Sand in My Eyes (25 page)

“Are you bored?”

“A little,” I told her. “I don’t want to waste my precious time, but on the other hand, I don’t know what to do with it, either. So what brings you over?”

“I know it’s early, but I noticed your lights on.”

“I was looking up a few things online.”

“Well, mind if I tinkle in your abode?”

“What’s wrong with your abode?”

“A frog, can you believe it?”

“A sticky frog?” I asked.

“I don’t know what kind of frog it was. It scared the ‘you know what’

out of me.”

“What about your son? Can’t you ask him to get rid of it?”

“He’s still sleeping, which is odd for him. He’s usually an early riser.”

“Oh?”

“He was out late. I don’t know where. I don’t ask, but I heard him come in.”

“Well, the green sticky frogs are kind of cute, don’t you think?” I asked, feeling nervous. “They’ve got those big eyes.”

“Obviously, you never put your foot into a shoe with a frog in it, because if you had, you wouldn’t care whether it was cute or not.”

“I guess you’re right, but my kids love them. We have them sticking outside our windows every night.”

I showed her to my bathroom, and when I turned the light on she looked me in the eyes and said, “You have a pleasant way about you.”

“Thank you,” I said, and went to brew coffee.

When she came out, I handed her a cup and we talked. We talked about small stuff. It wasn’t until she was headed toward my door that I asked her the big stuff, whether it’s wise for mothers to sacrifice their own interests and desires for those of their children when one day their children are only going to leave and start lives of their own.

“If you really want to know what I think,” she said as she started down my steps, “I think a person would do well to immerse herself in five things in life.”

“Why five?”

She stopped midway and looked back up at me. “I don’t know, maybe I was standing in a patch of primroses the day I thought of it and primroses have five petals,” she said. “But it makes sense, doesn’t it?”

“I’d have to think about it,” I told her. “Does it work for you?”

“Oh yes, I’ve always found that when I try mastering more than five things, I start to feel overwhelmed, and when I have less than five priorities on my plate, I feel lonely, bored, and lazy,” she said with a laugh. By now she had reached the bottom steps but was still holding onto the railing.

“I don’t know what a primrose looks like,” I confessed from my porch.

“Not just primroses, but buttercups, geraniums, pansies,” she said. “They all have five petals. Most flowers do, in fact. What flower do you see right over there?” She let go of the railing and took a couple of steps, then put her butt up in the air and pointed to a cluster of bluish-lavender flowers with trailing stems and evergreen leaves that, vine-like, were creeping along, covering the shady, grassless side of my yard.

I came halfway down my steps to better see. “I don’t know,” I said.

“You’re talking to a woman who hardly knows a daffodil from a tulip.”

“Vinca minor,” she said, standing upright again. “They’re periwinkles, and they have five petals.” She gave me a wave and left for her own yard.

The rest of my misty, moisty morning and cloudy afternoon were spent catching up on sleep. When I woke, I put on a pair of white shorts and a
short-sleeved yellow cotton blouse, cleaned the cobwebs off my rusty bike, and set off riding to wherever my thoughts took me.

As I turned onto Casa Ybel Road, periwinkles were covering the ground and got me to thinking in terms of five. I could see clearly how I had fallen into the habit of taking on too many petals up north—volunteering for innumerable causes, serving on this and that board at work and for daycare, heading up two, three, sometimes four committees at a time, never saying “no” and spitting out “yes” like balls out of an automatic pitching machine, offering to bake and bring homemade goodies to every event, staying up until the wee hours, contributing toward endless baby and wedding showers, spending a fortune on gift exchanges at work while bouncing checks at home, claiming for myself all the major titles to promote at work, and with them, all the pressure. Nothing I had been doing was of quality anymore, and I no longer walked, talked, or worked with joy.

“No wonder I am what I am,” I thought to myself as I rode along Middle Gulf Drive—a woman alone and loving it, pedaling her way across a barrier island in the Gulf of Mexico, with no friends except for Fedelina Aurelio and her son, no work, and, sadly, no family for at least a week. “Too many petals and the flower wilts,” I realized.

