It was the early morning hours of mothers day when the lattice blew in. It had been tacked to the deck for more than seven years, and the vines had spent that time resolutely climbing and entwining it. The glass bulbs from the old christmas lights were fogged by weather and dead from seasons of time but had become so laced in the thicket of viney wood that they were part of it all.
On the sunny saturday before we had decided to trim back the tallest of the plants–the ones that crept into the old grill and the deck chairs and snuck into the vinyl siding up to the rafters. It was meant to be cosmetic, just a shaping and a pruning.
It was that wildness, though, that extra thick blanket of green, that stored the determination for the whole thing. And when the wildness was gone it all collapsed on itself like the death of seven years’ time, unable to withstand the ill wind of a cold dawn.
The day when some men give diamonds and cards and restaurant dinners he spent clearing away the deadloss, chopping bits of wood and plastic and disentangling the vines while the wind beat against the house. It was as good a way as any to spend the first mothers day after the death of one of their children. As good a way as any to pretend that the way things were different didn’t matter and that what was torn down by wind and weakness would grow back if you had enough nails and patience.
