RETURNING FROM THE FARAWAY LANDS
He'd said it before, in conversation. He hadn't yet brought
it here. He'd gone as far as he could go to listen to what he'd found there, in
the faraway lands before he could return and listen to what's close. Nothing
could have been closer than his mother. He left and went as faraway as he could
go. He went to where everything he heard he heard as strange. Strange and
wonderful and all of it beyond understanding. Here is where he practiced the
listening. Listening to get it right. And he gave himself up to carrying it,
and bringing it back, all that he had heard. All that he could carry. It took
him, well, it took him most of his life. And he did what he set out to do, he
brought it back. He brought back what he heard. And what he heard was her, his
mother. He heard her. He sat with her. He had listened to it all. Now it was
her turn to return to him. Quiet at first, mirroring his father's quietness. She
was hardly noticeable. Her current, like a directional system, guiding him now,
through all traffic. Sometimes she would talk to him, throwing out some of her
favorite, even family famous, where would we go for naming them? Baseball
maybe, line drives--he thinks he'll try it out--Sometimes she would swing and
smack the ball where no one was, a rope, but usually the line drives were, like
aimed at him, terrifying shots, but now they arrived as volleys, a kind of
pitch of delight, and he'd go public with it, I'll give you one more chance
before I'm calling the sheriff! one-offs, like that. That close, like his
mother was throwing batting practice. They walked like this then. This is how
they walked. They walked further through alienation exile than any who knew
them individually, would have guessed possible. Both of them quiet, even on
busses. In their newness, she asked him again, that question she asked him half
a century ago, riding to the baseball game. He was living with priests and nuns
at the time, and she asked, Do you still believe like we believe? Asking now,
she patted his arm, as she was want to do. I can kid you, too, you know. The
others, well, they never listened like you did, not to me. When she said that,
he heard his father call, from the other room, Cele, get in here, I need your
help. Everybody on the bus turned and looked at them.
Jim Bodeen
29 July 2018
Posts
