Remembering

The air is crisp and damp and the chill tucks itself up beneath my thin denim jacket as we navigate the wet leaves on this place of death so rich in history.  Day is falling and across the way the sun streams happy against the edge of a rough-cut field, blazing warm yellow where leaves have shrunken and faded in their annual mortality -  a gleam of heaven beaming in the haze of this autumn twilight.

A whole year.  Gone in a blink but it's been forever since I heard him laugh.  He's so hard to hold on to - though we never really let go, do we?  And we stand, banded together at this memorial, children stepping on this resting as we think upon his name - our name - carved deep and forever into cold stone.  Our little flowers lay softness against his memory and we set them haphazard and random because any formality would seem presumptuous and plastic.

"But Grandma, how do you know when you're going to die?" Because they can't understand why Grandma's name stands there beside their grandpa when she stands there beside them.
"No, you see...?" she says, pointing to the dates, "this is when I was born.  This is so I can be buried here with Grandpa someday."  And they accept it because they've known now for a year that death is real.

It's hard not to remember the ending.  It's hard not to remember his face void of the him we all cherished.  That ending that stole from him all that made him the man we loved.  Those awful days when he was already gone but we stood by his side and urged him to let go because what he was hanging on to was no kind of life.

Erase it.  Every gasping breath.  Every glassy gaze.  Just erase it.  Remember, instead, the man who came before - that man of integrity and strength and humor.  That man who sang.  That man who made a mean roast beef.  That man who loved us all with a love that never quit.  That man who believed in us all with a faith that never faltered.  That man who welcomed me and called me daughter.  Remember that.

For that is the stuff that never passes away.

Gestures

I run.  Summer chases me, her winds pushing back my hair, her dew dampening my pajama bottoms.  Bare feet in sneakers and night so black.  Just thirteen years old and oh, so clever.  Eleven pm is heavy and exciting and when headlights slip over the hill from Durham I jump and duck into wet ditches because I am a ninja and those lights are my nemesis.  All the way to the town sign.  Gravel in my shoes and panting because I'm not a runner and ripping the duct tape - great tears of thunder in this country black - and holding up the sign crafted from three connected pieces of dot matrix printing paper because it's 1993 and that's what people have, and taping it up over the Population 2,500.  HAPPY ANNIVERSARY MOM & DAD!  And I run all the way back home and I sneak back into bed and no one is the wiser and I might die because I can't breath and I'm pretty sure I've got to be the greatest daughter ever to ninja my way along the highway just to acknowledge them like that... 

My children do not make grand (or medium sized, or teeny tiny) gestures.  Maybe I didn't put enough crazy into them when I molded them out on my insides.  Maybe they got that from their father.  On this, our fourteenth anniversary, his great gesture was interrupting my staff meeting at work to give me some Advil Cold & Sinus.  Pretty flipping romantic!  Of course, I'm not asking for anything.  If he bought me a card I'd laugh at him.  Chocolates just make me fat.  Advil's last for four hours - now that's a beautiful gift of stamina! 

Here's to 14 more!

Thankful

"It's snowing!"  I am hollering from the back hallway.

He glances up from his spot on the couch.  "It is not!" Incredulous and as if you'd dare to drift a cloud over my lovely Sunday...

"It is!" I say again.

He gathers himself and stalks to the window and puffs up to prove me wrong but..."It is snowing!"

I stand beside him and we watch little white pellets dance off the porch swing.  "More like hail, I guess," I say, throwing him a bone so he doesn't have to be totally wrong (because I'm sweet like that).

I add more wood to the fire and the smell of cedar smoke fuses with the aroma of turkey and stuffing from the kitchen.  The sweet potatoes are whipped and mallowed and waiting for their turn in the oven.  Cinnamon wafts and burlap makes a tablecloth and leaf clad windows count our blessings.

When family arrives, noise blows in with them like a thundering wind and I wrap it all up and tuck it by my heart and raise my voice above them to say welcome and decide that for today, I will be a hugger!

We eat but it doesn't get any quieter.  I have never had a home big enough to share a meal in before.  We fit around the table.  The children around their own.  I am swollen with pride at this family space that has always been this family's space and now it is mine.  But it is also theirs and it always will be.

We are full but still we have pie and then take our uncomfortable bellies for a walk through crunching leaves and the children gather and throw them up up up in the air just to be rained down upon by those wet, dead beauties.

It is crisp and we can see our breath and our noses drip and our cheeks tint rosy.  There is laughing and running and picking weed bouquets and finding game trails and kicking pebbles with rubber boots and holding hands.

And for this.  All of this.  I am thankful.

Pumpkin Patch Kids

They remember the planting.  The digging down and the covering.  The waiting for the seed death to bring life wild from the ground in twisting vines that trail all the way to the raspberries.  Now the grass cracks and our feet find purchase on the dirt beneath - fingers pulling frantic through the depths to be the one to cry out, "I found one!"  The air is crisp and rubber boots promise tracks of filth upon mudroom floors.  We aren't concerned with such petty things.  Our sights are set on orange.

"I fouwd anuver one!"

They have their names there, planted on stakes where their seed was laid, fruit tumbled far from the sowing.  But they claim their yield and holler across the field, "MINE!"

We use pruning shears to rend them from their stems, the proverbial cutting of the umbilical cord, and we line them along the cinder block wall.

Cheeks are rosy and leaves are turning and smoke billows from the chimney and fall is upon us and the garden dies slowly and we raise our faces like sunflowers, grasping at that last breath of summer that whispers over the dead corn stalks in a sudden moment when the sun peeks from beneath an autumn cloud.