soul

Excerpt from The Color of My Soul

...I gathered up other peoples' memories of my mama one by one, putting them in my pocket for safekeeping as if they were a trail of magic breadcrumbs that would lead me back
to my lost mother. And when I wasn’t helping myself to other folk’s memories, I would simply dream up my own. When I went to bed at night, I would lay in the darkness and
imagine my mama lying down on the bed next to me, her face across from mine. I’d pretend that I was already asleep. Mama would whisper, I love you baby girl, and a gentle
puff of air infused with the mother scent of cold cream and chamomile tea would bloom in the cool night air between us with all the splendor and sweetness of a summer
moonflower. Or maybe I would remember sitting on the her lap after my bath while she brushed out my hair, we would count out loud together, one hundred strokes, until the
brush became webbed with Mama's golden hair and my own dark wavy hair.
        I especially loved to look through photo albums and have Daddy tell me about the day the pictures were taken. In one of my favorite pictures Mama is sitting on a blanket at
the beach. She’s cradling her new baby, Jesse Friedman Reeves, in her arms, looking down at him smiling that dazed tender smile that all new mothers seem to magically come
by, as if she was amazed that she had it in her to create something so small and so perfect. Wrapped in a fuzzy hand knit blanket, only Jesse’s tiny squished newborn face is
visible in the photogragh. The summer that he was born, Aunt Sarah and Uncle Charles gave Mama and Daddy four weeks at their cottage on Martha’s Vineyard. Every morning
after they ate breakfast, they would go down to the beach. Daddy said he would get Mama and Jesse settled under an umbrella and then he would set up his easel nearby to
paint the ocean landscape. While Daddy painted, Mama would sit under the big green umbrella, read, nap and breast-feed little Jesse when he fussed.
        One overcast morning, after Mama had gotten Jesse to sleep, she walked down to the water. She was wearing one of Daddy’s white T-shirts, and a long pale blue cotton
skirt that she held draped up over her arm as she waded through the shallow water. Her long blond hair, wild and disheveled in the blustery ocean breeze, lit from her head like
strands of golden flames that she kept trying to gather up and control with her hand. Daddy said she was a work of art standing there; more beautiful than anything he could ever
have painted. He walked down to the water, snuck up behind her, and picked her up.
        “James, what are doing, you put me down right now!”
        Daddy pretended he couldn’t hear her over the sound of the wind and the breaking waves. He just kept saying, “What, what was that, did you say something Callie?” as he
waded out deeper and deeper into the water.
        “Oh, you want me to put you down, do you? Okay, I’ll put you down.”
        “No, don’t you dare put me down way out here James Reeves, I’ll get soaked.”
        “Well now, you can’t seem to make up your mind can you Miss Callie. What’s it going to be, do you want me to put you down or not?”
        I was sitting next to baby Jesse. I am as sure of it as though it happened yesterday. I remember picking him up and holding him on my lap so that he could see our parents,
too. “Look Jesse, that’s our mama and daddy. See them, there in the water,” I said, pointing.
        Mama was laughing and Daddy kept on teasing her, saying he was going to drop her into the water. They began to turn in circles then; spiraling round and round, a life size-
spinning top, Mama’s arms wrapped tightly around Daddy’s neck, her skirt dragging across the surface of the water, her head thrown back. They played in the water like two little
children for a long while. At least it seemed like a long time to me, like an old home movie slowed down, faded and flickering on a luminous screen of sky and ocean. They
appeared unaware of the world around them, as if they existed only for each other. A single white seagull began to circle over them, screeching and swooping down toward my
joyful parents as if it wanted to join in on the fun. Holding Jesse in the crook of my right arm, I shaded my eyes with my left hand and watched as a wave suddenly washed over
them, causing Daddy to lose his balance and throwing them both down into the rolling surf. Their heads disappeared for an instant below the surface of the water. The sun broke
through the clouds briefly then; bands of light stretched down and glinted off the cresting waves sending up brilliant sparks of light. My parents came up sputtering and laughing in
the middle of that sea of blue-green flashes and Mama quick went after Daddy in mock anger, splashing him and chasing him through the water.
        Finally, breathless and smiling, Daddy was the first one to make his way up onto the beach. Mama came out of the water and walked over to Daddy, her wet clothes clinging
to her body revealing the outline of her belly, still slightly swollen, still bearing witness to the creation of the new life that was my brother Jesse. The wind blew sand in my eyes
and I closed them. I listened to the steady sound of the waves as they crashed onto the shallow sands of the beach and I heard the wind rattle its way through the paper-thin
reeds of grass in the dunes behind me. I drew in a slow, deep breath of moist ocean air and I could taste the salt of it as it slowly filtered through my lungs and into my
bloodstream. I opened my eyes and watched my daddy gallantly bow to my mama as if he were a king welcoming his beautiful queen to his castle. He took her hand, kissed it,
and they walked toward Jesse and me, hand in hand.
        “They are very silly, don’t you think Jesse?” I asked my brother. I laid him down gently, covered him up with his blanket, and stood up facing the water. Mama and Daddy
stopped a few feet from the blanket. Daddy’s arms folded around Mama’s waist and he pulled her toward him. He kissed her first on her forehead, on the tip of her nose, and then
softly on her lips. They stood for a moment facing one another with Mama’s head on Daddy’s chest, leaning into each other as if they were holding one another up. A voice
whispered in my ear, you have to go now, and I knew it was right, I wasn’t supposed to be there anymore than a blue sun was supposed to shine in a yellow sky.
        I heard someone say, “I’ll never be happier than I am right now,” but I couldn’t tell if it was Daddy, or Mama, or me that had said it.

