Unintended Consequences

I’m not one to complain about the weather. Why would I? What difference would it make? It’s like when you ask someone…usually an older someone…and often a male someone…how he’s doing. Sometimes he’ll answer, “Can’t complain.”, and a voice inside my head adds, “And it wouldn’t do any good if you did.”

Despite my physical aversion to colder weather, I never complained when spring took her time getting here. I adapted instead. I looked upon the situation as an excuse to purchase a few more sweaters with three-quarter-length sleeves. I love sweaters with three-quarter-length sleeves. They are some of my favorite things. I especially love them if they are made from cashmere.

One of my friends was particularly irritated by people complaining about having to wear shoes in Atlanta in April. As it happens, she was born in South Dakota. I don’t think she’s lived in Georgia very long which would explain why she isn’t aware that, by April, most southerners are organizing their flip-flops according to outfit and/or occasion. She took to Facebook, warning anyone bemoaning cooler temperatures that they had better not complain about sweating in July or she’d be there to remind them they’d gotten just what they’d asked for. I’m guessing she hasn’t had to make good on that promise. Not because she’s a particularly scary person. And, not because people finally realized that complaining about the heat doesn’t cool things off.

My friend hasn’t had to remind anyone how they wished for Atlanta heat because Atlanta hasn’t gotten hot yet…not really hot…not Atlanta hot. Atlanta hasn’t gotten hot yet because during the month of June we received 9 1/2 inches of rain. And, since that time, it’s rained every day in July. So far this year we’ve accumulated almost 42 inches of rain which is more than we had for the entire year last year.

Sometime around the middle of June people began to complain. Often, mine was the lone voice of dissent. As the minder of a garden, I didn’t dare complain. For years I watched my garden literally burn to the ground because of lack of rain. There’s no way I would complain now…unless it is to bemoan missing melons. I planted melons, you see, and something ate them. I assumed the culprits to be rabbits until I spotted a pair of deer strolling casually through a neighbor’s yard. They stopped, on their way down the street, to nibble on roses.

Back then, in the middle of June, when only about 30 inches of rain had fallen, melons seemed like a good idea. Thirty inches of rain is enough water to fill lots of watermelons. Now though, some twelve inches later, I’ve begun to see that too much of a good thing really is too much. A melon, you see, begins as a blossom. A bee spies the blossom, and then he sees another one, and another one, and so on, and so on, and before you know it…mini-melons! But bees don’t like rain. Even in a light rain, a bee can’t leave its nest. And a blossom without a bee is just a flower.

So much water in such a short time changes things.

The chicken pen is under water. Seeing their ugly little toes disappear into the muck time after time as they rush to greet me reminded me of jungle rot, a podiatric malady soldiers in Vietnam often battled. Last weekend I put down boards for them to walk on. My chickens haven’t had as much as a sniffle in six years. Its bad enough they’ve had to learn to eat off a dinner plate. I can’t take a chance with jungle rot.

My flowers are drowning.

My floors are muddy.

My dogs are smelly.

And, don’t even get me started on my hair.

I’m willing to concede that, aside from the health of my hens, most of my worries are negligible.

And then I read about the snakes.

It makes perfect sense when you think it through, which I never would have done if I hadn’t read that a local newscaster was hospitalized with a snake bite. The sequence goes something like this: many bugs don’t do rain which means things that eat bugs are forced to forage. Foraging, as it happens, often requires travel outside of one’s usual hunting grounds and, thus, increased time outside of the nest. Guess what eats the things that would eat bugs but are now having to hunt?

Snakes.

And, here’s another twist. Just like my chickens who now spend ninety percent of their time inside the henhouse, snakes are tired of being wet. Only they don’t have a house of their own, so guess what? That’s right! They’re not picky! They’ll use yours. Right now, in Atlanta, the average wait time to have a pest control company out to your house to remove rain weary vermin is two weeks; two weeks of sharing your house with something that slithers. No. Way.

My seventh grade teacher, Mrs. White, marched with Martin Luther King. She played guitar and taught us folk songs and regaled us with stories from her past. One story involved a snake. It’s the one I remember.

She’d gotten up in the middle of the night to pee. For whatever reason, she didn’t turn on the light in the bathroom until after she’d done her business. That’s when she saw the snake, coiled around and around and around the inside of the toilet bowl. Having carried this image around in my head lo these many years, you can believe I toilet with the lights on, and only after careful inspection. And there’s no loitering. When I was a kid, my father’s bathroom always smelled like newsprint. He obviously hadn’t heard the story.

