‘The Men’s Room’ Articles

From Russia, with Love

When I get back home, I am going to watch Dr.Zhivago again. It’s probably not going to be as spectacular as I remember it. All those snowy, longing moments in the love scenes and Omar Sharf’s eyes is what I remember. There couldn’t have been much explicit sex back then, more just implication, but I sure remember just how much I fell in love with the good Doctor. That might have been when my fancy for Russian men developed, or at least the persona, since Omar, is quite obviously, well, not Russian. My next Russian infatuation was Illya Kuriakan, The Man From UNCLE, well the second man from UNCLE, currently Duckie on NCIS, all mysterious and hunky, in a cold war sort of way. And as Russia was our enemy during my youngest years, one with whom we considered bomb shelter manufacture in our back yards, its curious the romantic notions I developed of this country, defined almost solely by the movies, certainly in total by the media.

And let’s face it the media, some of it, some rumors, have set us to wondering about Russia again.

Flying over Moscow in the early afternoon, I was surprised how small the city seemed. She looked nothing like sprawling Houston, never ending Los Angeles, or the over-filled and spilling out valley of Mexico City. Thousands of Cold War housing complexes, 10 stories or so high, white stoned smudged with grime, filled my field of view. No amazing and spectacular sky line filled with buildings out of the 21st century. No swinging, industrious cranes filling the city with new life in the form of high end business real estate. Maybe they were on the other side of the plane.

The one thing I did notice. The air was beautiful. No blanket of odd colored smog laying low upon the terrain. No moisture laden film holding in car exhaust and air borne industrial waste. Just clear blue sky, the kind I have seen in high northern latitudes. I have always thought there was something special about being this much closer to the pole as opposed to the equator.

As I stood in the airport arrival lobby, the universal taxi driver plea all around me, it took over an hour for me to spot my driver. A young man, he apologized in broken English that he could not speak English. “This is my car”, he said, as we piled in.

My sons always found in interesting to notice cars whenever we traveled, especially anywhere they spotted a fine Italian or German import. It does say something about the country. There were few high end cars here, a few Lexus, but mostly low end Fords and cars with grinding transmissions, scars from multiple accidents, and more than a bit of rust. Alexy and I both knew it was going to be a long and silent ride as we drove southeast the hundred kilometers to the meeting site. There was no use in trying to talk; the best was to make less of the uncomfortable silences of two strangers in close proximity not having any way of communicating was to look at each other and smile occasionally. However, my driver had anticipated something more. “Music?” he said.

With a little nod from me, he plugged in his USB and techno filled the car. I nodded yes when he asked me in Russian, “A little louder?” For the next hour, he drove and I sat companionably, sharing his music preferences and I looked at the Russian countryside. Very tall birches, just beginning to beg off summer green lined the roads. I saw the white industrial apartment buildings up close. Interspersed with them were small, clapboard houses, their roofs wavy from time, each with carved and elaborately decorated window sashes. Pretty. No matter the road, expressway or two lane, cars dotted the shoulder. Some had people in them some didn’t. Sometimes people were outside of their cars talking, sometimes they were accessing communal water pumps and as we drove father into the country some were stopping at impromptu vendors along the road. I would find out that September is prime mushroom season and locals were combing the woods lining the roads. Alexy availed himself of one of the vendors, who was had beautiful flowers and apples. Dashing out of the car with his billfold, I looked into the yard of one of those clapboard houses. The house was more than pretty with a flock of chickens were doing chicken business in the yard. Alexy came back with flowers.

Looking more like one of the sons at 17 then either Omar or Illya, he handed me a bouquet and smiled. Thank you I said. “In English we call these asters.” “ In Russian too!” he nodded and beamed. For the hundredth time in life I felt guilty for visiting a country that I had none, not any ability to converse even in politeness with my hosts. There is something to be said about the wisdom of universal botanical nomenclature.

