I picked up my long-handled clippers from the garage and walked across the lawn towards one of the pine trees in the backyard. Sunday afternoons are for relaxing and not working, but I looked forward to cutting down the unwanted clumps of false elderberry bushes and other invasive saplings growing under the trees. This one job done on a Sunday afternoon would be easy to do, and a pleasure to have out of the way.

Visiting and checking on flowerbeds around the backyard on this pleasant early summer afternoon was a joy. Birds warbled happy tunes to announce that they had returned from their winter vacations. A busy little wren sang to warn other birds to stay away from his nest. An oriole singing from a tree top sounded wistful, like he was begging for jelly to eat.

Arriving at the tree patch, I stood looking at the plethora of weeds growing in profusion under the pine’s branches. I wondered where to start. The area had never been touched by a lawn mower. I ducked under the closest tree’s bottom branches and boldly waded into the tangled mess. My goal was to cut down the tallest and bushiest first. Instantly, a legion of no-see-ums rose up and swarmed across my face, neck and hair. The small, biting midges got behind my glass lenses and in my ears where they buzzed frantically and bounced against my skin like pinballs in a pinball machine. Sputtering, I spit out the no-see-ums that were trying to get into my mouth.

Swatting at the small insects was futile; they moved too fast. Suddenly, my one, small Sunday afternoon job felt like a hard-fought, protracted war and I was a stubborn soldier who refused to leave until the job I came to do was done. The enemy crawled all over my arms and legs. Dozens of midges started to take samples of blood from my hairline. I leaned over and quickly lopped off the bushes and invasive trees.

            Once I’d accomplished my goal, I rushed to escape. Taking a hasty step forward, one of the plant stem stubbles stabbed me in the ankle. Gasping, I limped out of the bramble onto the lawn. My leg hurt and blood trickled from the wound.

It’s well known that sight, sound, smell or touch can trigger many, long forgotten memories. The stabbing pain in my ankle that afternoon caused me to recall a time in my childhood when I tried running through an oat field after it was harvested. The stalks were ankle high, dried hard, and sharp as darts. All the stalks seemed to be angled towards me. Several stalks painfully stabbed my legs.

I hated the stubble, but I kept going on that hot and dusty afternoon. Keeping up with older siblings was hard to do when you were so many years younger than they were. The real pain came that evening when Mom made me take a bath. The warm water and soap made the scraped and jabbed skin sting painfully.

Returning to the house, I combed bugs from my hair and cleaned the scrape on my ankle and complained to my daughter, Tammie, “All winter I wished I could go outside, but it was too cold. Now that we have nice, warm days, I still can’t go outside. The bugs make being in the backyard miserable!”

My daughter suggested, “Why don’t you just apply bug spray when you go out?”

Rubbing a spot where one of the biting midges got me, I countered, “The bug spray might work for mosquitoes, but not for what I’m dealing with. When I told you a legion of those small bugs swarmed me, I wasn’t kidding. It felt like five or six thousand of them were crawling all over me.”

Tammie sympathetically pointed out, “As long as you live near the river, those bugs are going to plague you each spring. Until their hatching season is over, just go outside only long enough to get one job at a time done.”

Feeling exasperated, I explained, “That’s all I did this afternoon. One… Short… Easy-to-do job! One minute of having the no-see-ums crawling all over me and biting, felt like an entire day of working outside.”