Conversation

    It started when he casually mentioned the Blue-footed Booby in conversation. "Blue-footed booby is a silly name for a bird," he said.

    "Tell me more," she said. "Have you yourself see a Booby's feet?"

    He modestly admitted that no, he had not seen the feet of a Booby up close or even the bird in person.

    "In person?" she said.

    He ignored her implication that he might be claiming that the Booby is a person. He hadn't said or implied that it was a person. "It's a bird," he said. "And the feet are quite blue, bright blue. It's nature's camouflage for a sea bird like the majestic Blue-footed Booby."

    "Hmmm," she said. "So those dainty blue feet...."

    "Not dainty," he said. "They are wide, broad, web-like, to give the Booby stability on land...."

    "And, I suppose,  provide propulsion in the water."

    "Exactly," he said. "The fleeing squid never know what hit them when the Booby is around."

    "Ahh," she said and shuddered dramatically. "The Booby doesn't mind those ridiculous feet?"

    "No, of course not. It's part of nature's camouflage. Who would be wary of a Booby?"

    She laughed. "My point exactly, burdened not only with that name, but made worse with blue feet!" 

    "And a bright blue beak."

    "It has a blue beak? Oh, the poor guy."

    "It's a long, rapier-like beak. Lethal," he said, "and quite, quite blue."

    She laughed. "Thank you," she said. "I never know what tale you're going to make up out of thin air, but for now the Blue-footed Booby with its bright blue, rapier sharp beak is my favorite. You are amazing!"

    He smiled, did the mock bow he'd perfected, and hoped he'd be around when she discovered that Blue-footed Boobies were alive and well in the Galápagos.

Angélique

    The old guy was tired, probably just needed a place to sit down--a park bench, a low wall, a step, anywhere cool, steady, and safe. But he was walking slowly, so slowly, that I found myself watching him with suspicion, suspicion more than care or, even, curiosity.

    I didn't know him--I don't always remember faces, but there was nothing familiar about this guy, an old man in sagging jeans, no belt, his thumbs threaded in the loops of his pants and a yellow T-shirt that was too bright, too wrinkled, and stretched too thin over his narrow body.

    He made me nervous, and I felt sorry for him at the same time. I didn't think he could see me on my front porch, but I stopped reading when I first saw him, and sat very still. He would probably just walk by.

    No.

    He slowed at my step up from the public sidewalk and appeared to have an uncommon interest in my begonias on either side of the step. I kept an eye on him and assumed that if I was very still, he'd keep going, continue his halting stumble down the street.

    No.

    He's stopped, and now he's on his knees, well, one knee, peering into my flower bed, as I sort through my options, what to do if he starts picking them or, worse, looks up, sees me, and approaches.

    Call 911?

    Well, probably not, that would be ridiculous--Officer, somebody is picking my begonias.

    Yikes, now he's on both knees, with his nose literally touching my prized Begonia Angélique...well, it does smell good, but.... I move carefully, my chair scrapes, he looks up, sees me, obviously sees me, nods, then holds his hand up to get my attention. Oh, no, he's going to ask for something...money...food.

    I can't pretend I'm not there in full view, can't pretend I haven't seen him, so I put on my best school teacher frown, daring him to come any closer.

    He doesn't read body language, because now he's managed to stand up and is about to walk towards me.

    I get up.

    "Ma'm," he says, "Not only are your roses beautiful, they are thriving...and will outlive all of us. May I...."

    "No," I shout, too quickly, sure he wants to pick my prize begonias--which clearly are not roses.

    He ignores me and is already bent to the flowers, his head wobbling as he inhales the intoxicating fragrance of the Angelique, then he looks up, pauses long enough to make sure I see him, rasps, "I needed that," then turns and continues his slow progress down the sidewalk.

    "Thank you," I say, too late and too quietly for him to hear, but grateful and aware that I am slow to recognize angels when they appear, but at least I saw this one.

