"Birds flying South usually means winter is coming."
"Should we go there too? With the birds, Mama?"
"No, we'll stay here cozy and warm in our home, Sugar."
Every time I see birds flying South I think of those words Mamma repeated to me year after year in the late fall. At first I always felt left behind, as if they were going somewhere I could never go. I would sit outside on the porch steps and listen to the geese honk and cry to each other, flying like black Vs against a glassy blue sky. Sometimes the wind would pick up and blow the orange and crimson patches from the maple trees around me, and I would spin in circles, calling to the birds that never stopped to wait for me. They never stopped and I didn't understand it. Why wouldn't they wait for me? Would they ever come back? Where did they go?
Thick hot summers meant days at the pond squealing in the cold water, eating the berries that grew along the choked paths in the woods. I can still feel the hot stillness that made me sticky with sweat before the evening breezes came whistling around the house, and sitting with my sisters by the fire after it was dark and the outdoors was no longer friendly. Those were the nights that it was pitch and the moon was gone. Other times the moon sat in the sparkling velvet sky like a big firefly, bigger than the ones we chased and put in jars. We ran barefooted until Mama called us in and made us rinse off under the iron pump that spit out bitterly cold water. We giggled under the sheets in the big bed until Daddy told us to BE QUIET OR ELSE, and warned that bad men would get us if we didn't go to sleep. We'd whisper a bit more until the hazy dreams came to claim us one by one, and last thoughts were always cozy with my sisters' hair comforting a shoulder.
But then the geese would leave and I cried. And then we'd be left alone, blanketed under an unrelenting white quilt. The Wind Woman screamed and screamed as we huddled together at night, and snatched our breath away when Daddy took us to school. Once when I was too sick to go, I watched the speckled yellow truck grow smaller and smaller in the snow until I could no longer see it, and I cried. I knew better than to cry in front of Mamma and stopped; I was no baby girl! But I was scared until they came back.
The familiar dirt road wound around the big bend in the pale white road and then I saw it. The rambling, white two story house that held so many memories under the gabled green roof, that I had to stop and gather my thoughts. Though it was still bare and scarred from a long winter, I could picture in my mind the large Aspen tree's leaves trembling like lacy, silver tears when the summer breeze gently caressed it. Soon the rather wild flower beds would overflow with color, and the lilac bushes out back would perfume the air so heavily one felt as though she were in a bower.
On the east side of the house, in the shade, frozen patches of blue snow ran in little streams down the gently sloping hill. I climbed back into the car from where I had been standing against the open door, and drove past the weather-beaten mailbox and through the opening in the moss covered rock wall. I parked under the comfortable elm tree that stood a small distance away from the house, as if it was observing all that happened with tolerance and amusement. The tree was like an old friend's lap-- still as inviting as ever. When I was little I liked to climb up into the branches and watch the road and the field and hear what the birds on the lake were saying. Gazing fondly at the tree brought back memories, and I turned to see the spotted lake, still frozen but cracked like marble. It was cold and silent looking and sadly abandoned and lonely. There were no children or voices calling, only an eerie stillness. I looked up at the house then, and felt my heart swell with the beauty of it. It was leaning a bit, weather beaten paint chipped and peeling, revealing a rotted black beneath the white. The porch was over grown with dead weeds, and the little stone steps were cracked and half buried in snow and mud. The screen door that had been slammed shut so many times, by little forgetful minds, now hung torn from rusty hinges. I smiled remembering.
"Don't slam the door, girls!" Mama called out from behind the door as it swung and met the wood frame with a resounding crack.
"Sorry, Mama!" one of us would call as we raced down the hill to the lake. The air always felt cold, but the smell of the warm wet ground in the spring made me feel like a bird soaring through the blue sky. We'd fall down on the scratchy brown grass and gaze up at the strings of geese flying over head. This was what I loved! They were returning again; returning the summer they had taken from us. Their loud honking made me feel they had promised to never again leave, and I laughed with my sisters and we danced around and around and around, until the sky spun and we fell in a heap of wool dresses and coats. And inside Mama had made us supper and we felt glad to be alive.
