Beren deMotier * writer * artist * human  

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copyright May 23, 2001 Beren deMotier

Maggots Before Breakfast

             In summertime, anything can happen.

At least, that’s what it feels like.  When we’re ready to embark on another summer, I know it’s likely to be nothing that I expect, and lots more than I was hoping for.  We don’t, like some, plan glamorous vacations.  We don’t “cruise”, or even, as mommies, take the kids on down to Florida to Disney World.  Our vacation budget (the amount we agree to increase our debt), usually gets spent on travel to family weddings, or alternately, funerals.

Summer is more a time of everyday epiphanies.  Even gross ones.  Late last summer we had a Sunday morning we will never forget.

It was early but already the sun streamed into our room, promising to be a hot one.  In a rare fit of gardening enthusiasm, we decided to weed the vegetable patch, right then and there.  I disentangled myself from our sleeping and sweaty five-year old and sat on the edge of the bed to unwrap the ace bandage from my lower calf.  My wife was appalled to see that beneath the ace bandage there was a panti-liner affixed to my leg.  It was the only thing I could think of that was big enough to cover the fresh tailpipe burn that marked the one and only time I have thrown caution to the wind and ridden on the back of my wife’s bike.  Wouldn’t you know I’d step out on the wrong side.  Our neighbors had been over for dinner the night before and one of them, who happens to be a professor of nursing, suggested I keep it covered.  For all our sakes.  It’s ugly, and distinctive.  In fact, just the day before (when the burn was uncovered) a fetching brunette in a big truck slowed down behind my car as I unloaded the back end and said, with upturned brow, “motorcycle burn”.  Clearly she knew from experience.

            So I re-wrapped my panti-liner leg with a fresh one (bought bandages later) and we went outside to weed.  First we squabbled a bit about whether my wife was pulling them out by the greenery and leaving the roots, then our son awoke from his Nintendo stupor in the basement and came out to join us.

            Ignoring the plant life, he focused on the bugs.  First he found a spider.  And then a worm he said was cut in half and going in two different directions.  We had to see this.  Then he decided they weren’t worms, they were maggots.

            And not just one.  Many maggots.  Migrating maggots.  An army of white demons scattered and inching over our driveway.

            Something, I suspect, related to not emptying out the dog refuse bucket often enough.

            Then our daughter came out, woken from her reverie by the constant cry of “maggots, maggots” from the driveway.

            So she got into the act.

            I felt a little self-conscious at first.  Our neighbors’ kitchen window overlooks the drive and I was picturing them sitting down to breakfast with maggots on the mind. 

            But it was so absurd it was infectious.  Soon they were making maggot jokes and I couldn’t resist jumping in:

            Why did the maggot cross the road?

            To get to the dead chicken.

            All of this while my wife and I weeded the last month’s worth of mother nature out of the soil and we unearthed our bounteous crop of cucumbers and the beginning of a source for zucchini bread for days.

            I saw freezer bags in my future.

            This year I cannot hope for anything nearly as interesting.  While we are not officially in summer (thirteen days of school and counting), we are certainly beginning to get into a summer-like state of mind.  It was ninety-five degrees yesterday, an unheard-of high for Portland, and in a heat induced euphoria I decided it would be a good idea to draw tattoos on our children.  In ink.  So today they went off to school decorated with large hissing snakes, black widow spiders and a crouching bunny on my daughter’s shin.  Very proud.  And while I will only have myself to blame if they decide this is a good thing later in life, I’m hoping my vivid description of the actual process of tattooing will stay with them long enough to avoid those typical eighteen-year old mistakes.

            Furthermore, in a summer-like state of devil-may-care, I have agreed to pick up, along with the tattooed children, a froglet from our son’s class who will now consider us home.  I keep thinking “no more pets” but they continue to come.  The leech just died (that’s another story), so this will even out the numbers.

            Anything could happen this summer.  We’re getting the wedding-in-lieu-of-vacation out of the way early in June, paving the way for absurdities to come.  And maybe more maggots.  You just never know.