Fool Me Thrice

Thus far it’s a warm winter, the coldest temperatures only flirting with frost. This is why I’m waiting to rake out the debris behind our little shed. The two times I’ve tried, several weeks ago, I was stung by a hornet, once on the left eyelid, once on my wrist just above the edge of my glove. It seems there must be a nest buried in the fir needles against the bottom of the neighbor’s fence. In each case, the sting, or bite, hurt for about a day, while leaving no mark. Hardly serious, but not worth chancing a third time. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me thrice, just plain dumb. Speaking of creatures that bite, we’re currently enjoying our annual invasion of ants. There are never enough to worry about, yet these tiny creatures do prove a bit of a distraction when it comes to working in the kitchen. I told our eldest son that thanks to our new floor, I can spot an ant at forty paces. He said, Your paces, or an ant’s? I had to stop and think about it, realizing they were about the same, though an ant has six legs, while on a good day I have two. They’re not really a distraction. Nothing is, unless we make it so. We can chase a thought around the room until it wears us to a frazzle; but if we smile at it and let it go, it isn’t a distraction at all. It would be about as pointless as the sky being disturbed by a passing cloud, or a hermit by water slowly dripping in his hut or cave. How can I know eternal peace with this infernal dripping! And so he moves back to his seventh-floor apartment, where, at least, there are no ants.

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