Sign on the Line

It is official. A contract; a deposit check. We are tenants through Memorial Day, 2005. Sally's pushing us to stay in the freeze through December 1st. There is ice on the elbow joint of the outside shower and there are frozen icicles hanging from the showerhead. It is cold, for sure. Two flocks of Canadian geese wing swiftly south, headed more towards Sakonnet Point then along the eastern shore. I wonder if their navigation system is so subtle that they do not need to curve and follow the land; they just fly the straight and shortest route to, say, Maryland, sleeping on the water if they need to pause at night. Do they, or are they like sailors, running their ships around the clock. Only with a goose, there cannot be a watch system. It would either be fly, or float, or, that failing, sink. Another gaggle honks its way by, between the river and my windows. It is about right, signing a lease, the pipes freezing, the birds heading for more hospitable territory.

My mother stayed here until about this time ten years ago. She had cancer; she knew she was near the end. She knew that she probably would never see another spring. I know she cried when she drove up the lane on a similar November day, raw and rainy. She was no coward. She did not complain. She wanted more, however circumcribed her life had become. She wanted her snowdrops and muscarii to push through the thawing earth, the buds on the trees to swell, the air grow warmer, sweeter, and to see the geese heading up, not down the river of no return. No one ever told me how it was that fall day, but I know it was just this way. How could she have known, or we, that within one month she would be gone?