direction

After a long span of much-needed rain, I stood outside, looking up into the damp, grey sky. Breathing was forced in the thick air, yet rain's familiar scent seeped into my lungs, triggering some memory that I couldn't pin-point. As I contemplated the blankness of the grey, a bat flitted aimlessly in odd loops and dips above my head.

I think we are using the same road-map.

Books

I am determined.

Note: Made from a pocket-sized Moleskine blank notebook and a plethora of "borrowed" library cards, as they are obsolete.

Windows

I close my eyes, and I almost feel like I am home in the woods. I can block out the cars--the street is unusually busy for a Sunday night, though it might have something to do with the fireworks freckling the sky from the practice fields a few blocks away.

I can't help but wonder if I would be sitting in a lawn chair on a moderate July evening--thank God for this first evening where it's been under eighty degrees before eleven o'clock--had things been different. Would I be home taking care of Derek? Would I be preparing to return to WU in the fall? So many things happened so quickly. I know there's no use wondering where I would have been.

There's no reason for me to explain that one.

A few weeks ago, sitting around the kitchen table with some of the wonderful women of Waynesburg, we talked about the phrase, "When God closes a door, he opens a window." We said that it didn't make sense. A window?! It's something that I've been really struggling with: people telling me that something good will come from all of the bad. I've taken it so personally, getting upset because I felt like people were telling me that the bad thing happened just so that something better could come from it.

I'm suddenly realizing that's not how it works.

Shit happens. As cliche as it sounds, it is the truest thing I know, aside from a list of other cliche phrases like, "Change is the only constant." But life has fluxes and winding roads, and sometimes you have to pass through some dark alleys to get to the ice cream shop. Sometimes, you have to work through grief to get to wherever the road is leading, be it Seattle or Phoenix.

A year ago, if someone asked me where I would be today, I would say, "At home, taking care of Derek, getting ready to go into my last semester at WU." Clearly, I am as far from that as possible because our plans don't matter.

I really like the idea of God being outside of time. Sure, I have a hard time really grasping it, what, being in-time and all, but I think that knowing that there's someone out there who's got it together and knows what's up is the only real comfort when we don't know how to handle all that we've been given. I keep finding myself saying "This past year," and I've been saying that for months. I'm usually referring to since Derek died, but it hasn't been a year yet. I think I'm too busy pulling on the emergency break, trying to get my life into reverse, that the whole process feels slower. Days pass, one after the next, but as a whole, it's like this big glob of calendar months, and if it really has to flip to August, please, please be 2011.

When I think about "the past year," particularly since February, I'm reminded of how aware I have been of others' struggles. I'm not the only one who has lost a lot this year. During my whole "if things had been different" contemplation, I started wondering what it would be like if Martin hadn't lost his job, if a place where I put my trust, my loyalty, and my dedication hadn't completely turned on most everyone that I cared about there, if the magazine that I wanted to see succeed hadn't been unjustly discontinued due to illogical closed-mindedness and a greater want for money than cultural progress. Phew, it just keeps going. Anyways, a lot of people have been hurt by change.

Ever since I heard that Martin was denied tenure, all that I wanted to do was take it back. I wanted to protect everyone from all of the hateful vibes and sour feelings. I think one of the biggest realizations with that, was learning that even if we could have taken it back, there was still the initial blow, and that was enough such that things would never be the same.

But God's been opening windows like crazy.

Back inside, I sit on the couch for a nightly routine of Sleepytime tea and Frasier. Really getting in the spirit, I use Kim's Seattle mug (my favorite with the thumb-grip is in the wash), and I laugh at my own life, thinking about how in three weeks, I will be in Seattle. Who'd have guessed?

Without air conditioning, it's been pretty hot. We open the windows at night in hopes of it cooling off a bit. As much as I love this place, it's time to leave. I imagine myself literally crawling through a window in search of the next door. I've got a long drive ahead of me.

