3f#16 – et ego in arcadia vixi
I dreamed of my grandmother’s house last night. She was not dead, but coming home from the hospital. The Sisters of Mercy had prepared her house. There was new carpeting. I preferred the old, but the new was…OK.
I went to the beach today, wary of sunburn without a beach umbrella. Swimming in the surf, I thought of other beaches: Pebble Ridge where Stalky & Co. swam; Nantucket of my seventeenth summer; the gray sands of Scotland where I watched for selkies. I thought of other seas: the diamond surface of my childhood lake viewed from my father’s sailboat; the thick Caribbean when I had to swim all that way to get my rescue diver certification; the fish-filled Indian Ocean where you grew up.
I watched the airplanes taking off, remembering how you could read their tails from the ground. A little 2-seater cruised along the beach, the kind you drooled over in Flying Magazine, the kind I never let you fly because it was too dangerous. I should have let you.
I’ve been dreaming of my grandmother’s house since I was fifteen. The last time I dreamed it, we were having your funeral in the basement. Last night it smelled of new carpet. It didn’t need new; the old didn’t need to change.
The beach was not perfect, today, but it was…OK. Et ego in arcadia vixi. God willing, I will live there again.
The Sisters of Mercy have made the house ready. I am not, despite reports, dead.
This week’s piece didn’t turn out to be fiction. Sorry.
Read other folks writing this week:
August 16th, 2009 at 12:12 am
It was better than fiction, actually. Don’t apologize.
August 16th, 2009 at 6:36 am
Don’t apologise. Your fiction is so good because it uses the clean crisp poignancy of your non-fiction writing. I don’t believe that you could write the fiction you do if was not based on how you articulate your real world experiences and feelings.
August 21st, 2009 at 3:10 am
It may not be fiction, but it was well written. In the hands of another, such nonfiction might not have turned out as beautifully done. Good job. I enjoyed it.