Memories in the Making

The day begins thick and heavy. Fog limits the view and dew, heavy enough to gather and drip occasionally from the roof, won’t likely be enough to moisten the fields but will at least service the wildflowers. In the few days we have been here, the roadsides and roughs have increasingly blued. They are crop enough…for the moment.

Yesterday smirked with the promise of rain, but like Lucy holding the football, the sky persistently reneged. We’ll see how today progresses. If the morning is any indication, it will be another stretch of daylight wet in spirit but dry in substance.

This is our last full day in Berclair for awhile. It’s too early to plan when the next one will be, but not too early to look forward to it. The 1500 miles or so between us make visiting hardly routine, but hopefully it won’t be another year. These days have been like wearing soft and comfortable old clothes that know where you bend and “give” where they need to. That very sentiment now strikes me as interesting. I’ve had something of an adulterous relationship with Berclair over the years – I’ve taken it for granted; disrespected it, I suppose, to dabble in “prettier,” “sexier” locales. After visiting here twice a year for the most formative years of my growing, when it was up to my own initiative I seldom took it. Maybe it was too close; too common; too hot when my vacation days were available. And, as I say, there were titillating alternatives. Now Berclair is, I suppose, the “sexy” alternative – far enough away to be alluring.

The result is that I have very old memories of these roads, these fields, these spirits that still gather on the front porches of my mind to laugh and tell stories, light firecrackers, spit watermelon seeds, hum a hymn or a folk song and page through photo albums; very old memories of honking the cows up to pet and tromping the fields and singing hymns in the old church. And I have very young memories from the last few years of reconnection and exploration and feckless striving to contribute something here instead of merely use; of in-troducing those old legacies to Lori and creating our own. But I remember almost nothing in between. Which, though odd in some ways and revealing much remedial I have still to learn, has some advantages, given some of the other turns those middle years ended up taking.

Meanwhile, we are here for one more day; smiling; gratefully relaxed; eagerly curious and attentive enough to notice the hawk swooping overhead and the buzzards circling in the distance and the cacophony of birds calling from the trees and the faint “moo” in the distance and the still, mirroring water in the tank across the pasture and the bluebonnets blooming and the coyotes howling and relative prospects of the dewy fog…

…and every redbird that drops down to perch on the fence…
…or the low branch…
…or the dusty rain gauge.