Chapter Three
The State of Jen-Zen, the flag of feathers, hung on Grandma’s living room wall.
The flag idea formed not from a day, or a moment, or a passing glance, but
from walks along the bay in search of the forgotten spaces in grains of sand.
Like the way Jen-Zen touched her hair when it fell on her face, the freckles on
her neck, how she laughed, or rested her head against his shoulders.
The fleeting memories lost, as lost as she was.
He stood in front of Jen-Zen’s face woven into the flag and pulled out the blue
feathers.
Grandma put her hand over his and said, “Brad, what’s wrong? You got the
same look on your face when you were a boy scared about some dream.”
He lied and said, “I had the recurring dream. You know the one?”
She nodded.
When he was a kid he dreamed over and over about being perched on top of a
tree and afraid of falling. She used to calm him down and say, “You can fly in
your sleep.”
If only it were so, he’d fly to heaven and hold Jen-Zen in his arms.
Pulling out another blue feather from the flag he said, “Grandma, do you ever
wonder if there’s any truth to the Native American legends where spirits fly as
birds,” just one of many stories she told him.
“Oh, Brad that’s just a child’s tale, all that happens is kirplunk and you’re six feet
under.”
“Then how come you told me so much magic?”
Grandma pointed to a crow that had landed on the patio railing and said, “So
you’d see the colors, remember the forest crow?”
“Yes.”
They reminisced about bird watching in the woods when Brad was six years
old. On a tree limb close to the ground, a crow perched and turned its head,
staring at him for the longest time, then it flapped its tail feathers. They weren’t
all black, like he thought. The feathers contained the deepest shades of blue
and purple.
He watched Grandma pucker her lips and make birdcalls. As a tail feather fell
down to the ground she winked at him and said, “Enjoy the gift.”
“What gift, Grandma?”
“Silly boy, nature’s presents don’t come wrapped in shiny bows.”
As he rubbed the feather between his fingers Grandma put her hand over his
and said, “It’s your bird, Brad, in time it will show you its wisdom. Animals have
their own smarts they can teach you.”
The crow squawked. Brad looked at Grandma smiling. The past and present
merged.
Reaching into his portfolio bag, he handed her a wooden picture frame. In
calligraphy on the frame’s edges he’d written, “Grandma’s Slipper”.
The photograph inside the frame showed a slipper designed to look like a polar
bear. He found the slipper in the San Diego Zoo parking lot.
Grandma said, “Oh, Brad you saved it.”
“I couldn’t save anything.” Not Jen-Zen at the hospital, not our memories, they
all seemed to be lost fragments.
Grandma hugged him and said, “Sure you did. It’s the picture of the slipper I
gave you for your eleventh birthday.”
He remembered on his birthday how Mom had eyed the package with doubt
and said, “This one better be appropriate.” And it was; they all were.
Grandma gave him things no one else did. Before the slippers she gave him a
do it yourself kit for making stained glass windows, to study as she said, “The
way light changes colors and changes your perception.”
The birthday present before that was a kit for gluing constellations onto the
ceiling. They stayed up all night gluing the stars on the ceiling and when
Grandma traveled on her birding retreats, she would call him and tell him the
constellations she saw, that is, until the stars started falling down on his head.
At first it was funny just one star fell at a time then two and three.
She told him, “Think how lucky you are. Most folks never get to watch shooting
stars in their bedroom.”
When the Big Dipper and Orion’s Belt disappeared during a school day and
Oscar the dog wound up with bits of phosphorescent plastic stuck into his fur,
the game wore thin.
But Grandma didn’t want their game to end, she’d suggested he put the solar
system onto the ceiling and went so far as to buy the kit and glue. Instead, he
pointed to a pair of binoculars Mom and Dad had bought him and said,
“Grandma, the manual says I can see Mars.”
She crossed her arms and said, “Brad most nights, visibility is so bad you can’t
see the planets, but they are there all the same, that’s why you bring them
closer, like in the pictures on the ceiling.”
Staring now at the mischievous twinkle in Grandma’s eyes, past and present
became one and he knew; the state of Jen-Zen was Grandma’s fault. But he
wasn’t mad.
Grandma stirred the stew with exotic spices of mystery and lore, the right
ingredients left to simmer, just waiting for him to fall for someone like Jen-Zen.
He stood up, looked at the ceiling and noticed the sparkles. Jen-Zen’s words
came back to him, “Grief counts dots in the ceiling, afraid to count pebbles in
the ground.”
It was then Brad realized he could leave, figuratively walking out of Grandma’s
apartment, but it wouldn’t matter, one of them opened the window and the other
said “How wide?”
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J u l i e S h a p i r o