I've been struck with either bad allergies or some evil head cold -- probably allergies, from the amount of pollen on my car this morning -- just as spring break ends, and am too miserable to do anything today, even write. I took the kid to the park and could not even read. My eyes itch. My head hurts. My ears hurt. And some -- *idiot* -- about three hundred yards across the park had gotten out of her giant black Lexus SUV and left its door open and the keys in the ignition and was chatting to her buddy and all the while DING DING DING DING DING DING FUCKING DING her little key reminder alarm is going off, for, I swear, fifteen minutes, what is it with these people, have they no decency? Are they not human? and if I had felt one inch better I would have risen up and smote her.
And then someone started smoking a cigar over by the sandbox, so that was it, we packed it in.
But as we drove across the valley, back toward our end of town, I did have a revelation -- all of Pork Smith is blooming, and the hills are full of redbud and dogwood and some sort of bright yellow blooming tree I don't know but I bet the Other Liberal Professor does, not to mention daffodils* and the new grass is everywhere, bright green. "Ah," sez I. "Look at that."
"What?" said the kid.
"It's like a giant Easter basket, in't it?" I said. "That's why they do it up in all those colors."
"Oh," the kid says. "Yeah."
Well, if she had grown up in Metairie she would not be so blase I bet.
* mr. delagar didn't know they were daffodils, btw. "What are those little yellow flowers there?" he asked, because they are blooming everywhere this year, with all the rain -- they hadn't, the past few years, b/c of the drought, or not like this. I glanced at him a few times, sure he was playing me, but he was serious. "The daffodils?" I said. "Those? Those are daffodils," I said. "Like in the poem? You know. And then my heart with pleasure fills/ and dances with the daffodils?"
"Oh!" the kid cried in delight from the back seat. "That's in my poem book! I love that one!"
1 hour ago
1 comment:
The yellow bushes would be the forsythia.
You know, we've spent this whole week getting my mother-in-law home from the hospital and signed up with hospice. I've cried more in the last week than I have in years.
And then we drove into town today, and all the dogwoods were blooming, and the azaleas in our yard are starting to bud, and it was overwhelming to be greeted with such evidence of how life does truly go on, and sometimes, in really wonderful ways.
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