Little girls and pink

Small Granddaughter has been here this weekend. I've written often about Small Grandson. These two are the same age (4), but I have not seen the little girl as often. This weekend I had the honor of hosting her first visit ever away from her immediate family, all by herself. She was fine and has promised to come back soon.

This small female is smart, beautiful, competent, and good company. But there's one thing she can't control on her own: Pink. I took her to Walmart yesterday so she could choose a toy. I'll admit to being a failure here on two fronts -- going to a big box store and buying too many toys. But, moving past the failure to my point:  little girls' toys are too pink and too frivolous. I already knew that as a surface thought, but it's daunting in the experience. We walked through two aisles of princesses, Barbie dolls, and bejeweled purses.

I made sure that she walked past sports equipment, games, and the other toys. But, she seemed to think that she was supposed to choose from the pink stuff. She did, and we took Princess Ariel and her three dresses with us.

Here's the good part:  I never saw Granddaughter put any one of the three dresses on Ariel. Instead she made her climb and jump around, very athletic. And then, she discovered that crayons would fit down the necks of the dresses, and I was instructed to have the crayon people walk around and interact with the ungowned princess. By the time we left to take her home this morning, my little one was not at all interested in having Ariel and her pink gowns, but she did take a handful of her cousin's dinosaurs.

What's a little girl to do? When she has a birthday, everybody (myself included until yesterday's learning experience) buys her something pink. Little boys get blue, but they also get red and yellow and green toys. Little girls are stuck with pink, with maybe a little mousy lavender thrown in. Boys get the strong, vibrant crayon colors; girls get pale pastels. Stores are set up that way, and we follow their lead entirely too easily.

Next time I'll be better prepared, and we will avoid the pink aisles. That's my promise to her.

A camera's eye

Some days can make a nature-lover out of the most distracted of us while other days are gray and drab.  This was one of those gray days here, with skies overcast for much of the day. But, in five minutes of walking around in Rabbit Town -- in my own yard and nearby -- I came upon plenty of color. I'd gone out on a mission to photograph one mimosa tree, and then there were all these bright little flowers everywhere I looked -- when I looked.

There they were all the time, even when the day was gray and steamy, even when I wasn't primed to notice.

Canna lilies.  We mow them down and they pop right back up.

Day lilies that were here when I bought the house.  Indestructible.

Next door -- a mimosa tree has sprung up along the driveway.

Delicate morning glory and steel fence.

Hydrangeas, blooming under large oak trees.

Hibiscus in bloom, again by a driveway.  The trunk of it
is old and lichen covered.  Old and gray -- but still blooming.

Something to investigate

I'm back on my front porch again, with the evening well settled into darkness. For two nights I've been out of town, and though I have a lovely space there, I do not have a front porch.  It was good to be there, and now it's good to be back here, sitting on the front porch as the night cools down.

Dark as it is, I can still see the white magnolia blooms. The security light at the back of the house throws just enough pinkish light this direction to reflect off those waxy white blooms. Buds, really -- what I'm seeing are buds shaped like candle flames. Do magnolia flowers close at night? I don't think so, but there's always something to investigate around here. When I walk to the front of the porch to look closer, an attempt to be knowledgeable, I still can't tell about the flowers. But, I do see the moon there in the southern sky. It's high overhead, a half moon with two stars sharing its space.

On my trip south, I drove very near the airport. Large jets flew over, so close that I could easily count the windows, if not the people within, and slow enough in their take-off that it's hard to understand why they don't drop out of the sky, plop, down on the Interstate.  Now, here, I see them as dots moving across the black sky. There are two large vapor trails to the west now. . . enough light from the moon to see them there. And, just now, a blinking aircraft, traveling south to north, high over the magnolia tree.

I've made myself an icy drink and brought it out here as I settle into the night and the glow of the computer screen.  It's a "sour lemonade" -- so named by Small Grandson, who introduced me to this combination of lemonade and ginger ale. When he has grown into a real mustache, instead of the penciled one that complements his pirate costume now, I will never be able to drink lemonade or ginger ale without thinking of him running across the blue tile of the kitchen and asking for "sour lemonade." "Ahoy, Matey . . . walk the plank, AARRGH," he mumbles as he sports that eyebrow-pencil mustache and worries that the sour lemonade will somehow jump to his upper lip and do damage to his pirate look.

