Down the Garden Path

Penelope twirled her braid around her finger as she walked, her feet leading her to the garden. The flat stones were warm after a day of summer sun, and her toes slapped against them with a happy patter. Her eyes traveled from cloud to cloud, each shape a white boat or rabbit floating in the sky. Sometimes she saw a horse up there, but not every day.

“Hallo, Weedie,” she called.

A small-boned boy popped out from behind the old oak tree, a smudge of grime across his cheek. His thick hair stuck up in spots, as if clipped by a very short-sighted badger. Weedie made a sound a disgusted lawnmower might make, and stamped out to follow behind Penelope. Weedie wasn’t really his name, but Penelope started calling him that at the beginning of summer and wouldn’t stop.

“Whatcha doin’, Penelope?”

“I’m slapping my toes on the garden path.”

Weedie, whose proper name was Charles, followed a few more steps, trying to slap his smaller, pudgier toes like Penelope did. When he couldn’t quite make that happy patter, he shrugged and wandered off to find slugs.

The trees along this part of the path laced together overhead, their branches touching and intertwining. Sunlight still showed through, but only in spots, leaving the rest of the path cool and shady. Penelope always tried to keep her feet only in the sunny spots, standing on one foot, sometimes rising up to the tips of her toes, and jumping from one warm bit to the next. She imagined she was a spy, breaking into enemy headquarters and eluding their top-secret, instant-death security system. If she set it off, a killer robot would shoot out from a hidden access panel and shock her until her hair fell out. Penelope stayed very motivated, balanced spindly on her tippy toes. Sometimes she would fall into the shade. When that happened, the shade was the zone of instant invisibility, and she was safe from all who would do her harm—even killer robots.

Birds breezed past above Penelope’s head, their twitters as fast as their wings as they bickered with each other over prime tree branch real estate. Hands in her skirt pockets, Penelope always paused before entering the clearing. She loved its cathedral of tall pine trees, as if they guarded this quiet place from intruders. The breeze quieted in here, and the sun’s rays created halos. Wildflowers grew across the open space, a multi-colored carpet of waving delicacy; a welcome to those who showed proper respect. After a moment of quiet and very little fidgeting, Penelope stepped into the clearing and leaned over to pluck a single wildflower. She always chose purple.

Walking through the lush field, Penelope brushed the tops of the flowers with her fingers, collecting pollen as she went. She brushed her hand over her hair, leaving a dusting of yellow around her head. She reached the center of the clearing and knelt. Her knees pressed into the soft earth, the flowers beneath them folding, her bare toes digging into the soil, disrupting an industrious-minded beetle working his way up a thick frond. He swerved and beetled on, seemingly unperturbed. A flat stone lay in front of the slender girl. This one was different from the other garden stones. This one was a simple square. Four corners, where the others were rounded and irregular. Smooth, diamond-carved granite, where the others carried rifts and ridges smoothed by weather and time. This one carried memories.

“Hallo, Mom,” she whispered. “How are you, today?”

Her long black braid wisped along the edge of the granite as Penelope leaned closer to clear away a few leaves. She ran her fingers along the grooves carved into the stone: the name, the dates. The brief epitaph.

The ache rose to the surface, sweet and full, and Penelope allowed herself to cry a little. Not the kind of crying that scrunched up her face and left her throat burning and tight, but the kind that just bubbled over a bit, just enough to let her go and then come back the next day.

“Today, it was cloud rabbits and a boat, Weedie jumped out, bare feet and warm stones in the garden, trees holding hands, instant death security killer robots, and a flower. I picked purple again, Mom.”

Live your dreamiest dreams, Dearest, and then come tell me about them when you’ve finished.

Penelope had the feeling people didn’t understand why her Mom said that, or why she wanted it on her gravestone, but she did. She laid the flower on the stone and wiped her eyes dry with the edge of her skirt. She climbed to her feet. The sun brushed across her hair, lighting up the pollen in a shimmering circle of clinging motes. Penelope smiled down at the cool stone.

“See you tomorrow.”

She spun and returned to the garden, this time walking in a criss-cross pattern, each step crossing over the other. She laughed, holding her arms out for balance when she almost fell into the moat filled with ravenous alligators, and then skipped the rest of the way home.