Independence

Well I went to the dentist again the other day.  And I had the same hygienist  who told me six months ago that I needed to get braces to keep up my appearances.  She’s a gabby woman and—maybe it was the cold temperatures and the accompanying dry skin—the talk quickly turned to lotion.  “The first thing I reach for when I step out of the shower is my lotion,” she said.

“I just use olive oil,” I said.

“What?”

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Keeping the Bees

In the space between alfalfa fields, my dad kept a couple of bee hives.  I remember putting on a beekeeper’s mask and standing well back, watching him smoke the hive to lull the bees into a quiet.  I remember cautiously lifting the lid of the hive, my father close at hand, and peering at the world inside.  I remember my dad pulling out frames and cutting away the honey comb.  He’d slice the comb into small squares and put the honey—still on the comb—into Mason jars.  “You have to leave some for the bees, to get them through the winter,” my dad would say, refitting the lid back onto the hive. 

My dad, too, had on his shelf a book called The ABC and XYZ of Bee Culture by A.I. Root.  I remember running my hand across its dark nubby cover.  I remember reading that book and promising myself that one day, I, too, would keep bees.

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A Lot of Treasure

“It’s too early to pick out pumpkins,” Filibuster groused.  “I’m busy.”

“Yeah,” V added.  “It’s hardly fall, anyway.”

“It’s a nice day,” my husband said.  “Besides, if we go early in the season, we’ll avoid all the crazies.  Let’s go.”

We piled in the car and drove to the patch we went to last year.  I remembered it as a modest patch; hidden away from the crowds with only a few touristy items here and there: a flyer advertising a haunted house somewhere nearby; a goat and a cow you could pet; owners who would talk with you; a field you could actually walk into.

“Form two lines,” I read aloud as my husband pulled into the patch.  “I don’t remember that.”  I continued reading.  “Two dollars to park.” 

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Detachment

I see that the temperature is supposed to go down into the forties tonight.  This morning, I threw open the windows to chase away the heat and the humidity that has hovered in the air since May.  The flies appear to have been listening to the weather forecast: A group of them has taken up residence in the kitchen and I find it fair sport to chase them with a dishtowel.  It’s a battle I often lose.

A couple of days after I lost the War of Tug with Destructo, my eye started flashing—a quick burst of lightning that disappeared immediately.  The flashing began on an inconvenient day: the day of Filibuster’s photo preview: The studio owner greeted us warmly at the door and seated us upon a plush velvet couch before a gigantic movie screen.   She dimmed the lights.

My eye flashed.

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The Beginning...

At eleven o’clock at night, Filibuster discovered we were out of cat litter.  My husband sighed and changed out of his pajamas and he and Filibuster headed to the grocery store, which was open until midnight.  At four-thirty in the morning, my husband discovered the dog cage was too large to fit in the trunk and that the garbage can had leaked all over the garage floor.  Worse, his car emitted a strong odor that filled up the garage with the smell of gasoline.   

Vacations always seem to start this way.

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Things You Need

To get to the creek at my parents’ farm, leave the house by the back door.  Stop to admire my mother’s giant pots of herbs and other plants on the wooden deck before heading down the stairs and onto the brick walk.  To your left, you’ll see a perennial bed of, if I remember correctly, white and purple flowers.  And to your right, another smaller bed with shrubs and hosta and a gas lamp permanently lit to welcome visitors.

The gravel driveway will crunch beneath your shoes—and cut bare feet if you’re not careful.  Walk past the garage towards the barn.  To the right, another long and narrow perennial bed.  To the left, the remains of the pasture fence: a small length of wooden sections of posts and rails representing years of farm labor and lessons.  Tall pines on either side of the drive will escort you past the barn to your left.  And to your right, you’ll see the syrup shed, where my father spends late winters turning gallons of sap into the maple syrup that I use to sweeten peaches and strawberries and be reminded of home.  Know that into the concrete floor of that very shed, my children carved their initials with a thick nail. 

But we must go on.

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Crooked River

We put in at Route 422 near the old Riverside Restaurant.  Squints, my husband and I were in one canoe.  V and Filibuster rode in another.  My sister, my niece and nephew were in a third.  Another nephew rode solo in a kayak.

Our journey was a seven mile ride down the Cuyahoga River—the Crooked River—south towards Akron.  But our boat was put into the water backwards and as we shoved off, we accidentally headed north. 

