Migratory Creatures

“It was never really orange. Not like they said it would be.”

Grandma wasn’t a liar. She sat in her antiquated rocking chair, fingers gargoyle gripping the armrest with a gentle ferocity of an aged angel, lovely, cracked. An aging senile beauty. 

Soft whispered words, sharp with an unfocused meaning. No one listened to Grandma, not the way they used to anyway. Not when her youth had already kicked off its shoes, dress hoisted up at the ankles, off into the cold wilderness with rosy, hot snowflakes like freckles melting against her flushed skin. Looking for something, leaving behind a withered woman with a faraway longing. 

Grandma was old. She stared at the sky. She didn’t very much like the cold anymore. Residing to hold herself steady, hunched in a faded woolen quilt covered in red begonias. Sometimes she clutched it with her pale, shriveled fingers. Held onto it while she sipped her mint tea, (no honey, just two sugars and splash of cream) lips cold and cracked. She liked to wait for nightfall to count the stars. 

She talked to the moon. Called her lovely. “An old friend.” They were sisters, bright things watching over rolling white, frozen fields. One ancient and beautiful, the other a tide holder. 

She didn’t talk much outside of her patio spot, dressed in morning shadows, sometimes covered in speckled winter light. I knew they had an odd relationship, her and death. Not the end of times but the season of endings. She hated the knobby trees, wept for falling leaves, tsking them like careless children as they fell to their frozen beds. She only cared for the birds, “smart migratory creatures.” She said that winter never ends. It’s a clingy creature, desperate for warmth, pulling the sun out of the sky all greedy and vengeful.

We don’t see the sun here. Grandma hasn’t seen it since that one time fifty-three odd years ago. Glassy, milk-like eyes burning with a hot memory of an old summer. She licks her lips in the sunlight and shifts in her walnut chair. 

Grandma is like a bird frozen from beak to perch, all rustling frozen feathers, shuttered wings, colors bleached in the winter heat. Never alone but lonely for a time that isn’t now. A migratory creature held back by age. 

But, oh, does she smile. Sometimes when she forgets she’s doing it. Gummy, a noticeable pretty thing, greying dark curls whirling in the snowy frost, cheeks flushed to her gentle agitation. Mom likes to stare at her then, a cup in her ringed hand, steam curling around her beauty-marked chin. I used to stand with her, tugging at the seams of her dress with cold, blue fingers. “What’re we looking at?” 

“The sun, darling. We’re looking at the sun. It don’t come around these parts no more.”

And a part of me knew what she meant. The blue skies like the underside of the frozen lake. Rushing, curling, popping with snow and ice and blow-your-breath out cold. I remember I glanced at Grandma, saw that far away look in her eyes and shoved a whole turkey bacon in my small mouth, chewing around the burnt edges. I didn’t know what beautiful meant. But I felt warm. And good. And full. And I sat in her lap (hoisting myself up) and I put a chilled hand to her face. She had freckles like me. Longer hair. A kinder, forgotten face. We looked at each other. I was the horizon. And she was Grandma. 

The years go by fast in the icy wasteland. The fire burns and the wood talks fast, sparks flying out of its mouth. We have hot meat for dinner, stew occasionally, fish in the mornings. Honey cakes from far, far aways. I know winter like a family friend, leave the door open for it. We play in the snow, let it drip drip between our cold, stiff fingers, dig out tunnels into the dark depths of white mounds and slush. We get by. The moon rises. 

And rises. 

And rises. 

And days like these I learn silence. I learn the breeze. I learn the quiet of a held hot breath. I learn patience. I learn the feel of grandma’s rocking chair, each groove in the wooden carving. I face the shadows of the porch and shield her eyes from the morning when the white light becomes too bright. I don’t crave the sun. I don’t talk or mention things I don’t know. 

She doesn’t talk much anymore. Neither do I, not when it’s just the two of us outside. I’ve got no more stories to tell. I’ve grown listening ears and learned how to stand. Learned how to get warm without the changing of seasons. A jacket, thermal underwear, a heavy sweater, gloves, thick doubled socks, boots, earmuffs, hat. Always. Two blankets for grandma. Make sure her hands don’t get cold. And she tells me her stories. The ones she makes up with the moon about long summer nights with crickets and pleasant lake swims, tall wet grass, ticks and plump watermelons that leave your fingers and chin sticky like honey.

I don’t know half of those words. I can’t put pictures behind them. I’ve always known blue. Navy. Black. White and a chalky dirty gray of soiled snow. I know ice fishing and charcoal. I know the game that runs into the powdered forest, kicking up handfuls of snow with their heavy hooves. I know gunshots and venison. Long nights. Cold nights. Blankets that don’t wrap around you the right way, too-thin socks, and body heat. 

I know “Grandma come inside, please. It’s too cold for you out there.” 

And I know patience. The time it takes for her to rise shakily from her chair when she doesn’t want the help, the creaking of every step to bring her inside. But most nights she puts up a fight and sits, hands trembling, eyes far and steady. 

She looks at the distant hills. Lips pursed at the horizon and mumbles, as the stars blink out, morning drawing itself up like a ghost no one wants to see, “It was never really orange, not like they said it would be.”

And I’ll say, “What, Grandma? What wasn’t?”

It takes her a minute to blink. To think. To disperse her anger at the coming dawn. Not the one she remembers, not the one she likes. The foe of time. 

“The sun,” she says with a thawing resignation. Proud. Angry for change. “No, darling, it was bright hot red. Yellow sometimes. A simmering unlike the hell we’re in now. A good ol’ heat. Living. Alive.”

“What sun, Grandma?” I have to ask. To know if it was real once–or is. Mom’s never seen it. My uncles. Cousins.

But she just tsks and says something about migratory creatures. We fly home. South from the new sun, wherever it is in the high cold sky. Like a dim, white thing aging into the frost. 

I shake the snow from my feathers. And she huddles into it.