Sand in My Eyes (15 page)

“And you don’t want to do that?”

“It’s hard to know,” she said. “Change—it’s hard for young people to understand this, but it becomes harder the older you get. And up north isn’t the same anymore. The old neighborhood has deteriorated. It’s not safe, and my friends have died or moved away, and to tell you the truth, I hate the cold. Up north makes me feel old, keeps me sedentary. I like the seasons on Sanibel. Things here bloom year round and there’s always gardening
to be done.”

“What do you tell your family?”

“Some roses are tough and hardy and have a natural ability to withstand severe cold, but I’m not that kind of rose. Walking out to the mailbox would be one errand too many for me in below-zero weather. No, really, what I tell them is that if they want to see me, they can come here. That’s what I tell them,” she said. “I do feel guilty. My daughters keep telling me, ‘Mom, why don’t you move back closer to us?’ They say they’ll get me a condo, or we’ll shop around for one of those communities.” She shook her head, and then looked me seriously in the eyes. “I remember looking into colleges with them like it was yesterday, and now they’re researching assisted-living communities for me. It goes by fast, Anna.”

“That’s what everyone says. It’s why I want to make the most of it now. By the way, your mother’s letter put things into perspective. I no longer want to waste time moaning about my life, grumbling over every detail. And after what she went through, I don’t feel I have reason to grumble.”

“Lamenting,” she corrected. “My mother used to always tell me that as long as you crab to the Lord, it’s called ‘lamenting’ and it’s okay, productive.”

“Whatever you want to call it,” I told her. “The daily woe-is-me complaining that I do. I’ve wasted too much precious time fooling my mind into believing I’m a prisoner in a dungeon, without pleasure and tortured, without freedom to change the things I dislike.” I stopped there, not wanting to tell her I had spent all afternoon figuring out how to articulate it that way, turning my bitching into literary art.

“Should-haves, could-haves, Anna,” she said. “I tossed mine in bags and tied them up years ago. Unless you feel like driving yourself into a state of depression, they’re not worth a swarm of bees in May.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

BELVEDERE

DO YOU STILL FEEL
that way today—that regrets aren’t worth having?” I asked her when I stopped reading and dropped the manuscript into my bag.

“I didn’t do everything the way I could have, but I did the best I could at that time. However, I was a worrywart, and I see now that most of my worrying was over nothing. Life happens whether you worry or not. Worrying does no good, other than rob you of the moment. And I was busy all the time—overwhelmed. I look back and can hardly think of a time in my life when I wasn’t busy with something. I wish I had spent more time doing nothing,” she said with a laugh. “Then again, look at me now. I have all the time in the world for doing nothing. So maybe I should have done more! What about you, Anna?”

“Me?” I asked. “I wish I hadn’t gone on living miserably for so long—all that wasted time of my life,” I finally said. “I do regret that.”

“I don’t see it as wasted time,” she said.

“You don’t?” I asked.

“No. There’s no such thing. To me, your garden was in disarray, that’s all. No one’s garden is perfect all the time.” She was holding the roses I had given her tightly in her hands. I pulled a pen from my bag and began writing all she had said as quickly as I could, knowing her words were the
sort of material necessary to turn my dark story into an uplifting one. I stopped writing when I noticed her voice cracking.

“I don’t know why roses do this to me,” she said, looking ready to cry.

“What have they done?” I asked.

“Make me emotional,” she said. “About my life. I do wish I could have certain times back again.”

“You’re tired,” I told her. “You’ll feel better after a nap.”

“No, Anna, this is where I’m at in the cycle. Look at me! My days of full bloom are over, my petals no more. There’s not a whole lot more I can do at this age, no dreams to chase, fairy tales to believe in. You asked me about regrets.”

“Yes, and I regret that I asked you about regrets in the first place.” She was crying now, and I felt responsible. I hadn’t meant to upset her. I was nervous about her health, her blood pressure going higher, so I leaned onto her bed and awkwardly cradled her in my arms, wiping her tears the best I could, thinking hard for comforting words of wisdom I might share with her. “I feel bad I’ve upset you” was all I could think of.

“It’s not your fault,” she told me. “Regrets set in when all a person does is look back—when they’re no longer moving forward. But this is life, right? And we are constantly moving from one phase to the next, redefining ourselves as we go.” She stopped when there was a tap at the door and a nurse walked in.

“Blood pressure time,” the nurse said with a smile. “Then the doctor will be in.”

I stood up and went to kiss her good-bye for the day, but she took hold of my hand like she wasn’t ready for me to go. “I don’t let myself soak in them, but if you truly want to know my regrets,” she whispered, pulling me close, “I’ll tell you I regret the things I didn’t do in life more than the things I did. I wish I had pursued more of the ideas I had. It’s like my mother said—ideas not pursued are like seeds in a packet that never gets opened.”

I watched as the nurse wrapped the cuff around her arm. “I’ll come back,” I said. “I’ll come back after the doctor.”

“I need to know that I made the most of it,” she went on.

“Made the most of what?” I asked, bending down closer to her.

“My life, Anna,” she said. “Did I live a beautiful life?”

