November 15 years ago: my, how time flies!

 

 Several days late, I know, but here are three senryu in honor of Veteran’s Day:

 

the little girl

and her doll

among the veterans

crisp autumn winds ~
praise all veterans who fought
for our freedom

visit to vets’ home
the child asking
Where are the snacks?

 

How time flies. Especially in retrospect.  Please share in a reminiscence of one morning when we lived in Arkadelphia. Billy (grandson) was ten years old.

 

“Monday Morning, November 13, 2000”---At 5:35, the alarm sounded. I punched the snooze button and continued my dream.

At 5:45, I did the same—unusual, because I generally rise and shut off the alarm. At the third buzz, I sat up, killed the alarm, donned the green socks I threw off last night, and the old purple fleece robe I’d worn forever.

 

Yesterday’s schedule left no time to read the Sunday paper except for a quick scan of the obits. Warming up stale coffee, lacing it with diet Pepsi from last night’s return trip from Benton in the driving rain, I began my journal entry.

 

 Forty minutes later--at 6:40—the timer beeped. With it still sounding, I carried it to Billy’s sleeping place on the floor between my bed and the closet. I nudged his leg with my foot. “Time to wake up. Five more minutes,” I said.

 

At the second ring, I pulled all the covers off him. He smiled behind closed eyes. “I’m sleepy. Give me five more minutes.” No wonder: he’d spent all Sunday afternoon at Austin King’s rescheduled birthday party, and after the second trip to Benton for choir practice, it was ten p.m. before he’d gotten to bed.

 

He came to breakfast wrapped in a light quilt. Though he has plenty of pajamas, he chose to sleep without a shirt. He saved his soggy cereal “for tomorrow. I like soggy.” He did eat half a banana.

 

He dressed, but the sandals came off when he discovered how cold it was outside. Neighbor Jesse’s outgrown, low-cut rubber boots fit the bill.

 

Ritalin, teeth-brushing, rubber bands on braces—this was Billy’s toilette. “Can I turn on TV?”

 

“No, get your bedding out of my room; I need to get into the closet today.”

Done. “Can I go outside?”

“No, pick up your dirty clothes, bring them in here, and close the drawers— what if someone came to look at renting the house when we move?”

Done, but not without grumbling. “Can I go outside?”

 

“Yes.” Two minutes remained until 7:25, the time I set to leave home—getting ahead of the school traffic, but not too early for school personnel, who are on site by 7:30.

 

He took his backpack outside, dropped it in the recycling box and picked up a short-handled racket and a tennis ball. 

 

Gathering my walking gear, keys and purse, I exited and locked the house.

 

At my car door, I saw a bed sheet on the floor of the carport. “Billy! Come here and pick this up!” It was part of the covers he took in the car for the early morning drive to Benton yesterday. (I was music director at SUMC. Church in the morning; choir rehearsal in the evening.)

“How did this get here?” he asked--a rhetorical question.

“Drop it on the steps.” He did and entered the car.

We backed out, and saw Byron, our neighbor, tractoring two mattresses to the curb for today’s “big items” pickup. He gave us a thumbs-up. When we’d driven to the Y at Henderson, Billy piped up.

“I forgot my backpack!”

 

Oh, did I explode. “Drat it, Billy.” I spun the car around and gunned back up 15^th Street. I hadn’t reminded him. No, he didn’t say that, I did—to myself. Just how much micromanaging must I do?

 

I tore up gravel on our driveway. “You know how much I hate traffic,” I used as my excuse for such a show of anger.

 

I needn’t have rushed. Nor gotten angry. But when a grandmother raises a child, sometimes it happens.

 

Thanks for sharing the trip down memory lane. Billy now lives in Arkadelphia, works at Cracker Barrel and Game Stop, pays a car payment and rent each month. Has completed six years-plus of college hours. We’ve come a long way together.

A Story: When I was nine—in 1919

 

 

            I heard it before I saw it.

            The humming came from beyond the woods. The sound was lower than the whine of the 13-year cicadas that came out last year. It wasn’t the train––that came from the opposite direction. The noise was coming closer and closer, and I was out here alone.

            My forehead throbbed where Lotus had kicked me five summers ago. From my perch on a low chinaberry limb, I rubbed the scar and wondered what I’d do if I had to escape.

            Should I stay put and hope for the best or run across the yard to the cellar? Trouble was, a big piece of lava rock from Mama’s lily garden anchored the sloping, tin-covered door. Even if I pushed the stone off, could I lift the bulky hatch? 

            Spiders and rats and snakes might waylay me. And bats. We’d had bats scootch under the inside door and fly around in the house.

            Could my legs carry me to the far end of the front porch? What if I tripped over the sandbox? Or stepped on a piece of glass?

            Would anything be scary enough to make me climb over the well curb and hang inside by my hands? I shuddered at the thought of falling in. Frogs had, and they’d died. We could taste them in the drinking water like we tasted bitterweeds in Bossy’s milk.

            No, I’d climb higher into the leafy branches. Maybe I could hide myself into safety. But what if I got so scared my arms turned to jelly?

            The roar grew deafening. Whatever it was rattled and clunked worse than the old Number Nine climbing the grade to Black Mountain. Birdie stood beneath the chinaberry and barked. I shook like the lacy leaves sheltering me. Birdie’s bark became a howl. The earth vibrated. I squinched my eyes tight and hung on, digging my throbbing head into the rough bark. “Dear Lord,” I prayed.

            If I lived to tell about this, I’d better see what hit me. I took a deep breath and opened my eyes a mite. Looking up through a gap in the branches, I saw bright red letters on the gray belly of an airplane not far from my head. SANK WEAVER’S JOY RIDES, it read. The plane touched ground nearby in Daddy’s hayfield.

            Breathing a sigh, I relaxed my hold. My heart pounded like it did after I’d chased Birdie to the lower forty and back. Uncle Sank and his practical jokes. Daddy’s kid brother’d learned to fly planes in the First War. When he came home, he traveled to Fort Smith and gave thrill rides to folks willing to risk the latest invention of air travel.

            Birdie and I lit out to the hayfield. We’d give him to know he scared us out of three year’s growth.

            And for that, he’d have to take us up in his airplane.