Catch Jim Reed’s Red Clay Diary podcast: https://jimreedbooks.com/
or read the transcript below:
HENRY THE FROG AWAITS AN EVENING BREEZE
A patch of shade and a momentary breeze. Obtaining these phenomena both at the same time is my only goal, my only quest at this very moment.
This very moment being a Summer morning some uncountable decades ago in the Deep South village of childhood.
I’m sitting on wooden steps leading to the Reed Family’s back door, scratching at the latest red bug bite on a bare knee. August heat is upon the yard, chasing away Henry the Frog (he’ll reappear in the cool of the evening). Other critters are doing the best they can under the circumstances. Even the nearby anthill is quiet. I guess the ants are in their underland fanning each other with tiny leaves.
I scan the close horizon for signs of things to notice. Yep, even at this memorable age I am an Observer taking note of life a giblet at a time.
I watch and listen.
Next-door grownups are chatting, oblivious to listeners-in.
The wife pauses after a burst of enthusiastic holding forth to check on husbandly reaction, to see whether he understands her meanings, to determine what his response might be. I stare and observe like a small anthropologist.
The husband wants to couch his words in non-confrontive ways. He’d prefer not to talk at all, but even at this age, I am aware that sometimes one has to do what one has to do to maintain harmony.
The husband pauses during his raised-car-hood mechanical fiddling, takes a deep breath, instructs his mouth to smile and his eyes to become alert.
The wife repeats her lively rant, this time in a less aggressive manner, once she realizes that the husband is actually paying attention.
The back-and-forth ends pleasantly. The wife returns to her tiny vegetable garden, the husband dives under the hood, the ambient temperature lowers a couple of degrees.
And today, this very day, this right now moment, I am all grown up, grown old and withered, and am suddenly recalling an aha! moment from early youth.
The aged Me smiles in sweet recollection. The tiny young red-bugged Me broods like the little professor that I am, the little professor that I will always be.
Old Me and long-ago Me sit quietly on the back steps and enjoy each other’s presence.
Then, we each go our separate ways, ready for the adventures we will surely experience on these parallel overheated days. We await the relief of evening and the reappearance of Henry the Frog and his pals, the fireflies and mosquitoes that will outlive us all
© Jim Reed 2020 A.D.