Red's Wrap
Happiness. It's relative.
#19 of 92: Sailing on the Purple Sea
[I host a small writing group at a local senior center. Today’s writing prompt was purple. Here is my piece.]
This morning, the bath water is purple. Paulina’s aunt has given her a bath bomb. It’s a fist-size ball of something that sheds vivid, swirling colors, gradually disintegrating in the water. In the middle of the bath bomb is some little thing, a tiny toy. I don’t stick around to see but I know the tiny toy will make Paulina ridiculously happy as if she had no idea life would hold such a surprise.
When I come back ten minutes later, Paulina, who is five and not terribly interested in washing herself, is laying on her belly in her little purple sea examining a tiny plastic bowl that is part of her Moana outrigger canoe toy. Every morning, she spills the ten thousand tiny outrigger toys into the bathtub. They circle the drain when I pull the plug and it’s a scramble to swoop them all up. I think, why am I not putting these tiny toys somewhere else and having her play with the canoe and her two little ducks and things that won’t go down the drain. I wonder about this every morning. I ask her if she has washed herself. She nods yes. I see that the soap is dry in its dish.
I am Paulina’s grandmother. I am also her legal guardian because her mother died several months ago and there was no other relative able to guard her. That may change in the future but not for a while. So, in the meantime, I am the one assigned to worry about the infinitesimal Moana toys going down my bathroom drain. It’s a concern since we have an ancient house with prehistoric plumbing and there would be hell to pay for a jam-up. Elves would have to come help us.
After the bath, Paulina gets dressed. She picks out her favorite ruffled skirt and a t-shirt that doesn’t match. She loves this outfit very much. She puts on two blue socks. They don’t match. This bothers me in a deep secret cellular way since I am part of Boomer Nation, a place where we learned early that one piece of clothing has to ‘go with’ the other. I say nothing. She brushes her teeth. Later when I walk her up to the school door, I see that she’s dripped toothpaste on her shirt. I try to rub it out with spit and my thumb. The spot is blurred but still there.
In the car on the way to school, Paulina looks out the window and sings. The songs are always in Spanish because she is Nicaraguan and lived in Nicaragua for a year and a half before coming back to the States last spring and she is now attending a bilingual school. I don’t understand Spanish, so I don’t know what her songs are about, but they seem to be happy songs, sweet and light. Sometimes, she stops singing and says quietly, “I miss my mom.” And I say, “So do I.” I think if her mom was here, Paulina’s socks would match and her shirt would be spotless. Her hair would be braided like the other girls. I don’t know if Paulina would sing in the car.
Sometimes, Paulina calls me mom. It is her yearning talking. At the school door, she turns and waves. “Bye Mom!” I smile and wave back. The people around me – the parents and grandparents – hear this and they smile and nod like it’s a secret we all share. I head back to the car and then remember to check Lost & Found for her favorite black furry sweater. I find it tucked in a bin. It is a good morning.
__________
Photo by Mathis Mauprivez on Unsplash
One Comment on “#19 of 92: Sailing on the Purple Sea”
Leave a Reply
Recent Comments
Snow Door | wisconsinacademy.org
Listen to Jan read her essay “Billy” presented on WUWM’s Lake Effect
Jan’s essay “At the Breakfast Bar” on WUWM Lake Effect
Jan’s essay “The Parish Hall,” on WUWM Lake Effect
“Fury Cannot Touch Me,” Modern Love, NYT, 9/29/11
The, “Bye, Mom!” is heartbreaking, to me, if not to you at this exact moment.
My mom would call me by my recently dead sister’s name, partly because I didn’t have the heart to tell her that her daughter had died and partly because I knew she worried about my sister more than she worried about me (rightfully so), so my sister was always on her mind. Whatever, at the time it was fine, but somehow now, six years later, I’m resentful. I wish she’d worried about me, too, which is absurd.
This is a long way around telling you that maybe later that, “Bye, Mom!” will tug at your heart in ways you aren’t feeling now. Be prepared.