My habit of saying the word “yes” one too many times had worn me thin. My bike tires were thin, too, and needed air, but I wasn’t going to worry about that, I told myself as I stayed on the far right side of the trail, letting others pass me by.
I’ll start doing that in life, too
, I thought.

Let things pass me by. Let go and let others handle them
. I was in the mood to think, conjure in my mind five things worthy of my attention, but life doesn’t always go the way we want and my bike tire went flat. Veering off the trail, I hopped off and leaned the bike against a tree. When I could hardly think of what to do next, I pulled the book
How to Grow Roses
from the basket of my bike and, standing under a shady tree, I flipped through its pages, reading notes here and there that Cora had long ago scribbled in the white spaces.

Every morning I watch the lilies grow and wonder, what am I doing to grow my own self
?

There is no such thing as a wasted moment. Every moment of our lives holds significance. Even those we wish we could erase, the moments that made us cry, the ones in which we felt bored, or depressed, or angry. They all mean something, but only if we seek to find meaning in them. Search to discover meaning. Only then will you have no regrets
.

Don’t wait for a man to bring you flowers. Grow your own garden! Flowers don’t have to be some untouchable luxury item that you get only once a year, on a birthday or anniversary. You should be out planting your own, surrounding yourself, creating for yourself a world of flowers. Especially when life is dull and its vibrancy fades, it is then you must go out and find your own fragrance. This is not as selfish as it sounds, for a single rose can be appreciated not only by yourself, but by every pair of eyes that glances its way and every nose that stops to smell it
.

Don’t wait for any rose sale. A good rose is worth the price asked for it. But it’s better to buy yourself a cheap rose than no rose at all
.

I closed the book, left my bike against the tree, and started walking in search of a florist. Because I had never gone to a local florist before, never bought roses for myself, I had to ask three different people walking by to lead me in the right direction.

It wasn’t that I needed roses—the roses from my neighbor were still fresh and in jars on my desk—but Cora’s words compelled me for the first time in my life to buy them for myself! As I walked in the direction of the florist, I could see glimpses of the Gulf of Mexico and glimpses of the woman I wanted to become—a woman who does nice things for herself, and who sets aside a piece of time each day for her own care and well-being.

But as I turned onto Tarpon Bay Road, I could think of nothing more than the excruciating blister forming on my toe. I pulled my flip-flop off, carrying it in my hand and walking with a limp. And then I saw an old red-and-white convertible with silver trim pulled to the side up ahead, and
there was a man in the middle of the road, bending over, lifting a turtle by its shell. I stopped in my tracks and felt my throat tighten as I watched him carry it off the road and put it near the shrubs.

“I think they call this serendipity,” I said, walking up to him. It was Liam.

“You mean the turtle and me here at the same time together?”

“No,” I said, and laughed, “You and me.”

“I hope you’re not getting sick of me,” he murmured.

“No,” I told him, and then, as the turtle turned around and headed back for the road again—the direction Liam stopped him from going—I said, “I think you ruined his plan.”

“He’s a determined fellow—probably late for a date,” he told me.

Because I had a curiosity about Liam that wouldn’t subside, I could have stood there all day watching him carry the turtle across the road to the other side, and I wondered whether I might incorporate this into my story—the gentlest of things I have watched a man do.

“Question for you—two questions,” he said when he came back over to my side of the road. “If you don’t mind my asking, why are you holding a flip-flop, and how far are you planning to walk with that limp?”

I told him about my tire going flat and my blister, and about reading the letters his mother lent me—the ones his grandmother wrote—and how they inspired me to head to the nearest florist to buy myself flowers.

“I take it your husband doesn’t buy you any,” he said.

“He used to,” I told him, “but not anymore.” And suddenly I felt I had told him too much, had one too many times gone further than I should in disclosing the not-so-good details of my marriage. “I’m sorry about the other night,” I said, and he looked at me like he didn’t know what I was referring to. “Drinking as I did, and the way I rambled.” His eyes were telling me I didn’t need to feel self-conscious, that he had enjoyed talking with me as much as I did with him.

