Bug of the Year

There’s a dominant bug every summer. Last year it was stick insects. They were everywhere. If you put your hand on an outdoor chair or railing without checking first, your palm would land on a stick bug.

This year we thought it was going to be gnats. They came at our eyes and buzzed into our ears, leaving us foolishly waving at our faces. They got caught in our sweat and swam around in our dents and wrinkles, which tickled or stung, depending on the desperation level of the gnat. But as June aged and a bit of rain passed through, the gnats quit aiming for our moist orifices and we weren’t unhappy about that; though their retreat left room for the more predominant miscreants: Flies. I’m looking at one resting on the wall in front of me right now. We open the door to go out and a fly buzzes in. We come inside and a fly hovers along behind. I pause at the kitchen sink to put a few glasses in the dishwasher and four flies rise up, indignant that I’ve disturbed them at their leisure.

Flies. They’re annoying and I don’t like ’em. Once, many years ago, one of them buzzed lugubriously around my head and shoulders. So heavy and sluggish was it that when it landed on the kitchen table it occurred to me that I might be able squash it with my bare hand. Why I thought that’d be an interesting achievement I do not know. But reach out I did, and squash it I did. The wet body beneath my palm felt gross and when I pulled my hand away, the black carcus was covered with writhing maggots.

Excuse me. I must step away for a minute to wash my hands. Okay, I’m back.

When I was about twelve my father finished the addition he’d been building on to the back of our house. Instead of a cramped and squatty Craftsman-style three-bedroom home, we now had an extended living room with a slate floor, a fireplace with a broad hearth, an upstairs, and a basement. A household comprised of introverts, we used the space to put as much distance between us as we could. My older sister claimed the upper floor of the addition and I claimed the basement, which was dark and dank and cool even in August when the heat caused every plant and beast to long for death. From the outside, the new portion of the house loomed behind the original construction like an ill-conceived geometry project, but on the inside it was lovely.

My living area was composed of two large squares—one where I slept, read, and practiced my flute, which I did for hours every day; and considering the low ceiling and brick walls, the acoustics caused any grouping of notes to echo magnificently, which made it easy to fool myself into believing that I was indeed a magnificent flute player. And the other room was an open area in which I arranged a green leather chair and ottoman to face an old black-and-white television. During my first summer downstairs I painted alternate colors on the descending steps—red, gray, and light blue; and I painted the walls pink and the furniture red. It looked better than it sounds.

From the time my sister moved above and I moved below we spent very little time as a family. We were all hunched in our own remote chambers, going about our business in our separate paradises and communicating very little. For me, this was great. None of us got along all that well and developing far away from the parents’ watchful eyes and constant judgement gave me a freedom that I deeply appreciated.

I got off track. Bugs. As you can imagine, when it was a hundred degrees outside I wasn’t the only creature who found the pleasant temperatures underground to be delightful. All manner of bugs made their way to my sunken abode. Primarily spiders and crickets.

While technically spiders aren’t insects, they fit my personal definition, which is any creature that’s small, scary, and void of intelligence. My relationship with the spiders was convivial. Their corner webs caught smaller bugs like sowbugs, silverfish, and pill bugs. They were respectful, polite, and industrious, so I let them be.

What I came to loathe were crickets. In my resonant underground lair, the chirp of a single cricket was deafening—and for crickets, chirping is an all-night thing. From mid-June through mid-October I was robbed of my sleep on a nightly basis. When a body’s tired, battling crickets is frustrating and enraging. At first chirp I’d leap out of bed, grab the nearby can of bug spray, and then, due to the reverberance, be unable to pinpoint where the sound was coming from. The cricket’s battle technique was to crouch beneath the bed or behind the dresser until it was ready to hop out and make me scream; and then, as I sprayed half a can of poison on it, jump at my frightened legs until it died. It could take me as long as a half-hour to put a cricket down, at which point I’d pull out my flute and, making hyperbolical use of the lower register, play “Poor Jud is Dead,” the ironically mournful dirge from Oklahoma, dedicated to a man whom no one loved. Then I returned to my slumbers.

A spider is not an insect, but it kind of is.

This is a dead fly. If you’re a fly and you come into my house, this is how you’ll end up.

This is a worm, which is most definitely not a bug, but it meets my criteria.

