Remembering Mrs. Anderson
How I long to see your face. If not, see, at least recall. Yet both are elusive. Your image is like a fleeting apparition that does not desire your gaze, at least not for the moment. But is that for the greater good, the longing being more comforting than a fleeting image?
How I long to recall your scent. It, too, appears out of reach, not by a glazy internal sight but rather a memory not yet able to be recalled, but the memory and the scent are connected. If I could inhale that fragrance, I’d remember what I long for.
I can picture her fragrance, not her face. It is unique and comforting, what I imagine Lady Wisdom would smell like if she held me in a tender embrace.
Instead of your face and eyes, the image is that of hard caramel candy. One you may find in your grandma’s purse, up her sleeve, or most trying, bouncing between the inside of her teeth.
But why is my memory of a hard candy? My best guess is that it gets us a little closer to grasping her scent, which recalls a smooth sweetness and yet a hardness coming from a lifetime of love (loss) and longsuffering, which comes only from being born in her generation. Yet she did not allow her suffering or hardships to stop her from showing tenderness to a broken little boy, a tenderness not known before.
A grandmother’s tenderness?
A motherly tenderness?
Those, while marvelous, do not illustrate it the best. For me, tenderness is not associated with either, though I wish it were not so. But how do I compare the tenderness received to the one who first introduced me to tenderness?
