Saturday, October 27, 2018

Pure And Clear, Muddled And Confused



All of the chickens did come home to roost last night with no apparent injuries so that was good news. We had an excellent dinner with our grandson who tore up a chicken leg and stabbed his macaroni and cheese and then asked for a spoon with which to eat it more efficiently.
"A big spoon," he said.
"Who do you want to give you your bath?" I asked him. "Mer or Bop?"
"Bop!" he said with great certainty.
And so Bop gave him his bath and put him in his pajamas and we brushed teeth and we got on my bed, he and I, and read our favorite books including The Little Red Hen Makes a Pizza which I have read out loud so many, many times and still am not tired of it. August now lends his voice to the parts where the duck, the cat, and the dog all answer, "Not I," to the Little Red Hen when she asks for help in buying a pizza pan or mozzarella cheese or chopping and grating or making the dough. Owen and Gibson do this too and they have their own dramatic touches for each animal and I love how this is part of our ritual, every time one of them spends the night.
After our stories we went and told Boppy good-night and there was a hug and then I tucked him into his bed with many friends including Big Bear and Zippy and Little Monkey and Alligator and then finally, one more, a lamb which I think had belonged to his Aunt Lily and which, if you wind it up, plays "You Are My Sunshine" which is one of August's favorite songs. I kissed him and told him I loved him and before I was out of the room he was heavy-lidded and still, holding the lamb and that's how he fell asleep and that was how he was still sleeping when his grandfather and I went to bed.


Precious little boy. 
We hadn't told him but Boppy had a short trip planned out to Dog Island with our partner to see what condition our house was in and he was gone before August even woke up which he didn't do until almost nine. He popped up and said, "It's daytime!" and it was and then he said, "Where Boppy?" and I explained and told him that it was okay because he and I would play and that I would make him breakfast. He was okay with that. 

He was shivery in the early morning cool and so I made him some hot chocolate while I was cooking his bacon and waffles. 


"Boy!" I said, "What are you going to do when you go to North Carolina to visit and it's snowing?"
"Play outside with my cousins," he told me. And then he listed them along with his aunt and uncle and his grandparents there. 
And he will. And he will love it. 

He ate two huge waffles with butter and syrup so fast that I couldn't believe it and then he was done and we went out and opened the hen house and fed the chickens their corn and we gave the baby chickens fresh water and food and he asked to hold one of the chicks and I caught one and he did hold it and he was so proud to cup his hands around it, the tiny thing with its scratchy little feet and little beak, it's soft, soft down and coming-in feathers. 
Here's a picture I took of them this evening when I cleaned their coop and gave them some chopped spinach and apples and rice and ground venison. 


It's not a good shot but you can see the new wings on one of the brown chicks. They are starting to get identifying marks but they, too, will change before they're grown. Dearie is still being an excellent mother in all ways. If we ever do any chicken-housing improvements I want Mr. Moon to make a different baby nursery with smaller wire but roomier for the chicks that are being mother-raised. 

August and I decided to walk to the post office and so we did. He held my hand and when we got to the neighbor's beauty berry bush I asked him if he remembered the name. 
"Beauty berry!" he shouted. 


He knows how to push the little brass lever on the post office box to open it after I spin the dials to the right combination of letters. We pulled out our mail and then we said hello to the post mistress and I told August some of the things she does like putting the mail in the boxes and selling stamps. "She is very important!" I told him. 
She smiled and said, "You have a good day," and we walked back home. 

We read some books and in one of them there was a little Seminole Indian doll and I showed him the two old ones that I have and that led to us looking up Seminoles and Seminole Indian dolls on the internet and then on to chickees, the thatch huts that Seminoles lived in before they got fabulously wealthy by running Florida gambling operations. 
"Look up how you make Seminole Indian dolls," he said, and we did that too. He always wants to know how things are made and how things work and "why?" is what he utters the most. 

And then his mama and his brother came and we ate some lunch and then they left to go home. Mr. Moon is home now and he tilled the garden for me and now I have NO EXCUSE WHATSOEVER not to get out there and plant. 


The dirt is fine and soft and ready and that is my plan for tomorrow. 

Oh! And Dog Island! Well, the laundry/tool room underneath the house was flooded and the pump house and pump are gone. Well, broken. Something. And the orange shag carpet? Water did come in from under the doors and so some of it is ruined. 
So sad. 
So very, very sad. 

And meanwhile, while all of this sweetness and love and goodness was going on, another horrible, unfathomable hate crime was being committed in a place of worship in a neighborhood described as "totally without crime" and all that the man who has engendered so much of this visible, murderous hate could offer was the idea that if there had been an armed guard in the Synagogue, things might not have been so bad. 

Well. 

What can we do? 
Vote, of course. If that even matters now with what's happening at the polls. 
And love. Just love. Love. I can't say it enough. We have to love. In all of the ways we are capable, I guess. I ain't enlightened and I cannot say that I can love Donald Trump. But I can wonder if he or the guy who sent the bombs or the men who shot up the Synagogue had anything like love in their childhoods. If they had parents who made them feel loved, if they had grandparents who made them feel loved. 
Somehow I don't think so. 
Trump's father may have made him a millionaire by the age of eight but I seriously doubt he ever cuddled his son or made him feel as if he was important. He was too busy making money and being a racist asshole himself. 

Hell. I don't even know what I'm saying. 
But fuck it- just love. 
Whatever it is, whoever it is that you can love, do it with all of your heart. 

