Sand in My Eyes (39 page)

“I’m not doubting you, Lord,” I prayed, “but I’m questioning whether inspiration is only imagination, and blind faith simply compulsion, and creativity the arousal of the mind.”

When I finished my prayer, I looked up and saw a sign for a corn maze. After paying the five dollars, I set off through fourteen acres of dead ends, crying my eyes out as I went. My mind and soul were at odds with each other, questioning which one was to blame for having wasted all those years working on the same darn story, a ridiculous story, and wondering whether I had made a mistake, entwining spirituality with creativity and thanking the Lord each time a sentence or paragraph fell into my hands like a blossom from a tree.

“Where are you, Lord, when I need you the most?” I asked out loud, two hours into the maze and unable to find my way out. I didn’t want the farmers sending helicopters out in search of me. I didn’t want to be the laughingstock of Indiana or of the world should I decide to release my novel, so I got down on my hands and knees and once again prayed to God, telling Him how scared I was at the thought of Him not existing, and how full of fear and alone I would feel in walking through the labyrinth that is my life.

Three hours later I found my way out, refused a complimentary hayride, but bought a homemade soy candle instead. As I started walking back toward the Belvedere Nursing Home, there was a tractor stopped ahead waiting for a bird—a whooping crane—to cross the road.

“The bird forgot it has wings,” I said to the farmer on the tractor.

“They have no fear,” the farmer said back to me with a grin. “The birds have no fear.”

All I could think for the rest of my walk was what that farmer had said, that the birds have no fear,
no fear, no fear
. So why should I? I knew then that I would fearlessly plow full force ahead, read the rest of my story to Fedelina, and then ask her what might make it better.

“Whatever it was,” I mumbled to myself, “the receiving of inspiration or the activity of imagining, it drew me closer to God.”

Early the next morning, after my own dark night of the creative soul, I returned to the nursing home and to her room. I didn’t feel like talking about pancakes or asking her how she had slept. I only felt like reading. And then, about asking her what might make it all better.

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

I WENT ABOUT THE
rest of my summer setting the alarm and writing for two hours every morning. And one morning, as I was brewing coffee, I noticed through my kitchen window that things were starting to happen in Fedelina’s yard. I grabbed a crayon and a picture one of the boys had drawn for me, and on it I wrote what I saw:

There were new varieties and colors, new flowering stems growing in her yard
.

Later that afternoon, carloads of seniors were coming and going, and this got me to wondering whether she was ill and whether I should bring flowers—no, chocolate … no, an apology—but then, a couple of evenings later, I saw her hurrying down the stairs with one lady, two ladies, three ladies trotting behind, each of them carrying straw hats, dried flowers, glue guns, and more, as if they were volunteering for a bazaar, creating items for an arts and crafts festival. And they were laughing.

It was hard not to notice all that had been going on in that yard of hers each day, and soon I noticed a routine. Ladies would pull into her driveway every Tuesday night, talking about a thing I did not understand—“Mah-jongg” was the word they always said, a word I heard at least once through my window every Tuesday night, after the kids had fallen asleep and I had turned on my computer to write.

I found it difficult to write with my windows open on Wednesday nights. More women with white hair, these wearing oven mitts and carrying pans of steaming potluck-style foods would arrive, so I closed my window, not wanting to smell the food or listen to the ladies having fun.

Thursday nights were the best for writing. I would turn on my computer and, as I waited for it to warm up, I’d look out my window and watch my neighbor, all dressed up, carefully descend her steps. “I can’t talk now, I’m late,” I heard her say on a cell phone one Thursday. I had never seen her talk on a cell phone before. “Yeah, my e-mail class, that’s where I’m going now.” Whoever it was she was talking to was probably as surprised as I to hear she was taking an e-mail class. “It’s easy. We’re attaching pictures. It’s a nice way to keep in touch with grandchildren, but I’ll call you later. If you were on e-mail, I’d e-mail you later.”

And then I’d watch her back out of her driveway like a teenager, talking on the phone and pulling too far to the right, the branches still scratching the side of her car. Thursday nights she left for the movies. I know because I heard her once, talking with a friend who had come to pick her up. They were going to someone’s house to watch
Grumpy Old Men
, which one of them had rented. I saw her on Saturday mornings going down her steps, carrying different orchids each week. She must have joined the orchid society and was probably president by now.

Her orchids were gorgeous and got me to thinking again as to who I was. “An unhappy wife,” I said out loud as I swept the last remnants of a morning at the beach out my front door and over the side of the porch while the children were at the table eating. And I no longer wanted to be an unhappy wife. I wanted to be something beautiful, like an orchid or a white ibis, or a wife in love with her husband.

It was then that I noticed my neighbor dragging a suitcase down the steps, and there was that look on her face, the one that says, “I’m no longer lonely,” and it inspired me. If she, at her age, could sidestep her way out of loneliness, then I could do something about the stagnant relationship with my husband.

Despite the time gone by without us speaking, I left the kids inside and hurried toward her, wanting to tell her of the impact that the look on her
face and all the activities I saw through my window were having on me.

“Let me help,” I said. “You shouldn’t be doing that by yourself.”

