There is a boardwalk at the halfway point of one of the walks the dog and I take. It offers an elevated view of a large pond, and we always pause there while I look out over the water. We stopped there on a windy day recently. There were the usual Canada geese in the distance and mallards closer by, red-winged blackbirds chirring, and swallows swooping. And what were those birds fluttering in the water lilies, with long, thin necks and big, round wings? Nothing in my data banks fit that description.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They weren\u2019t birds at all. They were the lily pads themselves, flipped in the air by updrafts, straining on their long stems. Sue says she saw the same phenomenon that day. To her, the lilies looked like frilled lizards. To both Sue and me, the airborne lily pads looked animal, not vegetable\u2014something about their motion, perhaps. The lily pads in flight set us off on flights of fancy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Another walk this week set me off on time travel. Dog and I were on the far side of Plymouth Road while the dew was still heavy. We walked by a meadow that has been allowed to return to its wild state. It was full of weeds and wildflowers. It smelled sweet and heady. It smelled like childhood. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
We grew up in a rural neighborhood, across from a park. Every summer morning, we kids would head for the park, dewy weeds and wildflowers brushing against our legs. I\u2019d never given any thought to the smell of that park on a summer morning, but it had one. I realized it when the breeze wafted the fragrance of the wild meadow to us yesterday, and suddenly I was a child in the park again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Moments later, dog and I stopped on the bridge over the creek. A wet, earthy smell carried up to us, and instantly I was at the creek of my childhood. Mostly, that creek was off limits, but sometimes our moms let us play there. The water was shallow and cool. There were clay deposits from which we fashioned vessels. Violets grew so thickly on the banks that we couldn\u2019t walk without stepping on flowers, although we always tried. The scents of meadow and creek, twice yesterday, took me via time travel to a childhood long past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Various of our neighbors have been traveling or are traveling now. Next door, a flight cancellation and subsequent delays are holding up the return home. Which means more time for me to spend with Herbie, their wonderful cat. Herbie duty entails feeding him, of course, and sitting and petting him at length, as is only right. Herbie is a cat to be admired, not just with one\u2019s eyes but with one\u2019s hands\u2014he is so<\/em> soft\u2014and ears. Herbie starts purring even before I start petting him. This is a cat that knows how to get along with people, and with other animals, too. He is a cat among cats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The neighbors on the other side of Herbie have just returned from three weeks in France. Looking for their mail, which we had for them, Anne and Todd saw me, cat on lap, through Herbie\u2019s picture window. We chatted at some length, and Anne generously offered to take over Herbie duty. \u201cNo way!\u201d I told her. And she laughed, the laugh of someone who has just retired and gone to France.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On the home front, Marilyn\u2019s due in on Friday, so I\u2019ll soon be laughing a happy laugh, too. It\u2019s what we sisters do when we get together. Carol\u2019s husband says that Carol has a laugh he only hears when she\u2019s with her sisters. We may cover a lot of territory and get a lot done when we\u2019re together, but in the end it all comes down to laughter, shared memories, and memories in the making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n My husband and I have made a lot of memories with Rascal over the years. Rascal\u2019s newest dog license and rabies tag went on his collar today, which got me thinking about our past and future with the intrepid little fellow. We got him from the Humane Society in 2012, which estimated his age at the time as four-and-a-half years old. That puts him squarely in his middle teens, now. He\u2019s still manically cheerful, and we still enjoy our perambulations together. We\u2019re both a step or two slower than we used to be but find we have a lot left to explore. Vive le dog.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 3 June 2022<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There is a boardwalk at the halfway point of one of the walks the dog and I take. It offers an elevated view of a large pond, and we always pause there while I look out over the water. We stopped there on a windy day recently. There were the usual Canada geese in the… Continue reading Flights of Fancy<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[62,116],"class_list":["post-359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dog","tag-travel","entry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/moncrieff-in-michigan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/moncrieff-in-michigan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/moncrieff-in-michigan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moncrieff-in-michigan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moncrieff-in-michigan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=359"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/moncrieff-in-michigan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":361,"href":"https:\/\/moncrieff-in-michigan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359\/revisions\/361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/moncrieff-in-michigan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moncrieff-in-michigan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moncrieff-in-michigan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}