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Show Moon - 25 this, and invited me help with the weeding. In the wondrous black dirt, our hands would sometimes accidentally touch, and I felt shocks of pleasure. Tangles of spidery roots and wilting leaves piled up where we knelt together making a silent offering of love. While my mother was still gone, Uncle Michael and Aunt Gloria came to visit Alice and me and stayed for maybe a week. Michael held me on his lap and stroked my hair as if I were a special person. He limped from a wound he got in Army training before the Americans had even entered the war. Aunt Gloria talked more than anyone I have ever known, and she had a wonderful way of hugging. Their son, my cousin Tommy, was two years older than me. Tommy taught me how to climb the big tree in Aunt Alice's yard, patiently showing me how to test the branches first and to keep the twigs away from my eyes. He never got angry when I was slow, but I wasn't slow for long. On maybe my second climb, I cracked the code: You have to let your eyes go soft so that you're watching what's just ahead but can see everything on the edges, too. This kind of seeing lets the entire world in. You concentrate, but your mind is as open as the hand of a baby. I got to see for the first time into the heart of the wood and around the darkness of the branches to the light at the edges. The ancient memory of climbing took me by my hands and feet, knew the secret path, the anatomy of a tree, like it was a part of who I was, lifted me up and up, until I thought I was something lighter than the air. The thin branches at the top swayed dangerously. The new leaves tumbled and swished like water. |