A Birthday Letter

Dear Hen,

Five years you've been gone, and still you come to me daily—your lavender scent, or the sound of your voice, or some little thing that you did so long ago. Today I thought about that recipe you had me copy down, beef bourguignon when I was about thirteen years old, too young to even fathom cooking a dinner like that. I told you I liked the smell, told you it was my favorite meal, and so while you cooked, I copied, noting how similar our writing looked: the rounded consonants, the looping vowels, our shared impatient cursive.

I thought about the garden path today, which the new owner neglects. I know because I went there two summers ago, just showed up on her doorstep weeping, and I continued to weep as she walked me through your old house, pointing out all the things they’d changed, steeling me for the upstairs, which they’d gutted: all of our bedrooms, the narrow toy closet with all the games, Poppa’s dark office with the gleaming desk, and my dad’s childhood room with the flowered paper on the walls and the lace curtains that billowed out over the driveway—all of it, gone. They’d left just one space, one tiny room unchanged: the hall closet, right next to your old bedroom. That room smelled just like you, preserved after all those years. I went into the little closet and shut the door and breathed in deeply and tried not to cry while outside, the new owner waited kindly.

I thought about the things you used to give me: oil pastels I’d smear over nubby paper, taking pleasure in every line and crease. There was always enough paper to make a mistake. You taught me the names of the colors: Vermillion, Cerulean, Burnt Sienna, Raw Sienna. Titanium White. Watercolor trays, and damp paintbrushes, and charcoal pencils, good for sketching. And when the art was done, book and books, piles and piles, always what I asked for. We’d gobble the words up, page after page, never ready to go to bed.

I’m married now, but you never met David. He's a good man to me, and you'd be proud of how handsome and smart he is. I live a life you never would have imagined—yesterday I even mixed cement! We have a pickup truck that he goes and fills with rocks, or wood, or bricks, or sand, and then he brings it home and we unload that stuff into the yard and make something out of it. We read a lot of books, sometimes one a day, just like you did. David's a gardener, too, basil and tomatoes and a little herb garden he planted for me at the edge of the property. It’s so dusty here, so overgrown and brown and not at all what it was like back at your sweet house. We eke what we can from this earth. I memorize the names of all the trees in our yard: Russian Olive, Locust, Cottonwood, Ash. I plant Hollyhock along the fenceline. I dig with my hands; I smell the earth, and in the garden, I always think of you.

Tonight I’ll cook beef bourguignon. I wrote a book and dedicated it to you. The cactus are blooming, and the sky overhead is a sharp and piercing blue. A day doesn’t pass that I don’t think of you, and in this way, I keep you alive.

Happy Birthday to my grandmother, Hen. I love you forever and ever.