Last Monday Cedar went back to school. Tomorrow Iris, Wednesday Wren. And so this segment of our lives closes. I am sure it will return. Nothing is for certain. The veil now is drawn aside. We have seen it all. There is no real going back.
But tomorrow they go back. It is perhaps irresponsible of us. Nothing about the virus has changed. But I cannot afford to be responsible now. I must hand that role over to someone else. I can only be needy of the break. And they need it, too, this space of friendship, this space with the lightness of being, this space without grief.
Iris is in the bath. I can see her back from the doorway, and her legs stretched out, and her little toes against the white. She is poking her finger in the real sponge holes. I wonder what she is thinking, feeling. Her shoulders seem a little rounded for joy.
I go in and say near her ear, “I am so happy for you.” Just in case she wonders if it is okay to be purely happy. She gives me a little smile. I return it with the biggest one I can muster. We rub noses. She’d like it to be simple, this going back, and she knows it is not.
And what will they remember? It may be this is just the beginning of a series of periods of home education, but as the first and the one in which they lost their grandfather, when death, for the first time, visited upon their childhood, they are sure to remember it. But how?
Many years from now –
Cedar: I just remember spring. Endlessly blue skies. And somehow it reminds me of Egyptian mummification. How is that possible?
Iris: Do you remember the dawn chorus?
Wren: No.
Iris: I don’t think you were there. It was just me and Mum.
Cedar: And me. I think I was there, too.
Iris: Did we see a song thrush?
Cedar: You drew a song thrush, I remember.
Iris: Did I?
Cedar: Apple crumble on the fire!
Joel: Laura Ingalls Wilder, every night before bed! Planting peas. Sourdough bread.
Cedar: The light at night, coming through my curtains. The sound of skateboards. Why?
Wren: I wish I remembered something. What was that strange time, Mum? Do you remember?
Me: I felt so old and tired and sad. I don’t recall much but love…Here, I wrote some of it down, for us all to read. Just a collection of moments really.
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