“Daddy, what are you doing?” My dear daughter sounds surprised.
I’m making an environmental statement, I respond. Save the palmettos!
“Please, Dad, a palmetto isn’t the safest place to sit,” my safety-oriented progeny suggests. She is referring to my current location, which is about twenty-five feet above her in our front yard. The twenty-two-foot extension ladder I borrowed from a friend last week, for another project entirely, is laying on the ground.
Actually, I’m not sitting, I tell her. I’m sort of wedged.
“Do you need help?” she queries.
Yes.
“By the way, why do you have a kayak paddle in your hand?”
I want to say “because I’m an idiot” but I do not. I was cleaning out our storage shed, an annual event I have been unable to hand off to any other family member. Possessions we never use are stored there. We have a sailboat anchor that has never been wet, primarily because we don’t have a sailboat. Other items include a bag of Redi-Mix cement that got wet when I was defrosting the freezer – which is also in the shed. There are all the tools I can never find, boxes of assorted “things” I can never part with (i.e., a never-used bicycle inner tube repair kit), an exceptional accumulation of dead insects, and a bit of rodent spoor. The shed also shelters four kayak paddles, gathering dust. Just outside the shed are two kayaks gathering pine pollen.
The idea was a good one. Two kayaks for a family of four. We could explore the marsh together, take trips together! But due to such things as deadlines, interminable meetings, bills, taxes, jury duty, computer crashes, eating, and sleep, the paddles accumulate dust. I was rearranging them when I heard “MEOW,” which is why I am stuck in a palmetto tree.
I thought I was saving your cat, I tell her.
“My cat? My cat! Where’s my cat!?” she asks panicking. Her cat is an indoor cat.
Your cat is in the house. Turns out it was a stray, I explain to her. I used the paddle to get the cat. That’s when the cat jumped and knocked the ladder over. It’s a long story.
“Never mind,” she says and moves to the ladder. At 22 feet, fully extended, the ladder is heavy and daughter struggles. But, lo! Seldom-seen-son appears.
“Hey Dad. Have you seen my golf shoes?” he calls up to me.
No, son, I have not.
“Why do you have a kayak paddle up there?” he inquires.
I give a shortened version.
“That’s pretty funny, Dad,” my son observes.
Daughter Dear has actually gotten the ladder off the ground and is attempting to aim it at my tree. My son helps. I am rescued.
I check the shed and find that the cat, once on the ground, must have been rather crazed and has caused several coffee cans filled with screws and nails to spill all over the floor.
Son and daughter zip passed me and set off for their part-time jobs with a quick “see ya.”. Counting my getting them up for school this morning and the rescue, I have seen them today for about eleven minutes and I sorely miss them. When I was a kid in school, I worked at my father’s store, so I saw him quite a bit. And my mother was at home, preparing meals, doing laundry, caring for us all. Vanished time. I brood. They have grown too soon, too quickly. We have not taken the trips. I want to take the trips! I want the time back!
My bride arrives home from her job and asks for help with her trunk-load of groceries. Bags of groceries make my wife happy. She says she feels more secure when the cupboard is full.
The store managers and all cashiers at the grocery store know her by name. She loves to chat with them and they her. They inquire about the children, ask if the kids still like their turkey and cheese sandwiches, wonder about the dogs, ask how the garden is doing, and, my beloved tells me, inquire about my well being. This “chat,” I discovered long ago, is a Southern trait that leaves no room for moody Midwestern writers.
Cupboard filled, she sees the kayak paddle and her eyes light up. I have yet to tell her about the cat.
“You got the paddles out! Let’s go for a cruise,” she enthuses.
Rescued. Again. How did she know?
Copyright 1997, 2023 Paul deVere