Sand in My Eyes (17 page)

“So where do you live?”

“I rent a place near campus, and travel summers. I go light when I travel. I’m happiest that way. There’s something carefree about roaming the world with nothing but the shirt on your back and a pair of jeans, and I can sleep most anywhere. Just give me a big old oak tree and I’m dreaming in seconds.”

“So you’re migratory by nature,” I said.

“Funny you should say that. I’ve got a lady friend who calls me ‘Free Bird,’” he said with a chuckle, “but no, I guess the divorce did this to me.”

“Sounds to me like you’re not meant to be living in modern America. Maybe you should have been born a couple of centuries earlier, maybe as an Indian, or an eagle.”

He laughed. “You’re probably right.”

“You ought to move here, to this island. It’s busy during the season, but slow the rest of the year. It’s a wildlife sanctuary, not your typical place to live.”

“I’ll bet it must be nice living here. Do you like it?”

“I do,” I said, “but life is life. I used to think there was a utopia, and if I moved and moved and moved I would eventually find the perfect place. But now I know it doesn’t matter that you’re living on a subtropical island if your marriage is bad. If you’ve got problems, escapism only goes so far. You must be glad not to be married to her anymore. Sounds like you’re better off on your own.”

“Without a doubt,” he said.

“Good for you. It sounds like you have things all figured out,” I said in a final tone, as if letting him know we should both say good-bye.

“I can’t believe I said all that,” he said then.

“What?”

“All that stuff about me. You must think I’m a total sociopath talking so much about myself like that.”

“Not at all,” I reassured him, and put my hands in the water on both sides of my canoe like a beginner, hand-paddling my way closer to his kayak. “It sounds like you know who you are and what you want. That’s good.”

“I don’t think anyone truly knows who they are,” he said. “Do you know who you are?”

“I haven’t a clue,” I said.

“That’s okay. Why do you have to know who you are? Why limit yourself?” This time he was using his paddle to move closer to me. Our boats were touching again, our eyes locked. It was easy for our eyes to lock. The water trail was shady from the mangrove branches. If we were still on the bay, with the direct sun coming down on us, our eyes would have a hard time locking.

“I feel like I know you from somewhere. Did you ever live on the East Coast, New York, or Connecticut—maybe when you were a kid, or in college?”

“Nope,” he said. “I’m a Midwesterner.”

“Then, no, I don’t know you,” I said, shaking my head, trying to figure out why I felt like I knew him, like we had met before, grown up in the same home town, gone to school together, been side by side like we were now since the beginning of time—there and together at the creation of the world. How ridiculous, I quickly told my right brain, my left brain, and all the vibrating cells of my body—we didn’t know one another at all! I had been with Timothy since college and still didn’t know him!

“You weren’t in the Peace Corps, were you?” he asked.

“No, were you?”

“No,” he answered. “I just thought it would be a cool question to ask.” And it was after we stopped laughing that I knew he felt it too and was searching for an answer as to why we felt the way we did, as if we had met before.

“I should get going,” I told him.

“Me, too,” he said, looking at his watch.

“Well, it was nice bumping into you.”

“I’m glad you did. Bye.”

“Bye,” I said back and closed my eyes, listening to the sound of his paddle
slapping the water, while thinking about what I wanted to write, that once upon a time there lived a woman who believed a big rock on her left hand would bring her happiness. Now, I thought as I pulled and tugged at my wedding ring until it made its way over my knuckle, that woman would trade the rock for a pebble if the pebble promised happiness.

When I could no longer hear the sounds of Liam’s kayak moving through the tunnel ahead, I opened my eyes and saw I was headed right into a mangrove. I ducked, but one of the branches scratched across my forehead. Crouching as low as I could on the floor of the canoe, I was struck with inspiration and wanted to write it all down, but instead I got back on my seat and used my paddle and hands to push my way out, the canoe rocking and tipping. Once dislodged, I paddled and maneuvered my boat backward. Then I grabbed a pen from my bag and started to write.

A woman stuck in a mangrove might look like a mangrove, taste like it, smell like it, but that doesn’t make her a part of the mangrove. Once she gets herself out and washes off, she no longer looks, tastes, or feels like the mangrove, and it’s the same with misery
.

I put my notes back into my bag and started paddling away from the mangrove I had been caught up in. “I was stuck in it, but I was not it,” I said out loud as I started to paddle harder and faster than I had before, knowing I could never forgive my husband for what he had done to me and declaring with all my might that I would leave him once he returned, move on with my life, taking the children with me!

And I would write! I would write to comfort me, write to counsel me, write to make sense of it all, and write to create for myself a better life, a life where dreams come true and people live happily ever after. Then again, it wasn’t as easy as it sounded when there was always someone or something getting in my way. It wasn’t the act of writing I found hard, but my finding an uninterrupted chunk of time in which to do it.

When I entered the wide-open bay I put the paddle down, letting the canoe slowly drift about under the morning sun while questioning how a mother knows when to give up certain selfish passions and fold laundry instead.
I struggled with this, and needed to know whether I should hang my cravings to write out to dry until a different stage in life, or when I am old as Mrs. Aurelio and there is no one to answer to but the flowers in my yard.

