Has it been a century, already?

In August, the spiky plant that takes up most of one section of the back yard sprouted from its middle a stalk that reached for the sky.

In October, the stalk, taller than our roof by then, flowered. The petals littered the sandy ground and smelled like honeysuckle, but heartier.

Earlier this month, in place of flowers, round balls appeared on the tendrils that grew from the stalk. If you give the stalk a small shake, the balls fall like hail.

In the past week or so, the spikes, once sturdy and stretching probably 8 feet tip to tip, have started to droop and yellow.

“It’s like it’s giving up the Ghost,” I told a friend.

She came over and took home some of the ball-things, both of us assuming they must be plantable.

I Googled “spiky Florida plant,” and learned, as maybe I should have known, that we have an American agave in the back yard, commonly called a “century plant” because it takes so long before it blooms and produces “pups,” not usually 100 years, but often 30-40.

Our house was built in 1987, and it had one owner before us. I imagine her standing at the doorway and throwing handfuls of random seeds out into the yard. It’s taken us 4.5 years to clean up the jungle this property once was.

I expect the century plant was planted with the house, and indeed, it’s now pulling a “Charlotte’s Web” on us.

Once the pups fall, like Charlotte the spider after having her babies, it will die.

I never liked “Charlotte’s Web,” and it seems fitting that the agave would go at the end of 2020.

I’ve stuffed a few pups in the ground, in scattered places around the yard, not unlike the crazy lady who tossed seeds for us to one day tame. We’ll see what takes soon enough, and I suppose we’re to be hopeful that they all humbly grow and live terrifically and radiantly for the next 30-100 years.

May we all.

Happy New Year.

Almost a lap cat

We didn’t know, when we found this cat in a Wendy’s parking lot in Lakeland five years ago, that her flat-cut ear meant she was part of a cared-for feral colony.

Apparently, the ear cut means she’s had her shots, she’s spayed, and she should be left alone, as she’s also wild.

But she jumped into our car with a cheeseburger lure, and she sat on my lap back to Sarasota.

She’s not sat on a lap since.

When we got home that night, she became the “upstairs cat” at our rented, two-story condo, too scared to venture down into the family chaos.

Soon, we moved to Shady Brook Lane, and missing a good place to hide, she was present more often, mostly at night, when she’d sometimes let Thomas pet her — but only after children were asleep.

I often felt badly for bringing her into our loud house. I can’t blame her for keeping her distance. A lot of days, I don’t want to live here, either.

In recent weeks, though, months into the pandemic that’s cooped us into this house more than we’d like, she’s gotten closer to us, instead of running away. She’s started meowing at me, purring and allowing pets. She drools when she purrs.

Just today, she jumped up into my chair, and bumped me over, squeezing into the gap between my leg and the chair’s arm.

Hey, Wendy, welcome. My lap is still waiting for you, but you can sit next to me any time.

Well, that's aggressive

I pulled out some more garbage plants this weekend, and revealed this one in the process.

It’s pretty, with shiny leaves, and I got the feeling it maybe was something worth keeping.

I downloaded a “plant identification” app and was briefly impressed to learn that I had uncovered an Australian umbrella tree.

“That sounds fancy!” I thought.

“I wonder what I just threw away into the yard waste bin? Maybe there’s other good stuff? Ugh! Too late now.”

Then, I read further and learned that Australian umbrella plants, in Florida, are “aggressive weeds,” which seems like an awfully aggressive description for something with such shiny, pretty leaves.

Countdown to a Covid School Year

I'm up because he is, six hours before the pandemic's new school year starts. 

"Can I have melatonin?" he asked, when caught with all the lights on, no evidence of Minecraft or YouTube or Fortnite or any scramble to conceal activity. 

He said he couldn't sleep without the cat. 

"No. It's too late for melatonin," I told him. "And why didn't you just go find her?"

"I don't know."

"Go to sleep. Seriously. Now."

Yesterday, we had a virtual conference with this advisor. He participated from the other room, yelling occasionally to dispute my side of the conversation -- that distance learning last spring had been fine!, that he DOESN'T HAVE! a greatest strength, and to PLEASE STOP!!! talking about him. 

