Sometimes it’s wild, and sometimes it’s holy –

            A note to everyone who might have mailed me and gotten no answer: a response will come.  It’s not that I am willingly neglectful.  It’s that I’m months behind.  So I have a bunch of flagged missives and a heart aimed at answering them.  As I said yesterday, I’m guessing that all of this show-off recording I’m doing here playes some part in my processing the swift months’ load – or perhaps the empty (near empty – Chaz still counts) nest requires almost as immediate a life review as, say, stepping in front of a bullet train might do.  I ask forgiveness, anyway.

            As I have few traumatically entertaining things to report at this point, I will digress and introduce you to some of my neighbors.  This one, I met at least  hundred years ago—I think it was last March. He invited himself into my backyard.  And there I was, scrambling from window to window, falling over chairs to get a better shot at him.  I felt like a paparazzi.  And he knew I was there.  He couldn’t see me—but he could feel my eyes.  You can tell.

                             

                              

            We live along a little river.  It’s all very civilized down here—fences (some even chain link) – dogs, cats.  But those of us along the river are a little less civilized than some, what with our wild trees and tiny thickets.  We’ve had families of these lovely guys living in our yard over the years.  Some of you may even remember my mentioning the covey of partridges in our pine tree (can you sing it?)  They’re  actually quail, but calling “the quail in our pine tree” just isn’t the same.

            The new kid on the block, if he will forgive me for saying this considering his few years’ residence, belongs to Cheryl, the artist down the street.  She had a pair of them once, but the female is gone.  Don’t know how or why.  This cock is surprising – arrogant, which is not the surprise, and careful – which he’d have to be to stay alive around here, wandering the neighborhood the way he does.

            Cheryl says she has some nice rocks on her back porch and she has them arranged in a predictably artsy manner.  This bird is a critic.  Every day, he carefully rearranges them for her.  He has a voice like a public emergency alert system, which I can tell you with some authority after yesterday, when he took exception to a guy in a Bobcat who was cleaning up the wilder part of Cheryl’s yard.

            I saw him like this as I drove by the other day, so I had to trot back down with my camera.

 

Yes, yes.  Quite the neighborhood.

  –o–

          On the very first of June, we blessed Cam and L’s Scooter.  In the LDS faith, we don’t baptize babies, but we do bless our babies before God and give them a name.  We usually do this in church, gathering friends and family from all over, the men of the priesthood (fathers, grandfathers, uncles, brothers, friends, cousins) standing solemnly and lovingly in a circle around the child as the father (or sometimes another) carefully blesses his child with the strengths and attributes that are in his heart to give.

           

Often, when we blessed ours, it was at home with the Bishop present; we had to work around our far away families who could not always be all the way up here on the usual first Sunday of the month.  That’s the way it worked out this time, family from afar coming.  So Scooter was blessed in his own house, surrounded by friends and family and a ton of love.

It’s a very civilized family. Derek pretends not to know his father, who is Scooter’s first cousin, once removed.

My baby brother, the GREAT uncle, and fam.  With other Scooter once removed first cousins, and a second cousin, Izzy.

One set of aunt and uncle – my brand. And honestly, it wasn’t until Gin was holding Scooter that I looked down and realize that SHE was his aunt, and that I really actually was his grandmother.  GRANDmother.  How weird is that?  I know.  And it’s not even the first time it’s happened, being one, I mean.

The Scoot’s maternal grandmother, proud and misty eyed.  And-how do I explain this part of the family?  Scooter’s great uncle by marriage by marriage, which makes the little lovely there his – ummm – first cousin once removed by marriage X2?  Now, I’m in deep water. No consanguinity here.  But that won’t stop us.

Yay!! Friends!!  Easier to explain. I’ve known Emily since her clarinet was bigger than she was.

Nancy, the beloved.

The Murphy and nephew.  Cousin to Scooter.  Not Murphy – the Frazz.  Frazz and Scooter.

Basketball parents with their new ball.

IDENTICAL COUSINS!!  Not really. But contemporary ones, anyway.  I never had one, myself.  Lovely sisters.

John, who is also beloved, and also gone on growing up business (mission accomplished – now off to the National Guard). How do we stand it?

Scoot, enjoying the fuss.

And three generations.

–o–

            For the last little while, things have  become deceptively quiet.  The dust and viruses clearing, Scooter got to come to our house to visit.  And even stayed a little while his parents went out in pursuit of their own marbles. 

         We made food. 

          We pretended like everything was back to normal, and nobody was growing up and bailing out of the nest.  An elephant in the room with wings and an Argentine accent.

            And then a really weird thing happened.

I really can’t tell you how it happened.  We were just outside—I don’t even remember why.  Must have been putting out the trash or something.  And suddenly, G and Murphy began playing basketball.

            They NEVER play basketball.  I don’t think anybody’s shot anything through that hoop since Cam and L got married (and no longer needed excuses to hang around together).  Okay – so here’s a digression: all through his high school and college years, I had this funny picture in my mind of Cam marrying a girl who’d play basketball with him.  And not that many girls he knew fit that bill.  I mean, Kira was wonderful, but in those platform sandals of hers?  Basketball could have been fatal.  I am not exaggerating. 

           Then along came L—and one day, I looked outside to find her playing basketball with Cam.  I didn’t need a sign at that point, to know how right she was for him; I’d heard angels singing the second she walked through my front door.  But this – my vision fulfilled – it was cool.

            I thought maybe, after they got married and had their own house, someday a grandkid might want to use that hoop.  Which is why it’s still up there.  Because Murphy sure wasn’t all that interested (No, you weren’t, either!) and Guy?  Much rather play the banjo, he.  So what possessed them on this particular evening?  I will ask God sometime after I die.  All I know is, I ran for the camera—I mean, that’s what you’d do if you saw a UFO hovering over your garage, right?

Taking it real seriously

—o—

            And that’s the end of today’s installment.  I can’t believe it takes me three hours to do one of these things.  Or four.  Four hours, if you don’t count breaks for fixing the treadmill and bringing in the horses.  I think this means that I am  a little myopic still – or irresponsible, because you know the laundry needs to be put away and  – well, there’s enough after that “and” to choke a horse.

            But someday I’ll be dead, and the grandkids won’t get way sentimental about my neat laundry and the orderly bank accounts.  But then again, there are those basketball pictures up there . . .