Reflections on the Sixth Week of Summer – A Long Wet Mile

    After writing “Do something special to celebrate yourself” in hundreds of birthday cards to friends and relatives, I planned something special for my own sixty-ninth. I could swim a mile.

    I’d been contemplating swimming a mile for two years and eight months–ever since I walked into the Meadville YMCA pool for the first time and read the sign painted in black on the white tile wall.

88 lengths = 1 mile

I swam four lengths before the Deep Water Fitness class that first day and told myself I could work up to swimming a mile . . . maybe.

    Stroke by stroke and length by length over two long years, I’d finally reached three quarters of a mile. Since January, I only slipped back to a half mile once–the day my fingertips touched the deep end wall, and I turned exuberantly to backstroke another length. A wave of dizziness crashed through my head. Vertigo. I grabbed the wall until the swirling pool slowed and the band of pressure encircling my head eased. I stopped at a half mile that day so I wouldn’t vomit in the water.

    Never, after any of the other eighty-three swims in 2017, did I leave the pool saying, “I could have swum another twenty-two lengths.” Was I stuck at three-quarters mile?

    Marathon runners don’t practice the whole distance before a race. Maybe I’d built enough stamina to swim longer. Testing myself would be something special for my birthday Monday.

    But between 1:00 and 2:00 a.m. Monday morning, quarter inch red spots woke me for the second night in a row. Were spiders feasting on me during the night? No webs hung near the bed, but I sprinkled diatomaceous earth in the narrow gap between the box spring and wall. I didn’t mind smothering the spots in Cortizone cream for a week, but losing sleep over the rash was unacceptable. I fought the urge to gouge the itchy monsters out with a dandelion weeder and called for an appointment with Cynthia, the physician assistant at Sheakleyville Health Center.

    “Could you make it at eleven?” the receptionist said.

    Eleven? How long could it take to look at spots? I’d still have time to swim if the appointment took twenty minutes or less.

    “Thanks. I’ll be there.”

    Long black hair falling onto her white doctor coat, Cynthia studied the red spots on my arms and neck for less than a minute. “Have you been outside recently?”

    Lots–photographing roof walkers, cutting ferns and garden phlox for flower pounding, harvesting blueberries and purple beans.

    “Yes.”

    “You’re reacting to something in nature. It’s similar to a poison ivy reaction. I’ll have the nurse give you a steroid shot. Call me if you’re not better by the end of the week.”

    Cynthia also listened to my breathing, gave instructions for mixing an oatmeal bath to relieve the itching, and responded to my lap swimming plan. “That’s great. Chlorine helps itching.”

    Ten minutes with Cynthia. But I didn’t just see Cynthia.

    I had to check in, sign the copay credit card receipt, slip out of my shoes to step on the scale, take yoga breaths through vital sign checks, revise my medicine and vitamin list with a nurse who two-finger typed, relax my deltoids for the steroid shot, and stand in line to check out. The four person line didn’t move.

    If I waited, I wouldn’t have time to swim.

    The nurse had said, “You’re free to go,” after she put a bandage on my upper arm, so I stepped out of line, jogged to the car, and zoomed north on Route 19.

    I reached the pool at 12:15. Not great. Only forty-five minutes left of the two hour lap swim. My husband Spence’s admonition, “expectation is disappointment,” floated through my mind when I dove under the lane rope to position myself for breaststroke. I needed fifty minutes to swim the sixty-six lengths for three fourths of a mile. I pulled my arms in an arc, frog kicked, and blew out air. Bubbles drifted up. My goal of swimming a mile sunk.

    Tuesday, still in birthday celebrating mode, I arrived at the pool at 11:12. Only two men arrived earlier–Mike, the Mennonite who swims side stroke without kicking to strengthen his shoulders after surgery, and Brad, an asthmatic who swims to make breathing more comfortable and has a bucket list of pools where he plans to swim.

    I walked behind them through the middle section to the end lane.

