jumpingfish

Friday afternoon after the last school bell. The halls are empty. The classroom doors are all shut and locked, except Room 255. I’m putting up some decorations on the door.  

“Don’t waste your time!” someone calls out from  the end of the hall, and then she laughs. “Face it. You might as well just go home. I’m going to win.”

She laughs again. I do, too.

The thing about the door decorating contests in my experience is that minimalism gets you nowhere. Yet that’s how I do documents and presentations. It’s how I adorn my classroom walls. And how I decorate doors. But these are seasoned teachers, y’all. Next to them, I am an amateur. They do decorations in a way that… well, is unmistakably teacher-like. Fringe. Flowers. Smiles. Happy notes written on stars. Nothing wrong with that. They’re usually stunning. But my jam is less is more, which judges often interpret as lame.

So my door is plain. Two colors: a black and gold (for the “Go for gold” theme). A plain background with a wavy border. (Elmer’s with glitter is so perfect for this!) A Cartesian plane with an exponential function climbing to infinity (of course, because I teach Algebra 2). Two words: “Let’s go!” following the climbing curve.

Nothing else.

Wait. There’s also an admittedly lame streak of glue that dripped despite my best efforts to let everything dry first. Dang!

She’s was right. It won’t win, which of course is just fine. 

#silentsunday #freshmorningweb

Let’s talk about the Yellow Garden Spider again, shall we? She’s still there. (Indeed, we found another one near the front door: Beware garden walks in the evening!)

I walked out to check on her this afternoon. She saw me coming, and she scrambled. Not out of sight, just higher up on her web. And you know she was watching me. So I busied myself elsewhere, distributing rainwater in an attempt to encourage the flowers to continue blossoming despite the heat, and to provide for the birds and toads.

After a few buckets near the house and a few by the curb, I checked on the spider. She had moved back to the center of her web, evidently satisfied that I posed no threat. As I took a step closer, I startled two butterflies and a grasshopper. The butterflies leisurely fluttered around the web, but the grasshopper jumped smack into it.

The spider didn’t move. The grasshopper struggled. I thought the story was about to end. But the spider did nothing. I am convinced she had her eyes on me and was therefore less interested in the vibrating strands of her web. So the grasshopper desperately struggled and eventually fell to the ground.

I guess I owe the spider an apology.

1. 1967 

They ran out the back door into the field behind the farmhouse. It was summer. The air was warm. The sky was blue. And cousins were everywhere.

The kids ran across the lawn and into the nearby farm field. They ran into the corn rows. And somewhere in there, he encountered a spider web strung between the tall stalks of corn with a huge Corn Spider dangling in between. 

He came to a screeching halt with the spider in mid-air inches in front of his face. He was glad he noticed it before running thru. He turned around. And to this day, he has no other recollections of running up and down those corn rows, likely because … he didn’t?

2. 2024

We’ve been out of town a while. The yard has had a chance to wild to itself, and the unusually cool and wet weather has meant that the yard is not the usual brown, crispiness to which we’re accustomed at this point in the summer. (Although starting tomorrow, we’ve got triple digit highs, no rain in the forecast, and certainly crispiness will soon be upon us.)

But for now, there is greenery. There is water in (some of) the birdbaths. There are wild flowers blooming generously. There is grass growing gladly. And there is this suspended in midair on the walkway between the Texas Persimmon and some tall sunflowers.

A Yellow Garden Spider, almost as big as the palm of your hand with its legs stretched out. First one I’ve seen in this yard. Shades of the 1967 corn field.

I’m glad I noticed it before walking thru.

1. New York Leftovers

I crossed the St. Lawrence River from Canada to New York windows wide open. The temperature dropped, bringing joy to driving the Thousand Islands Bridge solo despite the lack of anyone to describe the beauty of the amazing world passing below — a world of clear water, of sunlight bouncing off the waves, of dream homes on islands just large enough for a dream home, of boats cruising the lazy river winding between the many islands, of a world far away from mine. As I drove across, the cool air a sort of consolation prize, I smiled to myself, breathed deeply, and upon reaching the southern shore continued on to Rochester.

That evening, Chachi Bette took treated me to a hip dinner at a hip restaurant she knew in a hip location on a hip street and a old, storied part of Rochester. We walked past big houses and elegant mansions as evening settled and the number of diners on the sidewalks diminished. The next day she took me for a walk thru the nearby cemetery, up hilly drives under towering trees beside gravestones some of which were so weathered that you could read nothing even if you stooped to look. And she took me on another walk later thru the nearby park, up hilly sidewalks and up a long cascade of steps, by one of the city’s reservoirs that usually hold water pumped from the Finger Lakes but were empty for maintenance.

On the evening of that second day, I kept to myself the soreness in my hips brought on by our hilly walks as I did a load of laundry (which I swear was not why I stopped by) and as Bette sat at the Oak table in her dining room cutting onions and peppers and olives and rutabagas and what-all for a tuna-pasta salad that we feasted on later. Ok, I thought: rutabagas fine, but the olives I left for her. She made so much salad, there was plenty for my next day’s drive back to Michigan, where I arrived with a few hours of daylight left.

And oh, was I grateful for Bette’s leftover pasta salad, which I devoured in an instant.

2. Michigan Leftovers

Back in Michigan, I walked alone around the cottage in the cool summertime breeze blowing off the lake. There were things to do inside and out, front and back, upstairs and down, putting away some things, cleaning some things, and packing others, all mixed with sitting on the hill, looking out on the afternoon sunlight glistening on water, listening to Bluejays and Kingfishers and the Great Blue Heron and yes the lonely Loon, and noticing the Hummingbird that had noticed the new Tiger Lily blossom.

Janet came over to announce dinner would be at six. Earlier, she and I had collaborated on the assembly some newly-arrived (and I must say unpleasant-to-assemble) chairs so she and Kent may entertain larger crowds on their deck in a breeze overlooking the water from the top of the hill where their cottage sits. When we had finished the final chair with no leftover hardware (because with me a hardware check is always in order), after I had checked that all the screws were tight (because I pictured with horror one of them sitting back only to have the chair give way), only then did I deploy the chairs to the deck. And I kept my soreness to myself as I stood with a silent old-man’s groan from where we had been sitting.

As announced, dinner was at 6:00. We had pulled pork and chicken and baked beans and cole slaw. And mac and cheese. There was plenty for the three of us and then some. So as Kent announced it was time for him to do the dishes, Janet packed some of the leftovers for me to take with me on my trek back to Texas. And at the end of that next day, after many hours driving south on what was supposed to be a short driving day, I arrived at my camp site with just enough time before dark to eat.

And oh, was I grateful for Janet’s leftover pork and beans and mac and cheese, which I devoured in an instant.