Salt and Honey

I dip a white plastic knife into the peanut butter jar. The honeyed butter is so creamy that the knife bends. Then, I swirl it so that a dollop curls around the plastic blade. Across the table, Mom does the same. We don't look at each other, pretending there is no silver river of grief between us. She stares out teh window absently, then, her dark eyes red-rimmed with memories. Over and over, we sink out knives into the jar. Silence is thick and sweet, and we swallow it resolutely.

She doesn't tell me what she's thinking, and I don't ask. It takes me a long, syrupy moments to choke past the quiet. "What are you painting?" I finally manage. It comes out heavy and high-pitched. I mean to tell her that an ache sprawls out on my chest and slinks down my throat, that I don't want to live like this, that we should stop keeping our secrets.

Instead, I twist my knife again. The peanut butter coats my tongue, sticks softly to my fingers. I consider fighting past it, but can't find the energy. Grief is salt and cloying honey.

Gone

In Peru, the houses wear their colors on the outside. Behind tall, iron fences, concrete walls painted mint green, summer peach, and Easter egg blue slowly flash by as I peer out the car window. I say slowly because the traffic is terrible! My aunt says, “This is my life,” when we comment on the endless stream of cars. Streets split and curl at intersections instead of crossing. They are all one way so that you have to make a U-turn in order to turn down the street you wanted but couldn’t take ten minutes ago. I force myself not to look at the clock again. It doesn’t matter anyway. Something about the air here, which smells slightly sweet and heavy, says, “Slow down. Sit and stay awhile.”

Somehow, though, that is the last thing I want to do. I am restless for my bookshelf full of English titles I love and my coffee pot that gurgles and my little, silver car. I thought I was coming home, somehow, but I’m not. Something about this place doesn’t feel comfortable to me. I don’t belong here after all.

Later, when we stroll (yes, I must learn to just stroll) through the mall at Larcomar, the salty wind drifting off the Atlantic Ocean tosses my hair. I’ve been to the beach before, but this one is different. This one is surrounded by cliffs (los barrancos) and stones. This one has outdoor malls and restaurants and clubs built into its capricious shores and stone walls. I lean over the glass railing and watch the grey waves wash over a rocky beach far below. I’m not relaxed by it as I expected. Instead, I have a feeling this ocean is dangerous. If I get too close, I will be swept away into the fog, never to be seen again. I step back from the balcony and suddenly long for home, for my little town and indoor mall.

In Peru, I am inside out. I can’t walk in the park because I’m a girl alone. I can’t talk to the people because, although I might look Peruvian, I speak mostly English. My Spanish stumbles. I can’t leave my purse on the table or my money will disappear. I can’t eat without asking what I’ve ordered; I can’t recognize what I’m drinking. I can’t.  

I tell my mom these things, my mother who is native to Peru, who has truly come home instead of leaving it the way I have. She nods, and I am surprised to hear her say, “I feel displaced here too. How can I split myself in two?”  How can she speak English to me on her right and Spanish to her family on her left? It’s not just the language, though.  “I’ve been in America for too long,” she continues. “There, I feel as if I am foreign. Yet, here, now, I feel the same way.”  I imagine her digging up angel hair roots 28 years ago when she came to American with my dad. I picture the way she opened her heart to new soil, patting the dirt here and there and watering new shoots. Then, I imagine that those roots don’t quite grow in Peruvian land anymore.

As our plane lifts off to return to America, though, I see her close her eyes against tears. The plane rushes on and on and on until a loud whoosh tells me we have become air born. “Gone,” I think, as I watch the wings meet the sky. I can’t tell if some part of me has been erased or some part of her. In the air, we are in between, not here or there. In the air, we disappear. 

Homesick

I'm homesick for Peru, a country that's in my blood. How can it be home too? Maybe home is more than a place. It's more than honeysuckle dripping like amber along my road. It's more than the hill in my backyard that was big enough to sled down when I was a little girl.

I thought a place became home because I allowed myself to love it. That's the way it was with Lock Haven University. Little by little, the confetti trees, the ones flowering shy pink and white, made me smile. Slowly, I let myself lift my eyes to the steep hills and the winding staircases. Eventually, I waited for the bells to chime lullabies and hymns and show tunes. I told my time by it. And then, when I left it all for home, I found myself sick for it and its moody skies.

Peru has never been that way, though. I have not been there long enough to allow anything. It's instinctive. I step off the airplane frazzled and longing for rest. The doors say, "empujar" instead of "push." The air is thick as a blanket and dripping slowly. The people have coffee-and-milk complexions.

