Wild Trumpet Vine is two years old today. A big thank-you to all my readers, whose numbers are growing steadily. I’m especially grateful to those of you who let me know, in some way or another, when a post strikes home. And as always, I’m interested in hearing divergent points of view. May we continue creeping along together, through the good times and bad, as the years go by.
When we turn off Route 6 onto Route 6A, Shore Road in Truro, we’re five hundred miles and twelve hours’ driving time from our house in Virginia. But we feel like we’re coming home. And we are, in a way. We’re here every year. We like to think that we’re more than tourists, who are just passing through, perhaps never to return. We will be back; we’re a sure thing. We’ve been coming here so long that we can’t imagine not going back.
Each summer’s inaugural drive down Shore Road finds the three of us exultant. Our time at the Cape is something we agree on completely; we all hold it equally dear, for our own reasons. The trials and traffic of the long trip are behind us. We eagerly scan the familiar land- and seascape along the mile and a half that leads to our little cottage complex. It’s rare that we are greeted by any major changes, and for this we are grateful.
The water, the sand, and the light are in constant daily flux, yet from year to year, this sliver of the Outer Cape appears virtually the same. The manmade trappings along Shore Road are modest; they make no effort to compete with nature’s spectacular beauty. There are bungalows, saltboxes, and of course, Cape Cods, but no high rises, no glitz. There are groupings of rental cottages. Most are small; some are unbelievably tiny. All are picturesque.
Those lucky enough to get a toe-hold along this enchanted strip of land don’t easily let it go. Homes are passed from one generation to the next. The same weathered, typically hand-painted signs in front yards have greeted us for decades: Beach Rose, The Little Skipper, The Sea Gull, Pilgrim Colony. Occasionally a cottage is resided, reshingled or otherwise refurbished. Some grow more charmingly dilapated every year. Once in a very long while a new building appears. Mostly, though, all remains reassuringly the same, and seems to promise always to be so.
Simple bayside cottages, brilliant blue sky, luxuriant green grass.
This is our Cape Cod.
I retired from Crafts and led Bible Adventures for the next two summers. The following year, when previous VBS directors had had enough, I agreed to lead the entire program. I’ve done so for nine years now. I may be starting to get the hang of it. At least I’ve learned some valuable lessons.
My first few years as VBS director were rough. I was reluctant to ask for help. I didn’t want to inconvenience anyone, so I tried to do too much. I was hesitant to schedule planning meetings, knowing that every church volunteer has too many such events already glaring out from their calendars. I often awoke around 4 AM, worried that I couldn’t get it all done, uncertain what “it” was. I got angry and tired because I didn’t have the help I needed. It was a vicious circle, and it wasn’t doing anything for my spiritual well-being, or for anyone else’s.
I was anxious over every bump in the road. And there were, are, and always will be bumps. What if I can’t find a preschool leader? What if I can’t get enough volunteers to provide meals? (Our VBS is held in the evenings, and we begin with a light supper each night.) When would I find time to buy all the necessary items for Crafts? Where are the robes we’ll need for Bible Adventures? Will I be able to locate the place where I can pick up dry ice? (VBS typically requires many odd props.) What if very few children participate? Or what if there are way too many, far more than we can handle?
I fretted about the task of organizing the children into the crews in which they rotate from one activity to the next. There are many subtleties to consider: these two siblings must be together; these cannot be together; this child doesn’t get along with that one; these two get along too well and will conspire to create chaos; these four cousins want to be in the same crew; this kid wants to be in a group led by his older sister, but the sister needs a break from her brother, etc. Then there are those difficult children whose strong personalities overshadow those of their peers. And each year there are some children I’ve never met. Are they painfully meek, or boisterously gregarious? On the afternoon that VBS begins, I have devised neat lists of kids, organized into apparently cohesive groups. An hour later, with the walk-ins and the no-shows, my carefully considered groupings are shuffled unrecognizably, turned upside down. This problem will always be with us. It’s not improved by my worrying about it.