Alexy and I waited in the lobby of the hotel that would be my home for the next four days until the local organizer could come. The hotel is strange. I have seen this before. Careful to ensure the masses are all equal, there arose a kind of architecture and facility in communist regimes that I can only describe as some sort of weak stab at institutional grandeur. I don’t know what the truly rich and powerful of said governments indulged in but there was some kind of attempt to provide the lower elite, whatever that might mean, some measure of extravagance and the evidence was in this hotel. I knew what the rooms would look like before I ever saw mine. The problem was these were built about the same time all those apartment complexes were. The lobby with its soaring ceilings probably hadn’t changed since the day it was built. Beautiful polished marble covered several walls, stained with leaky ceiling residue. Seventy odd years of maintenance to keep things running, modernization only a dream, or maybe never one; this is what happens when a nation declines.

The clientele fit the hotel. Except for me, they were all Russian, mostly older women, humming to themselves, locked arm in arm, occasionally accompanied by a man with a walker. A doorman manned the door. He looked uninterested when we entered.

I have to admit. I am not sure where I am. Until I meet others who are here for this meeting, I am alone in the lobby of a preCold war hotel, lost in time and with few people who understand the words I speak. I am left to think on my own.

I am not sure what I think of this country’s future but then I am not sure I know what to think of my own country’s future. Civilizations come and go and there must not be much way to stop the progression.

There is a certain peace here though, something I feel, that’s just short of hope but on the big side of just living today. I’m going to watch Dr. Zhivago, and perhaps, dream a little of years past and the beauty of a clear blue Russian sky, here in the fall of 2010.

Happy Monday. It’s not such a bad plan to live for today, even if you should find yourself a little lost, a little out of place, or if no one seems to understand you. Regardless of cultures, politics or plays for power, doing what you can today, whatever, wherever that is, is what counts.

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Fish Kill

The lake was an eerie green week before last.

All that cow poop, as those black Angus mommas stood in it 24/7 to try and stay cool in a south Texas heat has produced a vast amount of fertilizer.

Within two weeks of hot summer sun and more cow poop, we had a massive algae bloom.

We moved the cows to the back pasture, where a non-stocked pond could water them, but not fast enough.

We thought about aerating the lake artificially, but not soon enough.

As the algae covered the lake, sunlight couldn’t get in.

Bacteria sitting on the bottom of the lake couldn’t do their magic. The kind of magic where inside their one called selves, little tiny miraculous, molecular machines captured electrons from sunlight sending them zinging around with so much high energy that controlled splitting of water inside their tiny little selves made it possible for them to take the H out of the H20 and use it to.. well keep on doing what they like to do.

We like ‘em to keep doing what they do, because in all that zinging and splitting and taking out the H’s, they are busy pooping out O’s.

Life in the lake counts on this. It might be bacteria waste product, but to everything else, its life.

Once that algae bloom covered the pond and the hundreds of fish were sucking that O2 in through their gills with those bottom dwelling water splitters out of business, it was only a matter of time. This weekend the first of the fish we had bought as babies and lovingly fed and nurtured in time for fish fries, started dying.

It was heartbreaking.

Once the algae bloom died, things got worse.

The algae started sinking as they died and other little bacteria, hungry for dead algae bodies, started taking them apart.

Decomposing all those little algae parts sucked the last bit of oxygen out of the water.

Now, even though sunlight could get to the bottom of the pond where the little water splitters were, the lake was sucked so dry of oxygen that, even in working all day, obliviously pumping O2 back into the water column, the little water splitters couldn’t keep up.

Night time came, water splitting stopped. All through the night the fish sucked up what they could, eventually coming to the surface as a last resort, just before the sun came up over the rise. We saw them. Two pound catfish raking the meniscus between air and lake water, gasping. Their whiskers moved the surface scum around and we looked on, feeling like bad farm managers.

We didn’t do exactly right. Not with malice, mostly from ignorance with a big splash of apathy. Indeed, we weren’t good managers. Not because of the ignorance, but more because of the apathy.

Sometimes, the more things we do to make life easy, the less self sufficient we allow ourselves to become, the more we fail to realize that life can never be taken for granted and that apathy rarely gets you anywhere. It’s a bad frame of mind to get into.

