The wind

Awake at 5 a.m., I curl up on the couch and listen to the wind hurling acorns against the house like bullets. 

There is a magical sound among the bangs and booms. It’s the heavy silver wind chime that my cousins gave us in memory of Mom.

I asked my sisters if I could have this chime so that I could hang it on the deck of our wooded mountain home. Mom loved forests and mountains, and she’d have loved our house, but she never saw it. We closed on the house nine days before she died.

When I hear the chimes singing, I say, “Hi, Mom!” and I picture her dancing across the treetops, free at last.

We haven’t yet scattered her ashes, my sisters and I. Some day we will.

I salvaged her chimes from the broken deck at Azalea, and they are hanging now with a new view of trees on the deck at our rental home.

The wind that makes the chimes sing is the same wind that will carry my mother’s ashes away.

My efforts at marketing my glass today did not succeed. The sign was too small, the display too static, the wind too strong to put the glass pieces out where they’d catch the light and attract the eyes of shoppers.

I choose not to see a dearth of sales as an indictment of my work. I make pieces with fused glass in order to add beauty to the world, and they will find their homes.

The wind that moves my mind to accept life as it comes is the same wind that knocked over a glass piece and broke it.

I have so many fears about our planet, and the weather stands up like bas relief on white tombstone – sunny days that are too hot and too dry for October.

The wind that gives us relief from the heat is the same wind that carries toxic fumes into the atmosphere.

The wind that made me crawl into my flannel PJs and hide from the world is the same wind that made me laugh and dance to a jazz band on a hillside.

The wind that heaves acorns against the house is the same wind that escorts spring rain to sprout those seeds.

The wind that pushes me to keep going is the same wind that makes me collapse in a heap of anxiety. 

Nothing in life is certain. The wind can blow it all over like a piece of glass. And sweep up the pieces into a new mosaic.

Today’s penny is a 2007, the year my mother died and Azalea came to life.