    To keep track of the lengths, I chanted. Beginning of beginning. I kicked and stroked the first eight lengths–two breaststroke, two sidestroke, two more breaststroke, and two backstroke.

    Panting, I switched the chant. Middle of beginning. Mob. I swam and visualized mobs at political rallies, fashion shows, sandy beaches, and pastry shops. Every muscle in my shoulders, arms, and legs complained.

    Would I make three quarters of a mile?

    Habit propelled me. I pulled and kicked for another set of eight.

    Brad left and walked directly to the men’s locker room. Good–he didn’t need his inhaler after swimming today.

    I took his lane in the middle and pushed my feet against the wall for the “end of beginning” set of eight. With only two of us in the pool, I didn’t hold my elbows against my side and backstroke with my forearms to avoid poking passing swimmers. I spread my arms wide and zipped through the water. My breathing slowed. My muscles eased.

    When I finished “middle of middle,” forty lengths, Mike climbed the steps, picked up his duffel bag, and walked to the men’s locker room door.

    I had the pool to myself.

    Chanting “end of middle,” I slipped through the silky cool water for another eight lengths.

    Swimming a mile would be easier without waves from other swimmers.

    But vertigo could attack. Your knee could swell and ache.

    Alice and Jackie arrived. Alice, who’s recovering from heart surgery and swims with her legs two feet lower than her arms, took the end lane. Jackie, a diabetic who usually swims a mile and a half a day, sat on a noodle in the first lane and gently swung the foot she’d injured last week.

    I chanted “beginning of end” for the seventh set of eight, rolled with the swells, and did some math. After I finished my regular sixty-six lengths, I’d only need six more for five sixths of a mile. That, combined with the two thirds I’d swum Monday, would average out to three quarters of a mile each day. If I swam twenty-two more lengths, I’d make a mile.

    And you’d be too tired to drive home.

    Jackie chatted with the life guard, Alice swam freestyle, and I pushed through “middle of end” and “end of end” to finish nine sets of eight for the five sixths of a mile.

    I stood in the shallow end after that seventy-second length. Though my heart pounded, I breathed normally and nothing ached. Without checking to see if my knee had swollen, I pushed my feet against the wall, pulled my arms in an arc, and frog kicked. I could always stop at seventy-seven lengths for seven eighths of a mile.

    Pull. Kick. Breathe. “Tenth set of eight.”

    Pull. Kick. Breathe. “Eleventh set of eight.”

    I MADE IT!

    I held onto the wall at the shallow end of the pool, glanced at the clock, and reached my left then right leg back for stretches.

    Jackie swung her feet, the lifeguard chatted with Jackie, and Alice swam as if nothing special had happened,

    I stretched my right arm across my upper chest and called to Jackie. “I did it.”

    Jackie turned to me. “What did you do?”

    “I swam a mile. For the first time.”

    “Good for you.” Jackie beamed. “That’s great.”

    “It took me an hour and ten minutes.”

    “You made good time,” Jackie said. “It takes me an hour to swim a mile.”

    “Well done,” the life guard said, “That’s almost as fast as I swim. I come in at just under an hour.”

    From behind me Alice called, “Congratulations.”

    Smiling from ear to ear, I climbed the steps to the locker room.

    Getting ready for Deep Water Fitness class, women undressed by the benches.

    “I did it,” I told the other Janet that swims at the YMCA. “I swam a mile today.”

    She stopped with her sock half way off. “Did balloons rise up into the air?”

    Chest filled with the air from those rising balloons, I drove home and told Spence.

    “That’s fine,” he said. “But don’t do it again for awhile. You might hurt yourself.”

 

Reflections on the Fifth Week of Summer – Roof Walkers

 

    Wednesday a crew of five men from Energy Independent Solutions arrived wearing neon green t-shirts with “Harvest the Sun^TM” logos.

    I walked down the ramp toward them wondering if I could take photos and ask questions while they worked.

