. Site selection and orientation, square footage, shortest possible drain runs, height of crawl space, pitch of roof, number of 2x4s! I could usually fall asleep counting 10d nails.

But, remembering the present tense in my friend’s question, I wonder what is giving me pleasure now?

I’ll head the list with music and planning. Then: moving my body, holding Sheila’s hand, improving clumsy sentences, entertaining my friends with stories, eating tomatoes I grew, petting my dogs and smelling their sun-warmed coats, and almost every minute of every day. Just the little things, the very consequential little things that really make up my life. Certainly not the stuff we think is big and important, like work, politics, economics. Those might be the outcome of life, but they aren’t the planning … or the music.