Blabberings

Mother’s Day weekend, May 2013

Phillip and Brett had a joint birthday party at the lake.

Brett’s parents loaded the kids up on their pontoon boat and disappeared for a couple of hours. It was overcast and freezing. I cleaned up from lunch while they were gone and enjoyed a nap on the porch under a blankie. It wasn’t my fault the weather was yucky and they were gone so long.

They returned frozen and happy with tales from the island. And with a turtle. They found a baby turtle, freshly hatched, about the size of a silver dollar. Brett’s mom told my son that he could keep it. She put it in a red Solo cup. She told me that her boys had an unused tank—that she bought at a yard sale—that she would bring to my house later that night.

Thanks, Friend.

She brought the secondhand, secondhand tank and filled it with water and plugged it in in the playroom. She put some large rocks in it for him to climb on. She put blood worms in my freezer (which I forgot about until two years later when a storm knocked out our power for 48 hours and my refrigerator started bleeding).

Thanks, Friend.

My family soon learned that Brett’s family had a longtime love for turtles, stemming from a children’s book called Let’s Get Turtles that Brett and his brother made their mom read 1000 times when they were little. It’s about two boys who got turtles.

One time, they had a turtle named Shel that they kept in the yard, but he ran away. Not quickly, I imagine, but stealthily and unnoticed.

They weren’t using the little tank anymore, because their turtle had outgrown it. They found their turtle in the parking lot at the New Orleans zoo and brought him all the way home to Dothan, I assume, in a red Solo cup. They named him Zoos (pronounced Zeus). Phillip named his turtle Poseidon.

Poseidon lived in the little tank in the playroom from Mother’s Day until Christmas. We all grew so attached to the little feller that I asked Santa to bring a large tank to put upstairs, so he could be with the rest of the family in the den. We watched Poseiden pu-u-ull himself up the rocks, then dive into the water, then pu-u-ll himself back up on the rocks. He reminded me of the kids in the deep end at the Azalea. We tapped on the tank. We talked to him and giggled at him. We nicknamed him Little P.

One time, Chuck bought some goldfish to be his friends. He nibbled at their tails. They were the most skittish goldfish ever. We sensed he hated them, so we got rid of them.

Little P grew and grew and grew. People came to our house and said, “That turtle is huge!” Brett’s mom said he would grow to the size of the tank. Zoos was bigger than Poseidon and their tank was bigger and we didn’t know a thing about yellow-eared sliders and had never stolen a single turtle before, so we believed her like she was Google. Regardless, Little P didn’t have much room to frolic. We decided this past Christmas that in the springtime, we would let him go.

We discussed returning him to Lake Eufaula, but there is a pond in our neighborhood. We would like to wave to him as we drive by. Biscuit and I would like to look for him on our walks. We wanted to set him free, yet keep him close. There was a little colony of turtles—and no gators.

April 2, 2016

Abby was home for spring break. It rained and rained and rained. Then, Saturday dawned sunny perfection. Emma read online that fingernail polish wouldn’t hurt his shell.  We all love pomp and celebration.

If you’re ever at the duck pond and see a superhero turtle with a red P on his back, please tell him we said hello.

Thanks, Friend.

Although the season was technically summer, the attitude was definitely fall. School was in session, the days were shortening, and football had returned. Even the gasping and grasping heat of August in the South had eased a touch, as if Mother Nature, too, were ready for the leaves to fall, as if she, too, were looking forward to turtlenecks and cardigans and the National Peanut Festival, and as if her favorite holiday were Thanksgiving, as well, and pecan, her favorite pie.

Parents fret about big kids going to college for the first time, or maybe about big kids going to kindergarten for the first time. But all ends lead to beginnings, like the end of delicious summer brings the delights of autumn, so the end of childhood brings the joy of adult relationships with children, for growing them up was the ultimate purpose through the years, the effort, the exhaustion. All nature sings, “Job well done.”

Change, when brought gently, like the seasons, is life renewing.

We have a four-year-old lake neighbor who has yet to master his Ls and Rs, who has a vocabulary many grownups would envy, who was such an unexpected gift that his family and friends still struggle to believe he really and truly exists.

The summer before his third birthday, when he was still TWO, barely TWO, but yet TWO, he was over for a visit. I offered him some milk. He said, “Actuawy, I would wathew have wemonade. We have pwenty of miwk at my house.”

(“Actually, I would rather have lemonade. We have plenty of milk at my house.”)

He sounds like an old Southern woman. He told his mommy to please get a watermelon at the “mahket.” When he turned four, he told us, “I am four, this time.”

And so, it came to be Labor Day, as we were packing up the summer, when he showed up at our cabin by himself and invited us to his pahty. He wanted to host a pahty for no weason, just because we are fwiends.

“May we bring lemonade?”

“Wemonade is always welcome at a pahty,” he told us.