Gradually, I began to let go of more worries. Every year in VBS, we tell the kids about the power of prayer: Don’t worry about anything. Instead, pray about everything (Philippians 4:6). The message finally got through to me, too. I started turning my worries into prayers. Before long, I was hearing an answer: ask for help. Evidently I had somehow managed to give the impression that I had everything well under control. Once word got out that this was completely false, offers came rolling in. Some were from people who had no desire to be surrounded by a mob of children; they realized they could contribute in other valuable ways. One volunteer, who has a gift for composing, editing and polishing text, had the idea to publish a Wish List in the church bulletin and newsletter that spelled out our needs, both supplies and personnel. The Wish List, and the gracious generosity of our church family, allow me to go on vacation immediately before VBS and know that progress is ongoing; my vigilant and efficient friend is minding the store. I found that, if asked, a surprising number of people are glad to be of assistance. It helps immensely that our current minister, who knows how to rally the congregation, is our VBS head cheerleader. Each year, more people get involved, resulting in less work and greater camaraderie for all.
For the past several years, we’ve been fortunate to have the right volunteers for every job. Our music leader, a talented singer-songwriter and versatile instrumentalist, is enthusiastic and easy-going. He has helped me realize that we shouldn’t expect perfection, from ourselves or from the children. He reminds me that when something goes wrong, as long as no one is injured, it’s usually not a big deal. In Crafts, thankfully, we have creative leaders who take the messiness in stride and manage to enjoy the kids. Heading up Games is a dynamic young woman I watched grow up in the church. She possesses boundless energy and a formidable sense of dedication. Leading the video-discussion segment is a husband and wife team skilled in engaging the kids without condescension. My daughter recruits a few buddies, and they handle Bible Adventures with imagination and a sense of fun. D shoulders more responsibility every year; she has become my assistant director. She excels at the tasks I find most difficult, and she knows the ropes, having lived and breathed VBS every August for as long as she can remember. Our preschool leaders are caring, calm and unflappable; serenity reigns in their classroom. I no longer have to worry about arranging meals; this burden is shouldered reassuringly by a well-organized friend. We couldn’t pull off VBS without our youth; they bring their friends and shepherd the kids from one rotation to the next. Due to all these many considerate and capable volunteers, my job has become pleasant, even rewarding.
After all these years, it’s begun to make sense to me: an important aspect of VBS is building community. There is no glory in going it alone, beaten down by worry. It’s about working together, guided by prayer, in a spirit of optimism and generosity. When we combine our unique talents and pool our resources, that crucial VBS message resounds further and remains resonant far longer: Jesus loves you so much!
I’m glad. I vow to be mentally prepared in 2021, but I wasn’t ready this past May.
This year’s Brood II largely missed Northern Virginia. South of us, some areas were inundated, as expected. Friends with vacation homes around Lake Anna near Charlottesville were dealt a true cicada full house. They saw Brood II up close in all its red-eyed, rambuctious, ear-splitting, smelly glory. As for our neighborhood, it was no louder than usual, and no more critter-crowded than usual.
It wasn’t until toward the end of July that we first began hearing isolated cicadas chirping at night. This is a sound I love. It’s the soothing music of a summer night in the South, one that takes me back to my childhood bedroom in Atlanta. The windows are open, a fan is whirring, and the cicadas are singing, pleasantly, contentedly.
There were no cicadas in Cape Cod where we vacationed, and the nights seemed too quiet. We heard only crickets, the wind, an occasional coyote, and some chattering, laughing teenagers (including my own). The cicadas welcomed us home to Virginia.
