My Own Private Levittown

Haircuts, thunderstorms, and suburban zen

I am a latecomer to suburbia.

I grew up in rural Iowa, and lived in inner cities for much of my young adulthood. When I got married and we adopted our daughters and settled into the nuclear family lifestyle, we lived in funky homes in funky neighborhoods. The last home was a 110 year old Victorian-ish house that every kid in the neighborhood swore was haunted.

When my wife died, I felt like my kids and I were swimming in grief. My job would let me live anywhere in the state. We painted and repaired that funky old 110 year old home, sold it, and moved.

I came to suburbia seeking predictability and boredom. I was tired of drama and tragedy.

Jump cut to yesterday, late afternoon: it’s a gorgeous Spring day, I am sitting on a cheap plastic chair in the garage, and my current wife is cutting my rapidly thinning hair.

A thunderstorm is rolling in over the foothills, and eventually it’s going to swoop down on us, but right now it’s like watching cloud TV. Overheated air, from plains that have been baked by the sun all day, is now rising, and meeting the cooler air washing over the mountains. The peaks of the cumulonimbus are reaching high into the sky, overshooting the flat top layer of surrounding clouds. Tendrils of rain are dipping down into the valleys between the hills. Bolts of lightning occasionally flare from the base of the clouds. Anvils of stormcloud are tumbling over the mountains, following the slopes and prevailing winds, creating unknowably complex patterns of wind and rain and cloud, changing with every minute. Petrichor fills the air.

As I watch the clouds, my wife circles me, scissors and spray bottle of water in hand. She wets my hair, then holds the strands away from my head, measuring the length by eye. She cuts, measures, cuts again. I lose interest in the actual process, lost in watching the cloud formations in front of me, but her touch on my face and my head grounds me, and the gentle care with which she sculpts what little remains of my hair lends me calm.

The neighbor’s dogs play in the street. The mailwoman drives by, stops at the cluster of mailboxes and unlocks it, then begins sorting the mail into the various compartments. Garage doors open via remote control, cars turn the corner and pull in, occupants unseen. Garage doors close.

My wife finishes cutting my hair. “Does it look nice?” she asks me.

It does. I tell her so.

We clean up, put the chair away, take each other’s hands, and step inside.

The storm hits as we eat dinner. Nothing alarming. Some rain, a little thunder, thankfully no hail, though it is a constant threat this time of year.

After dinner, as we read and write and talk and play, the clouds push their way out onto the eastern plains. The overall shapes of the clouds is now easier to make out, the dark anvils of cumulonimbus spreading out flat against the top of the sky, the striations and mammatus marking the lower clouds, the long braids of rain falling down onto the parched fields below, the stunted whorls of virga sheeting down on either side.

This is my life now. Suburbia.

The conventional Levittown narratives about conformity and homogeny don’t really seem to apply. I feel awash in possibility. The changing shapes of the clouds pull my gaze skyward. Coyotes howl in the deep of the night. The cold light of the stars reaches through our windows, settling on my wife and I like a blanket as we curl together in the dark, dreaming, readying for a new day.

My hair looks excellent, by the way. Thanks, honey.

Peace.

The links follow. If you like my writing, consider buying a story, or share the Oort Cloud with a friend!

• May’s story: Nine Lives

• April’s story: Prince Albert in a Can

• March’s story: Fuck, Marry, Kill

• February’s story: Veronica Scissors

• My first novel, Life Under Water

• My website: jeffmwood.com.

• My Amazon page.

• My erotic flash fiction series, Serious Moonlight (as J G Cain)