STEPPING OUT

"I do what?"

“A half step. Like a baby step. But with bigger feet.”

The Captain and I are standing face-to-face in the living room. We’ve decided, after a half century of ignoring choreographed moves, that we should learn the proper way to do the Carolina Shag, the official dance of the South Carolina coast. Around these parts children learn to Shag before they learn to blame broken dishes on their little brother.

Just now we’re stuck at the most difficult part. Getting started. The Captain can slow dance smoother than morning fog on a bass pond, but when it comes to following directions, it's like asking a cat to walk a straight line.

“Which direction do we step?”

“I guess toward the beach.”  We are presently five hours and six more weeks of winter away from the shore. We pause and gaze serenely eastward in honor of the ocean.

“What are you doing?” The Captain wipes his eyes with the sleeve of his Jimmy Buffett t-shirt and peers at me.

“I’m gazing eastward.”

 “You’re gazing toward the kitchen.  East is the other direction.”

 “It’s the thought that counts.”

 “You’re thinking of the cheesecake in the refrigerator.”

“It reminds me of the beach”

 “Because it’s round like the sun?”

“Because they both remind me my swimsuit doesn’t fit.”

We observe a moment of silence in honor of the good things in life and traitorous swimwear.

He takes my hand.  “So where were we? Half. . .”

“Step.”

 “Okay.”

We immediately step in opposite directions, then back, then smash each other’s toes into the biological equivalent of strawberry jam. Our arms are locked around each other and we’re stuck together like purse-bottom postage stamps. Every time he breathes, my glasses fog up in a half moon shape.

I glare at him through a sliver of light at the bottom of my right lens. “The men on the video were light on their feet.”

 He grimaced and limped to a chair.  “I wish you were light on my feet.”

 “You need to practice. You’re supposed to look like you’re hovering just above the ground.”

“The last thing I saw hovering was just above swamp level in a bad science fiction movie.”

 “What happened in the movie?”

“The hovering thing got beat up before I got the butter on my popcorn.”

“So you don’t want to learn the Shag?”

“I’d rather line the bed of my truck in taffeta and throw an afternoon tea for the Sugar Tit chapter of the Hell’s Angels.”

 “The only motorcycle in town belongs to Old Man Pirkle, the Volunteer Fireman and Assistant Mayor.”

 “We could just watch You Tube demos and eat cheesecake.”

 “Turn on the laptop. We have six more weeks to buy a swimsuit.”

 

 

POTTY BLOSSOMS

I didn’t do it intentionally; I avoided it with tenacity for half a century, even when the neighbors added a creative touch. But somehow it happened without my consent, which is the sort of thing that will get your name in the news these days if you’re not careful.

I am one of those people.

Through no fault of my own and in a twisted turn of fate that makes me question my life choices, I’ve sprouted a toilet in my back yard. I've taken in many things over the years - cats, dogs, an escaped ferret, even a baby possum. But this is my first time to play host to a passing potty. The term Squatter's Rights takes on a whole new meaning.

A plain, white nonfunctional no-value-added porcelain pot is nesting by my back gate. It’s not situated in a cunning garden sunhouse that serves as the urban equivalent of a greenhouse/outhouse combination. This is a two-piece victim of a hasty removal job and a failed prayer, nestled in a bed of weeds and wild onions like an out-of-date Easter egg. A Peter Rabbit practical joke.

I can’t decide whether to plant geraniums in it or to top it with a beach-themed cushion for a jaunty seaside-inspired cabana spot. It’s sort of like a Kodak moment that you don’t want anybody to see.

I didn’t start out to be a plumbing failure. Life has a way of turning your best laid plans into sewage and before you know it – boom – you’re a casualty of a flush with death.

We are not Do-It-Yourself people. We’re lucky to open our own envelopes. My husband can build a supercomputer from the ground up with spare parts from a Waring blender, but faced with a simple flood of Biblical proportions in the bathroom, he acts like Noah had the right idea: hop a passing raft and row like crazy. This is not something you can turn off and on again to see if it rights itself.

So when the fixture in the bathroom put out enough whitewater rapids to start a rafting expedition, my team ripped the thing from its moorings and pitched it out the back door like a ninth inning fastball.

And time passed. And seasons changed.

Now it’s baseball season again. The tulips have bloomed, the dogwood has blossomed, and the crepe myrtle is fuzzy with new growth.

In the meantime, a leafy green vine awash in tiny white flowers has wound around my backyard porcelain, giving it an air of casual domestication, sort of like Mother Nature’s version of Shabby Chic.

I guess everybody celebrates Spring in their own fashion. In Augusta, the Masters has acres of azaleas, Washington is sprinkled with delicate cherry blossoms, and the Midwest is bathed in fields of sunflowers.

But in my little corner of the country--just below the Bible Belt and just above the Sweet Tea Bag--we have our pottied plants.