Futurespring

I love my hammock at this time of the year. In Texas in the summer, you have a very narrow window of temperature that you can hang around outside without being roasted like Peking duck in a shop window, your skin crispy and fats glistening hot, buttery. But in the spring, my backyard is a perfect place to be. The trees are the exact distance apart for hammock stretching, and the dappled shade as you lie in the hammock is punctuated by frequent cool breezes. Today, the trees (live oaks) are shedding their leaves. They do this about twice a year, and as I lie in the hammock, brown and sometimes wrinkled green leaves pelt me now and then. Squirrels race along the fence line between our various properties-- consummate diplomats, they straddle the fence and occasionally scold a passing cat for its neglect of proper boundaries. The trees above are filled with grackles. They make a noise that fits their name perfectly-- a combo of a crackling grate and buzzing whistle. I think that their frequent calls are probably what dinosaurs would have sounded like (only, of course, much louder). They challenge each other, swoop down on an unlucky grasshopper who has drawn too much attention to himself.

The grackles make lewd comments, whistling, as I struggle up and down into the hammock. I am not graceful. But once settled, I am comfortable, content, with my blue and green afghan (the grandma made blanket I wrap around myself when I'm cold or sick and lying on the couch), my soft chenille wrapped pillows under my head. My book is academic, dry theory for the most part. But I diligently pay attention, underline relevant passages. The cordless phone waits next to me for any important calls-- I silence the ringer when it is a telemarketer or charity begging.

My deck daisies nod yellowly in the wind, and the rosemary bush that has been sculpted to look like a Christmas tree occasionally sends its sharp green perfume I associate with Easter roasts and deviled eggs my way.

We live a block away from a neighborhood elementary school, and the kids are outside for recess. I can hear them yell, laughing, chasing. They will be in small groups and large, wheeling like flocks of birds, shifting directions, the occasional nonconformist making a separate "V" of identity before falling back into line behind the leader. My babies kick as if in response to the distant voices of play. They will someday attend that school; I will walk with them the 2 blocks to the front door, them carrying book bags and pencils, perhaps in separate classrooms, perhaps the same. Then, if I am lucky enough to spend a spring day in a hammock, some of those recess voices raised in running, making sweaty spots at the nape of their neck that smell like wet dog or dirty grass after a rainstorm, two of those voices will be ones I love. I will try to pick them out over their peers-- who are somewhere kicking a mother right now, too. I will believe I can hear the timbre of Sean's laugh above the others, of Maia's probably slightly know-it-all, bossy orders to do it this way. If I listen really hard now, I almost know that day already. And perhaps, on that day, I will remember this one, filled with potential and hope and green leaves falling in the wind.