Darby Girl's Perspective

Your plants made the small house smaller. And they dropped leaves and needed water or had too much water and sometimes they’d drip water all over the console stereo that Dee bought at Gimbel's with her first paycheck. Dad took the stereo part out years ago and turned it into a cabinet where you kept Golden Books and extra napkins and plants on top. And others hanging above. The ones that dripped. When I’d visit you’d want to show me something new. A bud. A brown leaf that confounded you. A macramé hanger that Roseann made. I lived in the small house with the plants long enough to know their vagaries, I even knew individuals and remember their arrival. Mother-in-Law’s tongue from your father’s funeral and Boston Fern from the Philadelphia Flower Show. Wandering Jews that escaped and set roots in the Weeping Fig and an amaryllis that Grandmom found in an alley in the 1930’s. Mistaken for an onion set she was deeply disappointed by flowers at Christmas instead of food. The disappearan...

Now, I count, add, the years. At least eight. But more like ten. Unless you count when you recommended I visit the Empire State Building during the Washington trip. Should I count that? Will they count when I said Labor Day instead of Memorial Day? A lot of people do that. I think. No. Definitely at least eleven. I remember Aricept at the millennium. At least eleven but if we count the nun who talked to you through the television. That would be more. Or less. I can’t remember. Really. It is a long time, either way. To be caught between the here and there. So, they tell me I should be relieved. Definitely eight. We went to a party and you had to relieve yourself and you couldn’t tell me. I figured it out then in the car on the way home. And made them stop at the mini-mart where the key was attached to a giant wooden paddle and you wore pantyhose and underpants and it took too long to take them off. You cried in the backseat afterward and I brought home the giant key holder. Accidentall...

Watching from a second floor window as you walk to the school bus, I am ashamed at my impatience with you. If you were not so easily distracted you would not have noticed the bluebirds flying in the trees between the houses, whose yards you shortcut through. I pray that Mrs. Kennedy is still sleeping on this Tuesday after a holiday weekend. Hope that she won't notice you again walking on her finely manicured lawn. Especially now, since you have slowed down to watch the Bluebirds dance in her Bradford Pear tree. The dew clings to the grass beneath your feet and I am sure your ankles must be wet and I consider how uncomfortable I'd feel walking in damp shoes all day. I remind myself that none of this, Mrs. Kennedy, wet shoes or imminent bus, weigh even slightly upon your head. The way the sun is coming up behind the houses makes you look almost golden. Your red baseball cap climbing the hill now as you turn to watch the birds fly into the woods behind our house. Big, yellow schoo...