Dusk flirts with the balcony of my grandparents porch which overhangs a Garden of Eden. The trees dance in the wind; the blackberries not fully ripe; the tall grass an arrow to the bay. Childhood.
My eyes cascade the scenery. I stop at one desolate spot in the tall aspens. This spot once encompassed my most precious journal entries as a little girl. It composed of a worn rope, a sturdy plank, and an old, broken tree.
Memories flood. I smell the air and hear the sounds of days long forgotten. I'm on that swing again. Sitting there in solitude, pumping my legs forward and backward. My light brown hair sweeps over my sun-kissed, freckled face. "Those are angel's kisses." He once said.
His hands calloused, grasp the thickness of the rope with unsuspecting strength. I am lifted over my grandfather's head as he prepares to launch my six-year-old body over the leering blackberry thorns. In his release, I grin.
In the height of the swing I experience liberation. Nothing matters. My feet graze the leaves as the pendulum reverses. The sky is uncommonly blue and the clouds, cumulous and white. I giggle and look back at his leathery face.
The memory fades. The swing is now gone along with the freedom of letting go.
My grandfather is selling this home. Along with all of my secret spots and fairy houses. He turned eighty this week. His hands are now soft and wrinkly. No longer calloused from years of pushing a swing for a little girl that wanted nothing else.
But the heavy fist of reality brings me back when I realize memories are only for reminiscing. A smile plays on my eyes.
Tonight I received a kiss. A kiss with a fist, which is better than none.
