electric mist

strange connections

I mostly remember the cold, some twenty-two years ago, living in a drafty house that we never should have bought, but with stars in our eyes and assumptions that we could repair the drab fixer-upper, we'd bought it anyway. And suddenly there had been a baby, all too fast, not enough time to get the thousand and one things done that we thought we'd get done before he arrived, and there was the cold. That winter seemed especially chilled, moreso I think because it always felt damp, rain and dreary gray overcasting the day until I wanted to weep for sunshine. I remember thinking that I would never get to sleep again, never get to feel that lush luxury of sheets and comforters and wallowing into oblivion because I was always half-listening for the baby's cries, the cries that always came, the cries that never stopped, and I wondered, sometimes, if I hadn't already gone quietly mad and was too deaf from the crying to hear anyone say so. I remember not knowing what to do for all of the crying, trying a thousand different things, everything anyone reasonably rational suggested and even a few of the odd ones, too, just wanting to know that I wasn't going to destroy this kid, this amazing pink and screaming child who somehow had shown up in this world with me as his mom. The gray of the days crushed in on me, moved into the house, took up all of the room, squeezed me into a corner until I couldn't breathe without breathing in the gray and I felt the color leeching out of my world, felt myself going blank for hours at a time, just trying to muddle through, just trying to breathe in and out without soaking up the gray, and whole eons seemed to pass without my moving. And I remember this moment, this clear moment when the gray felt a little less severe, and I looked out the window and felt the air shimmer, sunshine filtered through the clouds, but that's not what took my breath away. What did was an amazing sight of a dozen Japanese Magnolia trees that had been planted some thirty years earlier on the border of our property, and they had all burst forth with bloom, seemingly overnight. Vibrant pinks that crimsoned into lush wines on one side of the velvety petals, creamy white skimming the other, and thousands of blooms, filling the sky. We hadn't known what kind of tree that was when we'd moved in; no one had guessed Japanese Magnolias because traditionally, those trees aren't that large, but these were at least forty to fifty feet in height and there was a wall of flowers reaching toward the shimmering air. The color leeched back into my world and that image anchored me, reminded me of beauty, reminded me that there were going to be days of colors, of riots of greens and blue skies and sunshine. And for the first time, I felt less afraid of the screaming child and what I was going to do and how I might handle the tasks we had before us.

In this house where we've lived for six years, I made sure that the one tree I planted as soon as I had the chance was a Japanese Magnolia. It's just outside the kitchen window, and the buds are thick and burgeoning and promise to be stunning, and as I'm smiling at the memory, the phone rings, and it's that same child, letting me know that French sucks (he's out of practice and has one more class of French before being done -- the French teacher chastised him for bringing a French dictionary to class and told him to simply ask if he didn't understand what she was saying... but since even the instructions are in French, he's lost. He told her that would be a lot of "asking" because he was barely getting every fifth word. I think he's dropping French.) and grousing about falling down stairs (spilled coffee) and generally, cracking me up the entire time we talked.

Sometimes, we don't get to know the end of the stories we see around us; life is like that, it's fast and chaotic and very rarely do things tie off neatly or parallel nicely. But I remember how Granny (Carl's grandmother) who lived across from us would look at certain flowers or trees and there would be this wave of nostalgia, and I'd think she was a little daft, because a tree was a tree was a tree. Except, now, when it's not. Sometimes there are strange connections which mark for us a moment, that moment of breathing again, that moment where the color floods back into the world and we realize we just might be okay. And seeing that same tree, twenty-two years later, and knowing that it came true, that we were okay, that we made it, that there has been much color and laughter and smiles and living. I understand now.

And as I listen to my son and all that he's saying, making me laugh, there is this little part of me that suddenly realizes that one day, he'll have those associations, too, and maybe with his own child, and then so on and so on. He knows I've planted the tree, but I'm not sure I've ever told him why, and how looking at it reminds me of that moment I looked down at him and just knew, understood, what a gift he was, and that it was going to be okay.

I think I will call him back and tell him.