Reflections

From my place in the garden, the sound of the kettle whistling in the kitchen was transformed from a shrill shriek into a comforting, familiar song; the bass rumble of the nascent boil, minor notes of eager steam beginning to escape, an aria and crescendo, then the trilling, wavelike denouement as the kettle is lifted from the stove. I could picture Grandmother in there, ever so carefully lifting the lid, gently sending a cascade of water over the bags of tea- inevitably some variant of English Breakfast- and placing the delicate china cups on the serving tray, time-worn yet curiously unstained. She had a natural grace, unimpeded by her eighty-five years walking the earth, and I doubted whether a single drop had ever escaped a cup on her infinite trips from kitchen to garden. I knew better than to offer help; ever since I was young, she waved away any offer of assistance with a briskly polite refusal, and I was confident that that had not changed since I had been away.

The screen door slid open behind me, and she glided into view, slipping the laden tray on the table between us. She still moved with that unconscious elegance, but for the first time I noted a slight stiffness in her bend, undetectable to most, I’m certain, but there nonetheless. I felt a swoop and a pull somewhere between my heart and navel.

“Well, kiddo,” she said brightly, and that momentary panic was soothed by her voice, as energetic and comforting as it had always been. “Tell me all about it, and don’t you leave out any saucy details.” She gave me a sly, borderline salacious look over her spectacles.

“Grandmother!” I exclaimed in mock outrage. A few years ago I would have been mortified, but the millstone of time had ground down that curious sense of impropriety that hung over discussions of all things mildly sensual. To put it simply, Grandma was no prude.

Nevertheless, I did withhold a few details of my first year of college, sticking instead to the mundane and practical details of my time spent away: the classes, grades, professors, dorm-life, exotic restaurants, a new major (Water and Marine Resources Management), and of course, the new friends met along the way. Grandmother listened eagerly, letting me drone on for the better part of the afternoon, interjecting only to clarify aspects of certain relationships or to beg more detail of the riverwalk in autumn.

When I had at last exhausted my tales, the sun had shifted behind the maple that I used to climb in younger days, and shade had crept over the garden. We sat in silence for a moment, listening to the birds. 

“I’m thinking about dropping out,” I said quietly.

“Oh?” she replied neutrally. “Whyever so? It sounds like you are having quite the life experience.”

“Not dropping out of school entirely,” I amended. “Just that particular school. I want to look into schools around here.” I fell silent for a moment, and the swell of emotion that had been rising since I pulled into the driveway suddenly crested. “I think I’m homesick,” I said in a weak, watery voice.

She put her arm around my lightly hitching shoulders and pulled me closer, and I laid my head on her shoulder and cried. 

“Oh, Joanna, you’re afflicted with the oldest illness. Lord knows I’ve missed you dearly, but you know the best thing about home?”

She leaned away and smiled at me, brushing at my tears with a delicate thumb, her skin soft and smooth and seemingly as thin as paper.

“Home will always be here.”

I nodded into her shoulder and we sat for a while longer, until the sun touched the trees in the west and gilded the clouds. Grandma had begun to doze, so I carried the tea tray inside for her and helped tidy up. We embraced and I departed, watching her house in the rearview mirror, noting  with a gentle amusement her silhouette at the window, waving until I was out of sight, in the manner of grandparents everywhere.

When I got home, I started looking at my local schools programs that would flow into my new major, and was delighted to find that they specialized in certain areas of that path. Over the next week, I made all the necessary calls and emails to change schools and enrolled myself for the fall semester. The rest of that long summer was spent visiting old friends at local haunts, walks along our own rivers and lakeshores, and leisurely afternoons with my family. My parents, I think, were secretly delighted that I changed schools, and were happy to have me home. And Grandmother- despite her assertion that home would always be here, was pleased by my decision as well. I was, after all, her only grandchild, and it’s only in hindsight that I realized how much our time together must have meant to her.

When she unexpectedly passed away that winter (as unexpectedly as an eighty-five year old can hope for), I fell into darkness. Bleak hours passed, and I replayed those long afternoons together in my head on repeat, and slowly the golden sunshine that pervaded those memories lent the color back to my waking life. I became infinitely thankful for my choice to remain home for that autumn, and for the precious hours we were able to parcel away together.

I was surprised to find that she had left me her tea set and kettle in her will, along with a small amount of money and other sundries. There was a small piece of paper included with the set, and written in her flowing cursive were the words: For My Dearest Jo- The Keeper of the Water.

I puzzled over the inscription for a long while. It struck me as something that she would have written after I had declared my major, but a nagging part of me wondered if it was something she thought of me all along.

On a brisk spring morning some months after her death, I was putting the kettle on when it all clicked together. The Keeper of the Water; it was both a signature and a christening- an immutable bonding of our lives and stories. Grandmother, with her liquid grace, the well from which we had sprung, distilled in essence to the simple act of bringing tea to her children and grandchildren, had been the deep pool in which my own reflection took form.

On the stovetop, the teakettle began to whistle.