ducks

"ducks!" yells the sweetie as we pull into a parking space at the local grocery store. i would like to say my brain and body work together well enough that i hit the floor of the car as soon as i hear his voice. but no. the lack of brain/body coordination, coupled with a knowledge that the sweetie doesn't fumble his words, means i look up, expecting to see a flock of birds overhead.

i should explain that i'm no stranger to wildlife, especially large bird wildlife. i can no more explain why the thought of a duck nearby thrills me than i can explain why i like old buttons or horseradish. they are common enough but somehow worth having. we get out of the car and there on the pavement between us and the store are twenty or so fat ducks, some green headed, all orange footed. a wonderful waddling mass. and more fall from the sky all around us like those huge wet clumps of snow, landing on hidden feet then rolling forward like they're slamming on their brakes too hard. crash landings. not like when they land on water at all. or maybe exactly like that, which is why it looks so clownish on pavement.

we walk toward the front door of the store and forty ducks close in on us the way cowboys do in showdowns, wide of stance and unafraid. the sweetie holds out a hand, pretends to have food. they swarm. i worry what they will do when they find him foodless. i think of the phrase pecked to death by ducks. i'm sure it is a very slow process and i figure i can step in and rescue him if it comes to that. but there are these forty little feather covered animals here, wild things coming right out of the sky and wanting our attention. we wade through the ducks to do our little bit of shopping and i head next door to another store and then meet the sweetie outside.

i think the ducks will be waiting for me in the parking lot and am more than a little surprised they are not. they were, the sweetie tells me, but a little girl chased them all off. for a minute i think she is awful. then i think about what it must have been like to run screaming and flapping into that mess of forty ducks, how it felt when all that wind whipped up, all those bodies lifted and flew. i would have done exactly the same thing.

socks

socks are knit on big fat lion brand yarn called amazing. the color scheme, a self striping blue and gray, is called olympia. the pattern is a sock pattern i found online called "simplest sock pattern ever". and it is.

we are sitting in the vet's office, the sweetie and me. we are waiting for an x-ray of the small dog who may or may not have tangled up his skeleton on a trip through the car wash last week. he hates the car wash, hates it enough to fling his whole body, harnessed and seatbelted, furiously at the water showering against the windows. over and over. snarling. so we are waiting. the sweetie is leafing through books about dogs and i am knitting.

a woman sitting on the same long bench a space or two down from us asks me what i'm making. "pants," i tell her. "for a baby." i steel myself against the inevitable. a woman whose last foray into childbirth was long enough ago she remembers her own children as springing fullgrown from her body. size 12 husky. i wait for her to say what every single one of them says. "a human baby? that will never be big enough for a human baby. maybe it's for a dog." they say this with a snicker, the women who have had children and should know how tiny a human baby is when it first breathes. they always say this. so i tense up, waiting for her to tell me i'm wasting my time. but instead she says, cheerily, "i knit socks."

this is fantastic. i have just learned to knit socks. certainly i have made socks in the past, just like i was at the wheel of a car long before i had a driver's license. but there is a difference between doing something once and knowing how to do something. so i am particularly proud of myself and gush on about how i've just mastered the art of sock making, how much i love making them. she extends her foot a bit, pulls up a pant leg and shows a delicate, ornately stitched sock. i can tell from where i sit it is knit on the tiniest needles in the world. there are millions of stitches and endless secrets in these things. "i make all my own socks!" she says proudly. i am envious. she knows it. she is basking in the glory of the jealousy of another knitter. "i would love to make all my own socks," i say. but i am proud of myself for learning something new and i tell my secret, how i managed to tolerate all those stitches. "i love knitting them up fast so i use chunky yarn on big needles!"

and the needle drags itself across the record in an agonizing screech. she looks at me like i smell bad. she looks at me like i've said an awful word. now, for most of you this means nothing, but if you knit you know there's something called sock yarn. that's right. yarn just for making socks. it's skinny. delicate. the thickness of dental floss or the hair of an angel. think fine print in yarn form. it requires tiny needles and endless stitching. i have just admitted to filling up one of those dotted-lined big chief tablets with the scribblings of the extra fat crayons and then passing it off as a painstakingly crafted novel. i am a charlatan. i am a liar. i am not a knitter of socks. i am a shame.

but this morning early i put on my socks and then put on mary janes so the variegated yarn, the fat, fat yarn in big looping stitches, is clearly visible. i stroll proudly in to work and wave my feet around at every teacher i see. they are not knitters. they are not sock snobs or yarn snobs. and they say exactly what they should, what i want to hear. "those are awesome socks!" and no matter what that miserable woman with the tiny needles and anemic yarn says, i love my socks and will make more. simple and loopy and fat like kindergarten crayon on a big chief.

