BEGINNINGS

 

We are lined up quietly against the wood-paneled wall of the hallway, my older siblings and I, as if we are under inspection, or about to give some sort of recital for which we have forgotten to rehearse. But this is not a performance. Certainly nothing that could be prepared for. This is the moment our mother is being wheeled out on a stretcher, hovering somewhere between this world and the other, a bleached white blanket thrown over her, not unlike the heavenly robes in my illustrated children's Bible. This is the decision she has made, for reasons we cannot fathom. I am the youngest, and therefore the closest to her face as it passes. I want to say something -- anything -- want to reach out, but I have only been instructed to stand here, and to remain as out of the way as possible. The EMTs speak rapidly in their practiced medical code, all abstract phrases, acronyms, and numbers. None of it sounds clear. Time makes no logical sense in these moments, everything rushing by in a whir, then to an almost excruciating slow motion. The wheels of the stretcher squeak and clack in rhythm, the screen door slaps open and the ambulance departs, its siren spilling out in all directions. Then, there is only the silence between us, strange but certain, as if it has been waiting all this time to fill each corner of these rooms. Someone will come to check on us, they must. But for now, we are five kids suddenly on our own. Our mother is gone, and will be gone for some time. In some ways, she will never return.

MY GRANDFATHER'S DAY BOOK

 

Worn and dappled with age, it creaks slightly upon opening, must in its creases, a small narrow door leading immediately into the past. The winding blue script within -- all of it in Finnish -- I can only translate in part, a reminder that language, like memory, can only take us so far. What is left out of this ledger -- this list of dates, facts, and figures -- must write its own story elsewhere. There is no listing for the cost of whiskey and cigarettes, no mention of the son drowned on the other side of the world, nor the wife who followed soon after, no price mentioned for the arsenic that took her. The margins are narrow. There is room only for what he is willing to record, that which makes sense and can be easily measured. I don't know where my own days stand, so many squandered with laziness, the stubborn refusal of youth, so many unaccounted for. I know only that their shadow grows long, no matter which direction I stand. If I am found lacking, grandfather, let these words be a start, let my debt be paid in the telling.

WHAT MY FATHER FOUND

 

My father says that he remembers nothing

after finding my grandmother, thrown as if by

force upon the kitchen floor, her blue eyes gone

blank as river stone, blood not red but black,

reaching as one hand did into the stillness of air,

the other held inward, as if cradling a book

which no one could have seen or deciphered.

He remembers the amber bottle of arsenic glinting

in sunlight, the maddening shouts of the crows,

the strange weight of his own breath hovering;

remembers walking slowly back to the car,

easing it up the gravel road to the Halverson's

to start up a game of afternoon baseball.

I cannot pretend to know his thinking in these

moments, or whether all thought simply fled.

Yet in my mind's eye I see him, unwashed jeans

dragging at the heel, the bill of his cap pulled low,

walking much the same as I did at that age,

hands in pockets, gazing vaguely at the ground.

I can see him kicking at the dirt, signaling,

his worn H&B bat suddenly connecting, startling

the barn swallows out of their secret chambers,

the thin, red stitching of the ball turning

and turning, fast upon itself, shooting past

the billowing tops of summer trees; and below,

the lengthening silhouette of that farm boy

running, running toward a fierce blinding light

where, for one imperceptible moment,

he somehow manages to all but disappear.