Rain Watch

The rain came in wind-driven sheets. Henry had his face pressed to the window glass. He had seen it again, a shadow slipping through the mist that was beginning to form as the temperatures dropped. There was no passing it off as imagination now.

Movement to the left caught his attention. Bananas, his tabby cat, was clawing at the screen on the front door. Henry hurried down the hall, placed his hand on the doorknob, and paused. He thought of how grotesque the shadow silhouette had been - like an alligator struggling to walk upright.

Did he really want to open the door?  He heard cat claws plucking frantically at the screen. He turned the knob. Bananas gave a warning growl.  Henry backed away. Bananas would still be waiting when the storm stopped, he was sure of it.

Simply Enough

Sometimes it's enough to simply walk at the water's edge and think of nothing.

Sometimes it's enough to simply sit under a starry sky and be amazed by twinkling lights beyond counting.

Sometimes it's enough to simply hold the hand of someone you love.

Sometimes it's enough to simply be warmed by the smile of a child.

Sometimes it's enough to simply breathe in the smell of lilacs.

This weekend was simply enough.

Second Sight

He hated being connected 24/7 and was glad for the opportunities to venture into a world where he caught the flickering of faces in unlikely places. There was the Green Man whose eyes tracked his progress from the gnarled knot of a tree branch along with the pixie face peeking out from under the folded leaf of a Johnny-JumpUp.

It was a world he traveled in often, his second sight made possible by a gift from the most unlikely of sources.

The gift had come on the day of his sister's death. He had fled to the woods behind his house, a place he often went for solace. He had gone with the intent of never coming out again. He had stayed the entire day, past sunset, ignoring the swarming gnats and mosquitoes. Then had come a nudge in his back followed by an equine sort. He had turned to find his own face reflected in the unicorn's eyes.

Haphazard Tombstones

It was like running an obstacle course. The tombstones were placed in haphazard fashion as though the architect of the cemetery had an aversion to symmetry and order. The hound on his heels was unaffected by the need to zig and zag. He could feel the dog's hot breath on the back of his exposed calves. What had he been thinking wearing shorts in a cemetery in the dead of night?

A stone mausoleum was just ahead. He leapt first to one of the stone urns on either side of the iron gate, then vaulted so that his toes fell in a shallow recess made to look like a window. From there he scrambled on to the roof.

Looking down, he saw the tombstones were not hodgepodge after all. They formed a swirling pattern that led to a single concrete slab placed alone in a corner that had not seen a gardener's hand in years.

He resolved to discover what lay beneath that slab.

Welcom Return

A weekend away on my own ended with Miss Grabby Fingers clapping her hands when I walked in the door.

That's the difference between fathers and grandfathers. A fathers return is viewed with cautious assessment. A grandfather is cause for celebration. 

Since Miss Grabby Fingers is a live-in grandchild I'm sure I'll get the father reception eventually. For now I'm enjoying the notoriety.

Lighting the Way

An eclipse of white light slid across the gray sky and I thought back to my childhood days when beams from searchlights would sweep the sky to announce a grand event.

Sometimes the event would turn out to be nothing more than the opening of a new store, but there was always the chance...and hope... that tracking the light to its source would bring us to the tent flaps of a circus.

I was never sure which took more time, convincing my father to get into the car in the first place or finally rolling up to where the metal shells of the search lights rocked and pivoted on their base.

A circus was the best possible outcome. The searchlights were but a gateway to strings of lights and rows of sideshow booths leading up to the big top itself. Puffs of cotton candy bobbed in time to the strides of children gripping the paper tubes the candy was spun onto. Hawkers shouted out challenges to try a hand a knocking down stacked bottles or tossing rings onto bottle necks.

By the time I finally took a seat on the wooden bleachers in the big top I was already prepped to forget the everyday world for the duration of the performance.

Night Sounds

"Is your house always so full of strange noises at night?" Mindy asked.

Aaron sucked in a breath, "What did you hear?"

"It sounded like someone with a peg leg. I kept thinking of Captain Ahab walking the deck of his ship."

So its not just me, Arron thought, but what he said was, "Well the house is over a hundred years old. It has more than its share of creaks and groans."

Mindy shook her head. "These were not house sounds."

Aaron wondered if he dared tell her his grandfather had worn a prosthesis. Was she ready for that? He wanted to believe she was.

First Birthday

It was a birthday dinner fit for a... well, a one year old. Pizza, chips, and cupcakes.  Gathered around the table were four adults and three toddlers. In other words, the adults were outnumbered.

Place settings shifted from one end of the table to the other as three sets of grabby fingers pulled at the tablecloth. Pizza sauce decorated tablecloth, fingers, and faces alike. Forks were used for the combing of hair and cups full of apple juice became hand wash stations.

The after dinner cupcakes provided the toddler sugar rush that kept the adults pirouetting like ballerinas vying for the lead role in the Nutcracker Suite.

