After de-slugging the pepper patch on Saturday evening, My Beloved and I sat on our tiny patio (the lottery win I'm planning for this Friday will eliminate the "tiny" in that phrase) and watched the evening melt into dusk.
Everything seems to turn grayish-purple in the blue half-light of dusk - skin, grass, trees, fences. It's an ethereal and melancholic sort of time, I find. A time for fairies and gnomes and things hiding just out of sight.
And yes, I'm aware that almost every time is somehow a melancholic time for me. Dawn, noon, dusk, midnight - I can usually find a little melancholy in each of them if I look hard enough.
But you don't have to look hard at dusk. It's there in the deepening shadows, the blue pall, and the impossible stillness.
And in that half-light, as I stared out at the freshly watered lawn, I remembered a hazy, long-ago conversation My Beloved and I had back when we believed we would, I could, have children. He didn't want too many gardens. He wanted lawn - space to play with his children on the grass in our backyard. I agreed, picturing a chubby-legged toddler in a sun bonnet feeling grass on her toes for the first time.
The lawn still has space. Ample. There are gardens too, like our slug-ridden pepper patch. But nothing more.
So as my eyes fought against the dark on Saturday night, my mind drew a tousle-headed boy running in an arc across the lawn towards my chair, his arms thrown open in that glorious way that boys do when they're let loose on a patch of grass in the summer. He ran towards me, his mouth stretched into a crazy, wide open smile - and then he slipped quietly away into the shadows. Just before he reached me.
My mind will always be drawing pictures of the boy, I guess.
I know I'll see him no matter where I go, but I often wonder if a different place might hurt less. He was expected here. This house is missing him. I see where he should have been. I remember the plans I had and the pictures I drew when he was wriggling and kicking inside me.
Dusk falls everywhere. But it falls hard here.
4 comments:
This was stunningly beautiful. I think the thing I like about the time just before dusk is the way the light and time seem to float on the earth, as if nothing will ever change again.
After we lost Travis, we renovated our house. We had to. I couldn't live with that room that waited for second (and then third) baby who never came. But there are times now when I look at our master suite and think how different it might have been...how the crib would have been in that spot where our king-size bed now sits...how it would be a twin bed by now...filled with a child ready for kindergarten this fall...
This is such a beautiful post. Thinking of you and your boy.
I just happened to come across you blog today and am so sorry to hear of your loss. You write beautifully and openly and I hope that your honesty and the healthy self-reflection you're sharing about help you as you continue to grieve. I am sincerely sorry that you're grieving. I don't mean the following question out of accusation or questioning or anything of the sort, I would just sincerely like to know if you walked the road of considering adoption, and how you came to the conclusion against it...if you have/if you did. I am personally very interested in that topic, and that's why I ask -- if you have a post you can direct me to where you've talked about it, or one in mind you want to share, I'd love to read it. Thank you for your honesty.
Blessings as your journey continues. May you continue to be surprised by joy, and peace.
Caroline
P.S. I blog at carolinecollie {dot} com in case you are curious -- since I don't use blogger I can't include the URL below.
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