Color

She could see the images tumbling like Monarchs through the trees. The colors were always brilliant and buoyant. If she closed her eyes, she would have to completely succumb to them, so she kept her eyes wide open, hoping the images in her head would subside.

She was a visual schizophrenic. There was always a new image that imposed itself on her--particularly when she was relaxed. Sometimes pictures would superimpose themselves on each other, sometimes they would arm wrestle for dominance, but always there were far too many to paint or even draw. She had learned early in her artistic training—and it had taken some time to let herself be an artist—that if she gave in to all their demands, she would never sleep, never eat, never stop painting.

And then there were the pencils and ink pens lying in wait in the foxholes. If she kept them visible and handy they would attack her outright, demanding attention and allegiance even more ardently than the images themselves. They were the means to the end--these pencils, pens, and brushes. And they were in league with their compatriots--the canvas and paper.

She frequently wondered about this barrage. Where did it all come from? Why did she see the world in pictures and not words? Perhaps it was a mad rush against the reality of her blind, deaf, and mute muse: her grandmother, the one from whom her parents derived her name.

Her grandmother had been an artist in her own right, one who before the vision vanished in her eyes, had produced delicate and intricate crochet work. The works of others’ were always cumbersome and lumpy. Her grandmother’s were like snowflakes—yes, like snowflakes.

Throughout her house her deceased grandmother’s keepsakes were hidden. For the first time this struck her as odd. Why they had remained hidden she did not know. Even after this moment of realization, they would remain hidden. Perhaps it was too painful and frightening a reminder that the senses she now enjoyed, even the ones she herself had suppressed, had been systematically taken from her grandmother.

Her first and terrifying memory of her grandmother was when she was introduced to her by means of sign language. Her son had patiently signed into his mother’s hand the letters of her name m-a-r-t-h-a. The moment the last ‘a’ left her palm, her grandmother erupted with pure joy and crazy guttural expressions: “Gul! Marpha! Gul!” Her light and long fingers had fluttered wildly over the terrified grandchild’s eyes, nose, cheeks, lips, and hair. Marpha! Gul! She was her Martha, her girl, the oldest daughter of her only son.

She remembered being paralyzed with fear as she was pulled simultaneously into her grandmother’s warm arms and the cold steel of her wheelchair. The joy and delight on her grandmother’s toothless, blind face was equally astonishing. This hung like a beautiful, ravenous painting in her granddaughter’s mind for years to come. Rarely had she experienced such joy and absolute acceptance in all her life.

Yet, like the persistent and random images, she did not have any true sense of history with her grandmother--only gul and marpha and those long and tender fingers touching her face. Like a million butterflies brushing her face, her grandmother and the hundreds of colors had been with her for a very long time. They sustained her. They had given her hope. They had encouraged her and filled an otherwise gray life with color more beautiful than the autumn aspens.

Perhaps that was why she selected very carefully the images and colors she would apply to paper and canvas. If she put them all out there, perhaps she would lose them and lose the courage of her grandmother. This she could not do. This she would not do.

Dog

She turned her head sharply right, immediately aware that the dog had trained his attention on her instead of on the running child. She told herself that the dog was nothing to worry about, yet she quickly assessed the distance between herself and the animal.

As usual her heart picked up its beat as adrenalin interjected its voice into the conversation. Continual self-consolations were ineffective, particularly as the stare of the dog was unrelenting.

She remembered the instructional dog show at the fair. It was there she had learned of a dog’s tail. If it wagged erratically no one should be alarmed—the dog was quite content. If it wagged like the tail of the cat clock on her great aunt’s wall she was in trouble. One brief glimpse and she realized she was sunk. The dog had no tail! Well, he did have a stump of a tail. It was such a stump, though, that it could not be seen to be moving. These animal mutilators did not have her best interests at heart! They clipped tails, ears, and who knows what else just to suit their revisionist eyes. Didn’t they know that God put a tail on a dog to warn her?

It was decision time. She took a quick and deliberate step to the right. So did the dog. Four feet versus two seemed hardly fair. She didn’t dare look into the dog’s eyes. That’s another thing she had learned. Well, actually she was suddenly confused. That man on television said you have to establish dominance, while someone else said you were never to look a threatening dog in the eye because that would indicate a desire to engage in battle for territory. Maybe she should just pee on the bush. That’s an act of dominance and claiming territory, isn’t it? Or maybe that would just be an act of public humiliation.

While she was distracted by this mental quandary, her heart started to slow its pace. She realized she was hearing all the street noises again. She didn’t remember not hearing them. Her hypothalamus must have closed its door. Her focus became panoramic, stretching like a yawn as her body relaxed from the initial rush of adrenalin. Then her focus drew in tightly and she saw, for the first time, the high chain-link fence that stood between them.

She took a quick right turn and was on her way.

GRASS

She loved grass. And she had forgotten how much until her toes touched the verdant tendrils.

Her nerves picked up the cool and raced it to her brain. They hadn’t forgotten what a treat it was. And they were happy to remind her—with lightning speed. She remembered before the age of reason how much she had loved the grass, how much she trusted it. It had never hurt her, and she could never really hurt it. It always seemed to bounce back. And if it got too trampled, a bit of water would bring back its buoyancy. Water always helped.

She remembered the joy of releasing her feet from the cumbersome leather and plastic and feeling her toes embraced by the grass. The neighborhood children flew across the lawns, unhindered except by the jaded elders screeching warnings from windows and sidewalks.

There were things in the grass at times, but the grass did not put them there. Rusty nails, thumbtacks, broken glass—these things were not part of the grass. Someone put them there at night like the weeds in the fields of Jesus. It was not in the nature of grass to produce such things—not in its nature at all! That’s why she loved it.

And it’s why she hated asphalt. She understood now, in part, the need for asphalt, but it was so very ugly, hot, and dark. One couldn’t water asphalt and make it better. In fact, water was its enemy. Ha! Water always beats rock—always. And the water could run over the asphalt, down its sides, and into the grass. Water always wins. Maybe that’s why God put a boundary on it.

She remembered the time the bee had stung her toe. The bee was not the grass. She understood, even then, why it hurt. She would have bitten back if she had been stomped on, too. It wasn’t the bee’s fault, and it wasn’t the fault of the grass. It wasn’t even her fault. It was a harmonic convergence, an unholy collusion bringing little toes, grass, and bee together.

So there she was—post innocence—tossing her shoes to the side as if they were garbage. Oh, she wished she could just keep them in the heap. Perhaps burning them as a sacrifice to safety would be an appropriate rite of spring.

But then she remembered asphalt . . . and summer and the city. She was sad she needed shoes.