Impact
I started writing this piece a few weeks ago, but it didn’t feel right to post at the time. I returned to it yesterday morning, feeling like the time was right, before I heard the news. I will not pretend to have any special wisdom or insight in the matter, but I know that every act of love, no matter how small, to ourselves, to our loved ones, to our communities, is of vital importance, now as always.
“They want you to feel powerless and surrender and let them trample everything and you are not going to let them. You are not giving up, and neither am I. The fact that we cannot save everything does not mean we cannot save anything and everything we can save is worth saving.” -Rebecca Solnit
CW: This piece contains references to war, death, grief, and loss. Please reach out to your safe people if your feelings are becoming overwhelming. We need you.
Impact
The old woman looked out over the railing of her balcony. The sun was up, but the dew had yet to evaporate completely, making everything twinkle with glimmers of rainbow light. Or perhaps that was just her eyes. They weren’t as reliable nowadays.
Children were running around in the field. They were playing some game that seemed familiar to the woman, something she had played long ago in her own childhood. The rules forgotten but somehow still understood. They ran through the wildflowers and jumped atop the crumbled wreckage of the wall, laughing and brandishing sticks. They leaped around from stone to giant stone, not noticing or perhaps not caring what it once represented.
When the woman was younger, that wall had stood strong and tall. It had commanded fear; fear of the unknown, fear of imprisonment, fear of death. The soil around it that now sprang fertile with daisies and clover was once hard packed and barren, stained with blood.
The children played carelessly amongst the ruins, tumbling, laughing when they fell. The city beyond them, still shrouded in morning mist, no longer a looming threat. Perhaps they had heard the stories, perhaps that is why they played their game of war. Perhaps that is how nature healed, the woman thought.
The memories of those times were all around her, alive in her. The fear, the hunger, the grief. It was everywhere she looked. The children should know. They should know the cost of their freedom. They should know the names of their family members who fell here, to bring this wall down. They should know, so a wall like it would never rise again. But she didn’t want to talk about it anymore. She wanted to rest. She wanted to sit on her balcony and watch the children play among the wildflowers, listen to their laughter.
She was haunted. That was the word. She never really understood, when she was young, how the pain of some memories would never fade. She had fought. She had spilled blood. She had lost friends. She knew it was the price to pay for freedom. She never regretted it. But she had never realized that when you lived for war that long, it never really left you. She looked down at her scarred and gnarled hands. She wanted to leave the war, put it to rest. She looked at the broken wall. As broken as my old bones, she thought with a wry smile. The children were playing some other game now, searching in the rubble for insects. One of them found a shiny coin.
A very fine view, she thought to herself. Looking out at the wall that I helped destroy, watching my grandchildren play on it. No, great-grandchildren, she corrected herself. Had it really been that long? Yes. Time had a way of creeping past you when you weren’t looking. Soon there would be trees springing up, and the birds would return to nest. She wondered what her great grandchildren would see. A forest, perhaps? She closed her eyes and smiled.
In her mind’s eye, she’s back at her favorite cafe. She’s just sitting down with a cup of coffee. Then the sirens start to wail. She’s used to them at this point, so she stays to finish her cup. No use dying without having my coffee first. She pays for it too, because she knows the cafe owner, and knows the cafe owner’s children. It seems important, even though the owner is yelling at her to leave before the incoming troops close everything down. Then the first impact shakes the building around her. She runs out into the street and the cafe door is boarded up behind her, never to open again.
That coffee saved her life. It had kept her going through the long night of desperation. It had helped her fight to save the city. She had fallen in love that night too, with the man who had fought beside her, keeping his arm hooked in hers, refusing to budge, refusing to leave her behind. He had somehow produced a clean handkerchief to wipe blood from her face when she was hit by broken glass. She had used the hem of her skirt to bandage his arm where it got grazed by a bullet. They had survived the night. Then the night after that. Then the night after. Somehow, they kept waking up. Hungry, battered, scared, but alive. Fueled by the belief that hope should exist, and keep on existing, no matter the cost. What a miracle it all was. Life and love, amidst the death all around them.
The woman opened her eyes again. Yes, what a miracle it all was. Even his death was a miracle, of a kind; because it wasn’t really a death at all. She could still see his face in the face of her children, and grand children. Or she used to be able to: her eyes weren’t very good these days. She was angry with him sometimes, for leaving her with so much work to do. There was a lot of work to do after a war, when everyone was broken and grieving. When a new city needed to be built, when people needed to be healed, children housed and fed, houses cleaned and repaired, crops planted. She had done all of it. She had worked as a nurse, a farmer, a builder, a planner… she had worked until she could work no longer. But he had left her with a lot of love too.
She didn’t know when death would come for her. She had stopped worrying about it. She had carried life for long enough to not fear the moment when she could put it all down. What a gift, she thought, to have lived a full life, when so many died young. To have fallen in love. To be old, with old hands and old knees. To be here, watching the sun rise again. All that was left was to enjoy the last few years in peace. Was it years? It could be hours for all she knew. What do I know? She chuckled.
The children had stopped to rest now. They lay in the sun, pointing at the clouds, sharing a parcel of freshly baked cookies from the new bakery on the corner. A sharp crack sounded somewhere in the city, perhaps a firecracker. The woman startled, scanning the skyline for smoke, waiting for the wail of the sirens, the shake of impact. But they didn’t come. The children didn’t take any notice. They lay in the sun, scratching their bellies and rolling around like puppies, tickling each other with buttercups.
Yes, there was a lot of love, too.
Thank you for reading.
-Astrid
I love Astrid Rooke's peaceful, sad, and intellectual prose style. It's there in "Impact" just as it's always in her writing. The character of the old woman makes me wonder how a younger woman knows so much about life.