Can I open my eyes yet?

Ever watch a little kid play "Hide-n-Seek?" She will stand in the middle of the room, place her hands over her eyes and stand very still; the logic is if she can't see you then you can't see her.  

Last year as the pandemic raged (...sigh it really has not quieted down....) I stopped my subscription to the daily newspaper and quit listneing to NPR.  I chose not to read nor to hear the news.  It was scary.  No one definitively knew anything. I figured if I didn't know anything, I was OK with that and could continue merrily and blissfully unaware. 

Fires burning the western United States, Louisiana with another hurricane and hundreds without power in hundred degree weather, drought in Africa, Afghanistan lost to the Taliban, Haiti having one tragedy after another.....I could go on......it's enough to make me once again cancel my subscription to the paper.  

As kids get older they begin to understand the finer points of hide-n-seek. They will actually go somewhere to hide and when they do they try and make themselves very small and squeeze into tiny spaces.

Fear makes us small. Fear can cause either freeze or flight ---- I've done both very well depending on the situation. 

In scary times, we look for persons who steady us, are our trustpoints.  During these days, I miss my mom doubly so.  She had a tool kit stocked full of ways to handle fear. Sometimes she used humor; after watching a horror movie when I was afraid someone was going to get me she said, "Don't worry, he'll drop you at the first street light."  She used reason.  She used her presence.  She used her faith as she would say, "Perfect love casts out all fear."

We are not made to be small and afraid. 

We are called to shine our light into all those dark and scary places. Even the tiniest light, the smallest candle makes a major impact.  Shine on.....  

ABC's Wrap-Up

V = VOICE  

A frequent refrain from my mother was, "Sally, you don't know how your voice carries!"  

Yes....I do......  

When my brothers were outside and it was time for supper, she would appoint me to be the human dinner bell.  She'd call me in and ask me to let my brothers know it was time for supper. I never thought she expected me to walk up to them and invite them to table. Insted, I would open my mouth and yell, "SUPPER! SUPPER'S READY!"  Supper is a great word to shout out.  One can expel every bit of air in the lungs in the yelling of the word with its two syllables and hard consonants.  Supper.  Try yelling it out sometime and see what happens and who answers or even better who comes to the table.

W = WATERMELON  Another staple of summer.  The watermelon is so much a part of the season we often have our first one on Memorial Day picnics, the "official" start of summer.       

Are there still any kids who have not been told that if you swallow a watermelon seed that a watermelon will grow in your belly?  

I'm a big fan of watermelon; I lke the fruit, I like the flavoring added to hard candy (Jolly Rancher, anyone) and to water and beverages of a more adult variety. 

X = X-RAY  As we once again....sigh....return to wearing masks in stores and indoors (I confess I never stopped so doing) one of the moments that makes me sad is when I see a little kid, a three or four year old, wearing a mask; they are so innocent and I wonder the impact upon them of these days through which we are living. 

The same feeling of sadness occurs whenever in the midst of summer I see a kid with a cast on an arm or a leg. 

In these moments I trust even more on the resilience of children and how they are gifted with both a literal bounce and a wellspring of inner bounce to which they keep coming back and getting up and going forward. 

Y = YELLOW   I have never had done, nor do I think it is soon to happen, my color pallette.  Am I an autumn?  A summer?  What color is my color that when I wear it I own it?  Don't know.  Someone, someday may let me know.  When that happens I hope I already have the wardrobe for it. 

If there is a color for the season of summer my vote goes to yellow --- the golden sun, the jerseys of the 1979 Pirates, a canary melon.....

Z = ZUCCHINI   Be it a dry summer, a rainy summer, an extra-hot summer...whatever the weather the zucchini always seems to thrive.  There is an abundance of zucchini, they fill the stores, the farmer's martkets and our own gardens. There are so many zucchini that we freely and easily give them away....to everyone.

Thankfully,  I like zucchini. I am even more grateful that my mother was an incredible cook and made wondrously creative  dishes with the vegetable.  She pickled it, fried it, made a cake with it, cookies, used it as the noodles in lasagne....I swear if she would have been agreeable to fermentation, we would also have drunk it.

ABC's Winding Down....

  

S = SNAKE  Those who know me well are shocked to see this is the item to represent the letter "S."  I despise, detest and am deeply fearful of snakes.  To put it another way, if, by some cosmic twist, I had been the first woman in the Garden, we would all still be in paradise; I would not have been within 3 miles of that tree with that serpent. Knowledge, schmaledge...ignorance is bliss. 

