What Is It?

“Hey Mom!” Martin greets his elderly mother hunched over in pain as she opens the door.

He walks in. “Ahh, still looks the same, smells the same, and feels the same,” he admits while surveying the inside of his childhood home, the light walls and dark carpet and bleached-spotted curtains and the sound of a static television. “So, Mom, how ya been?” He notices her struggling to reach her armchair in front of the TV with a basket full of jumbled yarn resting beside it. He helps her sit down, and she returns to tangling her swollen fingers in a pair of knitting rods. “Mom, how you been doing?” He takes a seat onto the floor as her little yorkie jumps all over him, excited for a new visitor. Since he hasn’t heard a peep from his mother, he tries to break the ice. “So, when did you get him or her? What’s their name?” Still no response. She continues to look down at an unfinished knit blanket covering her knees. “Mom?” He starts to grow worried, getting up to meet her eye-to-eye. “Talk to me. Are you mad or something?”

She finally utters “No, son, I’m just watching TV. Quiet down.”

He fires back, “I’m so glad I went all this way to see you, and you can’t even look at me.”

“Son, if you want to do something for me, go ahead and clean out the garage. I can’t stomach going in there since your dad passed away.”

“Mom, that was over five years ago. Christie and Janna said I should check up on you. They’re concerned for you.”

“Son, if you’re going to give me a hard time, just leave.” She uses a knitting rod to points it at the door.

His mother was never exactly pleasant, a strong and callous woman. Ever since her husband died, she has turned cruel. She scared away his two sisters who eventually moved to other states and started families without grandma in the picture. “Dead to me,” she mumbles under her breath as she reaches for a cigarette on the side table. She shakes as she lights it.

“What?” he answers gently.

“Dead to me—your sisters!” she shrieks, blowing smoke. “And don’t treat me like I’m old and decrepit, got it?” she demands with the grimace of a homely witch, wrinkles outlining her dry lips.

He raises his eyebrows and nods his head in irritation. He ignores her rotten nature and decides he will clean out the garage for her, thinking that’ll make her slightly less miserable. He knows this house like the back of his hand, he could navigate the place with his eyes closed. Although in this home he underwent some tragedies, there are treasures everywhere from dusty picture frames on the walls to stale black coffee in an off-white mug with Class of ’87 on the countertop. He passes through the vintage kitchen with peeling wallpaper and copper tins hung, and he stops in front of door to the garage. He prepares himself for what he is about to unleash upon him, which is a mountain of things. His father was a hoarder, and Mom never allowed any of his junk into the house. As expected, an avalanche of objects of different shapes and sizes and uses comes crashing down on him as he opens the door with a jerk due to its rusty, sticky hinges. “I guess let’s get started,” he tells himself, unamused. He separates and organizes heaps of old newspapers, boxes full of baseball cards, random pieces of wooden furniture, piles of unpaired shoes, stacks of family photos. Back and worth through the house with garbage bags; him blocking the view of the television and Mom griping about it each time. One thing is weighing in his mind, however, is, My own mother can’t even call me by my name.

Several hours later, he manages to shape a small aisle inside the garage like a nature enthusiast clearing greenery with his machete down through the rainforest. Martin wants to feel that adventurous, instead he’s torturing himself with his mother’s chores. He yells out, “Hey, Mom, look I made a little walkway.”

No surprise, no response.

As he gets further and further in, he begins to feel trapped. And he begins contemplating, Why bother to help? Mom doesn’t appreciate it. She can’t even talk to me besides a couple one-sentence answers or complaints. And the moment she sees me, she puts me to work? Maybe I’m not wanted here, and I refuse to be anywhere where I am not welcome. Just as he is about to throw in the towel, a shine on top of the summit of the clutter blinds him. He notices a wide flying saucer-looking apparatus. A beam from the setting sun snuck through the garage window and radiates off the object like it’s calling to him—like he’s the chosen one. He clambers up the mounds, slipping with every other step, slowly and surely restoring the aisle with rubbish. But that thing—what is it?

At last, he seizes it with both hands, but it is practically weightless for its proportions. He brings it down balancing it on one hand like a tray. He taps on it, and it vibrates a gentle rhythm, rendering a subtle tremble. What in the world is this thing? He carefully carries it to the living room as his mother intently watching TV. “Hey Mom, do you have any idea what this is?”

She glances his way, unimpressed. “I don’t know, something your dad brought home from some foreign country when he went backpacking with your sisters.”

“It makes noise.”

She sharply interjects, “Well, I don’t want to hear it!”

Geesh. “I’m gonna’ figure out what this is.” He goes into his childhood room and sits on the floor with it in his lap. He pats it, and a smoothing harmony bounces back to him. It pulsates on his skin as he wraps his hands around its belly. This has a peaceful essence to it that I just cannot put my finger on. He slips out his phone and tries to describe it in an internet search browser. It’s round, and it kind of looks like a bowl—no, it’s like a disk. Is it a small table? Or a—I have no idea. He struggles to illustrate the object in a way the search results will provide relevancy. Eventually, he types in just the right key words. An article pops up, and he reads it very closely, zooming in on the picture and its insightful caption. It’s called the Hang, and it’s a unique sort of idiophone—an instrument. After watching a couple of videos online, he begins to master the simple grace, the creative harmony it unbraids with every thrust and graze. It swallows a state of tranquil in its tune, almost healing.

It must possess some divine essence, because his mother stumbles down the hallway, lured in to the flow of the melody like a friendly stream, the river’s current ushering her to bliss. She opens his door and quietly observes as he plays it, as she is mesmerized. She even encourages him, too. “It has a lovely sound, doesn’t it?” she asks in a warm tone. She perches on his tightly made-up childhood bed, and he hands it to her. With him holding it in her lap, she drums it and patters a song, soothing the pain from her arthritis. He is amazed by sudden change in her disposition. “Your father had this for nearly two decades, and he never bothered to play it once.” 

“I wonder why,” he marvels, taking in the calm feeling associated with the instrument. It’s as though his strife simply melts away.

She jokes, “Probably because he prefers useless junk.”

They both chuckle, reminiscing about what a great man his father really was.

She hands it back to him with a genuine smile. “Martin, I want to keep this. You’re a natural!”

He returns a sweet grin, striking the Hang lightly, his body gently swaying to the beat in which he commences. “We can enjoy it together. I’m staying for a little while.”

She unlatches the window, breathing in the beautiful day, brightly suggesting, “I want the whole world to hear this.”