14 April 2025
The other day I mentioned how puffy and white the clouds were against a very blue sky and remembered lying on my back with my cousin Jimmie in her yard and making out the shapes of countries, animals, faces, etc. At one time, in the Boy Scouts, I knew many of the cloud types. Sadly, I have to look them up on the internet today.
I was really struck by the contrast in the sky today. These are mostly stratocumulus in nature. I thought there were only a few types of clouds until a few years ago and I joined a “cloud” society and immediately got lost in the hundreds of variations in naming clouds. I’ll stick with the basics.
I won’t say Jimmie and I spent hours looking at the clouds but lying on the slope of the side yard in the grass with wild onions and henbit around us scenting the air, it was a moment of perfection. Strangely, we didn’t argue too much about the shapes. We argued about everything else, particularly whether the birdie was in or out in badminton.
As I get older, these childhood memories become more, not less vivid. I don’t understand that but I’m happy to go with it. Yesterday, Trevor mowed the grass. That takes me back to a time when Mom, Dad, and I were heading towards Meridian on US80 and we passed a highway department building and there was a guy out there mowing the grass around the building. Back then, cars didn’t have air conditioning so all the windows were down and the vents were open and I smelled the cut grass and immediately thought of freshly cut watermelon. I have associated the two smells ever since.
The strangest thing to me is what you remember from an event. There may be a lot going on around you at the time but one specific thing sticks out in your memory. It’s like finding a little treasure.
I feel slightly better today. My energy level is up and I did a morning walk (0.9 miles). I managed the walk pretty well even though I still feel very weak in the legs.
Today is dentist day. The appointment is at 2:30 so I have a lot of time to kill before I head out.
Stay tuned!
Playing badminton with you was always fun. Strange how we rarely saw the same straight line in calling whether the birdie was in or out of bounds. I still think your line of sight was crooked. We did so many things together. Pushing each other in the “sky rocket” was always fun. Climbing the fence and then walking across the cable to get high enough in the mulberry tree was always an adventure. Come to think of it, we spent a lot of time in trees. There was the tree house we built that straddled two sycamore trees. And swinging on the vines in the wooded area near the McCoy’s was a rite of summer.