#175 Mother's Day Flower

“Mom, look,”

Beside me in his awkwardly small plastic chair, my son had rolled his neck tie up tight under his chin. When he saw he had my attention he let it go, sending it shooting out like one of those paper party blowers. His face remained impassive as he watched me for my reaction, where another child might have grinned or even giggled.

“Don’t play with your tie anymore,” I said. “If you have to fidget, wiggle your toes quietly inside your shoes.”

He sighed, a huge exasperated sigh, and leaned all the way forward in his chair.

“Sit up please,” I whispered.

He sat up and was still for a few minutes, listening as the Sunday school teacher finished telling a story about Jesus healing a blind man. Then he started chewing on his fingernails.

“Hand away from your mouth,” I poked him gently in the side.

He jerked away from me and toppled onto the ground.

“Back in your chair,” I glanced at the Sunday school teacher, who was doing his best to ignore us in favor of the row of more attentive children in front of us. “One two three…”

My son climbed back up in his chair.

“Now children, because it’s mother’s day, we’re going to make something special for your mother.” The Sunday school teacher took out a basket of crayons and a stack of paper from the table behind him. “Everyone take a paper and fold in in half, like this, then write Happy Mother’s Day on the front, and on the inside write something you appreciate about your mom.”

When the basket of crayons made it back to us, my son stared into it for a long time.

“Just take a handful,” the teacher said, at least three times.

My son finally selected one crayon.

He folded his paper in half, then in half again.

"You don’t need to do that,” I said.

“But I’m going to do it this way,” my son said.

“Please, just follow the instructions,” I said.

He opened it up, and folded it diagonally from corner to corner.

Pick your battles. Pick your battles. Pick your battles.

On the row in front of us, I watched a little girl in her Sunday dress and lacy bow in her hair write “Happy Mother’s Day” in beautiful handwriting. Could a nine-year-old child really write that neatly? It seemed strange to me. But all of them were doing it. Perfect printing.

“Look, it’s like a flower,” my son held his multi-folded paper up in front of my face.

“I see,” I said.

He took his one crayon and began to trace all the fold lines, then draw a heart in each triangular section. I watched the other children decorating their cards, which actually looked like cards. I could read what they were writing from where I sat. My son had turned his card over and started writing on it. I knew it was going to take some serious concentration to figure out what words those were.

“All done, Mom,” my son handed the card to me, this time with one of his tight smiles.

“This is my favorite color of crayon.” He'd chosen blue-green. “How did you know that? Of all the colors of crayon, this was always my favorite.”

His smile got a little bigger.

I unfolded the card flower and started working out his handwriting.

you’re the bestest friend in the whole wide world, and I love you

I rotated the card to the next panel

mom you are so awesome

There were some more scribbles I just couldn’t interpret

you are friendly and kind and loving (so am I)

Now I had to turn it upside-down

I appreciate that you are always there for me

I love you

My Mother’s Day card was different from all the rest, but that's why I loved it.

#174 Rainbow

My bicycle tires crushed bright orange flowers the size of my fist into the black asphalt as I sped beneath the flame trees. On the other side of the new brown plastic fence, cows lumbered slow through the tall grass, standing or grazing lazily. Behind them, the steep green slopes of the koolaus rose up to a sky patchy with clouds. On the other side of the bike path, old telephone poles leaned under the weight of their wires, and cars sped down the narrow, pot-holed and patched highway. The smell of the sea mixed with car exhaust, sun on dewy grass, and tropical flowers.

As I sped down the path the sun warmed the back of my neck and my shoulders, even through the straps of my backpack. All of a sudden, a brilliant rainbow spread across the sky in front of me. Bright against a charcoal background of cloud, it stretched from behind the jungle trees that hid the beach from my view, all the way to the mountaintops beyond the fields where the cows were grazing. A glorious arc of color, the most amazing, perfect rainbow I had ever seen, and there it was, right in front of me! It looked like I would bike right under it if I kept going.

Right in front of me!

Rainbow.

Wait. That meant….

Oh, snap.

