morning thoughts
Many years ago, when my great grandmother came to visit (She was from West Texas/Arizona.) she said, "How can you stand it? It's like walking in a green tunnel. I feel like I'm suffocating." I went to West Texas to visit. The openness took my breath away. "I like them both" I said.
I saw two deer in the woods by the church and wondered awhile at an old tree. I always wonder about old trees. If they could talk, what would they say? How much life and history have they seen!
On the back porch the honeysuckle vines are creeping over everything and blooming beautifully. Fat blue jays fight over the feeder.
When I taught at Pearl (a low income elementary school in town) there was a small patch of woods beside the playground. Whenever I took the kids out to play I would gather flowers. When the honeysuckles were blooming the kids would eat them. (They would suck the juice out.) I would say, "Don't eat the flowers. I want to put them in a vase so the room will smell good." They would say, "They taste good, try it." They would look at me like I was crazy and I would look at them like they were crazy. Then we would laugh and pick honeysuckles.
Thursday
On Thursday night, after a meeting with some environmental activist, I fried some shrimp.
When my grandmother was alive and we would visit her in Galveston she would always fry a plate of fresh shrimp on her old gas stove. (Grandpa Louis was a shrimp boat fisherman.)
When my kids were little we learned to cast net on Tybee Island. We loved it. Mostly we caught shrimp. Together we would cut the head and feet off, peel them, de-vein them, fry them and eat them. Sometimes after that, I would buy shrimp ‘head on' just so we could remember.
Now when I fry shrimp and the kids, who are both taller than me, stand around laughing and waiting to grab them up, I always think of family.
So on Thursday, still thinking of my son's plans to join the army, I fried shrimp.
