| Moment- The Pecan Grove Review, 2001 She sat at the kitchen table, drinking black coffee with fruit and bread dipped in cane syrup. The lines crossing her face gave a roadmap of her life. I saw her dusty childhood sunshine etched in her crows' feet as she looked across at me. "Come sit awhile, keep me company," she smiled, imprinting ten new lines in powdery cheeks. They leaked past joys as I scooted my chair closer. "You're awfully young to be sitting so quiet," she commented, curling brown-flecked fingers around her paring knife. "What you doing all alone over there? Scribbling?" I hesitated to show her my notebook, lifting one corner, but careful to hide the few scrawled lines. "Writing." "Writing what?" she peered closer, cherubic in her curiosity. "A school assignment," I lied, not knowing why I didn't want to be showered with praise for my talents. "An essay for History." Every other accomplishment in my life that exceeded breathing merited praise in her eyes. And while it was fun at first, I tired of it, fearing her insincerity, wondering whether her censure would be as extreme when I made a mistake. I didn't want her to know I was writing about her. She might demand to read the pages and not appreciate the mirror I held there. Few people did. She lifted one shoulder and returned to her bread and fruit, the coffee long-cold on the table, as she sipped it once every ten minutes. "I used to write, too. Didn't want nobody to see it." I stared at her. "Really? Why not?" "No one felt it like I did." She slid me a glance. "I guess you got that from me." I looked down at my page, stunned. I never knew. "You know, Mom writes too." "She does?" Beaming, she nodded. "I thought so. Such a bookworm, your mama." I grinned, feeling a thread hurl across generations and snag on the past, drawing it adjacent to this moment. "How come you never showed your writing to anyone, even Mom?" She shook her head. "Some of the things I wrote, a young person could never understand- things I taught her in words rather than pages, later on." "Do you still write?" I asked, laying my notebook face down and resting my arms on the table. She nodded. "I have more time now, but I don't really want to do it anymore. It was too hard." "But- but it's easy," I protested. "You just put down the first thing that comes into your head, then keep writing until it's done." She shook her head. "You take one emotion- one moment- one picture," she said, squinting into the middle distance and lifting one hand partially curled, cradling her words. "And then you capture it, purify it, crystallize it," she closed her fingers around them, "and set it loose on paper. Let it shape, grow, but never release that moment. Build around that moment." "How do you know which moment?" I asked. "You just- know." Her eyes focused again and she looked over at me, a strange intensity resonant in her gaze that I'd never seen before. "It might not have come to you yet. You have to wait. Because the one thing you can't force is that moment. You'll try and fail a thousand times, thinking you've found it, but the first instant you catch that moment, you realize that all the others were dreams. It's like putting on glasses for the first time- you didn't realize what you were lacking, or even that you were lacking at all, until you find the clarity for the first time. And after that, other attempts are just a paltry substitute. And waiting for it, building it, is the most exhausting thing. Because once you've done it, you've pinched off a bit of your soul and spread it thin. It only takes a little. But it's exhausting, watching your life pan back to you. If you're true to it, you might see things you don't want to see." I watched her for a long time, but she said no more, her attention riveting back on her coffee. She fiddled with her food, as she had all day, reverting back to the wizened, simple woman I'd seen my whole life. "Thanks," I said, unsure of where I stood. She smiled again, patting my shoulder. "You're me all over again, honey, just luckier," she murmured. A jolt sizzled along my nerves, and I felt it. That moment. Grabbing my notebook, I left the table and went back up to my room to capture it before it faded. |