I saw it ripping toward me over the path, heard the rising roar, saw the wall rushing to meet me only an instant before I was pounded by buckets of cold rain. It swallowed me up, sent white streaks ricocheting off the asphalt, and created a fog of droplets that turned the grass silver-green and the cows into shadowy, distant shapes. I squinted and swerved my bike to avoid the puddles, not because I wasn’t already soaked, but because the mud here, the red volcanic clay, never washed out, not ever.

By the time I got to school I was as wet as if I’d rode my bike right into the canal, but the sky had already cleared. The dark rainclouds had moved inland, and were shrouding the mountains in a white gauze, leaving everything behind them gleaming wet in the sun, with colors as bright as the rainbow.

#173 Journey to the Future 3

read the first part

There was someone, or something, waiting for me at the gate to the city.

Gleaming metal walls rose three stories over my head. It made me wonder what they were trying to keep out, or maybe keep in. The wide road I’d been walking along, except for when a passing truck gently beeped to encourage me to move out of the way, maybe as if I were a stray cow, passed in under a wide arch in the wall. I couldn’t see any doors, but then maybe they were the kind that rolled aside and were hidden in the wall.

I still hadn’t seen any other people.

The something standing by the gate at first I took for some kind of public art. It had hinged metal legs, six of them, and a spherical body of black glass. When I came close, it spoke to me.

“Ryan?” It was my sister’s voice.

“Cathy?” I stepped closer to the sphere. Inside the black sphere, beneath the surface, I saw an image of her face, like a hologram, like she was trapped there inside the glass.

“They’ve said I can record a message for you, so here goes,” Cathy’s face said. She looked exhausted, worried, but hopeful. “They’re taking us away while they clean up the mess we’ve made. And then they’re going to bring us back, but it will take longer than a hundred years, they say. If you want, you can come join us. We’re going to another planet, Ryan. You’d be so excited.”

“Cathy,” I said again, even though I knew she couldn’t hear me. “Who? Who’s taking you away?”

“I hope you got here safely, and that the pod worked and everything. You never did test sending it forward more than a couple of weeks, so, well, I hope you made it.” I could hear a tremble in her voice. “Please come find us,” she said.

Her image disappeared.

“Is that all?” I asked the black sphere. “Where’s Cathy now? Who’s she talking about? Who took her away?”

The thing began to move, its legs lifting gracefully and touching down gently so that the sphere seemed to levitate over the ground. It took a few steps through the arch, and then paused as if waiting for me to follow.

I stepped into the city.

#172 Journey to the Future 2

read the first part

It got too hot for my radiation suit as I pushed my way through the tall stalks of corn. I hadn’t really lived in the country, ever, and I’d only seen corn fields from a car window on road trips as a boy, but I was thinking this corn was bigger than I remembered it. The leaves were wider than my outspread fingers, and if the city ahead weren’t so tall it would have disappeared behind the golden pollen heads.

I shed the suit and bundled it into my pack, then pressed on. Soon my arms were itching from brushing against the dry, hairy green corn leaves.

When I got closer I noticed something that made me stop and study the gleaming glass and metal structures in the distance. Along the base, standing twice as high as the corn, was a wall. I’d never seen a walled city in my entire life. As far as I could tell, the corn went right up to it. A single city like an island in a sea of corn.

I came to a road running crosswise to my direction of travel. Relieved to be able to walk a clear path for a while, I followed it until I reached a larger road that led straight to the city. A truck came rumbling up behind me. I looked behind, hoping to hail the driver, then saw there was no cab. It was just a huge bin of corn on wheels. When it got closer to me it slowed down, then stopped entirely and began to beep gently. I stepped off the road and into the corn, and it picked up speed again, heading toward the city in a cloud of dust.

Look me up when you get there, my sister had said. Maybe by then people will be living over a hundred years. At the time the joke had been a bitter one, recalling the years before the apocalypse began. But maybe it had come true. Maybe she’d be waiting for me.

read the next part

#171 Journey to the Future

"You’re abandoing us," my sister had said, her voice cold, hard, logical. “You think you’re going to save everyone, but you’re only running away.”

