Feathers

Feathers Amy Sickels Consider: the power of my own memory is not understood by me, and yet apart from it I cannot even name myself. —St. Augustine, "A Philosophy of Memory" In one of Ovid's myths, the gods Jupiter and Mercury travel through the land of Phrygia, disguised as beggars and testing human compassion by asking strangers for food and shelter. Doors are repeatedly slammed in their faces. FinaUy, at the poorest ofhomes, they are invited inside.An old couple, Baucis and Philemon, feed the gods what little food they have, and Jupiter and Mercury are pleased.To punish the rest ofPhrygia, they flood the land, but they save Baucis and Philemon, and grant them one wish.The husband and wife ask that neither of them wiU have to live alone, that they may die together. Baucis and Philemon live for many more years, but one day their bodies begin to change: their arms and legs grow long and smooth, like young tree limbs, and they reach to touch each other with the twigs that have become their fingers.The wrinkles ofBaucis's skin deepen like grooves, and her muscles and bones turn into fibrous, sinewy strands ofsapwood and heartwood. Philemon grows taU, the strips of bark hanging from his head like braids, branches and twigs webbing from his body. Heart-shaped and feather-lobed leaves sprout from their skin, unfurling from their eyes and ears and hands. Roots grow together, winding into the earth, and the massive trunks lean into each other and merge. Their strong, wood-stuffed, bark-lined bodies carry the weight ofa crown ofgreen foliage.They are transformed: two different trees, an oak and a linden that grow from a single trunk, their bodies forever intertwined. 73 74Fourth Genre The last time I saw my grandmother in her own house—an old, spacious, drafty place that she and my grandfather refused to leave—she was curled up on the couch. Her cotton nightgown exposed her skinny pale legs, the color of a fish's beUy and her hair frizzed into a wild and weedy gray Afro. Her arthritic hands were sUghtly curled, fingers sore and red, and her mouth hung partly open. "Mick, wake up," Grandpa called out. "Hey Mick." "Dad, just let her sleep," my mother said. Grandma opened her foggy eyes. She was confused and angry:"Mark, stop that yeUing." Then she yawned, her tiny mouth opened like a baby's, and stretched her arms in an awkward position, as ifshe didn't know 'what to do with them, as if overnight they had turned into strange, new appendages. I sat beside her. "Hi Grandma." She turned light-hearted, casual. "What's shaking, Amy Beth?" Grandpa and Mom discussed her condition—how much did she eat today, which piUs did she take, what time did she get up, did she remember where the bathroom was, did she bathe—and Grandma and I sucked on hardtack candy and commented on the rain. She asked me, as usual, ifI was stiU going to school at Ohio University, even though I'd been Uving in Pennsylvania for the past three years. I can't remember exactly what I said to her during that precious 20 or 30 minutes, but I know it wasn't anything important: "Grandma, you're so skinny, look how skinny, do you want something to eat, do you want another piece of candy, how about potato chips, do you want a glass ofpop, is there anything you want, Grandma, what can I get for you?" The visit was short. When I hugged her good-bye, she laughed. I guess she thought I was being dramatic. She thought we would have a thousand good-byes. But I knew. My grandmother Mary Adel Lohr, 85, died on July 14, 1998. The doctors said that she died from a severe chest infection, respiration complications , and dementia. I believe the latter is the most accurate: I beUeve my grandmother died because she no longer could remember. Mini-strokes damage the brain's blood vessels, and as a result, the mind eventually deteriorates from vascular dementia, a close relative of Alzheimer's disease. The strokes are so...