Remember me When

Monday, May 14, 2007

Six years since Edred had passed.

The honeysuckle was blooming almost violently on the back fence that morning.

The day passed quickly in retrospect. More teaching Rose during the day, who felt that it was necessary to bring out her toad to keep herself company in a ceramics pot with open ribbing for ventilation.

Meanwhile, it ended up being Carrie’s last day at NAWS. She seemed to have had the reputation ever since her arrival that she was on the road to aspiring adventure and greatness. Even as she gathered her things that day, apparently someone had called to her:

“Carrie, remember me when you land on Mars!”

And thus passed Carrie from the annals of NAWS.

In other news, stamps had risen to 41 cents that day.

That evening, Carrie took her first walk around the neighborhood. One house down around the corner grew between a set of tall sound tree trunks. And surrounding it looked somewhat like a garden of a witch in a long-forgotten fairy tale. Patches of flowers and bushes, ivies, lampposts, forest creatures, and wind chimes. A secluded pocket of the neighborhood, more shadowed than the rest.

The rest of the walk brought her past more old trees and barking dogs. It was a little disconcerting to pass one fence with the common label “beware of dog” posted next to the open gate.

Then there was the bright yellow house with the white shutters that could have almost been German. And the other house on another corner with boxwood growing around the perimeter of the yard.

Two young boys, one on his bike, headed out of the wooded dead end as she neared it. They hurried off down the street, the one boy not mounted on a bike, trailing a little behind the other with a large bag of pink paint balls in his hand. Every once in awhile he would drop one on the pavement.

Dad and Mom took their own walk that evening as well, although they pulled a four-miler in addition to the six Dad had run that morning. Collette’s brief saunter around the neighborhood suddenly seemed a little more insignificant.

Collette seemed to be haunted by her dreams those days. Each dream was encompassed by the same unseen aura. There was less than a mere whisper of the heavenly about them. But, as with most dreams, they were indescribable and better left to the realm of dreams and dreams only.