"Come with me," I said. "There’s room."

"And leave them?" She had shouted. "Leave them to this?"

Outside the windows of my workshop, the sky had been dark. Dark at noon. Ash and dust choked the sun, fell over everything like a sad, gray, toxic snow.

"There won’t be anything left," I said. "I have to bring them hope."

She had watched me set the last parameters, enter the final commands.

"I love you," she hugged me. The face masks of our radiation suits clicked. I felt her arms through the thick, stiff material. No warmth came through. "Good luck," she said.

"I love you too."

She stepped back. "Look me up when you get there," she joked. "I mean, maybe by then people will be living for over a hundred years."

I sealed myself in the pod. The countdown began. All the world’s knowledge and I, taking a one-way trip to the future.

And now I was here.

"What if no one listens to you?" My sister had said. Her words echoed in my mind as I turned the wheel to unseal the pod. "What if they think you’re a witch and smash everything you’ve brought them."

"Their problem, not mine," I had snapped back, tired of her arguments. At the time I didn’t care. Now I did. Now it mattered. I had to make this work.

Sunlight streamed into the pod. I hadn’t seen sunlight in months. At least the sun was still working a hundred years in the future. Green, I saw green. Plants. Life. We hadn’t managed to kill the whole planet. I laughed, tears streaming down my face, and doubled over with the agony of relief, one hand of my radiation suit clutched tight on the hatch opening.

Radiation levels normal. No toxins or known bio-weapon agents. All the readings were good. I took off my helmet and breathed the warm, sweet smell of a field of corn.

A huge field of corn, unbroken all the way to the mountains ahead of me. Distant, silent machines moved through the corn, harvesting maybe, I couldn't tell. I turned around and found myself facing an impossibly tall city. The buildings, cylindrical and metallic, rose high into the blue sky.

They hadn’t needed me at all. I could have stayed. I might have done more good if I had stayed.

Guilt gnawing at my chest, I sealed the pod and began making my way toward the city.

read the next part

#170 First Night Out

The last image of the dream burned in my mind. A tall man, a stranger, thin, in a pair of overalls, his dark, hollow face in shadow. He held up a limb rag of rabbit fur. My rabbit. Dead.

I swallowed, listening to the sound of my heart thump, and stared at the dark ceiling. My rabbit. This was her first night to sleep outside in her new hutch. Always before we’d brought her in at night, to keep her safe. She’d slept in her cage in the corner of my room. She was only a baby. Was she all right? Was the hutch safe? What if a cat got her, or a weasel? What if she was scared, or cold?

I rolled over and looked at the red glowing numbers of my digital clock. Only a little past midnight. Even if I checked on her now, she would still have hours to go before sunrise. Why did night time have to be so long?

In my bare feet I felt my way down the stairs, hand on the railing, nearly blind in the dark. Down on the ground floor a splash of moonlight spilled in through the sliding back doors. I put my nose up to the glass. There was the hutch out in the yard, but I couldn’t make out if my rabbit was in there.

I slid the door open after undoing the latch and stepped out onto the cold cement of the back porch. Now I could make out a small white shape behind the wire, huddled on the dark grass. Dew soaked through my thin pajama pants as I knelt in front of the hutch.

“Hey, bun?” I whispered. “You okay?’

My rabbit opened one liquid black eye and stared at me in the moonlight. In the dark, with her eye closed, the side of her head had looked blank, but now the dark spot appeared, staring back at me. Calm, a little curious, as if she wondered what I was doing out here in my pajamas. Of course I’m all right, she seemed to say. Why wouldn’t I be?

Rabbits, I guess, sleep outside all the time in the wild. Or maybe they sleep in their burrows, but that’s still sort of outside.

I wondered why my rabbit hadn’t gone inside her little rabbit house. Why was she sleeping out on the grass in her run? Maybe she liked the moonlight, and the stars. I liked them too.