There's that sound again!  I've never able been to figure out what it is, but I hear it at least once every night when I'm out here. It's a swish/thump as if someone has lifted the bed of a dump truck and several sheets of metal have slid together before the thump of hitting ground, or maybe the sound of gravel being unloaded, the pebbles bouncing off of each other and off of the metal bed. Could be air brakes, but there's no sound before or after. There's another thing to investigate.

What's good about being here in such a small place with so little going on is that the number of things to investigate are reasonable. I can get around to it.

A class reunion

We had a class reunion last night.  I'm not going to say how many years, but it's been many, MANY.  Pretty quickly, when you get into a crowd that once congregated in high school hallways, old patterns of interacting resurface. We hardly resemble the way we looked in high school, and yet we are the same people. Phyllis and Bonnie, forever pitting themselves against each other in those long, tiled, locker-lined spaces, were doing it again last night.  Everybody there recognized their good-natured interaction immediately.

Elvis performed for us. We were the Elvis generation, coming of age just as Elvis's first records came out. It seemed appropriate to have a tribute artist be part of our evening, so the planning committee talked to a local guy who has been performing as Elvis for about five years now. Green lights danced on the ceiling just as they did at sock hops eons ago, and our Elvis sang and gyrated for us -- very convincingly despite a story about some kind of injury last week that "shook up" one leg a bit. Thanks, Greg. And, thanks to a roomful of female classmates who got into the spirit of the thing, who whooped and hollered and fought for scarves and teddy bears. We have plenty of spirit left.

Sitting here on this quiet Sunday night, I'd like to do Saturday night all over again so that this time I could talk to people I missed. There was one big, burly man, for example, whom I took to be some classmate's husband.  He was, instead, Hugh -- one of our classmates, one who had not attended a reunion in a long time. Those moments when realization dawns, and it's too late, are disappointments.

Some of us would have said way back those many years ago that we hated school, and there may have been a few who actually did. Most of us, however, look back on those years fondly.  Despite some "adventures" we were good kids who mostly liked each other, and we have grown into older adults who still like each other.

When I learn about some of the difficult, hateful situations that teenagers face now, I'm particularly sorry.  We knew a situation so very different.
                                                                 
But yet, if I'm honest, there is more to our story.  .  .

 -- We lost at least half of the girls who started 9th grade with us. Pregnancy, early marriage, or held back by "girls don't need school." We lost a lot of the boys, too. Boys did not want to look bookish and, at that time, one could get by without a diploma.
 -- Out of 70 pictures in the yearbook, 8 didn't have enough credits and didn't get to walk the stage at graduation.  Summer school required. But, they -- mostly -- persevered.
-- During our school years we lost at least one teenager every year to an automobile accident.
-- Since graduation 18 classmates have died.
-- A tableful of women are widows now.
-- Two class members, that I know of, found life so painful that they committed suicide.
-- Several of us are unwell; at least two wanted to attend and could not.
-- Some don't drive after dark and left early. Some were simply tired, had a distance to drive, and left early. A couple of others wanted rest, but stuck it out.
-- Some of us were in pain or fighting incapacitating health conditions during the hours of the reunion.
-- I, myself, was so absolutely geeky during our high school years that I undoubtedly missed a lot of teenage angst. I do remember one girl telling us that "if you do it under water, you can't get pregnant," a statement that was proven false. Ignorance was rampant.
-- We were pre-integration and had little idea that there was anything wrong with our segregated world.

Our portrait is not less beautiful because there are teardrops in it. There were lucky people at that reunion last night, lucky in those years we shared, and we know it.

Crossing the highway

In the 1970's we had a Lieutenant Governor (later Governor) who hailed from the extreme northern part of the state, deep in the mountains.  I suspect he had something to do with the road built from Atlanta far into these mountains in the 1980's.

The plan initially was to open up the rural hill communities for development. That worked far better than originally envisioned; within 20 years the traffic was what had been predicted for 40 years out. The north/south highway can get bumper to bumper when the apples are harvested or on any sunny autumn weekend when leaves are turning gold and red.  On a day to day basis crossing the highway at 5 o'clock can get a little dicey.

Segue to Walmart. We also have a new Walmart here, a small version. It is, of course, built along this very same road, this successful attempt at economic development. There was opposition to having Walmart here, but the store was basically welcomed in the midst of the economic slump. Hundreds, maybe thousands, applied for the Walmart jobs. Anyway. The point I'm getting to is how very smart Walmart was to build on the east side of the highway because . . . 

Some folks in town won't cross the four-lane. 