It took a hundred farm raised pan fish floating upon the shores of our little lake to make the point.

It’s a good thing God gave us minds to learn from our mistakes and a natural world robust enough to forgive them. That and Bon apetite, vultures and crows.

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Little Seeds

Near Troy, Missouri and the junction of state roads V and W and JJ, there are a series of low rolling mountain ridges. These ridges stand only about a handful of miles from the mighty Mississippi and being high, they escape when that great river swells. Roads, paved and unpaved meander through and across their valleys and I guess the crazy road structure is typical of need. Need for access as various settlers did and do build isolated homes or pull double wides through the brambles to well, settle.

We had pulled past the old man’s garden several times. Not far off the dusty road, his trailer was old and it didn’t look to have much female attention and my plan was to ask about his garlic. He gives it away to his neighbors. We knew that because staying at a said neighbors house, we had tried it. The bulbs were full and firm, with strong white roots clinging to a little bit of his garden dirt and when we roasted them, they were divine. Yes, divine.

The last afternoon of our mountain visit, the sun just beginning to start it’s journey past the west horizon, driving past the old man’s place one more time, there he was, out in the heat, tending his garden.

“You still want some?” Jim asked. “I’m sure he will be happy to give you some.”

“Yes, but tell him we would like to buy it,” I said thinking its one thing for someone to offer the toils of your labor. It’s an entirely something else to ask for them.

Normally gregarious and usually lead in adventures like this, I asked Silent Bob to take my place with Jim. Judy and I watched from the dark windows, air conditioned air blowing max as we watched our two men approach the old man.

The old man was neither tall nor short. He was wiry and brown, like bacon left a little too long in the oven. He wore blue denim overalls and over the top of them he had a ragged workshirt. A thick leather belt circled his waist, sort of up high between his navel and nipples, on the outside of his shirt. Wet with sweat and unbuttoned, the shirt covered his arms to the wrists. His straw hat covered his eyes. He was a talker. We watched from inside the car, the mime of conversation and where my observation left me unsure of the dialogue, Silent Bob filled in later as we lay in bed.

Jim asked the old man if had any garlic he was willing to part with. Looking up from under the floppy straw hat, he looked Silent Bob over and decided he was okay, being with Neighbor Jim and all. Silent Bob offered money.

“No, but I have some I can give you. If I sell it, then it is work,” he said, his face friendly and welcoming.

His hoeing in the August sun revealed big red tomatoes, on the vines in the front, and a row of okra in the back. Several borderline “too big” and tough okra has been culled.

The old man leaned on his hoe, excited to have someone to talk to. Payment can come in all forms.

“I asked that old widow down the road if she wanted to pick that okra you’re looking at, but I guess she didn’t want to get hot out here.” the old man stated, his face registering the worth of fresh okra given freely.

I watched as Silent Bob and Neighbor Jim followed the old man to the back of the trailer. The old man limped, a strange giddyup in his walk, like one side of his bacon strip body had shrunk up more than the other side.

Once in the shed, there were five large bundles of fresh garlic hanging at a low eve, wrapped with red striped twine. “I knew your Mother would be happy with even a part of one of those bundles, Janet. They were really pretty,” Silent Bob said, revealing more than just words for my mother. “He told us about refusing another neighbor some of that garlic. Guess he’s more discriminating about who gets the toil from his labor.”

Laying their next to Silent Bob, I thought about that.

“That garlic wasn’t even 6 feet off the ground in that shed and either Jim or I could have reached the string easily, but that wasn’t how it was going to happen. That old man limped over to an old closed in shed, moved a 5 gallon bucket of oil and opened the doors. I wasn’t sure what he was doing. He moved a bunch of stuff, rolled out a lawn mower and then pulled out a rickety old ladder. Jim and I cleared a path under and around the garlic so he could set it up and precariously balance on the bottom rung.” He pulled a whole bundle, “Here, take this, this is a small bunch. You say you live in Texas?”

