late on monday morning, almost afternoon
i drove out to Bellevue with my mother and my little sister
to visit my great grandmother, the last one that I have
to sit and to speak and to check on her garden.
i brought her some cuttings of my prettiest daisies,
my white lavender and my lemon thyme in full bloom
i placed it on her dinning table and she savored the scent
and i melted ever so slightly to see her, soft and white as english lavender,
but poised and pristine as a daisy, sharp as lemon thyme.
we sat and she talked of strangers, her family that i never knew
for my mother's side has always been rather tentative
and i would never pry into what my mother withheld
for her father, one of my great grandmother's sons, was a scar she wore
and while she had since given it some space to heal
i'll admit I was too afraid to see her bleed again.
i had heard a few names, recalled some photographed faces
but really i longed to venture out to her garden
for when i was much younger, perhaps younger than my little sister
i had planted petunias and picked crimson strawberries
from the rolling beds which she once held in her dominion
where she gave me raspberry iced tea in her gorgeous castle
and i rode my pink bike down her gravel driveway and imagined
i was in some mystical land far away, wild and foreign and free.
i told her i had graduated and she asked if i was going to college
and so i told her about the work program i was starting in november
farming, she said with a nod, my father was a farmer.
she had asked me again a few minutes later, and again, i wilted
at the sight of such a strong and inspiring flower
beginning to lose herself to the passing season
sometimes i wonder who i am, she says and
i don't remember, she whispers.
you don't remember, her son says again,
not accusing and not sympathetic--just tired.
she runs through the events written in her calendar
and though she smiles softly and laughs thin and raspy,
her eyes are always searching for something
she can never seem to find.
you know how the rest of the story goes:
an old woman falls ill, moves into a home,
gives away her things and quietly retires
to a tiny room in long hall of rooms.
i have a house? why am i not there?
you're too sick, grandma, you'll get better care here.
I sort through her gardening things
and I take home some ceramic planters.
I recognize a cracked plaster pot
encased in butterflies and irises, just like before
when I was that young and so was she
and that pot and her majesty was fresh and magical to me.
She doesn't recognize me right away, she calls me by my sister's name,
but I show her my butterfly broach pinned to my headscarf
the one that I picked at her request--sterling silver she says, but an ugly green.
Peridot stones, which are very special to me, I smile in reply.
I adore my great grandmother who says whatever she means,
who never had the chance to teach me to knit
like I had asked so many summers ago.
I wish she could know how much she shaped me.
I wish I could plant her in my garden this summer
amidst the treasures of her heart and home,
and I wish I could grow her back into the body and memory she used to be,
where her mind still blooms so beautifully.
Her seeds have fallen and sprouted elsewhere,
scattered further than she can sustain now
and they will bud and fruit a thousand times over
throughout my life and all of the others' she's touched
with or without her tender hand.
