Contentment

It’s getting pretty hard to get up before it’s light out. I woke at 5:00 so happily this morning, so glad it was dark. Then I kept lying there. I had some kind of idea about how I’m always trying to express something that can’t be expressed as if it was something new—a new idea. But shoot, maybe it was. I was so happy. Then that crowd of less and less happy thoughts and finally getting up about 5:30.

6:04 now and the sky is white below, blue above. Walking to the cabin the smell and sounds are so intense. Coming in, shutting the door, the Fahreheat on, all noise is drowned out. Sensory deprivation and over stimulation. No really, the Fahrenheat has its own rhythm like a heavy breather or a snorer. Two ducks flew through the high light blue wilderness where they appear like two black beetles whizzing through the trees.

I just stood up to get lip balm from the desk and standing, noticed the yellow glow and shadows against the far wall and turning back toward the window, the sun where it’s risen but not yet visible when I was sitting.

Oh this is joy, even if it’s not dark out. A robin and a blue jay hop the ground nearby. There’s a yellow flower, probably a weed, but a lone one, and pretty, on dad’s mound.

Yesterday I visited Aunt Mary Ann at the nursing home. Uncle Owen and Dee were there too. We’d arranged to meet. He called ahead to see if he could wear dad’s hat, the black cowboy hat I’d given him with the flag pin on it. He said Kitty always said that when she entered a room she always looked for Dad’s hat, and when she saw it she knew she had a friend. He was like a little boy in the innocence of his pleasure over thinking of it; shy and proud.

Mary Ann held my hand a long time. Us three older women were all touched by Owen’s sweetness and his nervous pacing, and the way dad’s hat didn’t exactly fit his head. Dee said, “Your dad’s the only guy I knew who could wear a cowboy hat.” As they left, Owen had the tilt wrong and she adjusted it.

Mia was along and sat on the floor that was dotted with cat food and let Mary Ann’s tabby cat Binky rub against her sleek black pants and shirt and hair. She was like an exotic bird, one of those black ones with the long bills and bright splashes of color, the aliveness of her unmatched and out-of-place in the room; both welcome and jarring. She entertained Henry, who was first shy and then ready to explore the halls, and yet not out-of-place.

Mary Ann says she is content. She doesn’t lie and you can see that she’s not now. She’s cocooned in the little room. Lilacs are blooming and she has a bouquet: lavender, purple and white. Photos of grandkids dot every surface. A pile of newspaper and mail sits in a chair. The oxygen tank gurgles. The hat and these little things remind me of Dad’s final days but no longer of his death. I can’t draw up a feeling of grief. The room is alive with his presence. Mary Ann says she talks to him all the time.

Instantly, as the sun tops the fence, the floor of the woods darkens. The fence-top-level leafs glow translucently

I crack the window and bird song spills in, light spills over the fence in a narrow strip. It makes light appear to be rising from the ground up, as if leaving the ground and returning to the sky.

As I walk back into the house for more coffee, it seems as if everyone should be awake, the day is so bright. But they’re not. And the sleeping family fills me with contentment.