Oklahoma Dreaming: Wednesday Morning
by Donna Schoenkopf
I’m sitting on my couch in my living area, looking out of my sliding glass doors, then out over the deck Annie and I just built, and down the hill about three quarters of the way to the pond, when my eye stops at the bright yellow ear of corn hanging from the branch of an oak tree on its orange yarn rope. It twirls this way and that, swinging out occasionally as the wind gusts up.
It was put there by my blond and blue-eyed nephew, Tom. Tom climbed the oak last Sunday afternoon, after the barbeque.
The barbeque was to honor my lovely and talented daughter, Rebecca, who drove from Los Angeles to me, here in Tecumseh, because she promised me she would.
I love her so much my heart squeezes into a plump ball of love whenever I think of her.
But this story is about Tom.
He did it (climbed the oak tree) in nothing flat, one-handed, with the corn and yarn rope in the other hand. The corn is for the birds and squirrels.
And to charm the wandering eye.
Tom is fifteen. He is tall and lean. He is learning Bob Dylan’s “Desolation Row” on his ancient and treasured family guitar. He has tied a sky blue bandana around his forehead to keep his long blond hair from falling into his eyes. He made that bandana, and the tee shirt which matches it. Both have clouds and air gracefully imprinted on the cotton.
He looks like The Prince of Sky.
Because he had been outside leaping up trees in a single bound, and leaping down them in the same way, and because he and his brother Alex and cousin Jared and cousin Jimmy all lit out for parts unknown and came back (at least Jimmy did) with bramble scratches all over their legs, I played Nat King Cole’s “Nature Boy” song for Tom.
I forgot how stringy it was. Swirls of violins. There was a confused but definitely “My Aunt Donna MUST know what she’s doing by asking me to listen to this” kind of look on his face.
(It was OK. But I really must preview stuff before I go making people watch or listen to something. SOMETIMES I have a really out of whack memory of things.)
It’s Wednesday morning. I don’t have to work. Nobody has called me to sub.
It is delicious here. I cannot tell you the feeling in me right now.
But I’ll try.
Remember the song from the Moody Blues, “Tuesday Afternoon”? It’s exactly like that.
This could last for a thousand years.
Time stands still.
No, it’s not time that stands still. It is I. I am feeling, seeing, listening to the world outside myself and the world exists before me in a timeless state. We are all just “being” together.
Peaceful, beautiful, everything is so absolutely perfect. The deck glows with morning sun. The chickadee hops. The purple wildflowers turn their lovely faces toward the sun. The grass bends eastward, pushed by the wind.
Two hawks circle effortlessly.
I see the tips of branches at the tops of trees turning green. The cottonwood tree has leaf buds on the ends of every branch.
The grass glows with chlorophyll and snakes its tendrils across the red clay.
Che the Cat jumps after a grasshopper. The morning sun shines on his coat.
I sip my morning coffee. It is warm and rich and sweet.
Two small yellow butterflies dance in a spiral around each other.
Grass pokes up between the boards of the deck like jagged little knives.
The air is as soft as silk.
The sounds are soft and subtle ... wind gusts whistle, grass rustles, bird calls twitter and warble from the tree tops, the turkeys gobble in the forest, a cow moos lonesome down in the meadow, far, far away.
And the corn cob twirls and sways in the breeze.
donna@fourstory.org
Comments
Ahhhhh, a story about nothing.....and everything. Very nice. Reminded me of watching an episode of Seinfeld.
2009-04-22 by Betsy