August Mornings With the Woman On The Porch
High summer blasted in a couple of weeks ago with temperatures above 100.
At 6:10am CST, the woman on the porch took note of the local temperature and sent this out to her Facebook friends.
There is an old panel truck that circulates her neighborhood selling snack goodies. The speaker on 
top of the truck plays “La Cucaracha.” It always reminds her of the “ice cream man” who drove down North Dellrose in her youth. One hot day, when she was about ten or eleven, she was given some money (a nickel?) to buy a fudgesicle. Sadly, she learned a painful lesson the hard way: frozen treats straight out of a freezer will stick to one’s tongue.
Mid-August, and the dog days of summer hang on at 104° in Wichita. The steam from the woman’s coffee cup blends into the humidity of the still morning and the tree crickets, cicadas, and frogs have not given up their constant weezering. The woman on the porch comes out nearly every day. She watches and listens, and thinks about writing down whatever tiny events occur. And then she often doesn’t write anything. Experiences, sounds and sights, lost in the haze of the previous days.
Post Script: The temperature continued to rise, breaking a record for that date in Wichita.
Summer 2011
A Facebook friend of the woman said she attempted to fry an egg on the sidewalk. This brought back the memory of the woman’s own egg-cooking experiment several years ago. It sort of didn’t really work. The oil soaked into the driveway, there was no sizzle, and the egg baked, rather than frying.
With a chuckle, the woman on the porch finishes her coffee and wipes toast crumbs from the corner of her mouth. Looking down she sees a roly-poly resting on her shirt. Was it on the napkin that she had just picked up from the railing? Had she been about to mop her face with a tiny, armored crustacean?
Flutter-bys
A Monarch butterfly has been making the rounds through the zinnia blossoms lately. At least, it looks like a monarch. But the woman also remembers that that there is another, similar species. So how to tell the difference and know which one favors her lurid pink blooms? Professor Google, of course! The Viceroy mimics the Monarch to evade predators – strength in numbers. She has been hosting a Monarch.
The Waltz of the Flowers. Hum along if you wish
Truth To Facebook
Summer Nights
At 10:00 pm the woman goes outside because she gets tired of being in an air-conditioned environment all the time. Tiny chirps and insect-y buzzing drift on a breeze. To her, that sound is the essence of summer and she’s a bit sad when it goes away in the fall. Summer is her favorite time of year. Presently, angry meowing from behind the glass storm door tells the world that her daughter’s cat wants to enjoy an evening out also. His name is Pancho and he’s living with her temporarily. It’s too bad, she thinks, that she can’t take him for a stroll like she did with her old cat, Black Bugsy. But Pancho will soon have to go home and there he has to be an indoor cat. It seems cruel to let him taste the adventurous night air and never let him do it again. “Oh well,” she tells herself; she had given him a nice brush-out this afternoon followed by a lap nap. He enjoyed that.
She looked up just as a black cat crossed the street and disappeared in some shadows in the park.
Church of the Park Bench
It’s a muggy Sunday morning, but the woman lives alone, so enjoys going out to watch the world go by from her porch. An elderly man walks his two fluffy dogs in the park. He kindly stops to let them sniff at a tree and then they amble on, the dark smaller one, a shadow of the larger white one. Black-white, positives and negatives, yin-yang. The gentleman stops at a stone bench to rest and gives his pals some pats. A young man wearing shorts jogs at a leisurely pace through the park, He is taking it easy as the day begins to warm up. Lethargic might be the word of the day.
When a car pulls into the parking lot from the park, a tiny toddler emerges and walks by itself to the playground equipment. And then Daddy, carrying his travel mug, ambles along behind her. Her sweet child’s voice counters his deep, big man’s voice. The traffic is picking up, people on their way to church, perhaps. Or on their way to a Sunday “at the lake”? Tunes emanate from the gear of a passing bike rider who is wearing some fancy goggle-like sunglasses and a backpack. She wonders if he has to go to work. A pickup follows, mariachi music drifting from its windows.
Apparently the playground equipment is too tall, too big, for the little girl. So she and her daddy take a walk on the sidewalk around the swimming pool. Contrasting silhouettes against the eastern sunlight. She is about 2 years old and he is at least 6 feet tall.
A different homeless man is walking across the park. He’s trailing a small cart with only a single cardboard box in it. As he looks her way, the woman feels self-conscious for watching him so she waves and he nods in return. He continues walking north, perhaps to the spot under the 18th Street bridge where some of the homeless have an encampment. Later, the woman consulted the internet and learned that “un-housed” is the current PC terminology since the general public has become annoyed at those who sleep on park benches or under bushes because they have no home, and consider them a nuisance. Maybe a new designation will solve all of that.
Daddy and Tiny Tot return to the playground. He carries her up the ladder of the slide and says, “Whee,” as they slide down together.
Excerpt from “You Can’t Have It All” by Barbara Ras (1949 – )
But you can have….
the purr of the cat and the soulful look
of the black dog, the look that says, If I could I would bite
every sorrow until it fled, and when it is August,
you can have it August and abundantly so.
The day is heating up. Everyone seems to be conserving their energy, yet busy. The folks that the woman has seen this morning moved with purpose. So she gets up with her garden clippers to deadhead the zinnias because the bees and butterflies need new blossoms.
As Dr. Simoni, her old art professor aways said, “Perceive the totality.”
Look up. Look out. See the bees.
There you go again Barbara, sharing yet another (what the woman sees) from her porch and in her flower bed. I like what the women sees. You keep writing and I’ll keep reading. I believe living across from a park must be special.
Tom, thank you for your comments on this post and the previous one. Yes, it’s interesting to live within view of a park and I’m happy that you connect with my observations. In case you haven’t figured it out, I live by Minisa Park, which if you remember, is across the Little Ark River west of North High. I have a friend in the neighborhood who has lived here most of her life and graduated from North in ’61. She told me that she forgives me for going to East. I said, “Back atcha, sweetie!”