Red's Wrap
Happiness. It's relative.
Itty-Bitty Changes on the Bus
One small improvement that I could make in my life is to water my new hostas until they really take root and stop the cycle of elation about plant-buying and resentment about plant care that has ruled my adult life. Which is saying something since my adult life is fifty-nine years long.
I asked the woman sitting next to me on the bus today if she’d ever lived in the country. She said yes but she hated it because her older brothers would take her in the woods and leave her there and play other bully brothers tricks on her. We were passing newly planted fields on the way from Milwaukee to Madison which gave me my customary envy of people who grow things. Agriculture is so inspirational. All the little shoots. I felt bad for asking her since the question called up unpleasant memories but, earlier, she’d pointed out barns she liked.
I like barns and I’ve never lived in the country so I should have known. Anyone can like barns.
She was a woman who had been in many committee meetings with me, but we’d never talked. She is older and frail-looking and so, unconsciously, I did what I accuse others of doing. I sort of wrote her off. It turns out she was as dense with stories as any person could be. She’d worked here and there, knew this person and that, had fished in many places, and had the expected outcome of having one foot on a boat and the other on the dock. She was about to go on a trip to study Agatha Christie. I felt stuck and stolid beside her.
Just goes to show. There are more things to change than deciding to be a faithful waterer of one’s plants.
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Snow Door | wisconsinacademy.org
Listen to Jan read her essay “Billy” presented on WUWM’s Lake Effect
Jan’s essay “At the Breakfast Bar” on WUWM Lake Effect
Jan’s essay “The Parish Hall,” on WUWM Lake Effect
“Fury Cannot Touch Me,” Modern Love, NYT, 9/29/11
all things go much deeper than they appear on the surface not only plant roots, but people, and we find that if we take the time to ‘water’ them thoroughly –