Monday, June 28, 2004

Water, water everywhere

I know this is supposed to be a site about the oddities, eccentricities, and specialties of a very unique environment. What it is not supposed to be is a journal of my daily life. I cannot imagine anything much more boring. Of course, when I retell it, I try to offset the boredom with exaggeration. Nevertheless, it is rarely something to write home about. Or to write blog about.

However, I am in the middle of a refurbishing project which is occupying way too much of my time and all of my somewhat limited homeskills. Since that is all I can think of, that is what I will write of.

I tend toward being somewhat … single-minded. Some would say stubborn, but I prefer resolute. I truly believe I should be able to do anything. And I become more than a little frustrated when I cannot. My latest venture is to replace the faucets in my bathroom. Two sets. One is simply incredibly unattractive - having lost all of its shine from years of improper cleaning - and the other really should match; therefore, both need to be changed.
Now, I have already changed the piping under one of the sinks as it was totally rusted through. It took some determination and the invention of new vocabulary, and, at the very last, a man with muscle to tighten the last joint - but, it is installed and not leaking. However, in the process another rusted part was discovered - a part that has to do with the stopper bobbing up and down in the drain when the doohickey is lifted at the top. It broke clean off. No part, no stopper, no using the sink because it will not drain.

Since I am readying the house in preparation to sell, I really need to fix this. I cannot sell a house with dysfunctional parts. There is probably a story in that. (What a metaphor!) But not the one I am telling today. No, today is the story of how the bathroom, bedroom and part of the den came to be flooded.

And that’s it. The whole story. You may fill in the rest however you will. Details are superfluous. I am sitting here now, having mopped and sponged for quite awhile, wondering if it is safe to turn the water back on.

I am alone in this, if one discounts Moose the Beagle and Bella the Cat. No one to run outside, turn the handle and wait for me to yell whether or not to turn it off again. Only me. I would have to schlog out to the outside cutoff, turn it, dash back in, listen for the gush of water, and be prepared to rush back out to the cutoff to turn it the other way. And to be quite honest, I am tired, now. Just that.

Tomorrow’s another day, etc. There is probably some analogy one could make or some irony of water in an already saturated landscape, but I don't have the literary zeal for such ponderings at this point in the story. Make your own. About all I can handle at this particular moment is to wonder how long I can “hold it” - as they say in southern Louisiana.

Thursday, June 24, 2004


Rainy Days and Thursdays Posted by Hello

Wild Life

Just about the time I think I know everything, I learn something new. It’s a good thing. Keeps me humble. This time the new thing had to do with hair I saw growing on the old oak tree. Not hair, actually, but a tiny, green fern. Lots of it. I’ve never seen anything like this before, on my tree or anyone else’s, for that matter; so my first reaction was, understandably, concern.

I am the sort of person who becomes rather obsessive about the living things under my care. I feel personally responsible if anything happens to harm them in any way. And since this was something new, I wondered if it might be akin to a fungus, something harmful and debilitating to the wise, old oak. Yes, I should have known better. I never give myself high marks in logic about those things over which I am highly emotional. What I did do was make a note to find out just what this was invading my tree.

As it happened, while in Lafayette a couple of weeks ago, I had the opportunity to go canoeing with a group led by a noted local naturalist. He had hoped to take a bunch of those less enlightened into the swamps and show us a variety of nesting fowl - wild life, if you will. Unfortunately, those of us in the canoes were wilder than those in the nests. Flocks of fowl flew before us as we canoed our way around that lake, laughing and guffawing and making all manner of inappropriate remarks regarding our inability to guide a canoe and spot critters.

The only creatures we saw were those nested around the area where we put into the water. There were Snowy Egrets and Roseate Spoonbills, feeding nests full of baby birds; a couple of alligators, one of which we got a little too close to, but quickly backed away from when he headed for shore, right in our direction. Yep. We say lots of wild life before we got into those canoes. After that, I’m sorry to say, we were a pretty sorry bunch of bird watchers.

And canoers. One of the group decided all ships should have names. His was “Pinball Wizard,” aptly named for bouncing off every cypress stump in the lake. Ours was “Star Trek” for going “where no man has gone before.” Our leader eventually gave up his attempts to enlighten us. We suspect he may find a new profession altogether.

He did, however, assure me that “Resurrection Fern,” as it is called, is quite normal on the larger trees in our area. It’s an air plant named for its tendency to turn brown and appear to die during dry conditions and then burst forth with full, green fronds again with the first drop of rain. That seems pretty wild to me.


Resurrection Fern Posted by Hello

Saturday, June 19, 2004

Longevity

I saw a dear, old friend at the gas pump today as I was getting fuel for the grass-cutting that I have delayed longer than the optimal ‘one week.’ Old not in the sense of age, as her spirit is and will forever be young -old in terms of longevity of friendship. Maybe because of the moving around so much when I was younger, I don’t have many friends from the days “before Louisiana.” I have my sisters, four of them, who flow in and out of my life, and I have one tried and true friend who has been a part of my life for almost thirty years. He and I marvel at this in our intermittent phone calls and infrequent visits. We are both amazed that we have maintained the closeness, neither of us being particularly adept at the nuances and responsibilities of friendship.

However, this is another thing I have learned in my ’retraining’ for this environment. Families and friends here last for ages and ages. Having been raised in a city in a somewhat nomadic lifestyle, I marvel at that. There is a certain sense of sacredness in knowing the people I interact with every day have known each other since before they were born. Something comforting and at the same time strangely unsettling - to the outsider, at least - that the folks at the 35 year high school reunion quite likely started school together as far back as the first grade.