We couldn’t turn the boat around.  We paddled on one side.  We paddled on the other side.  We paddled on both sides, one left, one right, Squints eagerly and haphazardly slapping the water with his paddle from the center of the boat.  “Hey, I’m good, Mom.  Haven’t I gotten better?” 

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Lesson Learned

This post was written in response to a prompt from The Red Dress Club: Write a post that either starts or ends with the words "Lesson learned." Word limit: 400 words. 

“Pig’s out!” Someone hollered and we all jumped into action.

Now, escaped animals weren’t a routine occurrence in my family’s history of farming, but it happened often enough to lend a bit of suspense to our daily lives.  Once or twice, my mother looked up from the kitchen sink to see cows in the back field, lazily grazing on the rich alfalfa crop intended to feed them through winter.  Another time, there came a midnight knock upon the front door.  Two men stood on the porch, inquiring whether the cows in the middle of the state highway belonged to us.

But a loose pig?  This was new.

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The Permanence of Elephants--The End

The bathroom was at the top of the stairs and, of course, each week, I would have to use it—if only to break up the monotony of waiting for my piano lesson.  I would climb the wooden staircase, stepping lightly, hoping to have a peek into the room to the right.

This room belonged to the piano teacher’s mother, Mrs. T and, invariably, the door would be open.  The room was dominated by a massive bed—a bed so high, a stepping stool stood sentry at its side.  The bedspread was white as snow.  The bed itself was of a dark ancient wood. It looked so inviting in its size and softness, it was all I could do to keep myself from entering the room; from climbing that stool and sitting upon the bed.

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The Permanence of Elephants--II

Winters, we took refuge on the red velvet loveseat that was pressed against the windows of the front room of the piano teacher’s house.   I would run my thumbnail against the grain of the fabric, drawing pictures in velvet, listening to the warm-up scales of my sister.  On the table to the right there was a wooden box, which I felt entitled to open.  Inside there were dried rose petals—yellow—that must have held some great significance for the piano teacher.  But I considered them only for their entertainment value as I opened the box, inhaled the memory of scent and thoughtlessly poked a tiny index finger into fragile recollections.

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The Permanence of Elephants

Like everything else of importance, the piano teacher’s home was on Main Street.  The house was small and painted a light gray and full of mystery and contradiction.  A huge magnolia tree shaded the path from the sidewalk to the three concrete steps leading to the porch.  Formed into the risers of the first step and the third were identical images of a fat elephant in profile.  I never knew how those elephants got there and never thought to ask.  My six year old self imagined that the elephants had been chiseled out by some former teenaged occupant of the house.  But my older self—my adult self—eventually realized that was unlikely: The images were too perfect; too uniform; too deep.  Perhaps a form was pressed into the concrete before it dried.  Perhaps the images were carved into wet cement the way my children would—years later—use a nail to carve their initials into the new concrete floor in my father’s equipment barn.  I will never know the story of how they got there, but those elephants were as much a part of the piano teacher’s house as the piano teacher’s house was a part of Main Street.

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Wild Roses Along the Shoreline

I am an ornament upon their pristine lawn.  They gather in my honor.  Dutiful lips offer dry kisses.  They come bearing gifts: large boxes with colorful ribbons which they set at my bunioned feet.

A little boy in a cowboy hat is placed before me.   “Help Great-Grandma,” a woman says.

“I don’t want to.”  The boy frowns.  Perhaps he fears me.

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With Peaches...

With peaches, it’s easy to get carried away.

Noon and it’s already ninety degrees.  The exhausted air seems unable to support itself.  Here and there, it will appear to wrinkle under the weight of all that heat.  A tree will ripple and I’ll catch myself blinking, staring, testing my vision, or perhaps my sanity.

Across the street, the neighbors' Yorkshire terrier is wearing a tiny red jacket with black straps and silver buckles, languishing beneath the shade of a sweet gum tree. 

And if that dog dreams, surely he is dreaming of growing—growing so big, he bursts out of his little red jacket with black straps and silver buckles—growing so huge, he can exact revenge, rounding up his owners, dressing them in red woolen coats with black and silver buttons and setting them upon the front stoop.

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'Fessing Up

Well, Filibuster and V are at work.  Squints is in the kitchen making chocolate chip cookies, fiddling with the recipe—adding a little of this and a little of that—experimenting to see if he can improve it or, perhaps, make the recipe his own. 

I’m OK with this tinkering. My only requirement is that he run the new ingredients past me first.  Sorry, but I cannot tolerate cilantro in my chocolate chip cookies, even if it is organic. 

