Looking out my backdoor - Monsters in the night

I crawled into bed early, barely darkish. Wasn’t feeling great. My stomach/intestines were slightly crampy, nothing dire, just not my usual cast-iron gut. Went to sleep with clear conscience.

Woke up to wind that sounded like a freight train going through a tunnel at mach one speed, bending trees, flattening crops. Lightning flashed messages of doom across the black sky.

I got up and closed my last open window, grabbed another blanket and tried to curl back into sleep. The howling wind had other entertainment in store.

My mind, as erratic as the wriggling lightning moving ever closer, insisted on considering the fires in California. Dwelling on rains in far flung deserts of Arabia. Pondering tropical storms in both the Atlantic and Pacific. Reflecting on floods throughout the world, in places that never flood. Like here.

A branch somewhere nearby snaps off a tree. Debris rattles and clacks against my brick house. I think about my bricks, hand-made with sand. Something overturns on my patio.

I roll over onto my other side. My hand rests near my armpit. Quite unconsciously I finger a lump the size of a marble. We all know what that is. The Big C. My stomach continues to cramp. Probably swollen with a tumor. My body, no doubt, is riddled with tumors. I do a body scan. I discover pains I never knew I had.

Wind ramps up to mach two. I wonder if my roof will hold against such force. Then a clattering, pinging, onto the roof, against the windows. Hail.

There goes my garden. From the safety of my bed, I take inventory. My corn, waist high, leaves shredded. The new squash plants, eight inches tall when I went to bed. Gone.

Green beans. Oh, well, I’m tired of eating green beans, tender and delicious as they are. One cannot live on green beans alone. Though Bruce the Iguana would like to and attempts the feat. Tomatoes, shared with that bleeping squirrel. Tomorrow I would have had enough to make a chili sauce, now I picture tomatoes, pounded to sauce on the concrete.

Woe to my tender little peppers. It took three plantings, pleading with pepper seeds to sprout before they emerged and grew into toddler stage. The purple cabbage. The Brussels sprouts which I coddled, talked baby talk, loved like my own.

Granted, losing my little bucket garden has nothing to compare to losing a couple hundred thousand acres of prime winter wheat. But, still, it is my garden, petted and pampered toil of my hands.

I climbed out of bed and snugged a cotton rug against the front door. Checked the towels jammed under the window frames. When rains blow in from the east, every window leaks.

Back in bed, I thought about my hibiscus, more beautiful than ever this year. I had promised Denise pictures tomorrow. Now the flowers will be nothing more than a drooping, sopping mess.

Here come the rains. Magically, the wind dies down and the rains sound beneficent, like they are here to heal the parched earth. Now I can go back to sleep.

Or not.

My mind has a mind to decide that now we are awake, let’s take a moral inventory. We review all the sins, mortal and venial, of my past. One by one, they march through my head, each insistent on a thorough overhaul. Sins of omission. Sins of commission. Each take a place.

When I remember that a complete moral inventory tells both sides of the story, I hear, in Latin, remittuntur tibi peccata tua, your sins are forgiven, and I fall asleep to the patter of gentle rain.

There is no need to check for monsters under the bed. All my monsters sleep in bed with me.

(In the morning, I discovered that all my fears were for naught and like Mary, Mary, quite contrary, my garden still grew.)

——

Sondra Ashton grew up in Harlem but spent most of her adult life out of state. She returned to see the Hi-Line with a perspective of delight. After several years back in Harlem, Ashton is seeking new experiences in Etzatlan, Mexico. Once a Montanan, always. Read Ashton’s essays and other work at http://montanatumbleweed.blogspot.com/. Email [email protected].