Dog Days of Summer

My mom and I walked through my yard.  I was giving her my gardening tour.  She always indulges me in a way that most won't.
"So I planted dahlias..." I blathered on.
"I read that they can be planted in the Spring and they might work out in my yard" I continued, showing her where I had planted the bulbs.
"Dahlias are beautiful" my mom responded.  "I remember the first date I went on with your dad.  He was standing on my porch with a dinner plate dahlia.  He looked just like a little kid".
I felt my heart sting.  My dad left when I was three.  We don't usually talk about him.
"There was a reason why I married him," she said quietly, "it wasn't always bad". 

Long hot days alone with Lola.  I was ambitious at first, jogging in the morning, gardening, cleaning, looking for jobs.   But it just kept getting hotter.  Now, Lola and I take long naps in the afternoon, long delirious naps that I wake from wondering what time it is and staring into the peaceful, half asleep blue eyes of my dog.   I have never had a summer like this.

I emailed Warren's dad.  I had been meaning to for a while.  He hadn't been over to visit Lola since school got out, yeah, since school got out, I guess that was like six weeks ago.  The days blur together and become weeks and months.
"Hey, this is Warren's old Spanish teacher," I wrote, "he hasn't come to visit Lola dog in a while and if he's busy or doesn't want to don't bother him about it, I just wanted to be sure that he understands that he is always welcome....".

I was standing on my mom's porch.  We had been talking for quite a few minutes.  She was showing me her gardening.  A few failed hanging baskets hung from the porch ceiling.  It didn't work out, mine didn't either, and she was planing what to do next.  Suddenly, a bird shot out of one of the baskets.  I jumped away, then stared down into the seemingly dead earth.  A round nest tunneled under the soil, perfectly formed by pine needles. 

"Mom!  You have a nest in there!  You are so lucky!".

I sat on my sister's porch, talking about dahlias.
"Marge grew dahlias" Holly stated, referring to my paternal grandmother who shot herself when I was a kid.  It's funny, Grandma Marge used the same name as my best friend that killed herself.  Marge.  We called them both Marge. 

I invited a couple to dinner at our house.  She and I have been good friends since starting at the school.  I remember standing in the middle of the street as we walked home from work one day, both in pajamas for "pajama day", talking for almost an hour as if it was natural to be in your bathrobe at four in the afternoon.  She left this year too.  She is leaving Atlanta.

I ran around the yard to the front of the house with Lola, afraid that they might be at the front door.  I noticed something odd and walked up on the porch.  A perfect bone balanced on the old fashioned doorbell ringer imbedded in my front door.  I started to cry.  I knew that Warren had been here.

My mom didn't sound good.  I was in the twilight of my sister's kitchen.
"The eggs hatched.  But they have pushed one of the chicks out to the edge of the nest.  It's dying, I think it's dying.  But I am afraid to try to help it, because they might reject it even worse".

I told my mom about our Mourning Doves.  I always told her about them.  The amazing birds that mate for life and return annually to the same nest.  I walk past my old apartment and stare up to the nest on the top of the pillar to see if it is still there.  I watched them for months last year.  How they took shifts sitting on the eggs and bringing the chicks food, swooping in and sailing away systematically.  During storms they didn't take shifts, both would arrive and  lay their bodies over the nest, practically smothering the little birds.   And over and over again the little chicks would become birds and they would have more. 

"But these aren't Mourning Doves, Hilary...." my mom stated.
"They will never come back".