MindSpinner

This morning dawned a dark day; clouds lay blue-black to the west, promising storms and yet more drenching rain. But as I drove to work past fields and farms, trees and houses, dawn’s light shot out of clear sky at the margin of the eastern horizon, straight across from east to west. Suspended between the light on one horizon and the dark on the other, a statuesque tree, solitary and winter-bare in a field, was lit ablaze with the orange light of morning against the indigo sky.

That’s it. The camera comes with me every day, and I will be that odd woman who stops to take pictures on the side of the road :->.

The Web makes it possible for people we’ve never met to matter to us in very real ways. Somewhere out there in cyberspace (Et al), a wonderful teacher, mother, wife, and writer lost her young husband to cancer last night. Their love was beautiful, the kind that should never end, and I am crying. I don’t know their real names; I don’t know where she and her little daughter live. I know nothing but her story. Still, it matters that much.

Salmon on the grill makes a very nice Saturday lunch - it’s a favorite of my son’s, and my daughter hates it, but she’s gone for a retreat this weekend, so salmon it is. Yum.

But a late lunch means a rush to get ready for a wedding reception, and, oh, when one has grilled salmon, one smells like … grilled salmon. The scent clings in the hair. What to do? Son used all the hairspray. Febreeze is all gone. Daughter’s body spray is on retreat. Perfume won’t cover, anyway. Under the sink I find, yes, as fate would have it, ferret deodorizing spray. Test sniff. Not too bad. Ferret doesn’t need it anymore. Besides, any spray that can deodorize a ferret can tackle a salmon, so I spray some into my hands, smooth it lightly into my hair, and brush. Good. Now I smell like a ferret after a bath, maybe with a faint whiff of charcoaled salmon. Not enough. I raid my daughter’s room and settle on Sweet Pea Body Lotion from Bed, Bath and Beyond or some such place. I apply it liberally wherever bare skin may be found. At least people won’t be able to figure out what they’re smelling. The scent is … too rich, too complex, simply defying categorization or description.

This from the kid who wouldn’t let the stylist trim much off three weeks ago:

“Mom, I need a haircut. My hair is longer than Jesus’s ever was, okay. So please get me a haircut appointment really soon. All right? Bye.”

The wind blew last night. It whipped at back of the house and pelted the windows with hail like fingernails clacking on keys. It sent the trash cans toppling and skidding as far as 30 feet, even the can with two bags of trash in it. The crabapple seedling by the driveway fluttered with a few dozen leaves yesterday, all burgundy and burnt orange. Today it has only three, one leaf for each branch. Meanwhile, brown leaves the size of lunch plates blew into the yard from parts unknown. And up high in a neighbor’s tree, one that pre-dates the neighborhood by half a century, a yellow bag snagged in a branch waves in the long light of late afternoon like a flag atop battlements.