Escaping to Ireland

Vinessa

"Hello," My Aunt Wanda said; she is in the same spot on her knees from when I left her this morning. Gardening was a patient task. When Liam comes into view, she scrambles up to give him a hug. "Shawn, is that you?" I want to roll my eyes at her, but I can see Liam is confused by why she thinks he is Shawn. It is because I didn't tell her that Shawn and I broke up.

"Wanda... This is Liam." I kick a small rock off of her path back into the rock pile. Wanda and my mother had looked like twins except for the height difference; my mother had got it all, Wanda used to tell me when I grew up. She had always wanted long thin legs like my mother. Even with the height difference, Wanda was just as beautiful as my mother, just in her own way. My mother had the height, but Wanda had an outgoing and very loud personality. 

"What about Shawn?" She asks me, still holding onto Liam's arms as if her son had just come home from war. Her short black hair was pointing up all over the place, and I resisted smoothing it out.

"Well, that's not him. And we broke up." I said, finding the words I was dreading to tell her. Shawn and I were only friends when his phone conversations with Wanda started. "Who is Wanda?" Shawn asked one Saturday when he took me mini-golfing. "My Aunt," I said. A week later, when we had gone for pizza, Wanda's name popped up on my phone screen; Shawn grabbed it off the table before I could put my pizza down. And just like that, Shawn talked to Wanda once a week. He would hand the phone back to me with a goofy grin on his face. "What was that about?" I would ask him, and he would just shake his head and mutter, "it is confidential." I would now never know what was so funny during those weekly phone calls.  

"Say it isn't so," Wanda says, turning to face me. "Well, I guess that explains some things... Like why he called this morning and asked to be able to explain everything to you. What would there be to explain?" She was confused, and I should have told her before I flew out here, but I couldn't do it.

"He cheated on her," Liam said, saying the words for me; I don't think I could have told her, filling in the missing pieces, for Wanda. Shawn's piece could no longer fit in my life puzzle, making it complete; he would always be a missing piece. A missing piece I would like to burn...  

"Oh," Wanda was clearly having a hard time processing this with everything I had ever told her about Shawn. "Effin Manky," Wanda lets slip out, and this is the closest I will hear her swear. She was upset with these words; she was fuming.

"Tell me about it," I said, looking down in her eyes, trying to hold back the tears. I know she is thinking of my father. I believe Wanda could kill my father if she ever saw him in person. My mother was beautiful, almost flawless in her looks. The whole town of Portmarnock was stunned that my father was so brick-headed to leave my mother. He was handsome, but my mother's beauty put my father to shame; he didn't deserve her beauty. Yes, when I saw Wanda's eyes after we talked about my dad only once, she looked like she could murder him. Besides this one person, my aunt Wanda couldn't hurt a fly. "Liam, this is my aunt Wanda, Wanda this is Liam. I met him on the flight over."

"It is nice to meet you," Wanda says and starts to follow the path to the back of her small cottage, where the real magic was.

"Wanda," Liam said, stepping back looking around like if he has known her for a long time. "Is this all your creation?" he asks, admiring her garden. Wanda blushes at the compliment. It was magnificent.

"How about you two sit under the gazebo? I will bring out some sandwiches and water. I think we are in for a rainstorm." I steady my breathing; my legs feel like jello.  I walk the path to the picnic table that is under the gazebo. Wanda had a small cottage, but her yard was almost three acres in town.

"This is amazing," Liam said, still looking around the backyard. It took a while to get used to it. Every time you came to sit out here, there was something new or something you had looked over. My aunt was a romantic. Her yard was fenced in with an old wooden fence, but she made it look charming by adding different metal artwork or frames framing in words or important dates.

"What are the dates for?" Liam asked about the four dates on the far right-hand side.

"Top one is Jeremy's, my uncle's birthday. The next date down is Wanda's birthday. The third one is their wedding date, and the last one is the day Jeremy died...."

"I expect the date I die to be on that fence, Vinessa," Wanda said, coming from inside with a tray of finger sandwiches and water. 

"Why is that?" Liam asked, and I want to laugh at what he was getting himself into.

"Because our love will always live on," Wanda says, staring at the wooden dates on her fence surrounded by the most beautiful places in Portmarnock. Wanda was also a hopeless romantic; she boasts she was never a romantic until Jeremy came into her life. They had met when she was six, so he had made her a romantic her whole life pretty much.

"My aunt, the romantic," I chirp out, filling up my cup of water. My abruptness does not phase Wanda at all. She comes over, planting her arm around my shoulder.

"Vinessa..." she trails off, trying to find her words, "I pray that you find a love like Jeremy and I had." I squeeze her hand on my shoulder; a true romantic. "Oh oh, it is that time. I am supposed to meet Carol at the village today." Wanda looks down at her wrist as if she wore a watch. No watch was on her wrist.

"No, you don't," I said, looking up at her, hoping she will stay.

"It's only for an hour... I'll be back." She walked around the table to Liam and took his hand "it was a pleasure to meet you, please stop by at any time. We usually have dinner around six, and we usually eat outside."

"With a yard like this, I would too," Liam said, giving her hand a small squeeze before she left us to sit by ourselves. And then, a few minutes after she had left us, the rain started, stranding us underneath the gazebo.

I sit back, watching my beloved rain hit the ground. Ireland, how I have missed you, always.

"Vinessa," my mother had called out to be one of the last weekends I had with her. "Can you open the window in here?"

"Mom," I said, rounding the corner to the front porch, "It is down pouring; everything will get wet." She looked up at me sticking out her bottom lip giving off the impression of pouting. The pouting was a recurring act the last few days. She knew as soon as that bottom lip came out, I could not say no.

"Please," she said, letting her blanket fall looser around her; she had to know I would cave.

"Okay," I said, giving in to her request opening the windows. We sat for the next hour watching the rain hit the window; small puddles had started forming on the hardwood floor. When I stood to go grab a towel from the cupboard, my mother's white-knuckled hand stretched out, grabbing onto my arm. "Just leave it for now," she said, her voice sounded drained. She needed a nap, but I was not about to tell her to call it quits for the day, not in the happy mood she was in. Everything about nature entrapped my mother. It could have been raining, thunder, lightning, stars, fog, lightning bugs, and anything God created. I never understood her fascination with it until the last summer I had spent with her. "You can only handle TV and movies for so long, Vinessa, but this," she said, looking out past the bluff, "this is always perfect" I followed her eyes to the purple hue spread across the horizon. It was breathtaking...       

"Where were you just then?" Liam asked, pulling me away from my thoughts about my mother.

"Just remembering a special time with my mother. She loved the rain; she loved anything God created. I guess when you see the bluff in Howth, or the Dublin Bay, or even this garden, it's hard not to appreciate it all."

Instead of Liam asking more questions, he looks around as if he appreciates it all as well. I can't remember the last time that I appreciated the rain or even the snow. My mother would have loved the snow that I was able to see in Chicago. I had left Ireland, and I didn't learn to stop and appreciate the small things.

It was a real shame.