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!