Unseasonable

Too warm too fast. Very still this evening. Straight home after work, to walk about in the woods. No morels, but a splendid time, poking in the leaf litter. After you find the first mushroom of the season, you learn to see, again, the subtle difference in shades of brown. At first everything is the same color, and the textures are maddeningly the same. Needle in a debris field. Part of that ancient tie to the earth, what you can harvest when. On Cape Cod, for many years, this was the season for herring roe and wild asparagus. Hundreds of meals. Tonight I make a meal of dandelion greens, that I wilt with hot bacon grease and top with a lovely cheese, a Taleggio Ca D'ambros. I wash these greens well, because they come from the medians in the parking lot. I'm not a clean freak, but I have my standards. I do enjoy musky smells, as Napoleon famously wrote to Marie, "I'll be home in a couple of weeks, don't bathe". Dated a cross-country runner once, Rachel, as I remember, and dated is not the correct term. She came out to run up and down the driveway, and I'd fix her dinner. I insisted we make love after her exercise; and while she cleaned up, under the solar shower, I'd fix a great meal, that would earn me another roll in the hay. All of that was fine, but she was dumber than a rock and we couldn't talk. I choose carefully, how I spend my time. Conversation is critical. What you're left with, after the fact, is snippets of dialog, which you clearly remember being said. I'm not suspect of the text, but I question the sub-text. Question everything, really, when It comes right down to it; tomorrow is another algorithm. My older daughter calls, and we talk about everything. No secrets. She knows what makes me tick, what I covet. And we can laugh about that. I've inadvertently raised some good daughters, they respect me in spite of everything. Lord love a duck.