Sand in My Eyes (14 page)

Still, life is hard. And I must say, neither I nor your father when he was living dreamed things would turn out like this. I never thought I would be working so hard, growing rice, while you roam about the field, lost and lonely, with nothing but daydreams to keep you company. I feel bad that you miss your friends and pray that your time all alone will enhance your imagination. I tell you daily that, when alone, some people feel loneliness. Others feel inspired. And a girl walking through a field full of the Spirit, full of ideas, is never truly alone
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But ideas will remain ideas if you never pursue them. They’ll be like seeds in a packet that never gets opened. Times are tough, but that doesn’t mean we should forget our hopes and dreams. The other day your father’s second cousin returned from town with cotton sacks of cattle feed, and it was you who noticed it first—rosebuds, daisies, and lilies printed all over those sacks of feed. My heart wept because the flowers reminded me of the goals I once had for you, the goals of any mother, that her daughter have a beautiful existence. I stayed up all that night turning those feed sacks into clothes for your dolls, and, by morning, I had thought up one more thing that I wanted to share with you about life
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That nations could rise up against one another in war, and that a single strain of the influenza virus can, within two years, wipe out hundreds of thousands of people, was proof enough to me that bad things happen. That one moment you’re sitting around admiring a bouquet of flowers on your kitchen table, and the next they have wilted, with their petals fallen to the floor. Houses burn and automobiles break down, jewels get stolen, hobbies grow old, and loved ones disappoint. Everything in life will dry up and crumble to the ground, but a soul in love with the Lord remains intact for eternity
.

Mums

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

BY LATE AFTERNOON I
was fully in the mood, enjoying the process, and whenever I paused in my typing I could hear birds out my window, like a chorus of angels, their singing growing louder than the voice of my own internal self-doubt. I liked what I wrote as much as I liked the quiet and the mood I was in for writing, but with only a few chapters down I would never have the novel written by the time my children returned. The vision I had in my mind would take longer to complete. It would take me well into fall, and possibly winter, if I wanted to write it beautifully.

Two hours later I looked up from my computer and my urge to write was gone. I wandered through the quiet rooms of my house with tissues in one hand and roses in the other. The tissues I used to kill the legions of sugar ants that had been feasting in my kitchen cabinets, while the roses helped me ponder over all that Fedelina had said about women needing periods of rest in order to bloom again. That idea worked nicely with my own gusts of inspiration, and I jotted ideas down on colored construction paper as I went.

There’s always that one type of flower, the one that everyone wants when it’s in, and seldom do nurseries have enough plants to supply its demand. It’s the same with mothers—everyone wants them at once, and there’s hardly enough to go around, to get everything done. That’s okay. It’s not always about being productive. Sometimes it’s simply about being there. That’s what everyone wants of a mother—for her to be there
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When I had filled ten sheets of construction paper with ideas, I decided to rest. I carried the roses with me into the bathroom and set them on the counter as I removed grimy pirate toys from the tub, then filled it with water as I thought about all that I had read in that letter from Cora. Suddenly I no longer felt justified in moaning over the challenges of motherhood and decided instead to put all my energy into the story I was writing. I didn’t want it to be an everyday, ordinary story, but rather, something life-altering, and I didn’t care whether it would alter the lives of others. I only wanted it to alter my own, and it wasn’t the story itself that I hoped might instigate change within me, but the process of writing it.

I lit a candle and dimmed the lights, trying not to care about the toothpaste smeared across the counter, or my body, a glimpse of which I caught in the mirror with all its imperfections, the body that long ago was so in shape. Instead I thought about what Fedelina had said, that if a mother takes care of herself, she is more happily able to give. I stepped foot into the bath, the first such that I had taken in years.

I stared at the roses beside the tub and saw plainly what Fedelina had been talking about when she said that aspects of our lives go through cycles of blooming and non-blooming. There were times when I had nothing better to do than soak in a tub all night, times when Timothy and I were getting along, laughing, loving, and times when we were not. There were weeks of making homemade dinners nightly, followed by periods of visiting Chinese buffets. It was the same with the house. Some months I kept up with it and other months I let it go. Early morning power walks felt great, but then the kids would get sick, or work took over, and walking was pushed aside, like coffee with friends, an activity I savored years ago. Then I started to find myself too busy to return a call, and how sad, for friends put on hold are friends no more.

It all made me wonder when these aspects of my life might bloom again, and whether my relationship with Timothy could reflower. I turned the bathtub water off, as I had long ago turned off my attempts to make
him understand how overwhelmed I was with work, home, and our kids. It was why I had let the nonverbal cues take over, the glares, the sarcasm, the coming to bed later than him and rolling onto my side silently, without saying “good night” when the sun went down or “good morning” when it came up. And to think, we once loved mornings together, sipping coffee on the mattress on the floor, sharing our dreams. Not anymore.

I held my breath and slid under the water, hoping to drown my melancholy. When I surfaced, I heard a man’s voice outside my window.

“This, right here, is a good spot for it,” he said.

“A few feet closer to the house would have been nice,” said a woman.

“Too close to your house, and the branches won’t have enough space to fully develop. Keep in mind” —the man said, and I recognized the voice; it was Fedelina’s son— “it’s small now, but one day this thing could grow upward of sixty feet, Mom.”

“I didn’t know southern magnolias get that big,” his mother said. “How many years are we talking?”

“According to the girl I bought it from,” Liam told her, and I was hardly breathing so as not to miss a word, “an average tree will grow from sapling to the top of your roof by the time a kindergartner heads off to college.”

