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christopher@30seconds.org
As I grew older I began to appreciate her for her tact when it seemed that no one in my family had any left. We would pick flowers together and hold tight the long distant gaze of spring, knowing inside that summer brought the coast with its white hot sand and undertow. She liked yellow roses best, even loved them, but I can't remember a time when she looked more beautiful than when, clippers in hand, she cut wild flowers around Stone Harbor, Maine, the summer of 1951. That was when I truly realized she was giving me life, in a woven basket, full of bugs and rotten fruit from the apple trees around the farm. Yet, it was more than life she was giving. In every movement she made, in every wild strand of blond hair, in every crystalline step; she was giving me a memory.
I can't possibly remember Stone Harbor, I've never been there. You see, what I know of my grandmother comes from several dozen reels of dusty 8mm film in a polished aluminum box. Her best essence of being human is all dark rooms and plaster walls lit up by her smiles, her words mouthed silent through the whir of an old projector. At night, when the day has grown heavy, and the southern air is wet and sticky, I have a 220 watt window that never dulls, or yells, or grows old. It never forgets me, or doesn't call on my birthday. It just shines on with my admiration by the wayside.
goodnight 7.14.98