And yet, I am home.

Yes, clocks don't matter there, and strangers kiss in greeting. Yes, lunch is at 4 pm, and we drink tea for dinner. The traffic wraps around itself. Bread is fresh every morning. The fruit is lumpy or bright or sweet, but not quite. It is all unfamiliar. Yet, I will look at my uncle (who looks just like my brother) and my aunt (who is possibly more of a perfectionist than I am, if you can believe it) and my little cousins (who are so proud of having American relatives), and I will find a place for myself, a place where I begin and end.

And when I return home to this small town home, every once in a while I will breathe deeply and catch the scent of something thick and almost sweet and I will long for home once again.

Heartbreak Salad

-Lettuce
-Tomatoes
-Cucumbers
-Carrots
-Chopped almonds
-Craisins

First, Dad is going to pull the lettuce from the salad drawer in the fridge, the one that sticks. He'll unwrap it, wash it, and pull it apart. The heart of  it crunches and crisps as it breaks.

Then, he'll rinse a couple waxy tomatoes, glowing like embers. Dad will place them on a pink, glass plate, scratched from use. He'll cut them, the seeds squirting here and there. But the wedges are small and perfect.

Next, he'll peel the cucumbers, filling the sink with green confetti. Translucent, bare-as-baby cucumber halves will leave the kitchen smelling like spring and cut grass and maybe mint.

Soon, Dad'll select two or three brilliant carrots. He'll peel them too so that their rough skins stick to the sides of the stainless steel kitchen sink, curling like ribbon, making a party of the cucumber peels.

When he tosses it all together, he'll sprinkle chopped almonds and craisins on top. He'll be the first to eat salad, the first to offer it to the rest of us. All the while, he'll lean forward and raise his eyebrows with each bite. He loves earth, food, life.



He did so much that when the salad sits on the kitchen table now, untouched, my heart lurches. Hiccups. I want to devour the entire thing, but I don't. I leave it for lunch tomorrow instead, when it won't taste so strongly of loss drenched in a dressing of brimming eyes and aching chest.

Undo

I wanted to undo, unstitch, unweave. I wanted to unchop a tree or unsay a word or unpass an hour. I wanted to un…nothing. There’s nothing to undo. There’s nothing I could have done to save Dad or Mom or myself or my brother. I’ve done nothing wrong, nothing to ask forgiveness for. And I hate it. Dad is simply gone. No do-over for us or for him. No way to resurrect that tree or breathe back that word or respool that hour. 

So, I lie here in my backyard. I’ve gone back for the first time for myself. When I squint against the sunlight, I’m centimeters away from a dandelion stalk, its fuzzy, fragile fronds are gone too. It sways in the breeze though it has nothing left to give. It is spent. Above me, my tulip poplar is new, and it shivers in its childish joy. When the wind whispers, its dried seed pods float lazily away. Suddenly, I am seeing the sun through a rainy windshield, all beaded and glittery and out of focus. 

Suddenly I am seeing clearly. I cannot undo, and I really shouldn’t anyway. Perhaps it is what I wish to redo that haunts me. I want to go for a walk with him again and stop at every tree and bush and flower the way I just did this morning as I walked by myself. I have taken his curiosity with me. I want to glance out the window and see him push the lawn mower across my yard again. I want to wrap my arms around him one last time, his ribs too pronounced, but my head fitting perfectly within the little hollow beneath his shoulder. More than anything, I want to hear his laugh. It rolled from him, from somewhere deep and full, a secret well. It used to. 

I cannot undo or redo, though, so I slowly stand up, brush off my jeans, run a hand through my long black hair, and walk away.

Heavenly

A cardinal splits the almost-white sky like a wound in soft flesh. He shoots by, and I stop in my tracks. I didn’t expect him here at the end of the road. Immediately, I think of Dad. I remember him stopping in his tracks too for a cardinal or an eagle or just a gingko tree. For an instant, I feel him again. But can he feel me? Unbidden, questions scuttle through my mind. Wherever he is, does he hear me? See me? Ever, ever think of me? Does nature here indeed reflect Heaven, or do we just imagine that it does because the thought comforts us, allows us to sleep on nights when the other side of the bed is empty?

Golden streets, we imagine. Rushing, crystal water. Lush gardens. An endless sun (Son?) in a sky with no curling edges. Our pets scampering about. Rolling fields where children play. Flowers more brilliant than our eyes can stand. Snowflakes for no good reason. Is that the way it is?

