Taste Test

I saw her through an open kitchen door. An auburn haired woman wearing a full apron. She moved purposefully between sink and stove. The smells wafting across the yard told me that bacon was part of the breakfast menu.

It was the apron that triggered my internal way-back machine. You just don't see those aprons very much any more. I remember my mother had an assortment of them. One was red and white checked, another was off-beige decorated with pinstriped lines. There was a Christmas apron and an apron with stencils of barbecue utensils. Some aprons had two pockets near the bottom hem; a couple had a third pocket at chest height.

The aprons are a permanent part of my childhood memories. I was always underfoot in the kitchen, drawing in lungfuls of mouthwatering smells daydreaming to hypnotic clatter of wooden spoons in mixing bowls.

My mother donning an apron was a signal that there was going to be some serious baking going on. Baking meant samples to taste and tasting meant I was there!

Simple Greeter

He had really had no preconceived ideas of what death would be like, but he would never have imagined this.

Henry had lived his life as a simple farmer. The kind of farmer who worked the land with hand tools. He carried seeds in a canvas sack strung over his shoulder and spilled the seeds into the ground from the palm of his hand. He relied on mother nature to keep them watered.

There had been no pain the day his heart quit. He transitioned easily from living to dead in the space of a single step.  Now he passed his time in the cemetery watching for new arrivals. Gave him a might blessed feeling to be able to help those poor souls. Especially the ones who had lived their lives in front of computer screens and microwaves. He loved introducing them to the grass, trees, and moonlight.

It was always moonlight when he removed his tattered straw hat and waved it in welcoming. It was only at night that he could see the others. During the day he kept to himself, enjoying the flowers that arrived on a regular basis.

Lightning Guess

The day's heat carried well into the night and the air was heavy with moisture. Not a leaf rustled, not a cloud crept across the sky. It seemed all the world was exhausted save for the frogs croaking from the haven of the pond.

I thought back to nights such as this during my childhood when the neighborhood kids would gather on a porch drinking lemonade or licking freeze pops after the shadows had grown too thick for continued rounds of hide-and-seek.  Lightning would flicker in the distance and we would make guesses as to its nature. Heat lightning meant a long night of sleeping on top of the bedsheets. The real deal - storm lightning - meant visual excitement followed by cool breezes whistling through the house.

We always hoped for storms of course. There was nothing like the deafening thunder accompanied by the smell of charged ozone as a blinding streak connected heaven to earth. We had all heard our parents explain thunder as angels bowling in the heavens, but I always preferred the image of Thor striking an anvil with a god-sized mallet. 

Summer Bloom

Summer is in full bloom in our back yard.

A Snatched Carrot

Here we are again - on the cusp of the longest day of the year - an annual irony.

Just as summer arrives - just as we plan extended evenings outdoors watching the coals in the barbecue grow dim, daylight has peaked. The days now shorten as the temperature rises. It is the equivalent of snatching a carrot from in front of a horse.

Gray

Gray is the color of indecision - a fogging of the mind.
Gray is the color of confusion - a stolen expectation.
Gray is the color of apathy - a first step to anarchy.
Gray is the color of loss - a quicksand that threatens to consume.

Gray lurks between black and the white.
Gray mutes the vibrancy of opportunity.
Gray is a villan and a thief.
Gray is walking death.

Gray shrinks before determination.
Determination fuels light.
Light fuels hope.
Hope fuels love.
Love brings joy.

May gray be a stranger.

Watch Your Step

There was discussion on the radio today about the first parachute jump out of an airplane. I was intrigued so when I arrived home I sought more information from Dr. Google.

Apparently U.S. Army Captain Albert Berry was feeling quite the daring devil on March 1, 1912.

And I got to wondering just exactly what made the Captain think jumping from an airplane was a good idea... particularly in early March when the temperatures at ground level are enough to make the average person wish they had never left the house. And I emphasize jumping from the airplane because there was no in to jump out of. The plane in question very much resembled what the Wright brothers first used to hop through the air. There was a seat for a pilot and nothing more.

Think about it. Standing on the wing of a biplane and shouting Geronimo while pulling the rip cord of a device you hoped like hell was actually going to work.  Who does that?

I can only assume the good Captain had recently been diagnosed with some life threatening condition and decided sooner was as good as a little less sooner.

Stretching Silence

They spoke on cell phones - a universe apart from one another.

It was 7:30 in the morning. He sat in the airport waiting to board yet another business flight. He pictured her at the round oak table in their kitchen, dressed in a pale blue bathrobe, nurturing a cup of coffee. She  would be watching rays of sunlight angle through the trees in their backyard while he stared at travelers shifting uncomfortably in back to back rows of chrome and vinyl chairs.

"I love you ," he told her.

"I miss you," she answered.

"You say that every time I travel."

"I miss you every time you travel. I wish you were here," she said.

And then there was silence stretching for six hundred and thirty-seven miles.

They had been married for twenty-three years and still he felt he had somehow failed when he couldn't hold hold her in the morning.

All About Down

It's really all about going down.  But to go down you must first go up.

And so our granddaughter, Little Miss Grabby Fingers, has learned to crawl up steps. 

 While our home is on a single floor, that floor is five steps above ground level. Which means that when I'm outside with Miss Grabby Fingers relaxation is out of the question.  For there's nothing quite as heart stopping as seeing a toddler tottering at the top of five wooden steps leading down to a brick patio.

Heart stopping because Miss Grabby Fingers idea of going down is not to hold onto a railing. Rather, in full confidence that someone will be there, she extends her arms straight in front of her...and steps out into air.

It's kind of like watching a tight-rope walker. Only there's no tight rope and no net.  Only Little Miss Grabby Fingers testing to see how quickly I can make it from one side of the patio to the other.

Missing the Relax

It was back to the beach this weekend in more ways than one.

It was the first time Motivated Mom had set up chairs for a day-log stay since last year. And this time we found ourselves once again with a toddler in tow... something we thought we had forever graduated from some seventeen years ago.

Sitting on the beach I remembered with longing the inner peace I had found just last year in watching the ocean surge relentlessly to the shore.

Now I watched as little legs churned relentlessly through the sand.

I thought of how last year my drifting thoughts would come and go in synchronicity with the waves.

Now my attention was glued to the girl who considered every piece of sea shell to be a possible delicacy.

Yes it was back to the beach - and back to the realization there is something that can take the relax out of relaxation.