But the windows are open, and the breeze is not so bad.

Note: In some way, this was indirectly inspired by Wendell Berry's series of "Window Poems," which is why I have included this excerpt:

       15.
The sycamore gathers
out of the sky, white
in the glance that looks up to it
through the black crisscross
of the window. But it is not a glance
that it offers itself to.
It is no lightning stroke
caught in the eye. It stays,
an old holding in place.
And its white is not so pure
as a glance would have it,
but emerges partially,
the tree's renewal of itself,
among the mottled browns
and olives of the old bark.
Its dazzling comes into the sun
a little at a time
as though a god in it
is slowly revealing himself.
How often the man of the window
has studied its motley trunk,
the out-starting of its branches,
its smooth crotches,
its revelations of whiteness,
hoping to see beyond his glances,
the distorting geometry
of preconception and habit,
to know it beyond words.
All he has learned of it
does not add up to it.
There is a bird who nests in it
in the summer and seems to sing of it--
the quick lights among its leaves
--better than he can.
It is not by his imagining
its whiteness comes.
The world is greater than its words.
To speak of it the mind must bend.
From Openings, 1968

Family comes first

Every time I may begin to think that I have my life in some sort of order, I get pulled by the ankle and shaken, upside down. Someone out there does not want me to settle for "contentment."

There are so many things that I have been wanting to write about, but I can't seem to find the time or the motivation--Derek's birthday, the entire month of June, my last credits of my undergraduate degree, getting accepted to graduate school, ditching my plans for Arizona to move to Seattle, starting graduate classes, preparing the Cockroft house for sale, preparing my belonging to move cross-country; clearly, the list goes on and on.

So that's it. Just like that, a month passes, and life is completely different. Sometimes I wonder how so many months could have passed where I felt the same; I felt like I had some sort of control over the situations, and I was okay. Now, I can barely get through a week without feeling like everyday is some major life event.

Maybe that's the way that it should be--never boring, always busy. Is this "carpe diem"?

Derek's first tattoo spelled "carpe diem" in a curly font, written inside of a chartreuse ribbon, representing Muscular Dystrophy. He wanted to remind himself and others that we can and should "seize the day" despite the world's best efforts to bring us down--everyone has challenges that weigh on us and keep us from living out loud. For Derek, Muscular Dystrophy was that challenge, and he woke to meet it everyday.

As I was browsing through Barnes and Noble today, I fell into the Poetry section, of course. I was pretty disapointed to have not found it until probably an hour-and-a-half into our trip there, soon before we would be leaving. Regardless, I browsed the meager one shelf of books and found poems by Emerson, Frost, Elliot, Shakespeare--all of the well-knowns. Near the bottom, there was a series of crayon-colored books by Mattie J.T. Stepanek, a young man who died of Muscular Dystrophy very young, in the early 2000s. Derek had one of those Heartsongs books on his shelves.

Katlin, Derek, and I have been talking about getting matching tattoos for years. In August, we finally decided--Katlin and I would each get our own variations of "carpe diem" tattoos with Muscular Dystrophy ribbons to match Derek's; he wasn't feeling up to being inked again, but he wanted to at least be there. Our appointment was for September 2nd. Six days after Derek died, we still showed up for the appointment.

These thoughts are so scattered. Am I living my life to the fullest? I thought I learned in Italy to slow down; don't rush. What does it mean "to the fullest" anyhow? As if there were some capstone of "yes, my life is complete." Maybe that is it--striving for a sense of completeness, a sense of feeling accomplished at the end of the day.

Here I am at the end of yet another of the quickly passing days. This isn't any day though. This is the last night with the family that has really taken me in during the past year in the house that was my refuge this past fall. Though I'll be around for a little while longer, this house is not "home" without them here. Though the guitar still hangs on the wall in the room where we have sung and prayed; though the kitchen still shines in warm orange and yellow; though the bathrooms are freshly furnished with the sinks that we all worked on; though the garden still blooms over fresh mulch and lined with stones that we poured ourselves into; though I have been here for such a short time, it is just a house, and it is not complete without them here. I have learned so well that "family" goes further than blood-relation, further than daily encounters, further than walls. Family is loving the people you are with as though they were always going to be with you.

