Tonight
Posted on | August 31, 2006 | 14 Comments
Today I feel the earth has tilted on its axis farther from the sun. The air tonight is cold, and the earliest of the maples are vermillion on the hillside. Monarch butterflies have been everywhere in the past few days. They fly in their delicate aimless way from flower to stem along the roadside, and I wince as one hits my bike tire. It’s beautiful wings falter, but it’s no use stopping. It is not like a bird, whose body in shock can be revived with the shelter of warm hands.
In the flats below our house the mountain rises up from the wide field of grass like an elephant on bended knee, purple in the late afternoon sun. We make a fire after dinner, and sit in the quiet of early evening listening to the last of the crickets and the crackle of burning wood. The first frosts will be here in a week, and then the nights grow silent. The fire licks logs, and quickly turns the wood to pale ash. A snake, curled in a flat crevice of rock awakens with the heat, and glides from its hiding place, tonguing the smoky air. Above us, the moon is exactly half full, tangled in the leaves of a maple tree, and across the field our cat, a streak of orange and white, pounces on a mole.
When the sky turns from cerulean to indigo, we pour water on the fire and go indoors. In place of smoke, steam rises up. Tomorrow we go back. Back to the place where havoc happened and everything that mattered most was encapsulated in each pure second of staying alive. Tomorrow we go back to where we were before tragedy scraped across the surface of our souls. Back to where we were standing before the gun shots and the breaking glass: near the sink cutting paper. The new geranium in the bright sunlight on the windowsill had already dropped its first petals on the floor.
Yesterday I went with others to see the colleague I had been standing with who was injured. Just out of the hospital, her face was radiant with smiles. In place of guilt, she offered up forgiveness, easy and immediate, despite the fact that we all heard her cries but couldn’t come. Didn’t. Because we placed our own lives first. Self preservation lurching up in our throats, a part of the hardwired code being human, followed immediately by the bitter taste of regret. Seeing her was good. It gave me room to breathe again, room in my heart to stop replaying every broken moment, and to move instead towards preparation. And seeing her also made me think of this again: forgiveness is an act of love.
Night fills the bowl of day. The window becomes a mirror.
Comments
14 Responses to “Tonight”
Leave a Reply
I am Christina Rosalie
Hello. I'm so happy you've stopped by!
I am a multimedia storyteller, digital strategist, idea starter, stalker of wonder, finder of four leaf clovers, MFA graduate student, and mama of boys. My first book,
will be published by SKIRT! Books in September, 2012.
DAILY ART:
Follow:
Tags
Categories
Archives
ALWAYS:
August 31st, 2006 @ 10:07 pm
This is a beautiful and gut wrenching post.
You will be in my thoughts tomorrow…
August 31st, 2006 @ 10:13 pm
Damn.
You made me cry.
Looking up at that same moon as it is just emerging from the end of day and thinking of you and yours.
August 31st, 2006 @ 11:16 pm
I’ve been wondering when you would go back.
I will pray for you, pray that you will have strength and grace and courage. Every day, of course, but tomorrow most especially. Soon those halls will be filled with the laughter of children, with squeaky new shoes and lots of “shhhhhhs, walk in a straight line, please.” Hopefully it will help chase the ghosts of terror away.
And the last two lines of this post are so beautiful, like a small, perfect poem.
August 31st, 2006 @ 11:42 pm
I wish that tomorrow as you walk the halls you remember that with every step you’re taking you have the gift of being alive as you very well expressed it before. You are a brave woman, wife and mother.
I wish you the best day tomorrow.
September 1st, 2006 @ 3:15 am
Christina, I can’t even imagine what you have gone through. And that this happened when you were finding your way back to a job you love is awful as well. I have been thinking of you all week and pouring love and strength across the miles to you.
September 1st, 2006 @ 3:54 am
I’ve been so worried wondering what could have happened. I am sorry that you had to experience something so terrifying and awful. I hope that the arrival of children for the start of a new school year will aid everyone in the healing process.
September 1st, 2006 @ 8:07 am
I’ll be thinking of you today. I know that it will be so difficult.
You truly have a way with words. That was a beautiful post.
September 1st, 2006 @ 8:17 am
thinking of you…
it must be very hard.
September 1st, 2006 @ 8:21 am
I will have you in my thoughts today too, Christina. I feel so much for you and what you’re going through even though I have never met you in person.
For whatever it’s worth, I have a mantra that my mother-in-law passed onto me in times of trial: “You are your own power.” I figure it applies to anytime that you need to remind yourself that you are strong, you are powerful.
September 1st, 2006 @ 8:58 am
I can only imagine what you are feeling and going through after such a horrific tragedy. I am so glad you are okay. I wish you all the strength and courage you will need and will keep you in my thoughts and prayers.
September 1st, 2006 @ 9:32 am
Remember that forgiveness is first an act of faith, in yourself first, then others.
September 1st, 2006 @ 10:51 am
I, also, am thinking of you and your loved ones today. I don’t have any other words.
September 1st, 2006 @ 3:03 pm
Take care, Christina. Thinking about you…
September 1st, 2006 @ 8:20 pm
Please keep in mind what Paul said…we are all human. Stay strong dear one.