Something beautiful
Posted on April 15, 2008
Filed Under kids, suburban joys, homeownership, milestones, epiphanies |
Spring in New England is tumultuous; up and down, back and forth, driving rains and shrieking winds followed by the kind of sunshine that can make a person weep for the poignant return of something good. It feels appropriate, this riot of weather all tumbled up with the raw and unpredictable fluctuations of me. I feel that I have earned the tulips and the wild hyacinths just popping through the cold, dark soil just as I’ve earned the moments of clarity and the pleasant but temporary bursts of happiness that can color a day.

Sunday was steel gray skies and raw winds and sudden spitting rain but it was decent enough to be outdoors dragging the brush and the twigs out of the adjacent woods and burning the fallen limbs of winter on the driveway.
G sat close, absorbing the warmth of the popping fire. She crouched, rocking back on her rubber garden-boot heels and asked questions about the invention of fire and the purpose of stars and the reason for the strange colors she sees on the back of her eyelids even when her eyes are shut tight against the flames. She barely took a breath between queries, a stymieing slough of innocent wonderments for which I had no absolute answers. I just stood quietly off to the side feeding the hungry fire, one limb after another. I added a large severed branch from the old beech tree that lines the drive. The gnarled tree-arm was still holding on to all its paper thin leaves. Like delicate black butterflies, they quickly darkened and broke free of the fire. Floating on warm drafts of rising air, they spiraled and danced, filling the sky with their funereal confetti, the burn of one dead tree rising like hope and then falling about our shoulders like the end of something beautiful.
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