Okay, I've decided to write a blog

For years now I’ve resisted the impulse, knowing that nothing I have to say could add much to public discourse in the digital age.

“But your readers miss you between books!” I am told.

The answer to that is that nothing I come up with about my life is ever going to compare with a novel. Then again, I think we’ve all had days when we say to ourselves, “I should write a book!” Of course, knowing the publishing market as I do, I realize that real life can be so busy and complicated that if you tried to make it fiction, nobody would believe it.

“That’s crazy, it could never happen.”

It could. It did. It does.

Anyway, what the blogmeisters tell me about this is that I should take something that happened in my real life and write about it and just allow my train of thought to take over and to then follow that rabbit trail for fifteen minutes.

I have a plastic kitchen timer sitting here beside me. Let’s see how it goes.

Last night, as my eyelids were getting very heavy, I threw on my old ratty nightshirt from a Valentine’s Day long past and was getting ready to brush my teeth and don my plastic nightguard when my husband, Bill, came into the bathroom and said, “Come with me.”

Normally, I would be cautious of such an invitation, but it was late and I was tired and we are legally married, so I went.

Outside he sprayed me with mosquito repellant. (It’s always good to put on a coat of poison before going to bed). And then he led me out to our hammock which hangs in the backyard between the big red oak and the multi-family birdhouse.

It was a great night to be outdoors. The moon wasn’t full, but it was plenty big enough and there was a hole in the tree canopy above us so that we could see it perfectly, except when the breeze stirred the leaves.

I lay there with him soaking up the comfort and wondering why we didn’t sleep outside all summer.

That stirred a long ago memory from my oilpatch childhood.

I remembered, in the days before air-conditioning, that people did sleep outside. In fact, they put their beds out in the yard to catch the night breeze. How they dealt with bugs or skunks or possums, I don’t know. Because, of course, my parents never did that.

But one summer our neighbors down the street did have their bed next to an old shed in the backyard. I don’t know why they put it where they did, but it was perfect for our band of young hooligans. In the afternoon when that mom and dad were hard at work, we propped a ladder against their shed. Then we took turns climbing up to slide down the tin roof and land in their bed.

No amusement park ride was ever more fun.

Bill and I have often talked and laughed about our childhoods. He was a Maryland boy and I am from Oklahoma, but our memories are similar because we were both what we like to think of as Free Range Children. Our mothers always worked and from a very young age we were mostly responsible for ourselves. People don’t do that now, and for good reason, I’m sure. But it does make for a lot of smiles looking back.

So should we sleep out on our hammock for the rest of the summer? Well, first I want to find out about those skunks and possums.