Oh, the Sun Still Rises and Sets

We were sitting out on the back patio the other evening, and a sudden trick of the clouds and sun gave us a surprisingly reddish light. All the brickwork glowed, and the pool looked especially deep blue. This photo sort of captures what we saw, but not quite. Not red enough.

In only about three minutes, the light had changed; the sun was dipping behind the houses across the street.

You just have to savor the moments when they occur, because it's possible that oh-so-rich light may never return in this lifetime, and even if it seemed to be similar, the flowers -- that sweet mix of summer vinca, autumn mums, and winter color carnations and pansies -- would be different, the clouds would be different. And whether the beautiful time lasts three minutes, or thirteen years, all you can do is remember it with wonder and appreciation.

The radiant painting faded, back to normal. The sky dimmed to the usual lovely evening light of this season, and we sat out until the patio lights came on and scattered their pattern of shadows across the herringbone brickwork.

The weather service claims, in its long-range forecast, that in about a week or so, nighttime temperatures will be in the 40s, and that rain is possible. The beautiful light won't be there, but times of chill and rain have their purpose, and that's good, too. I have kohlrabi and lettuce and peas and chard and spinach and turnips and beets that all like the season of winter, so I will rejoice in what I have that lives and grows, and hold the memory of amazingly beautiful times in my heart.

Surfing Time's Curl

In the evening sunlight, this year's red dragonfly perches on a bamboo stick over my Goliath tomato.

He doesn't worry about how many days he has left -- by the time winter gets here, he'll be toes up in some shrub, his life drifted away in some shallow respirations at the end of his mating season. He doesn't care. He lives, eats, flies, mates, eats, flies, lands on his stick to survey his kingdom. That's good enough for him.

I know that I don't have all that many years left (or days, truth be told) and I want to get to that dragonfly's mentality.

I don't want to worry about the future; that leads to broken sleep and miserable nights.

And in the time that remains, while the wave is still sweet and strong and carries me and my board to exhilarating speeds, I want to live, write, eat, write some more, play with the Press, and hold my newest grand-daughter. Then write some more.

Yet I see the ceiling of water hovering over me, and fret.

Lord, make for me a dragonfly heart.

57 Years

What did you do special for your birthday?

Why, I did something I've been wanting to do for years -- I took a masonry chisel and a hammer and took the first rows of tile off the island/sink in the kitchen. The activity was very satisfying, indeed.

The birthday was an incidental kind of experience; maybe I used the birthday idea to allow myself the gratification of taking more tiles off the kitchen countertops, though certainly I enjoyed the nice wishes so many people sent me.

June 8 fell in a hugely busy time in my mother's household back when I was a kid. Her greenhouse and nursery were burgeoning from mid-May until July with sales, and frankly, from mid-March with necessary duties, as she started a lot of her own plants from seed.

Dad's birthday was May 25, just two weeks before mine, so we tended to defer all birthdays until July, and just have a celebration day when we might have cake (banana cake, always the favorite) or a barbecue, or just a favorite meal. (Sauerkraut and dumplings, pot pie, a turkey with stuffing). So celebrating a birthday on a particular day still seems a bit odd to me.

When I woke up this morning, I was glad to see sun; I remembered that it was my birthday but had to pause to do the math to remember just how old I was. Do I feel 57?

How would I know, I've never been 57 before. Ask me in six months, then I might have some idea.

Summer 2009

Lil and her pal Elena from across the street got in some desperate summer play today.

Tomorrow Elena won't be home, and the next day ... school starts.

They played in the garage and on the front lawn, then on the back patio, then in Lil's room, then out front again, then in back again, and then in Lil's room, and then out front. They had fun, they had drama; they had sun and then shade. They had a beautifully mild summer day with a sweet breeze, and Sebastian and Howie to play with them.

Born only a few weeks apart, sometimes I hear them play at being sisters.

I wonder often what they would have been like as friends if they had grown up in the kind of world I did. At seven, Lili's and Elena's parents and siblings worry about them crossing our wide street, because utter morons fly along at 45 mph on a regular basis, slurping canned drinks and talking on cell phones, oblivious (or far too self-important to take notice) of the 25 mph limit. When I was seven, Carol Jan and I ranged around our small town on our bikes in the summer (not down town, of course, but everywhere on the east side of town) and we kids spent mornings at the municipal playground, went home for some lunch, then went back to the playground until 5pm, at which point we played in the street or on the sidewalks -- or other kid's houses until dark.

The eyes of every resident in the community were upon us kids, all the time. But it was a town of 1000, and the biggest town in the whole county. People were poor, mostly, and we townies had it real soft compared to the kids on farms outside of town, who worked on their parents' dairies and chicken farms and fields.

Oh well. It was a different planet I lived on then, and it was blown away by "progress" as surely as Superman's home world Krypton fell to destruction. My Home Planet is gone, and Lillian must make her way in this world, however inimicable it may be. How she will grow up is anyone's guess.

That her summer "ends" on August 5th is another post, and it will be a venomous, bitter one.