Your Shocked, Wordless Heart

I have lived in this house with my arms full and my arms empty. I have lived in this house old and young. More years than people in my family ever live in houses.  I have lived in this house noisy and quiet, dusty and swept, stinky and sweet-smelling. I have walked the rooms barefoot, I have stomped upstairs and down in my muddy boots. I have lived in this house fat and skinny. I have worn my husband’s hand-me-down jeans, my children’s hand-me-down cargo shorts and hoodies, my own flowing colors. I have lived here with big-eyed boys and sassy teens, sweet tall young men, and all of their ghosts keeping me gentle company.  I have lived here with mice, with crickets, with ants. In this house I have remembered my mother’s sharp quick way with cockroaches, the flipflop in her hand coming down in a perfect crack. I have lived here with clean dishes and dirty, remembering the Sunday afternoons and the hot sudsy sink of childhood washings up, mother and sister and me singing rounds. ...

You brought me up in dirt yards, on concrete and linoleum floors, in wooden churches. On self-ground peanut butter cookies and ice-cold self-squeezed lemonade. Thousands of miles from your New Jersey. The silence was filled with hymns, poems, readings. Limericks, jokes, prayers, and old, old songs. With dancing. And trudging through sand to church. Holding your hand. There was a beach and there was sand, other sand, there was sunshine and splashing and crocodile jokes, frisbees and drip castles and heedlessness. We called it the Little Falls. You weren't there, and when I came home I was red and fiery and tender and sore to the touch, and everything hurt. You had a satiny pink nightgown and a satiny pink robe that had no seams anywhere and you wrapped me in those and for three days and nights I sat or lay on the green-and-white-striped vinyl stuffed chairs we always said we bought from the Norwegian ambassador, cradled in the gentle chill of your satin wrappings, pink against my fi...