Sand in My Eyes, page 10
There’s always that one type of flower, the one that everyone wants when it’s in, and seldom do nurseries have enough plants to supply its demand. It’s the same with mothers—everyone wants them at once, and there’s hardly enough to go around, to get everything done. That’s okay. It’s not always about being productive. Sometimes it’s simply about being there. That’s what everyone wants of a mother—for her to be there.
When I had filled ten sheets of construction paper with ideas, I decided to rest. I carried the roses with me into the bathroom and set them on the counter as I removed grimy pirate toys from the tub, then filled it with water as I thought about all that I had read in that letter from Cora. Suddenly I no longer felt justified in moaning over the challenges of motherhood and decided instead to put all my energy into the story I was writing. I didn’t want it to be an everyday, ordinary story, but rather, something life-altering, and I didn’t care whether it would alter the lives of others. I only wanted it to alter my own, and it wasn’t the story itself that I hoped might instigate change within me, but the process of writing it.
I lit a candle and dimmed the lights, trying not to care about the toothpaste smeared across the counter, or my body, a glimpse of which I caught in the mirror with all its imperfections, the body that long ago was so in shape. Instead I thought about what Fedelina had said, that if a mother takes care of herself, she is more happily able to give. I stepped foot into the bath, the first such that I had taken in years.
I stared at the roses beside the tub and saw plainly what Fedelina had been talking about when she said that aspects of our lives go through cycles of blooming and non-blooming. There were times when I had nothing better to do than soak in a tub all night, times when Timothy and I were getting along, laughing, loving, and times when we were not. There were weeks of making homemade dinners nightly, followed by periods of visiting Chinese buffets. It was the same with the house. Some months I kept up with it and other months I let it go. Early morning power walks felt great, but then the kids would get sick, or work took over, and walking was pushed aside, like coffee with friends, an activity I savored years ago. Then I started to find myself too busy to return a call, and how sad, for friends put on hold are friends no more.
It all made me wonder when these aspects of my life might bloom again, and whether my relationship with Timothy could reflower. I turned the bathtub water off, as I had long ago turned off my attempts to make him understand how overwhelmed I was with work, home, and our kids. It was why I had let the nonverbal cues take over, the glares, the sarcasm, the coming to bed later than him and rolling onto my side silently, without saying “good night” when the sun went down or “good morning” when it came up. And to think, we once loved mornings together, sipping coffee on the mattress on the floor, sharing our dreams. Not anymore.
I held my breath and slid under the water, hoping to drown my melancholy. When I surfaced, I heard a man’s voice outside my window.
“This, right here, is a good spot for it,” he said.
“A few feet closer to the house would have been nice,” said a woman.
“Too close to your house, and the branches won’t have enough space to fully develop. Keep in mind” —the man said, and I recognized the voice; it was Fedelina’s son— “it’s small now, but one day this thing could grow upward of sixty feet, Mom.”
“I didn’t know southern magnolias get that big,” his mother said. “How many years are we talking?”
“According to the girl I bought it from,” Liam told her, and I was hardly breathing so as not to miss a word, “an average tree will grow from sapling to the top of your roof by the time a kindergartner heads off to college.”
“Good, I’ll be alive to see it,” declared my neighbor. “That’s twenty years from now,” he said.
“I know,” she said matter-of-factly. “That’ll make me around one hundred. Oh, stop looking at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like my doctor when I told him I was going to live that long.”
“You told your doctor you were going to live to be one hundred?”
“I did, the day he told me the disease had already wreaked havoc on my body,” she said. “The day he told me in so many words that my life span wasn’t going to be all that long, so yes, of course I told him that.”
“Good for you, Mom.”
“Never let anyone put a timeline on your life, Liam.”
“Don’t worry about me, I won’t,” he said. “So where do you want this tree?”
I could stand it no longer. I had to see the tree they were planting. And I had to see her son! I stepped out of the tub and tiptoed over to the window, and there I stood, naked and dripping wet, watching that grown-up boy of hers carefully steady a tree down into a hole. His mother then held it firmly in place as he went for a shovel.
It was a small tree, handsome, with dark, lustrous green leaves, and he was handsome too. I could hardly take my eyes off him. Standing in a puddle of water, I felt rooted. My feet wouldn’t budge but I was content to stand, forever gazing down at the beautiful evergreen tree and at him, breaking apart clods and removing stones and other debris, then backfilling the hole with soil.
“Done,” he said when the hole was filled, but I didn’t want him to be done. I wanted to stay perched in my window all spring, admiring from afar the small magnolia tree with its one and only waxy white flower. It was a beautiful flower, with a splash of bright purple in its center, and he was beautiful, too, Fedelina’s son, the man who planted a tree for his mother and who was now gathering up shovels from her yard.
“You know, Mom, southern magnolia suffers transplant shock.”
“So?”
“So you can’t take it with you when you move. It would die for sure.”
“Who says I’m moving?” his mother asked. “Because I’m not—there’s no reason for me to move. The girls, they say they’ve found me a condo, but I don’t want a condo. And Suzie, can you believe, had the gall to tell me she toured an assisted-living community on my behalf.”