Reaching into a 5 gallon bucket of garlic seeds, he rummaged around until he found a Wal-Mart sack and filled it with seeds. “Plant these 3 inches apart, they say to space them 2 inches, but I prefer three. I plant them an inch and a half deep. They take a while to come up, keep them wet. Up here we plant them in September and start digging them in June. They take about 9 months. You dig them like potatoes, you know?”

Silent Bob watched and moved obstructions out of the way as the ladder was replaced in the shed and all the “stuff” was replaced where it belonged.

“My buddy and I got drafted in World War Two,” the old man started. “We just got out of high school, and we weren’t going to enlist, but if they drafted us we would go. I had a choice between Army, Navy or Marines, and I picked Navy. After boot camp I got assigned to school to be a Medic.” His voice steady he continued. “They were forming a new Marine Division and they needed Medics. So I was a Navy Medic with the Fleet Marines. We went to Guadalcanal towards the end and got sent into Guam. I got wounded pretty bad, they sent me back to Hawaii, and after a couple months there I got sent back to my unit in time to land on Iwo Jima. We had 45 Medics in our Battalion, only 13 of us when it was over. I got a few scratches, once a piece of shrapnel as big as a sawblade hit me in the shoulder. I was pretty lucky, it hit flat. When I go to the doctor’s now they were looking all over for cancer. They always tell me that area looks dirty.”

“I wanted to thank him for his service, Janet,” Silent Bob said, a soft silence envelops us and he continues.

“I guess some is still in there. I am glad I went into the Navy, I would never have seen a lot of things I got to see,” the old man said.

“I know from my history, the places he was when he was there were not places where you saw many things that were pleasant,” Silent Bob tells me, into the dark.

“What kind of car is that?” the old man asked, whether for curiosity or just for continued company. “Our wives are in there,” I said and told him the story of how I got it from my brother. “You know when I got back from the war I worked in a body shop, I retired managing a shop in 83.”

A shuffling of feet and a silent agreement between the three men that the price for hand grown garlic was set, and the mechanic-ing story left for another time and after just one more round of thank yous, and repeated instruction, Silent Bob and Neighbor Jim headed for the car. They called over their shoulder, “It is awful hot, maybe you should take a break.”

“Going to do that right now,” as he lowered his bacon self into a seat, shrapnel and dirty cells all.

I laid in my bed that night and thanked God for hands and hearts such as that old mans. And for the right payment for garlic brought to Texas. And for small seeds of garlic or freedom or good intentions sewn wherever they fall.

And for you my Josh, as you wing your way to Iraq, with your soldier’s heart and hands.

God Speed to you and all your comrades in arms.

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Remember What Your Daddy Said

As I think I have told you, I am the oldest child. I was also the girl child that my dad hoped would be a boy child. I take no offense at that knowledge, because as most parents do, Dad accepted my gender easily enough, principally because he fell in love with me, because I was foremost and forever, his child. And there upon, he just as quickly determined to raise me as if being a girl child wasn’t as important as being an educated child. To him, educated carried wide ranging considerations because even if he and me and we were lower middle class, working class, the ticket to… well wherever I was destined, was education.

There was music. I probably could have asked for any instrument and he would have done what he could to give it to me. Too bad I didn’t practice any of them the way I should have. I had some talent, but no initiative.

There were lessons on the mechanics of anything he had on his workbench or under our carport or on the back of his boat and despite my best intentions to not ever change a sparkplug or a tire or anything in between, I have done a few of those and somewhat more.

There were fishing lessons and hunting lessons and while I can’t say I ever enjoyed holding a bow in my hand or a shotgun against my shoulder, I can for sure say I am glad he put them both within in my reach and taught me the responsibility their kind of power carries.

There were chess games of which having nervously memorized the possible movements of the pieces of black and white, I spent more time analyzing the quite small but perceptible emotions that spread across by dad’s face as I never did much more than suck at the game. He had hoped for better. If I had not been so terrified of making a mistake, the competition might have been more to his liking. Or not. My dad was a good.

Then were the lessons on boys and sex and honesty and faith and Dad, rarely leaving those particular topics to single sessions, reiterated that it was okay to doubt, boys had one thing on their minds, and that no matter what mistakes I made, I would always be his daughter.

