Sunshine…

on my shoulders makes me happy.

…

You and I are camping with Jenny, camping like we did on the island, when you called me and said you were lonely. We paddled to the shore and hung a hammock and I started biting your lip and pulling at your collar. We had nowhere to be, and that’s why we stayed like that ’til the afternoon sun filtered through the low branches and the brush. And we have nowhere to be now, except around Jenny‘s table. She listens to music by searching songs on Facebook, though she says she only checks it for family news.

You and I are a family now, but I still came from her first. Still, nothing makes more sense than bringing you here to the beach to meet Jenny. The cell that became me was, before Jenny’s daughter was even born, when her womb developed within Jenny’s womb. She carried me before I was my father’s child. I was a part of her when she was a long-haired, barefoot little thing, running on the white sugar sand riverbank, the Jungle Trail. And I was a part of her mother’s mother, who came over in the cargo hold of Turnbull’s slave ships.

How different you and I are. Your fathers came over from Scotland, on the decks of the ships, but not in much better condition than my indentured Spanish mothers. Your Caledonian fathers reached the shore and soon found Indian women in the hills of western Virginia, who became your mothers. They had black hair like Jenny.

…

in my eyes can make me cry.

…

I am Jenny’s granddaughter and I can’t believe I am. She has raven hair, like you do— like I always wished I did, like I still sometimes imagine would grow on our babies’ soft heads. I think the 1/4th of me that is Jenny is recessive, because it sure skipped a few generations. I’ll never be half of the mother she is.

When I was a girl, and too difficult for my momma, I was sent to live down by the water with Jenny. I beat the wall with my fists and yelled obscenities and, on the really bad days, I would dig holes and sit in them. Since she was too afraid to stop me, she didn’t. She shouted at me from the screen room. The hot tears poured down my face and I couldn’t why I didn’t feel a thing, so I stayed quiet. She slammed the screen door, leaving me alone.

She wouldn’t sit with me in my mud puddle; she was strong and thought she could pull me out from the edge of the thing. She couldn’t. I blared my angry music and wallowed.

Her daughter would come get me the next day. I don’t blame Jenny for not being able to fix me, though. She couldn’t have known she had to get down in the mud with me in order to help me out. That’s alright. Jenny is tall, and she is kind, but her emotions steer her vessel. This is why we used to fight so much, before I grew into a woman; I was a woman the day I learned to hold my tongue.

…

on the water is so lovely.

…

Jenny spends every day she can on the gulf, now that she’s at least semi-retired. We kids sit around Jenny’s table on the screen porch, eating the good things she fixed, while she and her middle-aged daughter sit to the side in Adirondack chairs. Her daughter lives in the mountains with her 5 children, far away, but we are visiting for the week. Jenny starts cooking 3 days before the grands arrive, and she is a fine cook. She fried the fish the boys caught last weekend— she used to love being on the water, she says, but so many Yankees have come into town with their big boats and RVs, the fish don‘t bite often enough to suit her anymore. Jenny lets the boys go, staying home with a bit of a headache and with the grandbabies, and with you and me. She says doesn’t need anything more.

…

almost always makes me high.

…

John Denver garbles through her cell phone’s external speaker. She and her daughter laugh loudly, like how you and I laughed last spring in the Subaru with the windows down on that first warm night of the year. The year I found you.

The year you came and sat with me in my mud puddle, then gently asked me if I’d like to try getting up and coming in the house. Once inside, I refused to wipe off my feet and arms, but you made me a sandwich and told me about when you were a child and your mother made you feel so cold that you punched a fence post and broke your hand. I almost didn’t believe you. You are so gentle now.

You told me I could be gentle, too, but I was sure I never could be. You were gentle like a good father, even as a young man. I was a disturbed young woman and a monster and Jenny and her daughter had both given up on me. I told you I was no mother, that I couldn’t carry the 3 babies you always dreamed of, and that you should give up, too.You said I was in no shape be a mother, because who could bring up children in that kind of environment? But you would dig through the mud with me for as long as it took. You told me you believed I could dig, too, and what’s more: you believed I would. You knew that’s what I really wanted. More than to sit and wallow, I wanted to dig and get out.

Jenny and her daughter may have made me, but didn’t know me as well as you did. They didn’t trust me, either. It’s not their fault. They each had to dig through their own mud and learn to laugh in their own sweet time. I hope I have time enough to become their daughter and their granddaughter again, now that I have grown into a woman. The first step is listening to music with them on the screen porch whose door used to slam.

I pray to God I have time. Jenny slaps her knees and my mother spills her iced tea. ”Sunshine almost all the time makes me high,” Denver’s clear tenor croons from the grave.

I am still one of five siblings, and still a child at that. I feel distant from these two women who have grown to rise above the din. I am still very much in it. I still care what others think about me.

And though Jenny and her daughter both love you, getting up to add another helping to your plate, refill your glass, and pat your back, they think me naïve. To be so in love with man seems foolish to them. They have both seen enough bad men to believe that a man’s heart is an amusing and silly thing at best.

The song is over and they head to the kitchen to clean up the supper dishes, cackling happily all the way. I don’t often laugh around them, and I don’t laugh now. But you know and I know that on good days, I have the same huge, boisterous laugh as those two great women. That much doesn’t skip a generation.

…