TheBanyanTree: the sublime outdoors

[Julie Anna Teague]

It was a cool, rainy day all day yesterday, but as the sun started to 
set, it was only misting out, and so I cajoled the family into taking a 
walk with me.  Number One Son agreed to go but then got a better offer 
to go to a friend's house, so he apologetically scooted out.  Before he 
left, though, he sidled up to me, and being the sensitive young man he 
is, asked me if he had made me feel sad by not going on the walk.  I 
told him that I'm happy that he has such good friends and I know that 
when I was 18, even though I loved my parents, I would always rather be 
with my friends.  I said to him, "I don't think you'll understand this 
until you have kids, but it's sometimes sad for a parent to know that 
her kid would really rather be somewhere else, while at the same time 
it's normal and good.  I know you are not a little boy anymore, but I 
still have the experience of that little boy in my memory, in my heart, 
in my very bones.  So, yes, I do get a little sad sometimes."  He 
reminded me that he is living at home next year for his first year of 
college.  Yes, I know that.  And it's not all a bed of roses living 
with a headstrong 18 year old.  But still. There are some moments I 
miss experiencing with him, and this misty Spring evening walk felt 
like one of them.  At eighteen and a half, he is such a man in some 
ways.  But when I see his smile, a lock of hair that always curls a 
certain way, the tiny mole on his chin, his big expressive eyes, I see 
my little boy as he has always been.

But Husband and Number Two Son gave into my plea, son preferring to 
scoot along beside us on his bike.  And it was amazing out.  The grass 
is lush and green (everywhere, that is, except on our property where we 
our non-pesticided yard is still a bit sparse--because left to it's own 
devices, our yard is returning to the mix of woodland grasses and 
weeds, wild olive, and redbud shoots it was before we were there).  The 
crab apples are all bloom and perfume, while the Bradford pears are now 
in leaf, their recent finished blooms covering the sidewalks like a 
dusting of snow.  The bass and grass carp were active in the small 
ponds up the road, and our buddy the muskrat was taking his evening 
swim.  I see him almost every time I walk there, and I always envy him 
his quiet, solo swim in a placid pond at twilight.  I briefly 
reconsider letting Husband buy the backhoe he's been going on about, 
and letting him dig a pond at the bottom of our property so that I can 
be a muskrat on summer evenings at twilight.

The walk back was even more magical as a foggy mist settled into the 
low spots on our road and the spring peepers went into full song.  
Cardinals and other song birds flashed and twittered in the shrubby 
undergrowth that overtakes all the unkept edges where our dead-end road 
fades into deeper woods.  A red-wing blackbird sang from a marshy area. 
  It was hard for me to believe my luck at being alive on this damp, 
deeply green-scented evening.  What luck to live on my small acre and a 
half of shed, garden, woodpile, pine row, fallen tree, bird-filled 
thicket, cozy house, screened porch.  Even through the ups and downs of 
life with other humans and work and worry, I find much peace here, and 
being outside at twilight presses that peace into my very being.

Julie