Sick Day

It was a hot and unpleasant day. The heat stuck to me like a fuzzed dryer sheet, unashamed by the electric snag it had on me. Or perhaps more so like those rascally prickled bunches that traipsing about in the woods and fields will get you. It was damn hot and I was damn uncomfortable.

To make matters worse, my head was pounding. Angry pops of hurt that refused to leave me alone, scraping up against the inner tunneling of my head, filling the gaps with reckless waves of pain.

                                

This is the worst day of my life.

It was early June. School was almost over and there was little to be accomplished in the classrooms. Teachers brought the kids outside to sit in a circle and weave dandelions in the little girls’ hair and catch grasshoppers for the boys. To quiz the group on their freshly-learned vocabulary and create stories with those new words. To laugh and bond and play in the warm shade that the beating sun created with its marriage to the trees. The four walls of the school were forgotten as children laughed the afternoon away under their melting blue ceiling poking through the harbored peeking holes in the branches.

And I was not there.

I lay there on the couch, my eyes barely able to focus on the blinking and flashing VCR. Don Quixote was there atop a plump, smiling ass, his chin crooning up to the heavens as he proudly rode down what should have been the quiet road. But his anthem followed him along his journey, a trot and a kick and a boom and a tra-la-la of adventure song, attributing the notes to his bravery and valor.

I was too uncomfortable to care.

My head lay against a swampy pillow on the couch, a blanket knotted up in a ball at my feet. A sudden surge of frozen air swept over me, causing my spine to curl against my back, a tremor to overtake my frail body. The aching coupled with a moan as I shuffled my feet, capturing the blanket and slid it up toward my arms. I grabbed at the quilted squares, pinks and roses and purples and greens sewn together in an endearing pattern.

I will always associate that blanket with being sick.

And then, a moment of peace. Of wonder. Of calm and of beauty and of perfect medicine.

The household cat—be it Checkers the dark gray and tuft white feline or Buster with the lightened gray coat or Stubby the three-legged cat— jumped up on my hot and cold stomach and nestled himself against me. It was as though he knew I was at the end of the rope, the deepest depth of the pit, the last straw of my sickly camel. He fell into a thunderous purr, brushing his head against my temperature-rising skin.

I fell into slumber, the adventurous chime of Quixote and the happy rhythm of my cat setting my sickened and uncomfortable body to rest.  

Summer Swelter

The weather we have now in Massachusetts brings me back to the sweltering days of summer when the only things I had to worry about were where my water shoes were located and how to find that blackberry bush without anyone following me and getting to all the ripe berries.

You have no idea how fantastic a summer berry bush is. Just behind our Barn was the juiciest and most abundant blackberry bush in all of Granby. Heck, it just might have been the best in all of Western Massachusetts. One summer I had discovered the ripened berries alone.

It was amazing.

That day, I had been pretending that a television camera was following me around, documenting my every move and opinion. We didn't have a television growing up, so, to me, watching television was a great honor-- not to mention actually starring on it. I was just finishing showing my "audience" the art of a pogo stick, when I suddenly remembered that berry bush. Yelping with personal delight, I threw the pogo stick to the ground, and, in a hushed, hoarse whisper, I told my imaginary cameraman:

"Follow me!"

Our Barn, as dilapidated as it was, held mystery and fascination for us Powell kids. If you circle round back the sagging building, you'll see the tall, hallowed phenomenon known as The Silo.  (If you don't know what a Silo is, I'm afraid you have little frame of reference to my childhood.) Just before the Silo was a clutter of trees that swallowed the side of the Barn.  But only one tree was special.

Hidden against her own kind, my Tree stood, anchored to the ground, her swaying branches dancing with her Spirit. Her seeds draped down from the budding wood,  her silken, green hair slipping through her branching fingertips. I felt love for my Tree. She was my caretaker, the shoulder I could cry on when no one else could possibly understand. She held me as I wrote nonsense and dreams in my black-and-white-marble composition notebook. She watched me as I gazed out toward the back fields and then hugged me as I thought of all the things I was going to accomplish in my life. When I climbed up her trunk onto her lap and shoulders and in her arms, I was safe. I was understood. And even though it looked like I was alone, I was not.

My cameraman followed me as I passed my Tree and came to the very back of the Barn. Immediately behind the building and in front of the berry bush was a large pile of decaying wood, old boards and scraps that had been thrown together after countless of farm projects over the years. I was tentative to walk there that day. The previous year, I had fallen victim to a swarm of bees that had hidden quite sneakily beneath a board. I had misstepped, angering them. As a small child, I was blanketed by the buzzing monsters, stung repeatedly, over and over. Had I been allergic, I would have died that day. Just like that little boy in  that movie "My Girl." Tragic.

As I avoided the wood and board pile, I finally approached the blackberry bush. There, on every possible branch, clusters of berries awaited me. Without a bucket to place them in, I began to grab at them, stuffing my mouth with the deliciousness of solitary and fruit.