Reflections on the Tenth Week of Summer – Night Romp

North Face of Star Chart and Mini Red Flashlight

Footsteps pacing on the floor overhead alerted me that something was amiss Friday morning. Reaching for the tablet computer I kept under my pillow for playing stories that lulled me to sleep, I checked the time. 4:30 a.m. I crawled over Emma, who merrowed in protest, and headed for the bathroom.

The metal spiral stairs clanked, and my barefooted husband came into view.

“Do you have a leg cramp, Spence?”

“No.” He pointed to the ceiling above the cedar chest in the loft. “There’s a noise coming from up there. Don’t you hear it?”

Cocking my head, I heard metallic thumps and what sounded like rolling marbles. I nodded.

He slipped into his boots. “An animal’s on the roof. I’m going to investigate.”

“Wait! I’m coming with you.” Forgetting the bathroom, I dashed to the closet, pulled on a fuzzy red bathrobe, and slipped into Sloggers. I grabbed a flashlight from my purse and joined Spence on the porch.

He held a foot long flashlight.

Armed, we moved to the deck and pointed out lights at the solar panels on the roof. My light caught a hump. “I see a brown hump up there!”

Spence looked left then right. “Where?”

“We’ll get a better view from the road.” I led the way across the porch, down the gravel driveway, and along the road.

We pointed the flashlights and looked up.

“Okay. Not better.” I walked through the dewy grass in the side yard.

Spence followed.

Again, we pointed the flashlights and looked up. No raccoon or possum in sight.

“You saw the bottom of the chimney,” Spence said.

Had that been the hump? It was in the same place.

Since little animals can make big noises, I shifted the flashlight beam to under the solar panels. Perhaps a mouse had visited.

Spheres of glowing light reflected off the metal support racks. No critter hid under the panels.

I shrugged. “Maybe we scared it, and it ran away?”

Spence squinted and scanned his light across the roof. “Whatever made the noise isn’t there now.”

Turning off my flashlight, I gazed from the roof to the array of stars in the country sky. “Ooh!” Forgetting our failure at night critter observation, I stuffed the flashlight into my robe pocket, hustled up the ramp to the deck, and called over my shoulder. “This is the perfect time to try my new star chart.”

Spence moseyed to the deck.

I dashed inside, grabbed the star chart off the dresser, and adjusted the dial to 4:30 a.m. August 24. Back to the deck, I stood beside Spence and glanced toward the chart.

“I just saw a meteor.” Spence pointed over the south garden.

“A meteor?” I looked up. “It’s the last night the Perseid Meteor Showers are visible this year.”

“Yeah. It had a fuzzy round head―” Spence held his hands together as if holding a tennis ball. “―and a little tail. It arced over the south garden.”

Sheesh. I’d missed it.

“There’s haze on the horizon.” Spence folded his arms across his chest. “Let’s look on the other side of the house.”

Orion’s belt shone over the tree tops, but I didn’t recognize anything else. I followed Spence across the porch, down the steps, and onto the gravel driveway.

Overhead the Milky Way flowed like a shimmering diamond banner. Cassiopeia took center sky. What constellations surrounded her? I glanced down at the chart. I could feel it in my hands but couldn’t see it. “How am I supposed to read the chart in the dark?”

“Try the red flashlight that came with the chart,” Spence said.

After making another round trip to the bedroom for the mini red flashlight, I pointed it at the chart. “I still can’t see.”

“Your eyes need to accustom to the dark again after being inside.”

I didn’t want to wait. I’d run out of patience with mysteries avoiding resolutions. I pulled the flashlight from my pocket and lit up the chart. Lacerta, Cepheus, and Camelopardalis were closest to Cassiopeia. I’d never heard of them, but I glanced up to find the unfamiliar constellations. Because of the bright flashlight, half of the stars had disappeared from my sight.

After missing the animal, missing the meteor, and missing the unfamiliar constellations, I wanted to find something outside in the dark. Maybe Perseus. The Perseid meteors radiated from Perseus. I studied the star chart and located the constellation catty-corner to Cassiopeia. Turning off the flashlight, I squeezed my eyes shut for a slow count to ten then gazed up. No meteors flashed across the sky, but I spotted the outstretched stars forming Perseus. Enough success for a night romp. I put my arm around Spence’s waist.

We trudged up the steps and opened the porch door.

George and Emma sat on their haunches facing the doorway. Their cat eyes glared as if to say We’re gonna tell your children.

I stepped around them, made a brief stop in the bathroom, then yawned my way back to bed. Snuggling under the covers, I listened to Rilla of Ingleside and drifted off.