Tonight, Kim said we needed to break a glass in the leaving of the home. She held it at the stem, with a paper bag around it, and the girls each grasped the wooden spoon, gently beating at the glass like a pinata until we heard the shink of the pieces against one another. Kim said it's a tradition to do this because it shows that family and relationship means more than walls or possessions.

And this is why I need to move on. I can't bear to be near the walls that held Derek and I in for so many years; it's time for me to go--to not be here in Southwestern Pennsylvania where all of these things remind me of everything good and everything bad. I need to move on because I've got everything that I need within me--the spirit of God, the love of friends, the memories of a brother. These things will not go away, no matter how many miles there are between me and the walls that I was raised in.

I thought that was the end, but it's not. I once took part in a wall-raising. We were volunteering with Habitat for Humanity in Greensboro, North Carolina. All week, we built walls. Finally, we started assembling. Many people all in a line, pulling and lifting and shifting and placing these walls into what would soon be a family's home. It's not about the walls themselves; it's about the people that raise them, just as when I say "the walls that I was raised in," I mean the people that have raised me. Too often I rush to my bedroom and focus on the walls of home, when really, what I love about it is all of the people there.

Looking through Derek's facebook, I came across a photo of Katlin, Derek, and I on his 20th birthday. One of those survey questions was in the comment box. Derek had answered to, "What does this photo say about you?"

"Family comes first."

Nature in Literature aka Camping Class

For my summer lit. course, we had to keep a journal where we wrote about being in nature and responded to some of our readings. Here are a few of my notes:

“To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society,” from Emerson's "Nature"

            Solitude is something that I think about a lot. Rilke talks about it extensively, and one of the main things that stands out to me is that he not only endorses and lives it, but he also recommends against it. He notes how solitude is not for everyone—only those who can truly handle being “alone” should even attempt it. I think that solitude is one of those things that always sounds great in theory, and probably everyone at least thinks about it, but it’s definitely not something to be taken lightly.

            Sometimes, I think that I would love to be that person who just goes out into the wild and lives. That’s it: just lives. It seems ideal; why not? Before all of this modern technology and cars and indoor plumbing—before all of that—people were really connected with nature. “The wild” was something to be explored; something to learn about; something to seek solace and adventure in; something to be feared and adored. I wish that we could get that back, but modern lifestyles are difficult to recover from. Even if I go for a walk, I will often listen to my iPod or check my phone for a text message. If it weren’t for my sanity (in listening to music) and my career-path (in requiring communication), I would gladly toss those items out the window and be alone.

            Yet even as I type this, I know that it is a lie. Lately, the people that I talk to most have been silent. I mean silent. I haven’t heard from them in weeks, and I when I send them a message, I get no response. However, thanks to the lovely Facebook, I see that they are still posting and therefore, still alive. It’s really annoying though; why do we invest so much into relationships that often fail or aren’t worth as much to the other party as they are to us? The biggest question from all of this is: how do we break from these societal ties that make us think that we need to be constantly in communication with other people?

            I think that’s one of the main problems that Emerson had: he couldn’t go into the wild himself because he was still tied to those European ideals and sense of community. Is it possible that we are just not cut-out to live in solitude because of the modern ways in which we are raised? Of course writers like Rilke and Emerson are few and far between, though there are many writers today. So it is with solitary beings as well. I want solitude like I want to stop eating candy bars, but I’m as attached to my iPhone as I am to the Reese’s Peanut Butter cup that I’ll devour when I get home. 

