This is the time of year when south Louisiana sucks me in. The long, pleasantly warm days, the cool nights, the azaleas exploding with color in silent fireworks displays all across town, the leafy trees playing tag with the sun. Snowy egrets line up along the shores of the lakes; a brown heron struts her stuff; ducklings bob about the shallows. The restaurants trumpet, "Boiled Crawfish Now Available," and at every table diners descend into the primordial pleasure of twisting off heads, peeling tails, and sucking meat. I find myself thinking, "what an amazing, what a glorious, what an exotic place to live."
I've been had. Again.
I know, I do know, that within a matter of weeks, the heat will rise from the pavement in waves, will wrap its sticky cloak around me so that I'm like Frodo caught in Shelob's sticky web: pale, poisoned, unable to move a limb, not caring if I live or die.
But for now, I'm living in the Shire in 1420, "the marvellous year." Mordor has fallen, the good and the golden have triumphed, and "not only [i]s there wonderful sunshine and delicious rain, in due times and perfect measure, but there seem[s] something more: an air of richness and growth, and a gleam of a beauty beyond that of mortal summers that flicker and pass upon this Middle-earth. . . . And no one [i]s ill, and everyone [i]s pleased, except those who ha[ve] to mow the grass."*
But here in Shire-on-the-Bayou, in the glorious springtime, even mowing the grass is a fine and wonderful thing. Not that I actually mow (what else is the point of male offspring?), but I watch from the porch and really, Hugh looks happy, even bucolic. Ish.
Soon, tho', he'll be stumbling behind the mower, gasping for water, falling to his knees and muttering about "My Preciousssss."
Mordor will rise once more.
Every damn summer in south Louisiana.
*J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings. Vol. 3. The Return of the King, p. 1000 (1991 ed.).
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