JOY ALONG THE WAY: CONVERSATION OVERHEARD

"Maybe we could get her to do it if we can get her out of the hedgerow and away from the birds in her back yard."

I blushed. Who could they mean but me? I hurried on my way, not letting them know that I had overheard. I didn't even stick around to get some clue what it was they wanted me to do.

Did they want me to make a political speech? Speak out on Senators Specter's, Archer's and McCain's plea for the public to jump on Congress with both feet and demand campaign finance reform? Me? Well, I guess I could do that given that I'd like to jump on Congress, literally, with both feet. Put them all in a big grape vat and get a dozen or so outraged people to shed their shoes and stomp with me. Ah, the heady wine we might produce. It could even be classed as an aged wine for its "bouquet" would come out void of ill-smelling corruption and bought power. The pulp that would be left might speak of what we think of politicians we send to Washington to do what we want them to, but don't.

But my self-bestowed Ph.D. is not in political rhetoric. I'd rather talk about the grapes, how it is not the little slick center that contains the seeds, nor the outer skin that holds it together that give the grape its taste. It's that little sugary layer in between. Ever try to eat that and spit out the rest? Maybe that's where our true statesmen lie, between the pulp and the skin.

Maybe they'd like me to speak on balancing the budget. This would be a short talk. You make so much money. You spend approximately the same amount. It was Coolidge, way back there, who said, "Don't spend more than you make." But then no one paid much attention to Coolidge at that time. The good times were rolling. They rolled right into something called the Stock Market Crash and the Great Depression.

I'm afraid my advice to Congress on this subject would be very simplistic. I'd quote Nike's logo, "Just do it." Maybe Nike's check mark with the words "or else" following it would be meaningful.

I guess I'll always wonder what it was "they" wanted me to do. But it is no big worry. I've already matriculated to the hedgerow, the back yard, the porch swing and there's no turning back.

I watch the squirrels, rabbits, birds, bumblebees going about their living, only visually aware of each other. The bumblebee doesn't sting the mockingbird and the rabbit doesn't nip at the squirrel's tail.

The castor beans and the blue morning glories come up on time, just as the packet said they would, and I get off on a long, silent soliloquy about the miracle of seeds and how the original atoms came together to form them and bestow upon them the promise that they would ever be the same and produce seeds of their own kind, year after year.

Wouldn't you like to see the electrons and neutrons inside the atoms of a seed to try to fathom what insures the corn is always going to be the corn, the bean the bean?

The chickweed and the dandelion are somewhat unwanted on the otherwise smooth green lawn, but I admire them for they, too, fulfill an old promise.

Maybe the overheard conversants wanted me to speak only on what my doves and cardinals are doing this year after their old home (the big cedars) of many years have been cut down and hauled away. The doves have built their nest in the mock orange and the cardinal is in the rank bush honeysuckle. But then I'd still be in the back yard and I think they want me to do something else. Maybe get up a petition to shore up the banks of La Croix Creek where it runs through the ark, or start a grass-roots outrage that would spread like wildfire right up to the halls of Congress and say, cracklingly, "We're tired of it and we aren't going to stand for it anymore.

REJOICE!

~Jean Bell Mosley is an author and longtime columnist for the Southeast Missourian.