She'd left me for the picnic blanket we'd spread beneath a sapling willow tree. As I neared, I could hear her humming some Old World tune as she turned each plate over to wipe against the grass and thoroughly shook droplets of lemonade from each dime store glass before carefully putting them away in their birch bark basket lined with checkered cotton. "Sandy!" called my brother excitedly, distracting me. "Come see! Come see!" David had obviously discovered something of monumental importance to a three year old over by a rotting, fallen log at the water's edge.
I was turning towards him when I heard my mother mutter, "Getting chilly...." I hesitated, waiting for her to try and coax me into my lightweight jacket. She reached for her own pale mint green sweater, but sat still with it in her hands, frozen, contemplating the warm pinkish glow of the late afternoon sky just over the gently swaying tree tops. "San-deee!" David warbled, squealing when something small leapt free of his muddy hands and splashed him. I took off on little legs and ran excitedly toward my father and younger brother.
Dad'd look was strange as he glanced my way. I slowed, unnerved by his demeanor, never having seen him look quite that way before. Why was he staring at me? Had I done something wrong? Even David quieted and stared up at our father, too, confused. He looked my way and his dark eyes grew huge. The wind picked up. Something light and scratchy suddenly had me by the neck and I barked out in fear, thinking it was some huge spider or beetle. An end fluttered up in front of my face and I saw it was the satiny blue ribbon from mom's long hair. The wind had set it free and it had found me. Clutching the fabric scrap, I turned and finally saw what was so mesmerizing, so terrifying, that it had each of us rooted to the spot. It nearly filled the sky, mimicking the tree-tops, the ribbon of water, the red and white checks of the picnic blanket, reflecting us all along it's silvery, shimmery, liquidy side. A gigantic sphere. A great drop of molten metal or mercury, falling slowly, drifting downward, trailing steamy purple mists which swirled and lingered, then tattered like tobacco smoke. Mom was closest to it and she stood still, seemingly unafraid, facing the strange anomaly in the sky. A stripe of vivid yellow bled along its side, oozed down in a sheet which enveloped her, making her glow with a radiant light. She twisted, turning in the wind like a marionette as she rose slowly, floating gently like a dandelion seed. As she turned, she lifted her arms out from her sides and smiled sweetly down upon us. Into brightness like the sun she vanished and the thing in the sky quickly healed its yellow wound. For a moment all we saw were the remaining three of us, warped across its silvery side, hovering up there on a patch of grass in an upside down sky. Then the bubble zipped off beyond the tree tops, trailing a roiling plume of quickly fading mauve, blowing the blue ribbon free of my tiny hand.
