My mother’s family took photos. Lots and lots of photos. Mother always meant to organize and scan the pictures. She wanted a digital archive that could be saved and shared, one of the many projects left unfinished when she died.
I’ve been making slow progress with the photos, which is fascinating, frustrating work. Most are not labelled, so scanning is the easy part. The hard part will begin later, when I try to match names and faces, to reunite families and trace their paths through time.
It’s been a lovely, lazy day. Instead of doing anything new or productive, I wandered from window to window, lost in memories and daydreams.
As a child, I both loved and dreaded blue jays. Beautiful and fierce, they are a permanent fixture in my summer memories. (See this poem.)
Last year, a pair of blue jays nested in our wax myrtle. They built on the far side of our fence, right over the sidewalk. It was a precarious choice, and I wasn’t too surprised when the nest failed.
Today, a new nest is taking shape. This time they chose the neighbor’s pear tree, a safer and more defensible position. They are using twigs from our wax myrtle, which makes for some fun photos, but I’m content to have them in someone else’s yard. They are, after all, quarrelsome birds.
Okay, that part about being content is a lie. I’m jealous. Maybe the babies will spend some time in our yard, as they learn to fly…
Here in the mid-Atlantic, tornadoes rarely threaten. However, along the Tennessee/Alabama state line, where I grew up, spring routinely brings tornado outbreaks. These photos are from Easter morning 1984. That window, the one nearly hidden by leaves, was my bedroom.
There’s a pale blur of silhouette, in the back yard, that is one of our confused chickens. I don’t know where they were, when the storm hit, or how they survived. I was in bed. It was about four AM when the wind grew and grew and grew into a furious whistle and wail. I remember fear, and the wincing spasm of muscle and nerve when our roof shifted with a BANG.
After the storm, after it was too late to bother with safety, we gathered in the middle of our dark house. Despite having no warning, everyone was safe and unharmed.
Mother and my older sisters surveyed the damage, which was minor. I wanted only to check on my cat. Mischief had delivered kittens, days earlier, in one of the sheds. Mother made me wait until sunrise, which may have been the longest hour of my young life. When I opened the shed, Mischief greeted me with her usual cry and purr. I remember counting her kittens, even though it was obvious they were safe.
For that matter, all of the animals were safe. The chickens, whose roosts had been rearranged so rudely, gossiped and fussed for a few hours, then returned to their interrupted routine.
The peach tree (which had never produced peaches) was a total loss, and one of the small maples in the back yard. The older trees survived, survive yet, despite losing much of their upper growth.
Here in 2012, just this morning, a classmate from high school picked up her children after a tornado damaged their school. I don’t know how she survived the minutes between hearing the news and holding her kids. Simply reading her Facebook update, her few sentences confirming that the kids are okay, made my heart race.
And this afternoon my heart still races, because the day is not over. I want to curl, catlike, around my loved ones. Around all the ones they love, and everyone in the storm’s path. Please stay safe.
Before I Knew
Before I knew pleasures
Should be guilty
I climbed trees
Forfeiting homework and chores
In search of the beginning
Of wind
In those days shadows danced
Proved the sun moved around the Earth
(Did Ptolemy climb trees?)
Before I knew history
Was more ancient than myself
I hunted arrowheads
Scouring new plowed furrows
I exhumed fallen masterpieces
Of war
In those days summer ruled
Proved we would live forever
(Was Einstein once a child?)
Before I knew memory
Shaped the future
I dreamed easily
Dozing among the branches
Bare feet thickly shod
With dirt
In those days apples beckoned
Proved the universe was infinite
(Did Newton also dream?)
Published in The Powhatan Review, Vol. V, Number 1, Summer 2005
Rae Spencer 