I have often wondered who I would be if Dad had not constantly complained that I not follow along like a sheep. Did he see something in me that called him to reiterate to stand up for what was right and not go along just to be accepted? One thing for certain, he longed for me to be discerning; in what I thought, in how I behaved, and in what I read.

For the longest time, I have carried those lessons and lectures and dreams in the background of my heart, in the common places of my mind where distant reminders take up familiar space. I brought them out, bound in the wrappings of a mother, course corrected for more knowledge and insight of the female gender for three sons all swaddled in hope for their lives. Tonight, some part of me wishes I was young again, contemplating the singular singlemindedness of young men. I wish I was young again, with life and all that it had in store before me. I wish I was young again, because for the first time in a very long time, I would love to hear my Dad’s voice, tell me to stay strong, be smart, and don’t believe everything you read.

Because even when most of life is behind you, it’s still as important to know that it’s okay to doubt, it’s important to stand up for what is right, and no matter what, someone in Heaven loves you. And it’s especially good to hear your Dad tell you so.

PS. Dear God, I would like to beat, I mean annihilate, my dad in chess when I get to heaven. I love you. Janet

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Of Patio and Popsicles.

“Want to come up and help me build that patio?” Captain Josh said.

Being the mother of adult sons, I long to hear these kinds of requests. They hearken to my fledgling independent life as a young married woman when I went back home. My Dad always made sure we had some kind of ‘project’ to accomplish. Once you leave home and start your own, memories and connections take on a different context. In my life, I fondly remember those first, hopeful, learning adult experiences. I say learning because it surprises me even now, how many things I learned from just ‘doing’ things on those project visits with my parents.

“We can use Jake’s F450 to get the materials,” Josh planned over the phone. “I called John, he can help too.” This is real good to my mind, because although I am enthusiastic, Fort Hood at the first of August for patio building means 105 degree heat. Another, especially strong set of young arms and back strikes me as a doable plan.

Decomposed granite and flagstone weighing down Jake’s truck, Grace, at a tad over 2 tons, parked in Captain Josh’s driveway, I figured the best help I could be was to begin the carting of bed material to the outlined perimeter. Gloves on, wheelbarrow in hand, I carted, as the men in the group poured over Captain Josh’s do it yourself patio book.

We were all in agreement. The patio needed to be level. Conceptually designed as a square, it was somewhat more than necessary for the patio to be, well, square. These are more serious conclusions than one might imagine. Have you ever tried to level something? Have you ever tried to make a patio perfectly square? In some weird way of strings and pipes and a yard long level, the bare-chested members, mostly led by Captain Josh, accomplished those two requirements and over the next 36 hours the back of Josh’s home was graced with a quite pretty, square and level patio.

I am certain that each of the patio building participants carried away with them memories that they will rethink some years hence. Part of it is bound to be involved in just plain expertise in building future patios. One of us, the momma, even now sits and savors a couple of fine family moments.

In the middle of building, in the unbearable heat, Captain Josh, with the best twinkle in his blue eyes, announced: “Popsicle time”, and in his hands he carried those little plastic tubes of sugared and flavored water that I had to have provided for he and his brothers over two decades ago. Sitting in the shaded heat, I sipped on mine. How singularly good, I thought to myself. “This is refreshing, Josh,” I said out loud.

“That’s because they are made with love,” he said simply, with love all in his eyes.

I think a momma is in a good place, when her adult sons teach hew new things, covering the range of making patios and sharing popsicles.

You know what I am hoping for you, whatever your age…

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Christmas in July.. or Colorado fall at least.

It’s about this time of year I start wondering if I am going to Elk camp again. Understand, I am not supposed to go. Women aren’t invited. But since it’s the place of Jake’s homegoing and life has taken the uncles and friends to different starting points towards that Colorado mecca since Jake went to Heaven, their carpools aren’t what they used to be. It has been my choice to drive with my Silent Bob the last couple of years, to avoid him taking that long drive by himself, just about the time the aspens start turning in the Rocky mountains.