Things to Think About

It’s irksome when I find myself in a position of having to depend on someone to do what they said they’d do. If the AC is leaking and the guy says he’ll come fix it, then he should come. But he doesn’t. My disappointment becomes anger and puts me on a path of disbelief in the credibility of others.

So on this subject I give myself a talking-to. “You can decide to trust or not to trust,” is what I tell myself. “It’s better to believe in others and be let down than not to believe in others at all.” This philosophy has shown that approximately half the people I come across do what they say they’ll do.  

Another issue requiring trust and belief concerns labels. For instance, if I buy free-range eggs, I take this to mean that hens are laying their eggs wherever and whenever the urge demands—beneath porches or shrubs, in hidden corners, or behind the shed. Is a caretaker following the chickens around, collecting eggs as they’re laid, and marking each egg’s appearance on a calendar, or do the eggs go undiscovered in the tall weeds for months? Under these circumstances, how can I know if the sell-by date is accurate?

When it comes to religious trust or, as it’s known in the ecclesiastic arena, faith, I channel my mother. I remember an incident when she decided to cover a splintery old table with contact paper. Her plan was to make the surface smooth so she could use it for cutting fabric. I was in her vicinity, but too young to be helpful. The project didn’t go well. The sticky side of the paper stuck to her hands but wouldn’t stick to the rough surface, and it was so tightly rolled that it seemed to be ruled by an uncooperative spirit. She pulled the paper from the roll and tried to press it flat, but no matter how diligently she adjusted and straightened, fifteen minutes after she began, the contact paper was stuck to itself and centered on the table in a nightmarish wad, which she gathered up and stuffed into the nearby wastebasket. Then she remeasured and cut and once again attempted to cover the table—and the same thing happened.

“I’ve done all I can,” she said, red-faced and frustrated as she stuffed the newest mess in the trash. “It’s in God’s hands now.”

I was around seven, old enough to know that God wasn’t going to descend from his heavenly perch and put the contact paper on the table—although “in God’s hands” was a thing she said often, leaving everything from a lost sock to the sick cat in the hands of God. And her act of putting everything in God’s hands irritated my father, who felt that only the helpless and uneducated put trust in an invisible being.

When David and I lived in Cairo I pondered faith in the Islamic culture. The Egyptians draped themselves in it—Insha’allah. If Allah wills. Every Muslim I knew said it at least ten times a day. It was both a phrase of intent and an excuse—I plan to deliver your husband’s shirts on Wednesday, but it’s up to Allah, not me, whether or not that happens. It was a land of no promises, ever. How easy their faith made their lives. If Allah is in charge of everything, why worry? In fact, why do anything? What I did observe was that these people were remarkably happy. Well, why wouldn’t they be if they never had to take responsibility or meet a deadline?

A few years later, having returned to the states, I joined a Christian women’s group, and one of the members held to the Muslim belief of living by faith alone. Blithely she coasted through her days; no dwelling on accomplishments for her. She signed up for a committee position, then backed out the next day. She volunteered to take dinner to a bereaved widow, but didn’t get it done. She cadged rides to meetings and outings and sat back and watched other women chip in for lunch while she left her wallet in her purse. What I couldn’t understand was everyone’s acceptance of her behavior. Nobody ever said a disapproving or antagonistic word; they simply let it slide, including her in every activity, and treating her as if she were a contributing member of the group. Thinking that maybe they knew something I didn’t, I questioned one of the other women.

“I don’t know why she’s undependable and never pays her fair share,” was the woman’s response. “She’s far from poor and she has no mental issues. But whatever’s going on with her, it’s our duty as Christians to love her as she is.”

How pious. I took the issue to David.

“Shouldn’t Christians meet their responsibilities?” I asked. “Shouldn’t they be a help rather than an imposition? What’s Christian about mooching?”

“Christians like to do things for others and be generous. So maybe she’s doing her part by giving them someone to take care of and be generous to.”

“I get the part about the other women accepting her for who she is, but how could she not know that she’s taking advantage?”

“Maybe she sees what you other women do for her as God’s provision.”

“But it’s not God providing, it’s her friends and neighbors.”

“Think about what you just said.”

I did think about it, and I pictured a world where every human on the planet played with their toes as they waited for God to provide.

I’m obviously running low on pictures.

