One
There are people who can travel thousands of miles away from home and remain entirely intact, so intact you wonder whether they have ever lost any part of themselves to anything or anyone.
Delilah is one of those people, I think.
Years ago, she came to a remote fjord in southwest Norway from Belarus for a Tinder date. And she never left. Now the townspeople know her as the hostess of the local farm, one of the biggest tourist attractions around.
“Our duty is to promote local fjord products to the world,” she says, waving her hands as she talks and tucking them back into her apron pockets when she does not.
Palms up. From the fjord to the world.
Hands in pockets. Any questions before we head to the barn?
With her fiery red hair and dark green apron with giant pockets, Delilah could almost pass for a Viking descendant.
“There are only 400 people who live here year-round. Me included.”
Her fingers blossom open, then close again. Wrist draws a half circle. Hand returns to pocket.
“Did you learn anything interesting?” the tall young man behind the kitchen bar asks as he scoops brown cheese ice cream into a bowl for me.
“Yes.” I take my hands out of my waterproof jacket pockets and rest my forearms on the counter. “I learned Delilah came here for a Tinder date. Know anything about that?”
He tilts his chin toward his chest and chuckles. Guilty as charged.
Delilah rushes over, stands on tiptoe to reach for a string of keys, and announces she has to drive to the goat farm, where there are more goats than people, to pick up more cheese.
The young man pauses mid-scoop to watch her drop the keys into her deep apron pocket. A metallic clank echoes from inside.
Lilac-colored wildflowers bloom along the fjord behind her.
“Yeah,” he says, sliding the bowl toward me, “I guess you could say it’s an ongoing saga.”
I scrape the ice cream with my spoon and tuck my left hand back into my pocket.
It is a cold morning in the fjord, which makes me the only tourist crazy enough to order ice cream.
But perhaps not as crazy as moving across a continent for a Tinder date.
Two
There are people who deviate from what has always been without ever betraying who they intended to be, so much so that you wonder whether they ran away from home only to become more themselves.
My grandfather was one of those people, I imagine.
Almost a century ago, he met my grandmother, an uneducated young woman who never wanted to stay home.
“She won’t make a good wife,” people told him.
And they were right.
He was apprenticing as a tailor then, already skilled enough to make a decent living. But she could not read. Had no desire to learn. Had no interest in domesticity.
Still, he married her.
Since no one supported the marriage, they eloped to Beijing, where he opened a tailoring shop in a narrow alley. Eventually, it became one of the official tailoring shops for the British embassy.
While he worked day and night, she filled her sweater vest pockets with sunflower seeds and gossiped with neighborhood women for hours. One by one, she cracked the shells between her teeth and tossed the husks onto the ground.
Circles of sunflower seed shells gathering around her stool like fallen flower petals. You could always tell how juicy the gossip was by the radius of that circle. That was how big her world was.
And she never went home until her pockets were empty.
She was the original party girl. And he, the meticulous tailor.
“Where’s grandma?” I ask one summer afternoon while fanning my grandfather during his nap.
I am ten years old. There is no air conditioning, so I sit beside the bed waving a fan made from Bodhi leaf while the room fills with the scent of Chinese medicine and old fabric.
My grandfather lies on his left side, exposing the great arborizing scar curving across his right scapula. Tuberculosis had taken most of his lung when he was young.
“I think,” he says slowly, turning toward me, “she must be outside.”
The rice-filled herbal pillow beneath his head crackles softly.
Some memories come with scent.
“If it’s mealtime, you can always find her sitting at the mouth of the alley eating seeds and gossiping with the women. I’ve had to patch the inside of her pockets so many times already.”
She reached into them so often they wore thin enough for whole seeds to fall through.
A smile begins gathering at the corners of his eyes. Then I watch it unfold across his face:
First the eyes soften. Then the sparkles appear. Then the lines beside his eyes gather upward like cat whiskers. Then finally, the chuckle arrives.
That must be what love looks like in slow motion, I think.
A scrupulous tailor and his wild, gossiping, undomesticated wife.
Three
There are things passed down through generations without their colors fading a single bit, stitched together with material that transcends the slow passage of time and the rapidly shifting spaces between people.
The lilac-colored silk dress is one of those things.
Despite their mismatch, my grandparents went on to have four surviving daughters. And I am the daughter of their fourth daughter, who, like her mother, always hated studying.
5’8’’ and incredibly fast, my mother made a talented volleyball player. At sixteen, my mother made the municipal volleyball team and had to leave home to train. She traveled across China with the Beijing Women’s Volleyball Team, leading them to win their only six consecutive national championships in history.
Yup. That was my legendary mother.
Unlike my grandmother, my mother’s schedule was unpredictable. You never knew when she might suddenly return home between tournaments.
“Your grandpa would line up outside the silk store for an entire afternoon waiting for the newest color to arrive,” my mother tells me as she hands me the lilac silk skirt.
“He’d run home and stay up all night sewing so I could wear it the minute I arrive home the next morning.”
Pride dances in her eyes like inheritance.
I wash my hands before putting the skirt on, terrified dirt or grease might touch the fabric. The cool silk slides down my legs as I stand.
Entire transcontinental roads were built for this. Provinces shaped themselves around this. Tiny white silkworms spent their brief lives feeding endlessly for this. Mismatched couples eloped for this.
The world once sought after what touches my skin now.
“Oh!” I say suddenly. “There are pockets!”
My hands disappear into the comfortable pouches sewn carefully into the sides near the hips.
I think about all the expensive dresses, skirts, and pants I have bought over the years only to discover the pockets were fake.
Or too shallow to hold anything substantial.
A lipstick. A tampon. A few sunflower seeds.
Whatever they think women carry instead of real things.
“You don’t like it?” my mother asks, noticing my expression. “Don’t look down on its simplicity. It was the most fashionable color and design back in 1985.”
I think it still is.
There are soft things that are so durable they will outlive all of us.
Wildflowers draping over the hills, spring after spring.
Love blossoming across someone’s face, overriding a century of disapproval.
Silk folding into a smile, shaping without conforming.
Warm hands disappearing into pockets worn soft with use.
The color lilac.
This is beautiful, deep and still. Thank you.
Beautiful stories thanks for sharing 😻