 |
|||
|
|
|||
|
Spring and Summer Journal Excerpts It is early May, with Mother’s Day soon upon us. I’m driving my two youngest to town, to the public library where we will return overdue library books and videos with bad tracking. I glance at her out my car window, walking the rural roads, hair the flat black of cheap dye though L’Oréal would claim she’s worth far more. She clasps some certain significant paring knife in her dominant hand, staring down the ditches. I want to brake the car and shout out my shock of recognition. “I know you! I, too, search for wild asparagus.” I can’t possibly begin to explain any of this to my sons – it is all pink haze and hopeless unless you are a woman – hear us roar – even in adversity. The search for wild asparagus involves knowing where and when to look. City dwellers come in their cars and drive the country roads slowly, but that is cheating. True asparagus seekers walk or bike having memorized the spots from years and years of spring searching. The stalks thrust up with a green and purple certainty. Their arrow tipped heads hiding among weeds and canary grass. I want to escape the confining bubble of my four door Corolla and explain it all to this brunette stranger. I would tell her that I know just from looking that we’ve both survived angry fathers, childbirth, divorce and layoffs. We have known the scramble for loose change behind couch cushions, under car mats, in coat pockets – tallying up enough to purchase bread and peanut butter, super plus tampons even. We’ve prevailed against sharp words, and blunt force, felt the electric charge of milk letting down and filling up an infant’s hunger. The poverty of supper table silence contrasted with the feast of that first batch of asparagus – sautéed in butter and brown sugar, tasting like new lust, the harvest moon, and hope. ••••• June days are filled with white lies and sips of muddy coffee. The breeze blows light or the air sits still and heavy on my lap. Noah wanes bored or waxes content, and I fill or find time accordingly. We blow the mint-scented bubbles from the birthday party favor bag to judge the wind’s strength and direction. We pack peanut butter sandwiches cut on the diagonal, green grapes, and granola bars to picnic at the Cemetery of Peace. I wander up and down the rows of tombstones fingering the inscriptions. I pause at each baby’s marker, study their birth date and lifespan as if clues to the mystery of mortality. Painted Ladies and pink-edged sulphurs rest on the chicory and day lilies. They know enough to avoid the plastic flowers, faded and sad in pots and urns by the more recent graves. We find a place in the grass to eat our lunch. He eats in fits and starts, stopping to search out sword-sticks and climb the taller tombstones. I wonder if this is somehow sacrilegious but no one is here to see, so I allow him his mounts and dismounts, apologizing silently to any spirits we offend. He chooses the largest bur oak to call safe base and we start our game of hide and seek tag. I count aloud in Spanish or Hmong, he counts silently but gives warning with a loud “Ready or not, here I come.” We alternate roles of hider and seeker until I can take no more. I wander one more time puzzling the faded timeworn words and German inscriptions. I smile at the concrete book on a pedestal, open and inscribed with the famous quote, “Rest in Peace,” and pause at the carvings of hands clasped in a friendly shake or first finger pointing to a perceived and promised heaven. Clearly the dead know far more than the living, yet I make no attempt at psychic communication. We bundle our litter and mount our bikes for home. I tally my blessings as his pedals click slightly ahead and to the right of me. Half a mile down the road we stop, so I can cut some wild bergamot and orange butterfly weed. I explain that though I often gather wildflowers from the meadow and ditches, one should never pick flowers in or near a cemetery. He mumbles a promise and asks when Daddy will be home. We turn the corner and I beg God to number his hairs and give him as many guardian angels as his life requires. I call the all clear and we make the left turn into our gravel driveway. I vase the flowers and promise to remember these small moments; the daily detritus that goes unrecorded, but builds the bulk of his summer at age seven. ••••• It’s a strange, shaky day with pain in my head and neck, caustic audible cracks in my slightly crooked, scoliosed spine. I sound self-absorbed, bordering on hypochondriac, but I’m letting myself because it’s late July and in just a few weeks I will be back at work. Today I can’t do anything quickly – even wiping the scratched kitchen table of syrup drips and toast crumbs seems to take multiple attempts. I feel strangely alone, as though my brain is in solitary confinement and I cannot possible hope to communicate with the world at large. I should lay my heavy head down and shut my eyes against the children and their noise for a few minutes or hours, but that borders on heresy. I step outside to water the porch flowerpots and hanging baskets. Floral sheets on the line snap, rising like sails in the erratic breeze, and vouch for my work ethic – I do not lie on the sofa staring at daytime TV. I strip the inside beds of dingy linen hanging them outside even in summer humidity to save the planet. Twin-size flannel printed with Buzz Lightyear smiling behind his helmet, promising us all “infinity and beyond.” If I look hard enough I see a dull outline of my youngest boy’s body pressed into the hand-me-down threadbare material. I think of chalk outlines on city sidewalks marking crime scenes. Here in the country I feel safe, but isolated. I halfheartedly weed the flowerbeds and deadhead the roses. The hummingbird feeder sways, empty and sticky. I hear the rural mail carrier in stops and start on the gravel edge of the blacktop road. Who will carry me news from home?
Jenna Rindo lives with her husband and blended family of five children in rural Pickett, WI. She worked as a pediatric registered nurse for seven years, and now teaches English as a second language to Hmong, Spanish, Arabic and Chinese students. Her poems have appeared in Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, Kalliope, the Wisconsin Review, Bellowing Ark, and online at eclectica magazine and Iris magazine.
|
|||
|
