I haven’t written anything long in a while. I’m in the business of short. I’m a picture book author. Over my desk hangs the quote that keeps me on track when I find myself getting too wordy: You know it is done when you can’t take anything away. Could two words become one? Does that sentence move the story along? What am I really trying to say?
But lately, I don’t want to take words away. I want to add more. More words to tell you how the sunset slipped by. How I saw it from the side of my eye at my mother’s house while visiting with old friends and how I wanted to run down to the lake before it disappeared into itself, but I did not. And how when I did run to it a few days later, my beautiful daughters were already there, gently kayaking into its sherbet swirls – and I into them. And how when I turned around, the most magnificent full moon was making its entrance between the cedars and lake houses, and I didn’t know which way to turn. How could one sky and three women hold so much? Beauty.
I want to add more words. Words to tell you how I sat across from someone a few days ago. Someone I once saw every day, then once a week, then once a month, then year. Then not for a long time. Until the other day. And how I searched for the person I once knew when the days ran more closely together and words didn’t stand in our way. Not all words can be taken away. Not everything can be done. And yet there I was. We both were.
Words to tell you that I didn’t just want to listen to the cry of the peacock at the farm yesterday. When I looked up and saw him perched high in the branches of the leafy tree, I wanted to know how. How did it get there? So big, yet perched in that small busy space that is the heart of the tree. And whether his cry was to remind me to keep questioning. Or to find my own way into these spaces - wherever home may be.
As I write, a small bird glides over the water before me on a lake that welcomes me back each time. Even if only in my mind. This bird is dancing with the sky. I can fly. I can fly. Up, then down. In, around. He is performing for himself, and I happen to be watching. And yet, in this whole stretch of shimmering lake, the bird has chosen this space right before me to do this dance. And for that, I have no answer. I cannot shorten what I do not know. Mystery grows. Gets added to. Looms beyond words. Far beyond the thirty-two pages that usually frame the work I do.
At my feet sit two doggies. They are happy I have chosen this place to write. Slowly. To get. Long. Keep adding, they say. Once she finishes, it will be back up to the house. But this, THIS is more. Look, here it comes again. That bird.
- Erin Frankel