Surprise!

by Donna Schoenkopf

The older I get, the more I’m surprised.

This is a function of age.

I have noticed that EVERYTHING is new to young folks, making surprise commonplace, therefore NOT a surprise.

Yeah. Check it out. Introduce something new to a little kid and he/she will accept it without much fanfare.

I noticed this when I became a schoolteacher. I taught (mostly) third grade, which has a lot of new stuff (multiplication, division, fractions, social studies, cursive handwriting, textbooks, dense reading).

And my students accepted it all with a very matter-of-fact attitude. Very rarely does a very young person flip out over how NEW and surprising something is.

I was annoyed with their blasé take on things UNTIL it occurred to me that virtually everything I was giving them was new.

So “new” held no surprises for them. (Otherwise, I think they would be constantly blown away and nothing would get done.)

But now, as I’ve reached the ripe old age of 66, I find myself gasping with surprise about all kinds of things.

So here is my list of surprises of the week:

Surprise #1

I went out to my “orchard” this past week. I wanted to check on my two remaining apple trees and my little fig tree. (Those three pathetic little trees qualify that stretch of rocky backed clay as an orchard in my book.)

I had been watching, watering, NOT watering, putting sand in the mix to break up the clay, and then feeling dismay and, I have to admit, frustration and its blame game (Dammit trees! GROW! What the hell do you WANT??), over the inability of the apple trees to get past one or two little shriveled leaves and blossom into good health and robustness.

So it was with great surprise that Monday, in the early morning light, in my ratty pajamas and green rubber clogs, I found new leaves! Several of them! With one perfect and beautiful blossom! A deep pink apple blossom!

Surprise #2

I was weed whacking with Nelly, the gas weed whacker, on the side of my hill, cutting through thick stalks of Johnson grass and sage and woody stems of various plant life when I accidentally zipped off the leaves of a broad-leafed bush instead of mowing the whole thing down.

As I stood there passing Nelly over the plants nearby I glanced back at the leafless bush and thought I saw some orange-green-yellow-striped curly clusters of fruit of some sort.

I turned off Nelly and bent down to see what the heck it was and ...

Surprise!

It was several masses of caterpillars. In large bunches. Tight as grapes. In the crooks and along the stems of the bush.

It kind of took me aback. There was the the rush of ewwwwww! And the flutter of awwwww, I hurt them!

I have never seen anything like that. And I’m sixty-six years old.

Surprise #3

Even though I’d read and believed and trusted that using blinds to cut the morning sun in the east and the afternoon sun in the west would cool off my house, I was not prepared for how MUCH it would cool off my house.

I mean, it’s really cooooool. It might be partly psychological. Just having the house slightly less bright might have something to do with thinking I’m cooler.

But the thermostat and Bill’s wonderful radio-controlled clock-barometer-thermostat-calendar gizmo do not lie.

It’s waaaaaaay cooler with the sun blocked. And my old brain is surprised and happy with how effective it is.

Surprise #4

I am surprised that the drip from my kitchen faucet is “fixed” when I do the reverse of what I think I should do—that is, push the handle tighter. No, the drip stops when I loosen the handle just a tad.

Why is THAT???

Surprise #5

I am surprised to see a whole new pecan orchard on my drive up the 177 to Shawnee over there on my right. There has always been a really beautiful mature pecan grove there, but overnight it has doubled in size, with pretty baby new trees all in a row, standing sweetly.

Surprise #6

I am surprised with how much I HATE blacked out windows in cars. There are lots of them in these parts. I think people think they’re cool or their privacy is very, very important to them.

But I think it’s dangerous. I can’t see if they see me. I can’t tell if they’re on a cell phone. I can’t see anything about them. It’s like having a robot-devil-driven car, with no human inside, cruising alongside me.

Idiots.

Surprise #7

I am surprised by how much I am isolated from technology out here in the boonies.

I DID know how inconvenienced I was and how expensive things are for simple technical connections. But I was surprised by how really isolated I was when I went into explaining to dear Ann how I couldn’t get wireless for my computer or get AT&T (which I wouldn’t do anyway) for cell phone reception or how I can’t get cable or how the GPS satellite map thingy is wrong about my little stretch of country road.

