The Library The faces of the Grays— jaws set against laziness, skin wet from tending their crops in the heat— stare down like stars, shine down from their frames on bookshelves along my parents’ walls. Mom enlarged treasures of family Polaroids displayed down here in the library: Grandpop is in the garden pulling corn from dark stalks paused in time and jutting antiqued against a white sky. He fights weeds bent on killing a harvest. Work left undone leaves empty mouths, say weary eyes flashing down from their perch. He worked, and it was good. He worked, too tired to grieve. Those thick arms under rolled sleeves are bones in the earth now beside his young son. The bookcases covering two walls show portraits Mom had restored— one returns Grandmom Gray to her youth, smoothing her skin, reigniting in her eyes the hope they showed before she lost her third grader to influenza. But life went on: she had another son who had my mom, and Grandmom helped rear my mother then me. In another photo, as just a little girl, Mom sits on the linoleum sorting circles from the box of buttons Grandmom collected over decades. From her rocker, she darns socks and watches the child divide colors and diameters into piles. And as my dear great grandmother struggled to attend my wedding, we knew it would be her last outing. And as she lay toward the end in her hospital bed, I spoke I love you into her ear. Then she died. Dad preached the funeral sermon— and her button box, with its wisps of frayed threads, was passed on down to me. Iron frames clutch other snapshots nearby: two curly girls in the kitchen window giggle for their mother’s, my Mommom’s camera. I know what they’re watching. I’ve seen it too: outside Poppop stares skyward, hands jammed in dungaree pockets. Even today, he oversees flames reducing trash in his barrel. My kids, too, will change in their frames, as he surveys the lawn overgrowing the Gray garden. On the red sofa downstairs, Tom holds me. His German nose and Italian head of hair appear nearby in the portrait of our newborn. Our child’s a toddler now, asleep in my parents’ construction truck grandson room. It’s Thanksgiving night. My folks, siblings and their spouses play Pictionary upstairs. But down in the library, we open the guest bed. My husband is soft in his undershirt. And all these images surround us— Grandpop fixes his tractor in the field, Grandmom pares her beans from the earth, as skin hangs from their solid bones. Their sons, Poppop and Uncle Gil, sit at the woods’ edge, laughing from their bellies, crouched on that log, spitting like twelve year olds— and these preserved scenes align beside the photo of my mom in her lilac sweater swaddling our son. Nine months later, I’ll deliver another little boy. In him, we’ll sow perseverance, so he will grow into his forefathers’ strength. And it will begin as a sparkle and glow from the sides of his ocean-blue eyes. Bird’s Eye Review, July 2009
Posted on: Tue, 04 Nov 2014 23:20:30 +0000
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