Field Notes

Out in my field.
Last day of school. An entire summer of creative writing. Only that - no sermons, no prayers, except those that come from my heart as I write stories for children, stories for adults, stories for myself.

Out in my field in the hat I stole from my husband, who head is one size smaller than mine.
Wearing my boots and wool socks.
Carrying a yellow bucket that first had soil in it for the willow seedlings I planted by the pond.
Then filled up with wild irises, a bumper crop in our field thanks to the rains of May and June. One upside to a wet spring.
Although my father like red carnations and red geraniums, irises are the flower that make me think of him. When we arrived at the florist two days after he died, I walked over to the glass-doored fridge full of flowers and saw a bucket filled with purple irises. Just the like the ones growing along the lane of our summer house on Pugwash Point.
Purple irises, the symbol of royalty and wisdom.

Out in my field with a bucket of wildflowers and one goose feather plucked from the edge of the pond as a gaggle of goslings -- large, at their ugly duckling stage -- and their two parents hover amongst the bullrushes.

Later, while in the bath, I will find a tick on the back of my thigh, an unwelcome gift from the field. A reminder to not be lazy, and always change into pants that will tuck into my wool socks.
Later, while swabbing the back of my leg with rubbing alcohol, my husband will call from the bedroom, "Come and tell me what you see in the field."
And I will see something parting the growing grass and through the binoculars, I will realize it is not a bear cub separated from its mother.
"It's a really big cat," I tell my husband. "It's a really big bobcat."
Suddenly, finding a tick on my leg is not very exciting.

Later still, Dwayne will call again from the bedroom and we'll stand at our big window watching the young buck deer in our back yard, nibbling at the leaves on the elm tree. It will wander across the ditch to The Mound, where my father's ashes are buried, and red geraniums and purple irises grow in the memorial garden.

Last day of school and all this unfolds out in my field. As if the universe is saying, You know where you belong.