Effervescence

Gma shows me how to fold paper napkins, fives, and socks into the brown paper bags we bring to the park to leave for the forest of sleeping bags.

She teaches me art. Black, Brown, Red, White, Yellow. She shows me the beauty in the glorious complement.

She gives me a blank canvas. Brushes and paints. Tells me to go to town.

She is a work of art who refuses to get hung up, and certainly not on the small stuff.

She trains me to whistle when the pot starts calling the kettle black.

She places books in my hands and makes me balance them on my head.

She teaches me to balance the books, too, and how to make a killing.

She teaches me how to curtsey, and never to lower myself for anyone.

She teaches me to read words, and silence, shoulders and throats, symmetry and asymmetry. From her I learn to differentiate laughter from laughter, eyes that smile from smiles that don’t.

She teaches me to count numbers, street signs, the hands of time, the ways she loves me, and the ways she expects me to love me, too.

She lifts my chin that I might lift my eyes to bottles in rivers, tires in forests, oil in water.

She presents me with nickels, dimes, and quarters for bottles and cans I find while hunting seashells, easter eggs, and sunken treasure.

She takes me for a ride, teaches me a variety of ways to cycle, and recycle, and how to stand on my own two feet.

She sees smoke signals circling the clouds and reads the tea leaves.

She sees to it: my cup is never empty.

She encourages me to dance, because life is a song and if you’re happy dancing, it makes no difference how many chairs remain when the music stops.

I learn from her what it means to count endless blessings, like poverty and adversity, absence and recovery, strength and strategic patience, a sense of humor, confidence, and perseverance wherever light retreats.

She is the lullaby I sing. The endless shore I seek. She buoys me when my tiny sail slips below the horizon, bobbing and weaving my way to anywhere new.

She is a veritable beacon of light and strength in a tide of indifference. Bystander apathy, be damned.

She is a million contradictions and contraindications, and she’s perfect in her imperfection in tiny white sneakers.

She brings me home. Her voice is a siren song, and I am powerless to its beauty.

She is the garden planted and tended and tilled, until she can no longer weather another season.

She whispers, “Tag, you’re it. Plant your soul. Let it take root.” She takes a long slow drag and makes me swear I never will.

She advises, “Invest time, energy, beauty, imagination. Spare nothing.”

Such endless love she gives. “You are my world,” her parting gift, whispered.

*

Her path is her own.

She knows I seek to follow, every footfall, every failure, every choice, every misdirection. I choose never to be separated from her. But our paths diverge.

She walks ahead, with tenacity and grace, never looking down, or back.

She walks ahead, and elsewhere.

Eyes opened or closed, I cannot see her. But I feel her presence everywhere. In the shadow of trees. In the company I keep. In the losses I endure. In the triumphs I pay forward.

I owe her so much--thanks for the water--and everything else, and then some. I owe her all.

She leaves, not because I can stand on my own now, although because of her I can.

She leaves because her path and mine are not the same.

She showed me the way.

Now I walk this path alone, but never on my own. She walks beside me and within each breath.

She understands what I have yet to comprehend.

“Diamonds only shine after pressure does its duty.” She told me once when I palmed her wedding ring. A magic trick she taught me long ago.

She willed it to me. And from this day forward, its mettle lives deep beneath my skin.

***

Copyright © 02/27/2024 by Christy Munson. All rights reserved.