Nova Scotia III -- Homesick

When it started raining the wife couldn’t help herself. She had to pull on Nanny’s “duckies” (green rubber shoes), her shell jacket, and an old straw hat, because after all, it wasn’t raining hard, just enough to cling to her hair and make it frizzy.

“Roll up your pants,” Nanny called after her, “There’s likely tall grass, and it’s wet.”

The wife rolled up her pants just enough to show her brown socks and stepped into the small raindrops that were falling like snow. It clung to her eye lashes and dewed her cheeks. For a moment she felt like a flower waking up in the morning.

Next to the base of the house, curled up in a patch of dry grass lay the mouse cat. He was unfortunately wet for all his efforts, and the wife took pity on him, letting him rub his wet fur against her dry jeans.

The two of them traipsed around the farm house to look at the vegetable garden and small orchard. The wife wasn’t sure what she was going to look at, only that she had to stand in front of them in the rain. So she did. Through her wet eyelashes she looked at the rows of vegetables, trying to guess where one food began and another ended. There were red stalks with green flouncy leaves, tall and pointy leaves standing like giant blades of grass, and light green leaves, lacy and low to the ground.

Meanwhile, the cat wound about her feet, pushing it’s hips to her ankles. “What do you think cat?” she asked and noticed that he blinked at her. She and the cat walked over to the orchard which was just a small grove of short trees with curling branches. As the wife got closer she saw that a couple trees were growing pears.

“This one’s a pear tree,” she told the cat and fingered a small firm pear no taller than the length of her palm. It was perfect to her, delicious to the sight, and the organic version of the many Christmas pears she’d seen decorating department stores. She moved to another tree and found small red apples hanging like jewels. Nothing was ripe yet, but it made her think about the season when they would be. Which made her think about her home in Indiana, when the air would go crisp, and make her nose cold.

She thought about how the leaves would turn, and the horizon would fill with layers of glowing trees. Fall was the season for hay mazes, tractor pulls, barn bashes, and pumpkins. Things all together different than the eternal sunshine of Los Angeles.

She stood back, the cat sitting at her feet hopelessly wet by now, and she thought about apples: hot apple cider, the richness of cinnamon, and the velvet cloak of Autumn.