    A thin six foot man stepped away from the group at the truck and extended his hand. “Hello, I’m Richard.” His voice had a lyrical African accent. A smile crinkled his dark skin.

    I shook his hand and returned his smile. “I’m Janet.”

    Before I could ask a question he said, “Nice to meet you, Janet. Do you have any dogs?”

    “No. We have two cats.”

    “That’s fine then, Janet. Do you have a bathroom we may use?”

    I took him inside through the sliding glass door, led him around our cat George sleeping on the great room floor, and showed Richard the upstairs bathroom.

    “My you have a lovely house.”

    We walked downstairs to the basement bathroom complete with a worm factory in the shower stall. Then I showed him how to get back outside through the basement door.

    “This is perfect. We can use this one. Now, Janet, may we move your flower pots so that we can put the ladders on the deck?”

    “Yes,” and before he could ask another question, I got one in myself. “How can you work on a forty-five degree angle roof?”

    As if reciting a practiced report, he said, “We’ll put two short ladders on the deck and two long ladders on the grass.” His hands drew parallel lines upward. “Between each pair we mount bridges.” His hands moved horizontally. “From the bridge we install the first rail. Then we stand on the rail to mount the next and so on up the roof.” He placed one hand over the other repeatedly until his arms stretched straight.

    Throughout the day, I heard footsteps overhead, the brrrrrrrzzzzzaat of drills attaching clips to metal roof ridges, and, once, the squeak of the basement screen door. Did the other four men use jars in their trucks?

    Thursday, lugging my swim gear out of the garage, I met Terry, the site supervisor, walking down West Creek Road. His long thin arms swung by his sides and his shoulder length hair, with a pony tail drawn only from the sides of his face, swayed.

    I reached into the mailbox for letters. “Were you going for a walk?”

    “No, I was watering a tree.” 

    Okay. No truck jars.

    While we walked back to the house, I said, “The weather forecast called for thunderstorms at 3:00 today.”

    Terry’s brow scrunched. “I hadn’t heard. We’ll watch the sky.”

    After lunch I took my camera outside.

    Terry turned a solar panel on its side to pull off plastic packing corners and tape holding the connecting wires. He carried each unpacked panel, which weighed about thirty pounds according to one of the dozens of answers Terry gave me, up the ramp. Shifting his hands down the sides of the panel, he hoisted it over his head.

    On the roof, one of the men crouched, grabbed the top of the panel, and pulled up. Then he turned the panel around, held it over his head, and lowered the panel into the rack.

    Amazed that they didn’t drop the panel, I clicked pictures till raindrops hit my head. I lowered the camera and turned to Terry. “You won’t work through the storm, will you?”

    “No. It’s not safe.” He called to his crew. “Secure everything up there so you can come down.”

    Fifteen minutes later, rain pounded the roof. Except for Scott, the crew retreated to the two EIS trucks. In soaked clothing, Scott, who’d climbed down last, sat in a wicker chair on the porch. The shortest in the crew and the only one with glasses, he stared at his phone.

    After my husband Spence held George so I could give him his daily subcutaneous fluids, Spence joined Scott on the porch.

    I followed.

    “May we join you?” Spence said.

    Scott grinned. “Yes. I was only reading the latest from Mueller.”

    Spence sat on the love seat. “We were giving George IV fluids for his kidney failure.”

   I sat beside Spence. “With the lump of water on his back, George looks like the character from the Hunchback of Notre Dame. Quasimodo isn’t it?”

    “Quasimodo is correct,” Scott said and glanced at the rain pounding on the fir trees. “I hope it’s raining in Pittsburgh so I won’t have to water my lawn when I get home.”

    I stepped inside, checked the radar map on my computer, and returned in time to hear Scott say, “I trained as an architect. I like to work in 3-D.”

    “Pittsburgh isn’t getting any rain,” I said.

    Scott flashed a sad smile.

    Before the fellas continued their discussion I said, “Will you be able to go back on the roof after the rain?”

