Have you noticed spring flowers don’t possess high IQs?
After years of “surprise” March blizzards, you’d think clueless flowers would wait until April before peeking out.
Brave or foolish, my crocuses herald the hope of spring.
My daffodils also are poor communicators. Having often turned into flower-sicles, they should have the decency to warn the younger generation. New bulbs should don furry little mittens like spring-smart pussy willows. But they never do.
So, every March, I lecture my flowers about the virtues of sleeping in.
I never had to instruct my children about this.
But flowers don’t get it. Each year, they hear the same weather wisdom: come out too early, and you’ll freeze your buds off. Wait until the sun shines more than one day out of 30.
But do they listen?
Image by Ryan Minion from Pixabay.
No-o-o-o. While the ground remains iron and silvered with snow, dumb flowers poke their heads above icy earth and shiver in their shoots.
Not too bright.
Though I admit that doesn’t apply to color. Yellow daffodils and purple crocuses look like fresh, brilliant paint dropped from God’s brush onto a color-starved landscape. His gift after a long, weary winter?
Maybe spring flowers aren’t so dumb, after all.
Image by Ralph from Pixabay.
Your Extraordinary Ordinary: When does your favorite spring flower first appear?
O Lord, It’s only October, but I can’t buy a can of beans without seeing a Santa Claus. You, who made the sun move backward to preserve daylight during an Old Testament battle —OMG, could you pause on lovely fall …
O Jesus, I could thank You for a million blessings, but that wouldn’t even cover today’s gifts. I’m grateful for tiny things like working in my favorite jammies.
For cosmic things like the fact that our sun hasn’t ditched this galaxy and run away to Andromeda.
Photo by Adam Krypel from Pixabay.
But OMG, most of all, I thank You for Your infinite love — big enough to embrace the universe. Small enough to fit perfectly inside my heart.
In 1971, I scored higher than my academic-superstar boyfriend on our biology test. Now my husband, he remembers the questions were poorly designed.
Our brains record events differently. We should have realized that then.
Years later, during 2:00 a.m. phone calls, Dr. Hubby remembered how to calculate complicated medicine dosages and IV percentages.
When babies wailed at 2:00 a.m., however, he never gained consciousness. If he had, nocturnal amnesia would have occurred. “We have kids?”
Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay.
Yet, I appreciate Hubby, my medical consultant in mystery writing. Once, though, while eating out, I pumped him about undetectable, fatal drugs — and forgot to whisper.
“Keep your voice down!” Hubby hissed as big-eyed diners moved elsewhere. “I don’t do that!”
I should recall minutiae of mystery movies we’ve watched umpteen times. I remember what the main character wore. Or if she was pushed off a high bridge (I loathe heights). But Hubby, who never forgets a plot, reminds me whodunnit.
Helpful guy.
The I-see-it-my-way-you-see-it-yours list goes on. And on.
Hubby remembers campsite numbers and lake depths from every park we’ve visited. Which is north or south of what?
Image by David Mark from Pixabay.
I remember trees. Lots of them. Water. Lots of it, too. And that the sun sets in the west. Please don’t ask me about the moon.
Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay.
Hubby always memorizes his parking spots. Unlike me, he’s never meandered for hours in a dark lot with ticked-off kids after a rock concert. Think of all the exercise he missed.
On the other hand, I still hear my late, penny-pinching father, urging me to turn off lights: “This house is lit up like Alcatraz!”
Hubby must have been raised in Alcatraz, because all-lights-on seems natural to him.
He does remember to schedule our cars for oil changes.
What, cars have oil?
Lately, though, both our memories are suspect. Name recall’s the worst.
I say, “Who did we have dinner with yesterday? You know, the flannel-shirt guy and the woman wearing cute boots.”
“That was yesterday?” He muses. “Weren’t we in their wedding party?”
“And they in ours. …”
Together, total recall?
Eventually, we nail it: Ned and Patricia. My brother and sister-in-law.
So what, if married life now consists of playing 20 Questions. With both his-and-her recall, we’ll get it right.
As long as we avoid biology tests.
Your Extraordinary Ordinary: What differences have you noticed in male-female recall?
On frozen days like today, I want to press my nose against the window pane, spread my fingers and push winter away, as I attempted when a preschooler, living in the trailer park.
When spring showed up for real, our mother would no longer imprison my four-year-old brother and me in snowsuits. She’d stop slathering us with Vicks® VapoRub®. She’d let us go outside.
A little later, my sister, brother and I (pictured with my mom) all shared a for-real bedroom in a bigger trailer.
We didn’t dislike the tiny yellow trailer we called home. The kitchenette smelled like bubbling bean soup and love. Our play area: the closet-sized living room. We slept on the sofa, Ned at one end, and I at the other. Long before ESPN’s kickboxing competitions, we conducted world-class foot fights at bedtime — until the Head Referee called emphatic fouls on us both.
