May 12, 2017

It is Mother’s Day, and instead of thinking of my mother, as I should by popular tradition, I am thinking of you, the father of my children. Perhaps it is because I am sitting in the corner of the couch closest to the picture window, your favorite spot to sit and read. I used to sit opposite you, in the black leather chair with my feet up on the ottoman, and every now and then look up from my book and say something to you, although often I was out at a meeting and you read alone.

Now I sit in your spot on the couch because it is easier to get up from the couch with its higher seat and arms and I am older, and if truth be told, I like this view of the garden better. I have snagged the ottoman, so I can put my feet up, and although I began reading the latest book group selection on my Kindle, I have stopped to listen to the Carolina wren outside the picture window. He is singing away, so big a song for his tiny body, and perched on a branch of the lilac shrub that we tried to kill off because it was so massive when we moved into this house forty years ago, and when the lilac persisted and did not die we let it be.

I look out the window with your eyes, seeing the wren in the lilac shrub, the wren house swaying from the eaves where this little bird is building a new nest. We bought that bird house on a vacation to the Outer Banks in North Carolina. You put up the hook the wren house is hanging from. And when the original cording broke, you strung new cord, and that cord is holding still.

Beyond the window your eyes must have seen the changing light at this time of day, when the sun dips lower in the west, lighting up the spring green leaves of the willow oak that we planted together so many years ago. The willow oak and her sister have so shaded the bed by the picture window that I replaced the struggling plants you would remember. Now ferns, hellebores, native geraniums, and astilbe grow there.

But inside, this living room is not much changed at all. You could sit down in your favorite spot on this couch and pick up from the side table the last book you were reading before you became too ill to read: A Team of Rivals. There are other books stacked on top of it, but I have not found the heart to move it.

There is a new basket for kindling on the raised hearth, and a new hearth rug. There are two new Siamese cats sitting on the rug: Jasmine and your sweet Blueberry have passed away. And there is me, not all that different after almost seven years, but perhaps stronger for this journey, sitting in your favorite spot on the couch, listening to the Carolina wren singing his love song in the lilac shrub.