Eventually, he retreated to his room. "Goodbye, Dylan!" she yelled when our time was up.

"Oh, he's not there, anymore," I told her. I thought it had been obvious when the interruptions had subsided. "I'm sorry."

"Don't worry," she said. "I'm unflappable."

A newspaper friend once called me "unflappable," and I consider it one of the biggest compliments ever paid me. It's also true -- being steady and unbothered by most things is how I thrived in a deadline-driven career at the time, and how I've survived my motherhood years so far. I feel hopeful about this teacher (whose Zoom password is Tacos, so, really, I should already have known she's good people).

So if -- oh, let's just be honest -- when Dylan misses the bus in the morning, may she be unflappable. And may she have a big stash chips and salsa just off camera. 

Of Mess and Missing

Not being much into matchy-matchy home decor, I rely on books and LEGO and the kids' pottery and paintings to decorate our house.

Once, there was some deliberateness to the shelves -- board books here, off-limits stuff up high, paperbacks in this room, sports titles in the office, hardbacks there, small books on this skinny shelf, heavy ones in a stack on the bottom. But at some point, like most things around here, they got mixed together, and the randomness of the sizes, shapes and colors looked almost purposeful.

At the beginning of the pandemic, I set out to make the mess useful, and read the titles I haven't read, especially the ones the boys were assigned in school. I had neglected an earlier project, started a year ago, to read everything Blake read in eighth grade, in an attempt to create common ground. I hadn't kept up, and he'd not appreciated the effort, anyway.

The time in isolation afforded a chance to restart, I thought, and reading was up there with baking and Zoom workouts in those early lockdown days. Remember?

"You should start with 'The Crucible,'" Blake had said. "You deserve that one."

So I started with "The Crucible." And then I read or listened to many others: "To Kill a Mockingbird," "Fahrenheit 451," "Fish in a Tree," some of "The Great Gatsby," "Silver Linings," "Jaclyn Hyde," "Look Both Ways," "The Hate U Give," "Educated," "Untamed," "This Book is Anti-Racist," "The Worst Hard Time," "Little Fires Everywhere," and "The Breadwinner."

On Thursday, five days before remote learning is to start, the school sent the list of books we need to buy. I noticed the email, and then forgot it, until today. The order in which the books will be read is not clear, so I was hopeful when I saw "The Breadwinner" on the list.

"Oh, good. Maybe 'The Breadwinner' is first," I thought. "That would at least buy us some time to get the others ordered and delivered."

I had enjoyed "The Breadwinner," a story about an Afghan girl in a Taliban-controlled state, enough to take a photo of the cover and send it to my niece.

"You might like this one," I texted her, probably last May or maybe March.

That photo is now the only evidence that the book ever existed at Shady Brook Lane. Because it is lost. Gone. Shoved somewhere, likely, on the bright and scattered shelves of the family room or hallway, or hiding on Dylan's headboard, or stashed in an end table or stacked on a bedside table, or, or, or....

On this Day Whatever of This Covid Life, purchasing school books would have felt like an accomplishment, but now I've spent so much time looking for a book I surely will find once I reorder it, that maybe I'd be better off starting some sourdough or dumping a new jigsaw puzzle onto the dining room table and hunting again tomorrow.

Ohs and effs

This is not a story about a dog's haircut, but it starts that way.

The scene: A strip mall pet grooming salon. Mid afternoon, a few hours before the city's mask ordinance goes into effect.

I carried Peanut from the car toward the grooming salon because the pavement was hot and, somehow, she knew where we were. My keys, heavy with the attached minibar-sized bottle of hand sanitizer, were shoved in my pocket and making my pants fall down.

Half-way between the car and the salon door, I realized I left my face mask in the front seat.
"Effity, eff, eff!" I thought to myself. And then, "Oh eff it. This will take two minutes." (I didn't really say "effity" or "eff," but I'm trying to keep this family-friendly.)

The groomer fawned over Peanut. I completed the paperwork and handed over the leash.

"Pickup at 4 o'clock, right?" I asked.

"Yes, but we might be done sooner," she said.

