Little Feet Down Memory Lane

It felt liberating to crush old rigid blackberry branches.  They were in my way. A heat, almost like exhilaration, rose up from my heart to my eyes. My feet instinctively led me to exactly the right spot.  Nothing significant was visibly there, but my heart knew. Almost like Peter Pan, I was following my second star to the right, except in this case it was an enormous and grand tree.  As I dug, my fingers slowed as if in doubt of my original inclination.  But, then I saw it and my lungs paused in mid breath. My sister had come up to next to me with her two boys who rampaged around crushing sticks and branches at the base of the tree.  I pulled at the unearthed white rock.

"Is this really it?" I released the corners of the corroded and blinding white rock.

"It is."

I then spotted little black rubber pads dispersed on the corners of the rough rock and proceeded to coax it out of the wet earth. I expected the rock to say "Happiness" because that is what I recalled laying at her grave, but as I turned the rock over I saw it was a still intact statue. I had forgotten.

"I put that there," my sister gazed around the tree. "You remember where we buried her?"

"Closer to the tree," I responded.

"Seems so much closer to the house than I remember. I wanted to bury her far away so mom wouldn't be tempted to come down here," My sister turned and for a moment seemed to return to her 19 year-old self.

My mom wouldn't be tempted anymore even if she had been in the past. That is the phrase that crosses my mind. The house seems closer; yet far away, and like a stranger. Things have happened that I cannot explain.  It is as if my youth has floated away like a balloon to the Heavens and I spend day and night trying to find it.  All I find are memories that I doubt and faces that I miss.

On this visit home, I went down to look for a grave that was marked with Happiness and although my sister doesn't remember it being there, I am sure I put it there and I will find it when I go home next time. I just missed it.