The spawns have found a new way to harass me. The tall bird feeder holder with the anti-squirrel baffle at the bottom had to be moved. The spawns were jumping from trees to get at the top of the pole where there are holders for four feeder stations, and the spawns have enjoyed dining at each one. When Skip came last week, I had him move the pole away from all the trees. Now the spawns are flying off the deck to the feeders. The problem, though, is getting off. There is no easy way so they sort of just fall unto the fence below the pole, the fence which is protecting my vegetable garden. The spawns knock over the posts and the wire gets bent down from the force of their bodies falling from so high. It has happened three times and I have fixed the fence three times. Now I have this dream of a hunter dressed in khaki, wearing a pith helmet, also khaki, sitting on my deck steps with an elephant gun in his hand just waiting for the spawns. I think I’ll have them mounted. Meanwhile, the feeders remain empty until I can figure out a solution.

The hunter’s pith helmet got me thinking about hats. When we were little kids, we had two main hats. One was for winter, a woolen hat with ear flaps and a pretty design, and the other was an Easter hat, usually a new one each year to match our dresses. The Easter hats had ribbons in blue, yellow or spring green, but it didn’t matter to me how pretty or flowery or filled with ribbons the hats were because I never liked hats. My mother, however, insisted I wear a hat when I walked to school on blustery cold winter days, but it never helped all that much to keep me warm. My head might have been fine, but my face was always freezing cold with bright red cheeks. Mittens were more essential. The Easter hat went into the closet and was pulled out only for Sundays.

I don’t wear hats any more. In the winter I sprint from the house to the car and back again when I get home. On Easter I wear one to my friends’ house: it’s a wide brim pink hat like those models during the 50′s wore. I don’t wear it to dinner when we go out though I might one year as a lark.

Maybe in my future is me as an eccentric old lady wearing a hat every place I go, even the dentist. I think I’ll start with the old faded red band hat with the plume. I’ll drop feathers everywhere I go.

A chickadee is building a nest in one of my bird houses or at least I think so as I have seen her going in and out of the house which is a flamingo with swaying legs. It is pink as flamingos are and has a small opening, perfect for a chickadee. I’ll keep an eye.

Dandelions get a bum rap. They appear in the lawn and are dug up or summarily destroyed. They were the first flowers I ever gave my mother. Nothing so beautiful could possibly have been anything but a flower to me. Dandelions reminded me of the sun: round and bright yellow. My mother always took my gift, the bouquet of dandelions, with profuse thanks and put them in a vase in the middle of the table. She never saw them as weeds. They were a gift.

Before I visit my sister, I go up the hill to the house where, other than this house, I have lived the longest time. I know every part of that house and can close my eyes and see each room. The kitchen was small with only a little counter space, a corner which barely fit the table and chairs and a small stove on the same wall as the table. The fridge was beside the back door, my mother’s bugaboo. The door was wooden and painted green and in the summer had a screen instead of a storm door. My sisters, who played in the yard most summers, went out that back door which always slammed behind them. That drove my mother crazy. Her warning, “Don’t slam the door,” always seemed just a bit too late, drowned out by the sound of the slam. For some reason my mother and that door are a strong memory from that house.

I have this mind which seems to hold on to so many things though words and some names are beginning to escape me. I have to think long and hard to remember some of them. The other day I was trying to come up with Pierce Brosnan, don’t ask me why as I don’t remember, and I was with a friend who couldn’t remember either. I gave her hints: he was Remington Steele and James Bond. Neither one of us came up with his name. In the background, while we were talking, music from the mid 60′s was playing, and we knew every word. Once I told a friend how many traffic lights she would encounter on her route through Boston. I just closed my eyes and drove the route in my head. I remember odd things of little importance, but sometimes I forget why I am in the kitchen or I lose forever that small list I thought I’d memorized. Even mnemonics don’t help as much any more. I sometimes forget what they mean. I do, however, have a hold on so many past memories, long ago memories, the best memories like the dandelions and the back door.