I watched until my rabbit closed her eye again, the black spot vanishing again into her soft, white fur. Then I quietly stood up and looked around the yard. The bushes whispered in the wind, and the trees overhead sprinkled flecks of moonlight over the grass. Right now the yard seemed safe, quiet, but what about the rest of the night?
I slid the back door open again, then closed it behind me. Instead of going back upstairs, I turned on the light and went to the closet where we kept the sleeping bags. I dragged one outside, then went to get my pillow. It was my rabbit’s first night outside, but she wasn’t going to have to spend it all alone.

#169 How to Build a Sandcastle

Slice into the damp sand with a shovel. Hear music of crystal grains on metal. Smell the salt and damp rot of the sea. Lift the crumbling burden and tip it on the smooth, wave-washed surface. Clumps tumble down the small mound.

Another thrust with the shovel, cleave the sand, make the hole deeper, longer, each shovel-full creates both moat and hill. The rhythm of digging matches the hiss of the waves. Stop to look out over the sea, its deep, mysterious blues that shift with the passing of the day. Drink in the colors that only it can spread in such profusion, cover the earth in indigoes and turquoise.

Finish the moat, a deep rectangle around the lumpy cone at the middle. The boundaries of your imaginary kingdom are set. No stranger will cross them. This is your world now. Toss the shovel aside to lie with the driftwood. Now is the time for hands. Feel the grains on your bare knees, the sun baking the back of your legs and neck. Pound the sand, push it, knead it, shape it. Create plateus and cliffs, spaces for building, places for paths, terraces for gardens.

Now for the water.

Dig again, this time deep enough to find the sea. Down, down into the sand, create a well of saltwater and fine sand. A quarry for the slurry of crumbling, quick-drying cement that will be your building material. Deeper, deeper, and then at the bottom a darkening of the sand, then a gleam of reflected sky. Water.

Reach in and take a handful. Feel it drip down your arm, the flowing grit. Place it on your mound, cup your hands to make it round, wait while the water drains away, leaving the firm base of a tower. Another handful, set it on top, the water liquefies the whole mass into jiggly clay. Shape it, hold it, wait for it to set. Build your towers, layer by layer. Add a building, square, rectangle, or round. Make bridges by supporting the sand slurry from below as it hardens into an arch. Find a stick to carve windows, doors, and stair-steps.

Now for the magic.

Take a handful of watery sand and let it dribble off your fingers. See each drop fall, then freeze, building up a sand stalagmite. Lace your tower tops with sand-drip caps, sharp and pointed. Drizzle railings for the stairs and walls for the gardens.

A wave splashes at your ankles, then sucks the sand from beneath your knees. The next one comes, the water a great paw carving a hollow in the side of your hill. The castle falls into the pit of the moat.

The sea reclaims your kingdom for its own.

Take your shovel and walk a little higher up the beach. Slice into the damp sand.

#168 Desert Lights

A red sunset burned across the endless flat expanse of the Mojave desert. I could feel the left-over heat from the sun through the material of my sleeping bag as I spread it on the sun-baked crust. Hot as the day had been, it was going to be a chilly night. I could already feel the temperature dropping.

I couldn’t wait for dark.

I went back to the car, passing my boyfriend with his sleeping bag and my cousin who had just pulled a deck chair out of the trunk. I reached in the back seat and took a smooth, wooden box from the floor. My birthday present. It was still too early to use it, really, but I took it back to my sleeping bag and sat down with it in my lap, then opened it up to admire it.

Ultraviolet lamp. A long glass tube with a black, metal hood. I turned it on and shone its faint purple glow on my sleeping bag. My white socks lit up like the full moon on a clear night, but everything else stayed dim.

There were certain rocks, certain minerals, that would light up too. All around me on the desert ground, pebbles, crystals, bits of petrified wood, they held secrets that darkness and the ultraviolet light would reveal.

My boyfriend pulled the ice chest from the back of the car and slammed the trunk down. He brought me a can of coke. “Ready to start looking?” he asked with a grin.

I grinned back, “I want to wait until it’s really dark.”

