On a Dreary and Rainy Day

I prayed for rain for weeks and weeks. Even though it’s the middle of May, grasses looked dormant and yellow, no matter how much fertilizer we applied.

Finally, one day after Mother’s Day, the grey and cloudy skies finally opened, and a deluge filled the dry swamps, the drainage ditches, and the huge pond nearby. It rained all night and it’s still raining hard. Flooding has overwhelmed ditches and capturing ponds.

It has been raining non-stop for hours today. The bull frogs in the pond were croaking happily last night in a choral unison of “rum, rum, rum.”

Everything looks green, colors look more intense, and the birds are chirping harmoniously from all directions in the forest. The bird nesting under our deck is hiding at the moment but the resident fox came by to snatch the bones I left for her last night. A blue heron landed briefly by the pond but flew away.

On days like today, nature comes alive, but humans disappear. The only vehicle that drove by was the garbage pickup truck.

I am pensive, waxing philosophically about our place on earth at this late stage in our lives. It seems that time flew by, our children now have grey hairs, homes of their own, some have children. We are happy and blessed with our children and grandchildren, but I still don’t understand why we are here, what is the purpose of life, of our lives? Why are we here?

I miss the years of my youth, I miss my people, some of my relatives, the few friends I have, and the place where I was born, a place where I no longer belong and barely recognize.

My closest and dearest relatives have passed away, my parents are gone, and all of my friends have moved on. There are very few people left who are barely in our lives.

I have two second cousins who live in the U.S. but none have made any contact so they might as well live on another planet. Everyone is on Facebook, so impersonal and sad, liking each other’s posts, or getting angry at total strangers, who insult them. The world is smaller but a sad place, thanks to technology.

I am staring out the window, watching the rain and the flooding in my back yard that is greening everything. There is a sort of peace in being inside and dry, watching the animals and birds playing in the rain and foraging for food. It’s a life they enjoy in these moments, not wondering about their existence.

It's a dreary and rainy day but nature is green and alive.

Welcome to 2022

A snow day from the past and a foraging deer
Photo: Ileana Johnson

It’s finally 2022 and humans are making resolutions for the New Year, leaving behind 2021, the year of Fright and Flu. A saturating rain is drenching the woods. The distant river is shrouded in a greyish fog, concealing the silhouetted trees with exposed skinny branches stretched to the sky but meeting half-way the low ceiling. The animals appear in hiding, save for a few chirping birds and the occasional sparrow.

A bag of peanuts in the shell is awaiting by the door. It’s too wet to trudge through the mud to feed the two resident squirrels, my treat for them for the new year. They are going to have to wait until the rain stops and make do with their daily foraging. They hid enough acorns in my flower beds to keep them for the winter.

I open the windows to air the rooms out – a European habit many Americans dislike – why waste a perfectly warm and cozy room and fill it with cold and humid air?

The neighbor’s Christmas lights are still on, twinkling, casting a reddish glow in the rain.

A foghorn blew on the distant river. Who was brave enough to take out a boat in this weather? Perhaps a duck hunter. I am not sure hunting ducks is in season yet.

On the first Sunday in January, that is tomorrow, the January firearms deer season begins and ends on January 31. One half hour before sunrise until one half hour after sunset, my deer family will be in grave danger. The required fluorescent orange and fluorescent pink clothing will be easy to spot by humans among the shades of brown in the woods. The deer can see yellow, blue, and grey colors but are not very sensitive to dark and bright colors like orange, pink, red, and black.

The woods are quiet, only silent to those unable to hear its pulse. It is alive with sound and dormant fall colors. Last night creatures went into hiding, frightened by the celebratory fireworks that continued way into the morning.

The rain drips off the roof, cleansing the driveway and making it more difficult for the squirrels to dig out their nuts.

The Canada geese are sleeping at the edge of the pond, huddled in their flock, small figures in the dim light of the heavy and steady rain.

The streets are empty, humans are still asleep, wrapped in their warm slumber, tired of the night’s revelries.

Welcome to the first day of 2022, another ordinary day in nature – rain and fog, full of life and miracles. Hopefully the Fog, Flu, and Fright will lift this year permanently, letting sun and the truth disinfect the falsehoods.

Late Summer Rain Brings More Memories

Photo: Ileana Johnson 2015
Water pump installed long before
I was born

The hot summer has been suddenly replaced by a cold-driving fall rain. The water is soaking steadily into the parched dirt. There is a hurricane on its way, disguising its ugly wrath under a flowery name, Florence. Nature can use the rain but not the wrath and destruction of this massive swirling giant, picking up speed in the Atlantic and moving towards the Carolinas.

