I HAVE NOTHING TO SAY

I have nothing to say so I'm going to bed.

My bed, with the yummy topper.

And my four pillows. I tried sleeping with three but four is the right number because two of them end up on the floor. Why don't I sleep with just two then? Because four is the right number.

I've already brushed my teeth and cleaned my face and put on the lavender lotion that my daughter-in-law makes. It smells so clean and go-to-sleepish.

'll open the window to the cool night air. And turn the fan on, mostly for the "white noise." Maybe the garbage trucks won't wake me in the morning.

I'll say my prayers--like a good girl--and read my scriptures and write the short note I'm promised to write in a journal. It won't be very witty or wise because I have nothing to say.

I'll listen to the crickets. I hope that evil cricket-eating insect doesn't come back this year to clean the oak trees out. I know he needs dinner too, but I want him to dine somewhere else. Far away.

And then I'll snuggle down and go to sleep. Lovely, quiet sleep. How I love it.

So, until tomorrow, when brilliance visits me, I'll say good night.

And if brilliance doesn't visit me, I will have nothing to say.

Sweet dreams.

THE NOISE FACTOR or ARE WE CRAZY YET?

The child factor: Tonight some neighborhood kids were out playing. What they were really doing is screaming--for twenty minutes they screamed which sent the poor dog next door on a barking spree. Screaming usually mean "help." Not today, it meant, "We really don't know how to play, but we've watched a billion hours of TV and we sure have seen a lot of screaming so that must be what people do." 'And so they did.

The band factor: Every day, it seems, we get a free band concert. My dear neighbor, whose kids are in the high school marching band asked me one day, "Can you hear the band practice after school?"

"Oh, yes," I said.

"Me too," she said. And then I realized--she liked it! Of course she liked it, it means I know where my kids are and what they are doing. I didn't have the heart to say, "It's driving me crazy." She was so happy, hearing the band fill the air with drums and trumpets FOR HOURS ON END.

The high school mascot is the Thunderbird. Thundering and bird screeches. It figures.

This is a picture of the BYU band but the Thunderbirds make every bit as much noise, I'm sure of it.

The garbage man cometh: We now have three different garbage trucks. One for garbage. One for yard waste, that the city composts and sells back to us for our gardens. One for recyclables. Garbage trucks do not have mufflers. What they have is noise extenders.

Garbage trucks also have "The claw!" It grabs the garbage can, propels it upwards at ninety-five miles and hour and shakes it over the truck bed like a Coyote with a rabbit. "Clunk!" the can is deposited back on the street with such force that the wheels pop off. It falls over and a remaining stray soup can rolls out and into the gutter. They start this scary, insane noise and fearful demonstrations at 6:00 AM. We had a woman garbage truck driver the other day and she drove forty-five miles an hour IN OUR CUL-DE-SAC. What's up with that? I thought she was going to to slam breaks and skid into the neighbor's house.

Garbage trucks that empty dumpsters know they can not rely on their puny noise extenders to wake you out of a sound sleep so they crash the dumpsters with such force that the concrete has to be replaced. They have to do this for the sound to carry for five miles. They have also made a deal with the concrete man, who is their brother-in-law. Then those garbage trucks back up, and the "beep-beep-beep" causes people in bedrooms all over the city to roll over and hit the snooze buttons on their alarm clocks. Then, before they figure it's time for the alarm to beep again, they get up and shower. These people get to work an hour early and they have no idea why.

The school is "bing-bonging" me into insanity: We live close to two schools. An elementary and a high school. One of them has some kind of "bing-bong, bing-bong, bing" warning system attached to something ALL DAY LONG. I don't know if this is the noise of their phone's make or a warning when they are going to make announcements so the kids have time to turn their ear off or what, but it is enough to make me want to stick needles in my ears.

