The bedroom. Four o’clock sunlight reaches through the blinds and slants like cursive across the wall. I could see it if I open my eyes.

I lie there, two fists full of blanket tucked under my chin, holding on to these cotton fibers like they’re the only true thing I know. As though what I need is balled up inside, and if I let go I’ll lose it all for good.

As if I haven’t already.

It doesn’t matter what that thing is, not really, or how recent or far off the afternoon. Every one of us has lain there on that bed, alone. Sure that we should have seen it coming. Or worse, we actually did.

At that thought, I hold tighter to the blanket, as though I’m five and scared of the dark, back before I knew that the people in those other  rooms must have held tight to their own covers. Enough disappointment, enough lost things, for everyone.

And the one thing we all know (even if the thought is just a small stone that rolls about in the bottom of the soul) is that  it’s impossible to see the light at the end of a tunnel if that tunnel is curved. If there’s no straight shot from the entrance to the way out.

So you think, just goes to show you. It was always going to end up this way. Should have known better. How do I go toward something I can’t even see?

But, where’s the choice? So you hold your breath and listen. Open your eyes wide and strain to see in the dark. Feel your way onward by inches, only sure of the last step you took. Pinning every hope on the next step.

And so, forward.

But first, there’s that space under the blanket, and thank god for that. Except sooner or later (sometimes much later) you  realize that you’re no safer there than anywhere else. Turns out, a blanket doesn’t make a very good shield. And when the moment comes -  a meal to prepare, or kids to pick up from school – there’s nothing to do but to fold up that blanket  and put it back on the shelf.

To open your hands and let go of whatever you held on to so tightly. To trust the wind that carries away those wishes, and know that you might not get all the things you hope for, or enough of them, but there is something up ahead, waiting. And that you might just find it framed in the arc of the tunnel exit and bathed in sunlight. All the the good things that drew you forward all along, the other souls, the peace,  the version of you that you can finally let yourself see, the way others have all this time.

And you’ll think just goes to show you…

Even if you can’t finish the sentence, and you’re not sure how soon you’ll be able to. You know the answer is out there. You realize, in the light, that you can believe that much. Or you will, any day now.

You’ll let yourself believe that one day the answer will come to rest like a leaf inside you, next to the stone. And that each of them (at last) will weigh the same as the other.

Our garden was enormous. Not the kind of childhood-enormous that turns out to look small when you grow up. It was a monster of a garden.

And my sister and I spent most of  each summer working in it.

The garden existed as a significant food source for our family and for my step-grandparents, who lived next door. Rows of concord grapes served as bookends, and in between, there were raspberries, strawberries, tomatoes (several varieties), peppers, corn, okra, potatoes, several kinds of squash, green beans, rhubarb, and asparagus. (I feel like I’m leaving something out.)

When something would ripen,  my sister and I would help harvest and get it ready for canning or freezing.

But before that, there was the weeding. The endless weeding.

I’ve heard people say that they settle into a calm state when they weed, that the methodical pulling out of the weeds, moving to a new area, pulling more weeds, is relaxing.

And I will tell you right now that I have never, ever experienced that (I wish). I remember the heat, the bugs, the sweat, the sunburn, the bugs.  The prickly okra plants. The smelly tomato plants. The bugs.

Though, it’s only fair to say, it didn’t kill me either. And now, all these years later, I actually yearn for a small (very small) garden.

We learned very well which plants were weeds, and we also knew that if we only pulled off the tops of the weeds, what was above ground, we would hear about it later. Sue would tell us time and time again that unless we pulled the weeds out by the roots, they would just grow back faster.

Today is an anniversary that I marked last year with this post. This year, it’s 30 years since we went to court so that Sue could adopt my sister and me. It’s not a day I try to remember, at all (and my sister tells me she doesn’t even think of it), but every year it still seems to cross my mind like a phantom train. Empty, invisible, loud.

One thing I realized today, though, is that this year does feel different than any year before. Changed, even, from just last year. I know that what I’ve written here about my family is the difference, as I’ve dug with bare hands through this soil of the past.

As though these things that happened to us are the weeds, and I have to spend my life trying to keep them from taking over.

And wouldn’t you know? Sue was right about one thing. It is important to pull them out by their roots. But in this case, to expose the dark underside of things that look completely different above ground.

I can’t stop these stories from reaching up through the soil, toward light, and I don’t want to. Do I wish they weren’t there? Sure. Weeding never was an easy job, in life or in metaphor.

My hands are still in the soil, and will stay there for as long as it takes. It’s past high noon, though, I know that much. The sun slides with every day, with every word, toward the place where sky seems to meet soil. And maybe one of these days – any day now – I will come to understand, without the need for a reminder, that the sky and the land are part of each other. The soil is part air, the air carries particles of dust to other fields. The moon reflects in the smallest pond.

And there’s nothing to keep me, not anymore, from flying away from this work whenever I need to, high enough that the weeds become indiscernible from a field of sweet, warm strawberries.

Today’s post is in response to a prompt over at Weekly Anamnesis, which offers a one-word writing prompt each week. The blog’s authors are working to get it going again, and I’d like to see it get some more participation, so I thought I would contribute. If you’d like to participate, here’s how. This week’s prompt:

Shadow

I am invisible here, which is a good thing to be if you live in this house. I am in my closet, crouched beneath the clothes hanging above me. A dim bar of light reaches for me from under the door, but does not find me. Dresses tickle my face, and a hanger of belts swings back and forth in front of me. The closet smells like shoes. I lean against the toy box, its wood cool against my back.

From the other room, past my closet door, through my open bedroom door, and the one into my sister’s room, the sounds come to me. The sounds of Her striking my sister. The sounds of my sister’s cries. An equal number.

It is my job to count. It is something we do for each other, my sister and I. We are each other’s witness. It is important to know the number, to know how bad it is. More than the last time? Or less? One way of knowing where we stand.

I have no memory of when we decided to keep count for each other. It just was, and would be. For as long as we needed.

Thirty-two. Thirty-three. More.

I’ve lost count.

The shadows hide me. It is dark.