On the Divinity of Second Chances (32 page)

“You can come visit me at the tower if you want,” I say.

Mom inhales and nods. “I know it’s fine,” she says. “I’m okay.”

The man with the Chicago accent wraps up the rest of our pizza so I can take it with me, Dad pays the bill, and we leave. It’s just a couple blocks to the Forest Service office. Mom and Dad get out of the car with me, hug me and kiss me, and before they get back in and drive away, I slip a poem into my mother’s jacket pocket.

Pearl on Why Good Guns Make Good Neighbors
(September 13)

That bastard Dean fires up his ’68 Mustang, which sputters and roars interchangeably. He revs the engine. He is going to wake up both Olive and Beatrice. I put on my boots and Carhartt jacket and trudge over there.

“Dean,” I shout authoritatively over the sound of his decrepit engine. He ignores me. He knows better. “Dean! It’s late! Turn that son of a bitch off!”

“Hey, Pearl, it’s nine fifty. Legally, I still have ten minutes to be noisy, so blow it out your ass.”

Now Dean really shouldn’t have said that. I take out my trusty .44 Ruger and put a hole in two heater hoses and one in his radiator. I think I was being nice by sparing his engine. Water spurts in several directions. Dean picks up a jack handle as if he is going to come after me with it, as if I wouldn’t blow a hole in him large enough to crawl through. Fool. Before turning and walking away, I take another look at my watch. “According to my watch, Dean, it’s five after ten. You’re in violation of the law for disturbing the peace. I could also haul you in for threatening an officer, but I feel nice today. I feel downright charitable, Dean, so I’m going to give you yet another chance to develop some manners.”

I return home. As I walk by Beatrice’s room on my way to the bathroom, I hear her. “I heard shots, Pearl,” Beatrice accuses in a loud whisper.

“I saved Dean’s life,” I whisper back.

“Really?”

“Yes, I was going to kill him, and then I changed my mind. Dean lives.”

Anna on Her Art Show
(September 27)

There hangs my life: In the beginning, the emerging fruit, then the raisins, and last, the majestic cottonwood trees. On the portable walls in the middle of the gallery, my goddesslike daughters, the next generation, part of the cycle of life. In my paintings, I see my own summer and winter, and my own rebirth. My branches blossomed, leafed, and then my leaves fell. I grieved for my leaves and thought I’d never have leaves again. That was the raisin era. In the spring, my branches grew fuller and grew new leaves. No, they weren’t the same leaves as I had before; they are the leaves of a new era. It is a new time. I am going to be a grandmother.

The paintings of my daughters are not for sale, though you wouldn’t believe what I’ve been offered for them. In fact, none of my paintings but the raisin ones are for sale. The flowers, the trees, and my daughters are snapshots of good times. I’m keeping the originals and only selling prints.

I’ve been asked by a couple women if I would paint them on commission—if I would help them see their own beauty and perfection in the context of nature. This era of my life is not about doing things for other people, but that cause does seem worthy to me. I’m thinking about it. Each woman who does not recognize her own beauty contributes to the collective belief of all women that we are not good enough, and it hurts us all. Perhaps painting one woman at a time could cause a shift, even if it’s only slight.

It’s funny. I’ve wanted my whole life to have my work’s worth recognized, and now that it finally is, I don’t care. I look at all the paintings I love and think about my kids. My work is, and always has been, priceless.

