Sculpting

I sculpted against her soft pale skin like the dough she kneaded in the tiny kitchen back then.  Her arms were wrinkled patterns that pushed themselves into memorable designs of childhood.  Could she see little me there, aware that she was the whole entirety of my universe in those quiet hours spent in her company?

There was a tree with three trunks that reached for the sky and there were four of us.  Three older ones leaned their bodies against the bark while the youngest curled himself in the middle between tired Nikes and untied laces, licking the last bits of a creemee that came with the outdoors.  And I wanted more.  

More of Grandma and mom rocking in the redwood swing that Uncle made.  Wanted the day to last longer than a sunsetting in the west and the kids fighting over the front seat on the way home.  I wanted to roam the back yard of this suburban dream, where it seems the children of the land didn’t understand that we wanted to be a part of this scene.  They were mean too.  We hurled pine cones back and forth over the fenced in yard.  It was hard to be hit with the cone,

The tone of the day turning when the others hurled their anger over our happy little bliss.

And I miss those thrills too.  The girl with the curly hair spiking an evergreen missile at me still missing her mark.  Sparks of a feud no one could attempt to guess why.  Today I try.

Now the place is left with grass over a foundation, a stump of that magnificent tree that contained my whole life once, and a paved drive that others use for the adjacent store. And I guess I still want more.

I travel back in my mind to find myself sculpted again against my Grandma’s soft ways.  Days with listening to her pot belly gurgle a song to only me.  Her fingers brushing through my hair.  The freeing way I pushed, I wiggled, I giggled into her.  I remember her navy dress,

The mess of age marks on her hands I now understand as children come to me out by my fire a few streets down.

They come with the energy of pink hair and a loving stare.  We curl beside a fire no longer retiring at sunset.  We met the moon in the firelight, the children dancing, one attempting to build a tepee and I see little me beside their ways.

I stay by the crackle, the spitting flames, names of ones who have gone on my mind.  Isabelle.  Jean.  Lori.  Rob.  Jimmy.  Cecile. Linda.  Theresa.  Alice. Leon.  Zen.  Then there will still be more.  I open the door to my memories to see these faces, these graces that I encountered while here.

I watch the children cartwheel, feel the moment they are in.  Will one of them write forty years from this moment spent under the stars?  Will they want to haunt their memory to see me in this moment spent loving them?

I understand the pattern, the yearning for the past.  At last I stand, imagine the feel of a cartwheel, steal glances at the youth, the truth that I had my turn.  I’ve earned each age mark, each spark in my eye of a blessing I met.  I learn to linger now in this moment spent beneath a hundred suns done up in the night dazzle.  The smoke drifts up and I lift myself into the hands of the children with pink streaks in their hair.

I am where I am supposed to be.  Marshmallow fluff and enough.  I fill myself on the bounty I see.  Isabelle would perhaps find me well too.  She knew me as I know these two here by the fire.  And all that I desire is for them to sculpt themselves against my ways, my soft wrinkled skin holding them into the memories being made.