April showers and May flowers had both come and gone. The dandelions and bluebonnets had long since faded. I wondered where they went until the next spring, but I kept forgetting to ask.
Silas still walked through the meadow every morning. He said just because a thing died didn't mean it needed to be adored any less. Sometimes even more so, he said. I almost asked what he meant by that, then checked myself. That was the very kind of question that would raise his blood pressure, and I decided it wasn't that important anyway.
It was as if Silas anticipated my question, though, and he answered it on his own. Sallie was walking with us that morning, something she rarely did.
"'Course," Silas said under his breath, "Some things just go away altogether."
"Silas!" Sallie scolded him playfully. "You know that ain't true."
Silas argued, "Well, some things do change, and some things do remain."
Sallie countered, "But there are always remnants, traces, of the things changed. Hundreds of years later there's still at least a little tiny whiff of fragrance of a flower long since wilted."
"Just takes a powerful set of nostrils to smell it," Silas added.
Over dinner that day I wondered out loud what would happen to my jump box and my afghan after I reincarnated.
"Why, they get held up here till you're ready for them again," Sallie said.
"And how do I choose what to put in my jump box from my last life?" I asked.
They both looked at one another, then back at me.
"You planning a trip anytime soon?" Silas asked.
"Not really," I said. "Not sure. Don't know."
"Dear, that's private," Sallie scolded him again with a playful whisper, "Hand me the ketchup there, Honey. Thanks."
"Well, I was just curious," I said. "About how to tell, well, whoever one is supposed to tell what I want to be put in my jump box."
"You write it down and put it in an envelope, Sweetie," Sallie said. "We'll see it gets in the mail."
"What are you going to put in your jump box?" Silas asked.
"Silas!" Sallie scolded him. "That's private!"
"Well," Silas pouted a little." I was just wondering."
Silas and I were building a picnic table for Sallie later that afternoon. She had been asking for one the last three years and he just hadn't gotten to it. So that afternoon, we started getting to it.
"It's a toss up between Michael's class ring and Mom and Pop's peanut," I said.
"What is?" Silas asked. "Damnation!" He screamed, hopped around the yard awhile, clutched his thumb, kissed his thumb, and said some more words. When the throbbing finally eased and he felt safe to hammer another nail, I continued.
"There are so many things from my last life I hold dear," I said. "And most of them are small enough to fit into my jump box. Letters, pictures, my books, Richard Bach's books, Thomas Moore's books, …."
"I get it," Silas interrupted me. "You like books. Go on."
"And I noticed, when I got to thinking about it, that most of the things I owned, the things that were most precious to me, were gifts from others. Even the books. I mean, sometimes when I read Illusions it's like Richard was writing me a love letter, telling a story just for me."
"That's the mark of a good writer," Silas said. "Writing to 'an audience of one,' I've heard it called. What else, though. What else besides the books?"
"Well, the ring and the peanut, like I said." I laughed at Silas and said, "What's the matter, Newbie? Ain't you got your ears on?"
He chuckled with me, and when we were done chuckling, I said, "I wore Michael's class ring for two years. After we broke up, of course, I gave it back to him. But he never wore it again. His mother kept it after he died. And just before she died she gave it to me, and I had it until, well, until I died."
"And the peanut?"
I laughed. "Now, that's a pretty funny story."
"Well, let's hear it, then," Silas said. "Let's take a break, though. This sun is really coming down."
We sat under the walnut tree.
I left Kentucky to go to college the week after I turned eighteen. From then until 1998 I always lived away, but I visited Mom and Pop at least once a year for the next twenty-four years. I usually came home either Christmas or Thanksgiving.
When I moved to Massachusetts in the early nineties, though, I didn't get to come home in the winter. Hard to plan a long drive, or a flight, when you never know when it's fixing to start snowing. So I usually came home in the late spring or early summer, sometimes the early fall. Christmas time was long phone calls and gifts in the mail.
One year, the week before Christmas, I received a small package in the mail from Mom and Pop. I waited until Christmas to open it.
They had sent me gorgeous gold necklace. Eighteen carat, very nice, very dainty. It was lovely, but I was a little confused. I didn't wear jewelry. I had never worn much jewelry.
Well, I smiled to myself, it's the thought that counts. I called them.
"It's beautiful," I told Mom with more enthusiasm than I felt. "I love it. Thank you so much! Did you and Pop get my package?"
Several months later Mom asked me how I was enjoying my peanut.
"What peanut?" I asked, confused.
"Why, the one we sent you for Christmas last year!" she said.
"I didn't get a peanut for Christmas last year," I said. "You sent me a very nice chain. Remember?"
"Oops," she giggled, and that was the last I heard of it.
I went home to Kentucky that summer. Mom and Pop hugged me at the door with the kind of encircling embraces that only they knew how to give. We sat down on the couch, and before I could even start to complain about the long drive and the crazy traffic, or tell her how wonderful her house smelt, she was thrusting a little box into my hand. It was wrapped in red paper with little snowmen, and a tiny red bow was on top.
Inside was the exact replica of a peanut, only it was made of eighteen carat gold and had a tiny clasp on top.
I cried, and Mom cried, and Pop just smiled real big.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX