Memories Monday

Laying on my stomach in the grass, in the front yard of the Glen Rock house. Summer. When I wasn't reading I'd spend hours in the front yard, constructing what I called "rest areas" for the bugs that travelled through the jungle of grass. I'd clear a section of the lawn as big as my hand, pat down the earth, build a shelter out of twigs (four forked twigs, two crossbars and then twigs laid across the crossbars to form a roof.) Gather little seeds and other refreshments for the bugs. A raisin. A doll's dish filled with water. Cracker crumbs. I'd arrange this carefully, hopefully, thinking how surprised the bugs would be on their journey, to arrive at a place like that. I was 10 or 11, I still thought that things not human experienced the world as humans do. I saw whole families of ants -- mama ants, papa ants, little kid ants that just couldn't wait get out of the ant car and run around -- setting up to picknick in my rest areas. Only I never actually saw them, somehow I didn't want to look. Just wanted to know that they had liked it.

Every now and then the grass would have to be mowed -- sometimes I'd be in time to rescue my little constructions, sometimes not. I've always wondered if my father noticed what I had built. I never asked, I just started over again.