We made s’mores. We melted our marshmallows over the fire in his daddy’s Big Green Egg. His daddy had boiled some peanuts and had leftover sausage biscuits from breakfast. We took watermelon and wemonade.

It was a feast. A smorgasbord. A pahty. For no weason other than fwiendship with a wittle boy who almost wasn’t. And now, when my brain flips through my memories of summer 2015, the last image I see is his face, slathered with chocolate and marshmallow.

“Would you wike to come to my pahty?”

Life holds delicious mysteries for mankind to dissect and debate. Often, we prefer stories for which the answers seem to be lost to history. Who built Stonehenge and why? Do Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster exist? Was Atlantis real? What happened to Jimmy Hoffa? Did Wilson eat the poop?

Wait . . . I better back up.

The Annual Lake Friends Spring Break Easter Egg Extravaganza didn’t begin as tradition. Most traditions don’t set out to be traditions. During spring break more than a decade ago, it was a just pretty day at Lake Eufaula, and it was too cold to swim. The three mommies had nine children under 10 years old. One of the mommies said, “I have some plastic eggs in the cabin. Why don’t we hide them?”

Throughout the years, we have accumulated, broken, and lost dozens of eggs. Currently, about 200 mostly mismatched eggs reside in an old, large, pink plastic bag from Leon’s women’s dress shop at Porter Square Mall. In black ink that matches the handles, words on it boast, “If it’s from Leon’s, it has quality.”

While hiding the eggs each spring, a mommy finds an arrow that was lost the previous summer during target practice. While gathering the arrows every summer, a kid finds an Easter egg that was overlooked the previous spring. Scout the Labradoodle must be locked up while the eggs are out, because he likes to hunt them, too.

We have entertained a guest or two almost every year. Being our guest is an advantage, much as being an extra on Star Trek was a disadvantage. Odds were high that the extra on the Star Trek episode would be killed. Odds were pretty good that the guest at our Easter egg hunt would find the golden egg. Odds were astronomical that the only two stinky boys in our group would throw temper tantrums when the guest found the golden egg.

I’m digressing.

One by one (with the exception of the twins), the children turned into teenagers. Two spring breaks ago, to make the hunt less childish, we held it at nighttime. We don’t have much outside lighting at our cabin, so the kids needed flashlights. Even the stinky boys thought it was fun, whether they would admit it or not, and were finally too old to throw temper tantrums over the golden egg–at least out loud.

One of the stinky boys, Wilson, is a middle child, sandwiched in birth order between girls. One or both of his sisters hates him at all times. For a reason no one remembers, it was the younger sister, SB, who hated him on this particular day. She wanted to play a trick on him. She thought it would be funny to put rabbit pellets (from Emma’s furry friend, Caspian T. Bunny) into an egg and drop it in his bag. (We always use high-quality Walmart bags as “baskets.”) She enlisted the assistance of her parents, who were mischievous enough to help her do it. Her dad was actually the one who deposited the poop-filled egg in Wilson’s “basket.”

After the hunt, everyone gathered at the picnic table to count eggs and to see what treasures they had picked up. When Wilson opened the egg with the poop in it, he wondered out loud what was in it and tossed it into his mouth. The horrified and thrilled crowd silently gasped and held back giggles as he chewed.

“How did it taste?” Wilson’s dad asked.

“Grassy,” Wilson told us.

SB tore into the house. The screen door slammed behind her.

Her mama went to check on her. She was terrified. Wilson was going to kill her this time for sure. He had eaten bunny poop, and everyone had watched him. He was going to be furious and humiliated. Her well-laid plans were much more fun to plot than to carry out. What had she been thinking?! What torture would she have to endure for this?! What paybacks was she going to reap?!

The Easter egg hunt was over. SB cried all the way back to their cabin.

This took place on the second Friday of spring break. The next day, the three families packed up, cleaned up, and went home.

On Sunday morning, Emma found SB at church to see if she was okay, to see what Wilson knew, to see what damage he had done to his little sister.

SB told Emma that Wilson was not angry. She said her parents told him of the plan in advance. She said they exchanged the poop with Reese’s Puffs. She said he knew he was eating cereal, not feces. She said he played along.

Emma recounted to me what SB said. Emma remembered how upset SB had been. Emma said, “I saw it. It was poop, and he ate it. They all made up a story to make SB feel better and to keep Wilson from being embarrassed.”

Did Wilson eat the poop? Emma says he did. SB says he didn’t. Tight-lipped Wilson won’t tell.

I can picture them now in a future old folks’ home, reminiscing and arguing about the details. Certainly by then, the truth will have been long forgotten.

Perhaps, the answers to mysteries do not want to be uncovered. Once the truth is known, the curious move on to other topics. No one talks about who shot JR anymore. We want Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson to solve another murder. We want Indiana Jones to unearth another artifact. We want the Pink Panther to be stolen yet again. We want Inspector Clouseau to track down the thief one more time.

Did Wilson eat the poop? I hope I never find out.