A Single Grain of Sand

Here I sit at the patio table under the blue umbrella with my back to the afternoon sun. I can hear the neighbors talking nearby, a bull frog speaking to whomever is listening, the sound of a speed boat running wide open across the lake...

I lean back in my chair and put my legs up onto the table. My eyes travel along the water's edge...green umbrella...cat tails...red life jacket... I slowly inhale, the humidity brings out the smell of the pine trees. Their sweet, prickly aroma fills my head. It's hazy and hot. It almost seems like it could rain, but it isn't supposed to. For once my mind is as blank as possible. Too hot to think.

The past few weeks have been a blur... Wait, did I say "past few weeks?" I mean past few years. I've been going a million miles a minute since the day I was born, I think. I have a heap of unsorted thoughts and memories running through my mind on a continuous loop; no filing system in place for now.

My eyes settle on my own sandy feet. Chipped pink nail polish, summer tan, worn toe ring, black bruise... The bruise. I am rapidly becoming well known for clumsiness. I don't know why. I mean, I've never been supremely coordinated (can't play basketball, not good at video games, never excelled at archery...), but I never acknowledged that I was a clutz before recently. As of late, I've dropped the rack from the grill on my leg, causing a gash and a bruise (I haven't seen Grandma Marge move that fast in a long time!), fallen on my butt into the hostas trying to tug on the hose and then got completely pulverized by the new towing tube that arrived on our doorstep last week. All of which ended in tears, just like a little kid.

I can hear some kids playing and laughing out on the water. Two little girls and a boy are standing on top of a paddle boat rocking it back and forth and jumping in and out of the water. Sounds like me when I was a kid. The years spent at Rainbow Lake...wonderful in my mind's eye. I'm sure not so wonderful when I was there, but that time is forever fairy-taled in my memory. I wish that I was a sun kissed little kid again. Out there rocking on an old-school inner tube back and forth with a friend (Emily, I'm sure.), stringy wet hairy jiggling across our faces as we guffawed with laughter.

How nice it would feel to be in my little pajamas in my cozy bed, tired from swimming, the smell of the lake still fresh in my nostrils. Sometimes I wish my mom would still come and tuck me in. I remember how well I used to sleep. No gnashing of teeth and tossing and turning. Out like a baby...........safe at home.

Randomly, I remember the yellow rubber boot that I saw along side the highway on my way home. It occurs to me to wonder how one rubber boot ended up on the side of the road, right side up no less. Under what circumstance would one throw a boot out the window of a car? Were they mad? Did they leave it on the roof by accident while putting their coffee down? I will never know. I can only speculate... my brain hurts.

My thoughts flutter back to the same thing I was mulling over in the first place, but haven't bothered to mention until now. (Mostly because I like to beat around the bush. But also because I'm having a hard time putting a finger on it.) ...I had a "chance" palm reading. By chance, I mean that it was not planned - it just came up and some things came out that sent me reeling. Things that the person who did the reading could not have known.

It's a grain of sand...that just might keep me up in the night if placed under my mattress.