Gale
Once, when I was a child, my mother called the color of the sky cornflower.
I couldn’t have been more than four or five years old.
Craning my neck, I had stared at the unblemished field of blue overhead with perplexion, certain my eyes were broken or that this was what it meant to need glasses.
I didn’t want glasses because the kids at school would make fun of me for sure. More than they already did.
In my unsophisticated mind, cornflower should have been the color of sunshine, a bright yellow that stung my eyes and made me squint.
Corn was yellow, and surely, a cornflower must have been a flower that grew on cornstalks.
Therefore, I reasoned, my mother was mistaken.
Cornflower was certainly not a shade of blue.
It took a vast expansion of knowledge for the word association to finally correct itself. As an amateur photographer, the color spectrum and its countless blended variations were now a curiosity and a study.
Today, some twenty years beyond that youthful observance, on a balmy morning in mid-March, as I stood in a field of thigh-high grass at the far reaches of our property.
With the delicate stem of a real cornflower pinched between my fingers, I could say with absolute certainty that the sky was a perfect matching shade.
Too pale to be azure. Too light to be sapphire. Too humble to be royal.
Cornflower blue, like my mother claimed all those years ago. I wished she was around so I could tell her she was right. She would laugh at my naivety.
A spring breeze fluttered the petals and threatened the weakened stalk. I released the bloom, watching as it soared on an invisible air current for a few seconds before landing out of sight among the tall grass.
My sister would reprimand me for picking Dad’s flowers, but I was tactile. I needed to hold it and feel it and carry it with me for a time as I examined its properties. Indulge in its beauty. Inhale its essence. Compare it to the heavenly stretch above.
I returned my gaze to the sky as the warm spring air licked my cheeks. A kiss from nature. A gentle caress from the fingers of God. Maybe. Wouldn’t that be nice? He was out there. Somewhere. Everywhere. If I closed my eyes and prayed, I could almost believe He still cared.
God lived in the rustling of leaves, in the pleasant birdsong before the sun crested the horizon.
He existed in the rich scent of ozone after a rainstorm.
He inhabited the ocean, sang at the tops of mountains, and burrowed deep underground with the earthworms. But I was never quite sure if he walked beside me like the man on the beach in the poem. I wished for it.
In the neighboring field, a man’s sharp whistle pierced the quiet, and the Donahues’ dog barked, interrupting my musing. I glanced into the distance, shielding my eyes against the morning sun as I watched the hyperactive collie bound to the Donahues’ back door and slip inside the house.
Mr. Donahue waved.
I returned the greeting, self-consciously breaking eye contact first, never quite sure what the neighbors thought of me.
The Donahues’ son, Foster, was a year younger.
We’d had a shaky friendship. Considering I was always a grade ahead in school, it made sense that we had never been close.
Although I’d graduated and left for college first, Foster finished his degree before me.
Last I heard, he’d married his high school sweetheart and moved to the city for a job.
Continuing my stroll through the long grass, I refocused on the sky.
Unlike that blistering hot summer day from childhood, when the cornflower blue had stretched unbroken for as far as the eye could see, the sky today was dotted with cirrus and cirrostratus clouds.
They often signified an approaching warm front and the potential for rain.
The delicate, silky streaks filled the sky in a regular pattern of repeating commas and ripples.
I saw more than a weather forecast in the clouds. I saw unspoken beauty.
I removed the lens cap from my camera—a treasured high school graduation gift from my father—and took my time framing the shot, adjusting the aperture to ensure I captured the perfect effect and saturation before snapping a picture.
Varying a few settings, I took another, aiming for a moodier look. I wouldn’t know until I developed them if I’d succeeded. The old-school film camera was a favorite from my collection, and I’d been training myself to use it after taking an online class.
Studying the horizon, I paced thirty yards to my right and crouched, taking a similar picture from a different angle, capturing the long grass and farmland in the foreground. It took two attempts to find the perspective I wanted.
My phone buzzed with an incoming text as I replaced the lens cap. I let my camera hang from the strap around my neck and fished the device from a pocket.
