Happy Monday everyone. I’m still busy unpacking and setting up my new home. Had a walk-in shower installed on Saturday and happy that one major project is finished. Having workers in the house for several days really stressed my senior cat. She was anxious and vomited several times on Saturday, but was better on Sunday. Slept almost all day in her favorite place on the end of my bed. She hadn’t been able to do that for several days as each step of the project was done from taking out the old shower, redoing plumbing, then getting the new walls up.
While setting up my office and culling through a lot of clippings and copies of drafts of columns and stories, I’ve found some things I’d thought were lost. Like this essay I wrote in middle school as a class assignment. I don’t recall if there was some kind of prompt we all had to respond too, or if we were told to just write about anything we wanted. This is what I came up with, and I think of it every time the wildfires flare up in Western U.S. and Canada. All those wonderful trees… gone.
FIRE
A dull, dirty gray smoke slowly rises from a patch of dried out weeds and leaves, hinting at the desecration to come.
The breeze quickens, fanning the smoke until a tiny burst of yellow flame appears at the base of a huge redwood, flickering crazily like an intoxicated firefly.
Brush and small twigs add more power to the fire, and it gains enough confidence to attack the trunk of the majestic giant before it.
The flames eat slowly at first, then scamper up the rest of the way like a fiery squirrel. As the blaze lifts its lofty head and takes a bite of the top-most leaf, the tree topples. A fallen hero surrendering to a foe. The sound breaks into the silence with a terrific boom.
The tree lies there, crushed, defeated, while the rest of the forest falls prey to the greedy appetite of the fire.
Then the whole forest is adorned in pert red dresses of deadly flame. But how long does the beauty and splendor last?
Within minutes the fire melts away like the last snow of winter and all that is left is a blackened, desecrated battlefield on which an unforgettable lesson was taught.
Mother nature convinced the forest that although the fire was beautiful death lurk behind its innocent mask of beauty.
BTW: That is the way it was written back then with only a couple of minor tweaks to eliminate repeat words.
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This next piece is from the weekly column I used to write for the newspaper. Oh we had fun when the kids were young…. sometimes. Enjoy!
When the twins were just babies, I couldn’t wait until the day they could walk and talk and feed themselves. Until the night feedings were over. Until I didn’t have to juggle two highchairs, two spoons, two hungry mouths, and two sets of flailing arms. Until the day when they could walk to the car, to bed, or anywhere I wanted them to go.
Anyone who hasn’t experienced the custodial responsibilities of two babies at once simply has no clue of what the daily routine is like. But as the popular Country song says, I should have been careful of what I prayed for.
The moment the twins could feed themselves, I had two sets of gooey hands touching my favorite pair of slacks, the walls, and anything else within reach. Two delighted little tykes passing food from one highchair to the other, managing to drop most of it along the way. And if they didn’t like what I served for dinner, they could throw it a lot further than they could spit it when they were six months old.
We celebrated their first steps like any excited parents would, but rued the day they appeared to be training for speed-walking races. They swarmed through the house like locusts, and it seemed like their little fingers could reach higher than other little fingers could. They climbed up on anything handy to re-pot my African-Violets, or get their own drink, plug in the coffee pot, or empty it all over the counter.
They could stand on a Fisher-Price garage, unlock their closet door, and take all the tapes off their disposable diapers. They could help me unload the dishwasher and load the clothes dryer, even though they occasionally got them mixed up.
I did learn, however, to check the dryer for plastic cups before I turned it on. And if my husband couldn’t find a pair of socks in his drawer, he knew to look in the dishwasher before giving up hope of finding clean socks.
When the twins learned to talk, that didn’t ease my burden either. I had naively assumed communication would be helpful. While polite discourse is helpful, constant babbling, unless it comes from a brook, is extremely tiring. I longed for the days when they gurgled happily to each other when they woke up from a nap. Now they come right out of their room and demand a drink or a cookie, expecting my immediate compliance.
Now they can come up to me and pat my leg and say, “Eat, Mommy?” when it isn’t time to eat.
Now they can say, “Outside?” over and over again even when it’s pouring down rain and they wouldn’t last a second in the deluge.
And now they can call, “Mommy, Mommy!” from some corner of the house where they ‘did it’ in their training pants.
Now I can’t wait until they are sixteen, and obviously I am a victim of the old ‘The grass is always greener…’ adage. Even when friends with teenagers tell me I should thank God my kids are still little, I say to myself. ‘Oh, yeah? You’ve got to be kidding’.
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That’s all from me for today folks. I do hope your week starts off well. Be safe. Be happy. If you enjoyed the story of the twins, you can find more stories like that in my humorous memoir, A Dead Tomato Plant and a Paycheck.