We slept an hour past Spence’s morning coffee time―a perk for two retirees after a night romp.

South Face of Star Chart and Mini Red Flashlight

Reflections on the Ninth Week of Summer – My Father’s Eyes

Dad Christmas 1972

I gave myself permission to daydream about Dad all day Monday, the thirty-first anniversary of his death. While I sewed fabric sea turtles to card stock for notes, I remembered how he lifted new objects to his nose for an investigatory sniff. While I used smooth, frosting-a-cake strokes to shape worm compost into a drying pyramid, I remembered the way he chuckled at my shenanigans. While I stared through goggles at rising bubbles during lap swim, I remembered Dad’s expressive, hazel eyes―especially on that summer day when I was about ten and we visited his mom and sister in Erie.

With the family packed in the station wagon, Dad had driven us back from a grocery store. Crouching with my hands on the back of his seat―no seat belts in those days―I watched Dad steer into Grandma’s driveway, ease past her two story house, and park by the row of garages. As soon as his foot lifted off the brake pedal, I opened my door with the intention of dashing to the tailgate and grabbing a bag of groceries―preferably the bag holding the cherry vanilla ice cream.

My feet hit the ground.

I grabbed the door frame, slammed―

―and my right index finger crunched.

A searing stab radiated through my hand.

Wailing, I stared at dripping blood.

Dad’s hands clutched my arm and wrist. “How’d this happen?”

“I did it myself.” I sobbed. “I closed the . . . ”

He picked me up. “Dot, hold her.” He slid me to the middle of the front seat.

Mom put her arm around my shoulder and pulled me close. She wrapped a lavender handkerchief around my finger and held it tight.

In his no-nonsense-I-mean-now voice, Dad said, “The rest of you go into the house.” He jumped into the car, started the engine, and hurtled us backward down the driveway.

Aunt Jane shouted, “The emergency room entrance moved to State Street.”

Dad nodded and backed onto Fifth.

Mom opened her hand. “There’s a lot of blood, Bob.”

Keeping one hand on the steering wheel and reaching into his pocket with the other, he pulled out a folded white handkerchief, shook it open, and handed it to Mom. “Use this. Keep the pressure on.”

Mom wrapped his handkerchief on top of hers. “Do you think she’ll be able to use the finger?”

“I need to concentrate on driving, Dot.”

We lurched around a corner.

My finger throbbed. I curled up on the seat, lay my head on Mom’s lap, and watched the tops of telephone poles pass like train cars at a crossing.

My next memory? Standing between Dad and Mom. A man wearing baggy green clothes said, “Only one of you can come with her.”

Dad said, “Wait here, Dot.”

Mom slumped into a chair.

Dad put his hand on my back and propelled me after the man in green who hurried down a bright hallway.

Another memory lapse.

Laying on my back somewhere, I saw Dad standing close. His hazel eyes, as strong as the steel he helped design, stared to the side of me. I heard male voices but didn’t distinguish words.

“What are they doing, Dad?” I raised my head to look.

Taking my chin in his hand, he eased my face toward his. “Watch me. Let them work.”

Staring into Dad’s compassionate eyes calmed me.

His eyes switched focus to above me. “She’s a piano player. Do a good job so she can play.” He lowered his focus. As if his hazel eyes could heal my finger, Dad stared at the doctor’s work.

I kept my eyes on his.

Later, Dad, Mom, and I got out of the station wagon by the row of garages behind Grandma’s house.

Grandma, Aunt Jane, my sister Anita, and my brother Bob, gathered inside the back door. Their faces looked long and pale like tragedy masks at a theater.

“She’s fine.” Dad took my forearm and raised it so they’d get a view of my finger curved on a metal splint and wrapped in brown cloth tape. He sniffed the tape then released my arm.

I hustled toward the house. “Did you leave any cherry vanilla ice cream for me?”

Aunt Jane pointed to the tailgate. “You had it with you the whole time. We didn’t have time to get the groceries out of the wagon.”

Mom put her hand on her forehead. “Oh, pain. Now it’s cherry vanilla soup.”

Dad chuckled.

So decades later, while I brushed my teeth at the end of daydreaming Monday, I paused and stared at the scar in the middle section of my right index finger. I’d played piano and organ, written stories, and sewed quilts with that finger. My gaze shifted from the finger to my hazel eyes in the mirror. For about the hundredth time that day, I sang, “She’s got her father’s eyes.”

My husband Spence walked up behind me, massaged my shoulders, and said, “You’re far away. Where are you?”

I told him. “I’m lost in my father’s eyes.”