For your joy, here’s a picture of our granddaughter, Clementine. Isn’t she a cutie?

The Buick

The keys to my mother’s car, a ’61 Buick Le Sabre, were handed to me on my sixteenth birthday. And to replace it, my mother slid in behind the wheel of a Dodge Charger with a racing stripe. Every guy in the neighborhood coveted it. I was disappointed in and ungrateful for the old Buick, though it wasn’t long before I grew to love it. After all, who doesn’t love their first taste of freedom?

As to the LeSabre, it was a four-door sedan, platinum with front-pointing fenders that were typical at that time. It had a floating feel to it which caused me to name it The Land Yacht. When I went through a dip it would rock forward and back, forward and back. Most unusual was that the dash information was reflected in a mirror—a whimsical design.

Most of my friends didn’t have cars and I never knew why—could their parents not afford one? Did their parents think them too irresponsible? My parents’ reasoning on the matter was that I needed to learn to be responsible for getting myself to my own activities. I was in the band and orchestra, which meant concerts, competitions, and football games that always went late; and because of this full calendar, I suspected that the real reason they gave me the car was that they were fed up with waiting for me in dark parking lots.

Though, as bad timing would have it, between ’72 and ’73 the price of gas jumped from fifty-seven cents a gallon to a dollar fifty-seven a gallon. And that old Buick got eight miles to the gallon. My parents paid for gas for me to get to school and return home. I picked friends up on the way to school and took them home after. Also, I would drive friends by their crushes’ houses as they dreamily hoped for a sighting. The driver’s seat was roomy and I’d pull my foot up and prop up my left knee, wrap my arm around it, and palm the wheel with my right hand; windows down, top forty on the radio, living in the moment.

I constantly badgered my passengers for gas money, at which point, they pretended to be deaf. And this taught me another reason why parents should give their sixteen-year-old a car—to keep their children from becoming bums.

In 1973 the legal drinking age was lowered from twenty-one to eighteen. This was due to a conflation of war and logic—war because eighteen-year-olds were being drafted; and logic because, well, if eighteen-year-olds could be sent off to Vietnam and put in a situation where they were forced to kill or be killed, they should be considered old enough to drink.  

I turned eighteen during November of my senior year in high school and, as this was Amarillo and there was nothing better to do, my friends and I thought, well, we might as well drive around and drink. It was an expected progression that my car became the drinking car and I became the drinking driver.

Go ahead, shake your head in disapproval. Yet believe me when I tell you, I was not considered wild or rebellious or unruly in any way. In fact, I was quiet and obedient. I made many of my own clothes. I played my flute well and I completed my school assignments.

The times were different, that’s all. We drank. We cruised bars, bought six packs, and drove around. We attended drinking parties in the city’s parks and in Palo Duro Canyon.

Luckily for me, during the whole of my teenage years, my parents were fixated on my older sister who was all drama all the time. They seemed not to notice when I rolled in at two in the morning, staggered into the house, fell into bed, and then got up at six to get ready for orchestra practice at seven-thirty.

Only a single time did my father raise the issue.

“Jennifer,” he said. “Drinking is legal and so this is allowed, but putting alcohol into the hands of children was a reckless thing for our government to do.”

What was I to make of this? He’d given me permission, while, at the same time, criticizing the government, which he did daily.

One time, as my friends and I were making our way from one bar to another, I ran the red light in front of the police station. Another time I went the wrong way on a one-way street for the whole length of downtown. And one morning, as I was getting ready for school, my father asked where my car was. I didn’t know. I certainly didn’t remember driving home the night before. Panicked, I raced to the front window—and there was the Buick, right where it should be. “I got you,” he sang, gleeful at having proven a fool to be a fool.

This was when there were no broken-hearted mothers to point out the dangers of drinking while driving. It would be four years before MADD was formed. And when they came along the effect was intense and immediate. The drinking age was raised to nineteen, and then, five years later, back to twenty-one. And the penalties for DUI became prohibitively stiff. Drinking and driving was so politically incorrect that no one dare do it anymore, which was for the best. But still, it was senior year, a good year to be numb.

Remember this?

