Hydrangea Time

For Uncle Sam

Earlier today I stopped at the Post Office. The line was longer than usual, and as I moved to the front I could see why. Of the three postal employees working with customers, one was dealing with a pile of letters to be overnighted and another was helping a family—mom, dad, young teenage son and daughter—apply for passports.

I was contemplating my choices for stamps when I overheard the woman behind the counter talking to the passport-seekers.

“I don’t know. They look gray to me,” she said.

I glanced over. She was peering into the face of the son.

“What should I write?” asked the father, appealing to his wife.

“We’ve always called them hazel,” said the boy’s mother.

“They’re really—what color are those eyes? I’d say gray,” the postal worker went on.

By now I was intrigued, mostly because it’s interesting that this kid had reached adolescence without his parents coming to an agreement about the color of his eyes.

The father looked a bit exasperated. He glanced in my direction—I was at the front of the line by then—and I smiled.

“Ask her,” he said to his wife, motioning to me, and then to his son, “Look at this lady.”

The teenager turned to me and I examined his irises. He looked remarkably poised considering that in the last few minutes two different middle-aged female strangers had been gazing into his eyes. He even raised his eyebrows so I could get a better look—at eyes of such a pale blue that they really could be called gray.

“I vote gray,” I said, and grinned at the boy, who looked relieved.

“I said gray,” the postal worker affirmed.

“What color is hazel, anyway?” the mother mused.

So that’s how today I contributed to the U.S. government’s official record of one if its citizens. It was kind of exciting to cast the deciding vote, even if it was a pretty big responsibility. After all, if on his trip to another country the kid wants to learn the word for his eye color, he’d better have an idea what to ask.

Sacrifice

This is the lovely fern outside my front door. Notice how it's thriving!

Let's look a little closer:

Gorgeous, isn't it? Doesn't it make our entryway look warm and welcoming?

You may wonder why I'm not taking better care of this fern, by trimming off the dead fronds, or maybe by watering it just a bit more. You might even wonder why I don't just take this lovely fern out to the compost heap and start over with a new one.

There is a good reason: for the third year in a row, a pair of house wrens have built a nest in my hanging plant. When I try to water it, there is an angry fluttering of wings from within.

And because the babies who came from the eggs that Mama Wren laid have now hatched, the fern is really noisy. Whenever we go outside to get the mail, or to walk this dog:

the wren babies are cheeping really loudly for more food. (Mom and Dad must be working hard to provide for them--I know just how they feel :-)

But in the last day or so, I have noticed that although a cacophony of chirps still erupts whenever we're in the vicinity, it dies down almost immediately. You can just picture Mama hushing her brood, who are now big enough to follow instructions and wait a minute for the next bite of worm. She's teaching them manners. (Or maybe how to stay hidden.)

In any case, because of the wren family, I am allowing this fern to waste away. It's a dilemma, because if I can't get any water into it, it may die back enough that it won't provide camouflage for the nest. But if I disturb the babies too much by watering, they may hop out before they're ready. (That happened the first year, and although the little guy was okay, I still have not forgotten the trauma.)

So far I'm batting .500--one year the babies flew in time for me to save the plant, and one year they didn't. I don't know what will happen this year.

But I bet the fern likes the company, and is okay with it either way.

Overheard In A Coffee Shop

Yesterday when I was getting my large black unsweetened iced tea with lemon, a young couple, maybe college-age, was in line behind me. They had their arms around each other and were chatting with a woman who could have been one of their mothers.

The young guy said to the older woman, “No, you’re all right, because you haven’t gained weight in your face.”

And I thought, dude, if you know what’s good for you, you’ll stop right there.

Lost In Translation

I recently reread the Steig Larsson books The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played With Fire. The third and final book in the series is coming out later this month, and I want the story to be fresh in my mind. Larsson, who died suddenly after finishing the trilogy, was a Swedish journalist, so the books have been translated into English. They’re excellent translations, too, but as with many books originally written in a different language, they contain a few quaint exceptions to conventional usage.

For instance, “I have to be in Stockholm tonight, so I must hurry away,” one character says in Dragon Tattoo.

My favorite sentence in that book, though, goes like this: “She married someone, never even introduced him to the family, and anon they separated.”

Anon. I can just picture the person doing the translation, having had a long day, saying to him or herself, hmmmm, soon, need a word that means soon, but I’ve used that a lot already. And checking a thesaurus and seeing the elegant Shakespearean “anon.”

I associate this word with the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet, when the nurse is calling Juliet inside, and she answers “I come, anon!” And that scene remains fresh in my memory not only because I have seen the 1968 Zeferelli movie more times than I can count, but because when I was in eighth grade we read the play aloud, and my English teacher Mrs. Moore chose me read the part of Juliet.

I was so excited to see who would read Romeo. Might it be handsome Ivan, the quiet guy who sat in the back of the room? He had a deep voice and was even tall, at a time when many of the prepubescent guys came up to the girls’ collarbones.

But guess who Mrs. Moore chose for Romeo? My brother Walt.

I mean, really. I like my brother, but what a missed opportunity. I thought I would never get over the disappointment.

But anon, I did.