I can't sleep…
Notes:
My mother’s need for order has nothing to do with the chaos of a life with too little space and too little money and almost no chance to make something beautiful of it all. The chance to create loveliness is always waiting just past the door of our matchbox rental. She never prepares for gardening—no special gloves, no rubber garden clogs, no stiff canvas apron with pockets for tools. No tools, most of the time. She steps out of the house—or the car, setting her bags down before she even makes it to the door—and puts her hands in the soil, tugging out the green things that don’t belong among the green things that do. Now another bare square of ground appears, and there is room for marigold seeds, the ones she saved when last year’s ruffled yellow blooms turned brown and dried to fragile likenesses of themselves. The light bill might be under the covers at the foot of her bed, the unsigned report card somewhere in the mess of papers on the mantel, but she can always put her hands on last year’s seeds. And later, in the summer, the very ground she walks on will be covered in gold.
~ Margaret Renkl, from “My Mother Pulls Weeds, Birmingham, 1978,” Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss
Photo: Cindy Garber Iverson
5:05 am. Tuesday morning.
Mid-January, 40° F. 40° F, and Australia is burning.
Cabin is quiet, but for the heater humming, knocking down the chill.
Headlights illuminate I-95, dry road. 74 mph. Speed lane. I pass Truckers on my right, a convoy racing to beat rush hour into Manhattan. Google Maps updates arrival time in Midtown: 55 minutes.
I re-grip the steering wheel, shift in my seat, adjust the seat belt, uncomfortably snug across my lower belly.
Two nights before. At kitchen table. Fingers untie the bow, then move to the white wrapping paper covering the gift from the Chocolate Chalet. Hand made chocolates, hand selected by a friend, a colleague, and her children. Milk Chocolate. Raspberry jelly. Cherry. Vanilla Creme. Dark Chocolate. Nut clusters. I cordon off a Do Not Cross area around the table signalling My Box, My Chocolates, My Zone.
One night before. Monday Night. At kitchen table. With half of the chocolates remaining. I re-established my position, the cordoned off area, and went at it again.
And, there it goes. An entire box of chocolates in a span of a few minutes during back to back evenings, when the world stopped. No, Shoulder Pain. No, Work. No, Brother Gone.
I step out of the car, hand the keys to the parking attendant, and walk. Not to the office, it was early yet. But I walk down Broadway, with the lights beaming down from the buildings in Times Square. A few morning walkers, and me. And snippets of Renkl’s essay “After the Fall” drift in and out.
There’s no making peace with it.
There’s no closure.
You wear it under your clothes like a film.
Time claims you: your belly softens, your hair grays, the skin of your grief will loosen, soften, drape your hard bones.
The flowers turn their faces to your face.
Walk out into the springtime, and look: the birds welcome you with a chorus.
Notes:
Notes:
