My Hand Remembers

where the only words they had for me were blue air mail letters that made my mother’s heart ache.

They too, have become ghosts. Is that the fate of all of us? All we can hope is that our own voices will remain inside those who loved us and comfort them for as long as they need to hear us.

When I speak to my daughter on the phone, when she calls me on the way to the university, I ask about the children, ask about Stephen, the house. I say Do you think the upstairs will be finished soon? And she tells me that Stephen says it’s the closest it’s ever been; and she cracks back and I’m as close as I’ve ever been to death, too. I love her sense of humor, her quick wit, the easy way she’s taken on cherishing his children, caring for them as if they were her own. She tells me she tries to get Indigo to practice her spelling. Indigo asks her, Do you want me to be Clara (the smartest girl in her class)? I’m not Clara. I am Indigo. Jennifer says, Well, Indigo needs to learn how to spell. Jennifer looks over the eight-page essay that the child has written. Almost every word is misspelled. Jennifer carefully writes the words out on 3 x 5 cards for her and then she teaches her to spell them. Indigo is going to be a brilliant mathematician or scientist and words are not magical to her or sacred as they are to Jennifer. But Indigo always has an argument ready and never gives up. Jenniferfinds books she lovedwhen she was agirl and reads them to Indigo just as I had read them to Jennifer. How grateful I am to have this daughter with her open heart; her stepdaughter reminds me of Jennifer as a girl. This child loves art as much as I do. When I ask what subjects she loves in school, she asks if she has to choose only one. No, I tell her, you could choose more than one. “Well, I would choose math and science and art.”