I reached for the book my neighbor lent me, the one containing a mother’s inspirations, sealed in a ziplock bag. I pulled out a folded piece of stationery, opened it up, and began to read.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

1933

My Dear Daughter
,

With one in four Americans wanting to work but not finding it, the world is once again a difficult place to be. No mother wants to see her children hungry and coveting things they cannot have, but worse is when she sees them no longer dreaming, pursuing, seeing in their minds the things they believe in
.

I’m fearful, Fede, that this depression America is going through, and all the labor you are doing out in the fields, is limiting your mind’s capacity to believe—to believe in a beautiful world. And believe me, of all the things I’ve wanted to grow, rice never made my list. It’s why after hours in the field I gathered the coins I had been collecting, the ones saved for an emergency, and walked to town and bought the book I am now writing in, the book that cost more than a week’s worth of potatoes! Guilt-stricken, I have been hiding it under my bed, pulling it out after everyone is sleeping. The men of the house, they couldn’t possibly understand my longing for beauty, the kind that flowers bring, and so I’m keeping it my secret, flipping through its pages, crying over the colorful pictures while wishing for flowers in our life
.

I don’t want you to think I spent all that money on a simple book on roses when it was actually a reminder of the possibility of a splendid future, the preparation I needed to take to move toward a destiny of my own choosing, of optimism, of hope and what lies ahead, a reminder that, as roses bloom prolifically, then don’t bloom at all, only to bloom yet again, so it is that life is as short as it is long. Despite these depressed times that seem to never end, we will all look back on them as only a season of drought in our lives
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There are an infinite number of things a woman must do in her lifetime, more things she doesn’t want to do but has to than there are things she wants to do and can. And whether she is doing what she wants to be doing or doing what she must, there is never sufficient time in a day to get it all done. All I can say is, cut out that which isn’t needed in your garden, in your life, once or twice a year. Trim away that which serves no purpose and benefits neither you nor others. Trim it all away. And space your plants appropriately. Overplanting, crowding your days with too many commitments, activities, and involvements, may lead to disease and fungus, and the things you want to do won’t stand a chance of surviving
.

I want a rose garden, darling. I can’t help it—I do! As I flip through the pages of this book, I want, imagine, and believe I already have an amazing garden, abundant with roses. I also educate myself, read all there is to know about the growing of roses, and the more I read and learn of them, the more I believe in things I don’t have and in my power and ability to reap what I sow. A couple of mornings ago I took you aside and closed my bedroom door, telling you I had a secret and pulling the book out from under my bed. Fedelina, your eyes grew big like when you were a little girl, and you burst into tears when I flipped it open to the colorful pictures of roses. It was then that I told you, no matter what your situation, Fedelina, never look at a rose as a luxury item. It is not. It is a necessity in a woman’s life!

On those mornings, dear, when I awake and feel overwhelmed, defeated, exhausted with regard to what has become my life, when all I want to do is turn over in bed and crawl under my pillow to hide, I force myself to open this book of roses, to look at the colorful pictures. I read from the Bible, too, and then pray, begging that the dull and boring routine that is my life will blossom into more. After doing this, I find my mind unfurling. Even as I’m picking rice all day in the field, I see my dreams and work on them in my mind. I’ve done this so many times that my dreams have become far greater than I originally imagined, and it’s because I’m seeing instead the dreams that the Lord has for my life. The creator of the shells on the shore and the fish in the sea has adjusted my small way of thinking to dreaming bigger for my life
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And now, I’ll let you know what your mother has been up to. Early to bed, early to rise is what I’ve been doing, waking one hour earlier than my norm. Sometimes it’s the only way I can get an hour to myself. With my morning hour I’ve been sneaking outside for a walk, to a patch of dirt that no one is using, and there I’ve been selfishly playing, at least that is how others might see it. You see, darling, when you pursue what you are passionate about, to others it might look like you are only playing in the dirt. But you will know the difference between playing and toiling in that toiling brings forth changes in your life—even if that change is in your state of mind
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A wife and a mother sometimes feels a certain guilt when she plays frivolously, which is why sometimes she must keep quiet about what she is doing. In case you’re wondering, I’m out here secretly trying to grow a few things of my own. I don’t feel right telling any of the men what I’m up to. Even if your daddy were alive, I might keep it from him, or he might call me selfish for growing flowers in a time of depression, when each of us is only getting a mouthful of food per meal. Or he’d at least persuade me to grow the practical, edible kinds
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But I’m not growing anything edible. I’m growing roses, or trying. I’m sitting out here on a tree stump now—alone and inspired—overlooking my disturbed patch of soil and hoping I can do this right, grow roses not to eat, nor to wear, nor to live in, but to look at in and of themselves for no other reason than pure loveliness and delight. It’s something I feel compelled to do. It is my wish that one day soon I will hand you a dozen roses, and they will make you smile and have you believing again that you are stunning, life is lovely, and that you deserve abundance in your life
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