Just at dusk, before it is thoroughly dark these days the edge of the woods fills with a million flickering lights of the seasonal fireflies. And behind them is the harmonic resonance of the frogs, tuned together into such a magnificance of nature, who could not be awed?
Before dinner I went out to the vegetable garden with my five year old grandson and I introduced him to the bliss of eating fresh raw English peas and finding little new potatoes like treasure from underground. "Grandma Molly! Is this pod plump enough?" he asks. I show him how to tell and he stands there happily pulling off those fat pods and finding those incredibly green babies all lined up in their green row boats and ready to be eaten. We find some carrots and roll a number of pea pods into a collard leaf to take inside for dinner with the nine potatoes we dug.
We are fresh (but very tired) from hours in town where we have been pursuing our complicated real estate deal that has included selling two houses and combining our families into one new place. Our daughter has a wonderful new 1925 restored bungalow in old northeast with a carriage house on the back. It will be up to us to remodel this for us. Quite a challenge! We do not worry because our main home is here (in paradise) on the edge of the Green Swamp, not in spitting distance of anything man made. Still, it will be interesting to make something unique out of this and we don't flinch, having done this many times before.
Late this afternoon when the shadows were long and dark and grandpa was making dinner from the garden, Quincy and I drove out in the golf cart to explore the pastures. He asks me, "Why do you have two houses?" I try to explain this, giving him some simple history of our situation. I tell him that no way will we give up our ranch and that our new place in back of his new house will just be for us to come to not so often. And we want to come to his place because we love him and his mom and want to have a place to see our friends we have known for ever so long.
Five year olds keep you honest! So many questions! But Quincy knows in a deep way that this place is his. He's comfortable in the bedroom that used to be his mom's, and his tether is so long now on the place!
He knows what we do, and expects to go with me to my classroom volunteer gig at Lacoochee Elementary School on Tuesday. We are discussing the possible cooking activities!
It is not only the fireflies and the magic of being here in such a paradise. It is the getting to know a small community of local folks who really care and show up and help each other- Richard and Kathy, Virginia and Norman, the Greens, Judy, Nia and Dave, and Cpl. Hink, Kristen, and so many others who in their quiet ways really make a difference! Whatever we are, black, white, hispanic, we care in all the small communities across the land. It is so affirming and keeps me from the despair I could easily feel right now being an American.
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