Leah's Legacy

It’s a sunny afternoon when the light begins to fade and we gather around the fire pit in the backyard.  Erick shoves his hands in his pockets and peers at me from the corner of his eye. 

I have felt his eyes on me for the last few minutes. 

“What?” I say, somewhat rudely.

“I just never realized how red your hair is sometimes,” he says shighly, peering down at his boots in the cold dirt. The light from the sunset is peering above the trees now and there is a ray of sunshine in his eyes. 

I sigh heavily, somewhat annoyed that this was the one thing on his mind at this moment. “I know, sometimes it looks like a light auburn, almost brown color and other times it’s almost gold mixed with orange and red.” I lean my head back and stare up at the sky, wondering if the sunset today also mirrors the ever changing colors of my hair. 

“It’s not the same as mine” he says as he runs a hand through his ragged, short hair. “Mine is way darker, almost a dark brown with dark auburn highlights.” 

“Yeah, it’s funny how we’re cut from the same cloth but awfully different, right?” I ask him as I look over at him, wondering what else is on his mind. 

“That redhead gene sure was strong with her, huh?” Erick brings his hands to the fire pit to warm them and I’m instantly reminded why we are even here right now. Our mother passed away a few days ago, leaving us ready but not ready for the wake of her absence. We found out a few months ago that she was sick, some type of cancer. Come to find out, her symptoms had been present as warning signs for years but she refused to seek treatment. She said she didn’t need modern medicine to tell her how to feel about her body, she knew what was best for it. That was about as far as any of the three of us could get with her. 

Tonight we gathered around the firepit outside our family home; just me, my younger brother Erick, and my Dad. The first night that we have had as just the three of us without Mom. A chance to both feel her presence and the lack of her presence at the same time. The heaviness weighs on us like the smoke around the fire pit. The past few days have been full of friends, loved ones, and neighbors dropping off food, giving hugs, and even sharing stories of our Mother that we had never heard before. Most of them talked about how much they loved her little plant shop and how she always knew what they needed, even before they knew what they needed. She just had a way of knowing. 

Aunt Alma, our mother’s older sister, stopped by this morning to drop off a casserole. It was still warm, fresh out of the oven. She said she hadn’t slept last night so she got up to make us her famous shepherds pie. That reminds me to come back to Erick. 

“Yeah, crazy that she was the only one of 5 children with red hair, right?” I say to him as I seem to snap out of the casserole induced trance I was just in. 

“Not just that, but her 4 other siblings had jet black hair! Heck, even Dad has dark brown hair…” His voice sorts of trails off as if he’s losing steam to remember. 

“And we both have red hair, gosh...genetics are wild…isn’t that some kind of anomaly? Red hair isn’t that common right?” I don’t really know what else to say. The conversation seems a little awkward to me, almost like we shouldn’t even be talking at this moment but we fill it with red hair chatter. 

It was always a spectacle when Erick and I were younger and we would be at our Mom’s plant shop nestled at the end of the cul de sac in our neighborhood. It was just a small little shack but our mother set up a tiny shop for the neighbors to find plants and flowers for their gardens.  She sold mostly local plants in the area. She was especially busy in the early spring planting season. Erick and I would join her to repot some of the larger plants into several smaller plants for sending off with the neighbors. 

Erick is only two years younger than me and he would mostly complain about the heat. But sometimes the two of us had as much fun playing in the dirt and making messes as we did helping our mother with her tasks.

“Look at your darling little Angels!”

“What beautiful red hair you three have!”

“Wow Leah, your little redheaded children are so adorable. They certainly get it from you, don’t they?” 

That’s how the neighbors would croon. Eventually as I got older, I wanted less attention for my red hair. I was mostly made fun of for having red hair at school and always got attention for being different. While my mother would toil with her shop in the afternoons, I found that I wanted less and less to do with her shop and the attention our tresses would garner. It began to seem like even Dad looked at us with awe, like he was the one that was left out of the group but he was so happy to have a part of it in some way. We sometimes referred to him as the innocent bystander in the red headed brigade. 

I’m back to Erick and the smoky fire pit. The sun has faded and the darkness engulfs us. Only the warm glow of the fire lights up our faces. Now our red hair looks brighter from the flames of the fire. I look over to Erick and I notice that there’s a fresh sheen to his cheeks. A pit forms in my stomach as I realize he’s been crying. I reach over to put my arm around him and step a little closer to him. 

