On Saturday, we visit open studios. At our last stop, I find myself face to face with a 4’x6’ work of fiber – hand-woven muslin with wool and thread. The curves and stitches move me so unexpectedly that tears sting my eyes.
The artist presses a finger to my forearm as we say hello and goodbye. Those are ginkgo leaves, she says gently, briefly tracing the lines and then the tendon down to my wrist. Did you know they survived the atomic bomb?
Yes, I reply, they symbolize nature’s ability to move through all sorts of horrors. We lock eyes.
You seem to me to be someone moving through things, she says, shaking my hand. Resilience comes in all forms, she whispers.
I prefer the word transformation, I breathe. Resilience implies springing back to what once was, but we are never put back together the same way once broken.
The matrix of protective film that covers the rear window of hospital transport pixelates. From my bench seat inside, I feel the warmth of the setting sun weaken as we drive east. We have been awake for days, us adults, grasping at short sighs of slumber when we have moments to breathe. I gaze out the window, the view obscured by the privacy pattern, turning the highway and cars into blurs. For a moment, I wonder if I’ve forgotten my glasses.
Facing backward, I can only see what has already passed. The drab interstate scenery seems to speed in reverse while the vehicle hurtles forward. Traffic noses up to us and then slides swiftly around. I see hundreds of people making their way somewhere, moving toward us, surpassing us. This is what time is like these days. A solitary stasis.
I have always been good with landmarks. As a child, I knew the roads by feel. My eyes closed, curled in the back seat, I knew the curve of Crystal Brook Hollow, the dip down and twist of Old Post. I knew the acceleration when the main road morphed into the parkway, the jolt of brakes when traffic clumped at the border of Queens. During my time in the city, I could run thirteen miles through Brooklyn in the dark morning, primarily based on feel, sound, smell, and the sense of sidewalk changes beneath my feet.
I have no idea where we are. We have lived in this state for ten years, and I have never bothered to learn what highway gets us where except for the one that takes me back to the city. I have hidden beneath the ease of GPS. Just tell me where to go, and I will get there. I never stopped to think that perhaps one day I’d sit backward in a transport vehicle, the future very much unknown, and yearn to know one solitary landmark, something, anything, to tell me where everyone was going and, more importantly, where the two of us in this truck will land.
My child picks Car Seat Headrest as our driving music. Actually, they chose “Midwest emo,” and having little to no idea what that micro-genre was, I chose the first thing I found on my phone. The sound echoes ethereally through the ambulance bay. The sun has disappeared behind the asphalt New Jersey horizon, buried beneath the dusk and trucks and cars. We pull off somewhere, some road that leads to another, and the lyrics weave their way through my heavy head.
I thought one day
I thought I'd find a hole
In my own backyard
I’d never seen before
Follow it down
Underneath that fence
Come back up on the other side
Live another life
The transport stops beneath the fluorescent lights of a loading dock. There is a strange relief in knowing that this part of the journey has ended. We have reached a terminus for the moment, temporary, a vague temporal, but a place to rest. For now.
I open the door to fill out paperwork. On the sidewalk, half in darkness, there is a peacock. It screams a strange hello and sends its feathers out full and flush. Once the surprise lessens, I pause in the reality of the moment – the beauty, the absurdity, the flash of the unexpected.
object of memory 