TH E G O OD DREAM
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and anger and tears and outrageous moments happened here. Some people’s lives are imprinted into a home like handprints. Seven children left their imprint here: Grady’s robust laugh, James’s disappointment, Lyle’s gift of mercy, Howard’s dry and ironic humor, Caleb’s flash of anger, my spirit for fun, and Henry’s commonsense way of meeting the day. Seven children were born here and two people left the world here. When Pop lay withering, the smell of his illness clung to the curtains and towels, and when I took a breath it felt as if the house was consuming me. The morning that Mother died, the house didn’t feel like death—smells of coffee and sausage saturated the rooms and seeped into the sheets, making her death so jarring to me. All the imprints of life are here, but loneliness is as thick as mud inside these walls. School let out the second week of May and besides the two weeks at the end of the year and the two weeks prior to the beginning of the year, when I either tie up loose ends or begin my secretarial work in the office and organizing the school library, I get the whole summer off. It’s just me and my garden to harvest, berries to pick, Gertie to milk, and this old house to keep running. These first six months of 1950 have gone by as slow as molasses in January; I can’t imagine what the rest of summer is going to feel like. The screen door groans as I open it and I sit out on the back porch, looking out over the garden. Sally runs to me, pushing her shaggy, blond head under my hand. She looks up at me with sorrowful, brown eyes. She misses Mother, too. We are a pitiful twosome but surely things will get better. Or worse. I never know.
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5/16/12 7:17 AM