I am staring at a wheelbarrow in our backyard while Harper is upstairs playing the French Horn. The wheelbarrow is red and the color is charming, and it is filled with split wood for the fire pit, and Harper isn’t playing her French Horn, she is stomping and screaming and destroying her room because she cannot play the French Horn.
“Stop it,” I tell her after I’ve walked upstairs. “Do something else,” I say walking into her room, and it is a nightmare. Clothes and papers and shoes and stuffed animals and plates and cups are everywhere.
“I can’t do this,” she tells me and what I should say is, ‘You can’t do this YET.” That’s teaching and good parenting 101. It’s what you call a growth mindset.
I have a bird’s eye view of the wheelbarrow and the split wood from Harper’s bedroom window. It is sunny out. And warm. We could have a fire tonight, maybe invite friends over, or maybe it could just be the four of us. Either way, we’d be doing what we can with the situation we’ve been given. Build a fire. Play the notes you don’t know.
Everything smells like smoke these days. My hair, our jackets and jeans. Pillow cases. I loved the smell and I think I still do, but like the ashes that were supposed to be smeared on my forehead a few Wednesdays ago, the smell is a dull persistent ache for all that’s broken.
“You can’t trash your room, Harper,” I say staring out the window.
I don’t have the heart to tell her that no, she can’t play the French Horn, and that I’m not sure she’ll learn because even if she goes back to school, there won’t be band. It’ll be too dangerous. You can’t mask brass.
I pick up plates, stack cups on them, and walk out of Harper’s room. Hadley sticks her head out of her room.
“Hey,” she says. “I’m in ELA.”
I detest the acronym. What is wrong with the word, “literature?” Why not say, “Language Arts?” I realize I was born 95 years old, but what is wrong with naming – saying out loud – that one is studying the art of communication and expression?
“Sorry,” I whisper. “Harper had another run-in with the French Horn.”
“We’re talking about who our change makers are. Mom, do you know what a change maker is?”
I am holding a week’s worth of dishes and ten cups when I tell her that yes, I know what a change maker is.
Hadley stares at me, like a teacher, waiting for me to expand upon my answer. I say nothing.
“OK,” Hadley says. “Well lots of us are naming our parents, but do you know who Sienna Gomez is?
“Yes, I think I do,” I say, slowly and carefully shifting the stack from one arm to another.
“Mom,” Hadley says, stepping further out of her room. “Not SARINA,” but SIENNA.”
“Yes,” I say. “I know who she is.”
“I mean, really?” Hadley pursues, and I say nothing. “Well, some of us are saying she’s a change maker and what happens is the more we vote for a person, the bigger their name gets. Her name is HUGE!” Hadley says, and the way she says it reminds me of how she talked in Kindergarten, and I realize that little girl never left. She’s wiser. She sees the world in the murky grey, and she can stand it in, too. She’s willing to stand in it.
I go downstairs and into the kitchen and put the dishes on the counter because the dishwasher is running. It is always running. We have had dishes eternally lined up to be cleaned since March 14, 2020.
Harper is sitting at the dining room table reading, and I remember an afternoon a couple of years ago when she wanted to make paper cranes. Her teacher showed her how, but when she got home she forgot the steps. She sat at the table, growing angrier, and angrier because, “YOUTUBE STINKS,” and soon the paper she was working with was torn and wet because she’d started to cry.
“Take a break,” I said through clenched teeth. She left. Maybe she went outside. Maybe she watched TV. Maybe it took two or three days or maybe it was a week, but she came back and folded paper into cranes and we had birds all over our house.
I sit next to Harper and put my hand on her head. “All I know is that the French Horn is hard,” I say. “And you had, like, maybe two hours of lessons before the world shut down,” I tell her.
She nods quickly; gives me a squeaky, “Mmm, hmmm,” and adjusts her glasses.
I walk outside and stand on the deck. The sun is out. It’s not enough to settle my shoulders, but I don’t need my winter jacket. The wind exhales the first days of March, and the robins that once hopped around our yard now talk to each other on the trees’ branches nearby. They will have to find another place to find sticks for their nests this year, I think as Corby darts out of her doggie door that was not there a few months back.
I have my journal and a pen and I think maybe I’ll write out here. Maybe there is something about the fire pit and the wheelbarrow that can tell me about beauty and love and ashes and the eternal smell of smoke.
One of Harper’s slippers is in the middle of the yard. Dog toys we insisted must be picked up every night are all over the place. Jesse built something like a sandbox for Corby to dig in, and she has dug holes everywhere in our yard except the tidy corner he set up for her.
Our yard looks like the Ewell yard.
Hadley opens her bedroom window and asks if she can work outside with me. I nod and wave an arm for her to come on down.
She sets up her computer and then promptly asks me if I know how to solve for X and I look at her with the same expression as I did when she asked me what a changer maker is.
Harper comes outside next, and soon Jesse brings the heating lamp he bought so we could be outside with friends in the dead of winter. The three of us sit and work and the fire from the lamp and from the sun feel good.
I think of Mayella Ewell and the flowers she grew from slop jars and the destruction she caused and I don’t know how to reckon with the evil we are capable of and the beauty and love we all desire.
I look around my yard for flowers like the ones Mayella grew but the black-eyed Susans and the hydrangeas are just stalks, and the ivy is more brown than green.
Not yet, I think. Not quite yet.
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