SISTER WISDOM

05 April – 5pm - Walking through our little trail and then I cut up to High Woods Avenue or whatever it’s called. Everything is budding out, and I am having a love affair with moss. I look for small perfect places. It is the bits and pieces of nature that intrigue me.

A perfect day for walking, sunny and warm but pleasant. Birds and frogs and dogs are all making their own conversation and I hear the cut-off voices of people as I stride past houses where they are outside, weeding beds, unloading cars, directing children, taking trash to the curb. Kids riding scooters and trikes stop and look at me. I hear one of them say I’ve never seen her before as they resume their driveway circles.

I look at the ditch, at the trees, at the road, at the sky, try not to look at the man jogging this way. Joggers never look like they’re having a good time. This guy is sweat-covered, his fake-tanned skin shiny and wet, huffing and looking like death is imminent. My stepmom’s first husband died of the heart attack he had while out jogging. There are no guarantees. I give the quick nod and keep walking.

Lawnmowers are rumbling around everywhere, because it’s that time of evening when all the men come home from the jobs they do for someone else and need to assert their reign over the home kingdom. Or else the grass is just too high. Some of the dandelions survived here by the road, the low-growing smart ones.

Our field at home is dotted with bright yellow dandelions, flagrant on the deep green grass, oblivious to their inevitable doom. Large mown fields wherein no plants grow, no animals graze… one of the frivolities of American suburbia. Strange how we clear the land, strip it down, to plant the grass so we can cut it down all summer long.

I love a picnic in a nice green field… but many never get even that much use. Here’s one field that is obviously well-used: grill, picnic tables, fire pit, worn path to the house on the hill. There’s another without any signs at all, but a perfect picnic spot at the edge, that little grove of five trees.

Nature is not perfect. Nature makes mistakes, but she finds a way to use them. There is no waste.

My legs are rubbery and my feet are slapping down the hill. I haven’t used these muscles in this way in a while. All of it is refreshing, even the ache I feel beginning in my hips. It means that I am alive.

I plunge back into the woods and stand, disoriented for a second. Where is the trail? Ah, there, down the hill a few feet. The worn leaves on the path give no crunch of resistance. The tree branches stretch to hold the sky up over my head. There are tiny pale green leaflets on the dogwoods. The deep purple-pink of the redbuds is definite, alive against a brown background of tree trunks and last year’s leaves.

I cross the field toward the house, that lavishly mown field that curves down to our driveway, our door, and let myself in.

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Linked up with Steady Mom’s 30-Minute Blogging Challenge… though I actually have no idea how long it took me to write this… It was written in my head as I walked, jotted onto a notebook page this morning, typed and posted…