Letting Go
Set out for the sea, this afternoon, to do some letting go. Thought of Dad. Cried, right away, imagining my big, strong father transformed to ashes in a black box on my office bookcase, and just then, "The Rose," by Bette Midler came on the radio- my father's mother's favorite song - her name was Florence Rose. I sang this song to her the last time I saw her, full-voice through the halls of her nursing home. People peeked their heads out of doorways. Pulled over in a special spot with a box of stuff to release but it didn't feel like the right place. I found a heart stone on the way out. Drove the shore to where I spent part of my birthday this summer, took the large box I have carried in the car for the last year, filled with items I've carried for, seemingly, a lifetime, and I carried this box up a large embankment of beach stones.
When I got to the top, I saw the way down was so steep, and over rocks, that I knew I would fall if I tried to make it down with that large box I couldn't throw in the garbage; that large box of special things like a china birthday girl I've had since I was two, magic spells, pottery from friends, turtle shells and rattle parts, a special feather basket Seamus made in middle school for me. Prayer ties, stones little Seamus' s hands picked up from the beach, a clay traveler's chest made by him in elementary school for Mast Way School's immigration study; he played an Irishman named Jack. Seamus' ponytail from when he'd grown his hair long for the Oliver play.
This box was filled with clay hearts, shell hearts, sea glass, dusty lavender, and paper mache masks. One of my favorite things in this box was a pregnant pottery woman with wild, long hair I made when I first found out I would be a Mother. Despite my closest friends thinking this free spirit gypsy could never ever be a Mom, I made this as an inspiration to myself, and it hung on my wall for years until it broke (probably moving!) Into the wet clay, before it cooked in the kiln that made it shine, I wrote, "Yes I can!!"
I turned my purple sandal on a smooth stone and prepared to descend the unstable stone hill. "Carrying my past around is hard work, heavy work," I thought. And as if I had planned it, the cardboard box, weak from days in the rain while it moved from the back-back of our Subaru to the driveway this August, broke through the bottom and all the stuff fell to the
by Melisa Potter