The message was from Cormac, a classmate I’d met during my second and more successful round of college. Had he not dated my sister for two years, we would probably have never talked to one another. I wasn’t good at making friends.
Cormac had majored in meteorology, and I had taken atmospheric science, but due to their similar nature, we shared a handful of classes.
After graduation, Cormac had landed a starter position with the National Weather Service.
His family was well-connected, so his prospects for advancement were solid.
I had yet to seek employment or accept the handful of job offers I’d received from professor recommendations. My heart wasn’t in it. I was the most unsettled twenty-six-year-old on the planet, and beyond grateful I had an understanding father willing to house me until I sorted myself out.
Cormac and I had stayed in contact after graduation.
Rather, Cormac texted from time to time.
I rarely reached out. Olivia didn’t like that I talked to her ex, and upsetting her upset me.
Despite their failed relationship, when Cormac heard whispers about an opportunity that involved my sister’s life passion, he’d done what he could to get Olivia’s name in front of the right people.
I suspected he still loved her but minded my business and didn’t ask what had happened between them.
Cormac’s text was the update I’d been anticipating. Heads up. Word on the street is, Liv just got the news. Apparently, she’s losing her mind. I’d bet she’s on her way to see you.
As I read the message, tires crunching gravel sounded in the distance. Her speedy arrival shouldn’t have surprised me. She was practiced at racing out the door on a moment’s notice.
A car door slammed.
Half a minute later, the squeaky hinges and clunk of the back gate traveled across the field to my ears.
The wind ruffled my hair as I peered over my shoulder and watched her race across the enclosed part of the yard and hop the rickety wooden fence before swimming through the uncut grass that rose thigh-high on the other side.
My father owned seven acres of farmland on the outskirts of Elk City.
Two for the house, the gardens, the shed, and a moderate-sized equipment barn, three for farming, while the last two acres grew wild.
A gift of nature for his children. Untamed grass backed by a small forest of trees, and a creek where Olivia and I spent summers catching frogs and insects.
We had spent many hours climbing trees and playing hide-and-seek in the wild grass.
Those two acres were our playground and the one place I felt truly at home.
I texted Cormac a quick Thank you. I’ll keep you posted before returning my phone to my pocket and waiting for Olivia to catch up and deliver her news.
My sister was agile like a cat, with the effortless grace of a swan.
Tall and willowy without being gangly or awkward—those were my traits.
We were the same height—five eleven—but she managed every inch comfortably, whereas I struggled with a body that always felt too big or too small.
Like I had too many bones and not enough skin.
In high school, Olivia was the captain of the girls’ basketball team, the star athlete for track and field, and took home the championship title for women’s wrestling. She knew everyone and had dozens of friends.
I read books in the library and tried desperately to be invisible during physical education. No one liked me, and I was the butt of every joke.
Despite having shared a womb for nine months, we were as different as night and day. Her extroverted personality had always been my shield. Olivia protected me from a world where I didn’t belong.
Our mother passed away when we were young. Her death stunted my emotional growth. Olivia filled her shoes and took me under her wing, growing years older overnight.
The sun licked her tanned cheeks and highlighted her smile.
Her hair was darker than mine, leaning toward honey brown.
Mine tried to be blond but never quite hit the mark, being too dull.
My hairdresser once called it ash, but I wasn’t sure it applied.
Like cornflower as a child, the imagery didn’t land.
When I visualized ash, I saw the sooty remains of logs in a woodstove.
Silver or gray. The color wasn’t at all comparable with what I saw in the mirror.
Once Olivia was within shouting distance, she exclaimed, “You are not going to believe this.” She came to a halt a few feet away, barely out of breath, high color dotting her cheekbones. “I got a phone call from Dennis freaking Hawking.”
She brushed flyaway pieces of hair off her face where they clung to her mouth and eyelashes. She always wore it in a thick braid down her back, but finer strands, the ones that didn’t grow long enough to be included, always danced wildly about.
“I don’t know who that is.” I could guess, but Cormac hadn’t given me particulars, and I was sworn to secrecy.