A trip to the grocery store must always allow for time to visit with the neighbors and friends one will surely meet. I think sometimes about what it would be like to go to the store and never see anyone I know. I have only vague memories of that and am hesitant to choose that way to live, again.

On the other hand, there is an awareness of each other, a degree of knowing, that keeps the outsider forever on the outside. It is not an intentional effort. I have found the people of this area to be warm and welcoming and even surprisingly tolerant. And while they have always shown great kindness, there is too much unshared between us for me to ever feel “one of them.” Or, perhaps there is still too much the eccentric in me.

I do find, nevertheless, a great deal of comfort living here, at the edge of their lives. Only rarely, anymore, do I feel the intruder. And always that is something from within and not from without.

Thursday, June 17, 2004

Swingin'

Summers in Louisiana are not much different from winters, not so much as you would notice unless you had been here for both seasons. Winter is long and wet, with the sort of dampness that gets into your bones and lies there with a chill that just won’t go away. A chill that makes one dread the setting of the evening sun and long for the sweat of summer.

Summers are long and wet, with a humidity that wraps around you like a stuffy, old wool blanket. But it doesn’t start out that way. Before turning downright sultry, summer here starts out with a freshness and a reassurance that one more winter has fallen behind and lighter, brighter days are before us. The sun beats the mildew from the corners where she’s been lurking all winter and exposes her to cleansing light. You begin to feel as though you can take a full breath of air without choking on the mold.

That's just an illusion, of course. One can never inflate the lungs completely in the heaviness of the south Louisiana air. Humidity defines our days and is the gauge by which we discern the good from the bad. I soon learned the subtleties that distinguish days of 100% humidity, and no rain on the horizon, from those of a mere 85.

To fully enjoy my summers here, I soon learned the joys of rising early to sit in the cool of the patio swing, anticipating the slow invasion of the morning sun, lighting up another day; and the pleasantness of dusk after a day in the sun, when life slowed down to sort itself out again.

Those moments, now, for me, are of the nature of bittersweet. I ofte recall my mother, on her too infrequent visits, sitting here early morning, enjoying her coffee with the jays and the wrens and various species of waterfowl. We’d laugh at the acrobatics of the squirrels and the occasional insistence of a red-headed woodpecker. We said very little in those moments, having said too much, already, and having learned, with age, how truly vacuous words can be.

And evenings … well, evenings, too often, are a reminder of the folly of dreaming out loud. My husband and I would sit on that patio swing and discuss the day’s work - what went right, what went wrong. Mostly we made plans to do things differently … tomorrow.

Sometimes tomorrow never comes. Now, I cannot sit here without some sense of their presence and their absence and more than a little sense of regret. I don’t know if even the brightest summer sun can chase away all the shadows of winter.


"the cypress swing" Posted by Hello

Wednesday, June 16, 2004

Summer Patterns

It was early summer, June in fact, when I unloaded the truck, hauled the boxes up the stairs and first looked out the kitchen window. I saw green. Lots of green. Green and bayou and shimmering air and the flicker of sunlight through the leaves. I had moved into an upscale tree house. Upscale not because the apartment was new, with the latest appliances, gewgaws and gimcracks - upscale because it was quite comfortable and livable and inviting. And protected by nature’s own canopy. Yes, this could be home.

The apartment sat right there on Bayou Lafourche, “the longest street in the world” or at least in America, with trees hugging the banks and shading our lives. I quickly learned the local pronunciation of “by-yoo”, that the trees growing in the water were cypress and humidity dripped from every stem, leaf and over-hanging branch. And while I respected the warnings of wildlife and ‘gators, serenity was overwhelming.

I had never for once considered that southern Louisiana is sub-tropical nor what that might mean. What it meant was rain and lots of it. That first June, I remember, it rained everyday, starting about 3 o'clock in the afternoon and ending about 5. If you had no pressing appointments that demanded obsessive attention to detail, you could have set your watch by it. I did learn pretty quickly to arrange my life around the afternoon rains.

Clothes drying, grass cutting, errand running was all scheduled around the rain. Although Memphis had its own fair share of the wet stuff, I recall “up north” we mostly waited it out. If there were things to do - other than going to work - that required being out in the elements, we simply waited another day to do them. Here, if one waited, things would never get done. It took me some time - years, actually - but I have now grown accustomed to working around rather than waiting out the rain.

Summer is a special challenge, beginning with the early spring rains that accompany the northern snow thaws, we anticipate frequent flooding. Not here, right where I am. My bank is part of the natural levee that keeps Bayou Lafourche in her place. But by the time the summer rains come full force in June, the land is so water-soaked there is just no where else for all that rain to go. Roads flood and yards flood, and some of the lakes get real impatient with their own space and push on over the levees and into the homes of those folks who love where they are too much to ever move. So they get out the sandbags and the determination, and they just stick it out.

And when the sun breaks through the dark storm clouds, they mop up, sweep out and get ready for the next one. It is this, this strength of determination that I saw first in the faces of the Cajun people. The rain may come and batter the hell out of the land and the homes and everything they have worked for, but the rain cannot beat their spirit. Their jaw is set and their focus forward, and they rise above the high water mark.

And all this excess humidity is great for the complexion!

Tuesday, June 15, 2004

Tomorrow ...

... and the rains came.


"If I could bottle the smell of cypress ..." Posted by Hello