   “It’s safe when the roof is wet. We don’t slide down—” he moved his phone from over his shoulders to his lap “—just slip a bit.”

    “You mean sideways on the rails and metal bridge?”

    He nodded. “That’s not a safety problem.”

    Friday, I ran out and in with my camera a dozen times hoping to catch the crew installing the last row of solar panels. How would they work on the edge?

    Finally, Scott said, “We’re going to put the last row up now.”

    I stood on the grass, pointed my camera upward, and waited. A deer fly bit me once. Mosquitoes bit twice.

    Wiley, the heftiest guy on the crew, had the job of hoisting panels to the men on the roof. He pointed at our wire cages topped with white cover cloth. “What are those bushes?

    “Blueberries.” I clicked a picture of Scott setting the top panel. “The cages keep the birds away.”

    “My grandmother has a field of red raspberries.”

    “Does she make jam and pies?”

    “She makes jam that comes out more like syrup.”

    Jake, the quietest member of the crew if you don’t count the music he played softly on his phone, motioned to Wiley for a panel.

    Wiley missed the gesture because he faced me. “It’s great on pancakes.”

    I motioned to Jake. “I think they want another panel.”

    After Wiley hoisted the panel, I asked, “How many installation crews does ESI have?”

Wiley paused before answering. “Two, but the other crew only does ground installations. The heavier guys don’t work on roofs.”

    To install the last panel, the crew took down the bridges, and Scott stood on the top of a short ladder. “Can you put counter pressure on the ladder, Wiley? It’s crushing the gutter making it give way. I want to fix the gutter before I lean into it.”

    Wiley pushed against the ladder.

    Scott drilled in screws.

    The drill slipped from his hand. Leaning and balancing on one foot, he caught the drill before it fell on Wiley’s head. “Be sure to get a photo if I drop the drill on Wiley,” he called to me. “We’ll need the picture for worker’s comp.”

    After an hour, Scott lay on the empty one foot edge of roof and reached under the panels to make the final connections.

    Five red, five black, and one green wire, each sixty feet long, hung off the roof. Jake rolled them into a coil a foot and a half in diameter and set it on the ramp.

    “We can’t close the ramp gate with the coil there. George will wonder off,” I said. “Could we move the wires somewhere else till the electricians arrive?”

    Jake hung the coil on the butt end of a house log. “The electricians will be here in about two weeks.”

    “Will they have to drill a hole in the foundation?”

    “Yes,” Jake grabbed wire cutters and a drill off the deck. “The work to connect the wires to the basement panel will take two or three days.”

    When the crew ambled toward the trucks, I called, “Thank you. You did a great job. I enjoyed watching you work.

    Jake lagged behind. He touched the brim of his baseball cap. “It’s been a pleasure to meet you.”

    During the three day installation, the crew responded with a million answers to the two concerns I had walking down the ramp Wednesday morning. All five had become more like neighbors than contractors.

Reflections on the Fourth Week of Summer – Something’s Burning 

    “Something's burning,” I yelled from the bedroom Wednesday morning.

    “Nothing’s burning,” Spence called from the great room sofa.

    Sitting on the edge of the bed to pull on knee sleeves for yoga, I mumbled, “Figures.” My husband often says I’m wrong. If a spilled morsel smolders on the burner rather than food burns in a pan, he doesn’t count that as “something burning.”

    The acrid odor intensified. “It’s getting stronger,” I yelled back.

    Footsteps thudded. “You’re right.”

    I stepped into the hall and coughed. Wispy white smoke floated above my head. I turned to look into the bedroom. A cloud of smoke nestled against the ceiling. Cremated breakfast? I joined Spence in the kitchen.

    Smoke billowed from the Dutch oven on the front right burner.

    With tongs Spence transferred three chicken breasts–golden brown on one side and charred black on the other–to a paper towel on a cutting board.

    “The front burner is acting up again.” Spence pointed to the bright red electric coil. “I had it on five, and the breasts browned fine. I flipped them and turned the burner to two, but the burner acted like it was on high.” With mitts on both hands, he lifted the smoking Dutch oven and carried it outside.

