by
Maryann McCullough
her face and posture reflected the loss she felt. Her life was full of things that “were no more.” She
was widowed and each of her children had a full life in some other town, in some other state. Our
times together (such as this one) were too infrequent and involved suitcases and airplanes. And so her
yard had become a kind of surrogate child – well nurtured by daily attention.
But now she looked out on limp black leaves hanging uselessly from the branches. A frost, a
particularly bad frost over several nights, had laid waste to her yard. It was unlike the onset of cold
weather she remembered from her childhood. Leaves died honorable deaths back in the Midwest.
Gaudy glorious colors adorned the trees before they gracefully made their way to the ground, leaving
the tree with a kind of tidy nakedness. Then what remained through the coldest days of winter was
an austere beauty in the bare form of the trunk and branches. But the yard that now confronted my
mother lacked beauty of any kind.
I knew my mother was not a person to accept a life less than perfect, if it could be improved. She had
always felt a kind of responsibility to fix the imperfections she encountered, so I was not surprised
when yesterday morning she took the ugly situation into her own hands. Actually it was a power
hose she took into her hands. Like a woman scorned, she attacked every bush and tree that
disappointed her. For a moment she brought to mind Lewis Carroll’s mad queen, attempting her
own version of “painting the roses red,” and I wondered if the neighbors were watching.
And thus, those blackened and limp leaves – thousands and thousands of them - fell to the ground.
Was it to a premature death? Or had they simply clung foolishly to some branch that no longer
provided them sustenance? It didn’t matter. She watched the rain of black leaves fall beneath the
now-naked trees and bushes. This was step one in her attempt to make death something other than
ugly.
Then it was time to rake. We (I was guilted into joining the purge) gathered amazingly large piles of
the frost-generated detritus into old sheets and then deposited them into an alley behind a wall. My
mother was pleased with her work. She had prepared a blank canvas upon which the warm days to
follow could work their magic
Today I watched her slowly pace her yard, coffee cup in hand, leaning over the skeletons of bushes,
searching for the first buds which would signal new life. It’s the work of spring she is anticipating.
With its arrival, life will return. Maybe today. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe next week It’s just a
matter of time until her beautiful green garden will grow again.
As she walked back into the house, my mother’s smile had returned. She had done her part to
welcome life back. Now, it was just a matter of time.
brain work for a while. A relatively new writer of essay and memoir, this Phoenix writer's work has appeared in
both online and print publications. She may be contacted through the editor at QME.
Archives