An Invitation

Tonight I received a suspicious email – actually an electronic invitation from “your escort” for a “romantic night” on Sunday “for dinner and music” with designated attire as “casual nice.”

Time? 6:15.  I’d be picked up at my house.

Oh sure.  Uh-huh.  “Sounds like stupid junk mail to me,” I mumbled.

But then my adorable hubby heard me snorting about “stupid junk mail” and came over to see what all the fuss was about. 

“So!” he said with one eyebrow raised.  “An escort, eh?  Some incredible hulk is trying to pick up MY hot babe?”

I blew him off.  “Oh whatever.  It’s just junk mail.  Annoying....junk....mail.”

He knelt down beside me in his swimsuit and murmured in my ear: “Maybe not.”

“WHAT?  Did you send this to me?  DID YOU?”  I couldn’t believe it.  “Huh?”

His little-boyish-grin gave it all away.  It was true – he broke the mold (he NEVER does stuff like this) and sent me an evite!  Evidently we’ll be celebrating our wedding anniversary Sunday evening, compliments of my escort of 41 years.  (The actual anniverary is July 10th, two days later.) I don’t know the details, but we’ll be going somewhere.  To do something.  Special.

Relief

It’s not just hot outside, it’s sizzzzzzling hot.  Fry-the-petals-off-your-flowers hot.  Evaporate-the-lake-by-a-foot-or-more hot.

I remember a similarly hot summer when I was a child.  Mother and I were living at our lake cottage, as usual, when temperatures soared to the broiling point for about a week. To beat the heat, I alternately played in the lake and then sat at the top of the hill on a favorite split gray rock in my wet swimsuit – a relatively cool seat. Beneath the shade of an aged old oak tree, this elevated spot offered the possibility of air movement, and thus evaporative cooling.  It also offered an overlook of 1,800 acres of beautiful water that also soothed my soul.  There I rested from the heat.

Mother, on the other hand, stayed indoors where she pulled the blinds down from their rollers, stripped to her underwear, and yanked the silver ball-chain three times on the tall oscillating fan (a leftover from Pop’s implement business) until it whirred and purred on high speed with a loud bass voice.  For hours she read library books while spread out on the couch directly in front of the fan.  I can still envision the pull-blinds glowing golden in the hot sun and flapping spastically in the fan-breeze.  At the same time, Mother’s hand-sewn blue curtains were pushed back to hang stoically from their iron rods flat against the split-log wall.  It all seemed odd to me.  Fabricated.  Manipulated.  Mother looked sweaty. Uncomfortable.  It seemed wrong for the cottage to be so dark inside.

At the time, it made little sense that anyone would want to be cooped up inside on a hot day.  However, I confess that many decades later, I get it.  After thirty minutes of watering plants this morning (the delicate petals on my daisies and cone flowers have literally burned up, leaving lonely centers surrounded by crisp stubs), I retreated indoors.  WHEW.

Our air conditioning system here is antiquated, but there's an option if the AC should fail (gulp, I hope it doesn’t, but you never know).  The lake beckons just outside our door – one much smaller than the lake of my youth, but it still offers old-fashioned relief on a day like this with the high expected to reach over 100 degrees.  I COULD decide to sit in the water in the shade of the pier, just like old times.  Actually....perhaps I WILL do just that.

Sixty-Three

At 10:17 this evening I was deeply immersed in counting knitting stitches.  Suddenly my cell phone rang.  I had to get to a stopping place with my pattern (a Christmas stocking), but managed to reach the phone on the fourth ring.  I clicked the button and was blasted with a very loud and sort-of-harmonious birthday greeting: “Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear mommmm, happy birthday to you!”  The throng of voices laughed on the other end, and so did I.

That was birthday, take two.  Earlier today I blew out a green curly-que candle standing straight and tall in a tin of purplish homemade blueberry ice cream.  At that time I was given two new garden-oriented gifts: a lovely wild rose plant for my new flowerbeds, and two labor-saving, wide-spray hose wands.

I also received seven greeting cards and a few electronic birthday wishes.  A friend has promised to make me a custom-colored craft bracelet. There’s a rumor floating around that there could be a belated celebration of some kind in a couple of days.

Goodness.  So much hubbub over turning sixty-three.  

Rode Hard and Put Away Wet

Before the days of automobiles, everyone knew what “rode hard and put away wet” meant.  A horse had been "rode hard" when it was ridden fast and/or over a long distance, and it was "put away wet" when it was returned to the stable or corral without having sweat wiped off.

I have more to say about this in a minute, but first must digress.  It is midnight on the 4^th of July, a traditionally important day for us, a day we work and play hard.  Here are a few authentic-in-the-moment pictures of the day:

Now back to the old saying! It was a successful day, and memorable.  And yet I’m feeling a little bit like an old hag that’s been “rode hard and put away wet."  As such, I can’t wait to hit the hay.   

A Memory

Sun.  Kids. More kids! Fresh blueberries. Lake. Shells. Hot wind. Iced tea. NOISE. Swimming. Water toys. Lifejackets. Fish. Pontoon. Sandbox.  NOISE. Ducks.  Sunglasses.  American flag. Rocks. Sloppy joes. Hammock. Ice cream. More swimming. NOISE.