6am, 5 degrees

you think you will feel it right away. that there's a distinct and painful difference between temperatures on the fahrenheit scale with two numbers, such as 75 or 23, and temperatures with only one number. for instance, 5. you think your soul will freeze when you step into that sort of atmosphere. you think birds will shatter and fall from the sky and trees will split their limbs open from the pain of it. you think you will know.

this is not what happens at all. you step outside and the morning is just starting to push up from the ground. you can see that long strip of it at the horizon, clinging there, catching its breath before struggling all the way up. it is more difficult cold mornings for that weak paleness to accomplish anything. the five am sky is so much darker and so much heavier.

but the sun crawls up over the lip of the world a little and you are up and the small dog is running on shivering toes through the tire track in the driveway to find a space in the snow packed low enough to pee on. you are wrapped in wool, in alpaca, hat, sweater, scarf, mittens. your boots are surprisingly soundless. you wait for the cold to slither into your nose and grab you by the brain and squeeze. you wait. the dog searches for just the right spot and you realize there must be some horrible mathematical computation going on in his head figuring out where where where. seconds go by. your lungs keep breathing. you
are suspicious of this. can humans really breathe in 5 degrees and live to tell about it? you wonder about the potential for brain damage. like from breathing paint fumes. there must be a name for this. brain freeze has been taken by the slurpee/icee drinking community. you think something greek. something latin. cerebellum frigidus. this will not catch on. you know it but consider trying anyway.

instead of anything, nothing happens. the dog finally figures out his math problem and trots back toward the door. your lungs are warm and airy. your brain remains unfrozen. the sun pours out a pinky orange warmth that does not reach you but you are glad for the attempt. you have not been out long. you go inside, make some tea, sit in front of the fire. the temperature outside has dropped since you came in. 2.6. you will wait, you think, for the minus degrees.

noon

we have ourselves a very nice noon siren here in arkville. as far as we can tell, it wails for a minute right at noon on saturdays and weekdays, resting on sundays. there are plenty of forms of speculation as to why small towns have noon whistles or sirens but because ours sits right on top of the volunteer fire station i can see from the living room window, i'm going to toss out the idea that it's the same siren that calls the firemen to a fire and that its noon howling is some sort of practice, keeping the town sure always that the siren is working and keeping folks aware of what it sounds like when there's something wrong.

we also have a small dachshund who, much to the chagrin of the sweetie, has never paid much attention to the noon siren. you see, when the sweetie was a child he had a longsuffering dachshund named sammy, a dog who survived falls downstairs, a rattlesnake bite and the dangerous childhoods of two boys some might have called a bit wild. and this dog sammy was a howler. hounds in general are howlers, bayers, animals with keen ears and a strong desire to communicate over great lonely distances, to say, "i can hear you and i am here." so the sweetie and the small brown dog have been practicing because evidently this dog's interest in communication has lately been limited to barking. barking is not the same as howling at all. it is short, sharp, not so sustained. the sound doesn't carry as far as a howl because there's no need. it is more "i can bite you because i am right here." not the same at all.

the sweetie has faith that all hounds howl and so when the noon siren begins the sweetie begins. howling. pitched high to match the siren and the likely sound of a low dog with a small chest cavity. and the small dog begins. he is unsure at first, barks a bit, then flings his head back and lets loose the most pitiful, most plaintive cry in the world. the siren howls. the sweetie howls. the dog howls. for a full minute those three voices declare the most important thing. i am here. i am here. i am here.

veterans scooter show

he is asleep when i get on the bus. it is not terribly crowded but i am still standing by him awhile before i notice him. well, at first i do not notice him at all. i notice the palm trees. and the soldiers. small men in camouflage posed variously with weapons. there is an olive drab helicopter hovering above them, secured there with a slender stick. there is an american flag waving over the whole scene. this is world war two. i know because i recognize world war two when i see it but also because the platform is labeled. world war two. the platform the soldiers stand and crouch on is open in the center and the trunk of a very large elephant pokes up though it, the tip of the trunk resting near a small metal bell. the elephant itself is below the platform, painted black. it is wearing a blanket of some sort, the kind of thing folks in circuses drape over elephants before they put those seats on them. the blanket says "veterans scooter show is the greatest show on earth". indeed.

now would be a good time to explain this whole contraption, the elephant with world war two hovering above and around its trunk, is in front of and between the handlebars of a scooter, the sort folks use when they have a tough time getting around but feel that wheelchairs might cramp their style. a scooter is, well, sassy to some. this scooter is maroon and sits across from the back door of the bus against the folded up seats hinged for just this sort of thing. there are seatbelts on the floor of the bus to lash wheelchairs into something like stability during the ride but this scooter is not fastened down. it would probably be foolish to try to contain the thing in that manner anyway.

it is plastered with important information. a black and white photo of fdr, photocopied over a few times to graininess, when he was younger, handsomish, firm-jawed and waiting, with the look of a man who can lead people into or out of anything. next to him on the same sheet of paper are the words "we fear no one. the only thing we have to fear is fear itself". the whole thing together has some sort of plastic coating, not quite shrinkwrap but not lamination, either. under roosevelt is a red, white and blue poster with a muscular ship plowing through waves, proclaiming "the u.s. navy is looking for you". a hand points out of the image at me just in case i'm not sure who it's talking to. i worry about the navy if this is true.

"i have a dream" spreads across the right curve of the back bumper. the center of the bumper thanks patton for his courage and bravery. the back of the seat has, among other things, a photo of nimitz. the admiral, not the ship. he is labeled. everything is labeled. there is a navy man bumper sticker nearby. hanging from the right front handle bar is a large image of jesus with light coming from inside him, from his heart. he is glowing in the middle of the words "in god we trust". near jesus, attached to the black wicker-plastic basket resting under the elephant, is obama proclaiming "i am the 44th president of the u.s."

the man on the scooter sleeps with his face down, a hood over his head. he wakes up when the bus lurches to a stop under the f train, looks around, then drops his head back down. i see his face in that quick moment when he opens his eyes. he is not a veteran of world war two. he is plenty old enough to claim most any other exploit but he simply isn't old enough for this. there is no way to know why this man, sleeping on his scooter in the back of an early morning bus, is so chaotically captivated by a time he can't possibly remember. but it is easy to tell that veterans scooter show is the greatest show on earth.