Now co-driving to Elk Camp shouldn’t necessarily involve me staying in Elk Camp, but the fact that I always convince myself I can find some one-way ticket back once I get there, or I underestimate how long it will take me to get to the last flight out, I have managed to wrangle, mostly unintentionally, an invite to camp until I can find my way home.

For some reason, on these hot days of Houston summer, I am remembering those trips, those stays, with a special kind of longing.

I guess it’s in part because my soul feels something when I kneel at that makeshift memorial, beneath the dying tree there on that mountain, the place where I have talked out loud to God, when the guys were out scouting.

I guess it’s because last year, wearing Jake’s old boots, I tramped around camp, with the snow lightly falling, flakes covering everything with a soft blanket including the toes of his boots, and as if the moisture laden air itself cocooned our camp, my heart too, blanketed by memory and emotion, had time to rest in the mountain air as nature, herself prepared for her own cold repose.

I guess it’s because my Josh, my youngest soldier son, will be going back to Iraq soon, a trip that forces familiar patterns of worry and pride and mother-missing-child, and long distance birthdays of Christ’s and sons.

Strange, really, the thoughts of this odd old woman who, having breathed the clean crisp air of snowy, Colorado autumns, amongst the ribald laughter of hunters and husband, finds remembered solace there.

There are places in our experience where the feelings of sadness run so deep that they make a sanctuary, a place where upon revisiting them, the perfectly distilled moments that brought us to our knees are balanced by the recognition that one day, some day, we have the promise of everlasting reunions and all tears wiped away.

It’s Christmas in July, this July, a Colorado Fall in the summer heat, because I have spent borrowed time in the cold and snow up on Electric Mountain.

I just may find an excuse to go there again this year, presumptuous of welcome, an interloper, in a place where I feel comfortable and sheltered by God, by snowy mountain air, and a group of men who do their best to pretend I am not a burden and in doing so, shelter me with an odd affection.

Did I mention they always dry out my (well Jake’s) boots for me? They do.

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Make Hay While the Sun Still Shines

I have inordinately happy about this past couple of weeks at the farm. It’s because we have been baling hay.

Let me explain.

When we first bought the farm, the pastures looked like this:

Not knowing much about anything we went to school. Cowboy school. At A&M. Anybody can go really, as long as you pay the money, and you can go to classes that talk a lot about hay and how to make sure it’s high quality, which turns out to be largely about fertilizer and soil tests and pH. And rain. Don’t forget the rain, which is of course, obviously going to be overwhelming problematic because you might be able to control the other variables I mentioned, but rain doesn’t fall into that category.

Sooo.. we had our soil tested and bought a tractor. I love this tractor. I am amazing in this tractor. I am strong in this tractor.

(Sorry, I get a little carried away about our John Deere.)

Turns out that not only did we have to apply 3 tons of fertilizer to our pastures (a special blend) but we also had to lime, another 3 tons. So our tractor pulled and spread all last fall and then again this spring. In the full knowledge that all last summer it failed to rain. And while we had hoped we have hay for our cows for the winter, we didn’t. Not only we didn’t, but very few others did and come last winter, we were buying the most expensive round bales of hay, every 4 days. I began to resent cow poop because it seemed to me like they could be more efficient in their digestive efforts.

So it was this spring and summer that we looked on our pastures with hope that this year wouldn’t see a drought like last. And that not only would we have hay for summer with new little calves and pregnant mommas, but that also, there would be plenty for the winter.

I love these round bales that you see below. They are ready when the trees lose their leaves and our black hided mammas are nursing their babies. Who would have thought dried grass could look so…promising.

(Okay, so I am a little bit rusty on time lapse video.. but give me time..)

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Hymie, the Tree and Muscle Man

We’ve got a lot of pine trees on the farm. Very old ones. I’ve talked about them before. The barn and ‘D’ house all sit amongst them. They tower into the sky more than 60 feet and when the wind blows up from the south, which it does a lot for some reason, they bend and sway a remarkable amount. Song birds and woodpeckers and big ole crows gad about the top most branches.