I looked at the nurse, at the curious look to her eyes. “I’m sure you did,” I told her, “but only you can answer that. Do you think you did?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “These are the thoughts that keep me up at night, if you really want to know. When this whole place is sleeping and no volunteer visitors sit in that chair, I cling to the random memories of my life, wondering the same darn thing. Did I cultivate beauty each and every day?”

“I’m sure you did,” I said again, feeling self-conscious, not knowing how to articulate anything profound with the nurse listening.

“Oh, you’re just saying that.”

“How about I come back in a little bit? Would you like that?”

“Yes, but I don’t want to keep you,” she said. “You probably have plans.”

“I’ve come to Indiana for no other reason than to see you.”

“Are you sure?”

“I promise. I have nothing else to do.”

I left the room and went to get a cup of coffee, feeling glad to be here. My friend was like an overflowing fountain and needed to talk, to let it all out. I was thirsty and felt like listening, taking it all in. I wanted to hear more about the stages of life, especially the stage she was in now that I would be in, too, one day if I lived as long.

I watched her door and, when the doctor left, I returned to her room, only to find her fast asleep. Pen in hand, critic hat on, I sank into the chair and started editing my novel, crossing things out and making notes in the margins. I spent the next hour doing this, adding a layer of embellishment to the part I would read next, as if I were an artist painting a tree, and now I was adding flowers to that tree. Fedelina needed this. She needed to hear, to see in her mind this layer of beauty.

Some roses have one annual flowering that is astounding, while others have lovely clusters of blooms. And then there are those roses that do not bloom, but explode, only to drop their spent petals afterward. Such are the cycles of life
.

“Working on your story, Anna?” she asked an hour into my editing.

“I’m always working on my story,” I told her and then laughed. “Even in my sleep it seems my subconscious is working on it for me.” I was hoping then that she might compliment it, tell me she liked what she had heard so far.

“Anna,” she said, “I was thinking, just an idea—you don’t have to do it.”

“What?” I asked.

“What if you were to include a section on me now, here in this nursing home?”

“Oh,” I said. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

“I know it sounds boring,” she said, “but it’s not about me. I was thinking more of this entire population to which I belong—twilighters, I’ll call us. All the men and women, like me, who are sitting out here on the beach after the sun has set. The younger ones have left, gone on their way, but we stay put, trying to distinguish stars from planets and memories that are no longer visible to our mind.”

“I could add all that,” I told her, putting my pen to the paper.

“Good, because I’ve experienced it, Anna,” she said. “I’ve watched the horizon fade before my eyes, and I’m still here. The sun no longer illuminates the sky, but I’m still here. And you want to know what the best part of it is for me?”

“What?”

“That I’m not here alone.”

“That’s good,” I said, writing fast and furiously, trying to capture it as she had said it.

“I’m blessed to have a big family, to have had lots of children, and now, visitors, coming to visit me at dusk, but I know women who never have anyone stop by. They’re sitting here in the near dark, all by themselves.”

When I finished writing, I looked up at her and asked, “Is there anything else you want the world to know about you?” And by “you” I was referring to this population of people living out the dusk of their lives in nursing homes.

“I’d want them to know that we do still have regrets,” she said.

“I don’t think a person your age ought to have any.”

“You mean I should be excused from everything I did or didn’t do?” she asked.

“You’re too old for regrets,” I said. “You’re nearly a hundred!”

“I’m curious,” she said. “What do you think I should be focusing on?”

“I don’t know. You should be happy to be alive, that’s it.”

“But I’m still a thinking woman, more so now with all this time on my hands, and I see now that life didn’t always go the way I planned. I’m okay with that, but I wonder at times whether I saw enough sunsets, if I appreciated things the way I could have, and you know what I regret the most?”

“No. What?” I put my pen back to the paper, ready to write.

“Why didn’t I plant a royal poinciana?”

“I don’t know,” I told her. “What’s a royal poinciana?”

“Oh, Anna, it’s one of the most spectacular trees in the world,” she said, “with orange or red flowers.”

“You planted a magnolia tree. That’s good, isn’t it?”

“Yes, but why didn’t I plant a royal poinciana?”

“There had to have been a good reason for you not to have planted one. Why do you think you didn’t?”

“The tree is messy,” she said. “Its flowers make the ground slippery, and its droppings and seeds, they’re unattractive. It gets so big that you need a tremendous amount of space.”

“See? There were good reasons why you didn’t.”

“You’re right,” she said. “I guess I’m okay with that, but sometimes—on those days when no one comes by—what I wonder the most, Anna, is did my life matter?”

I started writing again. “Of course it mattered,” I said, scribbling as fast as I could, trying hard not to skip a single word she had said.

“But was it significant?”

“Yes!” I said, desperate to say something good, to comfort the woman who once comforted me. I put my pen down. “The impact you had on me was significant. It’s why I wrote the book that I did, why I’ve flown all this way to see you.”

“That’s nice, Anna, I’m glad, but there were people in the world in need of help, real help, people who needed more than a beautiful bouquet
of flowers. They needed food and clothes and roofs over their heads. I read about them in the paper, watched it on television. I’d cry. But did I do anything? I don’t believe I did. I never inconvenienced myself, went out on a limb to clothe or feed a starving child. It’s a major regret of mine. Why didn’t I go out into the world more and try to help?” she asked, her eyes tearing up again.