A Spring of Change

Magic bewitches the air come twilight. 

Orange light filters in between clusters of leaves, that project its imaginative shapes onto my face, as I make my feet clap over the almost faded frost. 

Winter has come to an end, and it's as if the fairies have gathered to celebrate the vernal equinox. The trees are beginning the wafts of pollen, flowers have sprouted into colors reflected like kaleidoscopes, all over the park. 

Here surrounded by the hand holding of couples, breaking from their mundane systems, to enjoy the fleeting strands of light, before dinner. 

Mini league athletes and their parents, exuberant about the end of practice. Packing up their folded chairs, and equipment. Heading home.

I walk alone through it all, my head down, my bare arms clenching over prickly hair and splattering of goosebumps of the other arm. My tears extinguishing the unbearable heat I can no longer stand.

I feel as if I’m not a creature of this earth, for I do not rejoice in mother nature’s sacred holiday of today. Where the world fades from one season to another.

For the past months, I have been entrapped in a stuffy clean white box, barely paying attention to the evolving world that lay at my fingertips.

For my world has stopped moving. My world is frozen in winter, an entrapment I never wished to break free of. For I knew when I did, spring would take what meant most to me. 

It will not grow anew, It will take an old.

I feel as if I have been running with my feet tied to this my whole life. 

Walking without a scarf, or a hat, only one sock on in a daze in the park.

My mother is dying. 

I feel like I’m suffocating. Like death has a grip on my neck and not hers. My mother is brave, and I am not. 

I rejected her as she reached for my hand. Calling my name, and telling me it was going to be alright. 

But how can anything be alright if I don’t have my mother? And my mother doesn’t have a daughter? How will anything be alright when she disappears from my forever.

I ran from her voice, as my family stood with hopeless faces around her bed, holding get- well balloons that will eventually pop, preorganized flowers, that despite the hardworking effort behind the display, will eventually shrivel up, fall over, and die.

I ran with no real destination in mind, the fastest I’ve gone, in what seems like years not months. My feet unknowingly bring me to where my mother and I used to take walks like this one, following the footsteps that I have paved before. 

Already I am replacing her, and our memories. With this dull walk in this stupid park.

I hate the mushrooms sprouting from the grass. I hate the birds calling cacophony in the branches, I hate the animals coming out of hibernation; don’t they know their walking into nature's trap?

It’s far safer to stay inside, and cling to the ones you love. Before it's too late.

Before the doctors tell you that your mother is actually not getting better like they lied to you and said that she was. That she will be nothing but ashes by the end of two weeks.

How could nature do this to me?

How I have protected it, adored it, praised it, looked forward to it. 

Nature is not a friend, it does not care. You call for help, a little more time, and it listens to none. It hears your cries and It continues to take and take and take until you are nothing for all you love is gone, and soon after you are too.

I spit on the ground.

A wind prudes the air, and slashes my skin. The trees get swept up in it, whistling and howling their branches, until the flow leaves as soon as it came.

I stop my stomp. 

My angry tears subside, and pained ones take its place. For before me is the bench. The bench mom used to read me stories, as we waited for my older siblings to be released from school. She read me all the classics, Dr. Seuss, Ronald Dahl, Beverly Cleary, Megan McDonald. 

She would tell them in fascinating voices, bouncing me on her knee, as I learned to read over her shoulder. Every time we had ended a chapter, she would look at me and ask, Now wasn’t this better than reading inside?

And every time I would nod ecstatically and beg her to read more before her attention drifted from me and onto my siblings.

I think of the unfairness in which my mind and body grew. From my arms aching of the want, for my mom to cuddle me, to my later years in which I would push her arms away, and run to the mall with my friends.

If I could only tell my younger self that my need for freedom would impair me to see my mother’s lack of youth.

If only I could tell myself to spend all my time with her, and learn all the wisdom that she had to give me, before I couldn’t ask anymore, and the fear of never knowing living in the crevices of my brain forever. 

The light has begun to disappear behind tall concrete buildings of the past. I feel a sense of security with it. 

Nighttime doesn’t hide what it is.                                   

We assume the worst of nighttime, so therefore we can never be surprised by what actually unfolds beneath the stars.

What will become of my mom? What will become of her when I can no longer reach out and touch her, or struggle away as she kissed me on my head.

She tells me she's not scared, but how is it possible to not be scared by the unknown. Will she be lost to me in a dreamless sleep? Or will she watch over me and drink ambrosia in the heavens?                

How can someone just disappear?            

I sit on that bench, for what feels like a minute of fleeting time. Like every moment I’m here I’m tempting fate.

I should be spending these last moments with her. I should be taking advantage of every moment she gives me.

But it feels as much as a blessing as a curse. How am I supposed to talk to her and not know if the words that roll off her tongue will be the last ones she'll ever say to me.         

With a shuddering breath, I lay my head on the cold Iron bars, looking to the sky.

There are no answers there, just a fog of city pollution, and the everlasting darkness beyond. I close my eyes, I fear the tears will freeze on my face.

I have no way of knowing it will be okay, but I also have no way of knowing that it won't.

I'm not sure if there is a higher being out there. 

Maybe nobody really knows. 

Just like nobody really knows if there are little things like Bigfoot, or the loch ness monster. Or big things like aliens, or why we’re all here in the first place.

I guess questions like this will continue on into infinity, without any real answers. Everyone always wondering. No certainties. No absolute plans.

All of us on a roller coaster of life going around in loops of the same attractions, same views. Over and over until we get kicked off and new humans take our spots.

Which is beautiful in a way. As much as life gives us no certainties, it also gives us some absolution like the sun rising in the east, the fall of leaves in autumn, flowers blooming in spring, and nights like tonight, where no matter where my life takes me I know I can always come back here, sit on this bench and think about it all.

I open my eyes and stand. 

I know I'm not prepared for life without my mother, I never will be. But over time like the seasons come and go, maybe the pain will lessen, and my life will go on with the tilt of the Earth.

For life is a gift, and my mom would want me to live it, even if she won't be here to witness it.