Soon the marble lake had melted, and suddenly it would be alive again with the geese. Daddy would show us the nests and the babies if we were quiet. Only once did we find a little broken baby bird that had rolled onto the rocks and died. I put it back but Daddy said it wouldn't do any good because the baby goose's soul that had been inside had gone to heaven.
"It left already, Daddy?" I asked sadly.
"Yes, it was time for it to go."
"But it will be so lonely since all the others are still here."
"Oh no, there are many souls that must make the journey earlier than others but they are not alone. No one is ever really alone, Sugar."
The house was so quiet it was like being dead in a dark mausoleum. My sister and I listened to the clock as we sat huddled under the thick down blanket. The relentless ticking kept us both from feeling our bewildered sadness and fright. My stomach hurt so bad I could barely swallow, and I knew with each painful breath I inhaled that everything was wrong and there was nothing I could do about it. A light came on in the hallway and I could hear the muffled sobs of my MamA&My Daddy trying to comfort her.
"Girls, you may come upstairs now." My aunt peered into the room where we sat transfixed. My sister moved first and reached for my hand to pull me up. I followed as if in a trance as we walked down the hallway into my oldest sister's room. Several candles were burning and flickering against the rain-speckled window pains. Gold hair fanned about her deathly pale face and eyes sunken into her hollow cheek bones. My beautiful sister smiled feebly at the two of us as we tried to hold back the tears that could never fall, so shocked and broken we felt. She held out her translucent arm for us to take, but my sister couldn't, I couldn't. Finally we sat down on the edge of the bed and carefully ran our hands along her cheeks, her hair, her hand. I cried then, and couldn't stop.
"Shh, little sister. Don't cry for me. It's time for me to fly away and go to heaven."
"You can't leave us. We all have to go together; I can't let you go alone," I sobbed to myself, knowing.
She left me like the geese did, but I knew she couldn't help it. The pain she left behind was raw and unbearable, and at times I would stare out over the frozen lake and wonder if she would come back in the spring. Of course, I knew she wouldn't, but when the geese came I felt somehow comforted, like maybe she was really with them. Once I thought I heard her laughing beside us when we somberly walked down the hill to watch the flocks return. The tears that fell that day were no longer bitter; they were warm and healing like the wind that had picked up from the South. I think she was in my tears, and her sweetness fell onto my heart like the thawing ground I stood on and grew pure and white like the crocus poking from the earth at my feet. That summer was lonely sometimes, but I learned that she would always be with me wherever I went, and that she hadn't really left with the geese. She stayed after the fall and on into the winter, and she was with me when I welcomed the geese back year after year in the Spring.
My car sat waiting for me under the elm, and I noticed the little face of my grandson peeking at me from his freshly opened eyes. He regarded the house solemnly, as if he knew it was no ordinary place, but one of special memories that shaped his own past. It was too muddy for him to walk around, and then I noticed the cold wind that began to pick up. It was time to return to my own home, where warmth from love and family was like an eternal sun and everlasting Spring.
I gazed once more at the old house, uninhabited for years, and knew I would have to fix it up soon. Perhaps my sister would like to stay the summer and we could begin to restore it. I laughed, knowing I might not ever have the time, but it gave me a degree of comfort to know I could. The love of my sisters had never died, and we were still all together in this beautiful house of memories.
I turned to the car, seeing the future in the darling face of someone who would one day listen to me talk of my girlhood days with an indulging sigh and a roll of the eyes, and perhaps not understand how precious this house was to me. But he would have his own memories to learn from and grow from like I had, and everyone has.
"Gran'ma," he said around his little pink thumb, "I liked tha' house. Who lives there?"
"Oh, no one honey," I said. "But three little girls used to long ago. They swam at the lake, played hide'n'go seek, and all kinds of games that you like to play."
He nodded gravely and looked out at the leaden sky.
"Look, Gran'ma!" he pointed a chubby fist at the clouds above.
I stopped the car at the mailbox and looked up. My heart seemed to dance when I saw the strings of geese flying North again. I reached over and unbuckled him from his car seat, and zipped up his little red wool coat.
"Let's step out for a minute, honey."
I smiled with pure joy at the wonder that filled his innocent blue eyes, and we laughed with the geese as they steadily made their journey back home.