Day 3 – November 3 – “Open the door or a window. What’s something you’re grateful for outside?”
I’m grateful
for my side patio and the memories it holds from over the last 30 years.
When we
moved here in 1991, there were 2 albino squirrels that skittered across the top
of the fence every morning, and sometimes in the afternoons. For about 3 years,
they played on that fence and in the magnolia tree that grows in the middle of
the patio. We watched them for hours on end.
We put a
table and chairs out there, and a grill in the little gazebo at the edge of the
patio. We barbecued year-round, hosted hundreds of cookouts for the boys and
their friends over the 20 or so years they were home.
I gathered
different kinds of wind chimes from all over the world, and put them across the
top of the gazebo, and on top of the gazebo, the boys had a ”clubhouse”, with
wooden slats up the edge to climb into it.
One edge of
the gazebo was a hickory tree. I showed the boys how to crack hickory nuts with
a rock, and how to pick out the meager fruit with a bobby pin. We also used the
hulls from the nuts to throw on the charcoal for a hickory smoke flavor. Daddy
always said you could starve to death eating hickory nuts.
One day,
Keith used some of the bamboo jungle to build a “shed” in a corner of the
patio. He put 2 chairs and a little table in there. We spent so many nights out
there with candles and a boom box, solving the world’s problems,sometimes
laughing, sometimes crying, or just enjoying the nights.
We built a
little bamboo fence across the far side of the patio, to keep Lucy, our little
dog, inside the area, and it was on that patio where Harry, Lucy’s “husband”
breathed his last.
We caught a
baby possum out there one evening. He was disoriented and frightened. After a
few days, when his mamma didn’t show up to claim him, we took him to the
wildlife center at Oak Mountain. We later learned that, without our knowledge
or permission, Mark had hidden the possum in his jacket and taken him to school
for a day.
Aaron fell
out of the magnolia tree several times, since he climbed it almost every day
for about 3 years. We were glad it was short, so he had only about 6 feet to
fall. He was never seriously injured.
Keith made a
little shade garden around the base of the tree, but once we put the dogs out
there, they made it into their bathroom, so the plants didn’t make it after
that.
Now the
furniture is gone. The bamboo fence and the shed are gone. The grill is gone,
and even the gazebo is gone.
The things
that remain are the magnolia tree, now 30 years older and much taller, the
hickory tree, that still drops nuts all over the patio, and, of course, the
memories.
I’m thankful
for the memories.
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