Words I Like Today

flummox
exquisite

Perfect Days: A Thank You Card

This has been one of the finest summers I've ever known. It seems impossible to catalogue the various aspects of the summer's perfection - I'm sure when I look back on it, I'll have nothing to sift through but photographs of smiles and surprised faces, and faint, wispy impressions of experiences.

Here are a few:

Walking through Bughouse Square

This tiny little park (parklet, perhaps) is what I imagine if someone took the Boston Commons or Rittenhouse Square and shrunk it down to fit inside a little bottle in Chicago's brain. Here, a daily walk led me to study the truly lovely flower bed around the fountain, bees and monarchs darting around its bold denizens. A blanket and a shady spot, and hours spent playing airplane.

Farmers' Days

"I could marry a farmer," I joked to Kate after our fantastic lunch. The Green City Market is a banquet, a plaza, and the best produce section you've seen. My first visit this summer was with Joan where we enjoyed savory crepes (cheese, tomatoes, arugula) and peach smoothies. Then, the following week, the Welvers blanket was honored to host three friends, a blueberry crepe, and much sympathy for my laid-off-ed-ness. (Temporary, I hope.) The flowers, the food, the babies staggering about - so much to see. Not to mention the delight I took in ogling the young bronzed farmers. So young...*smirk*

And Even More Tomatoes

For three straight nights this summer, I feasted on a bag of tomatoes - a gift from Kate's garden. How to describe their sweet, intense flavor? Those tomatoes were...oh, take it away, Neruda....

And there it is: on
the table, at the summer's
equator,
a tomato -
an earthen sphere,
a fertile and
repeated
star -
reveals
its folds
and channels,
its renowned fullness,
its abundance
free of pits
and peels,
thorns and scales.
It's the tomato's
gift to us,
this fiery color
and undiminished freshness.

__________________________

Other Impressions

A million facial expressions. The smiles of strangers. Songs, songs, more songs. So much laughter bubbling forth. Drooly raspberries, a new trumpet to play. Goodnight, Moon. (Goodnight stars. Goodnight air. Goodnight noises everywhere.) Long strolls under the honey locust trees. Dancing to Chuck Berry, Sam Cooke, Little Richard, Desmond Dekker, and others. "I've Been Working on the Railroad." Gazing at the Tree of Birds in Abuelito and Abuelita's back yard. The relief of a welcome nap.

I am so grateful for good friends, a safe home, and perfect summer days.

Lying in Wait

About a year ago, I was woken by a series of mosquito stings. I sat up, turned on my bedroom light, and waited, knowing that it wouldn't be long before the little sucker would be back for more. Legs crossed, my eyes scanned the room, hoping to notice the little bugger in flight so I could track where it landed and then kill it. Suddenly I noticed a spot on the yellow surface just behind my head. My hand shot out and I slapped a bloody smear on the wall. So satisfying. I slept well that night.

Now it's past midnight, close to one, and I'm lying again in wait, bad leg elevated and the living room light dim but there. So far I've missed it on two tries. The second time, it zipped around my face and I swatted at it, surprised, like a caricature of how girls supposedly fight, hands flailing. Turning out the lights and trying to fall asleep is futile - I'll lie awake imagining the shrill buzz torturing my ear until it actually manifests itself. I can only lie here in this half-light, waiting for either another visit from the mosquito or for my six-fifteen wake up call, the much more delightful sound of my baby son giggling himself awake.

Bikes That Go Fart in the Middle of the Night

I always know it's summer when motorcyclists begin to tear down La Salle in the middle of the night. Initially I wondered, why my street? It may be that the lights are timed just so, so that the motorcycle riding loonies can accelerate just enough to make all the lights from one end to the other. And while, as a pre-pre-teen, I had many Grease II (*cringe*)-inspired fantasies of riding on the back of some leather-clad stud's bike, hair whipping out behind me, I now have detailed an entirely different kind of motorcycle-themed fantasy.

In my new daydream (or awake-night-dream, thanks to the flatulating growls of bikes all hours past my window,) someone like Bond's Q has designed a special weapon just for me. At the very moment a sensor detects a single bike or troupe of motorcycles are approaching my block, a microscopically thin trip wire shoots out of the weapon and fastens itself somewhere on the Moody Bible Reformatories across the street. The cycles sputter ever closer then ... phwwTT! They hit the wire, hurtling wheel over wheel up, up, up into the air. A massive portal opens up at the intersection of Oak and La Salle the bikes fall into a below-street-level colossal pit of assorted animal dung,* like that scene in Back to the Future, where Marty McFly's super smooth skateboard moves draw Biff and his gang to slam into a manure pile with their car.

Sigh. I get happy just picturing it.

* I couldn't decide whether to use the word 'dung' or 'offal.' Offal is so much more elegant.