Jet airplane engines masquerading as lawn trimmers and lawn mowers: Is it my imagination or have lawn trimmers and lawn mowers gotten louder? We sit outside a lot, visiting with neighbors. When other neighbors decide to do yard work we have to put conversation on hold. I think trimmers and mowers are engineered by men who are hearing impaired. I know, they think, let's compensate by making our products sound like jet airplanes taking off. The we will always know whether the mower/trimmer is on and we won't put our fingers under there and get them chopped off.

People with silly little electronic lizard tails attached to their ears: I realize they have a right to get a phone call. What I can't understand is why they talk louder when on the phone. Is my conversation with my lunch companion bothering them?
Motorcycles: I saw a sign on a motorcycle the other day. It said, "Start seeing motorcycles." The motorcycle engineers figured that if we heard motorcycles maybe we'd also see them. The problem is the car engineers are making cars more and more soundproof so the motorcycle engineers have to ramp up the noise. It's a contest between the two. Something ate the only noise that's pleasant: For years we didn't have crickets out front. Two years ago a cricket found the front yard, climbed the oak trees and crick'd. It was so pleasant. This year there were two of them. How do I know? The second one was a cricket's heart beat behind the first one for a day and then he learned to stay in rhythm. 'Then one day there was a "clicking" insect in oak trees. I never saw him but I heard him. He ate my crickets. They were easy to find. They advertised. The next day the only noise was The Clicker and then the next day he moved to the back yard to eat those crickets. My teenage neighbor has to collect 50 insects for his science class. I'd donate The Clicker in an instant if I could find him. But, after dining on my crickets he moved on. My neighbor plays in the band. It would be some kind of justice if he ended up with The Clicker, stuck on a pin in his insect box. I can only hope.

BATHING IN A BUCKET

Lord Bumhampton climbed up on my lap. I nuzzled his little neck, he smelled of summer. Sometimes I’d lick my children’s arms just to smell the rich summer fragrance. It made them laugh, to see, and feel their mother licking their arms.

“I should take him in and give him a bath,” I said.

Mom didn’t say anything.

“I really should,” I said, halfheartedly.

“You know,” she said in a quiet voice, swinging the lawn swing with a slow rhythm, “there’s nothing says he has to bathe in the house. When I was a kid we bathed in a tin tub. Even a bucket would do.”

“I’ll be right back,” I said.

I set the bucket of warm water on the patio and tried to persuade my boy that bathing in a bucket was going to be fun. He wasn’t buying it. Getting naked in the back yard was out of his two-year-old comfort zone.

I swirled my hand in the water. He did too and soon he was splashing and laughing. He hardly noticed as I stripped his clothes off. When they were in a pile he stepped into the bucket and stood still while I soaped a washcloth and washed his plumb tummy, his arms and legs. I soaped the summer smell off his neck, then scooped water and let it cascade over his head. Water ran down his summer-browned arms and dripped off his fingers. I soaped his round little bottom and he laughed. Mom smiled.

When he was rinsed off I bundled him in a towel. Mom dried his hair with a corner of it and then wrapped the towel around him, tucking the end in so he could walk around. We called him our little Tongan.

I dumped the water on the grass. He poked at the wet grass with a stick and then came to get dressed. He climbed on my lap and snuggled down.

The stars came out; there were more stars then, city lights were fewer. Lord Bumhampton fell asleep.

We swung in the dark for a long time--Mother, daughter and grandson, his breath warmed my breast. He sighed in his sleep. Mom and I smiled in the dark and talked softly.

It was a night made of magic. Thin magic. Warm-toast kind of magic. I didn’t know it then, but it was also the future’s I-wish-I-could-go-back-in-time kind of magic. We stayed on the swing long after the stars filled the sky with specks of light and the crickets courted.

We were three generations. Maybe we were watched over by unseen generations, the ones who had gone before and those unborn, waiting to come, maybe one of those unborn was Lord Bumhampton's little sister, Her Excellency of Mousehole. I like to think that’s true. Maybe Lord Bumhampton's future children were there too, there might have been many generations, stretching in the distance on both ends, and the three of us, in the middle, swinging together, held together, by silken family threads, one summer night, so long ago.