Today our home was a busy, noisy, happy, messy place – both memorable and exhausting, depending on your point of view at any given time. I’m very tired this evening, and yet my memory bank is full of treasures. 

For example, I’m envisioning a petite little girl with bouncy blonde curls in an old-fashioned sundress as she prances barefooted across the lawn with evening sun streaming through the trees.  I see her pounce on the hammock as if weightless, only to dismount and rerun the entire exercise.  Feet flying above the grass, she runs gracefully and without effort, without thought.  She runs because she is made to run, because her heart is free, because she cannot imagine stifling the urge within her to move fluidly, almost poetically.  She is my granddaughter, but in some nostalgic sense that stirs my soul, she is so much more....for she is the embodiment of who I once was, and perhaps still am, if only I can remember.

Melting

As temperatures soared into the 90’s, one word defined the day: sweat.  Surely the whole world was melting. 

However, instead of languishing in the lake like any sane person, I was out and about running errands, getting ready for the 4^th of July. After completing my usual shopping circuit in the Big City, I stopped closer to home for the final purchase, ice cream, at a Small Town grocery (in order to minimize the chance of it melting).

I selected a half-gallon of vanilla and two boxes of chocolate-dipped bars on sticks for the grandkids, and then stood in one of the two possible checkout lanes.   The checker in this lane was currently servicing a small, dark-skinned, dark-haired young woman who was probably in her late 20’s or early 30’s.  Several customers waited in the other lane, so I thought I was making the smart move – being anxious to move quickly and keep the ice cream from melting, of course.

However, this turned out to be the very slowest-of-the-slowest lane.  In fact, the other lane emptied, filled, and emptied with customers several times while I stood there pouting, holding my precious, please-don’t-melt-on-me ice cream.

Finally I started paying closer attention to the little mama ahead of me in an attempt to distract myself from the inevitable: my ice cream was melting.  A year-old baby (I’m guessing at the age) was strapped to her back with a woven purple shawl, and she clutched a crumpled white paper in her hand.  She kept showing that paper to the checker as if to confirm various items.  At one point the checker broke two bananas from the larger bunch being purchased, and held them back as if they didn’t fit with the day’s banana quota.

Finally it dawned on me: this woman couldn’t speak English, she had food stamps to cover only certain items, and she was teetering on the brink of overwhelm. Her blank, expressionless face might as well have been slate.   I wondered if she was the wife of a migrant worker who had come to work in the local cucumber fields? 

Then I also stood outside myself for an honest assessment.  I looked angry and impatient standing there in a huff, holding my armload of ice cream as if it were some precious, irreplaceable cargo. I whined inwardly that my ice cream was melting (horrors).  After all, I still had 15 minutes to drive whenever I did EVENTUALLY get out of there.  

A spoiled brat.  That’s what I saw. 

Many of the woman’s groceries were baby-related things: formula (“this can of Similac is different than the other two, do you care?” the clerk asked, but the woman’s dark eyes said she didn’t understand), many tiny jars of prepared baby food that she removed one-by-one from the cart, and baby cereal. Who else was at home?  What would the rest of them eat?

My car was loaded to the hilt with a quantity of food this woman had probably never seen all at once in her entire life.  We never made eye contact, and I would have been embarrassed if we had.  No doubt she would have read i-m-p-a-t-i-e-n-c-e all over my face.

Her memory followed me like a ghost outside that little hole-in-the-wall grocery into the blistering heat and all the way home, begging for something else, something more, something encouraging, something hopeful.  As I broke the speed limit in order to get the ice cream safely into my home freezer asap (yes, it’s true, I did this), she was there, dogging me, a silent icon of despair in need of mercy.

My ice cream didn’t melt today after all.  But my heart did.  It bled.  For her.

Sir Arthur

A gigantic soft-shelled turtle (I’m naming him Sir Arthur) arrogantly swam by our pier this evening, plowing snout-first through the calm water with his unmistakably prehistoric-looking, pointed nose held high in the air.  Although Arthur's odd, flexible shell was submerged, it appeared to be at least 10” in diameter. 

This was one bruiser of a turtle.

Although I loved the gentler “painted” and “map” turtles when I was a kid, and even collected them, I feared these soft-shelled snappers. One time my dad intentionally angered one, forcing it to demonstrate its aggressive nature.  I remember thinking it could surely reach those horrible snapping jaws to the moon and back on the end of its very, very long, agile neck.  Nope, I didn’t want anything to do with soft-shells.  I have respected them ever since, although they’re supposed to remain docile unless provoked – you know, sort of like bees.

I was glad when Sir Arthur kept right on going, paddling his huge body with ease, keeping his big head steady and straight as if it were the masthead of a submerged gondola.  He seemed almost regal, like a king patrolling his domain. I, for one, would not think of denying him that right.  The lake is his home more than mine. 

Still, I just wanted him to return to his throne room in the swamp. A court of water snakes, crawdads, and leeches surely must be waiting amidst the muck at the base of the cattails where the glorious white and yellow water lilies are in full bloom.  There were no such attractions near our pier, so he might as well not bother to stay – or come back.