It’s a cool summer evening, and I’m shifting gears. I cover the fresh clay pots with plastic to keep them from drying too fast and turn the ceiling fan to medium so yesterday’s pots will dry overnight. I close the windows, follow the dogs to the door and turn off the last light. The adolescent, Mems, bounds out to chase a rabbit. Old Rosie rises slowly because her chasing days are over. I slam the sagging pottery workshop door and automatically kick it in at the bottom.

Clouds frame a beautiful, waning sunset. I stare, feeling sorry for people who won’t see this and for Gloria, my former student, who’d never seen a rainbow. Someone stepped into the swimming pool room one chilly day and said, “There’s a beautiful rainbow out there.” Gloria scampered out of the pool and out the door, wet and shivering, to see her first rainbow, at age 18!

The moon smiles at the sunset and at the first star. “Twinkle, twinkle little star ...” I make a wish: Health for Chub and me as we continue to age. Safety for people traveling. Recovery for struggling plants damaged by wind and hail. I stop wishing; it~s not fair to ask more on evening’s first star.

I stroll to the garden, get the hoe off the fence to slice off some tiny weeds. Dad taught me to scrape them off soon after they pop through the ground. I work first around the honeydew melons hoping to repeat 1991’s crop when a single plant produced a “nest” of seven big dews touching each other. I called them dinosaur eggs. I work around my three young watermelon plants, pull loose dirt up around the onions and then clean the hoe with my pocket knife. Dad did that. There was the louder “clank, clank” as he struck the hoe with his closed knife, tapping the loose dirt away. Then he’d come in for sup~er.

Sunset gives way to a glow on the horizon. That’s Columbia. Turn to the left and locate glows from Ashland and Jeff City. On around, I spot Fulton and the ball park near Interstate 70. I stop, listen, turn up the volume on my hearing aid.

“Whip-poor-will, whip-poor-will, whip ...” The bird doesn’t stop to take a breath. I recall Nancy’s clinging to me as a toddler, frightened, as two whippoorwills nearby were screeching -- and not synchronized. One was in the barn lot and the other on the driveway. They came closer, called louder, and she clung tighter.

“Don’t be afraid, honey,” I said. “It’s just a bird.” She was surprised. “A bird? I thought it was ...” She couldn’t describe what she thought. We all love these night hawks when they are not so close.

One night Chub stopped the car when a single eye reflected on the road ahead. We had seen that often. This time he turned the lights off and rolled forward slowly. Whippoorwills stand facing across the road so they can see cars from either side. They look like a clump of dry mud and, if disturbed, they wait till the very last safe moment before flying. Then they sort of tumble through the air and reveal their wide wingspread. We waited that night until the bird finally began to call again. We were as surprised as Nancy and Walt were that the bird’s whole body rocked forward and up with each “whip” and back as it said, “will.”

Whippoorwills are one of the rewards of living in the country -- one among many.