Edouard Manet - "La Prune" [Plum Brandy] (1877)



Edouard Manet: "La Prune" [Plum Brandy] photograph, x-radiograph (1948)

" … clearly never really intended to understand anything."

My daughter Heidi was born on April Fool's Day, though she was never anybody's fool. Her birth transformed that day from one of pranks into one of deeper understanding. Foolishness runs no deeper than skin; underneath, things get serious. My daughter Heidi died on Groundhog's Day in February, the first month of Spring at this latitude, the month I always relied on to deliver hope after an exhausting Winter. Her death transformed February into FebYouWary for me, a time I approach hesitantly now, dreading its arrival. I do not dread Spring's arrival, just the Groundhog's Day re-reminder that Heidi's gone forever. I never understood Infinite until my darling daughter disappeared there. My world seems hollow without her here, trapped within the finite with me. She's free. I grieve.

February belongs to that class of words that have no proper pronunciation. Pronounced properly, it sounds wrong. Mispronounced, it sounds right, but it does not pass scrutiny. When anyone pronounces it the way it is supposed to be pronounced, it just sounds wrong: FebRueAiry. Pronounce it wrong, and my ear considers it correct: FebYouWary. Spell it the way it sounds right and misspell it. Spell it correctly and lose the proper pronunciation. Like Quay, its spelling does not say how it's said in practice.

The other months seem so straightforward, with not a mystery between them. One wonders why anyone might decide to include such a word as February in the list of months. It makes no sense. I suspect that things are not really supposed to make sense; that sense must always be a derived value requiring conditioning, a learned response rather than innate. I ask 'why?' with trepidation. Do I really want to know? Can I afford to know? What might it cost me to understand?

FebRueWary scares me. It creeps in on monster feet and will try to teach me. I must face the fact that this Winter, like every other, departs begrudgingly. I will have to re-learn the sacred responsibilities every Spring demands, for I have seeds to sow and trees to prune, work that cannot be productively undertaken in any other month of the year. I must revisit the most devastating loss of my life so far, the sudden departure of my finite daughter, her leaving her family behind her. I understand that I will never be able to understand, but that does not mean I will not continue attempting to find meaning in her absence. It does mean that she will not be providing answers to any questions I might toss in the direction of her infinity. It's FebRueWary! The rains are supposed to come! The lilacs are supposed to start showing their first green, and I clearly never really intended to understand anything.

©2024 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #iAlogue , #PureSchmaltz