Collection of Found Objects

On a beach long ago, I’m holding her hand with our toes in the surf. The image is hazy, overexposed, cracked along its edges like looking through a glass bottle found washed up along the beach. But I can feel the sun burning my pale shoulders and taste salt on my lips and feel her fingers around mine. Her hands are soft from ritualistic use of moisturizer; like a lingering kiss on your cheek, my hands smell like flowers for hours afterward. Her fingers were strong from a lifetime of keys- piano keys, typewriters, the sticky lock that needed to be manipulated *just right* before it would give way. I’m too young to swim in this strong current, so we stand quietly watching the horizon, my hand safe in her strong and gentle grasp. My sister’s joyful screams can be hardly heard over the crash of the waves and the temptation of joining in their fun is met with an incredible sense of contentment just standing hand-in-hand with my mother. The sand erodes from around our feet as the water rushes in and out, tickling my toes. I don’t understand the physics of what’s happening, and I think I’m moving down the beach- away from my sisters and my grandmother, but my mother is with me and that is all that matters. I close my eyes and we’re flying along with the seagulls over a deep and mysterious ocean. My heart is overflowing with love, but I know no differently than to just rest in it and take it for granted. I drink in her love like overly-sweet iced tea on a summer day. I was special in my mother’s eyes; not a favorite child, or favored over my sisters, but because I was the only son she had. In my young mind, that did make me exceptional. And only as a mother can do through her profound adoration, she me let hold onto that feeling; like we were the only two people in the world.

            Janie Ruth, my mother, my first love who would send me valentine’s gifts to my high school for all to see. My friends would tease me, and I relished the jealousy they had over our love. My momma would never feel as though she understood me but would never hesitate to play a part in my life, no matter how small. A little cash for a date, a ride to a bus station so I could go “find myself” in the world, and an even quicker offer to pick me up from that same station months later with little warning I was returning home. Mom couldn’t wait to have me home, and with only the smallest protest would just as quickly drop me back off on a curb for me to fly away from her to my own life elsewhere.

            Studying her face, her hair, her hands through a weathered glass bottle found in the sand, the beauty of her love seems to have no easy definition. A mother’s love is otherworldly, changing as I change, and endless.