Ask the Willow
There’s an old willow tree in front of my house. It dips it’s graceful boughs into the stream that bubbles under it. It’s serene, it looks “wise” and it is so much part of this place that I want to ask it why...why would my daughter phone me from her campus bed and tell me she’s getting married? How could we have grown that far apart? That separate, that I didn’t even know she was dating someone she considered a candidate.
The house I’ve lived in for twenty years, which has always been my refuge, seems so alien today. I’ve considered it the heart of my family. The one place. The space where any of us could come for healing, if we needed it. For joy, for festivities, for stuff...for stuff.
I ache in places I haven’t thought about for years. What with life’s scurry and bustle, I can’t remember when last I took heed of myself. It’s always about someone else, the baby that cried, the girl with the scuffed knee, the heartbroken teenager, whose dress ripped up its hem when she tried to climb a mine dump on the night of her prom.
I’m torn up, but I won’t give in to tears. I won’t succumb to my heartbeat that’s twittering like a mad, mad bird.
I find my phone, it looks like an alien shield, but I hold myself and google the names of bridal shops in town. I wait for someone to answer, and finally the tears fall, fat and fast.