Category Archives: Family

Compromise Reached

July 25, 2013 Wildtrumpetvine

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.

Community, Family, Parenthood, Travel

Help! I’m Traveling with a Teenager!

July 24, 2013 Wildtrumpetvine

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.

Atlanta2013121 — Home sweet home for Nana and Papa.

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.

Atlanta2013082 — From the porch, a view of summer green.

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.

Community, Family, Friendship, Parenthood, Travel

In the Way Back, the Old Swing Set, Going Back to Nature

July 18, 2013 Wildtrumpetvine 1 Comment

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.

003 — The swing set, during a rare Atlanta snow, in 1983.

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.

004 — Vines, here in their early stages, are covered by snow.

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.

Atlanta2013099 — The state of the swing set, June 2013.

Atlanta2013102 — The crumpled slide, embraced by foliage.

053 — Way back when it was almost new: on the swing set at my grandparents’ place, 1967.

Family, Nature, Parenthood, Travel

The Sweet Smell of an Atlanta Summer

July 7, 2013 Wildtrumpetvine

Shortly after the end of school, we flew to Atlanta for our annual summer visit. Just as we did last year, we opted for MARTA to save my parents a drive to and from the airport, and to protect everyone from the stress provoked by that alarming ride. (See Fun with Ground Transportation, July 2012.) We waited only a few minutes at the Arts Center station before we saw Daddy rounding the corner from 16th Street in his red station wagon. My generally healthy father had frightened us this spring by catching a persistent bug that required two hospitalizations and prevented him and Mama from traveling to Virginia for our daughter’s school musical. We hadn’t seen my parents since early November, and I had been increasingly aware of their absence. I felt a real sense of delight as I saw Daddy driving up, waving, and I’m sure, whistling. He tends to whistle when he’s happy.

It was the second day of summer, and the temperature was pleasantly spring-like. Atlanta’s signature oppressive heat was blessedly absent. The city was in glorious, fragrant late June bloom. Our visit coincided with an occurrence I’ve been saddened to miss for a decade or so: the blooming of the gardenia bush outside my old bedroom window. In years past, we’ve arrived in early July, just after the heyday, when the blossoms are withered and brown. It’s like reaching the home of old friends, only to find that they left a day earlier for a year-long journey. I found it reassuring to behold those familiar, powerfully sweet-smelling blooms, snowy and velvety white. The idyllic scent of summer, and of long childhood days (without air conditioning) will always live for me in the smell of gardenias.

Atlanta2013128 — Gardenias, seen from the window of my old bedroom.

The gardenias were only one group of voices in the welcoming symphony of fragrance that greeted us as we stepped out of the car. A stand of privet, much enlarged over the years, and at the height of its bloom, bent its dense and shady canopy over the driveway. Tall hedges of abelia, buzzing with bees, hugged both sides of the house. Enormous blossoms of magnolia in the next-door neighbor’s yard could be glimpsed and enjoyed. Leaning over the fence was a mimosa tree, covered with fluffy pink flowers borrowed from a Dr. Seuss book. A few late-blooming clusters of purple wisteria still remained. To my recollection, Atlanta had never smelled better, or appeared more beautiful. It sure felt good to be back in my hometown.

All this week, back in Virginia after our return, the words of this melancholy John Prine song have been echoing in my mind. It may be a while before I can lay myself down again the arms of my darling hometown. I hope I’ll go there in my dreams.

Far away over the sea
there’s a river that’s calling to me.
That river she runs all around
the place that I call my hometown.

There’s a valley on the side of a hill
and flowers on an old window sill.
A familiar old picture, it seems,
and I go there tonight in my dreams.

Where it’s green in the summer
and gold in the fall
Her eyes are as blue,
as the sky, I recall.

Far away over the sea
there’s a place at the table for me.
Where laughter and music abound.
It’s waiting there in my hometown.

The river, she freezes
when there’s snow on the ground,
and the children can slide
to the far side of town.

Far away, far away me,
hung up on a sweet memory.
I’m lost and I wish I were found
in the arms of my darlin’ hometown.

With the evening sun settin’
on the top of the hill
and the mockingbird answering
the old chapel bell.