While my cousin sat in her deck chair and read a fashion magazine, I listened to my boyfriend talk about the drag races tomorrow, the real reason we were camping out here in the desert. He knew all the drivers, their cars, their wins and losses. It made me nervous to hear him talk about it. I didn’t want him to ever get behind the wheel of one of those cars, but I could hear it in his voice. It was his dream, he was going to do it someday. I didn’t think I could ever bear to watch him race, to know at any moment he could be crushed and burning. No, I wouldn't let it happen.

When the stars came out, I turned on my light.

We all gasped, even my cousin. The desert floor was as starry as the desert sky. Tiny bright lights gleamed everywhere, shining in the ultraviolet glow.

My boyfriend reached out to pick one up.

It moved.

He turned on his flashlight.

Scorpions! Tiny scorpions everywhere, each one glowing in my ultraviolet light.

My cousin screamed.

The three of us bolted for the car. My cousin tore the door open and we piled in, a tangle of arms and legs.

When we got ourselves sorted out and caught our breath, we all started to laugh. We laughed a really long time.

But none of us got out of the car.

We stayed in there all night.

#167 Fireflies

“I brought you something,” I told my little brother.

Turn off the lights. I unzipped my suitcase. The glass of a baby food jar shone faintly among my used socks and shirts. I pulled it out, felt the cool glass in my hands. Two tiny insects sat still inside, barely glowing.

My brother sucked in a big gasp of air.

“Fireflies,” I said

“Fireflies!” my brother echoed.

Fireflies, caught in auntie’s back garden. Fireflies, that rose up between the poles of okra and beans like green-yellow sparks from a cold fire. Slow, they were, and easy to catch. Easy to put in a jar and smuggle in my suitcase from Louisiana back to Texas.

Texas, where there weren’t any fireflies.

But now there were.

I opened the jar lid. The bugs didn’t know they were free. I had to shake the jar and tumble them out onto the bed. Gently, I didn’t want to hurt them. My brother watched, not daring to breathe, as they crawled slow, jet-lagged I guess.

One eventually took off, and then the other. I waited for them to flash, to spark, but all they did was make their dull green glow. Like a glow-in-the dark plastic toy. In the dark of my bedroom they wove their way up to the ceiling, bumped it a couple times, then landed on the wall, the two of them close together.

I’d wanted to bring my brother that whole garden full of fireflies, night after night of amazing fireflies. These two weren’t anything compared to that.

Should I have let them alone? It tugged at me, a little sadness, a little guilt. I’d brought them all this way, so far from home. No wonder they wouldn’t flash for us. They missed their garden.

I couldn’t take them back.

Wow, my brother said, but that’s just because he hadn’t seen what I’d seen. To him, two sad little glowing bugs on the wall was amazing.

I left them there, on the wall. In the morning, they were gone.

 

#166 The Well

My ancestors came to this land from the East. With their own hands, they built this house. With their own hands they dug the well. Twenty feet down to fresh, pure water for them to drink.

I stand beside the well diggers and watch as the machinery grinds and whirrs, burrowing into the earth at a depth I can’t imagine. Three thousand feet down. Over half a mile. When I look out over the dusty fields, three thousand feet must be about all the way to the abandoned silo on the Miller’s place. All that distance, only straight down into the earth.

I remember when the river ran in the bottom, when we could draw water from it to irrigate. I remember when there were orchards in this valley as far as the eye could see. Now there’s a patchwork, only a few squares of green where folks had the money to dig for water.

Every minute the drill pushes farther, and every minute the cost grows higher. If we don’t find water, I’ll have no harvest this year, and no way to pay the debt to the diggers. The house my ancestors built with their own hands, the ancient window glass, bubbled and warped, that they placed in the panes, will be lost along with the land it stands on. Someone who cares nothing for it will knock it to the ground, or leave it to slowly rot in the sun and the dust.

If we don’t strike water soon, not even a good harvest this year, or the next ten years, will pay for this well.

“That’s it,” one of the workers says. “Water.” He says it as if he knew all along they’d find it, as if it wasn’t the shape of my life, my family’s life, all depending on this.

The first flow comes up, pumped from deep beneath the surface. Thick and red like blood, it spills onto the ground.

Then clear water follows, washes the stain away.

We have bought ourselves a little more time.