Emerald blankets

Sensory memories stick around and stick out. One of my earliest: heat, smells of tanbark and rubber, and the gleam of a hubcap you could fry an egg on. A tire was built into my preschool’s playground. They continue that way, even for the more cerebral things. The stench of hundreds of uncapped Sharpies at a county spelling bee.

Last week there was the rumbling of the garden cart, the taste of sweat, the crackling of stick bundles on stick bundles. I had to cut up some tree limbs laying around in the back — some fallen, some from invasive plants we’d cut down — and shlep the bundles to the front yard for collection.

All is clearer and sweeter after a couple hours of this. Every gulp of water really quenches, every breeze soothes. Endorphins surge. Every hassle is easier. Rotating my shoulder in the shower and hitting the handle back to cold elicits not a sigh and a “why me” but twisted gratitude. Free cold plunge!

Just before that, there’d been freak heat. The growing began. Then a late snowfall.

Only a little remained one morning. The colors were too vivid. White snow on an emerald blanket. I wasn’t waiting for dogs to do their business somewhere in the suburbs. I was in the Cambrian era, a video game, a liminal space. Nature, a spurned ex, dressed to the nines, a bit for revenge and mostly for herself, shoots a glance at me: see what you people gave up?