Basecamp Dispatch: Tell Me Something Normal

It’s been a week. The air still feels heavy like a wet towel. Thunderheads roll in each evening, looking grumpy and gray, but rarely dropping rain. At least not more than a few drops. Barely enough to dampen the garden.

But the air isn’t the only thing that’s felt heavy this week.

One Moment

I knead the Play-Doh in my hands, blending bright pink and navy into deep purple. Ellie is making “pizza,” pressing strips of bright green onto a flat disc of blue.

“Grandma. What’s your favorite color?”

I think for a minute, feeling the cool dough give between my palms.

“Sometimes it’s green,” I tell her, as I remember the bold green of the turkey woods, so vibrant it feels like something alive.

“But sometimes it is blue.”

She studies me for a moment while her toddler brain tries to grasp that favorites can change. That things aren’t always solid and permanent.

“Blue like this?” she asks, holding up a chunk of cerulean pizza.

And I think of the blues that have shaken me. The cobalt shadows of bluefish caught in the prism of waves against a Carolina blue sky. The kinds of blue that make my heartbeat quicken and my breath catch.

“No,” I say. “Like the color of your eyes.”

Around the Yard

The squash bugs are back. Of course they are.

I got complacent because my garden was thriving. I let my guard down when the zucchini plants reached waist-high, spreading giant palm-sized leaves to canopy the peppers. I spent too much time trying to keep from drowning in a zucchini harvest that seemed to double every day.

But I celebrated victory too soon. Early last week, I noticed it looked like a couple of plants had been moved sideways. I blamed an afternoon thunderstorm. But a couple of days later, I realized the leaves were thinning. By the time the first few turned crispy brown, it was too late.

I pulled out the Sevin and launched a last-minute counterattack, hoping to keep the bugs from spreading to the cucumbers. But I think the damage is done. I’m trying to salvage what I can.

What surprised me most is how guilty I feel. Not disappointed. Not defeated. Guilty.

I know this sounds ridiculous. They’re zucchini plants, not puppies. They don’t get excited when they see me. They don’t care whether I checked the leaves every morning or stood over them in the evenings with the water hose, swatting mosquitoes from my arms and legs.

But I knew every one of those plants. I’d tucked those seeds into peat pots in February. I watched the first leaves push through the soil.

And now I feel like I’ve failed them. That failure has had me staring at my bedroom ceiling at 3 a.m. for days.

What I’m Carrying

I haven’t written about Silas in a while.

When your child is somewhere dangerous, you learn to be careful with words. Saying things out loud makes them feel more real. And reality isn’t something I can deal with right now.

But this weekend was hard.

When we learned that two service members had been killed in Jordan and another was missing after ballistic missiles struck U.S. installations in the region, my stomach tied itself in knots. We don’t know exactly where Silas is, but the news tells me that members of the 82nd Airborne are somewhere in the area. That makes every headline feel impossibly heavy.

Then his sister told me she had exchanged messages with him overnight.

They were talking about Olive Garden breadsticks.

The knot loosened. But only a little bit.

Saturday night, he called me.

“Tell me something normal,” he said.

So I told him about the squash bugs and Ellie. And then we talked about treestands.

With the property freshly logged, we discussed where we think the bucks will travel and where we should position our stands. We wondered if our favorite treestand would still be worth sitting in come September. The one where I killed my ten-pointer. The one where he killed his biggest buck ever last year.

Or November. Which is when he should be coming home.

I won’t pretend talking to him makes having him so far away easier. There’s still a knot in my stomach that I know won’t completely untie until he’s safe home on American soil. But for a little while, he was just my son talking about deer season, and I was just his mother, not thinking so much about the news.

But I’m beginning to think the stupid squash bugs aren’t what’s keeping me up at 3 a.m.

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