Olive on Her Housewarming
(October 7)

Vigas are the hardest part. I pick up one end of the long narrow log and walk toward the other end, walking with my hands also, so that the end I first picked up gets higher and higher as I approach the other. When the pole is straight up in the air, I’m able to walk toward my wall, and slowly let it fall to rest against the wall. Here’s the hard part. I have to pick up the low end and push it over the wall, high enough that it clears the other wall. Since I’m going to have a living roof, I need many vigas. When all my vigas are up on the walls, I mix another batch of mud, climb up my ladder, anchor my vigas in place, and fill the gaps between them with mud. I can’t believe it. Tomorrow or the next day, I’ll be ready to begin my roof. I’ll lay planks on my vigas, then layer special industrial-strength plastic over my planks, throw dirt up there, about a foot of it, and plant it. Or at least I’ll do what I can. Each week that goes by makes it more difficult as my baby grows inside me. Not only is the physical protrusion of my belly an obstacle, the Thunderellas are becoming more and more adamant that I need to be careful, that lifting heavy things could send me into labor. They’re a wise group of women, so even though I want to do as much of this on my own as I can, I heed their advice often. These days I’m doing more directing than lifting—and a lot of laughing. The Thunderellas will do that to you—nothing they do is without a certain flair.

My planks have come from the Methodist church in Ione that burned down. Most of the floorboards were in good shape. They smelled smoky, but I sanded them, and they’ve been sitting out in the air for a few weeks now, under the tarp I put up to shelter my tools and materials. Not only were the floorboards a good find, but they left me feeling like I was supported, and like I was going to be okay.

Hazel had an old shed on her land that had fallen down. For safety reasons, she was happy to help me tear it down and take the materials away. I used the old boards for a small deck, and will use the rest for a couple interior doors. I continue to fill in the spaces between my vigas and reflect on my gratitude for having enough—no more, no less, just enough. I’m thankful for every bit of it.

As the sun gets low, I enjoy the silence of sitting alone outside my almost complete house. I think about what to plant on my living roof. I’ll probably go with Grandma Pearl’s suggestion—strawberries and thyme. Maybe next year I’ll plant taller things, I don’t know.

I see the Thunderellas meandering toward me. Grandma Pearl pushes a wheelbarrow. They are quite a sight, a mix of colors and movements. I told Grandma Pearl I felt the need to skip tap night tonight because my feet are too swollen to fit in those shoes.

“We brought you a party!” Beatrice calls out as they arrive. Fiona hooks up some white Christmas lights and some party lights with horses on them to a car battery in the wheelbarrow and drapes the lights over my vigas. Beatrice and Hazel unpack cold pizza, some potato salad, wine, and sparkling cider on the small deck. Grandma Pearl sorts out everyone’s tap shoes, except mine, and sets up the radio.

“It just didn’t seem like tap night without you. Since you couldn’t come to us, we decided to come to you,” says Grandma Pearl. “Fiona, it’s time!”

Fiona, beaming with pride at the role she’s been granted, hands me a pair of new flip-flops with bottle caps stuck into the bottoms. I feel truly blessed.

We eat, drink, chat, and then Grandma Pearl turns on the music and gets the party going. The only station we get out here is NPR, and tonight, it’s the
Thistle and Shamrock
show. We squeeze onto the deck together in a row, everyone in their tap shoes and me in remarkably comfortable flip-flops.

“Okay, everybody, palms up and Riverdance!” We laugh hard, hold our palms up high so they touch the palms of the women on either side of us, and follow Grandma Pearl doing the regular old-time step, holding our upper bodies more straight and still—our own rendition of Irish step dancing.

I turn to my right, where Hazel is doing her best to look stiff and Irish, and I start laughing harder. To my left, Beatrice is laughing behind her cat glasses and gives me a joyous wink. Stomp, hop-shuffle-step, flap, ball-change, laugh.

Jade on the Divinity of Second Chances
(October 10)

Josh rests his head in the face cradle of my massage table in my living room. For him, I’ve heated up my stones in a pan of hot water, and I’ve broken out my very favorite oil, Bindi, which is sort of spicy.

