Succinctly Yours Weeks 226 and 225: A-Maze-ing and Leap of Faith

Many thanks to Grandma of Grandma’s Goulash for hosting Succinctly Yours. Participants are invited to view the photo and take the plunge by constructing a story of 140 words or 140 characters or fewer to go with it. I am cheating this week by throwing in last week’s as well. My excuse is that I couldn't think of much for either week, so by doubling up, I hope at least to entertain you with multiple pictures. This week’s bonus word was “fraudulent.” Last week’s was “symbol.”

Anthropologists discovered that the ancient temple site was fraudulent. Their tip off was the cardboard stones.   96

Members of the Canonballical religion use the ritualistic plunge as a symbol. They don’t believe in self-sacrifice like their crueler sect, the Bellyflopites.  136

Get my swan costume ready.
~ Purported last words of Anna Pavlova, ballerina, d. 1931

Succinctly Yours Week 222: Hope Floats But Bikes Are a Drag

It’s time again for Succinctly Yours, a weekly meme made possible by the illustrious Grandma of Grandma’s Goulash. Grandma posts a photo each Sunday with the challenge to come up with a story of 140 words or 140 characters or fewer to go with it. The bonus word this week was “quantify.” I struggled with that word and confess that I may not have used it properly.

It was hard to quantify the boys’ stupidity. Ma told them to buy a boat for the fishing business, but their idea to switch modes of transportation didn’t hold water.  136

Gilbert thought water cycling would be a good idea. While his calculations allowed for the amount of water in a lake, he forgot to quantify the amount of mud.  129

It was impossible to quantify the boys’ love of James Bond. Unlike Bond’s vehicle, however, theirs did not become a submarine when it hit the lake, they discovered.   137

The bike thieves failed to quantify the Girl Scout’s moxie. That tough cookie had installed on-vehicle security that enabled remote navigation…into the lake.  135

We look out for ourselves and too often make the mistake of confusing reality with our limited perception of it.  ~Hal Urban

High Summer High Jinks

         

           I can admit it now that my children are grown: I did horrible things over summer vacation when I was a child. We all did.  We were horrible. We were on our own outside all day long, every day, all summer long, and we entertained ourselves in the most horrible ways. 

I wasn’t the one who stuffed weeds down Jimmy Z.’s pants just because he would let out this little animal snarl and bite people. I didn’t melt Ex Lax on some cookies and wrap them all up nicely and put them in the park with a big sign that said “TREASURE!” and then enact a scheme (which involved really bad fake bird calls as signals) to lure the Mean Kids to eat them. I didn’t try to talk a kid over on the next block into drinking a baby bottle full of mud. My sister did all of those things. None of them worked, by the way—except the weeds in the pants, though I don’t think they curbed that biting any—but it wasn’t my fault. I always thought they were wonderful ideas and went along with them whole-heartedly.

We poked sticks at dead squirrels and then had elaborate squirrel funerals. We found baby birds that had fallen from nests, and somebody would find an old birdcage so we could feed them until they died. Which they always did. Then we’d have a funeral.

We were not-so-benevolent gods who punished armies of ants. We were armed with sticks and rocks and popguns, if someone thought to buy us the ammunition. Which fortunately they usually didn’t, because I think they were onto us.

And Fourth of July? I don’t even want to talk about it. Funny thing, though—I just now remembered how my mom and dad claimed they met as children. They had climbed up on the local clubhouse roof and were throwing cherry bombs at people. So there you go—it’s not my fault. It’s genetic.

Did you do awful things, or was I the only one?

Have a happy and safe 4^th of July!

“…this was my sarcastic summer. It was only long after that I recognized sarcasm as the protest of people who are weak.” ~John Knowles, A Separate Peace

The Summer Home from College

I’m sorry it’s been so long. Fortunately my computer issues are as resolved as they’re going to get for now, and I’m trying to get caught up. Again. In the meantime, this is an old post I ran across that I never published. Hope you’ve enjoyed your summer!

For several weeks now, I’ve been asking him if he would be ready.

He blew home at the end of spring, and the house just hasn’t been the same all summer.  He dropped his things in his room where he stood, and they’ve stayed there since, some of them still in garbage bags.  Years ago I learned to choose my battles, and my son’s mess was such a mighty contender that I surrendered early on. 

He left a collection of dirty dishes near the computer in the basement.  He left bags of chip crumbs and little plastic yogurt cups for the dog to get into and then vomit up. 

He worked on his car in the garage whenever he had spare time.  It became a hangout for the kids, like their own private annex.  They set up chairs out there.  The tools and car parts were everywhere.  Greasy black fingerprints marked a path through the house.  I cleaned them, but they appeared with such regularity that I gave up, figuring I’d wait till after he went back. 

And then, the day before he was due to move back to college, I got home from work.

His car was put together, and the garage was cleaned out.  As in, clean.  The black fingerprints were gone.  His room was packed up and as clean as it gets.  The lawn had been mown.  He had done all that I had asked and then some.  It was all so neat and clean, it broke my heart. 