I still have not seen a cicada this summer. During a walk, Kiko and I heard one buzzing loudly in the grass. He pounced, fox-like, but it escaped him, and I pulled my little dog away. The only visual cicada evidence I’ve discovered is a single, perfectly round, half-inch-diameter hole in a bare spot below the bird feeder. Nine years ago, our lawn was alarmingly riddled with such openings. While I’m glad that’s not the case again, I do hope our lone cicada managed to fulfill its purpose and find a mate. I like to think that, in 2030, I’ll be hearing the chirping of its offspring.
For the earlier post on Cicadas, see here.
My earliest church memory may be of Vacation Bible School. It’s a vague, but agreeable recollection: I’m about three years old, sitting with several other children in miniature wooden Sunday School chairs. A sweet-faced elderly lady tells Bible stories. We have juice and cookies. There’s an old piano, and we learn the Zaccheus song: Jesus said, Zaccheus you come down, for I’m going to your house today. We finish with “Jesus Loves Me.” As I recall, I was content to be there in the little stone Methodist church in the Kentucky town where my grandparents lived.
Back then, it was just Bible School, not yet routinely prefaced by “Vacation,” not yet shortened to VBS. It wasn’t slickly packaged or corporate. But the essential message, then and now, is the same: Jesus does, indeed love you.
This is a message I wanted my daughter to hear from others besides me and her immediate family. I wanted Vacation Bible School to be woven into the fabric of her early life, just as it had been for me. She first attended when she was two and a half. We had found our church home, and she would be starting preschool there in the fall. VBS was her first taste of being away from me, in a group of her peers, for a short time.
My daughter and I have both come a long way since then. D, of course, has grown from toddler to teen, from plump baby to willowy young woman. During her initial VBS, she was a somewhat reluctant participant in the preschool group, one who would rather not leave her Mama. Now she and her friends lead Bible Adventures. As for me, back then I helped lead Crafts, and I was youngish. Now, as the mother of a high schooler, I’m closing in on oldish. I have, however, become somewhat wiser. I’ve learned a few things from all my years of VBS.
First, I learned that I don’t like leading Crafts. It took me two years to realize that this was not my niche. One night I was standing by, trying to assist, as a child locked a bottle of white school glue in a death grip. Glue puddled on the construction paper, on the table, on the boy’s hands. Still he kept squeezing, resisting my helpful advice: That’s enough glue! Once the bottle was nearly empty, and as though in utter surprise, he began to wail, “Too much glue!” Yeah. No kidding.
I hate leading crafts, I thought. I hate the excesses of glue and glitter. I hate trying to organize the multi-piece, pre-cut foam assemblages, each small segment (moon-faced child, smiling sun) individually wrapped in cellophane. Certain pieces tended to vanish, causing great distress among the kids: I need a red bird! Where’s my purple dress? Did you take it? The Crafts experience, under my leadership, didn’t seem to be furthering the “Jesus loves you” message. At the end of each sticky, messy, frustrating evening, I wanted to run away and never return. I wanted to be far from any church, far from all children, far from everyone.
But on the final night, I remembered why we were there. H and I got to see our tiny girl standing at the front of the sanctuary with all the other children, singing the songs they learned during the week. Even before I became a mother, I’ve been a sucker for kids singing in church. Watching our daughter participating with the group made it magical. She looked like an angel. It was for moments like this that I had always wanted to be a parent.
Then a minor tragedy occurred. In Crafts (and under my purview), the kids had made shakers for use during the final musical program. We had filled paper plates with small pieces of gravel and stapled them together. D was brandishing her shaker enthusiastically when a staple or two gave way. Chunks of gravel and a cloud of dust exploded all over the choir loft. D burst into tears and bolted, screaming, searching frantically for me in the pews.
Another thing I learned that year was this: don’t use gravel to make shakers. The instructions in the Crafts leader guide need not (and should not, in certain cases), be followed to the letter. I would give this advice to a future Crafts leader. Next year, I would find a better fit, and I would go on to learn more important lessons.
