On Fairies

1. Went out the other morning to check on the raspberry bushes. Kiddo noticed a ring of mushrooms, remarked we had fairies in the yard last night.

2. I’ve had the sensation of swimming upstream lately; unable to settle, fighting the current. Always get this feeling this time of year, late summer, not-quite-fall-but almost. I look ahead, look behind, the projects and obligations, the chores and the sutras, perpetual motion. Grass and wildflower seed in the garage, cart and shovel by the pond, grapes to cook down, zucchini and tomatoes and cucumbers and…

3. Say nothing of the desk work!

4. Walk with Doggie, try to look around. Mushrooms: boletes and amanitas, black trumpets and chicken-of-the-woods. Content to notice, to keep moving.

5. Mrs. CWD joined me this week in entering the back half of her fourth decade. To celebrate, I ventured to Whole Foods to buy scallops — a daytrip to Gloucester out of the question. A radical grocery store, Whole Foods labels the provenance of its wares. The scallops were wild-caught, fresh — a product of the United States — Canada.

6. Which is it? I asked the fishmonger.

7. What do you mean?

8. He glanced at the sign. Huh, he said. Looked again. This has been up since June and not a single person has said anything.

9. How many shoppers buying how many pounds of scallops? Not a single person.

10. I don’t feel so bad about missing the fairies.

11. There were fairies, of course. Why wouldn’t there be? Kiddo saw them, or at least the tell-tale sign. But then one more morning you wake up and there’s a film that’s covered your eyes, imperceptible but there, a scrim, and you start overlooking the fairies — the scallops and the mushrooms and the god light.

12. I blink, try to clear my vision.

13. Sitting in my car before a site walk, I looked up. Vultures circling. A bad omen? Later on, glanced down and saw the husk of a cicada. Picked it up, held it between thumb and forefinger. The sun reflected and refracted off its back, impermanent.

14. E.B. White called his asterisks the “cicada of the typewriter,” his hot weather sign.

15. For me, asterisks last summer; lists, this. Each serves its purpose, each runs its course.

16. As I sat the other morning out back, a dragonfly landed on the knuckle of my thumb. We sat there together for an eternity — and then it flew away.

    

Took those scallops, coated them in flour and salt and pepper and seared them in butter, served them over risotto made with Carolina Gold middlin’s, onions and garlic, fresh, tart tomatoes and (not-so-fresh) corn, stock from deer bones and fermented tomatoes, some wine and Chardonnay vinegar, parm and kefir cheese on top. Happy birthday, Mrs. CWD.

We decamp tomorrow morning — pre-dawn, gingerly placing Kiddos CWD into their seats, trying not to wake them — to New Jersey, where we’ll spend the week breathing salt air. I hope to build sandcastles with the kids, surf and spear fish with Uncle Steady, steam crabs with Papa, tie-dye with Beeba, laugh with Aunties CWD, and do my best to resist the rip tide.

However you choose to spend your weekend, I hope you spend it enchantingly.

We’ll see you back here next week.