I imagine that he has a garden. Here, he said he wasn’t creative enough to design a garden plan. Maybe he wasn’t, but if Heaven is perfect, does he create endlessly there? Maybe it was all mapped out there, ready for him. Maybe all he does now is stroll along pebbled paths and breathe deeply of some sweet air I have never known.

I imagine he has a window with wooden shutters. They’re chipped and peeling (not because they wear out, but because God designed them that way). I want to believe that, sometimes, on those afternoons when my lack presses on my chest and begs, he feels me. I hope he walks softly to that one window, unlatches the shutters, and peers down at me for a moment. I want him to see me because I see him everywhere.

But that cardinal is long gone by now, crimson wings fluttering in some tree in the deep  woods. I have stood here for long enough, so I begin to walk back. I remember tip-toeing down the yellow line in the middle of the road. I remember Dad stopping in the middle of a long stride to examine the earth. I imagine a window and hope, hope, hope that he sees me. 

New Places (blog prompt 7)

At first, I looked for Dad. I looked for a scrap of his flannel shirt, for an imprint the size of his shoulders on the forest floor. I searched, scared of finding him, but even more frightened that I wouldn’t. At first, my eyes were drawn to the woods in our backyard like a terrible magnet, yet I couldn’t quite go further than my tulip poplar. I felt him just out of reach, just beyond my fingertips. He haunted my woods, my house, my heart. 

Dad and I on our balcony in the backyard on Easter, 2010

But then I stepped into those woods, and they have lost some of their darkness and fear. I can’t say I gaze at them comfortably and with great joy, though their beauty and little bursts of life lift me even on the worst days.  I look into my own backyard now, and still my chest aches at the thought of him. Something in my rib cage hollows out for a moment. Yet, I am quicker to notice the way the sun falls through the branches and the tilt of the most familiar trees. I look down, beneath my feet, and find tiny flowers of purple and violet and blue and white and yellow so sunny it’s almost orange. I am drawn to the greens sprouting in my flower beds, and the birds hiding among the still-sparse bush in my front lawn. 

Then, I leave my house, and there it is all around me: nature. The kind that flowers and tweets, and whistles. The kind that shimmers and rushes and trickles. The kind that laughs and talks and hopes. It’s difficult to ignore, really. Once I found it at home, I found it at the mall and in the city and along the suburban sidewalks. I found it in the park and in a meadow, along a stream, and in other woods. I found it in me, too, because I thought I wasn’t a nature girl at all until I realized nature isn’t about escaping to a remote place. It’s actually about finding it where you are and acknowledging its “otherness” in your own garden, if you must. 

Now, the trees outside my bedroom window are waving gently in a breeze, and I can’t figure out how I ever overlooked them. But I have a feeling that, although home is a part of me and always will be, there are other things I need to see. There are other places to go. When I leave for Peru next month, I will take a notebook with me so I can record the misty drizzle and the heavy, humid air. I want to capture the sound of a different shore and a different language. I want to take pictures of the strangest, two-toned flowers I have ever seen and the banana trees that casually line some streets. I want to tell a story of the way an entirely new continent can actually be home, too.

Let It Be (place entry 7)

This morning, even before 9AM, I sit beneath my tulip poplar and watch the sunlight flicker through the branches. It flirts here and there with the breeze. Even the lowest weeds seem to garner its lovely face as it lights the forest so that the woods become a cathedral. I hear birds trilling, and I see dandelions beginning to pop up. The trees are no longer flowering, though. They have blossomed to leaves, still curled in their infancy, or fruits blushing and twirling away at the attention of the coy sunshine. I sit here still.

            

 What to make of this? What deep meaning can I find in all of this while the forest resurrects whether I am here to see it or not? I try very hard to come up with something to write, something important to say. But I come up empty and end up just looking instead. I am silent in the wake of the wind that has been so insistent these last few days. So, nearby I notice new weeds. They are flowering with blooms so feathery that when I reach out my fingers, I almost don’t feel anything. They are little pink clouds, a substance I can see but barely touch, and I believe they exist. 

 Then, I wander, finding a path that is unobstructed, finding it like second nature the way I knew these woods when I was a child. I don’t fight thorns this time. I just take what the woods will hand to me and meander along, snapping photos as I go. I don’t fight anything anymore. Not dark thoughts, not the idea of my father lying here or here or here. Instead, I begin to wonder what he would have seen. I notice the wood nailed to a tree to form a ladder where our tree house used to perch. I stand beneath tangled bushes turning emerald and look up at the sky beyond. I notice little rosy leaves poking through the forest floor. I peak at the meadow I can no longer reach and breathe, knowing that it does not need me. 

