My mission may be futile. Perhaps I imagined the sighting. But the poignant call and the loon’s hesitant plunge persuaded me that I had, after all these years, found my grandmother. And this time I will not be diverted. This time I will honor my promise.
It was by chance that I came to this crucial moment. A week after my grandson proclaimed that everybody broke their promises I was consigned to bed with a nasty case of the flu. Drugged and dazed, I was visited by an ethereal stream of broken promises. Everything from the promise to stop nagging my husband about the mound of books by the bed, the promise to my doctor to quit smoking, the promise to an acquaintance to get together soon and the promise to my boss to clean up the pile of files under my desk.
All trivial promises, except for the smoking one (but I had cut down), and then in my stupor, what was, at the time, a heartfelt promise suddenly rose out of the water like Arthur’s sword: the thirty-year-plus promise to keep an eye out for my grandmother. And aching and sniffling, I couldn’t chase that promise from my mind.
Just six weeks after that night, I am back—for the first time in twenty years—floating across the bay where that promise was made many years prior. My grandmother and I were in a small rowboat, drifting across the inlet. Then, at eight years of age, I had expected to live forever with my grandmother by my side. Today I am alone, well aware that I have only finite time left, and savoring what will probably be my final visit to the Bay.
That long ago afternoon, drifting along, I had blurted out that I would watch out for my grandmother. But when the moment came I had only done so for a brief time. In my defense, I was hampered by not knowing where she would turn up. In her new guise, she could have appeared anywhere and anytime: the day she departed or five years later.
And I hadn’t anyone to turn to for advice. No one among my family or school friends understood how it worked. As my grandmother had advised me, only those in charge knew the score but we couldn’t contact them. So here I am, years later, focusing on the pursuit.
My uncle is selling the cabin—although the family had promised my grandfather they would never let the place out of the family—and I was enticed to spend one last week here. It is now almost three weeks. By the second week, my husband Peter had begun sending frantic messages: what was I up to?
I had said I would be back in a few days, but then alarmingly I had what might have been a sighting, and mindful of my promise, I wanted to ensure if it were I would respond.
Yesterday, hearing the urgency of Peter’s voice, I sent what is to be my last message: Phone running short of juice. Batteries dead and there is no electricity to charge it. I am fine, enjoying a few weeks of peace. Then I turned the phone off and hid it in the cooler outside.
Peter won’t understand what I’m up to. In the first blush of romance, after his initial questions about my family and childhood, he lost interest. And if he ever suspected what my grandmother and I had been up to, he would have been appalled. Nevertheless, I am determined to stay a couple of more days and then if there isn’t another sighting, or even another call, I will go home.
As a child, I visited my grandparents’ place every summer. The cabin, once clean and functional, warmed by the wood fire, was their last home together, secret and sequestered in the dense forest. The only access is by water.
During the day, my grandfather would busy himself: digging the well, building the ice house, fishing for trout in the creek, or collecting water from the brook across the bay. For a treat, if the river were calm, my grandmother and I would venture out in the bay in my small wooden rowboat. It was on these outings that my grandmother had spoken of different worlds, strange happenings, and alien possibilities.
One day she told me about a young girl who recalled, in detail, another life and remembered another language. All the following winter I had thought about that girl and longed to be back with Nana and hear more stories.
I never told my parents about our talks about ghosts and reincarnation. They’d have dismissed such speculation, as another reason to criticize Nana who my mother insisted was “only a step-grandmother.”
That last summer we were together, rocking along in the boat, I had asked Nana when she died what she’d come back as.
“I doubt you have a choice,” she’d said.
“I’ll watch for you, I promise.”
Time passed, instead of visiting my grandparents I went to camp. Then I got my first summer job, my grandfather died, my trips to the cabin stopped and, consigned to a care home, Nana left.
I knew she could be anywhere, in any guise, and for a brief period I was determined to find her. And maybe now I have.
That first day—was it her? The loon, a black and white slip, had lifted up, called, and dipped down. Sitting still as death, I watched for it to break the water again but it didn’t resurface. I tried to call but my voice was thin, sliding like silver across the calm water, “Nana is that you? I’m here.” I waited but the glass surface did not break.
Usually loons call at night, their poignant laugh haunting the evening, so the appearance and call in the morning was perhaps a sign.
When Nana first told me about people coming back, I’d asked her if we could come back as animals.
“Maybe—it depends on how good you were.”
“So if you were very good you could come back as a princess but if you were bad you would come back as a frog.”
“I don’t know. A frog seems a bit of a drop.”
“What do you want to come back as?”
“I don’t imagine you can choose. But if I could I’d rather be an animal, like a squirrel or a deer. Or a bird, they don’t live long but they can fly.”
“Whatever you are, try to tell me it’s you. I promise to watch out for you.”
And I will. I am determined to wait for the loon to reappear. I should have been more steadfast when Nana first left. This time I’ll honor my promise. This time I won’t disappoint.
Thinking back to my grandson and his lament about broken promises, in future I’m resolved to be more diligent about fulfilling mine, especially those to loved ones. And I’ll ask my grandson to make a special promise that he’ll fulfill after I’m gone—because promises, like memories, keep love alive.
Bio: Melodie Corrigall is an eclectic Canadian writer whose work has most recently appeared in Foliate Oak, Halfway Down the Stairs, Bethlehem Writers Roundtable, Corner Bar Magazine, Literally Stories, Scarlet Leaf Review, Subtle Fiction, Toasted Cheese, Emerald Bolts and The Write Place at the Write Time.
~ Melodie Corrigall
Printed in The Write Place at the Write Time. April 2018