Strange Days in the Hyacinth House

One of my earliest memories is of me standing alone at the end of the driveway with a snake slithering between my feet. I stood frozen and screaming. I remember my Mom running with her arms outstretched to pick me up. I love to garden however my fear of wild things is always a concern. I do love hyacinths and roses more than the fear so they are in my front garden. It is landscaped and easy to care for. My backyard is half landscaped and that section is well tended. Each summer I plant scarlet begonias, verbena and whatever else strikes my fancy at the garden center. The other half of the yard is filled with trees, weeds, wild strawberries and flowers, poison ivy, peace frogs and wild things. In the back I know not to touch the earth. Along one side of my property from front to back and continuing into gardens unknown is an ancient stone row. Stone rows are notorious for harboring snakes, chipmunks and mice. Each Spring I find myself waiting for the sun. I then spend days weeding, mulching, planting and pruning. Twice in the past, my tranquil gardening frenzy ended abruptly with a solid key of E shriek and my runnin’ blue when a snake that silently entered unannounced, lifted it's head and scared the stuffing out of me. Gardening was then over for the season.

Around the deck in the backgarden are Bose speakers that can probably entertain my whole block if desired. Last week before going out to garden I noticed a bootleg Doors CD in my son’s room and thought it would be great to get my gardening Mojo going. Turned up loud enough for me to hear throughout the yard, the cd began with Hello, I Love You into Light My Fire into People Are Strange which is when I began my work on the well. It becomes a muck pond from the leftover winter snow, spring rain, leaves and acorns. I was knee deep in the big muddy, climbing on rocks in a position I can only be in because of years of practicing Yoga. My hands, covered in bright yellow gloves were filled with leaves, when a little wild thing, possibly a lizard, jumped out of my hand. The surprise of the jumpy thing in my hand jarred me out of earth mother mode and brought my attention to the music that had changed to the Live version of Roadhouse Blues. This version I had never heard before. It included an additional Morrison rant and by now he was screaming the F word, moaning and asking for participation from some girl in the audience. I became aware in a flash that my neighbors’ twins were now outside on the swing set with their Grandma watching them. I adore the Doors but right then was not feeling the love, and was trying to get off the rock pile surrounding the well without slipping in, as fast as I could. I made it inside to lower the music just as Morrison was ……finishing. I fumbled for a different cd and put on Cold Roses, thinking Ryan Adams would be more apropos. Anyway, I finished cleaning up the well and just in time. Today my husband found a snake coiled up in the very clean dry shallow well. He took a rake and moved him far across the yard to the stone row. I’m not sure I find comfort in that but I’m sure I won’t be gardening anytime soon. I have to wonder if the Crawlin King Snake King himself wasn’t looking down on me and having a good laugh. Maybe by Indian Summer I’ll look for my gardening gloves again….and I'll experiment to see what happens if I listen to Monsters of Folk.

Little Tiny and the Great Spirit

Recently a friend asked me, through email, if I had a dream job what would it be? My response was, ‘don’t make me WRITE it.’ I’m not sure if it was understood but my answer of course was, ‘writer’. A simple but complex six-letter word. After all, I can dream can’t I?

Later that night I was in front of my mirror when I remembered that question. I’d never been asked that before and I was simply thinking how it was kind and thoughtful to be asked. My sometimes-dangerous mind became dangerous and automatically answered without thinking, screening or filtering from me, ‘mother’. Another simple but complex six-letter word that knocked me off balance. I laughed silently knowing the answer was from my heart this time, not my mind. I felt awkward about having a realization that at once created happiness and resignation regarding my own dream.

A few feet away from where I was in front of the mirror, in a box in my closet, is an old Thumbelina doll. She arrived brand new one Christmas morning, a gift from Santa. She was my favorite doll ever. Once I held her I never put her down. I would watch TV, play and jump on the bed with that doll wiggling on my left shoulder. I broke the original dial that made her move like a baby, from overuse and was devastated. My Mom, in her infinite wisdom, sent her to a doll hospital to be repaired. I vividly remember the moment in the kitchen when my Dad opened the box the hospital had addressed to me, with my repaired Thumbelina. They had changed the dial to a pull chord however I knew she was mine. By then she and I had the same wild looking hair. I knew my baby when I saw her.

I didn’t know though that she may have helped create me……I thought I could play piano, I thought I could be a music therapist, I thought I would teach preschool music, I thought I could be blah, blah, blah. God and Thumbelina thought I would be a mother. Who could undermine such a power couple?

“I am what I am and I’ve yet to figure out what I can be”