We gave up watering the dry lawn a few weeks ago as the grass turned brown from the oppressively humid heat. It rained a lot earlier in the summer but then it stopped.

Wild animals, deer, rabbits, coyotes, and raccoons were coming closer and closer to the front door, looking for fresh water. I filled the three bird baths daily but the water was always gone. Deer trampled the flower beds searching for water and fresh green grass. Why this water tasted better than the pond or the river nearby, I would never understand.

On days like this, my memory takes me to my grandma’s clay dirt and straw brick house with its tiny windows. When it rained, the interior became quite dark so I sought the outdoors under the large awning over a concrete patio. I enjoyed sitting and watching the rain fall, turning the grassless yard into a sloshy landscape with tiny rivers dug into the mud. The yard birds chirped and the pig squealed with joy. Thunder in the distance broke the domestic tranquility and lightning cracked an invisible whip in the sky.

I was too young to know or understand why grandpa never graveled the yard, installed pavers for a pathway, or planted sturdy grass that we could walk on without sinking into deep mud. Grandma’s rubber boots helped if they did not get sucked in and stuck ankle deep with a grip so powerful, no pulling could disentangle the vice like hold of the mud. He probably could not afford pavers or gravel, raising six children even in the country was not easy.

I was just happy to be with him, to ask questions to which he always had a fascinating answer. Grandpa was a self-taught man who loved books. He instilled in me the love of reading, exploring, and asking questions of scholarly men from whom I learned so much.

He always brought out the few copies of National Geographic which a team of American archeologists had left behind when they finished their summer Roman digs at the edge of the village. They stayed with grandpa as he had a beautiful and fully furnished brick home that was never used by family unless his youngest son visited from the city 60 km away. He unlocked this magical house for him and I would sneak in and play with his Roman coin collection or grandma’s shoes and purse from her dowry trunk. As was the case with everyone, his brick home did not have running water or a sewer system. The outhouse was in the back and the cast iron water pump was in the middle of the yard.

The rest of the year, grandpa and grandma lived and slept in the tiny two-bedroom mud and straw brick house with the kitchen at the other end and a generous loft where he kept hay, dry corn, and wheat from that year’s harvest, along with armies of mice and numerous flee-infested cats who kept the mice population under control.

The peasants were lucky to get electricity in the early 1970s even though the village was located only 9 km from a very large industrial town. Before then, the oil lamps were the only form of light at night. No street lamps either, just the starry nights, darkness, and scary stories sitting with the neighbors outside the gate on the wooden bench, specially made for this purpose, for chatting with neighbors and catching up on the village news and gossip.

People lived so close to each other and crowded, separated only by a wooden fence, with no land in between homes. It was impossible not to know everybody else’s business. The rest of the land was used for personal gardening and for Communist Party’s collective farms.

Bolsheviks were U.N. Agenda 21/2030 compliant long before the globalists of today decided to install worldwide communism and force people off their private property into high-rise, mixed-use buildings in the city under the guise of Green Growth, Sustainability for the sake of environmental protection - such an easy way to control the dumbed-down and crowded population.

Grandpa commuted to work 18 km round-trip for over 40 years on his bicycle, rain or shine, even in the snow. He could not afford the rickety communist bus that ran twice a day to and from the city and riding for free in the open cargo area of a large factory truck like cattle was out of the question.

Today’s globalists are attempting to remove us from our cars and force everyone into public transportation and bikes. They are even going to tax bike users on the many expensive bike paths that are being built around the country in a mad rush to socially engineer everything we do because, if it worked so well for communist China and socialist Europe, it must be good for us too.

At least the Soviets pretended to care for agriculture, for the food supply of the people. They forcibly confiscated their property and moved them off the land into crowded villages in order to form their collective farms on the joined land where everybody worked and, regardless of effort applied, got an even portion at harvest time, while the commies took their lion’s share first.

Some of the villagers worked harder than others but they shared the harvest equally. Humans are not so altruistic that they would put forth effort for others indefinitely. Pretty soon everyone slacked off.  There was no incentive to work harder. The factory communist motto, “we pretend to work and they pretend to pay us,” eventually stretched to farming as well and fields remained unproductive and full of weeds. Such was socialism, it bred laziness - everyone became dependent on the omnipotent government who doled out crumbs.

 

Childhood Years with Mamaia and Tataia

Photo: Ileana Johnson 2015

The simplest things in life can trigger a wave of memories long forgotten or buried deeply in the recesses of my mind – the scent of food, fresh baked bread, an exotic perfume, a melody, the crisp snowy air, the smell of smoke in autumn and a sudden thunderstorm.

