Hard Old Life, Part i

Dear Mother,

I can feel them even now as I set down these words. They are closer to me than some might think, and they are not at all silent. I am aware of their movement, and their songs are familiar to me, a collection of spinning alma mater, fully scored, richly orchestrated.

When I was a small boy, you led me out into the hard-packed dirt of our front yard. The night was frigid and clear, and the moon was either new or hadn’t yet risen. It was just after midnight , and it was my birthday.

You lifted your palms to the black sky with the sort of gesture one uses when telling an assembly to stand up — do you remember this, there in Heaven or the Next Place where you are? Do you remember doing this, Mother?

You looked up, and I looked up with you, and I saw.

The burning and chilled spangles of stars spilled across the black fabric of January sky like broken glass, like silver music written on the darkest page ever bound in any book.

I was lifted into them at that moment, my body rising into the open night, and I looked from side to side, and my mouth was probably open, and there existed no place where the stars did not live and rule. And sing.

I could hear them, in that hushed moment when you were far below me and my face was pressed to the contour of complete night, and my vision knew nothing but the points of silver fire around me. I could hear them, and I wanted to ascend higher and be among them, but I heard your voice join their song and my little stomach came up in my little throat as I dropped back down to the frozen hard earth and felt my numb hand wrapped in your warm one. The stars — the stars.

They looked farther away now, and your song had words to it, and I turned to you and you lifted me into your arms. I could smell cigarettes and hair spray and supper on your skin, and you were smiling into my center, smiling that rare, full smile that meant you were momentarily free of the fears and the whispers and the worries, and I smiled back at you, and our smiles became laughter, and we laughed hard beneath the singing stars, and you put me down and pointed up again to them.

“See?” you said.

Yes, Mother. I saw. And I see.

~ S.K Orr