Soggy Fruit

I felt it hit me before I realized what it was. I stopped in my tracks, cutting through Phoenix Park to the library, and looked down at the small black Bible laying at my feet.

“Do you believe?” a man asked me and as I reached down to pick up the book he stopped me. “Don’t bother, I don’t want it back. There’s nothing in that book for me.”

I wasn’t sure what to say. I started to keep walking but something stopped me, a pull of some sort compelled me to ask him what he meant, ask him where he was coming from. I once read that bees, their stomachs full of nectar, have magnetic forces in their brains which lead them to the hive- I felt like that about this man.

“You don’t have faith?” I asked him and sat down on the green bench next to him, both of our backs resting against a tree whose shade cooled the 90 degree heat.

“I don’t believe in anything,” he said and rummaged through the trashbags at his feet. “Belief didn’t save me from this life, neither did reading that Bible.”

I think sometimes people confuse belief with religion. Believing in something- like friends, the healing power of ice cram or even yourself- is sometimes easier to grasp than religion or God or prayer. And sometimes, for some people, those types of beliefs tend to be more in our power

“I believe in the things in that book,” I told him, “but I don’t think we have to only believe in what’s in those pages. I think its okay to have faith in other things, like ourselves maybe. Or even in love.”

I pulled a pen out of my bag and we sat together and on the back of a McDonald’s napkin we wrote down things we believed in, things that helped us see the good things in life. This was my list:

I believe…

… in laughing… that mascara is the savior or womankind… that you smile with your eyes… that if you believe in love at first sight, you never stop looking… that just one moment can change everything… that dreams are without limits… in sunshine… that it’s okay to rewrite the rules… in taking the road less traveled… that life is a bittersweet symphony… that you should own at least one table you can dance on… in stopping to look around you… that the way you live your life is a choice you make every single day… that love that is not madness is not love… that time flies… in a generous heart…

… that for some moments in life, like this one today on the park bench, there are no words.

At 11 a.m. the bride took her first steps down an isle lined with green and purple tulips and looked into the eyes of her soon-to-be husband. She blushed in her long white gown and held tight to her father’s arm as everyone stood to face her. She was excited and nervous and beautiful. But we weren’t there to see any of that.

At 11 a.m. my face was buried in a road map and Alice leaned closer to the windshield trying to read the mile markers.

“I think we missed it,” she said. “We had to have missed it. How late are we?”

“Oh we missed it,” I said and glanced at my watch losing my place on the map. “We’re officially late. But I think I did find us on the map.”

“I don’t even want to know where we are on a map right now,” Alice sighed and leaned her head back against the seat as we drove over a bridge marked with a tiny green sign that read, ‘Stinking Creek.’

“Please tell me that didn’t say ‘Stinking Creek,’ ” Alice said and laughed. “Okay I can’t handle it, we’re turning around.”

Pineville is a map dot off 25 E and we overshot it by about 20 miles. Our shoulders were sunburned from driving three hours with the top down. Our dresses were wrinkled, our hair was windblown. We were lost… and late.

The pitchers of iced tea and lemonade were sweating on the white table clothed tables. The sun beat down on friends and family who fanned themselves with programs. The bridal party tried desperately to keep from wiping the sweat from their foreheads. The bride and groom didn’t seem to notice the heat.

Alice and I tiptoed down the driveway and took our seats in the backyard ceremony just as the “I do’s” were spoken. But, blinded by love, no one seemed to notice. We hugged the bride, filled our plates and sat down in the shade of the towering oak trees.

“Isn’t it amazing how weddings bring people together?” I heard the bride’s voice behind me. “There is love everywhere on days like this.”

As I hugged and congratulated her, I looked over her shoulder at the couple holding hands under the table, at the groom’s parents dancing to no music, at the friends catching up on their times apart, at the flower girl pushing down the ring bearer before taking off running through the trees. I pushed back from her and smiled.

“It’s a good time to be in love,” I said.

It’s strange how something can be invisible to you then when it’s pointed out, you find it everywhere.

Sometimes I close my eyes and pretend I am blind. I stand still immersing myself in the darkness and try to excite my other senses. I try to feel the air with my fingers, taste the room, listen for every creak in the floor, drop of water escaping from the sink, secada calling to its mate. My nose tries to file the scent of the room into my memory.

But I can only stand there so long; I can only stay lost in that darkness for a few moments before my eyes beg me to open them, beg me to let the light back in. And then when they are opened once more, they see colors brighter, they light up with the brightness and contrasts of the shadows in the room. I see things that I didn’t notice before.

But it’s all just a game to me. I can open my eyes anytime I want. Mr. Kelly is going blind. I suspected it for a long time when I watched him squint into the sunlight or saw his eyes glass over as he stared out the window. But now it’s nearly impossible for him to deny that the darkness is taking over.

