After my grandfather died, I had trouble sleeping at night. One night the pounding of my heart resounding in my ears kept me awake for hours. No matter how I turned or positioned my pillow, I kept hearing my heart loudly thumping. The darkened bedroom windows reminded me of death. Hearing my pounding heart reminded me that it would someday stop. I felt hopeless, agitated and frightened. My breathing became uncontrollable. I didn’t know what it would be like to no longer exist. My grandmother called the doctor. He recommended a hot bath.
Daytime was easier, especially when spring came and the pale and bright yellow daffodils decorated the landscape, highlighting the sunlight. They seemed to spring up from nowhere and a large patch of them gathered behind the big oak tree in the front yard. There was a mushroom-like form which grew on the tree. The milky white shape seemed to grow from inside the tree and was always there throughout the seasons.
At some point my grandfather had engraved a face into the growth. As it grew, the face remained imprinted into the mushroom-like form. Each day its expression changed slightly and the eyes, though full of creases and crevices, looked out from the tree over the shady cut grass and across the walkway facing the hill where my grandfather lay. Its wise and sad eyes gazed out long after my grandfather died. Although it grew and changed in time, I knew it existed because my grandfather had created it with his pocketknife. At the time he did it to amuse me, yet after his death I found comfort in seeing its strange misaligned eyes looking out from the time when he was alive.
Eventually the angle of its mouth changed from a smile to a mysterious deep line with jagged edges. The fungus had a connection with my grandfather beyond the grave. I think it was his self portrait living and growing on the tree.
My grandparents’ farm consisted of beautiful green pastures and soft hills which were divided into separate fields by honeysuckled fences. After my grandfather died, my grandmother bought and sold ponies and opened a riding school. The ponies became my friends and my loneliness was relieved a little by spending time with them and learning their ways.
Summer nights were filled with anticipation of the next day. The ponies were turned out to the fields, where they rested in sheds. The yard around the house expanded as it gave way to long stretches of darkness. All that was familiar in the daytime became dark and indistinguishable silhouettes. These dark forms were not scary because the yard became animated with specks of light, as if it were mirroring the night sky.
The lightning bugs were as quiet as the moon, yet they darted over the lawn and through the night like dancing stars. The cry of creatures could be heard: a low growl, a high-pitched squeal, a croak or howls came from the woods and the dark bushes. As the night sky settled over the land, crickets’ rhythmic buzz was everywhere at once. A magical hum of varying tones and calls of creatures permeated the night air throughout the summer months.
I captured the lightning bugs and put them in a jar, yet my grandfather’s words always echoed when the jar became full of the starry light: “Let them go.” G&S
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