Evaporating Family

20221230

The flowers stand upright in the vase. Their colors vibrant young full of life enchant the eyes. There are yellow roses glowing amongst stars of baby breaths. Sturdy green foliage wraps them warmly. Together they draw sustenance from the water day upon day.

Across the room in a mirroring gesture rests a potted geranium plant with its red blossoms and dark green velvet leaves. It lives there often passed without notice yet always gracing the space with vitality and joy for those moments when, in momentary distraction from life's hustle, eyes fall upon it. It asks for little. A drink of water and simple pruning of an aged leaf or petal.

A day passes into days and then weeks with no one adding water to the vase or the potted geranium. The water in the vase departs for the air in the room as does the water in the pot. The flowers grow dry and brittle. They drop onto the counter upon which the vase sits. The leaves and blossoms of the geranium follow suite becoming scattered about the floor around the pot.

The house is host to family gatherings with four generations present. The oldest is a great aunt who's husband passed away many years ago from cancer. Then a single set of remaining grandparents. Most of the other grandparents are either deceased or live elsewhere under another roof. There are some aunts and uncles and cousins. There are direct descendants of the living grandparents. Then there are the grandparents offspring and spouses. And finally, the future of the family, the small scampering grandchildren.

I am not the last, but I can see the last ones from where I stand.

A tree extends branches out as tendrils in a gigantic spherical reach. Each tendril splitting and dividing into small and smaller tender shoots. Some tendrils sprout leaves while others also shoulder blossoms. Some tendrils remain shaded from the light and are abandoned.

I can't find a way I want to express the gradual and then sudden termination of a family.

One day there are grandparents, parents, and children scampering about. Cooking takes place in the kitchen with many hands. Plates and silverware are carefully arranged resting on a table decorated with candles and crafty objects conveying the season. Noises come from all corners of the house. Sauces bubbling in pots on the stove. The smell of roasting turkey priming appetites. A television commentator calls play-by-play action into a room filled with adults more interested in snacks, drinks, and swapping stories of previous gatherings. Kids scamper through all of it squealing with imaginations brimming.

Pencil lines with long ago dates march up an out-of-the-way door frame marking the growth of exuberant youths. Parents accumulate festering annoyances with their partners. Grandparents slow their walk soon shuffle and then find themselves bedridden in facilities of strangers. Children abandoned emotionally by parents find themselves pitched into hormone induced adolescent battles at school. Divorce ripples shockwaves through core families splintering bonds and trust. Traditions get bulldozed. Each grandparent, parent, and child are on their own.

The family evaporates like water from a flower vase. The members scatter into the wind.