a halo of bees

Mrs. Scattergood noticed a mild perfume hanging in the air. The air was infused with an ambient, sensory luminescence and an aroma as when rosemary is thrown on the flames.  Her nose, a compass after all.  She was nearly in a swoon from the smell. She fell through the moment tasting the scent on every particle of memory.  Unable to form itself into anything solid it caught her heart as she was leaving, just like your shirt might get caught on the door hook, and tore at her.  She could not close the image of the green leather of the limes a lover kept in a bowl for their color or was it to cover her eggs long since spent. She was being mean spirited, she knew. But old reflexes, you know, return even when the follow through is just forgetting to follow through.

~

     Mrs. Scattergood headed home.  Memories circled her head like a halo made out of bees. Why now would she remember her mother’s “I love you”? Some would describe her mother as a simple woman. She didn’t appear to have the complexities of angst crossed with misgivings and shpilkes.  She was straightforward and what you saw and what you heard was what you got.  There was no polish or politic. She would describe her as old fashioned but what did that mean? For her it meant that her mother was older than everyone else’s mom. That she cooked and stayed home.  Had pickles and Kool-Aid frozen into ice cubes for snacks.  She was a briny one. She loved what she called vinick and sweet. Sweet and sour, sour and sweet.  Just like life.

~

     Heraclitus wrote that “Character is fate.” Her mother was surely a character and it was her fate to hear “I love you” for the first time from her lips when Mrs. Scattergood was twenty-six. She told Mrs. Scattergood again when she was dying.  She had to strain through the pressure of the fluid in her lungs, and it was the only words she spoke in days. Mrs. Scattergood would never forget that her mother loved her. What a world it is without her.  And life after her has become an immense journey.  Mrs. Scattergood suffered a sea-change when her mother died. You hardly hear of people suffering from that these days.  It is strange because all things come from the sea, especially change. Shape shifting spheres of consciousness that disregard all laws about staying within her skull. What changes compare to the loss of your mother?  Mrs. Scattergood recalled how disappointed she was when her mother had to hold onto the ropes in the water.  Unsteady on her legs, the ropes were set out on poles and delineated the swimming areas.  But if you held onto them while the waves were crashing, you’d get mashed up on the beach.  Better to just dive in.  Unsteady legs will make you do strange things in the water.  Mrs. Scattergood held onto her mother’s ‘I love you’ like a rope. Just like that.  She was her mother’s daughter, her belly girl, finding her way back through memory’s labyrinth.