I like them.

But in the way of nature, things live and things die and one of our big old pine trees succumbed this spring. I could swear it had been green this time last year, but about May massive amounts of bark and limbs began to fall earthward and it was clear that the least of the big old pine’s problems was a massive infestation of pine bark beetles.

Nestled as it was behind the barn, every weekend I have been terrified to come to the farm and see the thing laying across our barn, or across the chicken and turkey coop (I could imagine feathers still flying as the it hit), or worse yet, laying across something of one of our neighbors. (Yeah, when I say this thing is nestled I mean nestled.)

I called Hymie.

He showed up, two helpers in tow, with a pickup full of azure ropes and chainsaws, took one look at the pine and said, “This thing didn’t just die.”

“Will you be able to do it”, I said. “Of course,” he answered and he strapped on his climbers, got his safety harness in place, and in the heat of a Texas July sun, he started climbing.

We had talked about the electric wire and my fruit trees and the muscadine vines I have been nurturing since January. I told him it was more important to me to have the tree down. He smiled.

Half way up the tree, he got a cell phone call, and with chainsaw in idle behind his butt on a carbiner, I heard him answer his phone and then laugh.

“She is an ole pine, si, it is good. Adios”

Meanwhile, I was praying, something between let him be safe and thank you God that you didn’t give me this job.

Higher he went. When he got to the fork, with about 20 feet from the top, with one hand he unlatched his chainsaw and swung in rhythm to begin his cut. The strong blue rope tied to the top, his helpers tugged towards the row of my garden where the tomatoes had been. He moved them a bit with the wave his hand, just to the left of my still producing peppers and down came her crown of dried and brittle branches.

He waved from the flat topped pine, her cones all gone and spread around my garden soil.

The second section on the ground, he tied his blue rope around the top of pine pole, and walking gingerly down, his spikes with little purchase on the slick, barkless tree, he called to his men. He cut the wedge out of the side, and coming around began the cut that would meet and topple the last of her. With a thunderous shake, she fell, nestled right up to my row of okra.

“You want some water and ice?” I said.

We all sat around the little picnic table, shaded by the other pines as old as that one he had just cut, drinking fresh, cool water. The dangerous job successfully over and in the sharing, made us friends of a sort.

“I do human bones and muscles, too,” said Hymie.

Huh, I thought.

“Let me show you.”

Coming around with one brown hand, dusty from pine chips, he pushed hard at the base of my neck where it meets my shoulder.

His eyes twinkled. “Feels good, huh? Doesn’t hurt anymore.” He said without question.

“Here’s my card. If you have any more trees. Or I can fix your bones or muscles. Yours too Bob”, said Hymie.

You never know what kind of multitalents are hidden in Hempstead but tonight, my shoulder, as I lay down, despite the work of carrying that gargantuan down to her resting and rotting place behinds the dam, my shoulder relaxes into my pillow, my sinews and muscles, soothed. And my brow a little less worried that when the wind blows at my old farm, the strong pines left, will bend and not bow nor break, at least for now.

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Who Silent Bob Is

Silent Bob, my beloved, is a very smart man. There isn’t a sport that you can talk about that he doesn’t know the stats, in detail. His mother tells the story that this was the case when he was only three. He had and does have a photographic memory. If you’ve never known one of those, it’s kind of a scary talent, almost unnatural.

I cottoned on to his intelligence first time I met him because, well, yeah, I think smart is sexy. The other thing about Silent Bob is that he doesn’t really care who knows he’s smart. That and he’s pretty comfortable in his own company.  However, as I would come to find out, this translates into him not being particularly chatty. Oh, he will be sociable, and in fact you’d be charmed by his dry wit at a party, but push come to shove, he’s nicely happy being Silent Bob.

Some would say that he married me because if he is Silent Bob, I am not. I might own up to a bit of that;  it’s my observation that dull moments due to lack of stimulating, if not downright invigorating conversation are hardly a concern when I’m around. But to be honest, there have been a few rocky spots in our romance because of Bob’s lack of conversational desire and although I might could have been a bit less recalcitrant to his way of life earlier, we have largely come to terms. It wasn’t easy. I had to suffer comments like “What do you want me to say, I think you have covered everything.”