We made plans, and during our week in Atlanta we managed a good mix of keeping busy and sitting around doing nothing. Our fun-for-the-whole-family event was a screening of The Birds at the Fox Theatre, Atlanta’s historic movie palace (See Back When the Movies Were Big: Atlanta’s Fabulous Fox, March 2012). Mama joined D and me at the High Museum for the current special exhibit centered on the famous Vermeer painting, Girl with a Pearl Earring. D humored me by showing interest in my tales of the Museum as it was in the 80s when I worked there. While we lingered in the atrium before leaving, I could almost see my former boss heading toward the galleries with his characteristic bouncy step. (See Remembering Gudmund Vigtel, November 2012).
For a few outings, D and I were on our own. On these excursions, we drove the unlikely second car, an iridescent gold PT Cruiser that Daddy keeps at the ready for us. Neither of my parents claims responsibility for choosing or buying this vehicle, but somehow, they own it. I’m glad, because it has always made D smile. During our annual tour of the shops of Virginia-Highland, we actually made a few purchases. According to tradition, Mama and Daddy met us for lunch that day at George’s.
D and I spent our last Atlanta afternoon meandering through midtown with one of my dearest friends. Tedd and I were in school and church together from second grade on. We therefore have considerable common ground, and we catch up about once a year. We started our wanderings on the grounds of Grady High, our alma mater, which has been expanded and beautifully refurbished in recent years. Reading the bricks of the commemorative courtyard brought back long-submerged memories and inspired recollections of half-forgotten classmates now dispersed. We crossed the street to Piedmont Park and envied the swimmers at the enormous new sparkling pool. When did the city start looking so good, so clean and fresh? We finished our tour at O’Keefe, our former middle school, now owned by Georgia Tech. What was the name of that band that played at the eighth grade dance? Was it really the Family Plan? Tedd, with his easy, endearing sweetness and unique humor, brought D into our shared past in a way that I alone could not. She has come to appreciate Tedd just as I do, and she seemed to take real pleasure in our swapping of 70s-era stories.
At my parents’ house, our sitting around doing nothing was of high quality, as it should be on a vacation. As in previous years, we passed contented hours on the screened porch. Shaded by trees and edged by dense foliage, the porch is like a cage for humans in the midst of a wildlife preserve. It’s a perfect spot to watch the exuberant acrobatics of squirrels, chipmunks, robins, wrens and brown thrashers. In the evenings, we regularly heard a pair of local barred owls calling to one another.
We spent time simply being there with Nana and Papa, engaged in those free-wheeling conversations that seem trivial at the time, but in hindsight, just might be the lifeblood of family and community. Neighbors dropped by, and D and I went visiting, as we always have. Both Sundays at church, I felt as though I were returning to a second home. We were greeted warmly by caring friends, most of whom are watching D grow up from afar.
If, in my last post, my daughter sounded like an entitled, annoying teenager, during the visit she was rarely anything but gracious, patient and kind, to me, my parents, and to all our friends. No one would have recognized her as one suffering the throes of high-tech gadget withdrawal. Some nights, as I drifted off to sleep, I could hear D and her Nana talking and laughing in the TV room the way they have done for years. It’s a lovely, reassuring sound–the sound of my daughter and my mother, two like-minded night owls, good friends, happy and comfortable together.
Before we left for the airport, Daddy cut us some gardenias to carry with us.
They’re dried and brown now, but still fragrant.
Just before our recent trip to Atlanta, my daughter somewhat reluctantly admitted to a concern about boredom during our stay. This made her feel guilty, because she loves my parents, and she knows how much they treasure her, their only grandchild. But, she wondered, what would we do, for eight days? This worry was a first for her. In years past, she has looked forward nearly absolutely to visiting Nana and Papa.