Sometimes I Go to London

The O2 is an event venue in London. It will be hosting Elton John’s final show at the end of May. It’s a massive structure—an oval white dome with yellow arms that are spaced around the rim and reach upward and outward at seventy-degree angles. I wonder at the intent of the design. Conceived in its creator’s mind, hours spent dreaming of it, visualizing it, sketching it, selling the concept. Big money poured into its making. Is it supposed to be attractive, innovative, quirky, functional? Eye-catching would be my guess, and if that’s the case it’s met the expectation.

I can see it from the window of my son and his wife’s flat, where I’ve come for no other reason than to spend time with my granddaughter, Clementine, who’s eight months old and adorable.

Sam suggests that we go see what’s happening at the O2. Not only is it a concert/sports arena, it also contains a mall, which unsurprisingly holds no surprises. What it does offer is an indoor walk on a rainy day, the energy that passes through a crowd, and lights and loud passing conversations to distract Clem, who’s happy in her stroller until suddenly she isn’t.

The next day, another outing. This time to the city center of Greenwich, home to the Old Royal Naval College and Greenwich Park, which is home to the Royal Observatory and crossed by the Greenwich Prime Meridian. Before going to the park we have lunch at a pub that seems to be a baby hub. At every table parents cater to their newborns and toddlers while, at the same time, managing to feed themselves and visit with the surrounding adults, who also have little ones. I find hanging with the thirty-somethings to be enlightening. For one thing, fathers are more involved with their offspring than they were when my generation was raising kids. But wait a minute, honing in on the dynamic, I see that the majority of the mothers have their eyes on their phones while the fathers manage the children. Based on my memories of being a young mother, I’m critical of the women—pay attention to your babies, your husband, your family. Be present!

On the other hand, perhaps this is daddy/baby bonding time and the wives have come along in case something comes up that the father can’t manage. What was I doing, judging? I have no way of knowing the truth of the matter unless I ask—and approaching one of these couples or groups and asking the mothers why they’re not participating, well, that’s not going to happen. Anyway, interesting.

After lunch, on the way to the park, we make our way through a wondrous outdoor market with booths offering artistic wares, like handmade cards, pashminas, jewelry, and muffins. On the periphery of the temporaries are more permanent retail businesses, and the window of one of these shops displays shoes with colorful finishes as opposed to shades of brown or black. I love shoes that offer variety. Going inside, I select an attractive pair of sandals that’re speckled with dots of red, green, blue, and yellow. I turn them upside down to get a gander at the price. A hundred and nine pounds! They’re awfully cute, and probably very comfortable. If we were talking dollars, I’d try them on and possibly buy them. In pounds, I walk away.

Greenwich Park is lovely. I’ve been here before, so this isn’t anything new, just a revisit to the vast green and hilly space along with a thousand other people on a bank holiday.

Before returning to the flat, we need to pick up some groceries, so we stop by Sainsbury’s, where I find the method of charging and paying to be tech-advanced—or maybe it isn’t; maybe it’s just that we’re not so cutting-edge in Marble Falls. As we enter, Sam picks up a scanning wand, and registers with an app on his phone. Then, after he selects an item, he scans it and puts it into his shopping bag. When he’s finished gathering, he goes to the self-checkout, enters the wand, and is given the total. So, scan as you go, bag as you go. No unnecessary transferring of items in and out of a cart. I do, however, see more opportunity for theft in this method. A person could simply not scan every item that goes in the bag. There seems to be a lot of trusting the customer.

The day after, a forest walk in Joyden’s Park in Bexley. Over time I’ve forgotten how much work it is slinging a baby in and out of a car, in and out of a stroller, how consuming a baby’s moods and needs can be. Taking this tiny being anywhere is a strenuous dance.

The trails of the park lead us over bumpy rocks and through slushy mud, but the pram is sturdy. For the first half of the walk the pram’s cover is down as Clem sleeps. Then, about twenty minutes in, we meet an elderly couple whose eyes light up when they see the pram. Depending on canes and leaning into one another for extra support, they slowly approach and come to a stop beside the pram. When they notice the cover, they turn impassive expressions upon Sam. After a few awkward seconds (Who are these people? Why are they stopping by our baby?) he grasps what’s expected of him and raises the cover. Surprised by the sunlight in her eyes, Clem blinks a few times, then peers up at the strangers who, of course, are stunned by her perfection.

On the streets of Greenwich.

You can see the pokey up things and the dome of the O2.

Darling Clementine!