Far away over the sea
my heart is longing to be.
And I wish I could lay myself down
in the arms of my darlin’ hometown.

—My Darlin’ Hometown
by John Prine and Roger Oak

Family, Walking the Dog

The Thundershirt: What the Well-Dressed, Anxiety-Prone Dog is Wearing this Season

July 5, 2013 Wildtrumpetvine

It’s the tropical rainy season here in northern Virginia, as it is for much of the east coast. Pounding rain and crashing thunderstorms are daily interspersed with periods of intense sunshine, resulting in a muggy, jungle-like atmosphere. Kiko, of course is distressed. (See Evading the Terrible Thunder Monster, April 2013.) Our once cocky, fearless little dog has become as neurotic as the canine Woody Allen. Should a cloud cover the sun, however briefly, we’ll find Kiko hiding in a centrally located bathroom, cowering in a corner of the kitchen, or repeating a nervous circuit of the house. The Xanax prescribed by our vet just wasn’t doing the trick.

So, we tried the Thundershirt. And, I’m much relieved to say, it works. For tough situations, when combined with an increased dose of Xanax, it really works. Yesterday, July 4th, was just such a situation, easily one of the most miserable days of the year for Kiko. The celebratory fireworks of independence are, to our dog, simply another, perhaps even more evil, manifestation of thunder. When he heard neighborhood children ominously blowing horns and snapping a few poppers, his apprehension took root. By the time the first local firecracker had sounded, well before dark, he was clearly anticipating the world’s end.

I put him in his Thundershirt by late afternoon. It averted the shaking and quaking he usually experiences during his periods of anxiety. At 8:00, Kiko dutifully swallowed the Xanax (.5 mg) in a bit of cheese. My husband and daughter, both devoted connoisseurs of fireworks, collected their extensive stash of explosives and headed out to join the neighborhood conflagration.

I retreated to the den of safety I had prepared for me and my dog: our family room, with the blinds drawn and draperies pulled (to keep out any flashes of light). Kiko, bundled snugly in his Thundershirt, eagerly cuddled up with me on the sofa. I tucked several pillows around us for good measure, poured a glass of wine (a bit of helpful self-medication) turned up the ceiling fan, and tuned into the first episode of Boardwalk Empire, which I had been wanting to sample.

As the sounds of pounding, popping, whizzing, cracking and booming increased outside, Kiko breathed evenly and appeared to be very nearly content. H and D witnessed and participated in a varied and prodigious display of fireworks, I drank a toast to Prohibition and Steve Buscemi, and enjoyed the sweet closeness of the loving lap dog I often wish Kiko really were.

Happy 5th of July to everyone, especially to those who share their lives with anxious dogs!

Thundershirt 015 — Kiko, in his Thundershirt, yesterday afternoon. It’s obvious, by the position of his ears, that he’s already alarmed.

Thundershirt 005 — The Thundershirt wraps tightly, to mimic a close hug.

Community, Family, Friendship, Parenthood

(Middle) School’s Out Forever!

June 18, 2013 Wildtrumpetvine

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!

GuysDolls3001 — My daughter and a fellow actor as Mission Girls in the school musical, Guys & Dolls.

earrings005 — D made these “Lazt Day” earrings (no more s’s in the abc beads) in 6th grade. She has worn them once a year ever since.

Family, Parenthood

Daddy Again, on Father’s Day

June 16, 2013 Wildtrumpetvine

0163 — My father with his mother, in New Smyrna Beach, Florida, ca. 1950.

When my parents married in the fall of 1955, there were many among my mother’s friends who expected the union to be short-lived. My father simply didn’t look like the marrying kind. He was boyfriend, or perhaps movie star material, but not husband material, they said. He was not the kind to be faithful, they warned her. He would move on. He wasn’t the type to settle down. It seemed less than likely that fatherhood would be in his aspirations.

That was fifty-eight years ago. Mama and Daddy have stuck together through better and worse, richer and poorer, through sickness and health. They’re a team. I think it’s safe to say that the critics were dead wrong.