Ready?  Guess so. 

“I’m going to make this the Summer of Socks. I’m going to go all out. Gallery crew socks, short socks, knee socks. Maybe hose, even. But socks, definitely socks.” ~Eleventh Grade Girl

Rain, Rain Don’t Go Away. Again.

It’s raining right now. Ordinarily I wouldn’t consider that an earth-shattering enough statement to post on my blog, but at the moment it really is.

It rained only once in my area through June and July, but for some reason it skipped my yard. A few blocks away it poured for a short time, but all my house got was what felt like a little warm spittle. It was like the joke about having the storm cloud following over your head, but the opposite, when—irony of ironies—that storm cloud would make you so very happy.

The lawn hasn’t been mown all summer. My grass is as brown as an African savanna. When I just thought it was dormant, I was perfectly okay with that.  Now I think it's just truly dead.  More irony:  my grass may have gone to greener pastures. The lush plantain lilies, usually cool-elegant as a southern belle this time of year, have curled into fried pork rinds.

For a while I turned my blog blue. The color of Arctic ice. Of shadows on snow. Of cold, predawn light. Of the breeze I imagine runs a hand over lavender fields in Provence. But then it got even hotter and drier, and blue started to look hot again. It was the color of that ceaseless sky that sizzles clouds off like a blue flame. It’s the distant lightning, blue and electric and ominous, that tormented us all summer with distant growls and threatened to burn us all to cinder, but rolled on.

This free water that falls from the sky from shivery-silver clouds is now an exotic thing. Guess that’s one of the true gifts of aging. I've learned to take nothing for granted, ever.

Simplify, simplify…We are happy in proportion to the things we can do without. ~Henry David Thoreau

Improper Poll: Gone with the Whim

Ahner's Greenhouse in its Former Glory

It’s been a summer of disappointments. The heat and lack of rain meant it was hard to go to festivals and outdoor concerts. Most of the Fourth of July fireworks were cancelled.

Then I found out two of my favorite summer products have been discontinued. The horror! Harry and David’s Strawberry Green tea is absolutely delightful iced. Why would they get rid of it? Especially when no one else I know of has a strawberry green tea?

And Clean Sweet Layer was my absolute favorite of all the Clean fragrances by D’lish and one of my favorite summer perfumes. Sure, I can still get it online, but someday those supplies too will dwindle. Besides, fragrances don’t have the shelf lives that companies pretend they do. Stale is stale.

But one of the worst is that I keep finding out more beloved places around town have closed. The one that absolutely broke my heart was Ahner’s greenhouse and gift shop. I had no idea it had closed until I drove by it. What a shock! It was not only closed, but going through some kind of deconstruction process that had it all hollowed out like a monstrous carcass on the side of the road. Brought tears to my eyes.

Have you lost a beloved product or store recently?

Improper Poll: Summer on a Shelf

Val the Victorian recently mentioned the books we read every summer. This, and Ray Bradbury’s recent death, reminded me I haven’t recently read the book that is to me the consummate book of summer, Dandelion Wine. In fact, it’s quite possibly my all-time favorite book. What’s odd is that I can never remember exactly what it’s about—just the feeling it gives me, the taste of it. Each time, I get something new. To me that book is as magical as summer itself.

I had no idea there was a film in the making until I looked for pictures. A movie could be wonderful, but the true beauty of this book is in the poetic writing.

The dandelion wine is truly a taste of bottled summer, “…the balm of sun and idle August afternoons, the faintly heard sounds of ice wagons passing on brick avenues, the rush of silver skyrockets and the fountaining of lawn mowers moving through ant countries, all these, all these in a glass.”

The yearly dandelion wine is “summer caught and stoppered” to be put on shelves “…row upon row, with the soft gleam of flowers opened at morning, with the light of this June sun glowing through a faint skin of dust” so that in the winter, “…snow melted to grass, the trees were reinhabitated with bird, leaf, and blossoms like a continent of butterflies breathing on the wind.”

Alas, the book was over far too quickly.  I might just take it out again in winter. To be read in little sips. What’s your favorite summer read?

Improper Poll: Those Summer Superheroes

 I have loved Spiderman ever since college, when I found a discounted air mattress for under a dollar emblazoned with the word, “Spidey” in a drugstore sale bin. It was sickly yellow and grew on me the way certain hideously ugly things do, and it never seemed to give out—as certain hideously ugly things don’t. I took it to the beach with me for years, and it was always a conversation piece. I could swim for ages and know that it would be there when I returned.

I used to read the newspaper comic and have always loved the way it was drawn. Spiderman is so visual. The thing that makes him a figure drawer’s dream is the same thing that gives any movie about him an automatic appeal: he puts the “A” in “action hero.” Because of course Spidey is acrobat, gymnast...and yogi. Who can resist that contemplative, upside down Buddha-on-a-string look?

