P walks into the room holding a small cardboard box in front of her, arms straight like a ring bearer. “I have a surprise for you,” she sets the box, covered in sparkly stickers, beside me. I open the lid and find nine red-orange cherry tomatoes. They are dusty, still warm from the sun. P grins at my amazement, smells like the garden. Later that night as I sit down on her bed, she leans over and kisses me and I say, “What a wonderful surprise.” Her face stays close to mine. “As wonderful as tomatoes?”
The girls drag stones into a circle at the base of the green slide, collect seed pods for soup, run to the school bathroom to fill an old plastic bottle with cooking water. At suppertime I find them, comment first on the dirt smeared across foreheads, caked between fingers, streaked on legs. M asks why I care so much about being clean. I’m ashamed at how far I’ve traveled from enchantment.
A jacaranda tree blooms above the driveway. I climb into a car covered in purple flowers, feel regal and celebrated.
J wears white tights trimmed with stained lace, gaping holes at both knees. I make a silent commitment to throw them out the next time I find them in the laundry. A moment later, she walks on tiptoes and announces that these are her favourite pants. Then I remember my own jeans shredded at the knees, long arguments with a mother who wanted to throw them away, remember writing in my journal that when I died, I wanted to be buried in the jeans with the holes in the knees.
this is one of my favorites..(tomatoes, cleaness, jeans)..wow, I feel special ‘hearing’ your thots as you look at life.
?cleanness…
C’est vrai. How has it been so long since we were kids? How have we forgotten? Yet, I’m super glad I won’t be buried in my hole-y jeans. I’ve got better style now…at least I think so…but chances are the younger generation would say, nope. 🙂