Gray-Sky Faith

Somewhere over the rainbow
Bluebirds fly.
Birds fly over the rainbow;
Why then, oh why can’t I?

I am six years old. My mother, a beautiful woman of thirty-five who looks ten years younger, sings me to sleep from the foot of the stairs. After I’d climbed into bed a little earlier, she’d asked if I’d wanted a glass of water.

I always did. It was 1962 and New Hampshire tap water tasted just fine. And every time my mom handed water to me in the green plastic cup that I listened to her fill in the adjacent bathroom, I found that I was thirstier than I’d expected and that the water tasted better than I’d remembered.

Sleep, sleep my little fur child
Out of the wilderness out of the wild…

That was another of her bedtime songs. The lyrics were from a children’s book, but she’d made up the melody herself, which had everything you could want in a lullaby. It rose and fell, then held low and warm. A song tinged with sorrow yet undefeated by it.

Today she is going on eighty-three, me on fifty-four. Neither of us can drive. I literally can’t leave my house. We seldom see each other. She has Alzheimer’s. I’m mostly bedridden and flat on my back.

I call her every day I can. She reminisces a lot, with increasing need of my help. Or we might joke about the Bonko Birds again. She usually remembers that there are no “Bonko Birds” – that I’d found online that the name of the bird whose word got reshaped by her memory is actually “Junco Bird.” Known by whatever name, she still enjoys feeding them and watching them use the birdbath on her balcony.

I’m learning to slow down and simply enjoy the sound of my mother’s voice again. She’s taught me that there's joy in being able to tell a story even when you have no new stories to tell and know it. My mom knows she’s losing memory and that she gets confused sometimes. She finds this process so disconcerting that she rarely refers to it. It’s good to know she feels safe enough to repeat her stories to me even though she knows I’ve heard them all.

Today though, she sounds serious from the time she picks up the phone. She tells me she is looking out the window at a tall tree. Very tall. She says it looks like it’s touching the sky, which is all cloudy. And that it reminds her of her mother.

My mom then alludes to the last time that her mother had asked her to play “Trees” on the piano, which, during my grandmother’s last year of life, she’d often ask my mother to do. That very last time, my mom had looked back at her, saw the empty expression on her face, and had a strong feeling that she’d never receive the request again. She was right.

Over the phone, my mom’s line of sight apparently continues to follow the tall pine up to the unbroken line of clouds. Her voice fades a bit as she forgets to hold the mouthpiece up and repeats that the tree is very tall and reminds her of her mother.

My mom reminds me of a tall tree too.