The Eyes Have It

     "Did you know the Long-Tailed Duck has orange eyes?"

    What a question! She almost didn't answer, resisted the urge to laugh, or even better, snort. What did she--or he, for that matter--know about the color of duck eyes, or bird eyes, or the eyes of any creature? Of course she didn't know that ducks, long-tailed ducks, had orange eyes.

    She smiled, looked up from the paper, her own blue eyes wide and innocent, and said, calmly, "Of course I knew that. The Long-Tailed duck is known for the distinctly orange hue of its eye, set off by the circle of white down that circles each orb. Quite striking. The pupil, of course, is black, but the orange of the surrounding iris permits it to sense their preferred fish eggs and mollusks--a well known fact."

    She paused, looked up to see if he was still listening.

    He was and was waiting to see where she would go next, amazed, she assumed, at her erudition...and what he called her fantasies, the phenomenon she called her quick response. They had been married too long to fool each other. She was used to his nonsensical questions, and he to her quick answers. Obviously, there was no such creature as the long-tailed duck and who ever got close enough to see the color of any duck's eyes?

    "The orange eye matches the color of the beak, an effective concealment in the arctic tundra it inhabits, a kind of camouflage," she said.

    "Of course," he said, and they went back to the paper, both of them smiling. 

Perfection

     The dog was alone, walking alone, not trotting, but walking across the field with intention, as if it had a specific destination--home after a night out? an impromptu foraging? exploration? It was morning, early morning, a sun-just-rising, field-damp-from-the-cool-night's-condensation time of morning.

    The dog thought it was alone, but I was there too, watching his steady trot, never a run, but it was moving swiftly enough to catch my attention. I, of course, was in my tree, not high up--too early for that, just on the first broad branch, elevated enough to detect movement across the field, but not high enough to see the fence below the rise in the field or more than the roof of my shack.

    A stray dog, I thought. A lost dog? A homeless dog? 

    I considered whistling to it, but didn't want to interrupt the peace of the morning, mine and his, and my whistle, my interpretation of a whistle, was more wispy air than music.

    The dog stopped at that thought, lifted its head as if it heard my inner voice, looked in my direction, then right at me, as if it saw me, really saw me, took me in, contemplated my presence, then continued its steady trot across the field, beginning his day perfectly with a morning baptism in a dew drenched field, as the earth turned, the sun rose, and the glimpse of another silent, solitary creature--me--drinking in the morning was the perfect start to his day...and to mine.

Yes!

Saving Face

    He wanted an apple, which made no sense since it was the middle of summer, well, okay, not the middle, June 5th was more barely summer, no, just summer, the beginning of summer, but still, he wanted a cool, crisp apple, tart...well, at least not too sweet or too sour, which was why he was standing at Whole Foods peering at the mishmash of produce, the loud signs proclaiming ORGANIC! Wasn't all food organic, even those tainted by pesticides at their origin? They weren't plastic--they still came from living, organic plants.

In fact he had heard that some supposedly "healthy," good-for-you foods were manufactured in a lab and given monikers like bio-this and probiotic that, the bios and probiotics the result of somebody's chemistry set.

There were apples in the produce section, so he should just choose one or two and keep moving, but he was too frozen in his contemplation of the American apple. He wanted to shout, "Whatever happened to the Red Delicious?" He knew it was a ridiculous question, especially if shouted in a grocery store, but still....HIs mind had become so tangled in an apple quagmire (of his own making, he had to admit) that he couldn't make a decision, couldn't move on, needed help.

Then it happened. A girl, young, not quite womanly, but old enough to be out on her own, probably driving a car, God Forbid, reached across him, grabbed a misshapen something, blushed when she brushed against him, looked up, smiled, said, "Don't you just love these, especially the name?"

He had no idea what she was talking about and must have looked confused.

She held up the misshapen object. "Ugly Fruit," she announced, "and so delicious."

He froze, paused (imperceptibly, he hoped), and then nodded, saying the only thing he could think of. "Yes," he said, "they're my favorite."