For the first time in two months I sat cross-legged at the foot of Mr. Kelly’s bed, leaning against the foot board, book in hand. We were reading a collection of short stories by Barbara Kingsolver but my mind was somewhere else.

“I can’t imagine what it would be like to be blind,” I told him and struggled to hide the pity in my voice.

“I imagine it will be an adventure,” Mr. Kelly says and closes his eyes against his shoulder. “I imagine I will be given a chance to experience things different. Blindness for old people is a gift of some sort, don’t you think? If you know how to use it.”

I closed my eyes too, then, and tried to pretend I couldn’t see. I put down the book and crawled to Mr. Kelly’s end of the bed and felt his face with my hands. I traced my fingers along the lines of his age and tried to paint a picture of his face in my mind. But I just saw darkness.

“Are you afraid of the darkness?” I asked him and we both laughed at the gravity of my question. “I mean not being able to see, seeing only darkness even in the daylight.”

Mr. Kelly opened his eyes and looked at me, trying to make clarity out of the blurred images his eyes gave him.

“Time takes all, whether we want it to or not. Time takes all, time bears it away and in the end there is only darkness,” Mr. Kelly said. “I read that once somewhere, can’t remember for the life of me now where, guess memory is going too these days, but I’ve never forgotten those words.”

“Are you taking it all in now?” I asked. “Are you trying to see as many colors, as much beauty as you are able to before it is all gone?”

I thought about the experiences I’d had over the past couple of months; I thought about all of the beautiful places I’ve been and suddenly I was panicked that I hadn’t taken in enough beauty from the mountains or the sand dunes or the deserts and the windmills. What if I didn’t have the chance to see them again?

“I’m looking at things as I always have,” he said. “I have always appreciated beauty. Now I’m just looking forward to what I will find in the darkness.”

I didn’t have to say anything, he knew I didn’t understand but I smiled at his unfailing faith in life.

“Sometimes we find others in the darkness,” he said and took my hand, “and if that doesn’t work out, I’ll always have you to read to me.”

Maybe blind won’t be so bad, I thought. They say love is blind, people have blind faith. Maybe the blind have had it right all along.

“But the eyes are blind. One must look with the heart…” Antoine de Saint-Exupery

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The movie Love Actually says if you feel discouraged about the presence of love in the world, you should go to an airport. Love is all around, it claims. But I spent the past two days in airports and love, well it must have been hiding.

If you ask me, the people who work for airlines should have to undergo a screening of Love Actually. They aren’t only loveless, they’re merciless. And the guy at the security check point blowing air into my eyes to make sure… well I actually have no idea what he was testing for, maybe just to see if I wouldn’t slap him across the face… he didn’t feel the love either. In fact, I’m pretty sure not a single person standing in that line with bare feet, belts in hand and their Chapstick being confiscated felt any love at all.

And love didn’t show itself on the plane either. It started off well. I was bumped up to first class (not a luxury I’m accustomed to) because I’m pretty sure United thought I was going to throw a fit if they screwed up my flight one more time. I boarded early, took note to the spacious leg room and complimentary pillows (amazing what they consider accommodating these days) and leaned my head back and closed my eyes hoping this early morning would go by quickly. But I napped only a few minutes before Tissues sat down beside me.

I don’t call her Tissues because I want to be mean. I call her Tissues because she went through three boxes (I wonder if United charged for those) as she cried the entire 2 hours and 43 minutes from Salt Lake City to Chicago. But she had company.

At the end of my row sat a young mother with her 6 month old little girl who wanted nothing to do with sitting still and was not prepared for take off. Her mother had just calmed her down, subduing her from crawling all over the lap of Tissues who was giving a smile a good effort, when the plane sped down the runway and began to climb into the air. Not many adults are fond of this part of flying so you can imagine the surprise of a 6 month old when her ears began to “pop.”

Just after my ears leveled with the altitude, the baby started screaming. So there I sat. Sandwiched between a window that I was tempted to jump out of, Tissues who was crying over leaving her family to take a job on the east coast, and mother and child, neither who could sit still. Flying was beginning to suck the love out of me as well.

About an hour into the flight, I offered to take the baby and try to calm her down. Her mother looked thankful and relieved, and I sat bouncing the little girl on my lap and shaking my keys… only adding to the annoyance of other passengers. But just as quickly as she had started crying, she stopped. I looked up at her, startled by the sudden silence (well except for Tissues who was still sniffling) and followed the girl’s gaze out of the plane window.

She was mesmerized, absolutely taken by the view? by the plane’s wing? by the blue sky and fluffy clouds that floated under us like a dream? I couldn’t be sure but something had taken her. I sat there holding the baby, both of us staring out the window watching the sun rise over the west that we were leaving behind us.

In the seat in front of me, the man had the shade pulled over his window. If only he knew what he was missing. It was a view that could hypnotize a baby and a view that pulled at my chest as I already missed what I was leaving behind.