It Must Be Spring

Golly. Yesterday's post was so grim. Sorry. Really. I don't know what came over me.
But today's another day and I'm not thinking about death as I sit on my back porch, the dogwood by the train track still in full-bloom glory shining through the mist.
It's spring here for sure and the mosquitoes are back in full and the last few nights I've heard the deepest rumbling chorus of frogs in the swamp behind us. It SOUNDS like they've got enough members in that men's choir to eat every mosquito on earth but I guess they don't because every night before bed my husband spends at least ten minutes, jumping around the room with a folded-up newspaper whacking the hell out of the ones on the wall who have crept in and are waiting to suck our blood as we sleep.
Last night he got so sprightly with that newspaper that the smallest dog, Zeke, ran out of the room and hid in the hallway, thinking that surely the giant man would come after him next.
Ah- the rituals of spring. The birds mate, the flowers bloom, the goats next door give birth and my husband whacks mosquitoes.
It's all good.
The wedding is now only ten days away and I'll say it again- we are not ready. I still haven't bought shoes. At the bridal shower, I told my daughter's future mother-in-law that if she went barefoot, I would too.
I believe she thought I was joking.
But no, I wasn't. I was drinking, however. Which doesn't negate the fact that I was trying to broker a no-shoes deal for real.
Of course shoes aren't the only things we haven't gotten yet, but we're getting there. My second-oldest child who is a bridesmaid just found her dress yesterday. I made the mistake of calling her and asking if she had a glue gun while she was shopping for the dress. We needed the glue gun for a whole different project that Lily was coming out to work on that night which involved one-hundred flower pots, ribbons, and heart charms.
"No, I don't have a glue gun!" my daughter said with a bit more hysteria in her voice than lack of a glue gun might require.
I made the mistake of asking if she could go buy one and she said (screamed), "Yes, yes! I can go buy a glue gun!"
"Honey. You sound stressed out," I said. "Are you okay?"
"No. I AM stressed out. And you are stressing me out more!"
For this child, that was like a full-on-breakdown Mama cussin' but it just tickled me that she'd come back at me the way she'd done.
"It's okay," I reassured her. "Don't worry. We'll get along without it."
"Okay!" she said (screamed).
She called me back about a half hour later to apologize.
"I'm so sorry. I'd been trying on dresses for three and a half hours and..."
"Say no more," I said. "I'm surprised you didn't reach through the phone and rip my throat out."
And we laughed and I pondered the way this wedding has got every one of us caught up in the whirlwind of planning and execution and if we don't keep a sense of humor about it, we're all going down.
So Lily and her man came out last night and I fed them and they finished up the flower-pot project and then my husband and her almost-husband went outside and kicked the bamboo which is another spring ritual. We have some terrible-bad bamboo and if you don't kick those new sprouts coming up they will turn into fourteen foot stalks overnight. It's like a horror movie.
I'm really developing a huge respect for this fella, this man Lily's marrying. He ties bows on flower pots and he kicks the bamboo and he really, really loves my daughter and they're being so pragmatic about plans for buying a house in a good school zone and besides that, he has really pretty eyes, sort of like Elvis and maybe I'll get a grandchild with eyes like that.
It's spring. We're having a wedding. Some of us may not be wearing shoes but that's okay.
Lily's got a man who is willing to take on the responsibilities of marriage and future children and I've got a man who smacks the mosquitoes and kicks the bamboo.
Who could ask for more?

The Friday Round-Up

When Diane Rhem does hers on NPR, she has a panel of experts. I have a panel of me. There may be "language" in this post, so be prepared.

Although I have a neurosis about making phone calls to almost everyone these days (it used to just be "official" calls like making appointments but it has progressed to dreading even calling friends) I had no problem yesterday calling a new local church which has sent out at least a dozen fliers announcing their opening on Sunday for an Easter service. They guarantee child and youth services and "genuine relationships" among other things. After I got the one yesterday with a picture of the white-man hippie Jesus arising from the tomb with wings on the back of his robed body, I called them and got their answering machine. I left a message with my name telling them that if I wanted to go to their service, I probably would have been alerted to the time and date by the first two or three fliers and to stop already. I got a call back from the pastor this morning and he said he'd take my name off the mailing list, which I thanked him for. I wanted to say a lot more, but was in a rush getting my husband out of town and so I didn't and the son-of-a-bitch got me by muttering a hasty "God bless you" before he hung up the phone.
ACK!

I have an entire weekend to myself and am looking forward to it with great glee. It is, without a doubt, the most beautiful time of the year here and I intend to spend most of my daytime time outdoors, weeding. This may not sound like much fun but for me, it hardly gets any better. I put a book on tape into the antique Walkman and wreck my fingernails in the warm dirt. To me, that is heaven and no promise of freaking angels sitting around playing harps or sitting at the right hand of God can compare. God's side must be pretty crowded and I'm going to have my yard all to myself.

My daughter's wedding is in three weeks and WE ARE NOT READY. We went out twice this week to get stuff and I have ordered a dress on E-Bay and dammit, it better fit and it better look great because I am having a terrible time with this shopping thing. When I put on real woman clothes I feel like I'm in drag and I don't want to feel like I'm in drag at my daughter's wedding. She and I have such diverse taste in clothing that if she wasn't born at home and wasn't the spitting image of her father's sisters, I'd think she'd been switched at birth for my real child. But really, we're having a good time although she's getting stressed out as the date approaches. She called me today from work, weeping because more of the groom's family is going to be there than ours and she doesn't know them. My husband asked me what was wrong when I got off the phone with her and I said, "She's a bride. She's supposed to be freaking out and she's doing her motherfucking job."
"Oh," he said.
I do understand her anxiety and I have a bit myself but as I keep assuring her, all will be well, and she will end up married. At least she gets to go on a honeymoon.

I think my kids are going to come out on Sunday to dye Easter eggs. This has nothing to do with the resurrection of our Lord and everything to do with childhood memories and a table full of coffee cups with various shades of dye in them and the joy I take in seeing my kids, adults all, doing a childish thing and having fun doing it. I will make some food and we will eat outside under the blooming Bradford pears and that, my friends, is my idea of a holiday celebration.

I'm sure I'll soon find a few words to say here about Easter and religion and how I have no tolerance for any of it. I am becoming the very worst sort of out-spoken heathen and I feel a need creeping up on me to speak my truth as they say somewhere (where they probably also say things like "thinking outside the box" so you know that's a stupid thing to say) but for right now, I believe I'll just glory in being alive on this, the second day of spring, 2008 and living in a place where it all looks like a picture painted by Thomas Kinkade, Painter of Light and I'm not kidding.

Happy Spring.