    The smell didn’t leave with him.

    I opened bedroom windows and turned on the guest room fan.

    “You’d think the smoke detector would go off,” Spence said when he stepped back inside.

    As if triggered by Spence’s comment, the smoke detector blared.

    We exchanged smirks on my way to turn on the bathroom fan. 

   He turned on the stove fan.

    I opened the kitchen windows then climbed the spiral stairs and opened the two loft windows. A cloud of translucent smoke hung from the ceiling to my waist. Sheesh. A malfunctioning stove in a log house is dangerous. To prevent a worse incident, we needed to fix the stove.

    Coughing, I descended the stairs and met our cat George on the middle step. He sat as still as a stone monument.”

    “You’re okay, George. You can move.”

    He didn’t budge. Had he heard my assurances above the blaring? I lifted my foot intending to nudge him, and the smoke detector stopped blaring.

    George turned and plodded downstairs.

    I followed, fetched the C & A Appliance Repair magnet from the refrigerator, and handed it to Spence. “You call.” He could explain what happened to Carl better than I could.

    Spence set the card on the coffee table. “I’m not going to call. I want to watch the stove for a while.”

    But he’d said again indicating this wasn’t the first time the burner overheated. Why did he want to wait? “Carl has reasonable rates,” I said. “He did a competent job for our washer-water-flow saga last year.”

    “I don’t want to spend fifty dollars to find out nothing’s wrong. I don’t want to trust old people’s memory.”

    Was this Mr. Be-Careful-Not-to-Trip-Over-the-Cat, Mr. Let-Me-Carry-that-Heavy-Bag, Mr. We’re-Not-Late [translation–You’re-Driving-Too-Fast]? Puzzled, I picked up Carl’s card and stuck it on the refrigerator.

    Old people’s memory.

    When we age, we’ve done automatic tasks like locking the car door so often that we can’t be sure we remember locking the door this time or one of the zillions previous times.

    I left the stinky kitchen and stepped onto the porch for Ashtanga yoga with a Rodney Yee DVD. Raindrops pattered on leaves, but I couldn’t smell the rain washed air. Charred odor from the Dutch oven at the other end of the porch clogged my lungs. I ignored the odor, enjoyed the breeze against my skin, and turned for a beginner version of revolved side angle.

    A baby cardinal fluttered to the porch railing three feet away.

    I held my pose like George’s stair statue while the fluffy brown fuzz ball gazed at me. The baby bird turned its crested head to the right, to the left, then diagonally up and down. Suddenly the baby jerked and zoomed away. Had it inhaled the acrid odor and fled?

    Mid morning, our son Charlie arrived after he’d supervised loading UPS vehicles and collected dirty laundry in his Seneca apartment. “Something burnt,” he said stepping inside the door.

    “You smelled it,” I said.

    “No, every window in the house is open.”

    Spence explained the baffling burner behavior to Charlie.

    “I noticed the back burner getting hotter,” Charlie said setting down his laundry bag. “That’s because the oven vents through it.”

    “Well, keep an eye on the burners for a while just to be sure,” Spence said.

    At noon, while I cut salmon for a fish salad sandwich, Spence set his laptop on the coffee table and walked to the kitchen. “I boiled water earlier, and the burner acted fine.”

    “Good to hear,” I said cutting pickles.

    He lowered his voice. “The old people memory thing . . .”

    “Yeah?”

    “Well, I intended to turn the burner down. Maybe I turned it up by mistake. I can’t be sure.”

    Remembering the numerous times I’d pushed the key fob button a second and third time just to be sure the car doors locked, I hugged Spence.

    Thursday evening, I wiped schmutz off the stove top. Half inch red lines marked the burner dials. Why would anybody paint red stripes on white dials? I squinted. The paint marked the tips of the handles which point to the temperature number. The other ends of the handles bisecting the dials were white. Helpful. Even with old people eyes, we could turn the business end to two while the decorative end pointed at nine. Not vice versa.

