Wildfire

My mother always complains that I was the most restless of her children. I had the ability to turn the daily five minute walk from our apartment to my grandma’s house into a forty minute struggle, complaining that I didn’t want to go and being more interested in climbing every fence along the way. Even though I cried while sitting on the marble window sill, seeing the back of my mother’s head as she rushed to catch the train to work I was always up and ready not long after for another adventure.

The peace and serenity of my solace was the only thing that allowed me to put my energy to good use. These  memories of lying on a blanket amongst the cherry trees pretending to be on a first date with a boy, cutting up earthworms on the buckets scattered around, or being responsible for the death of a baby frog eaten by chickens are my closest friends.  Being able to pick strawberries and gooseberries (which are apparently illegal in the US) when ever I wanted and playing in the broken down sandbox with my chickens were the highpoints of my every day.

The charm of the leafy lettuce, tulip buds, and potato stalks  blazing  like wildfire, the whole world turning to bright orange casting long shadows, was the only time that the hyper child inside me took a moment to just look. Stopping myself near the fence where I injured too many butterflies to look through the collection of walnut branches at the one place that I haven’t seen in ten years.