Dear mom
Spring is coming, I wait for the sun
Article by Clea Haran, art by Leyla Kamarsky
Springtime is my favorite season because everything becomes itself. Soon, time will pass in a different way and I find myself sitting and watching the cherry blossom tree next door. The pink petals fall from the clouds, pillows on pedicured feet. Sometimes I write down what happened that day. Today, a brown cat crossed my path.
Mom, when Dad isn’t home I go into the boxes of your clothes that remain under his bed. He wouldn’t mind if I went through them but for some reason I don’t want him to know that I do. I sift through the shirts and sweaters, searching for a piece that will help me remember a day that you wore it. Not trying to remember you wearing it (all of the clothes won’t let go of you) but longing for a specific moment to come back to me. I press the clothes into my face, pushing them harder against my nose, searching for something that can’t be found. I tell myself I won’t do it again because everytime the shirt smells like a shadow.
Dad lives downstairs now, where Pete and Kira used to live. Where Kira’s baby was born in the bathtub and you read Bread and Jam for Francis all night long because that was Zoe’s favorite book. “I do not like the way you slide, I do not like your soft inside.” You read and she would not hear her mother scream. You slept with Zoe and I that night and in the morning she went downstairs to meet her brother Tucker.
Dad lives downstairs now in the house that hasn’t changed for six years. As the outside world changes, the house remains the same, stagnant in time. The tattered fabric on our chairs is clinging on, as are we.
Shea lives in the blue room with the three big windows that used to belong to you and Dad. He always opens the door between our rooms before going to bed. We lay on the ground and talk about Scout’s paws and how that iced tea tastes like the color purple. Mom, he used to love the fall and watching the trees outside his window. Now he keeps the shades drawn and loves spring. I watch him as he vaguely stares at the television, the book still open in his lap. Sometimes it feels like you’ve just left to go to the store, as if you're sitting in the other room. Mom, he can walk for hours with anyone. The song “Oh-blah-di-oh-blah-da” can’t be played and he knows he isn’t fragile. Lost In Translation with all the windows open in August. I don’t feel real when I dunk my head under the water. He wades in it and swims to the other side, the part that the sun reaches. And there he finds rocks that never make it home.
I would listen to you and Dad talk as I fell asleep. The same feeling as laying on your chest at a dinner party. We would sit on the couch after dinner and I would listen to the soft vibrations of you humming “Wild Horses.” Everyone would stay at the table hours after dinner talking and laughing. I could hear them, but was too little to know or understand what they were saying. Instead I would try to figure out whose voice was whose. The voices blended into each other and then into the song behind them. Our house was lit by candles and lamps that were most condensed in the dining room, and as you went further away, there became fewer and fewer. I looked at the little circles of light scattered around the room. My eyes softened and I was in the place between sleep and paying attention to your finger rubbing against my thumb and you know I can’t let you slide through my hands.
We have the same thumbs and Papou says we walk the same but I think he is always looking for you in me. Calling me Nicole and then Clea. You are so much like her. After you died all he ate was blueberry pie. Sitting on the porch, one leg carefully tucked under the other, his head moving softly side to side.
Mom, sometimes I think about that place you used to bring us to get an ice cream sundae that looked like a baked potato. I’m trying to remember the way you sit. I know how you walk, loose and grounded, your fingers curled softly into your palms. And when you run you make tighter fists, head held high and move your arms too far away from your body. Most times at the top of our street you grab my hand and grab Shea’s hand and Schlemiel! Schlimazel! Hasenpfeffer Incorporated! We’re gonna do it! Scream it when you run down the street, run fast and keep those sneakers in sync.
I want to stand. I can’t fall back asleep. I hate weighted blankets. Knitting has infiltrated my dreams. Why is it easier to breathe when I am running up a hill, when the breath before this one is still caught in the cup of my throat. You told me the only cure to the hiccups is drinking a cup of water backwards. The chip in my front tooth is from drinking water backwards. I pour water into the kitchen plants until it leaks over the edge and spills onto the table. I spit toothpaste out in multiples of four and always avoid the number sixteen. Sixteen. I want to sit with you. I want you to cut through the counting and the patterns and the way I walk backwards when I take too many steps. I stand knee deep in snow and hold myself. There. I am not waiting, I am not in between two things.
Sorah and I found a church on a hot afternoon. We were not looking for it but we saw the small wooden door cracked open and we walked towards it. Our eyes squinted from the sun and then softened as we entered the place that smelled quietly of incense and wood. A woman sat with a child towards the front and an elderly couple stood by one of the windows. The outside light grazed the top of the woman's gray hair. We sat down on the pew and my eyes settled onto the wall just behind the altar where they stayed as my body sat still, bare back on wood, Sorah’s breathing steadies.
Mom, I don’t know how old I was when you ran the marathon. Maybe four or five, maybe not. I don’t remember seeing you run or seeing you finish, even though I see myself in those pictures. I do remember the morning after. It was early and still dark outside and the house was quiet. I went downstairs to open the door so Rosie the cat could come upstairs and lay with me. As I opened the sliding doors I peered past the living room and into the dining room where you sat, at the end of our long wooden table, leaning over a large bowl. You looked up and smiled at me. I walked over to you and sat next to you on the bench. The big bowl in front of us was filled with Dad’s leftover spaghetti and meatballs that he had made the afternoon before. You asked me if I wanted some spaghetti.
Our family friends Jen and Tashi still come over a lot for dinner. Tashi eats tomatoes now but still not fruit and because of this I won't understand her. She knows you make toast the best.
It is October and I sit on the counter and look at my shoes at the ends of my dangling legs. After a while I look up and I watch you carefully cut a mango. You came home from the hospital for a few days and my chest feels tight because last night I slept at Lia’s house and wasn’t home to see you. Your hair is pulled back in a clip as it usually is. You place the pit in my hands and I bite into it. My chin is sticky with sweet tears. Clea Clea bo bia banana phanna pho phia me my mo mia– Clea! To eat a tomato like an apple.
On the subway you would let Shea and I play Brick Breakers on your phone. But when it was 9th street and the train would go outside you would take the phone away and tell us to close our eyes and enjoy the sunshine. I would be in the middle of a game and get so mad and reluctantly tilt my face towards the window. Now, when I get on the F train, I sit down and wait and hope for the train to go outside again.