jumpingfish

Among the flowers making their appearance in the yard this spring are two clumps of

Blue-Eyed Grass. This was the first Texas wildflower I fell deeply in love with.

May spring bring happiness to you.

It’s been fifteen years. (How time passes when… time passes.) For our anniversary celebration yesterday, we hiked the long loop at Wild Basin Wilderness Preserve. 

At first there were meadows with Hill Country vistas. There were wildflowers, yellow and purple, many of which we could identify and marveled at but some of which we had never seen before. 

The trail descended from the hilltop into a valley where the vistas disappeared and Junipers and Oaks closed in around us. The ground was soft from the recent rains. The air was fresh. The breeze was cool. The water of the creek was clear with water bugs skimming across mirrored pools where the course turned and disappeared from view.

After we had begun our climb back out of the valley, we sat by the water fall, where the gentle stream spreads out on a broad limestone shelf before tumbling over the edge into a deep pool. There was emerald green moss. There were Maidenhair Ferns. There were Sycamores and American Elms. And there were frogs clicking from hidden places somewhere beyond the pond.

As we finished, the sun was slanting thru the trees sending golden streaks across the yellow and purple bedecked meadows. The stresses of the day had somehow melted away. 

And this morning the two of us woke up and looked at each other with mild surprise. We had slept thru the night and not woken up once, something that was cause for minor celebration — that and the beginning of the next fifteen years.

1. On Bookkeeping

We needed some papers notarized, and we were trying to figure out how… and who… and when. Someone at Trudy’s office is a notary, but that would mean that I’d need to go there perhaps at lunch so that the three of us could me. The bonus was that she wouldn’t charge, whereas Frost Bank down the street from us has a notary service, but they charge.

This question of charging vs. not charging for notary services made me wonder about all the folks who are notaries and don’t charge. A lot of these people don’t necessarily do it for work. And those that don’t do it for work usually don’t charge. You just go to wherever they are, you pull out your papers and sign them, and they pull out their notebook and dutifully record the transaction and then afix their seal to the documents.

“Who would ever want to be a notary just to be a notary?” I asked rhetorically.

Trudy was silent for a moment.

“Well,” she said. “When I was a girl, I thought it was the coolest thing. And I always wanted to be one.”

I was silent for a moment. And then I said, “My bad. I should have known that.”

Because, of course, bookkeeping is one dimension of industriousness.

We laughed very, very hard.

2. On Determination

We were eating BurgerFi burgers and fries. (We had run eight miles that morning and were splurging, although truth be told my carb-encumbered guilt led me to get a lettuce-wrapped burger to somehow offset the fries). We were sitting outside under spectacular blue skies in the warm sun and a blustery breeze.

Something made Trudy think of something the Travis county Audubon Society had once done with tattoos. Evidently they had a contest for the best bird design to be chosen as some sort of sanctioned Audubon tattoo community awareness thing. She was wondering what ever happened to that.

She was silent for a moment.

“I’m old enough that I’d do that,” she said.

“Old enough?” 

“Yes!” she said. There was a punctuated, determined aspect to her voice. “I’m old enough now that it doesn’t matter. I can have a tattoo.”

With that, she took a large french fry from the tray, dipped it into ketchup and took a bite. …Except she kind of missed her mouth and painted to globs of ketchup on her cheek.

I must tell you, that this kind of determination is another dimension of industriousness.

Trudy wiped the ketchup off her cheek, and we laughed very, very hard.

Saturday morning at the SFC Sunset Valley Farmer’s Market. We had eaten our Taco Deli breakfast tacos. And we had a dozen eggs in our bag.

We were on the crushed granite path between two rows of vendor booths. As we walked slowly along, we passed a Capital Metro booth, and I stopped, because … why would Cap Metro be at the farmer’s market?

It turns out they were taking a strategic planning survey. There were three women at the booth. One explained the survey. One handed an iPad to the fair and industrious Trudy who filled out the survey for the two of us. (Does this surprise you?) And the third woman was holding an umbrella to keep the sun off an elderly woman who was working on another iPad.

When the elderly woman finished, that third woman looked over at me.

“Did you used to teach math?” she asks.

“Um… a long time ago,” I say after a moment.

She smiles and nods.

“At ACC,” I say. “Algebra.”

“Are you David Hasan?” she asks.

I am stunned. My eyes open wide. My jaw drops. I don’t know what to say.

Teaching at ACC had been so incredibly wonderful. My two years there were some of my happiest ever. But that was a very long time ago — just before Ben was born. In fact the last class got regular updates on his mom’s status as her delivery date approached.

And here’s the thing of it: Ben helps run that farmer’s market. He is twenty-six. So I’m standing there speechless, this voice from decades ago having just called out my name.

“Yes,” I say. “I’m David.”

And the woman looks over at her colleagues and begins to gush about how she loved that class. About what a great teacher she had. And about how she finally understood math when she thought she never would. 

I’m still sanding there speechless. My eyes still wide. My jaw still slack. Literally speechless and unable to respond.

I glance at her colleagues. Then at Trudy. And then I look back at the woman. With tears almost coming to my eyes, I spread my arms and walk up to her, and we hug each other tightly.

1. Pocket Park

Sometimes it happens in the spring sometimes in the fall, but it never happens in the summer. This weekend Trudy marshaled her energies and gathered folks for our neighborhood’s contribution to Austin’s It’s My Park Day.  

A fledgling park down the street was born recently when the city bought several parcels of land along a utility easement that was once upon a time going to be a street. Despite the intentions of the Planning Department and the hopes of the speculator who owned the four plots, there will be no street, for it would have paved over what has become a pleasant spot of greenery, and years ago during a city land use planning exercise the neighborhood let the city know our views.

So those plots are now a pocket park, albeit a park in need of nurturing: enter the fair and industrious Trudy.

2. Thinning the Thicket

Trudy and John assigned Bob and me a simple task. It had been suggested to them by the city: thin a thicket of junipers that was growing near a bend in the trail so that a breeze might blow thru and eyes might see beyond.

“This is a job David would like,” John suggested when they met to plan the day. The two of them had strategized this as a way to entice me. It worked.

With our simple marching orders, Bob and I went off for several hours while other folks focused on other things in other places. Bob and I were quite content to be left alone in that one place with that one thing to do.

3. A Fine Meditation

The night before and into the early morning, it had rained long and slow. The ground was soft. Our shoes were caked with mud. Great drops of water fell from the treetops as we trimmed. 

As Bob and I worked, the drizzle stopped. The skies were mercifully cloudy, the temperatures cool. I took off my raincoat and threw it on the ground.

Bob and I pushed our way into the tangle knot of juniper branches that slapped against our arms and tried in vain to poke us in the eyes. As our piles of cut branches grew, the voices of the others in the distance would drift thru the undergrowth. Frequently I could hear Trudy laughing.

I must concede this: John and Trudy found us a wonderful task. Because with the sound of her laughter joyfully rolling thru my head, with the comforting cadence of swift saw strokes and with the smell of juniper resin drifting in the air, the quality of that morning meditation in our fledgling park was indeed quite fine.