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The Hammock
by Kate Tagai The hammock swings weightless in the evening breeze. As you walk from the car to the front door after work you notice it and think, “I’ll come back out with a book for a few minutes. That will relax me after this stressful day.” You walk into the house and change out of your fitted white oxford shirt that pulls across the shoulders and short polyester skirt that almost looks like real wool, but that you found in the bargain bin at the Goodwill. As you come downstairs your eye catches the pile of dishes from last night, so you fill the sink and begin to wash them. As you scrub at the stiffened bits of food, your stomach growls. You glance at the clock, startled when it tells you it is six o’clock already. You reach into the crisper for the carrots and snap peas and begin cooking supper. You decide that after dinner you’ll go relax in the hammock. Once dinner is done and the dishes stacked beside the sink, unrinsed, you remember you have to pay a few bills and that they really need to be in the mail tomorrow. You aren’t sure where you left the checkbook. You eventually find it under months of unfiled papers and once you notice them, you have to file them. When you finally lay your head on the pillow you think, “Tomorrow I’ll enjoy the hammock. I really need to relax.” When you sleep, you dream of childhood summers when entire Tuesdays were spent reading adventure fiction in the hammock, until the rough cotton knots imbedded themselves so deeply in your skin that you resembled the soft moldy orange hanging in its red netting bag. But when you wake to the shrill alarm at 6 a.m the memory dream is forgotten. You get up and prepare for another day, choosing another professional outfit, checking papers in your briefcase, barely stopping to register the crisp blue sky outside the windows. In the spring you had dusted the spider webs from the hammock and checked the cotton for rot. You had oiled the frame joints where they rusted in the cold dampness of winter. As you scrubbed and painted the few rusty spots you thought of all the lazy summer hours, after work, you would spend relaxing. All summer on your way to and from the car you’ve noticed the hammock strung on the posts under the shade trees by the pond. Perfect, you always think, wishing the day would speed by so you can come home and insert yourself into that tranquil scene. Each time you cut the grass, you climb down from the mower to shift the hammock this way and that to keep the lawn neat and tidy. It is a hassle, that shifting dance you do with the hammock, but worth it. One August afternoon, as you pass from the car to the front door, you detour to finally sit on the hammock. The bird feeder hangs in a birch tree near your head and the birds, unused to the intrusion, flap in irritation. They land in the branches. You peer up wondering if it will rain viscous white shit. The squirrel runs up the trunk of the birch, across the branches and halfway down the cherry tree on the other side. He chatters like your morning alarm but he has no snooze button. He runs across the branches, chattering. The hammock is his territory. You are an intruder. A dragonfly buzzes low over your head and lands in a spot of sun near your feet. Its white abdomen pulses and it twists its eyes in different directions. You didn’t know they could do that. He takes off after another dragonfly dancing over the pond. With your eyes closed the dragonflies’ sound like the wasps that beat themselves against your windows and fly angrily around the kitchen looking for someone to blame. The squirrel is still chattering, a bird flaps its wings very close to your head and the dragonfly lands on your toe. You jump at the sharp points of feet and the hard insect feel of it. “This isn’t relaxing,” you think as you collect your briefcase and jacket and head inside. The next morning on the way to work you think how tranquil it looks with the early morning mist rising over the water. The squirrel's distress, the birds flapping, the needle like feet of the dragonfly are a faded memory. After the first light snowfall melts you unclasp the chains of the hammock and dismantle the metal support. There is sadness in putting it away and removing the last sign of summer. A sluggish colony of earwigs tumbles out. You wash off the bird droppings and hang the hammock against the shed wall, propping the stand beside it to wait out the winter months. You think, “It is so nice to have a hammock.” |
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