“I’m fine, really,” she said.

“Looks like you’re going on a trip.”

“Nashville, Tennessee,” she declared. “Grand Ole Opry.”

“You have family there?”

“No,” she said. “I’m going with a group of friends. We’re taking a motor coach.”

“Good for you,” I said as I helped put her suitcases in the back of her convertible, wanting to tell her that I admired her. “Do you need help watering your flowers while you’re away?”

“It’s not necessary,” she said as she opened her car door and got in. “Nature waters them for me, and I won’t be gone that long, but thanks for offering.”

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

I STOOD THERE WAVING
until I could no longer see her car, and then I got on with my day: finger painting inside with the children, making homemade dough, gluing glitter and eyeballs to seashells. After all of that I looked at the clock and it was only nine-thirty in the morning, and I started to fret over what else we might do with our day. Fretfully, the hours passed, and I was glad when I put the children to bed and could start to write.

The next morning I woke early, as I had grown accustomed to doing, writing by candlelight my story about a woman who suddenly wanted more than anything in life for her marriage to rebloom. I did this, staying up late and waking early to write, for the remainder of summer, no longer caring whether it was good or not. The writing was mine, and I enjoyed the process. It satisfied me to the point that I didn’t stress at the end of the day if the laundry wasn’t folded or the floors swept. As long as I knit together a nice sentence or organized a good paragraph, I could close my eyes and feel that which comes from being productive.

But the last day of summer I wanted to be different, a day the children and I would remember. I woke my usual two hours before the world, but not to write. Instead, I washed and dried their clothes, laying them out warm and in a row on the sofa, then filled cups with juice, giving Marjorie the pink, Tommy the blue, and Will the green according to their favorite colors. I then poured cereal into bowls, set spoons beside them, and
placed shoes by the front door. The children were still asleep, so I showered, dried my hair for the first time in months, and got dressed.

And they were
still
sleeping. I scurried around the house, wiping counters, emptying the garbage, and smashing with a paper towel the small black bugs—the newcomers—that had invaded my pantry shelves. I dumped a box of rice and stopped myself from doing more. I could do more tomorrow. I could do everything tomorrow.

Tomorrow, when the boys start preschool and Marjorie goes to the two-morning-a-week program for younger children, everything from folding laundry to writing during the day to grocery shopping and prepping for dinner would become simpler, more possible, and I would feel more like the person I once was, a woman both sanitary and sane.

I poured myself a cup of coffee and sat down outside, on the top step, dreaming of tomorrow. I would bring them to school, come home, and do all the things I had been longing to do but never had time for, like floss my teeth. I would start caring for my marriage, setting it up as one of my petals and nurturing it in ways I never had before. If Fedelina could add all those things to her life, alleviating loneliness as she did, then I could try a few things of my own—what did I have to lose? But I would do all of that tomorrow, after dropping the kids off at school.

First, I would enjoy today—take them to town, get their pictures taken inexpensively at a superstore, have lunch, and watch a matinee. And if everyone was behaving, we’d breeze through the children’s department, picking out desperately needed T-shirts and shorts for school. Then, if the sun wasn’t too hot, we might stop at a park. Timothy could meet us, and together we’d watch our children play to their hearts’ content on this last day of summer. And it was a beautiful start, indeed, one of those mornings when everyone was getting alone fine. The daisies were mingling with the pansies, the morning glories entwined around weeds, and even my husband and I were talking kindly to one another. It all had me feeling as royal as any Queen Anne could be.

“Hi,” Timothy said as he sat down next to me with a cup of coffee in hand.

“Hi,” I said back.

“So what do you and the kids have planned today?”

“Special things,” I told him, “all sorts of special things.”

“As long as you don’t spend money,” he said. “We only have eighty dollars in our account.”

“What?” I asked, bursting with self-pity. “How can I do the things I had planned if I can’t spend money?”

“I don’t know. You’ll have to figure it out,” he said.

“Not even a little?”

“Not even a dime,” he said. “We bounced three checks last week.”

“All I bought were groceries.” And oh, how I had been craving a good loaf of rosemary bread from the local gourmet market, with olives on the side and a bottle of sparkling pomegranate juice to go with it.

“Doesn’t matter what you bought,” he said. “You still bounced three checks. We can’t keep doing that. Don’t spend a penny until Thursday. You’ve got to respect me on this.”

My mouth closed shut like the beak of a black skimmer.

“I can’t spend money until Thursday?” I asked, fighting back tears. I could hardly talk about how overwhelming I found it to be a woman, a consumer in today’s world, a person with material desires and needs, yet no longer having an incoming salary of her own.

“Better yet, Friday,” he declared. “And I think you know what I’m about to say.”

“No,” I corrected. “I never know what you’re about to say.”

“It’s time you return to work,” he told me.

I could hardly talk. I no longer felt any passion for work. I wanted to write, and to focus on other things, like keeping house, making great dinners, picking my children up from school feeling refreshed! And I wanted to work on our marriage, on figuring out what had gone wrong, on making it better, or trying.

“Why are you making that face? The kids are starting school. It shouldn’t be a shock to you. I can’t do it any longer, living on one income like we are.”