So, besides the wide, race-car track of a highway, a person can travel three different surface streets to get to Walmart. It is possible to go buy that shower gift or that sleeping bag or whatever is not stocked anywhere else in town without ever having to summon extraordinary courage. You do have to be observant. To slow down traffic through neighborhoods, there's a stop sign every 20 feet, even one in a curve where there's no actual intersection -- but you can still get there.

Now, I'm wondering if the Walmart executives were actually that smart . . . if they really did know they would get more local business if they built on the settlement side. Or, was it just luck?

Spring visitor is back

Over the winter I forgot that there is a very good reason why I never put food in the trash can.  So, yesterday when I peeled those peaches, instead of doing what I knew I should do, i.e, put them in the compost bin, I got lazy and put them in the trash can. Then, I congratulated myself when I remembered to take the bag out to that big, black, rolling contraption that gets wheeled to the curb for pickup. There would be no peachy smell in the house and no fruit flies. I had remembered.

But, I also forgot. I forgot that our occasional visitor here would love peachy smells. I actually heard him come to the Peach Peel Store as I sat on the front porch last night.  It's the cat, I thought when there was a thump. She's jumping around again. When I came inside, there was Lucy Cat sleeping soundly on the back of the chair, but I still didn't make the logical connection to the noise I had heard.

Morning came, and I walked blithely out the back door and straight into a heap of yucky trash. Strewn across the yard were greasy pieces of junk mail, an egg carton, corn husks, too many silvery papers from Hersey's kisses, but no peach peels. The big, black bin was turned over on its side. Our resident bear (he, who shows up every spring) had helped himself -- while I sat on the front porch less than 40 feet away. This is a small house; measured front to back, including the porch, it's 34 feet. I can be confident in my estimate. 

After I had picked up the trash here this morning, I drove up the street and noticed a white plastic bag lying in the grass under an oak tree. Next door was another tipped trash bin. I picked up the trash, righted the big bin, and drove on.

At the corner, I stopped the car to tell Gary and his wife, who live nearby, to watch out for the bear.  They beamed when they learned that the black bear is on my street now. Since February he's been creating mischief near their house, leaving behind muddy paw prints, they said, and ransacking bird feeders. Evidently, during this mild winter, Big Bear didn't hibernate.

As for me, no more food goes in the trash can.  I've remembered now. 

Bear neighborhood

Sunday stillness, and a walk

There has been a Sunday kind of stillness in Rabbit Town today. Somebody came and mowed the lawn next door -- I heard that lawnmower sound for a while -- but otherwise it has seemed quieter than usual, and I have settled into a calm that doesn't happen every day. . .

In early evening, I walk for about a mile through the neighborhood, carrying and reinforcing that feeling of stillness. My feet roll over gravel as I walk down my driveway, then cross the road to a narrow street with only two houses along its length, one of them unoccupied. Along this stretch of pavement there is plenty of shade from oaks and poplars, from tall shrubbery at the side of the road, and from the stand of sky-reaching pines where the road bends.

Two turns and a little further along chickens cluck in their pen at a neat, white frame house, and, across the street, people who are new to the neighborhood sit in Andirondack chairs on their back patio. They wave, wondering who I am, still trying to pin down this new place where they live.

Not a single dog follows me at any point on my walk. That's most unusual, and adds to my perception of the day as quiet, still, without confusion. Early on one truck passes me, and then one black sedan -- that's all the automobile traffic I encounter. One motorcycle catches up with me and passes, as does one four-wheeler. Along the route are four other walkers. One, and then another, stops to talk. A neighbor is sitting in her front porch swing, sorting papers from a bin near her feet: a teacher, with school now out, and closing down work to do. . . the confusion of the school year gone and leisure now to fold the flap over the cardboard box, until August.

And, then a little further and I notice that magnolia trees are blooming. These illogical trees shed their leaves in brown clutter at the very same time that their large white blooms appear. They look as if they're languishing in the midst of their blooming. As we all are, when I think about it. . . too much thought. It's that stillness creeping in again.

One more happening before I get back home to my own yard: I notice people walking in the yard at a house for sale here in Rabbit Town. And then, I realize that I know them and I stop to talk. The potential buyers are a couple with three small boys; they already live in a rental house in the neighborhood. The voices of the children in the yard glides over the stillness instead of interrupting it; their childish sounds seem to belong to a Sunday evening that is requiring nothing, making no demands.

Magnolia bloom among leaves turning brown.