Miles & Memories

Ch. 1 - The Crane Dance

My aunt rose left me a pink Cadillac when I was twelve years old. It was rusted above the wheel wells and had a large crack in the dashboard where the sun had beaten down on it for years, but it ran, and she considered it her greatest asset.

She died on a Tuesday, on our sun porch overlooking the backyard where the pond my father had put in gurgled and bubbled. That day a crane stood beside it trying to get a quick bite. I remember my father running out there that day, arms flailing in the wind, shouting at the bird to leave his koi alone. He loved those fish. They were his confidants. I would see him sometimes from my bedroom window late in the evening sitting on a chair under the light of the moon telling them things. His cigarette smoke circling like thick clouds above his head, floating slowly off into the night.

That Tuesday was warm, and a slow drizzle of rain fell that made things feel close as if gravity had stepped up its game and my skin was a magnet. My mother, my father, and I had sat on the sun porch surrounding aunt Rose for hours. Her eyes, creased and constantly roaming beneath the paper thin lids, would shoot open every so often to make sure we hadn't abandoned her. We stood silent listening to her breathing, loud and announcing, as if it needed to be. As if the ending wouldn't be enough of a show.

My father slid that day running after the crane. His flailing arms unbalancing him and shooting his stout frame forward as his feet launched beneath him on the damp grass. He looked as though he'd taken out my old slip and slide and was making a world class run. A string of curses flew from his mouth and the rest of us, save for aunt Rose's wheeze, stood silent, waiting for a sign of what to do.

Finally, movement started with my mother, her jet black hair flawless as it always was, held back with chopsticks in a perfect bun. Her face, olive with lips that had been coated with 'rebel' by Mac so many years they were permanently tinted red. Her perfect posture crumbled and she hunched herself forward. I felt a deep desire to run, thinking her dam of stoic watch had broken. But instead of sobs, deep roaring laughter shook the silence. She laughed and laughed until tears ran down her cheeks leaving black lines from her make up.

And I felt it then, the click of the universe. My own body going against me in a fit of my own relieving giggles. My fear of aunt Rose passing quickly abandoned as my father got up and continued to chase the crane. I thought to run out and help, not understanding the purpose of it, but sensing its importance. When something amazing began. My father stood, the crane stood, the raising of an arm instantly mirrored by a lifted wing as a delicate dance began.

For my mother and I it stopped time. I couldn't move a single muscle as I watched them gracefully mimic each other in a ballet of wills and pride. My father, his brown suit covered in mud and grass, and the crane in its own suit of ruffled damp brown feathers.

I'm sure it lasted just a moment but it felt as if I'd seen an entire show, and when the crane lifted its wings and took flight with a haughty yell, my breath whooshed from my lungs and I had a sudden urge to clap at the beauty of the moment.

It was during that exact moment, the dance of the crane, that aunt Rose died. I can't say exactly the second she stopped making noise and checking our nearness. But I can say that beautiful crane dance was the story she would want told. That perhaps she floated over and flew on the back of that beast straight up towards the sky. That's what she'd want me to believe, and I do.

When my mother and father called to have aunt Rose picked up, I went to my room. My earphones tightly packed into my ears drowning out the sounds of car doors and chairs moving. I refused to be a part of the reality of death. Not when the magic was so perfect.

Dinner was pizza. Which seemed wrong almost. An American carry out which aunt Rose wouldn't have eaten or even been in the room with. She scoffed at things rushed and easy. "Taking the time," she would say, "that's what makes the meal. Meals are more than putting food in your mouth and chewing."

We sat at the table like a puzzle missing a piece. The chair next to my father empty and somehow larger. Without the constant threat of criticism we could have said anything. We could have lay down upon the pizza and eaten it with our toes, but instead we settled for silence. As if we didn't have the ability to have conversation without her.

My eyes felt heavy, and unused, without their constant rolling at all aunt Rose's unending lectures on the many reasons America was causing us to lose our identity and making us lazy. And it occurred to me that we had never been a family without her. She had moved in when I was just a year old and was as much home as the house I lived in was.

Aunt Rose left a yellow envelope on her dresser with my name on it. My father handed it to me unopened and the writing was printed in an almost childlike scrawl. When I held it in my hands I ran to my bedroom and ducked down under the covers in a bubble of quilt cotton unwilling to share it with anyone's eyes but my own.

Inside that envelope was a single sheet of yellow legal paper with an entire life message, and a set of silver keys. I don't remember the words anymore, time has faded its message. But I remember the car. Shiny and long, a string of memories now held because of the contents of that single letter. Each one a tinge rusted, and some holding cracks as large as the dashboard. But they are all mine. Each and every one logged in my brain like the miles I added to the odometer.

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Thank you so much for reading.  And a major grande sized thank you to krazydiamond for this drool worthy cover. I mean, that, is amazing.  I love love love it!!!!