blue skies, daffodils & hyenas

Here's the intriguing pathway leading from the drive to my daughter's front door.

Granddaughter Kaylee at the park last windy Tuesday.

Sunny days, blue skies, cool breezes...I can't believe how much I'm missing my own spaces to muck around in, my walks with my dogs. That sounds very ungrateful, actually, and I don't mean that at all. What I feel is like I'm spinning my wheels because this is my daughter's house and I can't very well start turning her garden upside down just because looking at the space gives me ideas, can I? So I'm restraining myself.

The gardens in the suburbs here are all green lawns and acid green maple flowers and shocking yellow forsythia in bloom. In a few gardens, daffodils and tulips are making a show.

My thoughts are wandering around in the questions of what memories are. As I try to recollect my childhood for the stories and essays I'm trying to write down about Ethiopia, I'm curious about what actually happened and what I was told happened. Did the hyena actually stay outside the walls of the compound or did it sneak inside? It did sound as if it was laughing its eerie laugh right outside my bedroom window! As an adult, I realize how protected my childhood was, and yet the extent to which my parents were actually not able to protect me -- as any parent realizes the real limits of parenting, trying to protect children from the "dangers" of the world and growing up, and preparing them for life and living.

In reading an article in an old O magazine, the question of avoiding the dangers of the world vs being willing to risk living has made me rethink this old problem. I think there is great potential in trying to write about my hyenas as a metaphor for my life.