    For the rest of the week, no smoke gathered against ceilings, no smoke detectors blared, and no burner overheated. The burned chicken odor disappeared. Fragrance of milkweed wafted through the windows on rain washed breezes.

    Mr. Admonitions kept his watch on the stove and me. “Don’t do yourself a mischief pounding flowers too long,”

    I monitored his stove behavior with my nose and the red, burner-on light.

    We’re partners in this aging adventure.

Reflections on the Third Week of Summer – Fresh Air Guests

    “It’s not that Chris doesn’t like you. We just won’t be sleeping in your house,” my daughter Ellen said over the phone when she arranged their Fourth of July visit.

    During their two or three night visits in the past, my son-in-law’s allergies reacted to Wells Wood greenery and resident cats. He carried around a box of tissues, sneezed continuously, and swallowed antihistamines.

    How would he survive a six night visit?

    Ellen and Chris arrived June 29 with matching grins. After two-and-a-half years of marriage, they still acted like newly weds. They stood side by side but not shoulder to shoulder. He’s a head taller. Tall and short, they squeezed onto the loveseat on the porch. Ellen rose early. Chris didn’t. Her answer to, “Would you like breakfast now,” was always, “I’ll wait for Christopher.” When Chris woke and Ellen asked if he was ready to eat, he’d say, “Whatever you want, Little One.” And they walked together. Despite his allergies, Chris enjoyed camping and hiking. “I like to tell people I’m a card carrying Eagle Scout—” he said pulling a white plastic card from his wallet and handing it to me “—even though the card expired.”

    After supper on the day they arrived, Chris and Ellen walked around the house in search of a spot away from rain run-off paths. He chose a flat site on the sloping yard below the deck and pitched his goldfinch-yellow Big Agnes Big House 4 Tent with a rain cover.

    Then they walked down our country road.

    I washed dishes and looked through the kitchen window at Spence transplanting zucchini seedlings in the north garden. Dark clouds crept across the sky. Wind blew Spence’s straw hat off his head. Thunder rumbled. Then rain pounded.

Spence tramped onto the porch, stuck his head through the doorway, and said, “Are the children back yet?”

    “No—” Before I could utter another word, he spun around and tramped down the porch steps. The crunch of pickup tires on gravel and dirt faded down the road.

    Ten minutes later, the rain stopped, the pickup returned, and a wet, laughing pair burst into the kitchen. Rain water dripped from their hair and saturated their shirts. Ellen said,    “We’d walked down to the metal bridge. Then the rain started.”

    Yikes. That’s a mile and a half away. I handed them towels.

    “Dad picked us up by the blue house.”

    They’d walked three quarters of a mile in the downpour. Subsequent walks to escape cat allergens were drier.

   They supplemented daily walks through the woods and along country roads with excursions Saturday, Sunday, and Monday to

  ● Voodoo Brewery in Meadville,

  ● Conneaut Cellars Winery in Conneaut Lake,

  ● Lago Winery in Jamestown,

  ● Mortals Key Brewing Company in Jamestown, and

  ● Premium Outlets in Grove City.

    Chris also spent hours on the porch reading The Lives of Tao and drawing spheres. George jumped onto the loveseat beside his buddy and stretched his head toward Chris. Holding the paperback in his right hand, cat lover Chris petted George with his left.

    The loveseat sittings, excursions, and walks couldn’t keep  Chris’s allergies away.

    On the porch Monday morning, I took a deep breathe of the spicy-sweet fragrance of milkweeds and said, “Don’t milkweeds smell wonderful, Chris?”

    He glanced from his paperback to the pink blossoms attracting great spangled fritillary butterflies in the field. “I don’t know. I’m congested. I can’t smell a thing.”

    Ellen and Chris would have had to leave early except for the yellow tent.

    After they’d dried from their wet walk that first night, they dressed in tent-sleeping-clean clothes, ones without any odors of food eaten during the day. Thunder rumbled.