Yesterday the rain held off until rush hour. This is not unusual. In fact, yesterday was the second time I’ve sat in traffic and watched marble-sized hail gather on my windshield wipers before being swooshed off to ping the car in the lane next to mine.

By the time I arrived home, hail had given way to torrential rain and pounding thunder. My dogs don’t care for storms. Usually they’re too nervous to eat. But when it rains every day for weeks, something’s got to give. Murphy, my boxer, followed me into the sunroom willingly enough but minutes later, after I’d gone back inside, I heard his super-sized claws hit the industrial strength screen we installed to protect the French door from just that type of abuse. He gave a jerk of his head when I opened the door; our signal that he wanted company. I sank into one of the rocking chairs I’d drug in off the patio during an earlier storm, and immediately wished I’d grabbed my Iphone. For a few seconds, I considered going back in to get it. I could play a word, check in on Facebook, or read an email. The sound of rain hitting the roof called me back. I realized this was an opportunity to just be, and I don’t get enough of those.

I give the rocking chair a push and fold my arms over my lower abdomen, appreciating the softness of a little extra padding. Looking around, I realize I never really see this room. I’d forgotten, for example, about the funky wine bottles and vintage tin signs I sat on shelves next to the ceiling. I’ve downsized from a plethora of plants to a table covered in cactuses and hung, above them, twinkle lights encased in aluminum stars separated by wind chimes. I’ve left my mark here.

The sound of azalea branches scraping windowpanes turns my attention outside the room. The wind is blowing. The sky is unnaturally bright. Maybe the sun, too, has had to adjust; taking any opportunity to shine.

I wonder how the chickens are faring. It’s cooler now, after the hail.

When did my head tilt to one side…ever so slightly…the way it does just before a nap?

When did my eyes close?

The rocking has slowed.

Sleep could come.

Would he be disappointed if I slept through dinner?

Collateral Damage: Let Them Eat Cake

There were enough breaks in the clouds to remind us there could be sun. Rain didn’t fall as much as spurt from the sky, intermittently, and with little power behind it. But it was enough to soak the picnic benches, prompting several of us to muscle the tables further under the shelter and away from the fireplace where Josh built a fire. Lush green grass and blooming trees aside, you’d never have guessed it was April in Atlanta.

In my usual state of rebellion, I’d worn flip-flops under my blue jeans and hoodie. Within minutes of arriving, I was grateful I listened when a voice of reason couched in loving kindness urged me to throw a pair of shoes in the car “just in case”. It was tricky business switching out my footwear without getting my socks wet, but I managed. As I perched inside the door on the backseat of my car, a steady stream of soggy guests passed on the other side.

By the time I emerged, the party was well under way. A large, multi-colored balloon bouquet swayed languidly over a chocolate birthday cake. The smell of grilling meat billowed from a flume on one side of the grill, an array of chips and desserts filled one of the tables, and a football sailed, occasionally, over the heads of laughing children. Hoods were on heads, hands were in pockets, and breath floated like conversation bubbles over the heads of guests, happy to see each other. Things would have been very nearly perfect if only Trey could have been there. For the second time, we celebrated his birth after his death.

In the days leading up to the party, I marveled at how well I was handling things. There had been no crying jags or heavy sighs. I wasn’t sleeping particularly well but, as a woman of a certain age, there were any number of possible explanations for that.

And then, someone mentioned ketchup. Which made me think of mustard. Which made me think of mayonnaise, and cheese, and relish, and trash bags, and streamers, and noise-makers, and all the other incidentals that would normally come without thinking when planning a birthday cook-out. Except that nothing was normal. Normal hadn’t happened yet. Perhaps it never will. And, if it ever does, it won’t be on that day. That day, Trey’s birthday, will never be normal again.

I didn’t realize until I got there how much I hadn’t wanted to come, or how little I’d done to prepare. Luckily a store down the street stocked most of what I’d forgotten and, by the time the burgers were done, we had everything we needed.

People attended the party for different reasons. Some, like me, came out of a sense of obligation. Some came to celebrate the life of a friend. At least one came for the company, and a few came for the food. I realized though, as I looked over the crowd, that despite our personal motivations, we were all there for the same reason.

We were collateral damage.