The sheer impact of all that surprised me.

Made me feel like a pioneer.

Again.

Surprise #8

Last Friday I went to my first football game in 44 years. In Shawnee. At the football stadium I stood and cheered in all those years ago.

The evening was incredibly beautiful. Soft, cool air, gorgeous pink clouds, a lightning flash here and there.

The same, very same, bleachers stood stolidly where they had always been. The same Oklahoma rock building that houses the team before and during halftime stood there, all funky.

I was surprised with how I was touched with sweet feeling.

I had been mad at football ever since Reagan and Gorbachev’s nuclear disarmament talks interrupted some stupid game all those years ago and hundreds of thousands of football fans called to scream about their game being interrupted, which gave Reagan all he needed to back off of negotiations. After all, he thought, the people didn’t give a damn about nuclear disarmament, just football.

So I swore off the game. (Remember what Aristotle said: “Tyrants will say, ‘Give people the games.’” He meant that if you kept the citizenry amused, they wouldn’t notice the evil deeds of the powerful.)

But Friday night, with its own perfection, and my memories of my beautiful son Jesse in his glory on the field so many years ago, swept my bitterness away.

I was taken with how old connections still existed there in that stadium.

My dear Jim was announcing the inductees to the Shawnee Wolves Hall of Fame, which included Rocky, an old high school buddy. Nancy, from a million years ago, was my “date” and we watched her granddaughter, all sparkly and beautiful in the back row of the pompom girls. I saw Justine across the way, heard names and saw faces I hadn’t seen or heard in half a century.

Small towns certainly do have roots and memories and history.

And I was surprised with how much I loved being there.

Surprise #9

I was surprised with how different the wildflowers are this year from the ones that came up last year.

Last year there was HUGE diversity. Every color of the rainbow. Virtually every day had a new species popping out of the ground. There were wildflowers EVERYWHERE. TONS of them.

But this year, it’s different. Almost every wildflower is that deep taxicab yellow.

There are ten foot tall sunflowers everywhere. There are nameless daisy-type flowers of all kinds.

And they’re all yellow ... a sea of yellow.

Surprise #10

I was surprised that lemon juice does not repel whatever the hell is eating the new leaves on my apple trees and fig tree. And plumeria tree.

NOW what??

I am taking suggestions from y’all on what natural remedies you might have for plant pest control.

Surprise #11

I was surprised to see a huge hawk grab a large fish out of my pond and fly away with it, tail feathers spread like a fan, swooping past the tops of the oaks, fat fish in its talons.

Surprise #12

I was surprised that boiling water is the very best grass killer for the grass that grows between the slats of my deck. It beat out vinegar and salt.

(Yes. I experimented with salt on a small patch of grass. I’m sorry, Aquifer. It’s Don’s fault. He told me it would be an excellent opportunity for experimentation and that I must take copious notes. Please forgive me. And him.)

Surprise #13

I was surprised that what I THOUGHT was just another buzzing insect up in the rafters of the house was really a little hummingbird trying to fly vertically, not horizontally, to escape. When I finally looked up because Che the Cat seemed to think something was exquisitely interesting up there, I saw what it was and that its wings were creating the buzzing sound as it frantically pushed against the ceiling.

I thought immediately of a broom, ran and got it and tried to gently push it away and down from the rafters, but every time I managed to get him down a few inches he evaded the broom and there he was, back up at the ceiling, pushing with all his might.

After several frustrating tries, for him and for me, I saw that he wanted to perch in the broom’s bristles, so after I held the broom still next to him, he grabbed hold of those bristles and hunkered down on top of them. I held the broom vertically above my head with the tiny hummingbird nestled in it, and walked smoothly and slowly out of the house, to freedom.

Well, I’ll set YOU all free now.

Hope you have many pleasant surprises today.

Don’t forget to hunker down in the bristles. Trust the broom. Say yes to the universe.

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