    “We don’t have to sleep outside,” Chris said.

    “But,” Ellen said, “you’ve been looking forward to sleeping in the tent.”

    They stared out the sliding glass door.

    Rain splatted the deck, lightning flashed, and thunder rumbled louder.

    Chris put his arm around Ellen’s shoulders.“It’s okay if we sleep inside.”

    She turned, put her hands on his chest, and said with a wide smile, “We can be brave.”

    They stepped outside, opened umbrellas, and walked to the tent.

    Lightning flashed. Thunder crashed.

    They were brave.

    I wouldn’t have slept in a tent during a thunderstorm, but I sure was curious to know what it was like. In the morning, I sat at the kitchen table with a pen and a paper headed tent report. After they’d taken a few bites of Spence’s special bacon, sausage, and omelet breakfast, I asked, “How was your night in the tent?”

   They paused with forks midway to their mouths and shared amused grins. No doubt they suspected, and would be right, that I’d repeat that question every morning during their visit.

    Ellen set her fork down. “It was cozy. The rain was loud and, when lightning flashed, everything lit up.”

    Chris swallowed a bite of omelet. “It was nice. I heard water dripping everywhere.”

Ellen said, “It’s funny to think it rained so much and we stayed dry.”

    The next night a crack of lightning and boom of thunder hit simultaneously right above the log house, or so said Spence and our son Charlie when I woke the next morning. I’d slept through the crash. Ellen and Chris hadn’t.

    Ellen said, “A firefly got lost between the tent and the rain cover so we’re laying there and the bug went—” She held her closed fists in the air then flicked her fingers open and closed. “—beep.” She coordinated finger flicking and sounds for “Beep . . . beep . . . beep . . . beepbeepbeepbeep.”

    I chuckled.

    Ellen said, “Then the thunder boomed RIGHT OVERHEAD–really loud. The lightning bug went beepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeep. Her fingers flicked rapidly with the sound effects.

    I guffawed and spit oatmeal back into my bowl.

    On succeeding mornings tent reports included chilly-damp air, struggles for blanket possession, and noises other than pounding rain.

    Saturday Chris reported a chipmunk chirped and brushed against the outside of the tent in the morning.

    Monday Ellen said, “Fireworks went off everywhere. To my left was an owl. To my right was George wailing with the hairy snake [his cat toy].”

    Wednesday she said, “I woke up in the middle of the night to bozos making lots of noise driving down the road fast.”

    Chris said, “There was something larger than a chipmunk chittering outside the tent–a raccoon, skunk, or possum.”

Though these reports enriched my mornings, I didn’t forget the serious reason for Chris pitching the tent. Sleeping outdoors, combined with his fresh air porch sittings, excursions, and walks, kept Chris breathing through the week.

    The day after they left, Spence returned from mowing the field and interrupted my daydreams about Chris and Ellen pitching a tent in snow on their Thanksgiving visit. Spence said, “Daryl stopped to talk.”

    Daryl, a full time farmer and Spence’s part time tractor repairman, lives a mile away on the top of the hill. “What did Daryl have to say?”

    “Plenty. Daryl took his girlfriend for a ride on his ATV around midnight on the Fourth of July and saw a cat in the corn field. The corn was knee high and the cat was taller. The girlfriend said it had a long thin tail with a curl at the end.” Spence moved his hand up diagonally then made a backward C at the top.

    “A mountain lion?”

    “Yep,” Spence said, “Daryl couldn’t believe what his eyes had seen so he stopped to ask about the mountain lion we saw when we first build the log house. And Daryl said Downey’s—”

    I visualized the lane to Downey’s farm half a mile away.

    “—caught a picture of a bear on their motion camera in the woods. It had a huge head–probably the same 300 pound bear that Stacey said visited her farm.”

    A bear and a mountain lion had roamed our neighborhood while Ellen and Chris slept in the tent? Double yikes.