Revision
Puerto del Sol, Spring 2006
I wanted this to be a story about the loss a mother feels when her youngest leaves home. The hamper that stays empty. The absolute silence of the phone between five and ten, the dish no longer prepared because its recipe feeds an army. The first echo in the hall.
I imagined it a gift for every mother because who better would understand being permeated by sound, smells, the constant swirl of emotion until, body by body, this energy reduced —the click of a trunk, the slam of a door — and was gone? Empty. Her home a hole filled only holidays, summers, until that too was past and, unless she was one of the lucky ones, they’d return once a year. Once a year to see her child.
That’s what I intended to tell. How we raise the people we love the most to leave us. The injustice. Shouldn’t it have meant something, my wanting to reach out to all those women, frozen in their hallways, holding nothing in their hands? Should that have been enough?
I thought it went like this.
Oil painting “Poppies,” courtesy of the artist and Amy’s friend Ann Hogle