Assortment

A Welcome Surprise

Hello there, friends! Goodness, that was a bit of an unexpected blogging break! If you’d come here in the past couple days looking for the usual Monday fare, you may have been surprised to find no blog at all (unexpected and scary, to say the least)! Thank you to those of you who emailed or messaged me, letting me know of the problem or asking me what was up. My blogging host platform, Typepad, experienced a DDoS attack, which adversely affected many blogs for a couple of days (something, which, thankfully has never happened before). I’m thankful that their team worked tirelessly to fix the problems, and that you and I are back here together in one of my favorite places on the internet.

And now, let’s just fall in step with the post that’s been waiting in the wings …

I passed the open shed door on a sunny afternoon, and there he was, that boy sitting on that high stool at the workbench, sawing, sawing, sawing on an old scrap of wood. Blonde sawdust slowly sifted to the floor as one end was cut off, and then the other, so he’d be left with the nice part in the middle.

Leaving the notion of paper, markers, scissors and glue behind, he’d gone in search of a medium more fitting to a boy, and to a man. 

The saw stopped for just a second as he looked over his shoulder at me and said he was working on a present.

For Dad.

 

It was a special welcome home, he said, for our aviator, who’d been away for all those days, and who was coming home very, very soon.

There was just time enough to fashion a welcome that would say so much more than simple words pencil-scrawled on plain old paper.

 

 

 

He cut, he sanded, and later at the dining table, he carved with the knives that his daddy used when he was a boy. He slicked it with varnished and let it dry.

Then, he waited with giddy anticipation, as the last few days dropped away one by one.

And on that day when his daddy walked through the door,  the boy was standing tall with playful eyes,  a full-on grin, and a welcome home wrap-hidden behind his back.

 

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On a Moonlit Night

We’d been trying for months. Trying for that moonlit stroll. Watching the calendar, the moon phase, the weather. Oh, the weather! A clear sky is what we needed, what we had to wait for, for one month, and then another. Then, finally, on Monday night, there they were together at last – a clear sky, with a whisper-thin layer of puffed clouds, lit up by a full-round and glowing moon. We bundled up, two boys and I, and went out to greet them.

The path to the river was dark but for the silver light that floated from the sky and slipped between the naked branches above to the damp ground below. The trees and bushes on either side loomed ominously in their dark cloaks; the trail was strewn with rotten snow. The boys’ nerves were pricked and tingly as they cast their eyes from side to side, ears listening intently, even suspiciously, to the sounds of the night. They’d never experienced this before.

One cautious step and then another lead us toward the darkest part of the trail, toward the boardwalk and lumpy wooden bridge that crossed over a murky-green swamp. Nervous. Very, very nervous. Mama’s reassuring words shriveled into the farthest corner of their minds as every scary thought that they’d ever had suddenly boomed to the forefront. They weren’t sure this was a good idea.

But, we might see owls, guys!

With their shreds of courage somewhat gathered, we drew nearer the bridge and the swamp and the dark overhang of tangled branches. Carefully, slowly; their breath seeming to catch in their throats, somehow.

Another step.

Then, suddenly, into the deep silence of that moonlit night, a colossal crash of thunderous noise exploded right before us with a great thrashing of wings and feathers and terrified squawking as sleeping ducks, suddenly awake, careened off that quiet murky swamp toward open safety in that blackened sky. Boy screams answered, and terrified hollers and shrieks echoed back and forth. Legs went to jelly and adrenaline shot out their fingertips. Hearts wildly pounded larger than their chests.

Back to the nearest open space. Back to where the moonlight made it seem like day. Back to settle a bit, to calm. We could just stay right here. We didn’t have to go any further down that path if they didn’t want. This could be our slice of night. We could look here, just spin around slowly, and see how the light gave everything it landed on a silver lining. We could watch Nellie run around with sheer delight at this moonlit spree.  We could pause, listen. We could capture the moon and the trees and the clouds like that. And, look, there is a house with lights on in the windows, there just beyond the fence. And look, up at those trees silhouetted against the cotton night sky.

Maybe there really is an owl up there.

 

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On A Sunday Afternoon

 

 

For that time on a Sunday afternoon when your boy looks out that window toward the shelter belt of trees that splits the pasture in two, and he sees a huge hawk of a bird, perched way up there in that tall treetop that’s all naked limbs poking the sky, and he wonders what kind it is.

Grab the binoculars from the shelf, dust off the lenses, slowly turn the eyepieces until the bird is sharp and clear, and have a good, long look. It sits still for the longest stretch, then ruffles and shakes its wings once, as if it’s shaking out its cloak, then settles back down. The boy reports all this while peering through the lens that makes it so much closer.

We watch. He watches, through that window, while standing on the bench, looking, looking. And I watch him. Watch how he’s so enraptured like that by that giant hawk out there.

I thumb the pages of birds of prey, with their aquiline beaks and piercing eyes; he reports on the colors of the head, the tail, the chest. I thumb back and forth. He pulls the binoculars down, and checks the book, then raises them again, looking to see.

We decide it must be either a red-tailed hawk or a Swainson’s hawk, we’re not exactly sure.

But we are sure, as it finally takes wing and soars over the top of our house, that this was an extraordinary moment on a Sunday afternoon.

 

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