His huge arms hang over the sides of the table. I pull down the flannel sheet to reveal his rippled back. Ah, he truly is my Mount Everest. I squirt a dime-sized puddle of oil in my palm, look at him again and squirt in a little more, rub my hands together, and, starting at his shoulders, let them slide down either side of his spine all the way to his hips, and draw them back up his sides, over his shoulder blades, and all the way up the back of his neck to the base of his skull. I do that a few more times and then begin to knead the muscles up his side. As I get closer to his armpit, I’m able to really grab that delicious latissimus dorsi, perhaps my favorite muscle. I pull it out with each knead as if I were trying to turn him into a flying squirrel. From there, I skip over to the very top of his arm and knead his deltoid. Finally, I finish the side by kneading the place where his shoulder and neck meet, his trapezius muscle. Most people are so tight, their muscles are like chocolate decadence, denser than, say, a brownie, and though people think well-muscled people would be dense like that, they’re not, at least not if they stretch. They’re fluffy like chocolate mousse. Josh’s tissue is like that, like chocolate mousse. I can grab huge handfuls of muscle tissue and do whatever I want with it, like I used to be able to do with Aretha when she was a puppy.

Aretha. I exhale.

I knead my way up Josh’s other side, and then, putting all my weight into it, push my knuckles down either side of his spine slowly.

“Mmm . . .” he purrs.

I can’t help it. I kiss the back of his head.

He reaches an arm toward me, and rests his big, heavy hand behind my knee. God, I love him.

That’s the thing about second chances—they make every moment that follows feel like a miracle. There’s power in whatever created a second chance, whether it be forgiveness, acceptance, or faith. All of those things make me want to be worthy of them. All of those things humble me. Experiencing the grace of those things reminds me of the divinity of offering them to others. I love the divinity of second chances.

Grace appears and rests her palms on the soles of his feet. “You’re going to get married on your birthday next year,” she tells me.

I smile at her. Huh. I guess I knew that was the agreement Josh and I made, but I never really thought about it beyond that; I never really pictured myself married. I try to imagine what that might look like.

“What are you thinking about?” Josh asks.

Did you make him ask that?
I ask Grace with my thoughts. She just smiles. I take a deep breath. “Grace just told me we were going to get married on my next birthday.”

“Really?” he says. “That’s what I was thinking about, too.”

I stick my head under the face cradle and kiss his sweet lips through it.

He laughs. “Come here,” he says.

I’m so lucky. I’m just so lucky.

Phil on What’s Left of Autumn
(October 21)

I hide in the garage with the latest issue of
Forbes
. Inside, Anna is too focused on painting trees to be the investment police. I find the article on the year’s best college funds, pick up my cell phone, and make a call. I feel so fortunate to be able to provide my grandchild the opportunity to do well in this life.

Then I carefully tuck the issue of
Forbes
back into a box of my old books that Anna banned from the house after my heart attack.

I hear footsteps in the laundry room, and then the garage door to the house open. “Phil, I’m going out to take more pictures of the autumn leaves. Why don’t you come with me?”

“I’d love to,” I say as I spin around.

My guilt shows, and Anna looks at me suspiciously.

“I was just . . . thinking about putting this box in the attic,” I say.

“No heavy lifting,” she says, much to my relief. “So you want to go? We can pack a picnic.”

“That sounds great,” I say, and it does. I walk up the stairs to the doorway where she stands and kiss her.

I put on my lightweight hiking boots, and together we drive north to Redfish Lake. As we drive, Anna rests her hand on my thigh. I feel the corners of my mouth turn up into a slight smile. Life is good.

When we reach Redfish Lake, I take the backpack Anna packed, and even though she still worries about me, she lets me without any fuss, and for that I’m glad. I like being her man. She grabs her camera bag and shuts the car door.

“Oh, it’s so beautiful here,” she says.

New snow has already fallen on the deeply carved mountain behind the glacial lake.

“Look how the white snow really makes the orange leaves leap out,” Anna says and prepares to snap a shot before we walk the trail partway around the lake to a picnic table she likes. “Sometimes it seems tragic to me that this level of brilliance precedes death.” She looks at me, and I can tell that she’s talking about more than leaves.

I put my arm around her and kiss the top of her head. “It’s all too short, isn’t it?”