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Competition Over Blueberries

As soon as we hit the blueberry patch, the kids disperse:  Filibuster stealthily cases the entire patch until she finds the best row from which she picks only the choicest berries.  V disappears, watching people between branches, planning film scenes in her head, disdaining the people around her for their very humanity in the same way she so often distains herself.  And Squints?  When he finds a really good bush, he’ll shout out for the entire world to hear, “Mom! Dad! Come look at these berries! They’re amazing!”  But I won’t respond to his summons, not immediately.  Because I feel it’s my duty to pick a bush clean.  Even if there are other berries down the row that are perhaps a bit plumper, I can’t move on until I’ve gotten  all possible berries from the bush.  My husband stays beside me.  He claims it’s because I’m an expert, that he needs my guidance, but I think that he just wants to protect me from those dangerous blueberry-throwing men sometimes seen at this particular patch.  He picks slowly (he calls it deliberately), enjoying the nature that surrounds him.  We’ll pick in silence, listening to the birds and the conversations that float by as people head out to stake their own claims.

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Flirting Over Blueberries

When the first blueberry hit me, I assumed it had fallen from the branches.  It was a good crop that year.  The berries were as big as my thumb and so blue they were nearly black; all I had to do was run a hand along the branch and the berries would practically leap into my container with a rain of satisfactory little thumps that grew fainter as the container became full.  The branches were heavy with berries. The ground was littered with berries.  It was no wonder that one would land upon my head. 

The second berry hit me squarely in the back with uncommon velocity, as if the berry hadn’t fallen off the bush, but rather been shot from it. 

Or…had it been thrown?

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Hard Labor

So on Tuesday, my husband and I lassoed Squints and V into helping us with our yearly service at our community garden.  For the second year in a row, Filibuster escaped the event, as she had to go to work. 

We pulled in and parked.  In the distance, we heard the tractor in one of the fields.  D, one-half of the farm partnership, met us at the barn, wearing sandals and a floppy hat.  She was deeply tanned and, I could tell, deeply happy with her circumstance, despite the long hours and the backbreaking work her job required.

We heard a car on the gravel drive.  D nodded.  “There’s the rest of the work party.”  A man walked up eagerly, jabbing a thumb over his shoulder.  “They’re coming.”  His wife and daughters approached at a more leisurely pace, as if not so sure about the whole thing.  The daughters had long, thin, tanned legs and were carefully made up for the occasion.

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Please, God, Let Her Choose Archery

Well, V will be belatedly celebrating her Sweet Sixteen at a local fast food restaurant.  And her father and I won’t be spending a dime.  No, this shindig is courtesy of her employer, who likes that sort of thing.

We laughed, looking at the invitation.  This has got to be the oddest Sweet Sixteen birthday party in history.

Sure, V is sweet.  Sure, she’s sixteen.  But spending exorbitant amounts of money on a fancy-pants party with semi-formal dress; a hall; updos and I-pods for door prizes is a real quick way to turn that sweet into surly.  V’s birthday celebration, in fact, was downright subdued this year: Quick bite for lunch and a homemade cheesecake for dessert.

“Should I go?” She gestured to the invitation.

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Raspberry Season

We got a call from Filibuster on the answering machine this morning: She can’t retrieve voice mails from her cell phone.  Worse, the ATM refuses to dispense any money to her.  Apparently her PIN is too long.  Filibuster is a great believer in strong passwords.

I call the bank and they ask me how long PINs are supposed to be in Europe and I tell them I really don’t know: the last time I was in Europe there were no debit cards.  They place me on hold.  They transfer me twice.  They tell me to go to a branch after the weekend is over.  They tell me there’s no way they can change her PIN for me.  They give me a number for Filibuster to call, but I cannot reach her and if I leave her a voice mail with the number she won’t be able to get to it. 

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The Fair

Schools were dismissed at noon today, due to an excessive heat warning.  At the corner, the bus discharges a group of sweaty students, too hot to celebrate their unexpected good fortune.   They trudge down the sidewalk, beat-up backpacks dangling from listless shoulders, and head home to the shade.

The dogs lie on their sides, panting.  The cat sprawls on the cool wooden floor beneath the ceiling fan and refuses to budge.   The curtains at the front of the house are pulled closed to keep out the sun’s warmth; a warmth only three months ago we so desperately wished for.   My glass of ice water weeps condensation.  The couch is too hot to sit on, so we gather at the kitchen table and start a card game.  I toss the dog an ice cube and promise the kids that I’ll flip on the AC if it reaches 100 degrees.

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