Kukka by Sally Kilgore: A Kind of Hush

Rockwall, TX (July 18, 2023) – There was a wonderful hush to this day.

A Sunday in the very middle of July, amid a humid heat wave, the kind that makes the lungs feel heavy when breathing the air. The kind of heat that, when you step outside for five minutes, your brow gets sweaty. Ten minutes and the back of your hair is dripping. H a w t.

We awoke to gray skies and a bit of light breeze, though humidity still hung thick. Bob Kilgore, our tuxedo cat, was eager for his morning tour of the garden, and we sat outdoors on the newly covered patio for coffee and newspaper. The temps in the upper 70’s felt good to us after a week of near and over triple digit heat. But for the cicadas and birds, outside noises hushed by cloud cover. Then a wondrous thing happened. The wind whipped up and a cool stream of air blew over us, followed closely by rain. Marvelous rain! Rain that repeated with several lovely showers and downpours. When the rains ended, the cool air remained along with the clouded skies.

The respite from heat made for a quiet day for us, following a busy week and a fun Saturday with friends. I voted for a day at home, rather than the movie outing we had tentatively planned for today. The B.O.B. fell right in line with that thinking. We cooked a little and cleaned up quickly to get back outdoors to sit and watch the garden, and the skies, and the insides of our eyelids. After so many weeks of summer heat, the cool dimness of a rainy Sunday such a treat. I finished devouring a really good book on the patio today. Reading led to snoozing, the cat across my shoulders on the back of the chair cushion making a warm, furry, purring head pillow.

Until 4:30 when the clouds broke, the sun came through causing humans to stir, activity began, small yard chores accomplished. And just like that, the respite was over. How we enjoyed it! As the B.O.B. said – a lagniappe.

This day seemed a smidgie bit like a preview, a sneak peek into our upcoming sojourn to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. The U.P. – the Keweenaw Peninsula, specifically, land where my roots are. It’s pretty much the end of the world up there, a peninsula on the farthest northeast point of Michigan, surrounded on three sides by Lake Superior. We’ll be exploring the places my parents grew up, in the Copper Country, where my grandfather, a Finnish immigrant, worked as a copper miner and kept a small homestead with cows and a garden, my Finnish grandmother with eleven little Finnish American babies, raised my mom, aunts and uncles in a two-story house in tiny Allouez Township. My dad’s family, Finns too, were also from this area. We will be able to catch up with a few cousins while on our vacation. We’ll drive down Bootjack Road from Lake Linden, as we did so many times as children, to see my grandparents’ old place on Princess Point. We’ll walk sandy beaches and wade in clear, icy Lake Superior. I will not promise to swim, but you never know! It has been ten years since I was in the U.P. and I did swim those icy waters that year.

If we are lucky, the temps in the U.P. will remain in the sixties and seventies, as they are currently, quite the change from here. I’ve ordered two new sweatshirts and I had best dig out a jacket, and maybe shoes other than Birkenstocks and flip flops. These next days will be spent making lists and preparing. Packing, filling the cooler and snack bags, loading up crossword puzzles and my Kindle. We have an atlas and a roadmap, there is not much cell service or wi-fi where we are going in the U.P. Road trip ready! There’s something nostalgic about road tripping. I recall those long drives “Up North” when we were kids. Thermoses, backseat beds of piled pillows and blankets, and back then, stops on the side of the road when little girls had to tee-tee. I hated those stops! I always seemed to get my shoes wet. The B.O.B. and I love a good road trip. Though I can’t get him to pack a lunch to eat on the side of the road, he is a restaurant kind of guy, I hope he will indulge me with a few picnic lunches while in The U.P. And please note – these days I prefer rest areas or filling stations to roadside relieving.

Vacations are respites from real life. This one will involve lots of my side of the family, and hopefully, some quiet moments in one of the most beautiful places in the U.S.

While I do not hope for rainy vacation days like this day has been, I am hoping for the respite from the busy-ness of our normal routines. For refreshment of our minds and spirits. For re-creation within, visiting locales, beaches and roads traveled long ago. For the return to my roots.

Where are you headed this summer? For now, I am headed to bed so I can tackle the week ahead. Counting the days till Vacay!

Back to 103 degrees tomorrow.

Sally Kilgore is a resident of Fate, Texas, transplanted from Rowlett, across the lake. She is married to her long-time flame, Judge Chris Kilgore, (aka The B.O.B.) When not writing, gardening, filling in at the local flower shop or hanging out with grandkids, Sally devotes her time to serving Bob Kilgore, a well sized, Tuxedo cat with panache.