Longing to Learn

The air smelled of water. Not rain. More like a stagnant pond, close, silent, almost bubbling with its warmth. Humidity pressed in from all sides, making small curls stick to my forehead and to the nape of my neck.

The weather stole a summer frock earlier than usual this year. I knew Grams and Momma Sara were nowhere near ready for the summer retreat to the mountains, though days like today would add fuel to that fire. Sara would go into panic mode. Malaria wasn't a game. She wasn't going to battle it. I believed her. Sara refused anything having to do with pain, inconvenience or lack of control. Sickness was just one of the many things on her list that she simply did not allow.

I took a moment longer, a few more sways of the porch swing before I figured I was pushing my luck. Sara didn't take kindly to anyone else being in pain or being an inconvenience either. Besides, if we were going east soon, I had things that I needed to do as well. If I was ready when it was time to pull out--or way ahead of that--then no one would question my decisions as to what I was bringing along and what I wasn't.

Truthfully, our traditional austral migration stirred in my veins early this year, and I wondered for the briefest of moments if the sheer intensity of my desire had brought on this untimely hot spell. Some rampant uneasiness gripped every adult I knew, young, old, white or Negro, slave or free, it didn't matter. They all commiserated in hushed tones that went silent when I came within earshot. I suppose had I been stubborn enough, I would have found a way to listen unseen. I was too bored. I longed for a change of scenery the way a new baby wants its mother. Tired of the draping mosses on crooked oaks, and rigid schedules, I wanted to be where those oaks blended with pines and junipers to become a dense green blanket that covered the mountains as far as I could see. In that place all constraints were loosened, and I could really learn, simply by following a curious mind and an exhuberant heart. Mine or Mr. J's.

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Snippet courtesy of A.Word.A.Daywith Anu Garg
austral
PRONUNCIATION:(O-struhl)
MEANING:adjective: Southern.
ETYMOLOGY:From Latin auster (south). That's why Australia is so named, but that does not apply to Austria, in central Europe. Austria's name is a Latinized form of its German name Österreich (eastern empire, referring to the eastern boundary of the Frankish Empire at one time).