“You didn’t ramble,” he said.

“Thank you, but I feel like I did. And about things I’m sure no man wants to hear—the domestic woes of a woman.”

“I didn’t mind.”

“You’re being kind,” I said. “I didn’t even ask you what I really wanted to know, what I wondered about after you left.”

“And what was that?” he asked.

“Your upcoming sabbatical—what will you be researching, what sort of a book are you planning to write?” We moved a few feet over so we were no longer standing with the hot sun hitting our faces, and as we stood shaded beneath the awning of a sea grape tree, he told me how he was mostly interested in sacred places, and how every culture and time period throughout history has these beautiful sites, which are often marked with trees or stones or mountains or water, and that he wanted to visit several of them—from the Holy Sepulchre in Israel to Teotihuacan in Mexico—and research the artistic composition of them, of these objects of nature, as well as how they became sacred or holy.

“That all sounds fascinating to me,” I told him. “You’re talking to a person who has lived in every region of this country, but has never left the country, never gone to Europe, or anywhere else, only seen those places in books. What on earth inspired you?” I asked. “I don’t mean, why did you become an art history professor, but what made you want to research sacred places?”

“It’s been brewing in me for awhile. Back when I graduated from college with a major in art history, it’s what I knew I wanted to do. But before going on for my master’s, I wanted to see Renaissance art with my own eyes, walk into the very convent where Leonardo painted his
Last Supper
. And so I went to Europe with nothing but a backpack and a great pair of shoes on my feet. I took trains from country to country—focused on nothing but good coffee in the morning, art during the day, and red wine at night. It was an unbelievable experience to be so carefree. My whole trip was about beauty—mankind’s attempt throughout history to create beauty through art.

But then, one late afternoon I’ll never forget, I was in Rome and, with a guidebook in hand, I stepped inside the greatest work of Roman architecture and engineering—the Colosseum. I stood there reading its history, feeling the magnitude of the mammoth structure, knowing that at one time there could be some 50,000 spectators in those seats looking down at
where I was standing. And the thought of it—of the gladiatorial contests and the animal hunts, all those deaths in a single day—Anna, I can’t tell you how small I felt. It was the smallest I had ever felt in all my life. I hope this doesn’t sound strange, but I actually saw my size in relation to history—and to all of time—and suddenly, my life felt frighteningly short to me. It was then I knew I wanted to make the most of it, and to study things not only beautiful, but sacred, too.”

We stood there under the sea grape tree, talking long enough for another turtle to cross the road, and for Liam to tell me how, in 1749, Pope Benedict XIV endorsed the view that the Colosseum was a sacred site where early Christians had been martyred. I wanted to ask him whether the ground around us might be sacred, too, because standing there listening to him talk of all these ancient places around the world—and the look on his face, of a man pursuing his passion—was putting goose bumps on my arms and making me feel like I was on sacred ground. Just as I thought that, I felt hot sparks of pain dart across my foot and, when I looked down, I saw I had planted my foot on a fire ant nest and that they were swarming my toes, foot, and ankle. Their bites, like miniature fireworks going off on my skin, sent me hopping on one foot like an egret. Liam reached into his car for a bottle of water and poured it on my foot, but the ants were still having their way with me. So he got down on his knees and used his hands like a broom, sweeping the devilish orange-brown specks off my skin, and when we could see no more he let out a laugh.

“What?” I asked him when I had stopped hopping.

“Nothing.”

“No,” I insisted. “What’s so funny?”

“There’s absolutely nothing funny about this,” he said, “but I’ve never seen a woman doing one of those Indian rain dances.”

“Just don’t use it in one of your history lectures—don’t tell your students about this, the dance of the fire ants,” I said.

“I won’t, but I guess you have the title of your novel now.”

“The dance of the fire ants? I don’t think so. Keep to lecturing and not coming up with novel titles. I had better get going. I really want to continue my walk.”