"Oh, OK. Text me if you are. I'm a swim coach, and I'm headed to the pool now. With these clouds I won't be surprised if we get lightning. If we do, I can get her before 4."

"Oh! At least you get to swim! So many things are closed."

"Yes. I hope it lasts."

"Well, I can tell you this: I am NOT going along with that mask mandate. I've already called the police, and they say they can't enforce it. I have done my research! It's a $50 ticket, but they can't make anyone pay it. There's no penal code for it!"

"Oh."

"And I'll tell you what! I am NOT spending one dime in Sarasota until that thing is lifted. And I am NOT going to Costco EVER AGAIN. Mandatory masks there!"

"Oh."

"And what do you think is going to happen when they have this vaccine?"

"Huh?"

"Are they going to make people get it?"

"Oh. Well. I'm not sure what the plan is. But they make kids get vaccines for school, so I assume something like that will be done."

"Well, not my kids! My son was sliding towards autism before he was a year old. I put a stop to that!"

She went there.

Out.of.bounds.

----

A few things I should have done:

1) Taken my dog and ran.
2) Worn my effing mask in the first place.
3) Said way more than, "Oh."

But the poor pup had quarantine claws, and I had to get to the pool, and I was just so stunned to be included in this conversation in the first place. I was too slow and stupid to do or say the right thing.

I called my mother on the way to the pool.

"I'll pick her up, and I'll wear my mask!" she said.

"No, you stay home," I told her. "But I'll wear mine when I pick up. That will be beautiful."

"No," she said. "You're liable to be shot!"

She went there.

She's not out of bounds. This is effing Florida.

I picked up the dog at 3:40 p.m. I did not wear my mask.

I did not tip.

Happy Mother's Day, the pandemic edition

There's an enduring Caldwell family memory from 1987, the year we moved to California.

We lived in Bakersfield. "It's centrally located!" my father would say, perhaps trying to sell it to himself as much as to us. And as it was so convenient, the Caldwells would spend weekend days in the Toyota minivan, getting to know our new home.

We could drive to L.A. or the Central Coast in 90 minutes, sometimes less. It was five hours to San Francisco or the U.S.-Mexico border.

Totally doable, in my dad's mind, was to be in the Bay Area for brunch, walk around until dinnertime, and be home by late bedtime. Sometimes, we'd do it again the next morning. Or maybe I'm making that up. It's been awhile ... but that seems likely.

On a trip to San Diego one day, Patrick, Kimberly and I fought the entire way. My father blasted Zig Ziglar on the cassette deck, turning up the volume when we whined or asked how much longer or yelled about someone touching us. My mother waved and whacked her wooden spoon, only ever smacking the Good News Bible she'd stolen from St. Bartholomew's in Corpus Christi, Texas, and which would grace the back seat of the van until it finally was pushed to the junk yard near Fresno nearly 200,000 miles later.

There is a photo from that San Diego trek of us three children in a Balboa Park parking lot. We'd just arrived and are standing outside of the maroon van, all with our arms crossed across our bodies, all scowling. I am wearing a yellow shirt. My sister's hair is baby-white. My brother sneers.

Here's the part now sweet with 30-plus years of perspective: Seconds after that moment was preserved on film, my parents told us to get back in the van, and we drove home, through San Diego, Orange County, Los Angeles, over the Grapevine and into the driveway on Kennedy Avenue.

We never set foot in the World Famous San Diego Zoo. And we never forgot it. My folks tamed savageness with savageness and won.

Much respect, Mom and Dad.

I tried to re-create the photo in the zoo parking lot when Blake and Dylan and I were in San Diego in February. Just that little project to try to make Nana and Baba laugh was such a cluster of foolishness that I, too, almost packed up and drove away (in my fantasy, though, I left the children behind).

Yes, today is Mother's Day, and the truth is that the savages are winning most days around here.

But I'm so grateful for that trip to a water polo tourney across the country at the end of February. We landed home just days into a new world and a different and much more difficult time. It's hard to know when we or any other family will get another chance to create bad yet treasured memories, so I'm glad we got our shot.

Happy Mother's Day from these savages.