Brought Into the Fold

I started folding some seven years ago after a strange and potent dream. It was 2006, some seven months before my mother’s diagnosis, when I first dreamed of paper birds. I dreamed of my fingers gliding over creases and angles of white and red coming together slowly in a figure that was more than the sum of its parts. I dreamed that the paper bird suddenly came alive and flew out of my hands, delicate and trembling with the joy of living.

Returning to A Space to Exist

After the fact, I wasn’t even sure what had happened, but I woke up with a sense that the unremembered night had been important. It was the first real snow of the year and if I were being cynical, I might think it was the cold which woke me before my alarm (despite my perpetual state of sleep deprivation). I wasn’t being cynical, though, so I thought first of my Father’s connection to the winter storm--and that’s the true miracle of the thing: that my mind leapt to the unseen explanation.

Of Water and Wisdom

There is a subtle and horrible fear creeping over this town. So many seem to have fallen in such a short time—an athlete, then a band kid, then a beloved teacher with two small children of his own, then an older colleague--that whispers now poke at the unthinkable: maybe it’s in the water. And what exactly do we do? If the town really is fed by cancer causing wells, what do we do?

A Different Sort of Dawn

The new year came quietly for me. Open sky and sun, a light breeze chasing the summer heat away as my father and I walked among the flowers of the park and admired the art show displays. Later in the evening, there was a pleasant dinner at a nice little spot out in the neighborhoods away from the hustle of the city. It’s different with just the two of us, but we laugh when we remember her and it’s nice to share the memories without the pall of grief hanging over us.

At one point I tipped my glass to no one in particular and smiled when others looked at me oddly. A small gesture just to show I remembered, even if there was no fanfare to follow it...

Disconcerting Dreams of Her

I’m not certain I like it here. The clouds get snagged on the mountains and the rains and rolling thunder are just out of reach, visible but too far to hear or smell or feel. I suppose it wouldn’t make much difference anyway. I mostly sit inside with the shades drawn pretending I’m not here. I had forgotten the roughness of the place where my brother lives. I don’t like to go out alone in this part of town and the neighbors are loud and unstable. But we go out in the evenings to better parts of town when my brother is in the mood for it and the company is worth putting up with the broken shower and the small space. All in all, it isn’t so bad.

But then there are the dreams and the small anxious thing inside me that paces about because I don’t know what to do about them. It is the third dream now, when she has come and said she was coming back. Coming back? What does that mean? I look between the slats of the big window that can see the clouds being torn on the mountain tops. High above the desert, moisture gathers and threatens to fall. An empty threat. My mind turns back to the dreams. What do you mean you’re coming back? You’ve gone west, mother…there is no coming back from that journey.

In the last dream there was a strange resurrection and I think she wants to see my brother. I would work towards that, but he can’t see her because he doesn’t believe so there is no point to it. Then I think that must not be it at all because she has used the guise of others to say the same things—specifically the guise of a person I respect and trust and love— and if this is just about my brother, that doesn’t fit. What are you trying to say? What do you want me to do? Are you trying to say you are leaving the west? Are you trying to say you intend to try again at life? I won’t know you if you come back. I say. You’ll be different.  

Wind picks up and dust swirls… then all is calm and bright. The storm stays on the mountain. My mother stays in the west.

I don’t understand.