As it turns out, one of the things that binds us, despite who is or isn’t talking, is his sense of humor. Early in our marriage he insisted I didn’t have one of these. I was very mad about this for several years and then I guess I really didn’t have one and I finally got one and now when I look back, I think that more than anything Silent Bob’s best conversations have been when we were laughing.

Take the other day. Something has really been bothering Silent Bob. I know this because he has let a very few, sparsely worded, pointed comments slip out.

“I think I have invented something.” Silent Bob says, while I am watching Wimbledon.

“Uh huh.” I say, completely tuned into what he is telling me.

“Pants, with the top half underwear sewn to the jean waist band that starts at butt cheek level.” Silent Bob describes.

“That’s good. You can probably make some money on those.”

Silence.

“So you like the idea, huh?” Silent Bob reiterates.

“Yeah, I love it.”

Silence.

“I am going to Walmart, how do I look?” Silent Bob asks and something about the previous conversation and my lack of attention keys me in on I might ought to be playing better attention.

“I think you might get arrested for indecent exposure.” I say while laughing so hard I am afraid I might pee my pants. Bob knows this. It contributes greatly to his happy smile.

Saggin – unexplainable, Developing a sense of humor -  worth it, Silent Bob Saggin it – priceless.

Silent Bob may not talk a lot but the man does know how to get his point across.

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Who I Am, Part 2

Maybe it’s because I drive so much, but lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about cars. The one I am currently driving has become something I never intended. Among the things it does, like carry rocks and fertilizer, fresh tomatoes, and the occasional bag of fat head minnows, it is also the only vehicle I have that will allow me to transport my dogs back and forth to the farm. Two labs, one mutt, and a goat or two thrown in and maybe you have some idea about what the back hold of my Honda CRV looks like.

Here’s the thing. I love dogs. And while I love dogs and have the softest part of my heart for those furry companions, I don’t do dog kisses but most of all I don’t do dog hair. Or at least I used to never do dog hair, until I started transporting them back and forth to the farm.  (I may not do dog hair, but I do dog contentment and let me tell you, those hounds of mine love the freedom of farm life. I have no choice but to indulge them.)

Since, I don’t trend towards not shedding dogs, which I personally believe is a perpetuated myth by dog owners who just want to believe their dog doesn’t shed, there is an additional problem that seems to trend in every male dog I have ever owned. They stink.

Stink might be undervaluing the actual reality.

So if you’re one of those people that believes a car says something about the person who drives it, I am so not happy about what you’re going to think mine says about me. You’re not going to get into my car and think:  ‘this woman is a responsible, caring dog owner.” You’re going to get into my car and think, “uh oh… oh my gosh, this car smells awful. And there is dog hair all over the back.”  Some of  you will say this out loud.  Some of you have.

Some of you might take pity on my situation and try to provide some intervention. Some of you have.

One of you might go to Bed, Bath and Beyond and buy me one of these to stick under my car seat.

Thanks Becky.

Or one of you might advise me to keep a bottle of this in the door panel so that should the dogs be wet in addition to stinky when I put them in my car, I can perform immediate remediation procedures.

Thanks John.

Given that I have been open to all dog remediation efforts offered to me, I am feeling somewhat confident that although you might ride in my car, you’ll look past temporal appearances and won’t consider that my car and me are one.

But just in case, I am asking for your help, those of you who are willing go out on a limb and promise me that should I ever get to a certain point, you will be my reality check.

The other day, happening to park to another car, with tell tale wet nose slobber smudges all over three quarters of her windows, a middle aged woman bounced out of her car, her medium sized, hairy canine companion in tow. There she was, obliviously happy, ahead of me, totally ignorant that her butt, covered in yoga pants, was also completely covered in dog hair from sitting in her car.

Seriously.  Don’t let me go there.

Or here….

Promise me.

I am NOT that woman. I just know I am not.

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