Making the First One Last

The Butterfly wished for a bride; and as may well be imagined, he wanted to select a very pretty one from among the flowers; therefore he threw a critical glance at all the flower-beds and found that every flower sat quietly and demurely on her stalk, just as a maiden ought to sit before she is engaged; but there were a great many of them, and the choice threatened to become wearisome...

We traveled some miles this past Friday to our home in Florida. Thankfully, the price of gas was cheap, and our Dodge truck--a leftover from the drilling business we used to own--did not set us back too many of those green objects worked so hard for and disappearing more quickly than we could have ever anticipated. When Hubby and I married nearly twenty-nine years ago, though, times were tough then too for us and a lot of other people our age. We were young when we married, the first ones among our friends to tie the knot, and we have made it last while some of our friends have not been so fortunate. As you can see by the gauges pictured above, Hubby was driving responsibly on the Interstate highway, not speeding, and we had a few more miles to go before needing to fill up the tank or empty anything else. Hubby remarked that the last half of the tank always seems to disappear more quickly than the first half. How can that be? If a half is really half, then each one should last the same amount of time as the other one. Hubby replied that most fuel gauges somehow lose their calibration or whatever it is that keeps them honest in the beginning.

...The spring went by, and the summer drew toward its close; it was autumn, but he was still undecided...


At our exit from I-65, we noticed a new casino almost ready to open for business. These are heady days for the Poarch Band of Creek Indians and the town of Atmore, Alabama. According to one website I found, though, there are some officials at the state level who seek to block the Native Americans' quest to follow after the elusive American dream and make lots of that green stuff. I have to wonder why the Indians should not be allowed to claim their rights to the goodies, since they were the first ones here. They will, after all, be contributing to the dwindling tax base so greedily guarded and consumed by elected officials. There are not so many manufacturing jobs left to shore up that base anymore.

...And thus it happened that the Butterfly had no wife at all. He had been too long choosing, and that is a bad plan. So the Butterfly became what we call an old bachelor.

Saturday morning was devoted to unpacking a few things and taking a walk in the neighborhood. You can see the old reliable truck resting in our driveway not very far from the neighbors' maple tree, which was still looking colorful that day. After the brisk winds we have experienced the last couple of days, I do not expect to see too many of those colorful leaves left on the tree tomorrow morning. My little windmill palm seems out of place among these deciduous trees, but it just would not seem like Florida or home without it.

It also would not seem like home without this little guy coming to visit with his parents. Micah just cannot get enough of "guy" things like our lawn tractor. He insists on climbing up and pretending that he is in charge of lawn maintenance around here. If I had just half of his energy, maybe I could really get the lawn and gardens looking good. Our grass in Florida at this time of the year looks awful so Hubby seeded it with some annual rye. Maybe by the time we have to leave, we will have some kind of green stuff to admire here.

We had another turkey dinner on Sunday afternoon, believe it or not. This time, though, our son fired up his fryer in the barn behind our house, and we enjoyed the bird prepared in deep-fried fashion. It is surprisingly tasty and not at all greasy prepared this way.

Grandpa worked off a few calories pushing Micah around the back yard in another relic from our drilling days--the old workhorse wheelbarrow. It has carried more sacks of Quik-rete, Portland cement, and bentonite clay than we care to remember. I am glad it serves a more entertaining purpose these days.

It was late in autumn, with rain and cloudy weather. The wind blew cold over the backs of the old willow trees, so that they creaked again. It was no weather to be flying about in summer clothes, nor, indeed, was the Butterfly in the open air. He had got under shelter by chance, where there was fire in the stove and the heat of summer. He could live well enough, but he said, "It's not enough merely to live. One must have freedom, sunshine, and a little flower."

Our Peruvian lily and his beautiful mother love to watch Daddy cook. You can see our kayak behind them. We will be taking it back to Illinois in the truck along with a lot of other stuff I just cannot live without for a couple of years. I wish Micah and his parents and his aunt and a couple of kitties at home could join the stuff, but, unfortunately, these Beverly Hillbillies will be the only human objects traveling back to the Land of Lincoln. Somewhere in one of my comments on one of my posts, I remember telling someone that if wishes could move land masses, then Illinois would be on the Gulf Coast. Now that hurricane season is officially over for this year, I can say things like that without any fear of it coming true for a while.

And he flew against the window-frame and was seen and admired and then stuck upon a pin and placed in the box of curiosities; they could not do more for him.

Micah and I are fast becoming buddies. We both find humor in things we love--things like playing in the yard with Grandpa and working on getting our family back together again.

"Now I am perched on a stalk, like the flowers," said the Butterfly. "It certainly is not very pleasant. It must be something like being married, for one is stuck fast." And he consoled himself in some measure with the thought.

"That's very poor comfort," said the potted Plants in the room.

"But," thought the Butterfly, "one cannot well trust these potted Plants. They've had too much to do with mankind."

--from Hans Christian Andersen's short story "The Butterfly"--