Please note, I could not bring myself to even put an actual photo of a snake next to the letter....cartoon, kind of cutesie, works just fine.  As a youth while cutting the grass, if I saw what I thought was a snake, I left the mower running and ran inside the house. 

In this aspect I do not share my maternal line's courage in response to reptiles. My Aunt Ruth had copperhead and rattlesnake skins framed and hung on her walls. As she walked along the railroad, she carried her snake stick.  The story is told of my mother and her defense of a toad that had taken residence near the front porch of our home.  One day a black snake saw the toad and decided it would be good for dinner.  Said snake was beginning to eat the toad (note: just writing this I have the willies) when my mother, who was sweeping the porch, noticed and acted. She whacked the snake several times causing the serpent to patooey the toad into it's freedom and the snake to slither away....far away......far, far, far away.

This summer as I have been walking various trails I have had two near encounters with snakes and one actual snake crossing on my path.  

One morning while walking part of the Montour Trail I noticed a couple stopped along the side of the trail.  Immediately, I thought SNAKE.  Sure enough, the woman, now on the other side of the trail, said to me, stopped in my tracks, "There's a snake! And it's moving!" That was all I needed to move myself in the other direction. As I was in reptile retreat I warned each runner, biker and walker of the snake they were soon to encounter.  To my shock, they all kept merrily moving onward....the fools!

Last week, I was walking another part of the Montour Trail (in my mind a snake sighting equals find a new trail on which to walk). I was in the home stretch of the trail when a guy riding a bike stopped, turned around, went back from whence he came, stopped in the middle of the road and looked down.  Yep, there was a snake. Staying a good 25 yards away, I watched the snake approach the man's bike and start to slither up the bike wheel!!!! He backed up his bike, the snake (I swear he looked back in anger) slunk into the weeds on the side of the trail.  Frozen, as the biker approached me, I said, "I'm glad you saw that before me!" He replied, "O, that was nothing, just a harmless black snake."  I said, "I don't care if it's a black snake, a black mamba, a garter snake, or a  king cobra, I want absolutley nothing to do with any of them!"

The one direct encounter I had with a snake was on the Freeport Trail. It was black with a yellow stripe. I refer to it as a "yinzer snake" and it sliterhed in front of me. If there was such a category as the backward-fear jump, I would have set a world record.

There are photos of my father hunting rattlesnakes...just for the rush of it, I suppose. This inane behavior has been passed onto my oldest nephew, who has been bitten by a rattlesnake, lived to tell the tale and still hunts them. After continuing to question his mental faculites I once said, "You are bonkers to keep doing this!  I got an idea, I'll put on a swiimsuit and flip-flops and go with you!  Let's really nut-it-up!"

My favorite poet is Mary Oliver and who writes impactfully about experiencing the Holy through nature. She does have a few poems about snakes. It's only recently that I can read them....we are each in process...except snakes, they remain agents of evil.

 

T = TOMATOES   Along with the watermelon, tomatoes scream summer!  We grew 
many and there was quite a feeling of self-sufficiency going out to the garden to pick tomatoes and place them in the yellow-wire, handled basket and deliver them to the kitchen.

Of course the tomatoes were needed to make what is THE sandwich of summer...the BLT: Bacon, Lettuce and Tomato.  My mother very much enjoyed these seasonal delights and when the tomatoes were ripened to the point of picking we would journey to Brestensky's Meat Market to buy the very best bacon and stop at the Deli to purchase a great loaf of sourdough bread.  

U = UNDERWATER

What is the draw to swimming underwater?  Watch little kids and they love going underwater; give 'em a pair of goggles and they will spend the majority of time under  the water at the local pool....of course surfacing for air as and when needed.

Of course this leads to playing the game of who can hold their breath the longest...always a reason for a competition.

This leads me to speak of US Olympic swimmer Caaleb Dresel. He of the five gold medals won at this Olympiad swims the 50Meter freestyle without taking a breath!!! Of course, when they replayed his gold-medal winning swim, I held my breath to see if I too could so do.  I did. I felt very proud. Then, my friend watching the swim with me said, "Yes, that's great, except he did it while swimming very fast and very strong." And the point is?????