I love that he started out as human, but becomes spider-like against his will—and then evolves into defending others as a response to his own tragedy and loss. And he sacrifices his own happiness in order to protect his true love, at least for a whle. Yet she chooses him in spite of the risks. Now that’s love.

Most of all, I am drawn to the recurring theme that if we have the power to do good in the world, we also have the responsibility to do good. What we choose in life, whether good or bad, creates a ripple effect.

So—in spite of the horrifying fact that I have always seemed to attract spiders, Spiderman is my favorite superhero. Who’s yours?

A Window Opens

I’ve mentioned my smelly car. One reason this is so extra-tragic is that I have a freakishly strong sense of smell. So for the first time in years, I’ve been driving around with my windows down. When did I start keeping them up all the time, anyway, and why? I’m sure it was to keep my hair from being a mess, but lately I’m thinking that messy hair might just be a small price to pay sometimes. I’m almost a little bit grateful to the RBO for reminding me what I’ve been missing.

Years ago, someone gave my family tickets to box seats at the circus. No question it was cool. We had our own little suite with private bathroom and everything. But it made me realize it’s not always so bad to live among the common folk. There were some things I genuinely missed while being hermetically sealed in our little Plexiglas room in the sky. I sort of missed the down-and-dirty earthiness of the experience that is the circus I remembered from my childhood: the smells of elephant musk and popcorn and excitement. The guy with change in his apron hocking “Ice Cold Coke!” from the dark auditorium stairs and people waving sparkling souvenirs-on-a-stick all around us. Breathing and bodies and clapping and peanut shells. That disco ball light thing that showered the audience in stars so that we could look down and see the actual circus lights touching us, just like the magic all around, making us a part of it in one sparkling moment.

Driving with my windows down is a little like that. I find myself wanting to drive faster just for the exhilaration of it. There are whole new layers of experience coming in those windows. The sounds rush in my ears, and as the visual scenery flashes by in a blur of houses-stores-signs-fields-trees, so flashes the olfactory scenery in a blur of backyard grill-fast food-cut grass-mimosa. And the humid wind is cool-slick on my arms and swirles my hair in a mad summer frenzy.

For a while I am back in my big sister’s orange-and-black 1969 Camaro convertible with the top down. Or even my own first car with the broken air conditioner.

The smell is much, much better, by the way, thanks to your suggestions. The thing that really seemed to do it? The coffee grounds. Was going to try the apple, but it turned out someone had eaten it. Which was okay, because I got a new one at the grocery store and used it to get rid of the coffee ground smell, which it turns out is oddly out of place in a car. It actually smells good in there now. Thank you so much!

Still, I’m going to try to remember to roll down the windows. Just sometimes. I’d forgotten there’s magic out there in the summer air just waiting to swirl in.

All that is sweet, delightful, and amiable in this world, in the serenity of the air, the fineness of seasons, the joy of light, the melody of sounds, the beauty of colors, the fragrancy of smells, the splendor of precious stones, is nothing else but Heaven breaking through the veil of this world, manifesting itself in such a degree and darting forth in such variety so much of its own nature.

– William Law

Being True

I am driving to the college, my car packed so full that we had to make portholes between pillows and piles of clothing. I amuse myself by wondering with what profound words I can leave this child. It seems necessary somehow to have an important parting sentiment.

I think about Polonius’ famous parting words to his son Laertes, “This above all: to thine own self be true/And it must follow, as the night the day/Thou canst not then be false to any man." And I think about what I’ve tried to get across to my children their whole lives: Respect yourself and others. Seek balance. Play fair. Look at the big picture. Make good choices. “Make good choices” became a joke among us. A half-joke. We were kidding but we meant it.

You’d think with all of the goodbyes I’ve said in my life, I would be better at it. Most of my married life, we moved a lot. Every time I had built a life that I loved and lived in a house that represented all I had built, we moved. And every time we’d drive away from a place that one last time, I would mean to turn around and look back so that I could store that memory in my brain like a photograph that I would take out and reminisce over. At least that was the plan. But what happened every time was that I was always too busy to look back.

Which was okay. Sometimes it’s better to look ahead.

In the end, we hug somewhat awkwardly, and I say something that is not remotely profound. The words of wisdom I blurt out are, “Have fun.” Like I say, I am bad at goodbyes. Have fun? What kind of lame thing is that to say to your teenager? Do I really want that?

Well, yes, yes I do. Of course I do. Not the kind that hurts anyone, of course, but I do want my children to have fun, happy lives. Are my parting words really that bad? Who knows. These are responsible people who do, by the grace of God, make good choices. Now is not the time to teach them anything I’ve never taught before. So I drive away, thinking of the tall, wonderful, surprisingly self-possessed young person I’ve marveled over lately, and while I am smiling over that, I forget to look back.

And I realize as I am driving away that I’ve just left a person whose job it is to find their own wisdom. Which is, of course, what it’s all about, anyway.

Navajo proverb: “We raise our children to leave us.”