TEARS INTO WINE
TEARS INTO WINE
By John Tuft
“Life is such an amazing gift that my oncoming death feels glorious. Why would I feel otherwise?” Mabel chuckled and patted me on the knee. “I’m no longer at war with my body. I accept it and when it tells me it’s done, so be it.” We sat on the back porch of her rambling wooden home, the best kind of back porch with some warped floorboards, a swing that squeaked and groaned at all it had endured, and a view of the pastures and woods stretching toward the tree covered mountains in the background. “Who was your first love?” I asked, while munching on brownies and sweet tea. Mabel’s head bows, showing the large and beautiful gray and white braid that is wrapped around the top of her head as though a crown. “I was on the train going to Washington D.C. to start my job in the Pentagon during World War II. I grew up poor, my pappa grew tobacco as a cash crop in North Carolina. We needed that cash to get through the winters. Many a day I wore cardboard in my shoes because the soles wore out. Pay me no nevermind, but when I start remembering, I get lost in the quick sands of what ‘used to be.’ Now where was I?”
“You were on the train,” I gently reminded her. “Yeah, anyways, there’s a young Navy officer going back home for a bit. He saw me get on and look for a seat. He invited me to sit with him. I was 20 and he was 25. Well, as you can imagine, Adam and Eve didn’t sit around coming up with recipes to get the world started. People want good attention no matter what. And no matter what age.” She gave me a sly wink. “Did you ever realize that death is the accomplice of life. It’s just what is.” Mabel got up and went inside briefly before returning with a basket of peas and a large bowl. “Help me shuck these peas, Preacher Boy.” As we shelled the fresh peas, she continued, “We fell in love on that train ride. I mean all the way in love. We had two glorious weeks in the capital, dancing and laughing and believin’.” That wink again. Then a faraway look came over her. “He got sent on some secret mission and shipped out. A month later I found out he was lost at sea and that I was pregnant. But, I still had to go to work. I still had to live my life. I still…” her voice trailed off.
“It took a while, and it still hurts, don’t get me wrong. It still hurts, Preacher. But that’s when I started to learn.” She continued with the peas at about five times my speed. It was a silence with boundaries. Boundaries to be respected. Off in the distance a woodpecker started his staccato beat. Dragonflies buzzed around the bushes. Mabel sighed, “That’s when I started to learn about turning my tears into wine.” The soft plink of the peas into the bowl heard their echo in the woodpecker’s tirade. “How do you mean?” I finally said. She leaned toward me, “Honey child, living is about learning and leaning. But you can only cry your own tears.” Those words ran around in my head as she continued, “My little Clara died of measles before she was one year old. It broke me, I don’t mind sayin’. I started making a mark on the door frame each year on the date she died, a mark of how tall she would have been by that time. A whole column of marks up that door, rising higher and higher until…” she stopped and let the image hang there between us.
After a moment, “Then I met my Edgar. He accepted me with all my woes and griefs. We moved here and made this into our home. I found out that I couldn’t have any more children. Edgar’s two boys went to Vietnam in the early 70s. One was an MP in Saigon. One day a kid…a kid…rolled a grenade under the table of the café where his boy was sittin’.” Mabel sighed and wiped at her eyes with a tissue she kept tucked up a sleeve. “The other boy came home but his soul was back there in the jungle. Door gunner in a helicopter. Survival rate for door gunners was two weeks. Said they killed anything that moved, made no nevermind. He wants nothing to do with me and his daddy. Edgar put their combat boots, both boys’, beside the front door. He says it will keep their hearts close to hearth and home.”
We ran out of peas to shuck. And for a time, we ran out of words. “They say this is the 80th anniversary of DDay coming on,” Mabel spoke with determination now. “Only a few of them boys left. The ones that are, the ones that make the pilgrimage to Normandy. They only go for one reason. To see their brothers. To stand there among them white crosses and touch that marble. Maybe to shed tears they’ve kept stored up all these years like wine aging…”
I gave her a soft kiss on the cheek as I rose to leave. On my way out I paused at the front door. Two pairs of combat boots sat there, ever vigilant. And as I opened the door, I spied marks on one side of the frame. Marks that started down low and rose steadily up and up…
Words are magic and writers are wizards.
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