Peaches

saved me

My Edna is the color of peaches.

Edna first unwanted. Edna a diagnosis. Then she was trauma. I suffered. My husband suffered. We hid in the darkness and moved through our days as waifs. Half selves no longer in the living, always fearing. Would the pregnancy continue another day? Would she die after her first breath? Would she live? What would life be like with a Down syndrome daughter?

I opened the front door. My personal winter blew friged air through the threshold. She stood there holding peaches. Peaches. A summer of sacrificed afternoons picking pealing poaching peaches. How did she know? She didn’t. A treasure. I kept them in the back and at the top, safe. I opened them each morning dipping my fork down deep into the juice collecting a precious half spooning it into my bowl. Just a single half to keep as many peach mornings as I could. Sweetness to the bitter.

My childhood was canned in those peaches. Swinging over elk-filled meadows, fishing boats, and Indian paint brush. Memories of innocent wishing, adoring adults and quaking aspens. Safety. And peaches. Homegrown, hand-made canned beauties courtesy of great aunt Georgie and her fifty year old peach trees nearly swallowed by the long grasses her husband could no longer cut. Family currency traded for favors, gifted above all for Christmas. Rare and unspeakable glory with melting ice cream. The joy of my soul in a jar.

Peaches to keep me. Peaches to save me. Peaches from my dear now dead. Peaches from my new and forever now. Her peaches. Those peaches in the dead of my winter. Carefully, tenderly passed from her hands to mine.

Edna, my Edna, the color of peaches.