The Bell Jar is filled with flowers now –
yellow zinnias, purple pansies, pink vincas pressed smooth between worn
pages. Some leaves too, a red
maple, a pin oak already browning at the edges. My daughter brings
another fistful to the shadowy
kitchen where I mix batter for her zucchini muffins. Press these
in the book, Mama. She leads
me to the bookcase and points, folds her hands in her lap,
watches me flip the pages
underlined in blue ink and dotted with notes from a long-ago girl.
What’s this book about? she always asks,
and I read her my favorite part with the fig tree, the fruit
falling to the ground, withering,
disappearing as Esther contemplates one dream or another, one
perfectly good life for an appealing
alternate. My daughter leaves me alone with my book, off
to find more flowers to save. I watch
her through the window, squatting in the garden, and I want to tell
her why choosing is so hard, how we
spend our lives fading in and out, how we feel happy and unhappy,
satisfied and unsatisfied, full and empty,
how faith gets some people through but how it complicates things.
It’s the knowing and the not knowing
that keeps some of us awake—not that we’ve made a wrong choice
but that we had to choose. Alone, I put the book
back on the shelf and return to the kitchen, slide the bread into the oven.
Photo by frank mckenna on Unsplash