jumpingfish

The sun was beginning to go down behind the trees across the street. Miss Izzy was sprawled out on a slab of limestone in the shade of the Flame Acanthus. I was sitting on the bench nearby marveling how it can be that the heat can feel so good when you’re in the shade … and your skin glistens with sweat.

I gazed into the canopy of the Red Oak in the yard next door. It was a young tree when Vivian planted it before Trudy had bought this house. Vivian is gone. Alex has come and gone and now rents the house out. And year after year, Vivian’s Oak has grown, its leaves waving higher in the breeze, its trunk having added another ring. It is magnificent.

I was gazing in that direction. Thinking of the heat. And the Oak. And my eyes fell upon a… what was it? A lump of something on a branch.

“Is that an owl?”

I slowly rose and walked over the field of stones between the yards, picking my way carefully, because even though my feet are tougher now after three weeks of being barefoot (oh, what a good decision it was to quit my job!), the stones can still hurt. So I walked slowly, deliberately, not taking my eyes off that lump in Vivian’s Oak.

It was the dusty gray-brown of an Eastern Screech Owl. But it was not small. Not big enough for a Great Horned… I got closer. Yep. Definitely an owl, look at those round yellow eyes. 

No wait. Where did the eyes go? Are you kidding me!? That owl is doing that owl-thing: it has turned its head completely around, looking the other way without moving its body. And there they are, again. Those eyes staring down at me. Or was it… staring in the direction of Miss Izzy? 

“Well, it’s only an Eastern Screech Owl,” I tell myself. “Izzy’s too big.” 

“And it’s daytime,” I tell myself. “Owls hunt at night.”

And yet, I turn and deliberately but quickly make my way back across the ouchy rocks. And take a seat next to Miss Izzy.

Pam had the students work through an exercise that involved finding people in the large room and writing their names to icons for the four seasons on some cards she had passed out. She walked back to her table and started some music.

The room filled with the low roar of people talking. They all had pencils, and they were jotting down names on their cards.

“Do you have somebody for fall, yet?”

“Would you be my spring?”

And in the background Pam’s music played.

Winter, spring, summer or fall
All you have to do is call
And I’ll be there
And I’ll be there, yes I will.

Afterwards, as everyone was sitting down and Sweet Baby James was finishing the song, Pam said, “Let’s sing it together.”

She started singing. Some others started singing. I started singing. And we laughed when we got tripped up by the repeated

Ain’t it good to know?
Ain’t it good to know?
Ain’t it good to know…

that comes just before 

…you’ve got a friend.

As the song ended, someone at the next table said, “I have never heard of that song.”

Now, can someone tell me how on earth that is possible? Wait. On second thought, don’t tell me. I don’t want to talk about it.

On my way to water the tomatoes, I spotted a Spiny Lizard sitting on a log in the sun. It did not move. It was watching me warily. I turned to get my camera from the house.

When I returned, as I walked barefoot on the grass, I kicked a flimsy twig, swooshing it out of the way with my toes. I looked down.

This was no twig. It was a small Rat Snake, as surprised at the swooshing as was I. It looked up at me from the grass as warily as was the lizard on the log. And then it slithered into the Turks Cap growing in great profusion at the base of the Pine tree.

I looked over to see if the lizard was still there. It was. It had seen it all.

In the cool of the morning, as a breeze blew in the back, as the sun peeked over the top of the duplexes on the other side of the alley, as birdsong filled the backyard, I watched a Sparrow. It flew in, gliding between the tree trunks, landing on the leaves beside a long log that forms the boundary between our semi-civilized lawn and the less-civilized butterfly garden.

One hop, two hops, three. It tried to pick up a bundle of ball moss, but the bundle was too big. So the Sparrow moved on.

One hop, two hops, three. It picked at a stick from yesterday’s clean-up, but the stick was too long, making the Sparrow look like a cartoon weightlifter trying to press it above its head. So the Sparrow moved on.

One hop, two hops, three. It grabbed a sprig of St. Augustine that I pulled up yesterday, since it was making an unwelcome advance from the semi-civilized lawn to the less-civilized butterfly garden. And here, the Sparrow succeeded.

The Sparrow flapped its wings furiously and slowly became airborne (although only barely), flying off to some nest in some distant tree back on the other side of the alley.

“Hey Trudy?” I asked as I walked into the dining room to retrieve my (lost) cup of coffee.

I had this theory, and I wanted to confirm it with my fair and industrious spouse.

My theory was that there’s some kind of energy conservation principle at work in moments of duress — that I turn inward, shutting off the outside world, giving myself strength to focus on the task at hand (say: nausea from chemo, radiation burns, incisions, lack of sleep… the setback and humiliation of failing a certification test). My theory was that somehow my brain knows it’s stressed out and unconsciously chooses to conserve energy. That was my theory. I was curious whether or not it squared with Trudy’s observation.

She didn’t look up from her phone.

I took a sip of lukewarm coffee and continued. “Would you say that I react to the stress of a test like I react to the stress of being sick?”

Her head instantly jerked upwards, and her eyes opened wide. “No!” she said. “You did not react the same as when you were sick!”

We looked at each other.

“You do fine when you’re sick,” she said, “but you were massively stressed out from this test!”

So much for my theory. I guess that for many reasons it’s really fortunate that I passed.