The butterflies still visit the flowers in my parents’ backyard in November. The leaves shift colors and occasionally fall to the ground. The temperature dips. My mom brings in the more sensitive plants while my dad props the cabinets open to keep the pipes from thinking about freezing. I pull my woolen sweater out of storage. I find my jacket.
Rain sloshes down.
One Sunday
afternoon, my uncle stops by. We sit together in the living room, me, my uncle,
and my parents. “Everything we do,” he says at some point. “Takes everything we’ve
got to do it.”
I leave the room for a moment to go write that in my notebook. Filled with absolutes, it could be true. Filled up with absolutes, it could be false. It lands on us, at least my dad and me, as profound. It fits the moment. The mood. I don’t want to forget it.
The temperature
rises and then drops again.
Night comes sooner each evening. Polar Night is on in Svalbard, Norway, in the polar north. Daylong darkness. A world away. In the world closer to me, I daydream of cold and mountainous places.
On more than one
day, I visit the library or a few bookstores, sitting in the aisles with books
in my lap researching for a potential next novel. A librarian orders a list of
books and articles for me through the interlibrary loan system. A benefit of
being in one place for a while, of knowing my way around. I walk out of the library
with the sweet sense of waiting for a present to arrive. The anticipation of
words. I forget to ask how long I have to wait.
I wait.
For Thanksgiving,
my youngest brother flies in from Georgia and my older sister drives up from the
Hill Country.
We gather at my other brother’s house where my nephew and niece radiate like inexhaustible suns.
Out on his patio,
a chiminea casting smoke and heat our way, my hosting brother says, “The only
people who can be completely honest with you are your brother and your dad.”
He makes his statement an absolute and I don’t have a strong argument against it. Not strong enough. My brother is prepared with his proof. He presents it with examples. As he does, I think of all the people in my life and the truths I’ve been given. Raindrops raise the levels of the puddles in my brother’s backyard. One of which, my visiting brother reports back later, is my nephew’s favorite. Can an aunt be completely honest with a nephew, with a niece? What is complete honesty? A core, a kernel, an idea.
Sometime later,
after the food, after conversations, after playing with those fusioning children,
I herd the ones who came with me out to the car before it gets dark. Not
wanting to drive in this rain, down these highways, in this gathering darkness
with the responsibility of other lives in my hands
It’s the first Thanksgiving without my grandmother.
She, agonizing on
behalf of someone else, used to say, “I am so sorry that they have to get out
in this rain,” of any who had to get out in the rain.
And I, pragmatic and matter-of-fact, had often replied, “It’s just rain.” And now, here I am, planning around the rain, wanting the safety of already having arrived, of everyone being safe all the time.
Wanting everything
all the time and thinking about everything we do taking all we’ve got.
“The only constant is change,” my visiting brother says, but more poetically in a conversation with me and my older sister, and I forget to write down how he says it and so the exact words are lost though the sentiment has been around since at least 500 B.C.
The morning changes
around us. My sister drives south again home.
In the garden, the woodpeckers have a field day with the trees and the bird feeders. My mom names them off. Downy, red-bellied, yellow-bellied sap sucker. Leaves cover the brick pathways in the backyard and float in new puddles. A butterfly lands on the rain gauge, wings pulsing like falling leaves. I write things down and wait.