“We all travel the milky way together, trees and men; but it never occurred to me until this stormday, while swinging in the wind, that trees are travelers, in the ordinary sense. They make many journeys, not extensive ones, it is true; but our own little journeys, away and back again, are only little more than tree-wavings—many of them not so much," from Muir's "A Wind-Storm in the Forests"

            This reminded me of a popular quote about trees that goes something along the lines of, “If you don’t like where you are, then change it. You are not a tree.” Assuming that I am at least close to quoting it correctly, I just have to say that I never understood that. Trees are not stagnant to me. They have spirits and motion and life.

            As a result, I was really drawn to the selected passage from Muir. First of all, I love the connection of cosmos with Earth. I think too often, they are taken as separate entities, but, Muir is right—we are all in the milky way together. That aside, I definitely agree that trees make journeys. I think that it is silly to take on a perspective of only human, where we think of ourselves as the only entities who can move and live and breathe.

            One of the best parts about this quote is actually thinking about the trees’ travels. Grown trees are often so much bigger than us; we will never grow to such heights—yet, they sway. That motion seems disconnected from our notions of time. As I feel the breeze hit my face, it feels more tense, quicker , than what I see passing through the trees. There is almost a delay, as if each sway of the branches, twenty seconds in people-time, were three years in tree-time. Our long journeys that we take throughout our lives may seem like a lot to us, but, in fact, we all just take a multitude of little journeys, maybe just few-year ventures, just like the sighing trees.

Response to Time in Nature                                                                             6/23/12

            As I sat at the picnic table attempting to read, something caught my peripheral. Some white speck was moving in contrast to the dark, still table. I tried to ignore it as I did with the voices from a boating lesson or the creaking oars drifting by on the lake. Curiosity got the better of me, or maybe I was just looking for any distraction, any excuse to take a break from reading. I looked toward the white speck.

            I have never seen a caterpillar so wild. It was a symmetrical punk—dark, brown tufts of hair, standing up like they’d been straight-ironed, on its front and behind; three white balls like Q-tip ends stuck to its middle. Were they egg sacs? Just part of the design? It meandered along. Really, it’s feet looked like suction cups with their forced movements, yet as a whole, the small being looked graceful, deliberate. It walked across the first plank, started the ninety-degree-drop, then reached across to the next plank an inch away.

            I was shocked to see the caterpillar make the stretch and wondered how its squishy body managed such stability. Once across, it turned left and kept going, crawling across the table to the far end. When the end of the table approached, the caterpillar reached out, as if for another plank, but upon feeling none, it crawled straight down.

            I never touch caterpillars because:

                        1) They freak me out. Anything with that many legs cannot be trusted.

2) They tickle when all of those legs crawl across my pores and flirt with the thin hairs on my knuckles that I never knew were there until the caterpillar brisked them.

3) With all of those crazy colors and funky hair, they’ve got to poisonous.

            I looked at the yellow spots and the contrast of colors on the furry critter. Are they poisonous in bite? Is there something in their fur? Is it even fur? I wanted to put the caterpillar under investigation and ask for answers to everything that I don’t know.

            I wondered what it would be like to have nothing going on in my mind. My first thought when I saw the caterpillar seemingly aimlessly venturing in, what I think is, a big world (and must seem endless to the caterpillar) was that it must be great to just be. Is that even possible for humans? We’re so caught up in infinite thought processes, and we’re so tied down by language.

            The language of a caterpillar:

                        .:...:...:...:...:.........::....:::....:...:...:...:...:::.......::::...:.......:......

            Even though my first thought was that the caterpillar had no thoughts, I can’t help but imagine some map in his mind, some internal compass directing him where to go across that table. And, naturally, if he thought anything at all, he spoke Portuguese.

Response to Time in Nature                                                                             6/23/12

            When I lie on the ground, the sounds in the woods seem illuminated. The chipmunks dancing through last fall’s leaves are deer blindly building a trail; the birds lightly flitting and calling are children running and screaming across a field. I wonder how I haven’t heard them before. No, I have heard them, but they just sounded like background noise then. Now, they are the only noise—aside from the bulldozer in the distance and the hum of cars on a distant highway. It seems like there is no escaping modern living, but so often, nature escapes me; how is that?

