After the Fire the Rain Came

SCW 6-12-2012                             Nancy Dunlop

After the fire the rain did come?  Or should it be after the fire it rained?  Or should it be after the fire the rain came?  I like after the fire the rain came the best and so that is what I will use.

After the fire the rain came and not a single ember was left.  I was trying to roast marshmallows to make s’mores but just as the coals were perfect for roasting the darn rain destroyed the whole idea.  My mouth was watering thinking of the giant sized marshmallow perfectly toasted, brownish on the outside but white and gooey on the inside smushed and covered with a Hershey bar between two graham crackers.  I hated not to have this treat and so took all the fixings into the cabin.  I put the marshmallows in a bowl in the microwave and stirred every few seconds until they were melted.  Then I put Hershey bars on top of the mound of sticky marshmallow and micro waved a few more seconds.  I took it out and mixed the whole mess together and spread it on a graham cracker.  I named this delicious new concoction micro mores.  Then I ate another. 

“We need to talk.” Silence. 

The emptiness on the other end of the phone line overwhelms me.  He mumbles something about a big project due, we can talk later, and hangs up his end of the conversation.  I struggle to submerge and bury, yet again, my unsaid thoughts and let my mind drift.

I stood on the sparkling shore with tiny ripples of water caressing my feet.  A hand rested over my eyes, shielding them from the too bright sun when he caught my eye.  Actually, it was his bright, yellow swimsuit that caught my gaze, but it was the rest of him that kept it.  Muscular, tan, dark hair and arresting blue eyes, he was stunning.

This is my first memory of him.  Sun-dappled.  Brilliant.  I guard it closely because it is all I have now to keep me company.

We speak only when spoken to, and then only from necessity.  He works late and so do I.  We live side by side, but a chasm separates us.  We are completely alone in our togetherness.  Neither of us can stand the emptiness of the house, our marriage, the hollowness of our dual lives.  Likewise, neither of us is willing to chink away at the walls we have carefully built up to protect ourselves.  These walls of protection are also our prison.  They shield us from hurt and vulnerability just as easily as they deny us love and laughter.

            Who can say when we cemented the first bricks in the wall?  Was it the year he forgot my birthday or was it one of the many times I rolled away from him in bed and said I was too tired?  Perhaps it began when he started working late.  Maybe it was when I got my promotion.  I was so thrilled with a new sense of “me”, I forgot to notice how he felt.  When did we start spending more time apart than together?  I can hardly remember, it happened so gradually.

            Every bit of resentment harbored, each angry thought, cements together the singular events.  Taken alone, they seem harmless enough, but collectively, now stand as a veritable fortress between us.

            I want to be brave, brandish my tools, and start chipping away at our differences, but always I am held back by the two false friends I cling to, weariness and apathy.  It puzzles me that the easy warmth and caring, a trademark in my other relationships, eludes me so perfectly in this one, the one that matters most.

            He comes home late.  Again.  For the first time in ages, I wait up for him, cradled in the softness of the bed.  Our bed.  A look of confusion and surprise crosses his face momentary and then…hope.

On Writing

Words. They gather inside me all jumbled up like a marching band preparing to perform. Sounds bellowing out randomly. So here I sit, pencil in hand. Awaiting their performance. Somehow they know and they align themselves and spill over the edge. With the force of a waterfall they plunge. Down the barrel of my pencil and in order of rhyme they march, across the lines and down the page until… words stop, pencil stops, nothing comes, “The End.”

