Greece

The house is heavy and dark, fading evening sunlight streaks through in uneven ripples giving an underwater glow to the unused rooms. On a taupe sofa a woman sits primly in her short silken nightgown. Her chin jutting out slightly and her blond hair pinned loosely up .Her eyes stare vacantly towards a television which is on and busily blaring scenes of hyperactivity, abstract colors and optimistic clapping and laughter. She turns and gracefully cups a glass of white wine sipping slowly as she narrows her green eyes. She cannot help but glance at her companion although she would rather not because it pains her so much and starts her thinking down a long dark road which has no end. He lays stretched out from the adjacent sofa his feet propped on the coffee table wrapped in warm brown moccasins. He has his face propped in his chin and occasionally brushes down his face as though deep in thought. His eyes are focused completely upon the television and he flips through channels and makes an absentminded snort or chuckle here and there. The woman looks at him and wonders if he is really there, how long will this image remain when he is gone? How many of these long dreary nights will she miss and weep over and rail against? She studies his gaunt face and pale skin, noticing each mark upon him from his purple bruise on his forearm to his now fuzzy white hair. She closes her eyes and tries to conjure up his deep olive skin and black hair, his muscular arms and even his soft belly and a million images flash through her head, his face sleeping, kissing children, yelling, smiling, joking, sarcastic, running down a beach, driving away, watching his plane become airborne. And then she realizes. All of her married life she has been preparing for this final goodbye. Every journey he has taken, every time he has kissed her goodbye she has known that someday her luck would run out. The plane would crash, a car accident, bad food in a foreign country. And she would be in bed with the light on and the TV on for comfort and she would get the call she dreaded and then her life would be altered forever. But she never pictured it like this. She never wanted to be so close, to visit this strange country called cancer and learn the foreign language that she never wanted to speak aloud and meet people that she could only associate with sadness, visit desolate places like waiting rooms at 4pm and hospitals in the middle of the night. She didn’t ask for any of it and the worst part was the lingering hope. It was the knife edge in the pit of her stomach that caused her to wake every day and fall asleep each night with the same prayer on her lips of more time, just a little more time….and it was strangling her with its invisible cords of desire. She was hoping for the past, she was hoping for a dream, for a miracle. But she was above all else a realist and in her heart of hearts she knew that this magical restoration which she so ardently prayed for could not happen. Yes, perhaps he could recover to some extent but no they could never go back. They were true expatriates now, and in her mind their lost homeland became more beautiful, more comforting and safe than she had ever truly felt. She imagined that they were living in a painting, a fragile world where the light was always soft and friends gathered around and children laughed. And they had been cast out like Adam and Eve into a harsh land fraught with dangers that she had not even anticipated. This worried her most of all, she had always been proud of her ability to forsee danger in all its myriad forms- a sharp stick, a loose rock, a menacing voice and she had always managed to steer them to higher ground under his optimistic guidance. But this had come upon them like an earthquake with its utter indifference and its ability to swallow whole years, and cause the hardiest soul to crumble under the weight of the stones that rolled over them daily. She couldn’t imagine a future without him yet she would have to, there wasn’t any choice. Whether it was 2 years or 10 years it would happen and she didn’t know who she would be after that. She had always been the pepper side of the pair, the straight man, the negative one, the future, the realist. When she thought of this sometime in the future she pictured herself like the red balloon drifting along aimlessly over happy villages and placid cows. Not a part of anything in particular just a red spot in the landscape. What country would she end up in when she finally landed? The woman pulled a blanket up over her feet and lay back against a pillow. “Are you ok honey?” “Yeah. I’m fine, I feel a little dizzy, my eyes hurt.” He rubs his face for emphasis, “Maybe I’ll go lie down” But he merely shifts positions and fades into the television’s dull glow. She says a little roughly “ well go lay down, you need to rest” But its only to hear the sound of her voice, to reassure herself that he still annoys her and that he is still here to annoy her. She closes her eyes and sees an image of Greece – yellow land strewn with rocks, spindly dark olive trees reaching up into a fierce blue sky. The wind blowing unevenly, smelling dank and heavy. She is looking at her daughter and her sons and they smile at her as if from across a great distance. But they are there. With her in a strange land and feeling just as uncomfortable in their foreignness as she does. In this strange land she looks down at her feet and she steps out tentatively at first then as she finds her footing she lets herself go and she walks into the landscape of a new painting with her wary children trailing along behind her like newborn ducklings.

Madison

Today I’m going to see a little five year old girl named Madison. I picture a little girl with blond curls and wide blue eyes, wearing a yellow sundress tied in bows on her delicate shoulders. I can see her licking a lollipop and already she has that haughty look in her eye that says one day she will totter around in high heels at fourteen in too tight jeans wearing someone’s promise ring to class surrounded by friends who laugh at the girls named Molly or Dawn.
I brush my hair and reapply lipstick and it hits me as it always does with these never ending names, lists of names like Edward James Jr. or Charity or Tara and on and on that I will never meet a girl like Madison. My Madison of today promises to be beautiful in her own way I’m sure but she will not be a girl that will grow up to dominate the world. She will be in a wheelchair, she will need help to eat, her father will carry her into the shower and will cradle her head as the water rushes over them both and he hurries to soap her long flaxen hair before she starts screaming. She will say a few words and she will smile and laugh and she will be oblivious of my presence as I sit with her parents talking about her “needs” and as we wonder, our heads together if she can recognize the pictures for her favorite foods.
Does her screaming and her crying mean she’s just a little girl or is it more?
Only time will tell.
Madison screams happily as she watches her cartoon and I remember the little boy named James who crawled all over while I talked to his mom about diapers.
The little girl named Tanisha who couldn’t move at all but stared up at me with huge dark eyes as drool puddled on her shoulder. Her mother smiling as she recounted how much her daughter loved her teacher.
I see Austin, the mute autistic teenager calmly chewing on his arm as he arranges his stuffed animals in perfect rows all assembled to watch him.
He will not look at me.
His father laughed describing plunging the toilet weekly and his tone left no room for pity.
These names haunt me with their hopefulness-Katherine, Jamal, Patricia, Evan, Ethan, Tyler, Jordan, they contain the whole tale within their syllables.
A happy moment of new life.
A name given.
Full of meaning, significance and history landing heavily onto a soul who will never carry it to fruition.
As I am leaving I say- “Madison is a pretty name how did you choose that one?” They look up at me and say together “well it was the only girl name we both liked and we had just started looking at names, we thought we had so much more time.”