“Sarah, we should have had more time with her.” He sniffles a little and leans into me. “Why did she need to do things her way?” 

I can’t help but chuckle a little. I’m sad too. I know I haven’t begun to even decipher the grief sitting below the surface of my stone like facade. I’m a lot like the fire in front of us. Serving its purpose, providing warmth and comfort but if you get too close to me, I’ll burn everything up in a fiery rage of pain. 

“You know Erick, it’s the way she’s always done things. Dad never wanted her to open that little shop. He said it invited too much chatter from the neighborhood and that something felt wrong about selling our plants to the neighbors. Like it was easily something they all could have done in their own yard. But she just had a way. More than just a green thumb, it was her nursery. Those plants knew more about our mother than we likely did. She talked to them like they were her children.” 

Erick nods and tilts his head as he’s remembering. “You’re right,” he says. “Once I remember when Clara came over from next door. Mom had been whispering to some of her baby plants about cheering up, she said they never knew when someone might need them. Clara showed up in tears and just a few minutes later, she left with one of the flowers Mom was just talking to!” The corners of his mouth lift a little as he thinks about the memory for a second. “The flower even looked happier somehow!” 

I smile too. “What kind of flower was it, do you remember?”

“I think it was a pansy…” he shrugs. “Anyway, it worked. I asked her what was wrong with Clara, and Mom never really told me. She just said something about Clara not getting what she hoped for but now Clara had something to care for instead.” 

“Wow,” I say as I wipe my own tears aside and step closer to the warm fire. “Sometimes her sage wisdom was exactly what I needed in those difficult times.” 

“Hey, you two!” Dad exclaims as he walks out of the dark shadows and up to the rumbling fire. “Nice fire we got here.” He looks at our faces and I see his eyes twinkle when he meets the glow of our tears. We nod at him and smile softly. The loss is as heavy as the darkness that surrounds us but standing next to the fire, we feel held and protected in its warmth. It’s just enough in that moment to feel tethered to her presence. 

I have an idea. “I’ll be right back,” I say as I step away from the fire. I suddenly know there’s something I need from Mom’s little shop. I run through the house and out the front door, down to the cul de sac and up to the weathered green shack. All the plants are inside to be kept out of the cool evenings so it’s just a lonely little building under a street lamp. Anyone would hardly notice it as anything more than an old tool shed during the winter. Except for the tiny sign still hanging in the window that I made for her in 3rd grade that says “Leah’s Plant Shop '' in choppy third grade handwriting, every letter written in a different color. Around the letters, there are tiny drawings of plants and an adornment of vines. My mom was so proud when I brought it home, she framed it that day and hung it in the window as her shop sign and that’s where it still sits.. 

I nod at it as I swallow my tears and make my way inside. Instantly I head to the back of the shed where a few small plants sit on the window sill. 

“Hello lovely's,” I whisper as I swipe the three of them up and nestle them in my pockets. Just as I do, something falls from the sill and feathers to the floor. I lean down to inspect it and realize it’s an old photo of our family. I’m probably around the same age as I was when I made the sign. My toothless grin front and center in the photo with Mom, Dad, and Erick circled around me. I am holding my arms out wide and I remember this day so clearly. It was the day we finished putting up the shed. We were so happy for her to have this space. I run my hand over the brightness of our red hair in the photo. It always felt like we had something special in this place. I decided to put the photo back on the shelf, as if we all belong there forever. 

As I took a step out of the green shed, I let my hand linger on the door knob. Instinctively, I knew I would be back tomorrow to check on the plants. The wind blew towards me as I turned to face the house. I took a deep breath and let it pass over me. 

When I make it back to the fire, Dad and Erick are sitting next to each other on a bench near the fire pit. I can tell by their faces that the grief is starting to surface. I reach into my pocket and hand each of them one of the small plants. 

“Here, I’m certain Mom wanted us to have these. They’ve been sitting on the windowsill for weeks, waiting for us.” I smile softly at them as they open their hands to take the tiny green plant and inspect it. Dad lifts his small pot near the light of the fire and turns it around. The green arms of the plant reach out and sparkle in the firelight. 

Erick rubs the leaves on his plant, careful to avoid the spikes at the end. He looks up at me and smiles. At this moment, with the firepit behind him, I can’t help but think our hair is the exact same shade of red. “She grew us Aloe plants,” he says. I nod. She did, she left a salve to soothe our souls.