Summer Snow in the Moonlight

It's magic! I return home from work well after 9 pm. I step from the car onto a sidewalk swirling in white fluffies. Cottonwood dander rises in slow motion, like fog from some stage machine. The full moon bathes the swirling white masses in eerie shininess, lending an air of otherworldly unreality. Flakes of cottonwood fluff fall from the air continuously, sifting ever downward. I am inside an enchanted snow globe.

I breathe in deeply, straining out the fluff with my fingers. Ah, evening! What a strange smell of dead seaweed, farm manure, damp grass, and rotting fruit. The air is robust with promise of fall harvest. I shiver ever so slightly even though the temperature is comfortable. A slight breeze ruffles the new leaves about me whispering of good things to come while brushing against memories of wonderful times in summers past being outside in the evening.

Memories!

On the lawn in front of the Stewart's house in Fort Covington, we neighborhood kids played a last round of hide and seek. Jimmy was calling "alle, alle, oxen free!" and the Hunter girls giggled as they raced to the gigantic oak tree that served as home base. Peony bushes nearby nodded off to sleep, spraying the air with a light fragrance and shaking of the myriad ants who nursed there during the daytime.

On the sidewalk in Johnstown, we kids lit black snake fireworks, ooohhhing and aaahhhing over the squiggly clumps of black ash that wormed their way out of the little cubes. Peter pops caps on the sidewalk, leaving black splat marks where the butt of the cap gun hit the pellet tape. Kids from the house on the corner with the big white dog ride past on their bikes, talking loudly, cards clattering against the spokes.

On the Houghton campus, we Gayodeo girls, tired of studying, wander to the quad, kick off our shoes and turn somersaults on the dewy grass, laughing and playing tag until the mosquitoes drive us down to the snack shack for pizza and Cokes.

I kick at the cottonwood fluff and gaze at the full bursting moon. It is a wonderful evening. God sure made an enticing world for us to live in.