            I think about morning. At home, I go outside and something about the cool air seems to make the birds louder—their harmonies and responses echo between the trees. As I drive down the hill, twelve bunnies run in front of my car and twenty-four chipmunks sit nibbling on stones along the side of the road. The world is alive.

            I think about afternoon. I go outside, and I can hear the heat waves bouncing off the air—stuffed with molecules so thick that it becomes difficult to breathe. I hear cars. I hear people. I wonder where the chipmunks are hiding.

            As I sit on a bench, I hear a rustle beneath me. I look, ready to lift my legs to safety if anything freaky is down there. I slightly jolt as two chipmunks race into view. They come from opposite directions and pause about a foot away from each other and only inches from my toes. They both look at me. I look at them. They look at each other. I’m still looking at them. And in that moment where their eyes meet, their glance is so awkward, like secret lovers who have just been found out, but they try to pretend it didn’t happen as they turn and run in the directions from which they came.

            I watch both of the chipmunks reach the woods. One jolts up a tree; the other runs in small circles on the ground before deciding on a different tree to mount. Leaves crackle. Small toes pitter up pieces of bark. A moment passes.

Response to Time in Nature                                                                 6/26/2012

            I ventured into the woods without direction, just to see where they would lead. I decided to follow Throeau’s advice of just going wherever my own two feet would guide me. Of course, I ended up lost—is there such a thing as lost? (We are never really far from home.) It wasn’t long though before I found a small trail. I thought at first it may have been from deer, but then the consistency of its wear seemed too planned for un-patterned four-footed beings. A bike trail, maybe? It soon led to a much wider path—for hiking or maybe horses. The hoof-prints of horseshoe and deer gave away the instant connection that humanity would impact any inch of soil we could touch.

            There weren’t any climbable trees. I was losing hope of finding my heightened escape when I saw it—a giant ‘L’ leaning obtusely at 125 before immediately shifting straight skyward. I removed myself from the path and walked toward it, planning my approach. A small knot provided an immediate foothold as I pulled myself onto the tree.

            The poor traction of my sneakers left my feet slipping as I grasped further up with my hands, slowly maneuvering my way. When I got to the corner of the ‘L’, I let my bum flop onto the slanted bark. Propping my feet, I took off my shoes and socks and let my toes grasp the tree’s skin to keep me from sliding back down. I leaned back onto the trunk and closed my eyes, imagining that I was an extension of the tree.

            Silence cannot persist here. The breeze, the birds, the bugs—it all echoed through me. So, also, did humanity. Beyond my being, I could hear the distant humming highway. Even here, well into the woods, the sounds of man could not evade the calling air. I wished that I could turn it off—mute the commercials so that I could better enjoy the nature channel. Gosh, even my metaphors turn into technological references of modern making.

            Kayaking in Florida this past spring, I fell in love with the open water. I yearned to venture towards that infinite horizon that left so much unanswered. As I’d point my boat south, reaching for the un-seeable shore, my vision dizzied with the thought of actually being caught with nothing around me—no way of escaping the floating craft that determined my survival. I resolved to always keep one eye on the mangrove islands that pervaded the glades—one step removed from humanity, yet always safely within distance of return to the comforts of knowing where my next paddle would lead. The Gulf called, but, like Thoreau, I could not fully indulge in answering the echoing waves.

            In the tree, I focused, like Abram,  my attention to the details of nature, tuning out all other distraction,—be it the highway or the rushing waters as in his Balian cave—and I let an uncertain silence pervade the continuous thrumming, echoing on the edges of my eardrum. Now I could read.

