The Air

The sunlight pierced the dusty room and lit up a spot on the floor in front of her. The clock on the wall told her it was ten a.m. as she picked up her accordion, its gray casing sparkling in the sunlight. It was a new one, an instrument that her nephew had lent her. For the time being. An accordion, she surmised with a humpf, back to that old thing, like the old man. That which I spent my life trying to get away from. Hobnail boots, untied, worn and carrying cac bó all over the scullery with them, not wiped nor shaken clean, planted right in front of her broom while she tried to sweep away crumbs, the dust, the eggshells, the anger of her short-lived childhood. Sweeping up and over, around the heels of those solid, heavy, nasty, soot black boots. And he laughing, pulling the bellows out with a raucous grin, swaying from side to the side where she stepped in, into his way, to sweep, sweep it all away, continuing despite his obnoxious frame making himself larger, intentionally puffing his chest and pulling the bellows out, wide around the berth of the chair he’d pulled out to sit on, in the middle of the scullery floor.

These were the things she had to work out. Out of her mind and body and into the notes of the melojeon. To send them flying into the air, away, eternally. So she persevered and found the buttons with her right hand, which began her Air. The baby steps she had to muddle through. To have no shame, they had told her. What of it? To have to start from the beginning, once again? At the age of seventy-eight, a life lived and a squad of children raised. A home left behind and still, put back at the start by what cruel god? Made to swallow the fourth piece of humble pie in this lifetime. The treble notes piercing her lament, a high siren of something beautiful, something unadulterated. The girl on the strand, sun-lit and bare-footed, standing in the salt breeze, looking for seashells and wrapping them in her skirt to count later in the palm of her hand. Her blue-eyed delight scanning the waves for seals and dolphins in the deep white foam that coaxed her daily. If only she could swim, she’d go with them smiling and reach the rippled seabed to wait for the iascairí who might fish her out. Bring her home on their shoulders singing the tune of the ghosts, celebrating her return. And her parents rejoicing the lost girl returned, if only they had missed her. If only.

She fingered her way over the accordion buttons, pressing on through the Air he had taught her to sing. As the cailín álainn he’d told her she was. She stopped and stared at the floor. At the hole in front of her. He hadn’t cared. Not as much as she’d needed him to. What was the point of this melody, of these buttons? She took the straps off her shoulders and put the accordion on the ground. Don’t bother. Wait this thing out, just wait it out. It’ll subside, with time. Time’ll take it with him. She rested her chin on two fingers and exhaled. An old double chin, a tired set of eyes was all she was now. And the accordion. Was it looking up at her? Did it ask, what have I done? Take me again girl. Go on, take me in your arms and play the Air. The song of the Bench of Rushes upon which we’ll sit and look over the sea. Give me your hand love, come along, come. Tenderly she takes the accordion. To try anew, the path of the melody, to glide through the high notes and catch the whisper in the sea breeze that told her she always was and forever will be, the girl that shone in the sun.