Finally, a hundred robins outside sounded an all-clear. Before sending us outdoors, Mom drilled us: Thou shalt not play around the railroad tracks. Thou shalt look both ways before crossing the drive to the playground. Thou shalt never speak to strangers. But the First Commandment eclipsed them all: Thou shalt not shed thy jacket.
Fully catechized, Ned and I darted to freedom. We stopped and looked both ways before splashing across the gravel road that circled the playground, the center of the trailer court and our world.
Paradise awaited, with a clangy old merry-go-round that spun us into an ecstasy of nausea. Ned and his buddies defied God, gravity and their mothers, walking the teeter-totters instead of sitting. Kathy and I soared on swings, singing Perry Como’s hit, “Catch a Falling Star,” as we touched heaven with our toes. Sometimes, we all simply galloped like a wild-pony herd around the playground.
As suppertime approached, Ned and I picked up dandelions like golden coins to take to Mommy. When Daddy’s old blue Chevy turned into the drive, we raced toward it. Daddy stopped and threw the back door open. Ned and I rode home, waving to friends as if in a parade.
Eating soup and johnnycakes, we fought sagging eyelids like an enemy. We wanted to watch Rawhide, with our favorite cowboy, Rowdy (a very young Clint Eastwood). I wanted to sit on Daddy’s shoulders, eat popcorn and comb his wavy, Elvis-black hair. But it had been such a long, wonderful … spring … day … zzzz.
What do you mean, fall asleep? Not me! It’s springtime! That lazy, good-for-nothing sun has finally shown up. I’ve got more to-do items on my list than candles on my last birthday cake: garage to clean, closets to organize. Plus, a new book to write …
But first, I’m going out to play.
Your Extraordinary Ordinary: What childhood spring memories warm your mind?
O Lord, another spectacular sunrise! Amid glorious sherbet-colored clouds, the butter-cake sun shines through dark-chocolate trees … um, sorry, Jesus, dieting is getting to me. But viewing Your generous artistry day after day — OMG, where do we funny little people get off, thinking You aren’t Love?
“Little darling,
it’s been a long cold lonely winter
Little darling, it feels like years since it’s been here
Here comes the sun.”
—The
Beatles
Decades ago, a science book convinced my
brother Ned the sun was a star.
I scoffed. How could the big, round, yellow sun
and white, diamond-chip stars be one and the same? Anybody with a brain could
tell the difference.
Besides, had anybody ever suffered from star burn?
Huh? Huh?
Image by Pexels from Pixabay.
Eventually, my teachers forced me to admit Ned was
right. However, this April, I find myself playing cynic again. Despite
Indiana’s strong evidence to the contrary, scientists insist the sun is still
there.
Whether you believe the scientific or my sensible
view, one important expectation remains: with May’s imminent arrival, here
comes the sun! Let sun rituals begin!
North American ceremonials are less
all-encompassing than ancient Aztecs’. They believed they perpetuated the sun
by sacrificing human hearts. But we do follow the sun’s dictates year after
year — despite protests from dermatologists, who prefer we live in subterranean
caves.
Nope. No ritual is more sacred than sunbathing. Women will pay big bucks for the smallest amount of fabric they’ll wear all year, then don cover-ups and hats. When quarantine’s over, we hope to set up beach umbrellas and tents. We’ll slather ourselves and our kids with gallons of sunblock. A fog of its fragrance, similar to fall’s smoke from burning leaves, will fill the land. All to protect ourselves, at any cost, from the sun, for which we have yearned the past six months.
However, that’s not the only odd chemistry set
in motion by the sun’s advent.
Grill addicts will barbecue every meal outside,
including romaine (which is wrong on so many levels). Picnics will dot the
land. Despite sun worship, everyone calls dibs on shady spots.
All part of the love-hate rituals we keep religiously with the sun’s advent.
Image by Jill Wellington from Pixabay.
We also up our junk food consumption to proper
warm-weather levels. Dieticians, citing the availability of fresh produce, delude
themselves that we will eat healthy.
Seriously? In six decades, I have yet to
encounter a single concession stand that sells carrot sticks. Unless they’re
deep-fried. And dipped in chocolate.
Unfortunately, when the sun gleams through
dirty windows, we sense a moral obligation to wash them. Our cars, too, as the
slush excuse won’t work anymore.
We also fertilize grass we don’t like to mow and bushes
we hate to trim as well as plant flowers we hate to weed.
Amazingly, we don’t avoid these rituals. On a lovely spring
day, we may even embrace them, because here comes the sun, ready or not!
I think we’re ready.
Even if we get star burn.
Image by jplenio from Pixabay.
Your Extraordinary Ordinary: What’s your favorite sunny pastime?
