"I Want To Lay In The Grass"

                                                                                               

I want to lay in the grass. I used to. I used to lay on my tummy, arms crossed under my chin and watch the ants. 

 

Ants follow each other. I knew that before I could read because I watched them. One ant carried a white ball, same size as his head, up a green blade of grass. Up. Up. Up. He got to the tip, the blade bent, and down he went. All very interesting.

 

Once Mom poured boiling water on a pile of coffee grounds under the clothesline. It was ants. Guess she didn’t like them crawling up her bare skinny legs while hanging clothes.

I used to not care. Laying in the grass, I’d uncross one arm, reach for my sandwich, take a bite, then lay it down again on the grass. I used to not care about that!

 

Did you know some grass is soft? It was soft at my childhood home. Not here. Here it’s stickery, hard and there’s patches of crusty brown dirt between clumps of bushy grass. But some grass is soft. I know.

I used to lay in grass without a shirt on. Before I got too old for such things I used to ride my trike and lay in clover without a shirt on. Uncle Paul found a four-leaf clover in our soft grass, so I lay in it to get a closer look to find my own four-leaf clover. He was lucky.

 

Instead I found a rolly-polly bug crawling along so I poked him. He curled into a ball! That was funny. Another bite of sandwich. This one full of peanut butter and jelly. I’ll need a drink soon.

Remember not caring? Mom took care of everything. She’d even bring me a glass of red kool-aid before I knew I wanted a drink.

 

I used to lay in the grass until my nose would stop up and I’d have to open my mouth to breathe. Old people hang their mouth open to breathe. Mom said not to do that. She never said, “Don’t lay your sandwich on the ground.” but she did say, “Don’t drop your mouth open - you don’t want to look old.”

After that, they said I had asthma, I couldn’t lay in the grass.

 

Maybe now I want to be out of body. Our bodies are just dirt anyway and they’re going to go away, so I want to be out of body, no pain in the muscles, no pain in the heart, no pain to reason away in the head, just floating and flying with arms as rudders and thoughts as navigation. What fun to fly free and exist without body. No worries, like not worrying about wearing a shirt because I’m a girl.

 

I never had a girl. I had all boys. They love to play in the dirt and lay in the grass. One laid in the grass with a yellow downy duck on his chest. I have a picture. Another laid in the grass laughing while his puppy licked his face. Then they took a nap.

 

Maybe I’ll have a girl grandchild and we can lay in the grass. 

She’ll not worry about a shirt 

and I’ll not worry about the dirt. 

I’ll show her how to make a grasshopper spit. 

And how to lay in the grass, not sit.

I want to lay in the grass. I used to.