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I used to have a scar on my left hand that reminded me of my first Thanksgiving without my mother. I wonder now if I can even call it a scar, seeing as how it’s since faded past the point of detection—then again, we all know the most unassailable wounds are often those invisible to the eye. In any case, it was there and now it’s gone. Isn’t that the entire point?
I chose to believe the story for as long as I did because it was the kind of story children want to believe, and, if we’re being honest, the kind of story grownups tell in the first place because some part of them wants to believe it, too.
It is quiet now at night, even in the city, roads and voices muted by the mad hush of rain. Rain against pavement is also a sound, but it slips through ears like it does through gutters, spilling over and out and rushing to sea in the way all moments and memories eventually do. But I imagine that tonight even without the rain the world would seem silent, no matter the city or bustle or subway line. Tonight is made for our quiet.
When I was 18, before I knew anything about publishing or pitching or rejection or acceptance, I tried to get something published that didn’t belong to me, but, rather, belonged to my mother. Years earlier, when I was only 8, she had written a poem that had become famous in my family.
She told me to never settle. She was frail then, but her voice was strong. She spoke of men, but I knew she meant everything. Don’t settle. Don’t wait. Do all the things.
Last night I dreamt of my mother. She had been gone a long time.
“Can you stay?” I asked her. “I never get to see you.”
She didn’t answer, and instead pointed to my chest.
“Your heart is bigger than it was last time,” she said, more observation than offering. “But it still has room to grow.”
The first Christmas I remember, I must have been 7. My parents asked me to write down what I wanted so they could mail it to Santa. It is a standard custom. It’s possible I had been given this opportunity in years past; if I had, whatever I asked for must have been reasonable, or at least forgettable because it takes up no space in my memory. But that year was different. The question left me euphoric: What do I want?
The day we found Rokan, the sky was blue, that sort of crisp, surreal cerulean that might only exist in New Mexico and other arid, sweeping landscapes that offer nearly nothing in the airways between you and the vastness of the beyond.
Cait named one of them Charlemagne, though really they are all named Charlemagne. Ask me on a different day and I’ll tell you that’s only what we call the Albino one. The other two have yet to be named, because I cannot tell them apart.