It started in death and in a way everything does. Around three weeks before my first week of law school, I was a witness to my Aunt Jodie’s will. The somber man in the glasses was the first attorney I met that I hadn’t worked for.
I wondered how many expired dreams were sitting half-drafted in his briefcase. At one point, the corner of a page raised its hand as if to speak, but I imagined it was a groundhog. If the will saw its shadow, then I’d have six more weeks with Jodie, and, if not, then she’d have an early, eternal spring. Early spring sounded better. Early spring sounded temporary; I thought back to summers where I didn’t even notice spring had happened. I pretended death could be this sweet if it wanted to.
Sitting next to Jodie, reminded me of my limited interactions with the landscape of Texas. I looked at her, and she was a field of bluebonnets. My parents used to thrust my sister and I into that light blue sea of blooms that undulated without wind every Easter. I’d sit there, eggs in tow, with a smile dripping like melted candy, while I waited for the camera to click so that I could bolt back to the car away from the bees. I never understood why you can’t see bees in bluebonnet photos until I saw Jodie that summer. Death was a bee lurking around her body, and Jodie had used her hand with fingers soft and encompassing like Texas night to swat at it once before. That time it flew away, and this time it lingered, but, like all the photographs of children frozen in bluebonnets, our eyes will never spot the bee. A desperate hum will brush our cheeks. We may giggle, cry, or run, but we won’t see it coming. I pictured a congregation of old mouths spitting out death like an empty sunflower seed shell onto to the concrete floor of a screened-in porch, while the goodness of life slid down their throats to be digested later. Meanwhile, outside of Dallas in some unnamed heaven, Jodie was standing stark and blue against the highway waiting to welcome the next generation of children (because I’m starting to believe that is what we all are until we die).
On one of my visits, Jodie handed me a bag of frozen rhubarb. Ronnie’s family had come from Nebraska with homegrown rhubarb and he deserved a pie; my granny, I was told, would know the recipe. This is when I learned that death is intuitive like folding pie dough. You add enough flour until it looks right, roll it out thin enough, and bake it until it looks like life’s last sunset—you’ll know it when you see it. My grandmother’s hands had kneaded plenty of dough, but this one wouldn’t stop sticking to her fingers. None of us were ready to let her go. “Add more flour,” my grandmother barked, “and quit taking up so much room in the kitchen.” I forgot that baking was the business of birth, death, and anything we decide to celebrate in-between. I forgot that this pie would be the last one we would bake her. I forgot that this pie wasn’t even for her. I washed my hands, but didn’t change my clothes before we dropped off the little tin pan.
***Please read the rest of this piece at my new blog http://www.insidethecavalcade.com
Cavalcade 