May 10, 2024
Grandparents
If there was one weekday I enjoyed waking up on, it was Friday. This morning, I talked to my wife via FaceTime to say hello. She would be back this evening, and we were both eager to spend the weekend together. I made some coffee and sat down on the couch alone, thinking about tomorrow morning’s coffee time. My wife would be with me, transforming the entire coffee experience.
While I missed my wife, I was happy she had a night of reprieve from the long morning commutes she had braved. As if medical school wasn’t tough enough, spending three hours on the road each day ate up precious mental energy and study time. This compounded the stress of being tired, needing to study complicated material, and having no time to do it. Next week, my wife would stay in Cary. This would relieve some of the pressure and create some space to get her work done. For us, schooling was a priority, and it was something we both signed up for, and I took my support role seriously.
This morning, I made time to take feed out to the pine grove for the deer and other animals. I grabbed the last forty-pound bag of deer corn from my SUV, threw it over my shoulder and headed into the grove. There, where the pines met the old forest, I started pouring out small piles, being careful not to inhale the dust that shot up in the air as the kernels hit the ground. I used up half of the bag and then hauled the rest back to my car. It was almost birthing season, and I was sure the pregnant deer were hungry and looking for extra food. Before leaving the grove, I checked the trail camera in the area to find out if any new fawns had emerged. There were none.
I came inside the house, took a shower, and got busy with work. This week had been unusually quiet. Several people were off on vacation, so maybe that was the cause. In my line of work, slow days were uncommon, so I embraced them while they were here. Next week, several people would return, and I was sure that work would be doubly busy.
During my lunch break, I drove into Wilson, making a repeat visit to Panera. Yesterday, I tried their Fuji Apple Chicken Salad, and liked it so much that I grabbed two of them for tonight’s dinner, one for me and the other for my wife. Although it was only lunchtime, my wife called me. She finished work early and was getting ready to make the drive home. She told me the weather in Cary looked ominous and that the trip might take a while. I looked out the dining-room windows. In Sims, the sky was clear and bright.
My wife must have brought the stormy weather with her because when she was about five miles away, the sky suddenly clouded up and went dark. The wind picked up, stirring the tall pines and blowing debris around the yard. Then the sky opened, and the water fell. In twenty minutes, the weather had transformed from sunny to stormy. I reminded myself that I was no longer in Texas, where the spring and summer weather was dry, often to the point of drought. Here in North Carolina, there was plenty of rain year round.
My wife arrived, and I met her outside. We did our usual wave and smile as she parked her car near the front door. We lived in the country, so every inch of grass was a potential parking space. Sometimes we parked our cars away from the house, but they were most often close to the front door because it was the tactical thing to do. I pulled a large green tea from Panera out of the refrigerator and handed it to my wife. She loved those things, so I saved mine for her when I learned she was on her way home. I was already working at the dining room table with my work computer, and my wife joined me, sitting down with her computer to study.
When I had one hour of work left, my wife closed her computer, grabbed a cold beer, and sat outside. I was happy for her, even if I was a little jealous. Thanks, Alan Jackson. After I finished work, we ate our salads outside together. The dinner was tasty and convenient for a Friday evening, when neither of us wanted to leave the house or be up late. We sat outside together talking and taking in the scenery.
It was one of those evenings where the weather helped break up the monotony of the season. It was cool enough outside to feel a little cold. The wind was stirring, making the hundred foot trees sway back and forth like saplings. Clumps of dead pine needles that had been stuck in the trees loosened and blew all over the yard. Some floated to the ground, almost arriving at the deck, but most of the needles fell fast, as if there were much heavier than they actually were. The wind and blowing debris had us standing at the railing to watch the show. I tried to catch pine needles, but they never quite reached the deck, some coming as close as a foot away.
Even though the weather was acting up, there was no rain. The high winds seemed to move the clouds along, and after an hour, they were mostly gone. The sun came back out, and the weather calmed, as if some entity had possessed it, and then suddenly vanished. As the sun neared the horizon, its light shone on the tips of the eastern pines. I loved seeing these last streaks of light. They were always a soft golden color and made great lighting for pictures. But most of all, to me, these bright slivers were the sun’s last stand against the night, a sign, and perhaps a symbol, of day’s end. Last light was the end of our day, and we would wake up early tomorrow, waiting for the first light to hit the western pines.
My wife made a lucky discovery this evening. A week or two ago, we noticed two wrens return to a nest they used last year to raise two broods of chicks, producing seven baby wrens. We welcomed their recent return, but a few days later, we discovered that two eggs had been pushed out of the nest and were lying on the deck, broken. Our hopes for them were a little broken, too. However, for a few days now, the male wren had been taking food to the nest for the mother to eat, who was likely sitting on her eggs. Tonight, my wife noticed two bald chicks poking out their beaks, taking food from the father. A new brood had been born, and we were grandparents again.
Friday evening had ended, and nature had also closed her curtains, preparing for her evening show. The stars poked holes in the night, making pinpoints in the fabric of space. Fireflies were lighting as they sat on the ground, signaling each other. Frogs sang loudly, and I wondered where they were in the forest. It was time for us to go to bed, but I knew the rest of the forest was just coming alive. The foxes, opossums, deer, coyotes, and raccoons were getting ready for their nocturnal activities. Millions of spiders were crawling about while the bats and owls patrolled the air. It was time to let nature devolve into darkness, to become wild, unsettled, to resume its life without us, until the sun’s light could rise once again.