Visitors From Texas

This week we had visitors, Aubrey and Ella from Texas, up here to finish up some business left over from the passing of Kathleen’s life-long friend, Marie Franklyn, Aubrey’s mother.  Our house filled with Ella whose inquisitiveness and bright interest in life was constant – within minutes of entering our kitchen the drawer contents were inventoried.  We quickly learned that any overheard conversation was recorded in Ella’s memory and likely to be returned to us later. She had a jewel-encrusted flower which she held like a magician's wand and later someone gave her a Dream Catcher, which is a decorated hoop-net.  The Dream Datcher originated with the Ojibwe people (of which I am one, abet only by 1/32nd due to the dilutions of generations) and was intended to hang above a bed, changing a person's dreams and avoiding nightmares. I hope Ella puts it to good use since the adult world in which she must live certainly contains a few of those. During her visit a 777 crashed at SFO due to pilot error and she is due to fly back to Texas tonight.  While we tried to keep the news from her, it proved impossible with her radar always up. But Ella's visit was mostly filled with joy, like her crystal flower.

Ella soon met our neighbor’s girl who is a bit older, giving Ella a pile of things which had not grown to keep up with her but fit Ella just fine.  Among the clothes was a pair of slippers which had a mechanism so that with each step the tongue of the shoe popped up and a grinning face appeared and we all laughed along with Ella as she flopped around, the slippers smiling with each step.

At one point Ella noticed me taking my ‘Droid phone out and asked to see it and moments later she had, much faster than I could have done it, set the phone to front facing camera and took a picture of herself.

Ah, a techno-native.

Aubrey and Ella went to the Pleasanton Fair and Ella came back with a prize teddy bear measuring 3 feet high, 18 inches wide (I know because I measured it so we could figure out how to get it back to Texas).

Then Ella was in our backyard and spotted a dead rat which had been trapped near our gardening.  After much food destroyed by rats I had set some traps to control the population at the urging of Kathleen who says she is the Judge and I am the Executioner.  I accept that role but when Ella spotted the dead rat I was suddenly faced with a deep discussion of morality which I present below in poetic compression.

Flip-Flop

Dream Catcher, hear my plea --

my 7-year old friend has enchanted slippers of pink fur

            flopping                     up-pop

steps

            so        two      beaded blue eyes    appear

above a                     

fuzzy tongue smile

ha!      ha!      ha!      ha!

she dances in shoe grin almost

as sweet as her

giggle joy

near my dull leather laced in

I am up - down

the same street

not realizing that the road

can be approached in

floppy ways anymore. . . .

                        she picks a crystal flower

for her hair     

grins larger than any shoe

before ruin:               The Rat

she spots, calling me with frown pointing dark eyes --

there with limp gray short hair & a string-tail it is pinned dead by one foot

            in that black trap I had set

                                    (mr. rat was eating the lettuce, I begged)

no shoe-grins now, pensive, my friend is silent on the step

            ‘til time has folded back into her ponds open wide

and she asks

“do you step on ants ------------------ or walk around?” 

(did you know she charges a quarter when I swear?)

So I ask you, Dream Catcher, let her nights be visions

-- flopping blue eyed shoe grins, flowers, and the dances of youth –

let rat questions rest until

bright and pink day.