I wave at her absently, return across the expanse, and sit back in the swing. And for the first time since the doctor’s words—anytime to three months—I feel quiet tears forming behind my eyes and my throat aches, because today is John’s birthday, and I have not seen him for four years. You have not seen your father since you were seven-almost-eight, and in a week it will be forty years since Mary left me. It is a tornado of memory, and I glance up, certain I will find the sky in a boiling state of Armageddon. But there is no approaching lightning, no funnel cloud. The gray actually appears to dissolve like melting cotton candy, and the blue seeps through.

A bell rings from the bowels of the school, and a few of the doors unlatch. The parking lot has filled with parents, and all the children spill into the heat, their feet sliding like sandpaper on the pavement. As my rough hands try to dry my face and stop up any more tears that might think about leaking out, your wispy voice calls out to me, and it’s like you’re in some faraway place, calling to me from a land I will never find.

The White-Haired Woman

Grampy! Why are you swinging? I want to swing!”

“Go on.” I stand, taking your backpack, but the first thing you do is hug me, and I hold you there in the heat. You move quickly to the swing, and I watch you. As you glide, your long, dark hair moves in a rhythm, trailing out behind you like a comet, then clutching tight against your back, then flying again. Your eyes remind me of your father’s—dark as coal, glittering.

The sun brightens, and I notice people around me shading their eyes, still watching for their children to come out. A man who left his house wearing a flannel in the autumn heat takes it off and ties the arms around his waist. A woman steps smoothly out of her shoes and stands on the warm pavement in her bare feet, arms crossed.

“You know,” you say in your innocent voice, “we had a helper in our class today.”

“Like a teacher’s aide?”

You nod and giggle. “The swing gets my stomach.”

I smile. “You’re good at swinging. Much better than I was. I always needed a push.”

Emphasizing your independence, you strain against the chains, stretch your legs, flying higher. “She had very white hair, or silver, like moonlight.” You seem disconcerted by the color. “She helped me draw a map.”

“Is that right? A map? Of what?”

“Of the place where you grew up. There was a long bridge that goes over a river, and a lake on the other side, and a cabin on the shore.”

Chills flash through my body, along with a hint of nausea I think might be the result of this sickness.

I have never told you about where I grew up.

I have never told you about the town or the cabin or what happened at the lake. If all was well, I wouldn’t tell you about it for another five or six years, when you’re older. But all is not well, at least not with me. Anytime to three months. Time is running short. I am left wondering what things to tell you and what things I will take with me, what things you will never know.