|
By Leela Date: 2005 Oct 25 Comment on this Work [[2005.10.25.08.57.4047]] |
|
She won't ever forget the day that she lost her cast iron frying pan to the sea. That day such a long time ago in Mexico. She and her youngest, blondest child had run laughing down to the beach, their hair and linen dresses billowing behind them, trying to catch up to their browned-by-the-baja-sun legs. She held the frying pan close to her chest like a heart shield, carrying it with her to wash in the salty sea. At the place where the water met the sand she knelt to the water and began to wash the pan with an old piece of steel wool. As she rinsed the dirty water from the pan the blond child called to her with a note of panic in her voice. She dropped the pan to the sand, turned, and began to run toward the child. She stopped short. The child was close by and had cornered a large crab against a piece of weathered driftwood. The finger the crab had pinched was stuck tightly in her mouth, stifling the wails that usually came loudly from her healthy lungs. She turned around only to retrieve the pan before she went to comfort the child, rock her in her arms, and kiss her finger where it hurt. But the pan was gone. She ran into the waves, holding up her linen dress, scanning blue-green for a trace of black. She went deeper, now wetting her dress up to the waist. Not a trace of her precious pan. The cries were coming loudly now, and with hestitancy she returned to the beach and her wailing child, know that the frying pan had disappeared forever. Now twenty hears have passed and she knows why her mind, her soul, and her whole life are marked by that day. It is the day she looked inside herself and found that she no longer loved him. And it made her sick, but she could no longer find love in her heart for her beautiful, devoted man, the father of her children. Years later she knows that somehow her love was held by the cast iron pan and that when the pan disappeared into the sea forever, so did her love. |