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Bourbon, cupcakes, tennis, and psychedelic leaves during the pandemic
The cocktail of the day is a little number called Fancy Free. I’m enjoying it in the back garden, which I’m only now calling a garden. Before it was the backyard. I didn’t dare call it a garden. It was something that always mocked me. It hurt me. Every time I came out, I felt chagrined, ashamed. Shame, in fact, is what welled up in me. Why?
To explain or describe how much of my life has been dictated or undergirded by shame would be going too far for this article. It would also be boring. So, I’ll refrain.
Here I am, then, in the back GARDEN, and it’s a garden, for real! And I’m doing gardener-like things, like telling my 22-year-old son to be “careful of the garden” as he hits his tennis ball against the back of our sun-splashed Spanish Mediterranean house during these Covid-19 days when the tennis courts are closed, just when he was developing a groove with tennis. Or when I ran to the Lady Banks climbing rose to find several balls stuck in the criss-crossing branches and noticed with dismay the shower of tender, new rose leaves on the soil below.
“Bo!” I said. “The garden! Be careful of my garden!”
It’s fun to say that, even though it make me feel kind of like an old lady. Lol.
