jumpingfish

1. Grokking Around. We go walking out to the soccer fields. He’s on a leash, pulling to reach that one magic spot along the chain link fence, that one spot that he always wants to check out. A pole comes between us, and he’s in danger of getting the leash wrapped around it. He stops, glances at the pole, turns around, and runs around my side so that he won’t get tied up and so he can get on with the business of the chain link fence. He must grok the concept of around.

2. Happy Grass. We’ve just come out of two years of deep drought. The creeks didn’t run for two and a half years, not even in the spring. The soccer fields had a hard time of it. Or rather, the soccer associations had a hard time, stuck as they must have been with massive water bills to keep the fields from turning into dust bowls. This year, the water barrels have been constantly full, and oh, is the grass happy. The soccer associations are probably happier.

3. The Planets. How is it possible that a high school student doesn’t know how many planets there are? Ok, you might be off by one, given the recent controversy at the fringe of the solar system. But, six planets!? Turn off the game console, man. I know I’m not exactly objective, but you’re in serious dark ages territory, here.

4. Box Ack. He got a Valentine’s Day box with some clothes and a card and some M&Ms. But that was last month. This month, I send another smaller box with miscellaneous things: microfiber towels to clean lint off a laptop monitor, Thin Mints, another card, a Lego kit as an inside joke. A message comes back late last night. One sentence, four words: Thanks for the package. I shall be thankful for small things.

A Cardinal talked to me Sunday morning from the branches of a leafless tree. I was bent over, pitching forks of chipped tree branch mulch into the wheel barrow in a kind of meditative stupor when I heard it singing overhead.

Tweeeet. Bit-twoo, bit-twoo, bit-twoo, bit-twoo.

The sky was grey, and there was a slight drizzle in the air. I stood up and leaned on the pitch fork and looked up into the branches to where it was perched. It was bright red against the greyness all around.

I’m not quite sure why I’m telling you this. No… that’s not right. The fact of the matter is that I’m not talking to you. I’m talking to my grandmother, just letting her know about a singing Redbird in the upper reaches of my Ash tree. She would have wanted to know.

It’s dark outside. And quiet. Not a sound in the house. Just the dim glow of the lamp beside his bed. He holds a book in his hands on his chest waiting for sleep to come. The chapters go by, but it does not come.

He closes the book and sets it on the table. Sets it on a pile of other books from other nights. There are several such piles in the house — a sign, perhaps, of something. He doesn’t want to think about that right now. He rolls over and turns off the lamp.

The room is dark. And quiet. Not a sound in the house.

It’s cold outside today, as cold in Central Texas for the weather curmudgeon as it is in northern Ohio where he imagines his son might be trudging across campus soon. (Although the weather curmudgeon privately acknowledges that he hasn’t the faintest idea about his son’s schedule.)

The weather curmudgeon stands at the patio door surveying his backyard. Here and there, snow lies on the lawn left over from yesterday. The raised garden bed closest to the fence is still covered in white. So is the pile of logs. And a blanket left outside in a chair.

The weather curmudgeon remembers the morning yesterday and the predicted wintery mix. When the snow started falling and the flakes got bigger and bigger. When they fell from the sky in clusters so big that even the weather curmudgeon was amazed. Some were as big as half-dollars and fell to the ground like leaves. Others were picked up by the wind and swirled around. The sky was thick with them.

And when the weather curmudgeon opened the door on that snowy yesterday, the air was full of a crunching/clicking sound of the snowflake clusters hitting the ground. He stood on the patio and gasped aloud.

“Holy cow, ” he said, shouting to his fair and industrious wife who was across the house getting ready for work. “I’ve never ever seen anything like this, Trudy!”

The accumulation never did amount to the four inches the weather men predicted. But with this exclamation coming from the weather curmudgeon (who grew up in northern Illinois ice skating, building snow forts, having snowball fights and trudging across campus in knee-deep snow for an 8am Dynamics class), we know it really must have been something.

The weathermen called for cold weather today with a possibility of snow. On the radio (and certainly on the TV too?), they talked and talked about dropping temperatures and projected lows and the possibility of 4 inches of snow accumulation.

The paper said it, too. In big block letters across the top of the metro section, this morning’s headlines proclaimed the possibility of snow.

Trudy looked up at me as I rolled my eyes.

She knows how I feel about this fetish Central Texas weathermen seem to have with inclement weather — proclaiming in excited tones coming fronts, warning people of the dangers … all in the interest, Trudy knows I feel, of getting eyeballs to drive advertising revenue. But when it snows in Dallas, it usually doesn’t snow in Central Texas, and more often than not, their proclamations pass without a snowflake falling.

So I’m in there this morning at the keyboard, reading email, modifying a program, listening to the garbage truck work its way toward our house, when Trudy shouts from the kitchen.

“It’s snowing! It’s snowing! Come quick, it’s snowing.”

And sure enough, there it is just outside our patio door: big wet flakes falling out of the sky, covering the garden beds and the compost pile. There it is, just like they said: our wintery mix, all 0.25 inches of it.