Tomorrow we will go to the airport. By then the sky will be
dark, like the dark blue of the vase in the kitchen. When I
was little, I used to lift my hand up to the sky and would
always be caught by surprise. Looking up at my outstretched
palm, it was bigger than the sky. More real than the sky. I
could see the lines of my hand running into each other,
etching lines of birth, of before birth. Who was I before I
entered this world?
The airport will be different now, and this scares me. I
remember that small circle of arrival, the smoke-filled room
that teems with the sense of coming home, returning, closing
the gaps that form silently across the miles. Now what will
it be? So large, so unfamiliar. Who will know where to turn,
where to search for the face that looked out at the kitchen
window, that peered into the slanting afternoon light while
washing a blue and white dish and sang a wordless tune that
carried her away. Who will know where to search?
It is years ago. I stand at the airport waiting for my mother
to arrive. My three-year-old stands next to me with her head
full of blond-white curls. Her river blue eyes light up with
a glimmer of being in a noisy place, waiting for arrivals.
She jumps up and down beside me, looking into the fountain
that spills water into water, in lilting sprays that
disappear into the air. A woman stands next to us. She looks
down at my daughter and then up at me. She is wearing a
brown, woolen cap and a khaki sweater. Her eyes are green and
rimmed with red puffiness. She has been crying. She smiles
down at Adina with a flicker of recognition. Then it fades.
She turns to me and tells me that her mother has just passed
away.
Her brothers don't know yet. They are arriving on this plane,
hoping to get there in time to say good-bye. But does anybody
ever get to say good-bye in the end? Are there ever enough
words, enough prayers, enough tears to take away the absence
that slices between this world and the next.
My eyes fill up with tears for her. For her brothers who are
picking up their luggage from the metal conveyer belt that
circles for hours. And then she sees them carrying their
black suitcases, walking slowly, deliberately, as if bracing
themselves for arriving here. She runs to them. Tells them
that Mother is gone. Gone. Came here on vacation. Now she is
gone. She wasn't supposed to die. The brothers begin to cry,
right there in the middle of the crowd of passengers. They
hold each other and cry. They are too late. But what does
that mean?
"Where's Grandma?" my daughter is asking as she pulls on my
arm, trying to see through the sea of suitcases, people and
smoke. Where is Grandma? And there she is. I see my mother.
She is walking towards us. Adina begins to run towards her
and she catches my daughter in her arms, laughing. Laughing
beside the crying brothers who will soon go to bury their
mother.
I run up to join them. And that is when I notice that my
mother is getting old. Not old, old. But different. For years
she stayed the same. Same face, same eyes, same clothes in
different colors. Now something is different. Subtly so. A
line here, a line here. Nothing I can point to and say, now
everything has changed. But it has.
*
Tomorrow I will stand in a new place, a new circle. I will
look for my mother's face, her eyes that looked out the
kitchen window so many years ago, singing a wordless song.
And I will search for my grandfather. He, too, is getting
old. When did that happen? What does it mean? And then I will
search for my grandmother even though that is absurd. I know
I will do it, anyway. Where is Grandma? How can Grandpa be
without Grandma? But it is.
I search for her. Her green eyes and tough stride, her smile
that breaks so easily into laughter. Adina drew flowers for
Grandma Golda. "Because, Ima, she is really still here even
though she is in shomayim. Right?"
Right. Today I picked up a sweater that I took from Grandma's
house when she passed away. It smells like her, like the warm
scent of her black and white house with the willow tree
outside. I let myself inhale that scent, pretend that the
year didn't happen, didn't pass. And though I warn myself, I
know:
Tomorrow at the airport I will be shocked. I will be
surprised. How could Grandma leave without saying good-bye?
Where is she? But she did say good-bye. Don't you
remember?
That wasn't really good-bye.
Why is Grandpa all alone? Why is this airport so empty, so
vast. Why can't I look my mother in the eyes? How can I face
Mommy with the loss of Grandma so fiercely intense around
her. The arriving hurts almost as much as the departing. For
what really, can you say?
