I turned

I turned, my coffee in hand, and I saw the bougainvillea through the dining area windows. All summer they’ve been on the upper deck, the one where we had our coffee after swimming, where we sat in sunlight, talking about the day, books we were reading, our children, theirs. Last week I realized the season had turned and the sun was no longer there after the swim but later, watering, I soaked in the beauty of the bougainvilleas. There are 5. I brought 2 down to sit on tables where I can see them at every turn. Seeing them this morning, I think I might bring down the other 3. Windows filled with magenta, cerise!

On English Bay the other afternoon, I turned to see 2 of my grandsons talking to a young woman in the briefest of bikinis. She was helping them make a canal from their sand construction, using her heels to dig. In 10 years, in 15, their conversations will have changed. They will be 19, then 24, and 17, then 22. Will I still be sitting on the sand, drinking a glass of See Ya Later Ranch Brut (an early birthday gift to my daughter from her brother and his family), happy to be with my family again after a period of sadness? I turn from that thought.

The lines of a poem I have loved for decades come back to me:

Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!
How shall the heart be reconciled
to its feast of losses?

The feast we ate that evening, the sweetness of the company, the sweetness of all the visits in July and August, one family, then another, overlapping for a few days, the sound of children’s voices, drinking coffee in the bougainvillea’s light: my heart, reconciled, though still a little bruised.

Yet I turn, I turn,
exulting somewhat,
with my will intact to go
wherever I need to go,
and every stone on the road
precious to me.

In July, my granddaughter in her pink layered birthday dress, her brother on the rocks below the Backeddy Pub, searching for shells, their cousins and aunt and uncle arriving in time for dinner their first night, the table laid with the summer plates, the old silver, wedding napkins our parents never used, John opening the best red wine, pancakes on the old iron griddle, turn, turn, English Bay and the boys talking to a beautiful girl, gulls waking me just at dawn, wheeling in the early light. Turn, turn, the wishing stones on Trail Bay, ice cream dripping over wrists, the long drive home.

no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written.
I am not done with my changes.

Note: as one reader has astutely observed, the lines are from Stanley Kunitz’s beautiful poem, “The Layers”