Dad, Daughter Ellen (about JW's story age), and Janet

 

Reflections on the Eighth Week of Summer – Warm, Creamy, and Janetesque

Janet Milking Chip 1

Walking with Spence into the goat tent at the Cochranton Community Fair Tuesday evening, I squeezed the strap on my camera bag to calm my nerves. Last year, a half hour before the Kid’s Goat Milking Competition [See “Country Scenes Blue Ribbon Dreams” August 13, 2018], giggling children with radiant faces clogged grassy aisles between a maze of goat pens. This year, a half hour before the Adult Goat Milking Competition, one family stood in the ten foot square open space formed by pens lining the sides and back of the tent.

The two women clutched their elbows and glanced over their shoulders at the goats.

The chubby elementary school youngster tossed a pebble from hand to hand.

His dad bent to the boy’s height and said, “I’m gonna milk a goat. You’re not.”

The youngster dropped the pebble and punched his dad in the stomach.

The dad raised his arms, flexed his biceps, and growled.

Laughing the boy ran behind the women. The dad chased after the boy, who circled the women again and again.

Sheesh. I’d be competing with a guy the size of Bluto in the Popeye comics. Don’t get me wrong―I didn’t plan to win. I’d challenged myself to try something different at the fair. Besides, I could gather data for reviving an old goat story that had curdled.

I bit a fingernail. What if, like some children, I balked at touching the engorged teat?

The children eventually grabbed a teat. You will too.

What if thirty seconds isn’t enough to learn?

The handlers let children try till they squirted milk. Then they started the timer.

What if I miss the container? I’ll look foolish.

You’ll look like a beginner.

To quiet the what-ifs and my internal voice, I studied the goats―Nubian goats with long ears, Lamancha goats with stubby ears, and Nigerian Dwarf goats so adorable I had to suppress the urge to pick them up and hug them to my chest. Two does, with full utters, nibbled hay in a corner pen. I tapped Spence’s arm and pointed. “We’ll probably milk those does in the competition.”

Spence nodded. “If you say so.”

I checked the time on my cell phone. “We have twenty-five minutes before the competition.” I needed a distraction. “Let’s check the cows.”

Spence stretched his arm toward the front of the goat tent. “I’m following you, babe.” He followed me across the lane and down the middle of the cow tent.

Owners groomed cows with combs and electric shavers. Cows munched hay or lay on it. Tails swished. Faint moos and whiffs of manure floated through the air.

We exited the cow tent onto a dirt road passing the arena. Inside, two draft horses pulled a pile of concrete slabs on a sled, called a boat and weighing over eight thousand pounds according to the announcer. The first team pulled the boat more than twenty feet. The next strained, and the judge instantly blew a whistle.

Chip

Back in the goat tent fifteen minutes before the adult competition, no one listed names of contestants. No one carried milking stands to the front. And no Bluto character strutted in front of the pens. Only a young man with a stroller paused by the Nigerian Dwarfs. “Look, Chloe. See the goats?”

The toddler leaned over the edge of the stroller and stared at blades of grass.

In a back corner of the tent, a preteen sat on a wooden milking stand and pulled the teats of one of the does I’d pointed out to Spence earlier.

The man pushed the stroller with the toddler out of the tent.

Spence petted a doe that stuck her head close to his hand.

I walked nearer to the preteen and her behind-the-pens audience―a man, a women, and two girls. The youngest had the same blond hair, round face, and brown eyes as the milker. Her younger sister? The other girl, grinning so wide her dimples merged with her lips, sidestepped back and forth next to the milking stand. “Hazel’s my friend. She let me milk her goat.” She giggled. “But I squirted milk on my shoe.”

The tan doe, head secured in the frame over a tray of grain, kicked her back leg. The hoof missed Hazel’s face by inches.

Hazel’s friend halted her side-stepping. “Yikes! I wouldn’t put my head that close to the back of a goat.” With arms arched over her head, the girl tiptoed in a circle. “Did a goat ever kick you when you were milking?”

Hazel pulled on the teats. “No.” Milk squirted into a gallon bucket under the udder. “But the first time I milked a goat, she pooped on me.”

Great. I could get a black eye or be speckled with goat shit. Milking a goat presented more danger than I’d thought, yet Hazel made the task look easy.

Milk squirted swish, swish into the bucket. Hazel gave a final tug, slid the board up to free the doe’s head, and led her on a leash to the corner pen. When Hazel opened its gate, a black and white doe scrambled out and scooted around the side.

“It’s okay.” Hazel shoved the tan goat into the pen and bolted the gate. “She knows where to go.”

