Ginger Snapped

Two and a half hours. Choice: grocery shop or flaneur. Feed the body or feed the soul. She choses to feed the soul. She drives a half hour to the closest city--a city which she is certain real city-dwellers would laugh at. Nevertheless, it is city enough for her. She parks the car, locks the doors, and walks down a brick sidewalk. She is joined at the crosswalk by a man in khaki shorts and two greyhounds. At least, she thinks they are greyhounds. They've got funky stripes, and they walk with a spring in their steps, like they're used to running. If she lived in a city, she thinks, in a loft with big windows and an open floor plan, where friends would gather for impromptu dinner parties featuring things like pancetta and fried squash blossoms, she would have a dog like that. But she doesn't, so she won't. She keeps walking, over the bridge with the river's water churning below, past the cafe, past the bank, the toy store, the lawyers' offices. She arrives at an...

Last summer, the Gingerbread Man put nine goldfish in the pond. It was a very small pond, fed by a very small spring, bordered by sticks and stones, mostly. Moss, ferns, iris, and marsh marigolds grew on its edges. Week by week went by, and each time she looked, it seemed as if there were fewer and fewer goldfish. By summer's end, only one goldfish survived. More clever than the others, this goldfish would hide under the leaves that fell on the surface of the water. They named him Angst and took him in to winter over in a glass bowl set on a bookcase by an east window. He sickened in the bowl almost immediately, turning black on stem and stern. They fretted over him, researched goldfish diseases, took action. Angst eventually got better, returning to his normal orange shimmer. They were relieved, happy in his goldfish antics, his goldfish shine. He grew bigger and bigger over the winter, fed on a daily diet of fish pellets. When the sunshine became a bit more regular, they returned...

Remember the swing Remember the crab-apple tree Remember the lilacs and the pussy-willows, The pheasants and the squirrels Remember the joy of pumping legs, Swinging so high your stomach dropped down-- The exhilaration of flying. Remember the rough brown bark Ants climbing tree Side by side to knee and elbow Remember hanging upside down on branch Hair swinging free Blood rushing to face, The tipping point.

On a windy spring day, she drives down a winding road. Dry oak leaves blow in front of the car as if someone forgot to tell the leaves that it was spring, not autumn. She thinks about death during her drive; she kills off not one or two characters in her novel, but a whole slew of them. She's worried that she hasn't written the emotion to carry the deaths. But her lack in narrative emotion, she realizes, comes as a result of strong faith. She knows there's a heaven. When people die, they don't just die. When people die, there's sadness and missing, but not devastation. They don't disappear for good. When she reaches home, she's met with news of a death. A woman nearly fifty years her senior, a woman she visited regularly. A woman she brought homemade peach jam to, who welcomed the gingerbread boy with blocks, who showed her newspaper clippings. In fact, she visited this woman in the hospital not four days prior. The woman's family was there, all gathere...

Supper's late. The sun peeked out from behind the clouds, so instead of making supper, they go down to the river. She sits on the naked roots of a tree that weaves in and out of the bank, overhanging the water. How odd to look down and see water rushing underneath. Next to her is a sapling sheared down by beaver teeth and left to rot. The sky is blue, and the air is fresh. When the gingerbread boys return from explorations over the stream that feeds the river, they all clamber over an old and massive stone wall, thick with moss and lichen. Where the forest floor was the tan of bleached leaves only a week ago, now wild lily of the valley carpets it. Ferns curl upward, lifting their fronds to the sky, stretching after a long winter's nap. Parchment berries spot the ground, specks of red amidst the green. Soon, she thinks, the lady's slippers will rise, ready to dance. But now, supper. At home, she measures the spices and stirs. She boils water for the rice, She roasts the veg...

She remembers long Saturday afternoons spent in Lockwood Library: Mom at the copier with piles of coins, sister claiming the best of the blocky chairs available. The options were limited. Ride the elevator up and down, up and down. Run out to the vending machines, having first snatched a quarter from her mother's towering pile. Quarter in, press F8, curly-cue swivels around, out pops frosted nut brownie. Or there were the stacks. Mostly, she spent time in the stacks. The one row of children's books, mostly books that sported shiny gold Newbery stickers. Somehow she got her hands on a bookmark that listed all the Newbery award winners, and she decided she would read them. Some of her favorite books were Newberies: A Wrinkle in Time, Tuck Everlasting, Bridge to Terabithia, The Westing Game, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH. She thinks she read these books long before those Saturday afternoons, though. They were quickly joined by Summer of the Swans, My Side of the Mountain, The ...

What is it about spring that makes her long to wander through European streets, through cobblestone alleys with little cafes that are tucked in between book shops and walled cemeteries? Where skies above are so blue that they seem unreal? Where bridges can lead not just across a river, but to an adventure awaiting on the other side? There's no wandering through European streets in her future, so she must resign herself to blue skies over New England, to rough paths through the forest, to tiny cemeteries hidden amongst birch trees and maples, to adventure found by crossing a ford through the stream out back. Maybe she'll buy a baguette tomorrow.