Snapshots,

I.

She recalls how Billy Pilgrim looked back on his memories of the war with mixed feelings. One of his fondest memories was taking a nap in the ruins of Dresden. This, she believes, is the perfect morning. The sun has given everything a photographic look. It trickles down through the trees and reminds her of a nap. Both a nap and this sunlight incite the same feelings.

She knew it could only last a short while longer, but she cannot bring herself to care like she has in the past. She knows there will always be more sun drenched mornings with Mary-Ellen.

II.

"How much of my life," she wonders, "Has been hidden behind the off key music of an ice cream truck?"

It is the kind of melody which can float unnoticed in the back of your head for quite some time.

She leans back on two legs of her chair like her father is always scolding her for and knows it has been sent by God. She knows this because it is interrupting her and making it difficult for her to repeat her new mantra of, "I AM SO ANGRY." She sighs knowing that the sun will set on her anger.

III.

She stomps along the sidewalk watching dust clouds drift at the surface.

She thinks, "I don't know if I could feel this alone on a desert island."

She walks a few more paces and then thinks, "This does not hurt as much as it did before."

She blinks but this time the tears would not disappear. It may not hurt as much, but these tears will still not disappear. Even amidst the loneliness and the dull ache she can cling to this fact, though it may not hold her for long- It does not hurt as much as it did before.

IV.

She questions Ross about the sticks of chalk she found in the pool. He shakes his head and answers, "NO, LILA, GRANDMA GO HOME!"

What a calming release it would be to not understand the questions of life and thus not be required to submit answers.

He ruins all the charm he had by picking his nose when he thinks she isn't looking.

V.

Nobody, no nobody, who ever lived their life on the shores of an ocean can say that this world is damned. She feels the wave crash over her face and becomes at once herself and part of the world. For that one instant, while her previous breath goes stale in her lungs, she experiences infinity.


VI.


A boy with curly red hair and trendy sunglasses came and sat with her as she waited for her bus. He ignored her headphones, but her conscience would not allow her to ignore him. Twenty minutes later her bus pulled up to the curb, and as she shifted on the ground he offered her a hand and pulled her to her feet. Then he turned and walked across the grass. This red haired boy hadn't been waiting for the s56 after all. He just sat in the grass for twenty minutes with her.

She thought, I wish I could bottle that moment. It is equal parts magic and sunshine and God. It made her yearn to hold someone's hand. It made her want to run 100 miles, write old friends letters, and paint her bedroom yellow.

God, she knows, shows up in the funniest places.


VII.

The August crickets provide parentheses around her scattered thoughts. She has always called them August crickets ever though they usually appear in July. There are times when she can rest her elbows on the cooling cement of her stoop and pretend the voice of God is in the crickets.

It was listening to the August crickets that she first decided God was in the summer. As they chirped in a chorus around her ears her lonely childhood heart heard the words, "Take off your shoes for the place you are standing is holy ground."

One verse dimmed and another swelled to take its place. "Take of your shoes," the crickets whispered, "Take off your shoes."