       “How much did you love our mother?” I asked Daddy one lazy Saturday morning.
        We were in the sun porch, a room of tall wide windows, colorful rag rugs, hanging ferns and dark green wicker furniture. The small room had been awkwardly tacked on to
the back of our rambling house just off the dining room, an afterthought I’m guessing but it has always been my favorite room in the house. It was a cool rainy spring morning and
several of the windows were open a few inches, cracked just enough to let the wet mushroomy smell of the damp earth in, but keep the raindrops out. It was the kind of day that
you could stay in your pajamas past lunchtime, and later still if a grown-up didn't come along and spoil things for you. The kind of the day where doing nothing at all felt precisely
like the thing you ought to be doing. Daddy was reading the newspaper while Jesse and me were lying on our stomachs on the floor perusing the comics.
        “Well baby, I’d have to say that I loved your mama this much,” Daddy answered, setting his paper down and holding his arms straight out to his sides with his fingers
stretched out as far as they would go. “I still love her this much Miracle, you never stop loving someone.”
        “Not even when they die Daddy?”
        He reached down, took my face in his hands, and looked me in the eyes. “Your mama is with me and you and Jess every minute of every day Miracle. I can see her right now
in your eyes. Did you know that when you smile you get the same sparkle in your eyes that your mama used to get?” He reached over and touched the side of Jesse’s face with
the tips of his fingers. “I can see her in your eyes too Jess, your eyes are exactly the same color blue that your mama’s were.”
        He leaned forward, took my right hand and Jesse’s left, and pressed them to his chest. We could feel his heart beating strong and sure beneath the palms of our small
hands.
        “Do you feel that?” he asked us, his voice was quiet, almost a whisper really, and yet somehow it seemed to roar above the sound of the rain that beat down on the metal
sun porch roof. “Your mama is here. Inside all of us, always, and with every beat of our hearts she is speaking to us, telling each of us how much she loves us.”
        I knew that he was right. In the length of time it took my daddy to say that one sentence, I suddenly understood that all my efforts to capture bits of my mama’s voice in the
dialogues of my girlfriends' mothers, and all of my efforts to catch a whiff of her mother love in the strands of their sweetly perfumed hair, was nothing but a waste of time. Mama
was right here all along, inside of Daddy, Jesse, and me. I knew it only for a moment; but what a perfect moment it was. The kind you want to put in a brown paper box and keep
under your bed forever. Daddy let go of our hands and sat back in his chair, he picked up his coffee, sipped it slowly, and stared out into the rain soaked yard.
        “Daddy?”
        “What is it baby?”
        He looked over at me and smiled gently. I felt bad for interrupting his thoughts, maybe he was thinking about his next painting, or maybe he was remembering something
about Mama.
        “Are you going to die too?” I asked him.
        “We’re all going to die someday Miracle, but I promise, I won’t die for a long, long time. Don’t you worry about it, okay?”
        “Okay Daddy. Just one more thing. Do you still miss Mama?”
        “Oh baby, I sure do. I miss her every minute of every day.”
        “Me too Daddy,” I said.
        I looked over at Jess, his head was down but I could tell he wasn’t really reading the comic in front of him. He felt my eyes on him and looked up at me.
        “Me three,” he declared, as he quick reached out and snatched the page that I was reading and hopped up on the chair next to Daddy.

Back to Main Page

Lilli Jolgren Day