“They love you.”
“Then tell them to leave me alone and let me live where I want to live. It’s my life.”
“We know that, but you’re all alone here.”
“Yes, I am! For the first time in my life! And has anyone heard me crabbing?”
He laughed and so did I, alone in my bathroom, standing in a puddle of water with goose bumps forming on my arms, legs, and stomach.
“I have no intention of leaving here,” my neighbor went on. “Tell that to your sisters, will you? Or better yet, I’ll call them myself.”
“What if something happens and you need help. What if you fall?”
“Lord,” she said, “what if a papaya falls from a tree and hits me in the head? Let me assure you, Liam, if I fall, I wouldn’t call any of you.”
“You wouldn’t?”
“No, you’re not paramedics. I’d call my neighbor, and then I’d call 911.”
I put my hand to my mouth. I would have to set her straight, tell her not to call me, because I didn’t know anything about the physical care of senior citizens or saving one’s life, but then her son took care of it for me.
“No offense, Mom, but a woman coming over to your house like she did, in that nightgown, and then all those books in her yard …” He looked over in the direction of my house, forcing me to duck. “What’s going on with that?”
“I don’t ask,” said Fedelina. “She was throwing them out her window this morning. She’s a lovely woman, truly lovely—the kind I always imagined you with—but when it comes to certain things in life, Liam, I mind my own business. I don’t ask too many questions. I know better.”
I gasped, covering my mouth with my hand, while trying to hear what they said next—something about him going kayaking in the morning and that he craved a good rowing experience, time alone, with nothing but nature to regenerate his cells. I didn’t hear it all because they went into the house.
I went to my bedroom, sat down at my computer, and started to write.
I once loved baths, and taking them with my husband—loved them as much as I did working out. I once loved all sorts of activities, even cleaning. I was a neat freak—the slightest piece of lint had me sprinting toward my vacuum. Not anymore. And getting roses from my husband—I once loved that, too. The hardest thing about turning thirty-seven is missing all the things I once loved but haven’t time for anymore.
I was fully involved, in the creative zone, when one, two, buckle my shoe, three, four, there was a knock at my door.
“I know it’s late,” Mrs. Aurelio said, “but I saw your lights on. I hope I’m not interrupting. You’re not busy, are you?”
“No,” I told her, “just resting.” Resting so I might bloom again, I thought. “Why, is everything okay?”
“Well, I told my son I was coming over to borrow an egg.”
“Would you believe I still don’t have any? I haven’t gone shopping.”
“I don’t need an egg,” she said, lowering her voice. “I’m here to ask a favor of you. If you see my son, swear you won’t breathe a word to him about my attack in the garden.”
“I won’t say a thing,” I promised. “But if I hadn’t found you, and you didn’t get that candy, how serious could it have been? What would have happened to you?”
“Possibly convulsions,” she said.
“Oh.”
“Then unconsciousness,” she added, “but at that point there’s an injection that could have helped me. It’s important that you know—I keep it in my bag at all times. It stimulates the release of sugar into my blood. You could give it to me in the arm, buttock, or thigh.”
“Me? Give you a shot in the buttock?” I made a face.
“Yes, if necessary, but I prefer the arm. It starts to work in five minutes.”
“Why don’t you want your son to know?”
“Anna, I’ve spent years of my life handling their needs and worrying about them, and lately it feels like roles are reversing. I don’t like it this way—all seven of them calling constantly, questioning me. Mother, you’re all alone, are you eating right? Sleeping enough? Carrying your candy with you?” She put her hands in the air. “If I tell them what happened to me, they’re going to insist I sell this place and move closer to them.”
“And you don’t want to do that?”
“It’s hard to know,” she said. “Change—it’s hard for young people to understand this, but it becomes harder the older you get. And up north isn’t the same anymore. The old neighborhood has deteriorated. It’s not safe, and my friends have died or moved away, and to tell you the truth, I hate the cold. Up north makes me feel old, keeps me sedentary. I like the seasons on Sanibel. Things here bloom year round and there’s always gardening to be done.”
“What do you tell your family?”
“Some roses are tough and hardy and have a natural ability to withstand severe cold, but I’m not that kind of rose. Walking out to the mailbox would be one errand too many for me in below-zero weather. No, really, what I tell them is that if they want to see me, they can come here. That’s what I tell them,” she said. “I do feel guilty. My daughters keep telling me, ‘Mom, why don’t you move back closer to us?’ They say they’ll get me a condo, or we’ll shop around for one of those communities.” She shook her head, and then looked me seriously in the eyes. “I remember looking into colleges with them like it was yesterday, and now they’re researching assisted-living communities for me. It goes by fast, Anna.”
“That’s what everyone says. It’s why I want to make the most of it now. By the way, your mother’s letter put things into perspective. I no longer want to waste time moaning about my life, grumbling over every detail. And after what she went through, I don’t feel I have reason to grumble.”
“Lamenting,” she corrected. “My mother used to always tell me that as long as you crab to the Lord, it’s called ‘lamenting’ and it’s okay, productive.”
