I wouldn’t feel like I had ended the year well without informing you that Big Bessie Green the trampoline has passed over and is no longer with us (well, technically she’s here in small pieces until we can remember to drag the parts out to the curb on bulk trash day.) Here friends is the story of her untimely end at the hands of the evil villain Vindice Microburst ala Okinawa. (Vindice is obscure I know—Italian for revenge, zany courtier avenger in The Revenger’s Tragedy, and excessive in every way. Humor me in my grief.)
The Commander of Fleet Activities Okinawa called ALL CLEAR on the typhoon season three days into December. This was the first mistake.
We had already decided that VongFong was typhoon season’s last hurrah, went out and bought brand new shiny bolts for Bessie (remember we had to cut the nuts and bolts off her in June), and put her together. This was the second mistake.
Mistake three is a complicated algorithm having to do with the complete inability of anyone to predict the weather in Okinawa and therefore warn residents of impending doom. I’ll spare you.
On December 4, I got in the van to run some errands and the weather was misting. I noticed a crock pot without a lid sitting on the curb for bulk trash. Nothing else was out of the ordinary as I drove away (except for maybe the four hundred Christmas inflatables on my block—up after the Thanksgiving Day sales). Within a few minutes of driving, it felt like tropical storm conditions—limited visibility, wind slamming against the side of my van, and pelting rain. When I parked at my destination, I checked my phone for extreme weather alerts, but the weather report said “100% chance of rain and windy.” Always on top of things here—musta been one of those “mist squalls” they reported during Typhoon VongFong.
A couple hours later, my neighbor called with an urgent message. Then she sent me a picture taken from our houses at the top of the hill.
I was physically ill and immediately checked with her to make sure no property or people had been damaged. Thank God nothing else was damaged or hurt.
I called Matt and asked him to go check on it and drag it back home in pieces if needed. I hoped she could be salvaged. Matt arrived on the scene, took a picture and posted it on Facebook, to which I replied “What are you doing? It’s too soon! You don’t post pictures from an accident scene!” If this is the first that you have noticed my irrational attachment to our trampoline, you haven’t been paying attention. Saint that he is, Matt took it apart in the rain. Once Ransom arrived home, they took a couple trips down the hill and brought all the pieces back home.
Matt’s Facebook photo: 
Then I started looking around. This trampoline weighs two-to-three hundred pounds—I am not kidding when I say it is heavier than a Japanese car. It was strategically placed in front of a seven foot cement block structure that provided protection on two sides. Exhibit A:
There’s only about five inches between the trampoline and the walls. Note the chain link fence about five feet behind the walls, and the Colonel’s two story house which sits at the bottom of the hill behind our house.
The grass where the trampoline sat was undisturbed- no drag marks, no unearthed soil. The wall did not have a mark on it, which means the wind carried her straight up and over not only the wall, but the fence, and then to the left fifty yards (completely missing the Colonel’s house and yard- thank goodness) and down the hill fifty yards. That was where the first marks were in the grass. She must have landed and crumpled in on herself. I couldn’t help but be proud of her manners in keeping it together and not damaging anything else on her journey.
Then, as I went back out front, I got angry.
The Christmas snowmen and penguins and Marine Santas and snow globes and angel inflatables were all in tact- puffy and floating and taunting me. What kind of cable do they sell with those things? Titanium?
And then to add insult to injury—here is the moment I knew this was no rogue wind, but Vindice Microburst ala Okinawa out to laugh at me and my trampoline typhoon dismantling dances- exhibit B:
That stupid lidless crock pot had flipped over one time.
I waved my white handkerchief in reply. Then I checked myself into the M Weems Clinic of Counseling (my kitchen table where my husband politely listens to my ranting) to help myself admit that my real sadness stems from the emotional attachment I had unwittingly made between the trampoline and my children’s childhood which is fleeting away.
Farewell Big Bessie Green. You have served us well—from that postage stamp backyard in 29 Palms where I thought I’d lose my mind with three children under five-years-old to your overseas adventures here in Okinawa. Thanks for the memories.
29 Palms Feb 2007; Ransom age 6, Memphis at 5, Cora age 3; Papa-timeless.
Bessie’s Greatest Hits:
Priorities in a Hurricane 2011
Not Quite Bilingual 2012 (Bessie in a supporting role)
Choose Your Own Title 2013
If Robert Frost Had a Trampoline 2013