Mary Dansak

Recently, while horseback riding in the woods, I spotted a handful of brilliant yellow feathers on the ground. Struck by the unexpected slash of color against the brown leaves, I dismounted and examined them closer. These woodland treasures were tail feathers from a Northern Flicker. Holding them in my hand, I was immediately transported to my childhood yard, staring up into the tall loblolly pine trees, with my father beside me pointing to a bird perched on a branch.

My Aunt Frank had a huge magnolia tree in her front yard, surrounded by a sea of crab grass. Despite the inevitable stickers in our bare feet, my brother, our cousins and I scrambled through the cruel prickly patch to get to that tree. It demanded climbing. As soon as we reached the pile of crunchy, boat-shaped leaves under her branches, our feet were safe. Then we skedaddled up the limbs, high into our lofty fort, where we could eavesdrop for hours on the grown-ups yakking it up on the screened-in porch.

Boy, do folks ever get in a tizzy over aging. I can't go to any of my old-folk medical appointments without seeing ads for Botox! It's almost as if my aging body offends thee.

“Did you ever hear of Steller's sea cows,” Tipi Joe, our feral bonus-son, asked me the other day. I had not. Intrigued, I spent much of last weekend engrossed in learning about Stellar's sea cows, Hydrodamalis gigas.

One day, when I was in my late 40s, I woke up with an overwhelming sense that I was not myself anymore. Something was dreadfully amiss. I could not find pleasure in anything. Furthermore, my emotions went berserk. I was unable to pinpoint what was wrong with me. This state of living like a stranger to myself went on for years, accompanied by a new and most unwelcome brain fog.

When one of my stepmother's tiny dogs disappeared from her rural home, we blamed coyotes. I wanted to kill every coyote in Alabama to avenge her death. I had the same reaction when coyotes broke into an enclosure and killed an injured Canada goose my neighbors were raising. It seems all my animal-loving, live-and-let-live tolerance immediately gives way to violent fury when it comes to coyotes killing off pets.

New York City shines like a beacon, glitters with lights on streets and in windows, and beams with the dreams of eight million souls on any given day. Recently, however, the city experienced an extra fresh and spangly sparkle. Not because the Knicks won the national championship. Not because the violent crime rate is lower than it's been in the past five years. Not because Lei won the James Beard Award for Best New Restaurant on the very day our daughter Anna started working there. No, the fresh little light that brightened the whole city was the presence of Ruby, our brilliant gem of a granddaughter, who visited New York with me to celebrate turning ten years old.

I am the world's worst gardener. I am content to let the wildflowers and those some call weeds take over wherever they find purchase in my woodsy yard. But this was not always the case.

She's old and heavy with a musty smell about her. Her joints are stiff; she's out of tune. Still, I am charmed.

I have so many questions about stinging. What is happening at the cellular level in our bodies when we get stung? How is a sting different from a shock or a pinprick? And, of course, oh death, where is thy sting?