             

And just like that, I know, too, that Dad probably didn’t look for meaning here. He probably didn’t examine a plant and philosophize or create metaphors. He didn’t look for any of these things because meaning came to him unbidden. “This is amazing,” I imagine him thinking. “For all of this life to rise from a tiny seed. Doesn’t it prove the presence of God? Doesn’t it show His wonder?” Then, he would have left it alone because nature, like God, does not need us to become important or meaningful or deep. Perhaps, in the midst of his doubt and hurt, he stepped into nature and knew exactly what he needed to know: God is. Maybe, here, he was simply able to let it be. 

I will too. 

I Am a Little Girl (blog prompt 6)

            I am a little girl. Well, not so little, really. I’m 12, and for pity sake, I can’t believe my parents are just barely allowing me to walk down to the end of my road all by myself! The whole world is large here. The trees look like huge stalks of broccoli waving against that cathedral blue sky. And there’s a trail I just have to explore. Two, actually. One splits off to the left. It’s beyond the end of the road, behind the logs and the metal fence that never kept any one of us out. This trail rolls off into the distance. There are telephone poles every so often, standing forlornly against the full forest. Why are there telephone poles down here? Are there cabins in the woods in need of connection? The other path is cut through tall, tall grass. It’s almost obscured, really, but I can just make it out as I push through the weeds and the lady bugs and the ticks. It disappears into the woods where a more certain trail takes over soon. It winds past whispering springs and is interrupted by fallen logs that I hop over or crawl under or play balance beam on. Yeah, the whole world is big back here. It doesn’t stop. It is endlessly possible, and I am free in it, finally allowed to explore on my own where the little flowers, close to the ground, are the beauties that catch my eye. 

 I am not a little girl anymore. Well, I’m not supposed to be. I am 22, and this is the last place of refuge I can think of. It is the day after…well, just the day after. The house is full of well-wishers and sympathy-givers and “If you need anything, just call.” I almost run, I am so desperate, so hurt, so empty and angry and scared. And when I find these two trails again, the ones I used to think held the entire world between them, the tears come. They spill over my eye lashes and drip down the side of my nose, into my hair at my temples, fall into my collar, and this, the end of my road, is suddenly the smallest and most confined place behind all the blur. I take the trail with the telephone poles. I walk and then run and then stop mid-stride, and something tiny and warbling escapes my throat. It is a whimper, a plea just before it becomes a howl, a long, loud, high, “NOOOOO!” It turns into, “Where the hell were You?” and “How could you leave us?” and “What if I turn out like this?” and “I love you.” It spends me until I am crouched low amidst the tall weeds and the odd, ugly bits of dead leaves. I spread my fingers over the dirt and press down into the ground that will soon hold him. 

I am a little girl again, reduced. The world is huge and cold, and I am small in it.

Pictures :-)

 I tried to insert these pictures into my last post, but I couldn't quite get them to fit right with the text, so I just decided to post them alone.

What the Rain Did (place entry 6)

This is what the rain has awakened:

The wind. You’ll have to trust me. I can’t take a picture, it being all about faith.

The robins. They dance around each other, fluttering here and there, fighting across my yard, bearing their red breasts. 

A garden snake. It lazily draped itself before my front door, not even looking at me when I tossed a rock at it. 

Ladybugs. They crawl patiently across my window screens, and I let them be. I count their domino dots because not a single one is like the last I saw. 

The big, velvety green leaves beneath the tree that divides my yard and the neighbor’s. It is exactly where we have never planted anything at all.

The forest. It is stippled minty green, as if an artist decided we need a little color here and there and just there beneath the thorns where everything has been dry and fragile.

My tulip poplar. Tiny leaves are translucent against the brave blue sky.

The maple trees. They have grown fuzzy, red and orange to tell me they are just about to burst.

The floral, ornamental trees. They flower all over, all dressed for afternoon tea. Some just on top so that they present an offering of adoration. 

Weeds. Some are tall enough in my yard to slap my plaid sneakers. Some are shy, violet, and I try very hard not to step on them. Some are little bells I imagine are tinkling in the sunlight.

Hydrangea. Veiny, deep green sprouts peak from their beds, finally pushing their way past thick, brown comforters. Above, dried parchment paper blossoms, remnants from last year, still wave stubbornly. When will they fall off?

Daylilies. Well, their leafy bases. They will trumpet come summer. I will wake to them every morning because you can’t ignore something so jubilant.

