Swallowing the Fire
My mother Lucille sitting on the running board of the family car. 1935
Swallowing the Fire
The first time she saw the ocean
my mother was about eight, riding in an
old Chevy, faded green, with her parents and younger sister.
It was the mid-1930s.
They had driven West from New Mexico, but theirs
was a generational journey that started 50 years prior
in Arkansas, then Oklahoma, then New Mexico.
This last leg was simply the latest choice, to escape
the wind-blown, spirit-choking dust of that century’s
climate catastrophe.
Rolling up and over, up and around the dunes
that lead to the shore, she thought they’d come
to the edge of a giant lake. She wondered where
the bridge was that would take them to the other side
to a place where new adventures would begin.
They didn’t stay but she vowed she’d return
to this place of cool wonder.
Nine years later she did return. This time with a second
sister and her mother, but no father. They decided to
settle in the City of Angeles, where the landscape
overflowed with opportunities.
Now 70-some years later she stands on that edge again.
In that span she married, raised a family, divorced a husband.
She’s known the full spectrum of success and failure.
Loss that could crush. Yet she is still standing and firmly
grips my hand as we walk out onto the pier.
The rough planks and distance are a challenge for her
but we’re not trying to cross, only reach a little way out
beyond the waves.
Standing at the end of the pier we stare out
our eyes traveling the distance our feet can’t
imaginations traveling beyond our eye’s limit.
A sea lion appears, swimming under us
playing in the surge while sea stars hold onto
pilings trying to resist the same.
Eventually we turn and walk back to the beach
just as the sun’s fat golden yoke settles and sinks.
My mother asks —
“Doesn’t it always look as if the ocean is swallowing the sun?”
At last I see why we come here, and what the ocean gives us —
A place to plunge the burn of regret and loss into
the cool tide, to let the flames of all our failures
all our worries, fall into the waves
swallowing the fire in all of us.
©Jim Cokas, 2021
Great Grandfather and Great Grandmother and their three sons (my grandfather Ernest is in the highchair) on their farm in New Mexico. 1902
I want to hear from you. Submit post ideas to me via email. Stories about your family’s journey to becoming American are needed now more than ever. How do you feel about your roots? How does your family paw through its myths? My hope for this blog series is that many verses, many voices, and insights will be explored here. Let’s talk about food, music, culture, invasive species, and even family trees if you can make that interesting in 500 -1000 words.