Whew! Saved again by harmless prevarication.

The Blues

    It was still raining when he woke up, a steady rain, without the drama of thunder and lightning, good for farmers, he assumed, but a challenge for the perfect day the had planned (perhaps prematurely), for Allegra. The day he had planned since he first saw her behind the cosmetic counter at Macy's, extolling the subtleties of blush to a pair of women who needed more than a smear of pink to achieve the radiance Allegra exuded.

    It was his mother's fault. Or maybe he should give Mama the credit for his consultation with Allegra. Mother's Day, innocent Mother's Day, had sent him to Macy's for perfume. Mama loved anything that smelled good, and after a lifetime of prickly roses and wilting tulips, he had decided to be unpredictable this year, to surprise the person who knew him best with a gift she didn't expect.

    "Chanel Number 5?"

    Allegra had laughed, well, snorted, "Every man thinks Chanel No. 5 is the be all for every woman."

    "But it's just for my mother."

    "Just? Just?'

    He blushed, his worst quality, being a man who blushed when embarrassed. He felt the heat which meant the red had already spread up his neck to his scalp, and told him that this woman, Allegra in flowing cursive on her name tag, might be the one. He laughed, stuttered, tried to retract the "just" by over-explaining. "I always, well, usually, most of the time, give her something that smells wonderful on Mother's Day--a bouquet, chocolates, once a ride in the country to smell the first breath of spring."

    Allegra smiled, obviously charmed by his good taste, creativity, and filial devotion (or so he assumed), so he kept going, probably a sentence--or paragraph--too long, the good son extolling his own virtues, until she interrupted him.

    "Here is what you need." It was a small, dainty bottle. "L'Heure Bleu," she said, with a repeat of the dazzling smile. "Shall I wrap it up?"

    "It's so small," he blurted, without thinking, without really knowing anything about perfume.

    Allegra already had it wrapped in luminescent gold paper speckled with clouds of blue, and, when he choked on the price, Allegra reminded him that "The queen wore nothing else."

    $120 and 2 days later, his mother peered at the tiny, multifaceted bottle. "The blue hour?" she said, with only a hint of wonder, but the quizzical wonder that you might call disappointment or criticism, was enough for him to remember instantly that his mother's most common lament was "I've got the blues."

    Well, Allegra had said, "Let me know how she likes it...." Which had sealed the deal, because he would have to report back and the two of them could celebrate his mother's delight or, more probably, find solace in her lack of sophistication. 

Something to Celebrate

        She believed in age, in embracing growing old, in knowing, even loving, the scrawny arm, the wave of wrinkles up her cheek, across her forehead, even the neck, the old woe-is-me chicken neck, not a smooth quarter inch anywhere, just the patina of age--patina, the description of beauty for an antique table, a beloved rocking chair, and now, her face.

Well, why not?

Why not?

Yes, why not?

A new mantra for the unstoppable journey into old, old old, then really old.

And who would want to stop it now, leap off the wheel of life too early, become a memory, not her memory, but somebody's, and for how long would that last?

Well, from being a memory, she could move to story, even an oft-told tale, an amusing anecdote, a fond remembrance of another time period for her children, grandchildren and....

Well, yes, better than Glad she's gone...but, really who would think that?

Nope. Not to be considered.

But what's after "faint memory" or "faded history," a story the grand grand grands know, maybe even tell once or twice?

Time...life--was all illusion anyway--a construct, human invention to satisfy the impulse to count, to plan, to know, record, predict, think, assess...which, apparently, is what she was now consumed with.

Yes, that must be it...She was just thinking, letting her thoughts spool out, playfully, an amusing game while she stretched her good leg over the side of the bed, forced the other (given to cramps) to follow, until she was sitting on the side of the bed, straightening her back, vertebrae by vertebrae, to an upright posture-perfect (well, practically perfect) position, the essential prelude to standing up.

Which she did, victorious again!

ALLELUIA!