Upon entering, brush off the bugs

Everywhere, boxelder bugs. This time of year, prevalent annoyances: so many leavings, altered views out windows~from screened to glassed, bugs. Don't step on them, my grandson says. Them, are all dead spread out on the sidewalk in front of the main door. You can't help but step on them, can't help but crunch the dead. I think of the Hunger Games: rolling heads, dust of the deceased, things that will eat you. We don't have it so bad.

I like fall. I like the closing in of it, dusting off things, rearranging. The shorts and tees go into plastic. The sweaters come down, gratefully, and take the place of shorts and tees in drawers. The flowers, durable ones, are hauled inside to the little space there is for plants in a small apartment. Pumpkins are bought and adorn doorways, instead of boxelders. They are swept away. Gone is potato salad and brats and cold pasta with veggies. Soup cooks on the stove. Squash gets chopped into chunks. Apples sit in a pretty bowl begging for attention.

I hate football, hate those big guys going after the tall thin guys, hate the crunching and punching and all. I watch real games through fingers held in front of eyes, was not that sad when my oldest grandson broke his arm last week during ninth grade football and that fact benched him. I'm sorry for his broken arm. I'd rather it had happened climbing a tree or skiing or just rolling down a hill. But he was there for the taking, slim quarterback with a good arm. Not a dirty play, his father said. He was there with a camera to capture it. Cool, Noah said, stilly prone on the ground. You should put it on Facebook.

There are no boxelder bugs in the photo. There is the dry grass of summer, a Minnesota drought. There is the pediatrician's arms with her bandaged finger holding up Noah's rubber like arm. She has a ring on. He has a bandage on his finger, too. What's up with that, I wonder. His arm looks like those rubber things people stick out of trunks for pranks. A Halloween arm. Broke in two places, both lower arm bones.

When I go to visit, step over dead boxelders, the younger brother holding the door, the house operates like there is an invalid indoors. And there is, sort of. At fourteen, he'll heal fast. Not fast enough for the rest of football.

Sigh.