Breath & Shadow

ESSAY

LAURA TAYLOR

Easing into Sunlight

I'm Southern, which means I'm a natural, slow–talking storyteller. I write memoir the same way I speak, and although my stories are often sad, I'm unable to rush through even the unkindest of memories. I share my thoughts slowly, as if sitting in a rocking chair on the porch, sipping sweet iced tea with lemon, enjoying the scent of nearby honeysuckle. I'll set the scene and show what it feels like to be me, but I'll take my time writing it, and I'll drench each memory in buckets spilling over with all my senses.

I'll be inclined to never use a verb that can't go along with a metaphor: I won't cry unless it's as if tears are trying to wash the brown off my eyeballs. Dew will go unnoticed unless it looks like tiny diamond chips sprinkled on the grass.

I'll be unaware of using too many adverbs. I'll probably walk briskly instead of running. I may sigh deeply, laugh loudly, or touch gently.

I'll use adjectives as if I've got all day because the lazy sun is lying across my porch and there's a gallon jug of fresh–brewed tea setting on the kitchen counter. Hospitals may smell like their concrete walls are painted with mixtures of ammonia, vomit, and grape–flavored medicine. Churches may have splintered wooden pews covered with cheap, frayed, burgundy felt. Anxiety may feel like clutching the shiny rear fender of a red sports car that's speeding down an unlit Atlanta highway so fast that the broken white lines become one solid streak.

I'll tightly wrap all of my emotions in their honesty and use them to form the words in my story, and then I'll sit back and rock awhile. You — the reader — will become comfortable in our companionship and patiently sit with me while buzzing bumblebees nudge the honeysuckle bush. I'll recall the time I opened my grandmother's mailbox only to be assaulted by a swarm of wasps, and how my mother, who was usually too occupied with her own needs to notice mine, coated my numerous stings in a paste made of baking soda and water. I'll remember how much I miss my grandfather, who taught me how to grow tomatoes and died when I was six.

I won't neglect the requisite universal truth — to do so would mean that you knew me no better at the end of our visit than when you'd first joined me on the porch, that I'd kept you from seeing the rip in my screen door, the cracked ceramic pot near my chair, the worn–out "Welcome" on the mat at my door.

After our tea becomes water, and you and I are no longer strangers, I'll angle my rocker toward you, easing into sunlight, losing the shade in which I've been sitting. Not quite facing you, I'll stare at the sidewalk as I begin to share the reasons why the pot is imperfect, who tore the screen and couldn't repair it, why the mat is too weary to welcome. You'll inch your chair closer to mine, and out of the corner of my eye I'll see you nod from time to time, recalling your own broken flowerpots, torn screens, and faded welcomes.