Almost Touched

I live in hot, and now arid, Atlanta. A city that moves at the speed of light, and barely notices that it hasn’t rained in months or snowed in years.
A much-needed break in our drought came some time around November, and the rains fell. The lakes are still wanting, but reservoirs are filling, allowing the lakes to hold their precious raindrops a little longer.
Today, it snowed. The weathermen were right, for once, and it snowed! As I sit in my tiny car, forced upon me by the length of my commute and soaring gas prices, I idle, as I do every day at this time, waiting for other weary commuters to pass on an adjacent roadway.
The snowflakes dancing across my windshield are a miracle only a true southerner could enjoy, and I muse as I watch them fall and melt, fall and melt. I enjoy the whiteness of them, their fluffy, irregular shape, and their rarity.
Glancing to my left, I see a small bespectacled boy, buckled snuggly into the backseat of his mother’s Mercedes. As my gaze lands on him, he spies the swirling miracle outside his window and stretches one pudgy hand towards the window in the kind of pure joy only a child can experience. His swarthy face breaks into a crooked grin as he turns towards me. His smile glows brighter as he discovers someone to share this miracle with, and he gestures wildly with his hands as if to say “Look! Look at that! Have you ever seen anything so wonderful?!” His mouth moves, and he must have made some noise, because his 30-something mother turns in her seat. She sees the joy in her child’s eyes and her face, too, breaks into a smile. She looks across to me and acknowledges my presence in her child’s miracle. She waves and mouthes something I’m sure would have warmed my heart even more had I been able to hear, as she softly wraps her child’s waving hand softly inside hers. And the light changes from red to green.
In a city like Atlanta, where so many are wrapped up in their own agendas, and schedules, and stresses, 3 people stopped at a traffic light, and enjoyed a snow flurry, and almost touched.

Super 8 Childhood memories

I realized today, as I traveled across Atlanta to share lunch with my sisters, that my past has become a dark cave. I am fascinated and sad at once. Fascinated, continually, by the swiftness of the process, and sad, because what I always feared must be true.
Growing up as one of 4 female children proved challenging for me, given that I have always preferred my own company to that of others, and I enjoy the company of other females least of all. Being the oldest of 4, only served to sharpen the challenge.
I never understood until recently why my childhood memories are so patchy. On the rare occasions I have sought to replay the images, I have found them so blurred and lacking in detail as to be almost indescribable. I listen, as my sisters recount the funny/sad struggles we faced as we experienced childhood “together”. While I appreciate the humor and empathize with the pain, the stories are new. All my life, the stories they share bear no resemblance to those that play in fits and starts in MY brain. I’ve often remarked that it is almost as though we were raised in separate households. I listen as they laugh at the absurdity of an event, and smile to cover my confusion.
Remarkably, my memories are mostly singular ones. I can remember sitting beneath an enormous oak tree whose roots had, in my mind, formed the shape of an equally enormous tortoise. Despite the fact, that by the age of 8 or 9 I already had 2 sisters, this tortoise was my best friend. I literally spent hours under that tree, talking to my friend. The importance of this tortoise, whose name escapes me, is obvious by the brilliant colors contained in this memory. It seems I wore a lot of pink. I can feel the hot Atlanta sun on my bare arms as I lean against the tree and absentmindedly draw in the sandy soil with a crooked pine twig while I pour my heart out to a root.
I also took great joy out of tormenting our really ugly little dog, Jo-Jo. My parents always proudly announced to anyone listening that Jo-Jo was a Manchester Terrier, and I’m sure he was but what he mostly was, was ugly. I have distorted visions of poking a gnarled stick towards his pointy little snout, and rejoicing at his growling. When tired of the stick game, the front tire of my bicycle produced the same results, to equal enjoyment. I don’t remember my mother ever discouraging my aberrant behavior, but I definitely remember her mentioning it years later at a family gathering, and I remember feeling myself shrink in my usual way under her tongue.
I can’t remember my mother smiling. None of the “Super 8″memories of my childhood include a smiling mother. That might be all I need to say about that.
My father, on the other hand, fills the screen of my mind, not with his physical presence but with his emotion and spirit. Strong words echo even today, “Remember who you are! You are a Howell, and nobody is better than you are.” countered by “Look at your calves! They’re as big as my thighs!”. Of course, they weren’t, and years would pass before I realized my father had chicken legs.
I spent those years, covering up my calves.