The steady rain for the past two days could have easily turned into feet of snow had the temperature not been above the forties. Hard rain drenched the woods into deeper shades of winter browns and greens and turned the trails into soggy miniature swamps so close to the river. It was a long overdue rain as both summer and winter have been quite dry.

Even in its dormant state, nature smelled alive and dense trees looked majestically strong. Without its coat of leaves, the woods allowed the river to peek and shine through its thick boughs. In the full moonlight, each tree appeared like a phantasmagorical giant with human features, casting long shadows in the drenched soil.

As a child, I’ve loved rain and its soothing thumping on the metal roof. Sheltered under Tataia’s shop awning, I was mesmerized by the rivers of fast water running in the muddy yard; everything in nature came alive. Tataia would answer any questions about the earth bursting with life, how clouds formed, why it rained, and how water nourished life.

I learned how to garden, how to water plants with carefully dug ditches that pulled the rain water away from direct contact with the fragile roots. He taught me first how to grow wheat and bean sprouts in a moist glass dish on the window sill in winter. He was truly my first biology and science teacher.

Lightning did not frighten me; the zig-zags of light were God’s hand drawing on the sky’s canvas. Rainbows were God’s palette, the colors that tinted nature and life. And thunder was God snapping his whip to make unseen heavenly horses run faster through the clouds.

When it rained, Mamaia had a reprieve from the farm chores. But she did not rest; she washed clothes by hand in a wooden tub carved from a tree. It was the same tub she used to bathe me in as a toddler. Her hands would turn red from scrubbing one item at a time in hot water and harsh, unpleasant smelling soap which was made with lye. And there was no lotion to soothe the redness of her small hands. Layers of skin would peel off painfully. Finding unscented lanolin to treat the cracked and burning skin was difficult.

On my wash day, the modern “chore” is to sort the laundry, pour a pre-measured cup of detergent into the washing machine, adjust the water setting and temperature, and let it do the scrubbing and washing for me. And the dryer replaces hours of hanging clothes on the line, bringing in off the line dry clothes stiff as a board in winter and smelling like wet dog. We never stop to think how much easier our lives are today and how many varieties of cheap lotions we have to soften our hands. I don’t think most people appreciate what a wonderful and easy existence they live.

Mamaia’s hands were magical. They raised six children, fed them, bathed them, and cloth-diapered them. Mamaia cooked and washed everything for six children, milked the cows, slopped the pig, and fed numerous chicken, ducks, and rabbits that Tataia bought from other farmers.

In her spare time, Mamaia was the village seamstress who made beautiful wedding dresses, church dresses, and practical every day clothes for her own children. She mended their clothes and pressed them with a heavy iron which could be filled with hot coals or placed on the stove to get hot. Sometimes there were slight brown lines left from the iron burning a favorite shirt but children still wore it.

Mamaia’s chores included putting away the vegetables from the garden that Tataia planted, weeded, and watered. She would stir a huge cast iron pot outside on a fire stoked with wood, turning pounds of tomatoes into a sauce preserved in jars for winter time. She pickled cucumbers, cauliflower, green peppers, red peppers, green tomatoes and preserved green beans in jars sealed with wax or corks covered in tar. Everything was stored in the cellar for winter.

Her prune marmalade and tart cherry preserves were delicious. Using sugar made from beets, she made sweet preserves from green plum tomatoes stuffed with walnuts. Regrettably, her recipes were never recorded before she passed away. We were too busy trying to survive or escape the communist harsh life to think about writing these recipes down for posterity.

To this day, when I want to cook something that my mom used to cook for us, it is impossible to replicate the recipe because she did everything from memory, just like Mamaia, a pinch of this, a pinch of that, no measuring cups in mom’s kitchen. Now that her memory is scrambled, I regret not having written her ingredients down and the number of pinches.

My mom smiles in her moments of clarity and tells me how hard she and her five siblings had to work to help their parents on the farm, how they had to give up too much education, and how they practically raised each other. Aunt Nicuta was Mamaia’s first child; Nicuta helped raise her brother, and then each child helped raise the next. They learned to grow up fast this way. Few of the girls actually extended their education past eighth grade or high school but the two boys went much further.

Rain is still coming down hard, drumming on the shingles; my eyes are taking in the soaked nature and bubbling mud but my mind is still wandering through my childhood years, flashing memories and images of my past, times when we, as children didn’t understand the vicissitudes of life, we were happy and felt loved no matter how poor our families were. It was another life, another world, long time ago.