Homing

Back from California, back from England, I with my mother became we. If snow cloaked the yard, we saw a cardinal settle on it briefly, brilliant red sharpening the white. If rain fell, we lingered, enchanted, in the rooms where it could best be heard. In summer, we breakfasted on salted melon, ate corn on the cob with dinner. In winter, orange cinnamon tea fragranced the air. For most lunches we travelled to find another enclave, ideally a booth, where we could relish General Tso’s chicken or toasted bagels with red onion cream cheese or BLTs on sourdough, we drank large glasses of iced tea, we talked about how this grandchild/nephew aced the state math test, how this daughter/sister liked her new job as a teaching assistant, and we talked like this for days. I was like that red cardinal on the white lawn, easy in brightness, except I was two: we.