Peering into the clouds

   For the longest time, I pondered how my elderly neighbor claimed to see people in the clouds.  I understand that the cloud formations can give the idea of something or someone but he claimed that he saw people...real people...only they were all dead.  His exact words were..."real dead people".  It was a scary thought.  He never explained whether he saw real people who had died or if they were just really dead people.  For a while, I was scared to look at the clouds in case I saw really dead people.  It is not that I don't see things.  I do.  In fact, my imagination is probably a bit wilder than most folks. In my brain, I can twist and turn things to be most anything.  It's a gift!  Not really.  Just trying to justify having a weird sense of reality.

  With all of the heavy cloud cover lately, it has been hard to visualize much of anything but rain.  A few days ago, the hike was drippy.  The slight drizzle would have kept most folks inside but I have had enough of confinement.  I braved the cold and wet to head to the unfinished pier.  A thick layer of clouds was divided from the horizon by a thin line of clear skies.  Once the sun rose behind the cloud ridge, magical things began to happen.  I started seeing things!  Lots of things!  Like I said, my imagination is strong and this time it ran amok.

  I took lots of photos and then checked them to see if I actually saw what I thought.  Hmmm, there it was right smack dab in the middle of the photo!  I will leave it up to you and your imagination.  Hint...at least, it is not a dead person!  (If you look at the tags, you will see suggestions from a few of my friends.)

When the key was found, she was unarmed.....

  Huh?  Yep!  When the key was found, she was unarmed.  Doesn't make much sense, does it?  I did not figure it would to most folks but it made perfect sense to me.  I found the key.  

  Yesterday, we had a thunderstorm that dumped several inches of rain in just a matter of minutes.  As torrential rains have a tendency to do, it washed quite a rut in the ground as the water poured off the rooftop. This occurred on the north side of the house where work had recently been done.  The ground was bare and already soft so when the deluge hit, it merely washed dirt a bit further down the hillside.  It was in this rut that I found the key!  

  The key was once our house key.  Years and years ago, the first Little Bayou House caught fire and burned to the ground.  Nothing was salvageable.  As matter of fact, very little could even be recognized.  We lost everything but, the fact remains, that we still had everything important.  We were safe.  But...that key.  After some thirty-five years, to find the old house key and to actually recognize it is quite amazing.  I stood holding that key when another fragment caught my eye...an arm. Yep, an arm was protruding from the soft sand.  I reached down and gingerly picked up the tiny porcelain piece.  Ahh, I remember that!  Just days before the fire, Mom had given me a box of antique porcelain "pincushion doll torsos".  These tiny figurines were sweet little pieces that were handmade.  Mom told me that they were around a hundred years old at the time she gave them to me. Wow!  She had asked if I could remake the pincushion part for some of them.  I never got the chance.  Today, I found that broken piece and wondered whatever became of the rest of the dolls.  

  I stood holding that tiny arm and an old rusted key and a thousand memories flooded my brain. What if the house had never caught fire? What if I (being very pregnant at the time with my first child) had been in the house when it did ignite?  What if....what if?  Things would have been very different.   

  Son came up behind me as I stood there pondering things.  He noticed the single tear that gently rolled down my cheek and just put his hand on my shoulder.  Nothing was said. Nothing could be said.  I handed him the key...the key to nowhere...and we went to the garden to pick tomatoes.  I am glad things are not different.  I like them just the way they are.

The Red Door

The hallway renovation continues! This is becoming quite the epic redo as it seems to be taking a good bit longer than expected. What should have been done in a few days has taken the better part of a week and is still not complete. Perhaps a few more days will see the culmination of the project...at least I hope! One of today's chores was to paint a door that leads into the living room. Not that we particularly need a door here as it is rarely used to block off anything. It sort of hangs there being in the way. It is just that I like it..so it stays.The door itself makes me happy. It reminds me of the door that led from the living room out to the screened front porch of my childhood home. It is the same style door. I do not have a screened porch so this door hangs prominently between the hallway and the living room. Of course the old door at my folk's home was not red..it was stained a nice warm brown. My door was painted when I got it years ago so it definitely needed painting again and red seems to be the "color of choice" lately in the Little Bayou House.

The door I grew up with was one of my earliest "architectural" memories. A favorite thing of mine to do as a child was to stare out the windows of this door at the few strings of Christmas lights that Dad would occasionally put up on the porch. The lights were nothing like the fancy things of today but the old, large, glass bulbs. Being the youngest, I never was allowed to help with the lights but oh, my goodness!...what a beautiful sight those colored lights were through the windows of that door! I was captivated by the sheer beauty! And oh, how poor Mom must have cringed as the lights were just strung haphazardly here and there. There was never enough to put up on the entire front of the house and there was never any rhyme nor reason as to how they were strung. Most of the time, Mom just relented to let Dad and the kids have fun..and what fun we had! Gorgeous!

Another memory of the door..it had a LOCK! And this lock had a KEY! Yeah..strange memory..but back in the day, we did not lock doors so there was really no need for a key. For that matter, the only time the door was ever closed was during winter! The key sort of hung in the lock without ever really serving a purpose. Still..there was a key and that key fascinated me. I would try my best to lock the door but as with all old locks, the key had to be perfectly aligned in the keyhole to work. I was too small to keep the key level in the hole so it would turn, therefore, locking the door was near impossible. Then..if per chance I ever did manage to get the thing locked, I surely could not unlock it! I did not get to salvage the door when the old house was torn down, but I did get to save the key! Memories!

My door is much like that key..it does not serve any logical purpose. As soon as the paint dries, this door will be rehung and there it will hang evoking memories of the past. There it will hang being in the way of everything! Still, I like it..so it will stay!