Mair's CMA Response

This short story was written at the Columbus Museum of Art based upon the piece “Turtle & Boy” by Jack Lessinger, 1949.
written by Mair Culbreth

Stephanie

It was this day. This moment. It really could have been any other day. But it wasn’t.

The cotton balls-in-my-ear sound of raindrops against the widnow, sliding down the glass. Telephone wires reaching from me to something out there engenders a grid to mark a place and space. This window, this house creates a boundary, a separation- much like the cell membrane selects what can enter or depart but only through a complex chemical code. We, Dog and I watch for you, listen for your laughter, your sunlight. We long to reconnect to the smell of the wet molecules of rain in the air, feel the realness of it and on us. Shhhh....I can almost hear the whisper of the wind--soft like the echo of the way I used to grin-the hint of a smeile that left with you that day. I remember it, do you?

It was the 8th anniversary of the day I was born-the day I joined your world and it was the 1st anniversary of many of the day you left me. The beginning of the trickle of birthday cards, that I longed for but to open them was to the close another window, another door, another place to feel something for you. Mailed birthday cards only mark absence. Instead, I build and create homes for other people now...the framework to the hold the security, the hope, the belief that everything is ok.

Waiting at this window for the you that won’t return. The place where the roof line of the house across the street dissoves into the sky, blurring the boundary between the two. If I flutter my eyelashes together, the telephone pole rises through the house. The telephone wires swing into and with the tree leaves as they connect to my house. Connecting us to the world. The wood of the window frame seals itself into and becoming an extenstion of the glass. The glass which lets me see, but not feel the world beyond me. This marks the day I stopped looking out for something I could not see or feel anymore. I remember the day, do you?

I build in nooks and secret places though as I tear down others people’s walls to build them back up. I collect the treasured secrets that have been hidden and tucked into the cracks and crevices--covered by plaster, wallpaper and paint. All of my collections live in my home, anchoring me to this place. To re-create all that you took with you. I remember the day, do you? I build and paint through grids that position myself and the world I am in. I paint beds and flowers and houses. I actually have my own dog now, his name is Turtle.

When I remember the handful of good things, I call you mom. For everything else, you are just Stephanie.