Harold at the Park

The sun shining on the water is what makes all those sparkles. My brother Gregory showed me how to throw rocks in the water to get the sparkles to move. Gregory likes to “skip” the rocks across the water and make them jump across the lake. I can’t “skip” my rocks. I just like to make the biggest splashes with my rocks and see all the circles come out from the hole in the water. I’m not really supposed to go down by the water by myself, but it was such a sunshiny day and there were so many sparkles. I was just looking for a good big rock to throw and found something else stuck in the rocks down by the edge of the water. It caught my eye because it was silver and silver is my favorite. It turned out to be an empty coca-cola can. I didn’t care that there wasn’t any coca-cola left in it because it was still so beautiful, sparkling in the sun when the waves sloshed it around. Just as I was about to pick it up, Lana found me. She said “Harold, what are you doing with that?” I told her that it was silver. Lana understands that I liked it because it was pretty. She still made me throw it away though, because she said it was somebody else’s garbage. She said that people ought to clean up after themselves, and that’s why we put our things in the can when we are done with them. Lana always knows about what things you are supposed to do. I like Lana. She always understands about things and her hair always looks so soft and shiny. She’s always putting stuff on her lips to make them shiny too. I really wanted to stay down by the water, but Lana said we needed to get back to the party. It was my party so I should participate, she said. She said my Dad wasn’t here yet but that maybe I could play ball with Jeffrey until he gets here. Jeffrey is really good at sports and he brought a baseball and a mitt to my Birthday party at the park. When I asked if I could wear his mitt to catch the ball, Jeffrey said to Lana “I don’t want to play catch with Harold. He’s the worst catch!” I said that I didn’t really want to play catch anyway. I turned around really fast and headed back toward the water so that no one would see that I was crying. I pretended like I just wanted to go look at the ducks and never really wanted to play with Jeffrey’s baseball anyway. Lana came after me like she always does. I tried to wipe my tears off before Lana saw that I was crying. Lana said that we couldn’t play by the water right now, but that I could come up and have a peek at my birthday cake if I wanted. I hoped it was a GI Joe cake. Ever since the first time I saw GI Joe, it has been my favorite. I’d asked Lana about a million times for a GI Joe cake and I really hoped she’d remembered. She showed me the plates and napkins she’d bought that were gray. She said that she got them because she knew that silver was my favorite color. I smiled to show her that I was happy even though they were gray and not silver. When she took the lid off the cake I felt really disappointed. The cake was camouflage all over and had little silver beads arranged to spell “Happy Birthday Harold!” It had little green army men standing on it, pointing their plastic guns all different directions. It was pretty cool, but it wasn’t really GI Joe. I guess because Lana is a girl she doesn’t understand about how GI Joe isn’t just a regular army guy. A metallic creaking sound took my attention away from the cake disappointment for a minute. I thought it might be Dad and turned to look. It wasn’t Dad; it was just a kid on his squeaky bicycle riding by. The boy was followed by his dad on a bigger bike. I wondered why my Dad didn’t go on bike rides with me. I hadn’t learned how to ride a bicycle. Maybe my Dad could teach me, I thought. I wished he was here. I searched the parking lot for Dad’s car and when I didn’t see it I started to cry again. Lana turned away from the cake and pointed to the sky. “Look Harold!” She said. I looked up and saw a bright red and gold kite flying just above our heads. It started soaring away from us out over the water. I was worried that it would fly away, but Lana showed me how it was attached to a string and couldn’t get away. She pointed the other direction where Bill was standing. I was excited to see that it was Bill holding the other end of the string. Lana sent me over to the other teacher to watch him fly the kite for a bit. After I’d been watching Bill for a few minutes he let me have a turn holding the string. It was so much fun flying the kite. Bill taught me how to move the string to make the kite fly a different direction, and how to let the string out to make it fly higher. I was flying it higher and higher until the wind pulled it really hard and then I could see it falling out of the sky. I’d flown the kite so high out over the water, that when it fell, it was far out in the middle of the lake. Tears filled up my eyes, but Bill told me, in his funny voice that Lana calls “southern,” not to “worry a bit” about it. Bill said that he would go and get the kite. Then he took the string from me and said it was time for cake and to go tell the others to come to the pavilion. I ran quickly through the park to tell everyone. I thought for a minute about not telling Jeffrey so that maybe he’d miss out on the cake, but I saw that he’d noticed everyone else going and came anyways. As I was heading up to the pavilion I heard a familiar squeaking noise. Just then Lana called me… “Harold! It’s cake time! Come on!” I could see from there that she was already lighting the candles on my cake, so I ran the rest of the way. Everyone sang Happy Birthday for me, even Jeffrey. I think Lana sang the best. I noticed right in the middle of the song that I could hear my Dad’s funny crackly voice singing. I turned around to see, that the squeaking noise I’d heard had been my Dad! Standing right behind him, singing along in a big deep voice stood a big man in a dark suit and a necktie. I was so happy to see him that I ran over there right in the middle of the singing. “Gregory, you came too!” I said. Gregory approached, pushing Dad’s wheelchair in front of him. Gregory said, “Happy Birthday, big brother!” Then Gregory reached behind the wheelchair and pulled out a bunch of balloons that he’d tied down and hidden back there. There was a big shiny silver metal one with a giant number 47 on it, and I knew it was for me. It was the best Birthday ever!

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