It is so quiet here. And I am so tired now. Perhaps because of the time of day, the natural time of fatigue, maybe because of the brief intoxication from sugar, deliciously crafted into dessert, and the all-too-soon fall from its heights. My handwriting is clear and deliberate. My sentences come slowly, word by word. This is to be, then, a quiet piece, an oasis, a departure, a refuge from the constant hum and thrum of the city I live in, the neighborhood in which my mind habitually resides. Some serenity, some relief, from the constant threats—of recurrent disease or new ones, mine and others’; from persistent memory of friends and parents recently and long ago gone and still maddeningly dead.

Unreachable. Unknowable now. Untouchable, the remnants of their physicality discernible (and only barely) in the clothing and jewelry left to me. Mom’s monogrammed handkerchiefs and pearl and garnet ring; Dad’s neckties and navy blue terrycloth bathrobe; Karen’s Champion hooded sweatshirt, the color of tangerine sorbet, her Ellen Tracy pajamas, comforts in the mornings and the nights. The hand-stitched Chi Bird, made especially and individually for each of us in her circle, arriving by mail at different times, making us feel special and unique and loved. Jane’s mother-of-pearl pendant, the one I could have worn today if I had thought more about accessorizing before I left the house so early this morning. Photos of Susan, on the wall, in the living room; velvet scarves in the top compartment of the tansu, and the wool and silk one she bought in Tuscany the spring I should have joined her there, the gift she gave herself for getting through yet another round of battering treatment.

It is quiet here. When I think of them, they arrive slowly. Not the usual barrage, their faces less vivid than usual, my own heart pain less noisy than I usually feel it. Here, they may be circling the fountain, all of them, many more than I have named, can even remember, dabbing their necks, wrists and behind their ears to cool themselves off on this refuge of a quiet summer day, in the land where birds of all kinds fly as freely as I imagine my dear departeds do.

*****

13 July 2013

Forestville, California

Birdland Summer Retreat

Prompt: The definition of Oasis