When she was younger, of course, the bar for fun and adventure was low and accessible. Beginning with the plane ride, a sojourn in Atlanta was full of thrills, there for easy picking. Her grandparents’ house was an enchanted place, and there was so much to do. A typical day began with a leisurely breakfast on the screened porch. D could have Papa’s scrambled eggs every morning if she wanted; he was truly happy to make them for her. Later, we’d wander from park to park, sampling the different types of playground equipment. We’d “hike” the wooded nature trail by the creek. We’d visit neighbors, who doted on D as if she were their own granddaughter. She’d feed their fish, play with their cats and dogs. In the afternoons, we’d explore a fantastic sea of old toys in the upstairs playroom, or dress up in Nana’s amazing vintage creations. At night, we’d be back on the porch for ice cream and ghost stories. Every day offered wondrous opportunities.
Now that she’s a teenager, the magic has mostly dissipated. While I expect she’ll always have a sentimental spot in her heart for her grandparents’ home, the silvery jingle of the Southern Express bell is barely audible. Former childhood pleasures inspire only yawns, wistful sighs and bouts of grumpy melancholy.
What makes the situation even worse is that, as D grows up, the rest of us are growing older and more jaded. With each passing year, my parents have less interest in leaving the house for entertainment. They’re not recluses or agoraphobics. Most mornings, Daddy is running errands. He zips out and back to Kroger, to the pharmacy, to the bank, to mail a package, to gas up the car. He returns almost before it seems humanly possible. But together, my parents leave home rarely except to go to church, out to eat, or to do neighborly good deeds. Occasionally they see a movie, and of course there are doctor appointments, which eat up huge chunks of time. Home is where they really want to be, and I don’t blame them. Home is comfortable; the outside world tends to be far less so. In going out, the pay-off is too small, the hurdles too many. Unpleasantness abounds: heat, traffic, crowds, noise. If I live to be my parents’ age, I may well be a hermit. Those aforementioned factors, plus the chance of thunderstorms and the need to comfort my anxious dog, kept me at home last Saturday as H and D went to a Nationals game.
Another thorny issue nagging at D was the dread of spending over a week in a technology vacuum. Several years ago, we presented my mother with an iMac for Christmas. Because we couldn’t be there to help her deal with the constant minor quandaries, and she didn’t want to be a bother to friends, she gave up. By the following Easter the iMac was back at our house. When I suggested to D that we had a unique opportunity to travel back in time, to experience the life of an earlier era, before household computers, cell phones, cordless phones, or Wi-Fi, she was unmoved. She didn’t want that kind of time travel. Her iPhone would be rendered nearly useless. She would be cut off from her network of friends. And, I realized, with some alarm, she would be primarily dependent on me for amusement. My husband, who is often as restless as a teenager, would be with us only for the first weekend. We needed to make some real plans, or suffer the consequences.
The backyard of my childhood home in Atlanta, like most of those in the neighborhood, is narrow but very deep. It has two distinct sections, which my friends and I differentiated in this way: the area just behind the house was the back; the more remote area was the way back. Sometimes, for emphasis, we called it the way, way back. The same terminology, of course, referred to the seating arrangements in those old station wagons from the 60s and 70s (including our 1965 Dodge Polara, with its rear-facing seat, as well as the one appearing in a current movie of the same name.)
We bought our house from a family with four children who played in every inch of that yard, as the numerous toy soldiers, cap guns, pen knives and dolls with mold-encrusted eyes, found in the unlikeliest places, attest. In 1968, when we moved in, the landscaping left much to be desired. There were a few azaleas and some dogwoods in a wide-open sea of scraggly weeds and spots of bare earth. We didn’t devote much time or thought to real gardening; we had more than enough to keep us busy with the ongoing renovation of the house and the rehabilitation of the extremely patchy front lawn. (See Morningside Begins its Comeback, July 2012.) But a mere four decades plus later, in the absence of an army of hard-charging children, nature has worked its own special magic. Behind the house now lies a sort of enchanted urban jungle.
