I was a kid in LA, lightyears ago. I had these two forever long blocks to walk every day – a choice of three parallel routes that all ended up at my school. Every word I am writing here calls up another image, another kid-level story about that long walk. But I am remembering now because of the rain. My horse arena, if the planet would just top off all this weather with a hard freeze, could make a perfect ice rink today. The dogs are looking drowned after two minutes outside. The lovely day I photographed last week is now lost in the mists of time.
I wore a serious rain coat in those LA days. I don’t remember what color. Probably yellow. And I carried an umbrella. And I wore galoshes. If you are too young to remember galoshes, I’m deeply sorry for you. They were these rubber boots – sometimes red, but I think mine were green. Or yellow – designed to fit over your shoes. Just fit. Like a shoe second skin. They had wide open tops, sometimes with a rubbery pleat. And you closed them by folding them over and stretching an elastic frog (if you don’t know what that is, I can’t do much for you) over a big round rubbery button.
The galoshes kept the rain off your shoes. Kind of. But that’s not really what I’m here to write about. It was the LA winter rain that got me here. Feels just like it outside today. About the same temperature. And the same intensity. That coastal rain would come straight down for days, filling the street gutters so that miniature rivers rushed beside the sidewalks, threatening to overflow onto feet and lawns. And at the end of each block, just where the gutter was supposed to drain, there’d be these huge knots of earthworms struggling under the quick, deep, gritty water – bigger than baseball-sized knots of frantic, drowning worms.
If you were feeling reckless, you’d slosh along in the gutter, trusting the galoshes to keep your shoes in stasis. But I never saw anybody slosh to the end where the earthworms were.
On those days, there was no recess. I mean, there was recess, but it was inside. We had games to play, or you could read. Which I did. Comic books. The Green Lantern, mostly. Sadly, I do not have any Green Lantern lying around the house for today. So I must work instead. Which is why I’m doing this. Avoidance. Just glad this screen lights up, because it’s pretty dark in here. Even at noon. The river out back probably has huge knots of worms in it somewhere, which should make the trout happy. I would prefer that what is presently in the river stays there and does not presume to explore my house any time soon.
Here is the rest of what I saw when I was doing my yard tour the other day:
Okay, wrong season. And many years ago. This is Emma, hanging from the rope swing the way a human is supposed to. And here are the old dogs, still alive and kicking, enjoying the rope swing the way a dog is supposed to.
But the other day, as I was shooting the yet-to-open lilacs, I heard this canine discussion going on. And on. And on. When I turned around I found this:
Now, I had seen them do this before. And shot it before, hoping to share this odd thing. In fact, G stood out here just a couple of weeks ago, swinging the rope for them so I could shoot them at it. But here, I caught them playing in the yard just the way the long-gone kids used to. I shot too many pictures of it, only a fraction of them foisted on you here, because I found this so fascinating. He actually gets air, hanging from the thing.
And it just goes on and on. Two brothers. amusing themselves.
Toby participates in a sort of cheerleading, I’ve-got-it-Grace sort of way.
See? Totally off the ground. Tucker is the kind of dog who has a serious interest in flight.
If he could master it, all of the butterflies and swallows in our yard would be laughing out the other side of their mouths, I’m tellin’ ya.
Because he’d give them a run for their money. This dog is a serious dude.
As you can, no doubt, see for yourself.
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