It is a well-known fact that I am a stickler for manners. It is rumored that my grandmother once stuck her fork through the hand of one of her ill-mannered husbands when he reached in front of her at the dinner table. What does that have to do with the pondering of the day? Nothing really. Or maybe it does?
And I wonder, has she yet discovered the truth about the woodpecker? Not my grandmother, mind you, for she has been gone from this world for nearly forty years. No, it is another that I speak of now. An important part of my family, for a brief while. Does she realise yet, that it was not ever tree decay that was the concern, so much as tooth decay? Mermaids with gingivitis were truly always the issue. Yet how silly to end a friendship over a woodpecker! It was silly coincidence that placed a full-fledged, live, feathered woodpecker in her favorite tree. While I told her as much at the time, she insisted that it must be about her, because clearly, my world revolved around her.
Thus began the chain of lost friends, handcuffs and police cars. Thus began myths of meth, of starvation, of suicidal and homicidal plottings. Such began a world of witchcraft, talking to God, and visions of angels. Friendships and family, trusted loved ones, all thrown to the wind under the wings of an imaginary bird. Silly, you say? No sillier than harboring dangerous animals, no sillier than being caught with paddles and handkerchiefs, no sillier than transforming oneself into a contortionist while handcuffed in the back seat of a police car. Truly, no sillier than believing that the world consists of safety and that one may have personal rights.
It was a simple message. A message that had nothing to do with her. Yet, with it, she laid waste to my world and thought herself clever.
It is all right, now. She has fallen over her own folly. Ill-conceived, nonexistent predictions now have become truth. What must they think now when they look back at those so called ramblings of insanity? Surely now I am even more ill-marked as the demon. And so, the lies meant to destroy, have circled back around and found their true owners. Paths have been cleared, obstacles removed, foes uncovered from beneath their masks of adoring love. It was a cleansing, a rebirth, a shedding of skin that was unbeknownst cancerous.
She was right, in a sense. My world did revolve around her. Not in the same manner that she twisted herself around my world and attempted to constrict the life from it. My world revolved around her in that, she was the one I called when I needed someone. It was her shoulder that I laid my head upon and cried. It was her that cheered my sorrows, found my laughter, and eased my mind. Did she truly believe that all of the gifts; the favors of dishes washed, children watched; anniversaries of sorrow well-marked, remembered and softened; that the years of attempts to make her life more pleasant were simply a ruse? A major plot of her demise at the expense of my own pocketbook and career? In what world does this make sense? Clearly, the same world in which woodpeckers destroy friendships.
It is safe, now. For clearly, she was not deserving of my love or the gift of my friendship. She took many with her. So many that I miss; so like herself. But truly, do I miss her or the concept she stood for? I recognize now that I watered tainted soil; the seeds that I carefully tended were devoured and reduced to rot. Looking back, there were many seeds that I nurtured and lovingly cared for, during those years. How much better it is to discover the empty soil and no longer waste precious resources needlessly toiling.
What has changed? My back still aches with the close of the day. My tears still fall to the tilled Earth. Yet the sun rises each day and I begin again. I continue to pull and cast aside the weeds, still occasionally finding a spent seed husk. The seeds which I lovingly fed her; the empty husks that she spat back in mockery. Seeds of the past; just empty shells of yesterday.
Yet I still sometimes marvel over this immense chasm; all over a misunderstood parable that she so badly wanted to claim as her own. Does she see it now? Does she realize yet what she has cast away? Does she realize that only the very ill-mannered would treat a friend in such a manner? Ah, and truly, it matters not.
Today, I choose to cultivate gentler life. Today, I remember the lessons and recognize that sometimes a woodpecker is a woodpecker and sometimes, the sisterhood is broken.
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