Primavera
Sky. Cielo. It is the house where truth lives. And I stand at its door like someone in waiting, trying to decipher my own intent. Sky is the house where desire falls away. Sky is the house where our best-selves reside, sometimes arriving too late.
It is springtime in the great American Southwest, place of myth, legend, poverty, and crime. It is my home. On the local evening news, they broadcast a report on the Easter-time pilgrimage to Chimayo; this story is then followed by the double-shooting-murder on Albuquerque’s 12th Street. Sacred shadowed by the un-sacred, but all of it under the same sky, the same cielo of truth.This is the Southwest I call home.
Springtime and I hold my belly, both fearful and hopeful for the child growing within. Is it cliché that I am pregnant in springtime? Is it a cliché that I am my father’s daughter, full of sentimento and ego and love of good musica?
Lent is an ancient word for springtime. A season of growth. I attend daily mass as if to save myself, as if to find comfort. The priest recites, and I genuflect at all the right times. And there is a child within me, growing in this season of springtime, growing inside the center of myself. Natural facts reflect spiritual truths. There is a child growing, developing, being formed within me. It is spring. It is Lent. The adobe walls of the church are draped in purple, a morada of repentance. And all I seem to want is the effect of whiskey in my blood, that strong and un-mistakable feeling of comfort and ease. But there is a child inside of me. Does that alone not remove the obsession? I too am that sacred shadowed by the un-sacred.
Evening and the sky opened up on itself. Then just as quickly, it dimmed into twilight, stars appearing so slowly that they convinced me they’d been there all along. Cielo. Sky. Draped in the purple of twilight but never judging, never sentimental.
Where and what is my deepest misunderstanding? Or by misunderstanding do I really mean resistance, or resentment, or heart-ache?
Besides news of my baby, a diagnosis is given in spring – Michael’s mother has stage-three colon cancer. They will do surgery to remove the mass in the intestines, then five months of intense chemotherapy. And it is her grandchild that grows inside of my belly.
The baby was conceived in winter. The baby will grow in spring and summer. And the baby will be born at the beginning of autumn, pushed out into the brutal-beautiful world without will, without want. This is how many of us are born, without will and without want. But it never stays this way, and we grow into gardens of desire that overtake us, consume us.
Michael’s mother has been told she has cancer. Michael’s wife is carrying his child. So, what does he do with the day? He lingers and thinks and drinks a Corona that I can still smell on his breath even hours later. The afternoon is growing cloudy and it is a Friday in Lent. Primavera. Spring. We must abstain from meat. We have fish-sticks and mashed potatoes for dinner, hardly speaking. I think about the wind and about the hidden disease rattling Michael’s mother’s insides. She will put a smile on and remain polite. We will all put a smile on and behave as best we can.
I am restless in this sea of change that is occurring – the pregnancy and the diagnosis. Rather I try and focus on the season of spring, the essence of mountain and sky, the slope between disease and sobriety and all that is shadowed by the un-sacred.
What is at the center of my own restlessness?
On a drive across the llano, headed north, it is cloudy and lovely. Michael drives as I watch the shadows in along the rock bluffs and savina plains. The palpable scent of rain in the air.
The rain is coming. And so what do we do with these places we visit again and again, speaking in ghosts? What do we do with these places? Or else what do these places do with us? The rain is coming.
From the car window I see this land, llano and mountain, sky and juniper, beauty and cliché all at once. Michael drives without speaking. I am a passenger unspeaking. What is left to be said as we drive across this landscape?
Surrounded by sky & juniper, cielo y savina, the stains of my sins mirrored in the purple of the Lenten season, the scent and softness of the coveted promises of springtime. Suddenly I am grounded with the existence of this place and nothing more. This is primavera, the grace between sin and sacred, between sobriety and sickness, between the child within me who is living but not yet born.
We drive north, seeing, looking, but not speaking. Springtime and everything around us keeps Michael and I silent. In the distance is openness familiar to the West, sagebrush and desert willow, gramma grasses reaching up into the expanse.
Cielo is the motion returning me to gratitude, even as my mother-in-law faces death, even as I carry her grandchild. Cielo is the house where truth lives. Michael’s mother may not live to be abuela to my child. But the sky is larger than our discontent, our fears. Cielo is sky is prayer is blue is eternal. It is the house that will keep me. Keep us.
THE END
Leeanna T. Torres is a native daughter of the American Southwest. She has deep roots in New Mexico and has spent the last fifteen years working as an environmental professional.