WELL DONE! Essays, Memoirs, and True Stories
creative life, I dreamed of the sunsets that showed through the special window and created an artist canvas of orange, red, and pink. I missed the place that nurtured me as I navigated a bad relationship, but the decision to leave saved who I was to be, an author, a strong woman, and a passionate mother. Not long ago, I had to visit the house on the steep hill. Much has changed. The house is dark on the inside with new wooden shutters closed tight to the outside world. My beautiful window is gone, replaced with a standard double window. Many trees that the magnificent sunsets filtered through have been cut down and a shed has been built in their place. The front yard is plain and lifeless without the flowering quince. The driveway has been paved for ease of navigating. No real remnant of the house that once guarded and protected this woman’s soul exists. But, I stood and looked at the mountain in the distance, something that couldn’t be erased, and thought of Bette— the woman who showed me a new way to live. She died three years after I left at the age of ninety-two, buried within five minutes of her house and the beautiful rose and flower gardens she cultivated. As I sat in the moment of being, in the place where I found myself, my art, a thought, more like a feeling, entered me. Always the roots of life spring from this space, waiting. Waiting for the next heart ready to bloom and find its way.
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WELL READ MAGAZINE