Had it been up to my mother, my parents might have postponed the whole childbearing thing indefinitely. After six years of marriage, the leanest days, when dinner might mean a shared can of ravioli, were behind them, but they were far from financially stable. No matter what, though, Daddy wanted a baby. He wanted a little girl. And when I arrived, he loved me to distraction. So much so, that, for a while, he avoided work. This made for a stretch of marital “worse,” one that was worked out in due course.

I find it hard to imagine a more devoted father or grandfather. There may be no one on earth who celebrates my triumphs, or suffers my heartaches, to the degree that my father does. He feels the same way about my daughter. Her joys are his joys, her trials are his trials. There is no battle he would not wage for us, should it be necessary. We know, without a doubt, that he stands resolutely, enthusiastically, steadfastly, in our corner. His unwavering love is a gift that adds immeasurable warmth and color to our lives. Happy Father’s Day, Daddy!

00142 — Daddy and me at my wedding, 1995.

Daddy with my daughter, Centennial Olympic Park, Atlanta, 2006.

(For more about my father and the other father figures in my life, see posts from October 2011 and June 2012.)

Family, Nature, Parenthood

Barred Owl Update

June 7, 2013 Wildtrumpetvine

Soon after the chicks first flew, the owls moved on, probably into the nearby woods. The next spring, they tried to return to nest in the same tree. We heard their cries, which by this time we had learned to translate as Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you? We caught sight of them in soundless flight.

They didn’t stay, much to our disappointment. My husband climbed a ladder to look into their former home, and saw that the shelf that had supported the nest had collapsed. He and D built an owl box together as a father-daughter project, in hopes that we could lure our feathered friends back again. In the photo immediately below, the box is visible in its first position on the tree. The owls evidently found it unsatisfactory. Maybe it wasn’t situated high enough, H thought. The following spring, he risked life and limb to attach the box much farther up in the tree, as shown in the second photo below. I remember my alarm when I returned from an errand one windy Saturday morning and saw him standing on a tall ladder by the tree, the owl box balanced precariously on one shoulder. Despite H’s grand gesture, the owls said No, thanks. They have not returned since, we are sad to say.

The immense old tree that sheltered our family of owls no longer stands. On a sunny Easter Sunday in 2011, we were eating dinner with my parents on the back porch when we heard a thunderous crash. We followed the sound to the front yard, where we discovered that half the tree had simply fallen to the ground. We knew it was nearing the end of its life span. Its hollowness was what had made it especially attractive to the owls. Still, it was painful to see so much of that massive tree splintered in pieces on the lawn.

On the tall remaining section, the never-used owl box was unscathed. Creaking sounds could be heard emanating from the tree. It couldn’t stand for long, and it was a danger, obviously. The next day, I watched with a heavy heart as the tree was slowly, painstakingly removed. It took a full crew and a huge bucket truck to reduce our dear big maple to a stump. The tree was ninety-one years old. Like the other five that once accompanied it, it had been planted in 1920, the year the house was built. I had recently spoken with one of the daughters whose parents had built the house. In her mid-nineties when we talked, she shared vivid memories of growing up in her family home. I told her how magnificent the maples were. She replied that she distinctly remembered the day she helped plant them, “from switches.”

Of the six original trees, only two remain. One day we will plant young trees in place of those we have lost. For now, though, the owls’ former home will be marked by a slowly deteriorating stump. Every tree company in northern Virginia, it seems, has stopped to give us a good price for stump grinding. We always say no. Unlike the owls, we find it hard to move on.

On the left, one of our two remaining silver maples. On the right, the stump of what will always be for us the owl tree.

Community, Family, Nature, Parenthood

Cicadas!

May 15, 2013 Wildtrumpetvine

They’re coming. Cicadas, in extraordinary numbers, will soon be waking from their seventeen-year naps. Really? It hasn’t been seventeen years since they last overwhelmed our area. I know this for certain. An intense cicada season is not forgotten. Our daughter was five, nearly a preschool graduate. Time does fly, but she’s only fourteen now, not twenty-two.