It’s not that we stood by and did nothing. In that case the house would now be completely hidden by a tangled Sleeping Beauty thicket. Daddy has always been out there clipping and pulling weeds. Since his retirement, he has spent the greater portion of his waking hours combating the constant, determined creeping of the vigorous, semi-tropical plant life that thrives immediately outside the walls. If it’s daylight, Daddy is pruning, pulling ivy, gathering fallen sticks, clearing away the ongoing accumulation of natural debris. Nearest the house, in the back, Daddy’s efforts are keeping nature’s tentacles in check, to some degree. Atop the steps leading from the rock garden, there is a central area that to this day remains recognizable as an actual yard.
Further back, however, the battle has long since been lost. The way back luxuriates in a state of benign neglect. With my every summer visit, it’s substantially lusher, more enclosed, more overgrown. Every year, the vines have thickened, reached higher, delved deeper. Nature’s resolve to have its own way is everywhere in evidence.
When we bought the house, the way back was especially barren, strewn with pine straw and sprouting a few weeds. It was here that Daddy set up my red and green metal swing set. Brand shiny new when I was two, he assembled it behind the small house in suburban Lexington where I was born. While our family bounced around from Kentucky to North Carolina during Daddy’s graduate school years, the swing set found a temporary home beside the chicken lot at my grandparents’ farm. Once we settled in Atlanta, it settled there with us. In the theatrical production of my childhood that runs in my head, that old swing set is a crucial backdrop, an essential set piece. It boasted none of the fancy components seen in today’s typically elaborate play sets–no castle, fort, or climbing wall–just a two-person glider, a couple of swings, a trapeze and a slide. It was nothing special, but it was where my friends and I gathered. Located, as it was, in the remoteness of the way, way back, it was where we met to play, to pretend, to talk, to argue, to make plans. It was our place. A kids’ place.
Not all memories the swing set conjures are idyllic ones. Several years during elementary school I struggled with the mind-gripping demons we now refer to neatly as OCD. It didn’t have a name back then. Thanks to the patience and understanding of my mother, who had experienced a similar near-insanity as a child, I managed not to fall apart completely. Mama sat at my bedside every night, when I’d tell her each worry, and she’d tell me not to worry. A general, all-encompassing “Don’t worry” meant nothing. I needed her to respond to each anxiety individually. It was exhausting for both of us, but she never complained. During the school day, when I was occupied, I was OK. I don’t think any of my buddies knew I was crazy. In the late afternoons, if I didn’t have the company of friends, the beasties roared back, preparing for the free-for-all of night. They often demanded my fealty in the isolation of the way back. I can see myself running yet one more time around the swing set, zipping joylessly down the slide again and again, touching the rusty spot on the top bar just once more. I have to do it. No, I didn’t touch it exactly right. I have to do it again. I’m a weary, restless, ten year old nervous wreck. Fortunately for me, that time passed. I either outgrew the demons, or they got bored and went on to torment another, more defenseless child, one without as compassionate a mother.
As a high schooler, having learned a few moves on the rickety uneven parallel bars during gym class, I used the high bar of the swing set to practice. With the picnic bench positioned below, I could propel myself onto the bar and execute back hip circles. I shudder to think how close I must have come, repeatedly, to flying off and breaking my back, my neck, or worse.
During my college years, there were fewer hours to be whiled away in the way back, and nature asserted itself in earnest. The wooden seats of the glider rotted and disappeared. The slide weathered to a warm, rust red. A few vines, wisteria and grape, managed toe holds and began to wind their way up, across and over. One hard plastic swing was anchored in place by a vine that braided itself delicately along the length of the chain. Year by year, each element became more firmly rooted, more tightly entwined.
The vines might have held the swing set up for decades to come, had not a nearby giant tulip poplar been tossed onto the slide during a lightning storm. While one side is crumpled like a broken toy, the other still stands, held fast in the candy cane clasp of a massive wisteria vine. The glider is locked in place, as well, vine-trapped. Vinca, ivy, Virginia creeper and mahonia flourish along the ground. Unchecked plant growth closes in from every direction. Going on right now, and for the forseeable future, at least, it’s a wild foliage riot in the way, way back. In the midst of it all, my old swing set remains, ever more adorned, yet ever more fragile, a monument to simultaneous decay and growth. A monument to life, and its circle.