“Whatever you want to call it,” I told her. “The daily woe-is-me complaining that I do. I’ve wasted too much precious time fooling my mind into believing I’m a prisoner in a dungeon, without pleasure and tortured, without freedom to change the things I dislike.” I stopped there, not wanting to tell her I had spent all afternoon figuring out how to articulate it that way, turning my bitching into literary art.
“Should-haves, could-haves, Anna,” she said. “I tossed mine in bags and tied them up years ago. Unless you feel like driving yourself into a state of depression, they’re not worth a swarm of bees in May.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
BELVEDERE
DO YOU STILL FEEL that way today—that regrets aren’t worth having?” I asked her when I stopped reading and dropped the manuscript into my bag.
“I didn’t do everything the way I could have, but I did the best I could at that time. However, I was a worrywart, and I see now that most of my worrying was over nothing. Life happens whether you worry or not. Worrying does no good, other than rob you of the moment. And I was busy all the time—overwhelmed. I look back and can hardly think of a time in my life when I wasn’t busy with something. I wish I had spent more time doing nothing,” she said with a laugh. “Then again, look at me now. I have all the time in the world for doing nothing. So maybe I should have done more! What about you, Anna?”
“Me?” I asked. “I wish I hadn’t gone on living miserably for so long—all that wasted time of my life,” I finally said. “I do regret that.”
“I don’t see it as wasted time,” she said.
“You don’t?” I asked.
“No. There’s no such thing. To me, your garden was in disarray, that’s all. No one’s garden is perfect all the time.” She was holding the roses I had given her tightly in her hands. I pulled a pen from my bag and began writing all she had said as quickly as I could, knowing her words were the sort of material necessary to turn my dark story into an uplifting one. I stopped writing when I noticed her voice cracking.
“I don’t know why roses do this to me,” she said, looking ready to cry.
“What have they done?” I asked.
“Make me emotional,” she said. “About my life. I do wish I could have certain times back again.”
“You’re tired,” I told her. “You’ll feel better after a nap.”
“No, Anna, this is where I’m at in the cycle. Look at me! My days of full bloom are over, my petals no more. There’s not a whole lot more I can do at this age, no dreams to chase, fairy tales to believe in. You asked me about regrets.”
“Yes, and I regret that I asked you about regrets in the first place.” She was crying now, and I felt responsible. I hadn’t meant to upset her. I was nervous about her health, her blood pressure going higher, so I leaned onto her bed and awkwardly cradled her in my arms, wiping her tears the best I could, thinking hard for comforting words of wisdom I might share with her. “I feel bad I’ve upset you” was all I could think of.
“It’s not your fault,” she told me. “Regrets set in when all a person does is look back—when they’re no longer moving forward. But this is life, right? And we are constantly moving from one phase to the next, redefining ourselves as we go.” She stopped when there was a tap at the door and a nurse walked in.
“Blood pressure time,” the nurse said with a smile. “Then the doctor will be in.”
I stood up and went to kiss her good-bye for the day, but she took hold of my hand like she wasn’t ready for me to go. “I don’t let myself soak in them, but if you truly want to know my regrets,” she whispered, pulling me close, “I’ll tell you I regret the things I didn’t do in life more than the things I did. I wish I had pursued more of the ideas I had. It’s like my mother said—ideas not pursued are like seeds in a packet that never gets opened.”
I watched as the nurse wrapped the cuff around her arm. “I’ll come back,” I said. “I’ll come back after the doctor.”
“I need to know that I made the most of it,” she went on.
“Made the most of what?” I asked, bending down closer to her.
“My life, Anna,” she said. “Did I live a beautiful life?”
I looked at the nurse, at the curious look to her eyes. “I’m sure you did,” I told her, “but only you can answer that. Do you think you did?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “These are the thoughts that keep me up at night, if you really want to know. When this whole place is sleeping and no volunteer visitors sit in that chair, I cling to the random memories of my life, wondering the same darn thing. Did I cultivate beauty each and every day?”
“I’m sure you did,” I said again, feeling self-conscious, not knowing how to articulate anything profound with the nurse listening.
“Oh, you’re just saying that.”
“How about I come back in a little bit? Would you like that?”
“Yes, but I don’t want to keep you,” she said. “You probably have plans.”
“I’ve come to Indiana for no other reason than to see you.”
“Are you sure?”
“I promise. I have nothing else to do.”
I left the room and went to get a cup of coffee, feeling glad to be here. My friend was like an overflowing fountain and needed to talk, to let it all out. I was thirsty and felt like listening, taking it all in. I wanted to hear more about the stages of life, especially the stage she was in now that I would be in, too, one day if I lived as long.
I watched her door and, when the doctor left, I returned to her room, only to find her fast asleep. Pen in hand, critic hat on, I sank into the chair and started editing my novel, crossing things out and making notes in the margins. I spent the next hour doing this, adding a layer of embellishment to the part I would read next, as if I were an artist painting a tree, and now I was adding flowers to that tree. Fedelina needed this. She needed to hear, to see in her mind this layer of beauty.