The black and white goat jumped onto the milking stand, and the woman secured the doe’s head in the frame as if she’d done the task a million times. Maybe she had.

If Hazel milked the second doe, would there be a doe left for the contest?

“Excuse me,” I said. “When will the milking competition start?”

Hazel turned to me. “The competition isn’t until Thursday.”

“I’m asking about the adult competition not the children’s. The fair book said the adult milking competition was tonight at eight.”

Hazel looked to the man. “I didn’t know anything about an adult competition.”

Shoulders bent forward giving his back a slight hump, he said, “I’ll go ask Regis. He’s out in the camper.” The man turned.

“No, Grandpa.” She pouted and wrinkled her forehead. “Don’t ask. It’s up to me to decide who milks my goat.”

Her grandpa hesitated―one foot ahead of the other.

“I don’t need to be in a competition.” I looked from Hazel to her grandpa. “I just wanted to try milking a goat.”

“Don’t go, Grandpa.” Hazel put her hands on her hips. “I’ll let her milk Chip.”

“Chip?” Chip sounded like a name for a buck.

Chip

“Her full name is Chocolate Chip. She’s a three-year-old Alpine.” Hazel led me to the milking stand. “Sit here.”

Handing the camera bag to Spence, I sat and stared at the two engorged teats. “What do I do?”

Reaching under Chip, Hazel encircled the top of a teat with her thumb and index finger. “Grab here. Wrap your other fingers around.” She wrapped her fingers. “And squeeze.” Milk squirted into the quarter-filled bucket. “Try this one first. It’s easier.”

Following Hazel’s instructions, I grabbed the teat. I’d expected it to feel rubbery. It didn’t. It felt warm and soft. I opened my fingers and squinted. Tiny hairs, like those on my arm, covered the teat. I grabbed again and squeezed. A stream of blueish-white milk, not as forceful as Hazel’s, squirted into the bucket. Foam covered the surface of the goat milk. I squeezed again. Another stream squirted into the bucket.

“You can try the other one if you want.” Hazel pointed to the other teat which was larger than the first. “It has a crack so it leaks. You’ll get milk on your hand.”

I reached for the other teat and squeezed. Milk squirted into the bucket and leaked onto my hand. “It’s sticky.”

Hazel nodded.

Spence circled me and the group to get an angle for photos.

I took a teat in each hand and squeezed one after the other. Rhythmic squirts of milk swished into the bucket.”

Chip knocked the food tray off the milking stand and stamped her hoof.

“Is Chip upset?” I asked.

“No.” Hazel picked up the tray and set it aside. “She’s just done.”

Done as in finished with the milking routine? Tentatively, I squeezed a teat.

Chip stood still.

After many more than thirty seconds, I said, “Do you pasteurize the milk?”

Sitting on a bale of hay, the woman said, “We filter it before we drink it.”

“Yeah.” Hazel patted Chip’s neck. “To get the straw out.”

The woman pointed to the bucket under Chip. “Some people use a chilled bucket to cool the milk right away. And some drink it warm right out of the bucket.” She stood. “Would you like to try? I have a cup around her somewhere.”

Taking my hands off Chip, I said, “I’d love a sip.”

The woman rummaged in a knapsack, pulled out a Styrofoam cup, and handed it to me.

I held the cup in one hand, squeezed a teat with the other, and milk squirted into the cup without splashing my shoes. I lifted the cup and sipped. Warm. Creamy. “Ooh. I like it. Thank you.”

The woman smiled as if agreeing with my evaluation and took the empty cup.

Spence balanced my wallet, camera, and extra lens atop the open camera bag. “You’ll have to pack the bag. I don’t know how to put this stuff back in.”

Standing and holding my arms out with elbows at right angles, like television doctors waiting for a nurse to put surgical gloves on their scrubbed hands, I said, “I need to wash first.”

The woman stuffed the cup into a garbage bag. “There’s a wash stand by the cow exhibit.”

Hazel slipped onto the milking stand and grabbed Chip’s teats.

Still holding my hands in the air, I said, “Thank you,” and walked to the wash station with Spence.

Pushing the foot pedal to get water, I rubbed off sticky milk and glanced over at Spence still juggling the unpacked camera bag. “Did you want to try milking a goat?” I wiped my hands on a paper towel and tossed it into a bin.

“No. Milking a goat is Janetesque.” He stretched his arms toward me.

Janetesque?

Fitting the camera, lens, and wallet into the bag, I didn’t ask what he meant. Instead, I ran my tongue over my teeth and wondered how goat milk ice cream would taste.

Janet Milking Chip 2