That's all I got. 

Love...Ms. Moon



27 comments:

  1. Love is wonderful and we need more, but at this point I would settle for even just an absence of hate.

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  2. I agree wholeheartedly with Wilma..... make the hate stop already! I am so tired of it. Have worked hard to keep it out of MY life.......But.....YOU have enough love to go around..... and I *try* to have that as well....every single day in every single small way. We must. I smile at August holding the tiny chick...... my last brood.......I had a friend bring her 4 year old son to hold my chicks and he kept saying *their fingernails are scratching my hands*! I smile to this day at the memory.......
    Susan M

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    1. Oh! I love that! Their fingernails! They do have scratchy little fingernails. Isn't it funny what we remember that they said?

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  3. I was thinking about your baby chicks yesterday and thought you could name them after hurricanes.

    I am so glad you have all your awesome grandchildren and that you share them with us.

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    1. Good suggestions about the hurricane names. First hurricane I remember was Donna. No one is named Donna anymore. That would be a cool chicken name.

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    2. Nobody is called Barbara anymore. Thank god. I have told my kids they can use my middle name May to do the named-after-grandma thing but not Barbara. Barbara is and always will be an old person name.

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  4. The book my grands were raised on is 'Sleep Tight Elmo,' and the characters all have distinctive voices. Our youngest just turned 15, but she sat in the 'kids' room' while visiting today and read it. Our oldest, 21 years old, sat on a bunk bed with her seven-month-old son a week ago and read it to him. GMaw (that's me) cried shamelessly. As for Trump, I read somewhere that he calling himself a nationalist was some kind of code to his cult to unleash the violence. I'm hoping it's one more conspiracy theory, but I know it's a possibility.

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    1. I would have cried my eyes out too. Oh my goodness.
      I've read that theory on Trump and it's as possible as anything else that we have found to be true about him.

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  5. August is such a fine sidekick for Saturday adventures. Such a darling boy. As for the rest I think I need to focus elsewhere for a bit. It’s wearing me down. Love.

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    1. He IS a good sidekick as long as you don't mind answering the question "why?" all of the time. Which I mostly don't. I often answer, "Because that's the way it is," though, to be honest.

      Wearing us down, wearing us out. Making us weary.

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  6. I watched a documentary on Netflix yesterday, Feminists - What Were They Thinking. You reminded me of one thing someone said about what good is art when the world is falling apart - they said everything positive is like a stone in water, rippling the positive out and touching others. That is paraphrasing big time, but you get the gist. The same goes for love. If we do good things, if we love, it does matter.

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    1. I believe that. I really do. When it's the hardest to love, it's probably the most important time to do it.

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  7. I know what you're saying, and you're so very right.

    Wondrous August and reprehensible Trump are as spiritually and intellectually as far away from each other as they could possibly be. His poor children. Poor Trump. I suppose.

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    1. Yeah. Trump surely didn't get a lot of what he needed as a child. I never hear anything about his mother. Wonder what she was like.

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  8. tRump is still a small child inside of a grown man's body, desperate for love and attention and affection, with no idea that what you give, you get back. I'm glad you had such a wonderful visit with August. And glad your chickens are all thriving.

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    1. Ain't that the truth? And it seems to me that if someone doesn't get that love as a child, they spend their entire lives trying to find substitutes for it. And of course, if you aren't loved, it's hard to know how to give love.
      Chicks are GOOD! And so are the others. Thank you.

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  9. love is the only weapon we have until we get some politicians that actually care. Trump's reaction to the bombs was 'they aren't talking about me'.

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  10. Amen. I love Birdies idea of naming the chicks after hurricanes, brilliant! Every morning I have to sit and remind myself to be kind and compassionate to all, even those that I really want to slap the shit out of. Much love .
    Xoxo
    Barbara

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    1. Especially those we want to slap the shit out of.
      Much love to you, too.

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  11. I'm glad to hear the Dog Island house is still standing, albeit a bit damaged. I guess now is the time for new flooring! Do you have to replace washing machines and whatnot in the laundry room? And that's a drag about the pump, too. I hope all of that isn't too expensive, but it sounds like it could be.

    August is adorable! And the chicks are too! They look like they've grown quite a bit just since your last photos.

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    1. Yep. Time for new flooring for sure. Of course, it was time for new flooring before the hurricane. And yeah, we'll probably have to replace all that stuff. I guess. I think the washer may have been broken already.
      Dog Island. Magical pain in the damn ass.
      Thanks for saying that August is adorable. I think he is too. And those chicks ARE growing.

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  12. Gosh, I go away for a few days and look what happens, baby chickens! I have got some catching up to do.

    I can not yet handle the grief that is this country- deflecting as I go...

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    1. Yes! Ten baby chicks! Dearie hatched them under the pump house and then brought them out, all perfect and beautiful. And that's been the sweet thing that has helped me lately.

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  13. Honey-If Donald had had a pair of grans who made him waffles with syrup and bathed him and tucked him in after story time with beloved stuffies that belonged to other beloved family members and then he got to hold a baby chick so tenderly and with reverence, well....he would not be the clueless, harmful, hate-filled, sorry excuse for a human that he is.

    Bless all of you forever.

    Beth

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    1. You are so right. The man obviously has no experience with love. None. I shudder to think what he's like with his own grandchildren. Someone probably has to pay them to spend any time with him.

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