            At 1:28, the pages of my book began to glow; my pupils contracted to small ants, skimming from left to right, but the words couldn’t hold my attention. I looked for the source of light, a rarity in such covered woods with sunlight blocked from the branching leaves that reached for each other, like Michelangelo’s God and Adam. The breeze sparked that touch, allowing light to briefly reach my page.

            The mesmerizing sensation of light dappling the forest echoed the waters when sunbeams, at the peak of mid-afternoon, would dance along rolling crests, creating a glittering array. Dulled by the reflection of color versus water’s shine, the light hopped from leaf to leaf, making its way to the ground in hopeful spurts—just enough to quench the photosynthetic thirst of the plants below.

Response to Time in Nature                                                                 6/27/2012

            I was looking forward to kayaking because I like being out on the water. Floating, itself, is an interesting spectacle. When I first started paddling, my mind was focused on time: was two hours too long to rent the boat for such a small lake? I started out across the water, aiming to reach the other side of the lake, past the swimming area. When I realized that I would be there in less than ten minutes, I realized that this wasn’t just about rowing.

            I paused, letting the weak current drag my kayak in small beats. I lifted my feet from the cockpit and rested them on top of my boat, feeling the sun dry the water droplets that had splashed on my legs. Leaning back onto my elbows, I closed my eyes. Nothing came to mind. Such meditation seemed foreign to me—always busy and thinking and re-thinking every scenario.

            I decided to warm my face in the sun too, so I raised my neck, lifting my face skyward like a turtle basking in late afternoon. I could hardly feel the small bumps of current beneath me, and the world seemed to be still, save for the shrinking shoreline in front of me. The water has a way with warping distances to seem farther.

            When I opened my eyes, another kayaking was zooming past. He nodded at me, and I gave a small tilt of my head and slight smile in return. Had he been closer, he probably would have said something about what a nice day it was and how great the water felt. I definitely was not about to interrupt my contemplation with speech, though my internal voice started up again.

            She told me that it was weird how it looked like the kayaker was going so fast. I wondered if I went that fast too. When you’re actually in the boat, it doesn’t seem like much—you move; the water moves; the trees are standing still, but you could swear that they were walking too, like when you are the passenger in a car or on a train, and you focus your eyes on the closest trees, and they look you are passing them really fast. Then you focus on farther trees or an approaching billboard, and they are stationary; your speed hasn’t changed, but it feels different; the item in focus seems to reach you slower.

            I put my feet back into the cockpit—my kayak cocooned around me, and I snuggled in, imagining I was floating above ground as in the hammocks tied between trees at the shoreline campsites. As I reached the edge of the lake, I passed a group in a canoe. Two men were on either end of the boating, rowing in sync, while a woman sat in the middle, perched and poised, sunglasses resting on her face; a daschaund yapped under her left arm. Her face jerked towards the dog, and just as quickly, she smacked it on the head with her free hand. “Shut up!” I heard her snip; she sounded even more annoying than the dog.

            As I watched them float away, I kept paddling. When I reached the edge of the lake, I paused, feeling slightly disappointed. I looked around—the park seemed pretty void; there weren’t even many people at the beach, which was still well within my sightlines. With a burst of giddiness, I rowed the right side of my paddle backwards, the left forwards, and continued this pattern until I completed a full-circle pivot. Then I laughed at my own idiocy and began paddling back to the other end of the lake.

            I looked at my watch. 3:45. I still had an hour and a half to play with the boat. I decided that it would be fun to take a closer look at the edges of the lake. The vegetation varied, and I thought I might see some interesting critters there too. I began my scaling of the circumference of the lake.

            I got off to a rough start. As I paddled, I paid more attention to the shore than where I was going. Not only did I end up caught in shallow water, but I nearly floated right over a fishing line. I looked up just soon enough to paddle away from the transparent line. I sheepishly apologized to the fishermen, who sat complacently in foldable camp chairs, and continued my adventures. I felt like an early explorer, navigating by water to investigate the land. 

in time of dandelions

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.