Cotton Fields

"Let me hear it for the cotton fields
The cotton fields back home"
Beach Boys

So I've begun to realize that my blog is started to resemble the conversations between the two main characters on Mad About You. All I ever seem to talk about is how I'm tired, and overworked, and my students are weird, and I work so hard, and I'm exhausted, and how Steve is a nuisance. Well, in all honesty, Steve is mainly a nuisance because he's considering leaving, but that's not the point. Not yet anyway.

Anyhoo, I wanted you all to know that I am sorry about whining. Really sorry. And I would tell you I'm going to try and quit whining, but we all know that I'm Dutch and so that's just not really going to happen. Instead I'm going to prove to you that I don't whine all the time, and write about something that has been catching my eye. And my sinuses.

Cotton.

Most people, when you mention cotton, start talking history. You know, plantations, the civil war, Scarlett O' Hara, the cotton gin, and other events from a long ago past. But when you live in the south, you know that cotton, unlike some of the other, less constructive, southern traditions, is still alive and well today. And let me tell you, it is amazing.

I remember the first time I saw cotton. It was Thanksgiving some years ago, when we went to visit my husband's family in northern Florida. We drove through southern Georgia, and upon seeing endless fields of white, I got incredibly excited, "Is that cotton?! That's cotton isn't it?"
When husband-dear confirmed my suspicions, I got even more excited, "Oh wow! Real cotton! I've never seen that before. And there's so much of it! Pull over!"
"Why?!" Husband-dear, you should probably know, spent part of his childhood in this part of the world, so the sight of cotton, like many other things other mortals find extremely exciting, does little for him.
"Because it's cotton! It's what I'm wearing!" I turned to the kids, "And the kids want to touch it too, right?!"
If you have ever had two boys, you know that anything will get them riled up, especially if it involves touching something that belongs to someone else, so it wasn't long before we had pulled over next to an endless cotton field, and I was admiring the little white fuzz. And you know what? It felt just like a sweater. Or a ball of yarn. Only it was on a stick with leaves on it. A sweater growing on a bush. Who would have known.

Now that we live here, cotton has become a way of life. I no longer scream or get all excited when fall comes around, and the cotton starts to come up. But I can marvel at its beauty. There is nothing quite like an endless undulating cotton field, with cotton so white it looks like it snowed. Or the sun coming up over a waving field of cotton. Or the way the cotton glows pink when the sun sets at night. It makes me smile and think poetic thoughts every time I see it, even if it is at 7 in the morning.

Now for those yankees among my readers, November tends to be harvesting season. This means big machines plowing through those poetic fields, big machines which somehow, in some weird, unknown way, turn all those little balls of fluff into gigantic big blocks of cotton. Huge white squares, at least eight feet tall and ten feet long, that sit on the side of the field for weeks. They sit there unmoving through the rain and winds, until a semi loads them up, completely intact, and then takes them for a ride down the interstate with nothing but a bitty tarp to hold all that cotton down. You would think all the little fluff would fly it away. But it never does. Not visibly anyway.

Of course, there is a down side. All that cotton produces enough pollen to keep the antihistamine industry viable for a whole year. And the fields do look very brown and depressing from December through to September. But those two months a year when the little white buds start peeping out are magical.