Right now I’m writing to you from the backyard hammock. My husband bought this hammock for me as a gift because I begged fiercely for it in the middle of Fleet Farm. Not in a kid begging making a scene sort of way, but in a pleading and here’s a million reasons why I need this type of way. He said he’d buy the hammock now, but I couldn’t buy the rain barrel too. It was too expensive he had said. But shortly after, he built me my own rain barrel with a pump and all and I can hook it up to the sprinkler and it waters my garden with water from the clouds. For added pizzazz, he built a compost barrel too that spins on an axle and makes thick fertilizer, rich black dirt with nutrients to be tilled into our garden ground in the fall, before all sleeps under a blanket of snow for the winter. He knows that this is better than I ever dreamed. He knows me.
The tree above the hammock is a massive walnut tree. Its
leaves are dark green and stretch out like a fan or a palm tree branch wannabe,
but its edges are softer. It doesn’t fool anyone. It is risky business swinging
under a walnut tree in a hammock in September. The walnuts are large and green
and loud when flung from the tree to the warm sheet metal roof of the machine
shed nearby, loud like a gunshot if you didn’t know the difference. I do know
the difference now, but only by experience from a year’s worth of walnut gun
shots spanning over the seasons. The winter brings harsher sounds from the
dropping of the stubborn walnuts that hung on during the fall winds. The smack
of the falling walnuts brings a sharp echo from the sheets of ice, the edges of
the roof trimmed with caked layers of snow. These stragglers from the season
before will prove to be the strongest of all. They held on when the others
couldn’t. It’s only appropriate for them to go out with a resonating bang. While
in the hammock, I am thankful that winter is not here yet. Fall allows me to
squeeze every last drop out of every day, and I’m not ready to let that go yet.
It’ll come soon, no doubt. The seasons
swing in and out of style.
Sometimes I’ll swing with my four year old son on our swing set
under an ash tree that is bigger than the gunshot walnut tree. He sits on my
lap facing me like I’m carrying him, but he holds on tight to the links of the
chains and each time we swing back and forth, feet to sky, feet to ground, he
leans forward and says “BOO!” And he laughs the sweetest giggly laugh that he
has perfected in his four magical years. My bare feet are muddy on the bottoms,
but I’m indifferent to this. The grass feels like a pillow when I walk across the
yard toward my garden that sits behind the shed. The grass needs mowed again
just like it nearly always does except for on the day we mow it. The breeze is
lovely today and it is neither too hot nor too cold, but just right. The
flowers sway in the breeze in agreement. While I watch them, I remember riding
my splatter painted bike down our street as a little girl. I was probably the
same age as my girls are now, and I felt that same wind that we do today,
freedom searing through my veins, dreams bigger than the heart that held them, a
heart beating heavy and quick in my chest.
The world outside has always spoken to our souls.
If I told you my favorite time of day, would you agree? Or
do you have one of your own that differs from mine and I haven’t been paying
attention to that particular time like I should? When I think of my favorite
time of day, it is night, or nearly night, and the four year old son I was
telling you about is almost ready for bed. I’ve instructed him to pick out a
book, and he always picks out three, but that’s not my favorite part. His
jammies are red plaid, or Thomas the Train, or blue with monkeys on them. He’s
found his treasure in the three choices in his hand. It’s the look he gives me
when he whirls around to show me what he’s chosen. It’s the way he plops down
on my lap on his colorful rug next to his bed. It’s the excitement of knowing he
will hear the familiar words that will send him back into his dreams. It’s his
silence while he waits for my lips to begin speaking the words he is
anticipating so much.
“Red truck is a tow truck, a work truck, not a show
truck…..”
It is familiar and safe. We breathe it in.
For her, it smells like garlic and chicken and onion. She
says she could smell it all the way down the street. She grins and she thanks
me for making it from scratch. Although not home most of the day at her age,
busy with friends, busy with growing up, learning, and perceptions of an almost twelve
year old mind. Right or wrong? What is it? She wonders. But she comes home to
the smell of soup on the stove. She steps into the feeling of warmth and one
that is safe and full of acceptance for her. Are these carrots from our garden?
She asks me this. They taste pleasant and sweet. She knows they are not from
the store, but she asks me to thank me properly, to inform me that she notices
the small ways that I hope to make her life better, more full, full to the very
brim while she is here under my roof, a blink of an eye, but full to the brim,
I hope. It is my behind the scenes way of loving her. She knows this, but we
don’t say it. She asks for more soup and she grins. In the split second of her
grin, I picture her small with pigtails, same grin, a mischievous spark in her
eye. Time is a funny thing how it flies by. I love it and I hate it at the same time.
Time is running short in this day as the sun sets in the
west over the field of hay next to our house. Soon the tractor will come and roll it into bales, silhouettes to decorate the field of green. Bugs will jump and scatter as it flattens it's path. For now, it stands uncut, waving shyly to us. The softball hits hard onto my
palm. It stings. The glove I’m using does a poor job of protecting my skin, but I’ve
made the catch. She grins. Her hair is a mop of sunshine. It is always in her
face. I hit a ball out into the grass
and she dives for it. She knows how to play hard. She has a fire in her heart.
She grins in my direction as she is up on her feet again from the ground. She
runs invisible bases. I hear her commentary as she sprints around them, eluding
the other invisible players. First base, second, third. Will she go
all…the…way? I holler out as I reach for her with my glove as she nears home
base, but I am playing in slow motion on purpose as she slides into home base.
I lazily attempt to tag her and roll to the ground, but she’s made it home of course. “Aaahhh!!!!!” is
the sound of the fake crowd that she and I make in unison.
I’ve spoken her joy
language the way it makes sense to her. The sun is low. The earth is a deep
color of orange. The world is shutting down for the night. And she is happy,
because she’s made it home.
On this particular Sunday, on any given day, I love them the
very best I can.
We are all home.
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