Resistance to change bubbles up for me. It starts low, but arrives at the base of my throat. It turns into a little nagging anxiety that arrives right at the base of my throat, like something is about to go inexplicably and horribly wrong. Mostly, I’m reminded of this anxiety in the springtime. The feel of first sun on my skin, or the sight of bright flower buds, promising a fresh start. It often catches me off guard, I’m not expecting it and it seems like it arrived for no reason at all.
I associate the changing weather with our substitute teacher, Miss Winters. The petite and friendly woman telling me to inform her when the big hand was on the eleven, and the little hand was on the twelve. Someone would be coming to take me home early, she whispered to me. A secret just for me. I was excited for the surprise, but I was angry with Miss Winters for putting all that pressure on me. I checked the clock every two seconds. I was terrified of speaking up. Finally, I didn’t have to say a word. Miss Winters received a call! That special someone had arrived a little early.
When I got to the school office, it wasn’t someone special. It was that mean old lady, Cindy, who lived across the dusty dirt road from our house. She drove my sister and I all the way home. She was an awful woman, and I could feel her eyes on us in the rear-view mirror. I could barely see her face, hidden behind her fake orange-permed and short hair, like a grandma should wear, only she wasn’t a grandma. Her hair made it hard for me to see out the front windshield. She was peeking at us in the rearview mirror. She knew what she was doing, driving us home to a big change. A momentous change, a life shattering, earth rupturing change. She delivered us at the door, and then dispersed.
My mom, alone, on the old brown tweed couch. Her red eyes betraying that she’d been crying. She wrapped her arms around us and began sobbing. She delivered the worst news she would ever have to deliver. She had to do it, she was forced.
My mother, her body suddenly shuddering with gasping sobs. My six-year-old brain knew what had happened.
“A divorce?” I squeaked it out, I couldn’t bear it.
“No, sweetie. No.” Another rattling, gasping sob.
Relief washed over my small body. (Nothing was worse than divorce.) The memories get fuzzy, my child’s mind processed information different than my adult mind can now interpret.
I don’t know when I realized when I’d never see my dad again, that he’d chosen to leave us. I know that it was late February in the low Sierra Nevada mountains, the new season beginning to warm the afternoons. I was wearing a spring dress with a cheerful songbird print. I felt the new sun on my skin, observed the brand-new wildflowers full of life and promise in the cemetery, as my dad’s freshly prepared body was slowly lowered into the Earth.