Thorns. They curl into themselves, but somehow manage to reach for me. I push them aside or skirt them. I brave them the way I did when I was a little girl. 

Something else that is not in my yard at all: Tiny, uncertain shoots of trees in the empty woods across from my house. Only, they are not empty woods anymore because the slope is a brilliant green, and tiny cup flowers climb surely up the bushes, and amidst all the open space, coltish limbs reach determinedly to the sky to make up for lost time. 

And one last thing the rain has awakened that is at home in the backyard, but decides to leave every once in awhile anyway: Me. I play balance beam on the logs and kick rusty metal cans away. I want to rush into the woods instead of lying beneath my tulip poplar. I run up the hill of my yard instead of trudge. I smile without thinking about it even once. 

Surprised by Joy (blog prompt 5)

Sit beneath its branches, the Celts believed, and you will find inspiration in the wind whispering through weeping willows. Poets write there, artists find inspiration, psychics dream many dreams. Sit beneath its branches, and you will be enveloped, hidden. Your heart, that part of you that creates, will be played like a harp to some unaccountable melody. Or so they say. 

Never having sat beneath one, I can’t quite be certain. I do know that weeping willows bend, but rarely break. I know that theirs are some of the first leaves to turn green in the spring. I see them often, now, tiny leaves collected on long branches, glowing almost lime green against an otherwise brown backdrop. They ripple, even when I can’t feel a breeze. They dance alone. Around here, I don’t see them by water too often. Yet, they are commonly found by lakes, their roots perfectly at home and content in the soggiest soil, their tops leaning, leaning further to touch fingertips to an almost-still mirror. 

And they weep, you know. Their branches curve sadly, dripping long, flat leaves forlornly. They are drooping heads, slumped shoulders, downcast eyes. They are too heavy to stand up straight, too wispy to fall over. They are sinking into wet earth to reach for life water offers so that somehow, someway, they can survive. They are me when we found out Dad was gone.  They are my back curved, my arms draping over my mother’s shoulder, my head aching, eyes dripping. 

Some flower, though, like the weeping cherry tree. Some blossom delicately and slouch like pouty little girls in pink, fluffy dresses. These are the weeping willows that really enchant me. They are whimsical, story-tellers. I smile at them because they always make me grin, and no matter how many times I see these weeping trees, I cannot look away. They are lovely, loving, lacy. They are so very hopeful, that I perk up. I lift my head, square my shoulders, take in a deep breath, and dry my eyes. They are spring, you see, in all its newness. They surprised me with their joy every single time. 

Thorns (place entry 5)

Memories feel like hunger, carving out a space beneath my rib cage, a place of longing. I feel it the moment I step out my glass sliding door into my backyard. The air is so gentle today, warm and beneficent. Immediately, I am an explorer, pushing through the forest, a child so small the whole world looks big. I remember running back here in the summer with neighbor friends. We’d clamber past rocks and over roots, paving a well-loved path through the thick thorns. Now, the woods in my backyard are overgrown. There are no more children, just me. 

            A garden snake coils before my feet, sleeping in the noon sun. Its black scales shine as if oily, and I decide to enter the thicket a different way. Above me, the Yellow Poplar I sat under after Dad died opens its seeds to the sky. They are woody, splayed, children’s fingers asking for more. I watched this tree give its last in autumn color. I watch its rebirth again and again and again. Maple trees flower nearby, their little red blossoms are pompoms that cheer on the spring. Fleetingly, I recall Dad pointing out these trees to me, crouching to pick up their seeds, shading his eyes against the sun, walking far ahead and fast while we struggled to keep up with his enthusiasm. Now, I explore for him, asking, “What more?” 

            My little forest fights me every step of the way, but I manage to keep bristles from my hair and skin as I walk deeper. The greenest plants are the thorns, ironically. They wind and twist, trapping and snagging. I want to get all the way back, though. There’s a field we used to play in when it snowed. Now that I stand before it, the branches are too thick to fight through. Suddenly, a snapshot comes to mind, unbidden, but warm. These thorns, weighed down with snow, curve like weeping willows so that we can climb through, our snow pants and coats catching all the pickers, not our skin. 

            But it’s only a memory, and I don’t expect I’ll be able to go back again. It is cut off from me, a past I don’t fit into anymore. Birds twitter in the bushes, and the sun is kind, but I’m stuck here, between the middle and the beginning. Little alcoves I loved when I was a little girl are too small for me now. I look, but find it hard to see because, even if I know where he is not, my heart won’t stop searching for him here. Thickets of thorns stand in my way. I am trapped.