Memorial Day Derecho, and: Inside Happiness Factory World of Coca-Cola

Memorial Day Derecho

(a derecho is a windstorm accompanied by a severe thunderstorm)

If a bird frightens a pregnant woman, her child will be born with a wing. Which explains his feathers, the claws, the downy neck. He snipped my redbreast every two hours for weeks, so perhaps I am the bird, a robin leaning over his open mouth, arranging each stick of hair for pictures. But I never nested. When he was born, I never bit into a cloud to sing a song for the whole forest to hear. So maybe I'm a mealworm brimming blood. Or a plastic shard of a soda ring tucked into the nest-wall.

If I am a bird, then he is a tree. No. He is a bird and I am a tree:

my tumble of hair a dark canopy-crown from the sun,my heartwood thrummed to bear any weight abovemy rooted feet. And perhaps maybe decades from now,

as he hikes the Adirondacks and pauses to tie his boot—maybe he will look up and up—he might remember how he oncereached for me those early days with outstretched arms—reached for the xylem, the phloem, the dangle of nut-bud and bloom.

Inside Happiness Factory World of Coca-Cola

Atlanta, Georgia

Everything about flying in an airplane is a miracle.The lift of hull and metal. Our collective breath heldin a can. When my red suitcase actually makes it backto me in Buffalo, I am amazed no one has stolen

the shark puppet I've brought home. When you forgetthe taste of soil under fingernails, it's time to land.We make our own happiness. I have been too long withoutthis land. My husband farmed and planted rows

of staked tomatoes—a hundred hearts—some splitfrom too much sun, some still green and growing.The first time I flew without my son, my chest pulsedtwo hot discs of pain whenever I heard a baby cry.

I never told anyone this. We make our own happiness.I just smiled at the babies, fighting the urge to lift upmy blouse right then and there. And my crooked smileis now my son's: our bottom teeth do not line up

with our top teeth, but when we smile, we smile bigand bright. We make our own happiness. The final productcomes to us on a conveyer belt. Each light green bottle fullof fizz-pop and syrup—no machine could ever cap it.