“Good, I’ll be alive to see it,” declared my neighbor. “That’s twenty years from now,” he said.

“I know,” she said matter-of-factly. “That’ll make me around one hundred. Oh, stop looking at me like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like my doctor when I told him I was going to live that long.”

“You told your doctor you were going to live to be one hundred?”

“I did, the day he told me the disease had already wreaked havoc on my body,” she said. “The day he told me in so many words that my life span wasn’t going to be all that long, so yes, of course I told him that.”

“Good for you, Mom.”

“Never let anyone put a timeline on your life, Liam.”

“Don’t worry about me, I won’t,” he said. “So where do you want this tree?”

I could stand it no longer. I had to see the tree they were planting. And I had to see her son! I stepped out of the tub and tiptoed over to the window, and there I stood, naked and dripping wet, watching that grown-up boy of hers carefully steady a tree down into a hole. His mother then held it firmly in place as he went for a shovel.

It was a small tree, handsome, with dark, lustrous green leaves, and he was handsome too. I could hardly take my eyes off him. Standing in a puddle of water, I felt rooted. My feet wouldn’t budge but I was content to stand, forever gazing down at the beautiful evergreen tree and at him, breaking apart clods and removing stones and other debris, then backfilling the hole with soil.

“Done,” he said when the hole was filled, but I didn’t want him to be done. I wanted to stay perched in my window all spring, admiring from afar the small magnolia tree with its one and only waxy white flower. It was a beautiful flower, with a splash of bright purple in its center, and he was beautiful, too, Fedelina’s son, the man who planted a tree for his mother and who was now gathering up shovels from her yard.

“You know, Mom, southern magnolia suffers transplant shock.”

“So?”

“So you can’t take it with you when you move. It would die for sure.”

“Who says I’m moving?” his mother asked. “Because I’m not—there’s no reason for me to move. The girls, they say they’ve found me a condo, but I don’t want a condo. And Suzie, can you believe, had the gall to tell me she toured an assisted-living community on my behalf.”

“They love you.”

“Then tell them to leave me alone and let me live where I want to live. It’s my life.”

“We know that, but you’re all alone here.”

“Yes, I am! For the first time in my life! And has anyone heard me crabbing?”

He laughed and so did I, alone in my bathroom, standing in a puddle of water with goose bumps forming on my arms, legs, and stomach.

“I have no intention of leaving here,” my neighbor went on. “Tell that to your sisters, will you? Or better yet, I’ll call them myself.”

“What if something happens and you need help. What if you fall?”

“Lord,” she said, “what if a papaya falls from a tree and hits me in the head? Let me assure you, Liam, if I fall, I wouldn’t call any of you.”

“You wouldn’t?”

“No, you’re not paramedics. I’d call my neighbor, and then I’d call 911.”

I put my hand to my mouth. I would have to set her straight, tell her not to call me, because I didn’t know anything about the physical care of senior citizens or saving one’s life, but then her son took care of it for me.

“No offense, Mom, but a woman coming over to your house like she did, in that nightgown, and then all those books in her yard …” He looked over in the direction of my house, forcing me to duck. “What’s going on with that?”

“I don’t ask,” said Fedelina. “She was throwing them out her window this morning. She’s a lovely woman, truly lovely—the kind I always imagined you with—but when it comes to certain things in life, Liam, I mind my own business. I don’t ask too many questions. I know better.”

I gasped, covering my mouth with my hand, while trying to hear what they said next—something about him going kayaking in the morning and that he craved a good rowing experience, time alone, with nothing but nature to regenerate his cells. I didn’t hear it all because they went into the house.

I went to my bedroom, sat down at my computer, and started to write.

I once loved baths, and taking them with my husband—loved them as much as I did working out. I once loved all sorts of activities, even cleaning. I was a neat freak—the slightest piece of lint had me sprinting toward my vacuum. Not anymore. And getting roses from my husband—I once loved that, too. The hardest thing about turning thirty-seven is missing all the things I once loved but haven’t time for anymore
.

I was fully involved, in the creative zone, when one, two, buckle my shoe, three, four, there was a knock at my door.

“I know it’s late,” Mrs. Aurelio said, “but I saw your lights on. I hope
I’m not interrupting. You’re not busy, are you?”

“No,” I told her, “just resting.”
Resting so I might bloom again
, I thought. “Why, is everything okay?”

“Well, I told my son I was coming over to borrow an egg.”

“Would you believe I still don’t have any? I haven’t gone shopping.”

“I don’t need an egg,” she said, lowering her voice. “I’m here to ask a favor of you. If you see my son, swear you won’t breathe a word to him about my attack in the garden.”

“I won’t say a thing,” I promised. “But if I hadn’t found you, and you didn’t get that candy, how serious could it have been? What would have happened to you?”

“Possibly convulsions,” she said.

“Oh.”

“Then unconsciousness,” she added, “but at that point there’s an injection that could have helped me. It’s important that you know—I keep it in my bag at all times. It stimulates the release of sugar into my blood. You could give it to me in the arm, buttock, or thigh.”

“Me? Give you a shot in the buttock?” I made a face.

“Yes, if necessary, but I prefer the arm. It starts to work in five minutes.”

“Why don’t you want your son to know?”

“Anna, I’ve spent years of my life handling their needs and worrying about them, and lately it feels like roles are reversing. I don’t like it this way—all seven of them calling constantly, questioning me. Mother, you’re all alone, are you eating right? Sleeping enough? Carrying your candy with you?” She put her hands in the air. “If I tell them what happened to me, they’re going to insist I sell this place and move closer to them.”