Wrapping paper soon filled every square inch of open floor space - and proved more interesting than the actual presents. One of the presents was a pop up playhouse which did anything except pop up. The three page instruction sheet taxed the interpretation skills of all the adults, and as the adults struggled to make sense of the hieroglyphics the kids managed to open the patio door to the back yard.

Sifting Sands

Miss Grabby Fingers and I were pretty much on our own this weekend... so we headed to the beach. I had purchased a new stroller for the big weekend. The box it came in identified it as a jogging stroller. Folks who know me well, know the chances of me jogging are the same as the sun failing to rise in the morning.  I chose the stroller because if came with monster truck tires that I figured would be perfect for getting through sand.

And plow through sand it did. Saturday we made a four mile round trip along the Delaware coast. I use the term we loosely since I was propelling while Miss Grabby Fingers slept. It was as close to alone as I was going to get with a one-year-old in my charge and I relished every moment.

Sunday was not an instant replay. Miss Grabby Fingers decided she needed some hands on involvement. And she did just that. After being released from the seat belt, Miss Grabby Fingers got down on all fours and sunk her hands into the sand.

Who knew watching grains of sand sift through fingers would be good for thirty minutes of fascination. There was the tight-fingered sift that allowed the slightest trickle of sand to return to the ground. The open-fingered sift let loose a stream of sand.  Perhaps the highlight, for Miss Grabby Fingers anyway, was the roundhouse relocation. The roundhouse consisted of clenching a handful of sand, rotating the entire arm in a circular motion, and releasing the sand when the hand was at the zenith of its arch. And if the sand just happened to land on yours truly - well - so much the better.

Sounds of Our House

The sounds of our house:

Slap, slap, slap, slap, slap.
One-year-old Miss Grabby Finger's bare feet on the hardwood floor.

Plunk, kerthrump-kergurgle
A plastic sippy cup falling to the hardwood and releasing its contents

Slap, slap, slap, slap, slap.
Hands now free, Miss Grabby Fingers looks to put her ten digits to an new use

Snap
The sound of misplaced reading glasses being broken in two.

Slap, slap, slap, slap, slap
YEEOWWLLLL
Miss Grabby Fingers removes a clump of fur from the cat's tail

Slap, slap, slap, slap, slap
Silence

Thump, thump, thump, thump,
Adults run in sheer panic wondering what new  tragedy the silence holds

Of Buds, Blooms, and Cars

As sure a sign of pre-summer as buds and blooms are the automobiles with tops down and sunroofs open.

Mustangs, not the four legged kind, have been in abundance these past few days. Many gleaming with a blinding polish that suggest the cars have been hibernating beneath protective sheets in garages all around the area.

Apparently Corvette owners are not yet ready to roll their vehicles out. Perhaps these folks are a more finicky sort - like the mockingbirds that allow robins first dibs at thawed ground and then swoop in later to make themselves known.

Muscle cars are not a prerequisite for announcing pre-summer's arrival. Open sunroofs and windows rolled completely down are equally effective in creating interior turbulence that tosses the hair of drivers and passengers alike. An intrusion that would never be allowed if the air were not soothingly warm.

Sexual Options

Standing at the open door of the airplane he considered how it was sex that had led him to his new passion. Well, if he was going to be brutally honest with himself, it was the lack of sex that had sought him to seek release of another kind.

Now he wondered why he had every bothered with sex at all. A sensible person would have quit after the first post-coitus that's it?  He considered himself a sensible a sensible person, though admittedly slow on the uptake. So it had taken a second failure to satisfy, followed by a phone call demanding money for child support, to cause him to look at other options.

He had taken up sky diving. It had turned out the thrill was the same. A gradual build up of emotion released in a moment of ecstasy. But in sky diving, no obligation came with the ecstasy other than having to pull the cord. An if you couldn't commit to the pulling the cord... well there really wasn't much of anything to worry about afterward.

Waiting for a Move

You're a nice enough guy but a little boring, she told him.

Truth was, he wasn't sure if he was ready for her to understand him better. Thus far he had volunteered little about himself, opting to reveal relatively insignificant tidbits - just enough to prompt responses on her part. He studied those responses carefully, looking at them this way and that the way a jeweler analyzes a rough stone to see if it has potential to become a gem.

It had been sort of like a chess match so for, he moving only his pawns while he waited for her to commit a rook, knight, or maybe even her queen.

This was their third date and, he thought, destined to be their last, until she asked:

Tell me, how often do you see things others can't, things that keep to the shadows?

White Impatience

Over the past few months the white arms of leafless birch trees have been a welcome contrast to the dark shadows of barren oaks. But now, with buds of green beginning to form everywhere, those same white branches trigger impatience within me.

It seems an eternity since I last heard fully leaved trees amplifying the rushing wind of an approaching storm. Too long has it been since I sat beneath a tree and stared up into pinpoints of sunlight flickering between dancing leaves.

I long for those silver-white branches to again become lost amidst a sea of green.