The sun glaring into my closed eyes reminds me that it is summer. When I open them again, the world looks faded like an old photograph, and I feel like I have been here before. Sure, I was here yesterday and the day before that, but my childhood was miles away in a wide, mostly flat field adorned with dandelions and a long, steep hill patched with clovers and chopped grass that stuck, like a scarecrow's, out the ends of my sleeves after I rolled down the hill.
I wonder what happened to the years since those days of hill-rolling and doing cartwheels in the field past dusk, when Mom would call me in at dark and beg me to take a bath or at least wash my feet, but I wouldn't because I liked the way they felt when the bottoms were grassy-green. I almost felt that yesterday. I pushed Bea on the swing under the fatherly maple, and I felt like I could be ten years old, pushing my sister skyward as afternoons were measured in laughter.
Days seemed dull as the seasons stack into piles of old calendars, but now, the flowers, the trees: it all seems vibrant. I wonder where I've been the past eleven years because I don't remember any days like this lately. I think of the past ten months; the journey has been long.
This colorful house was my safe-haven in the fall. I didn't realize then how much morning tea and a patchwork quilt could hold me together. They warmed my body to a semi-cohesive being, stitched from these simple tokens of Christian love after being picked from a sidewalk of grief where I was a fluff of dandelion popping through the cracks--pieces floating away with each tug of breeze.
Bea loves to pick flowers. She walks along finding the brightest hues and textured arrangements. She picks them short, just tall enough to fit in Kim's tiny vases that scatter the kitchen table and counters. She pulls a dandelion from the side of the road and adds it to her bouqet as we walk towards home.
Summer used to mean this for me: playing outside all day, running around pretending like we were adults because it was summer, so we answered to no one. We--Katlin, Derek, and me. Those days are long past, though, and my recent recollections of summer are working at the daycare, counting heads for ten hours a day and being too exhausted to venture beyond the kitchen after returning home. At least, that's what I'm sure it would be like if I were staying at my parents' house. My mind blocks the last four summers from resurfacing. If I were at home, I would be going to Derek's every night after work.
I keep having these moments where it hits me that he won't be there when I go back. These moments are painful in a way that I cannot grasp because the concept still baffles my mind. Last weekend, I sat over his grave in awe. Had he really been placed into this rectangle of ground? The grass is a solid green across the plot where a short, yellowed patch had sprouted in the fall. It all blends in now, smeared together by the season's first cutting, and I cannot be sure if he is really there because my memory of those months has blended too.
The town of Waynesburg is the only place here in Southwestern PA where I have no connective thoughts of, "I should be doing this with Derek right now." He's never been here, and phone calls were never enough anyways. When I opened my eyes to the sunlight, a rush of urgency flooded me; if I were home, I would be with him. No, I will not allow myself to go there. I am here; I am safe; I am living a life painted in purples and reds and three daughters, like sisters, when added together equal the age of my own, as if I am living with her at all stages of childhood again. Where is my brother?
This house greets me like an old home aftering my brief stay months ago. I feel part of this family, and I wonder what happened to this sensation in my own home where I spent my childhood. The kind faces that I'm spending my days with encourage me towards hope--in faith, in future, in family. The dandelions that Bea picked open petals of orange and yellow; home is sitting around a small table in mismatched chairs to sip the morning's prayer to the day.
I don't know what brought Derek to mind as I let the rays seap through me, but now as I listen, I hear him all around me. The birds chime to each other in a symphony of summers spent listening to Uncle Eltie talk crazy to them as he sat by the mailbox when Derek and I brisked by. The breeze trickles down the hanging pipes that sing to the touch of metal-on-metal--the only voice that answered during the days after he died. The dogs bark down the street the way Casey would when she saw me bounding down the hill as she peered through the open window. I even see him in the sequins of birch leaves, flicking like pages through a book. He is the breeze carrying the birds' tune, the dogs' bark, the leaves, the curtains by the window. His new voice speaks without words, only tiny clangs of soft-loud-echo.
"This feels like summer when I was a kid," I told Kim as we walked inside for supper. Bea and I prepared spaghetti, and I saw the green-stained balls of her feet as she tiptoed on a chair to stir the noodles. I peered under my own toes to find that they matched. She turned to me and smiled, probably proud of her noodle cooking, while I smiled back, wanting to hold on to green feet and children's laughter and bouqets of dandelions on the kitchen table.
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