My eyes caught on a crystal I’d hung in my window years ago during my hippie period. It didn’t last. Nothing does. The thing shone in the half-light, throwing its rainbows across my desk. How did rainbows understand the order in which their colors were supposed to appear? They made it look so easy for the rest of us. Meanwhile our colors were out of order, scattered, thrown in ways that could never be understood.
Hopeful. That was the word. That was always the word for me. My mother knew that. “Meredith,” she once said, “you have this whole ice-cream-in-the-sky thing going on. You know?”
What I did know was that my mother used euphemisms like English wasn’t her first language. “Mom,” I said, “it’s pie.”
“Jell-O, tiramisu, I don’t give a damn. Girl, you’ve got to get real. Life will knock you down and kick you in the nuts. That’s what I’m saying to you.”
This time I didn’t even bother to explain the concept of mixed metaphor. God knows what her response might be.
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