We hear it’s likely that the DC area will see more cicadas than usual this year. Various broods hatch every seventeen years, and this year’s Brood II is not the one that deluged us here in Northern Virginia in 2004. Fairfax County lies on the outer limit of this coming brood, so we may not feel the impact as strongly as places farther south. We’ve heard from my husband’s brother that the big, lumbering insects have indeed been spotted in their neighborhood in Richmond. Our daughter’s young cousins have never been party to a cicada invasion. I hope they enjoy it as much as she did.

D has always had a soft spot for oddball creatures. I admire her ability to find beauty where many cannot see it. She took an immediate liking to H’s pet box turtle, with us since we married, and before that, with H since he was a boy. Speedy (H was twelve when he named it) lives in a spacious glass box in our basement. He dines on raw ground beef, blueberries, and now, thanks to Kiko, canned dog food. Occasionally he gets the run of the basement or one of our larger bathrooms. D maintains that Speedy is terribly cute, although few would agree. As a toddler, she befriended the numerous toads that make their home each spring in our yard. She named them and discussed their differentiating traits of appearance and personality–how she could distinguish Squeaky, say, from Emily. As I’ve mentioned in an earlier post, she loves all the bizarre aquatic life of Cape Cod bay, including the spider crabs and the slimy moon snails. See Our Summer Village on the Cape, September 2013.

D’s five-year old self welcomed the cicadas enthusiastically. She picked them up, but gently, carefully. She enjoyed letting them amble along her arms, even on her face; she often had one perched on her nose. She loved their segmented, transparent wings, red bulbous eyes, stick-like legs, and coal-black armored bodies. I agree that each full-fledged cicada is a majestic specimen, and I find their uncertain, drunken flight very endearing. But I don’t care much for the nymph stage, in which they first appear after their long gestation period. They tend to tunnel out of the ground in unsettling droves around dusk, each cicada leaving a perfectly round, approximately half-inch hole in the earth. D didn’t even mind the look of these initial wingless, moist, pale beige creatures. Unattractive, I would call them. Or better yet, just plain icky. D wasn’t put off by the discarded exoskeletons that clung to tree branches, reminding me of some dreaded dermatological condition, or the pile-up that accumulated around the bases of our old maples. She wasn’t bothered by the noise, a sound like the roar of a hundred generators and power mowers. And she wasn’t even offended by the smell of pervasive decay, rather like the scent of rotting shrimp, that marks the winding down of cicada season.

It will be interesting to see the scope of this coming invasion and how it affects us this time. Will it be really be an onslaught? Will D, at fourteen, be as eager to mix it up with the cicadas as she was nine years ago? And what about Kiko? While he thrills at the hunt for the single buzzing cicada in the grass, this will be his first major brood year. Will he try to gorge himself on the insects, as some dogs do? Considering his finicky nature and dainty habits, this seems unlikely.

The Cicada Clock is ticking. Recent mornings here have been unusually chilly, but surely spring-like weather will arrive before long. Will the warming earth send these Rip Van Winkles of the insect world out just in time for H’s family’s Memorial Day visit? We were together, memorably, nine years ago for the holiday. As we watched D enjoy the kiddie rides at our local carnival, cicadas hitched rides on our clothing and in our hair. Occasionally a particularly clumsy new flyer would careen into one of our faces. Will this year’s start to summer bring with it another such noteworthy interspecies reunion?

Family, Holiday, Parenthood

For Mother’s Day

May 12, 2013 Wildtrumpetvine

Happy Mother’s Day to all the dear mothers out there. No matter what the attached modifier may be–whether young, old, grand, great-grand, or in-law–may you all be appreciated and honored by those you have nurtured, by those whose hearts you have touched, by those whose lives you have helped mold into meaningful shape. May women who mothered the children of others be included today as well, because their love and support may be equally powerful and equally cherished.

My mother, as a young woman. Because she’s smart, funny, warm and loving, she tends to be surrounded by young friends who wish she were their mother. I am glad to share her, but even more glad to be able to call her my own Mama.

Mama, in 2005, with my daughter, who made me a proud Mama, too.

A blog about motherhood, marriage and life: the joys and frustrations, beauty and absurdity, blessings and pain. It's about looking back, looking ahead, and walking the dog.