Stormy & Nokosee Sitting In A Tree...

K-i-s-s-i-n-g (spell it out)
First comes love.
Then comes marriage.
Then comes baby in the baby carriage,
Sucking his thumb,
Wetting his pants,
Doing the hula, hula dance!

From a kid's  taunting rhyme to Whitman's sublime choice of words to describe his life in the world. All of that came rushing back to me when I saw that picture above, reminding me of my time with Nokosee up in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g (and other things-- and if you read my books, you know what I'm talking about). The picture-- from a recent post on Brain Pickings-- spoke to me of that wonderful, unforgettable time Nokosee and I lived in the Everglades. At first, as a city girl, the silence-- aside from the mosquitoes-- was the hardest thing to get used to. I had doubts about making it in what I use to think of as "bumfuck nowhere." That all changed after I saw the stars above me for the first time without any interference from city lights. Until that moment when I was up in a gumbo limbo with Nokosee and looked up at his insistence, I had no idea what was going on above me and what I had been missing all my life. It was a wildly thrown veil of stars across the night sky.  That picture above by Margaret C. Cook from a 1913 edition of Leaves of Grass brought all the magic back because that is truly how I felt in Nokosee's arms: taken away as if on a cloud. 

As for that childish rhyme, it all came true except for the last part: our baby Haalie came in a bithlo.

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