Trying On Wealth

The word ‘July’ makes jewels in my mind. There is the green, gold and red of first vegetables. There is the deep glow of roadside berries catching shafts of sun. The big pearl moon floats in the kindest air and you can be comfortable lying around looking at it for hours. You can make music or listen to music by starlight. Hundreds of fireflies spark up the dark valley.

There for the taking are a few moments as good as the best moments of childhood if we want to snatch them for ourselves.

Friday evening, end of the week, Ray and I were so tired we thought we couldn’t move. If we hadn’t been really really hungry and too tired to cook we would probably have fallen asleep on the sofa watching Coneheads for the fifth time. Instead we threw ourselves in the car, opened the sunroof and all the windows and went in search of nourishment. The end-of-day sun trickled gold through the car and the green bosomy fields rolled by with glimpses from time to time of blue mountains in the distance. The radio was playing old rock and roll and the car hugged the curves like water in a spinning bucket.

Coming home there was a sheer red moon floating up in a haze. We drove just a little fast through the reservoir and kept time to the music. He smoked a Swisher Sweet and my hair was flying in my face, both expressions of the sudden and surprising joy we were feeling. The words to a song were floating through my head. ‘Whatever happened to Saturday night. Finding a sweetheart and holding her tight. She said tell me, tell me, was I all right. What ever happened to Saturday night.’

Saturday night I hosted the monthly ‘Sing.’ At one point I slipped away from the music and sought the quiet of the porch swing. Will and Daphne were there. Is there anything more delicious than the sound of a creaking porch swing, the laconic intermittent remarks of old friends? Terrance brought a drum out and quietly drummed up the moon.

Ray told me once he thinks we are swimming in miracles all the time. How could you not love a man capable of a remark like that? But I think it’s more like we’re flying through miracles focused on all the wrong things most of our time.

I have a headache, a stiff neck and a painful cut thumb. I have $1.47 bank balance. Arthritis is making me walk funny. I need to spray for bugs and the car needs rear shocks. The roof leaks in five places but I think I’m having the summer of my life. I’m pretty sure we can’t always tell when we are in the middle of the best of our own times. So for the rest of July I’m looking for the edge of beauty in the ordinary and I am trying on wealth. I’m sucking it up with the butter on sweet corn. I’m letting it dazzle me from the reflecting wings of bugs.