This morning, my daughter caught the middle school bus for the last time. She’ll return barely four hours later (early release at 10:20, classes twelve minutes long.) I packed her last eighth grade lunch yesterday (no more washing of the thermos and tupperware salad containers for a couple of months). Actual school work, of course, ended a while ago. The final week is a mere formality, a period loosely filled with awards ceremonies, desk and locker cleanings, movie-watching, yearbook signings, and saying goodbye.
It’s hard to believe that all those highly anticipated school events requiring so much preparation are now in the past. Guys and Dolls, in which D played the faithful Mission girl, Agatha, is ancient history. The music department’s competition at Busch Gardens: barely visible in the rearview mirror. The same goes for Mayfest Playfest, a day of short plays written and performed by local middle schoolers throughout the county. Standards of Learning exams in reading, geometry, civics and science: duly completed and scored. (Eight years ago, when D began elementary school and we first heard of the SOLs, my husband found the acronym hilarious.) The eighth grade dance: over. Year-long projects: researched, written, presented, evaluated and returned. Exams: completed and graded. End-of-year orchestra concert (featuring a beautiful rendition of I Dreamed a Dream): it’s history. The final, quite comical performance by the drama class (30 Reasons Not to be in a Play): c’est finit.
When D returns home very shortly, she’ll be accompanied by a crowd of friends. I’ll drive them to the pool, and summer will begin.
When school resumes in the fall, our only child, our baby, will be a high schooler. H and I graduate to another, if not more mature, then at least more elderly parenting bracket.
Seventy-six days of summer stretch out before us. Once, ages ago, that sounded like an eternity to me. Now I know how quickly the season will pass. Every year, I vow to appreciate these precious days, to relish each one for what it brings. I don’t really like the expression, but I’ll use it anyway: I’ll try to be present for these fleeting days of summer. They will vanish in a flash, as always. We’ve been waiting in line 180 days for our turn on summer’s roller coaster. The cars are pulling up, and soon we’ll be inching up that first hill. This season, I will pay attention and enjoy the ride. I hope you do, as well!
Nearly always, the pair sticks together; it’s rare to see one without the other. While I have no credentials in duck psychology, I see them as a couple seeking respite from the chatter of the loving yet overbearing familial horde. When they get the chance to steal away to this cozy pond, pleasantly shaded by cedar and pine trees, they take it, and they savor it. The puddle is just big enough for two, but no more. It’s their peaceful hideaway, a summer getaway, with no guest room or pull-out sofa. Please, this puddle is private.
One afternoon, I was a bit alarmed to see the male duck alone in his micro-pond.
When I checked back shortly, I was relieved to see that Mrs. Mallard had returned. Her presence apparently relaxed her mate enough so that he could catch some z’s.
This photo shows the puddle after a fresh rain.
Yesterday, after a couple of days without rain, the ducks were gone. Their private puddle, like so many treasures, is ephemeral. Its water level had dropped considerably, and the area, shown above, more closely resembled a reedy marsh than a pond.
But barring unforeseen incident, the ducks will be back. Once again, the skies this morning are ominously heavy and gray. Storms are coming. I wonder how ducks feel when battered by vicious weather. I assume they are well-suited, like the best-constructed boats, to ride it out. I doubt they are gripped by overwhelming fear, as Kiko is now, huddled at my feet in the kneehole of my desk, shaking, his generic xanax having little effect. And unlike most human vacationers, the ducks have discovered a retreat that is improved by bad weather. When the skies clear, I expect to see the devoted mallard couple enjoying their time alone, floating serenely in a more luxurious puddle.