Kathleen Van Cleve - Drizzle

Table of Contents

The mist is back.

As soon as I step outside the castle, I see it: a tiny cloud of green mist, swirling above the lake under the weeping cherry blossom tree, dragonflies zipping in and out as if theyre sewing it together with some kind of invisible sparkling thread.

It makes my heart almost stop, if you want to know the truth.

Almost four years ago, I saw this same kind of mist stretch across our entire lake. That time, Grandmom had just died and the farm was going crazy.

Today, Im not sure whats going on. Today, everything seems okay. The rest of the lake is perfectly flat, perfectly blue. I look quickly around the fields, toward the White House and the castle, toward the Giant Rhubarb field and the place where the chocolate rhubarb grows. Everything looks fine, normal.

I peer closer at the mist, which is tucked in the corner of the lake under the truly weeping cherry blossom tree, in my special place. It isnt like a normal, all-over-the-place mist. Its smallsmall enough that it seems like you could pick it up with your arms if you were careful. Grandmom taught me that dragonflies are born in the water, and they have their nymph stage there. Even after they grow up and fly all over the place, they return to the lake, because its their home. She said dragonflies were made up almost completely of water. Nature does nothing in vain, Polly, make sure you remember that. These dragonflies know everything there is to know about this lake; they spend their childhoods in the water, shed tell me. Any questions, you ask them. They love children. Then she sighed. Naturally, they think most adults are idiots.

Grandmom was the person who first showed me all the fantastical things about our rhubarb farmthe truly weeping cherry blossom tree, the ruby flowers that cluster in the Learning Garden, the lake that never drowns anyoneso I had no reason to doubt what she said about dragonflies. Plus I was seven, which means that you believe everything everyone says, especially adults, all the time.

Grandmom died soon after that, so I never told her that the dragonflies didnt love me and that I didnt love them. After all, dragonflies are bugs, and as a rule, I dont like bugs, even though I live on a farm where theyre literally everywhere.

Now that Im eleven I know I should have expected Grandmom to dieshe was old and she had cancer and besides, like Charlotte in Charlottes Web says, everyone dies. But I didnt get it then. Grandmom kept playing hide-and-seek with me in the Learning Garden and teaching me about rhubarb plantings on Mondays, so I figured that she was sick in the same way that I got sickthat is, she would get better after a lot of sleep and orange juice.

But then, on one rainy Monday afternoon, the twentieth of September, I found her, lying faceup, in between the P and E of the PEACE maze. The toes of her silly slippers pointed up to the gray sky as rain washed over her cheeks. I turned to see that all around us the rhubarb plants swished their wide green leaves over their heads, pointing to her body. The lake began to roar as if there was a windstorm, even though there wasnt. I turned back to Grandmom and begged.

Then I saw the tips of tiny glittering diamonds popping out of the ground, outlining Grandmoms body. Thats when I knew. Grandmom loved the farm so much it was like she breathed it in and it became her lungs and mind and heart. I knew the farm was honoring her by sprouting the tiny diamonds. I knew I should have been in awe of the magic spinning around her. But all I could think of was that she was dead.

My grandmom was dead.

I kept waiting for her to open her eyes and tell me something like Dont fall into the slugs or Rhubarb is almost as pretty as cabbage! But her eyes stayed shut, and I felt deep in my bones that everything was going to change. I wanted something huge and terrible to happenI wanted an earthquake to rumble and smash everything: the buildings and the castle and the trucks and the Umbrella. I wanted to fall into the roaring lake and sink to the bottom.

But the ground stayed still. The plants bent over and flapped their leaves good-bye. Flies and bumblebees and spiders and dragonflies fluttered around her, even in the rain. And I stayed there, holding on to her hand, as the tiny tips of the diamonds glittered. She wore her emerald ring, and I wore mine. We had a lot in common, Grandmom and me. We loved the farm. We preferred to be outside. We both had crooked index fingers on our right hands. And we were crazy about the rhubarb on our farm that tasted like chocolate.

I loved Grandmom with every bit of my heart.

For about a week after she died, I did odd, maniac kinds of things: I smacked a rhubarb plant and it smacked me back, I yanked out some of the rubies from the Learning Garden, I threw cinderblocks as hard as I could against the castle walls. Mom tried to helpshe put her strong, wiry arms around me as we sat by the weeping cherry blossom tree, thinking, I guess, that if she could hold me in, keep my jittery energy from exploding, Id start to get over Grandmoms death. Instead, I jumped away from her, away from the tears of the tree, and leaped into the lake, wishing more than anything that things could die in our lake, that it was possible to drown even when I knew full well that nothing ever died inside of it.

Eventually I pulled myself out, not even noticing until hours later that my emerald ringthe gift from Grandmom herselfhad slipped off of my finger. Mom was waiting for me with a big towel and a sad face. I wanted to make her feel better, but I couldnt. I had a riptide swirling inside of me.

I went to my turret that night, and stared out the window. Grandmom had been dead six days, and the lake was still turbulent, the plants at half-mast. I thought that maybe everything was going to die without Grandmomthe plants, the trees, my family, me.

But the next day I awoke to find the green mist spread across the entire lake, with what seemed like millions of dragonflies threading their invisible fabric. Beatrice, our chefand basically our second motherbrought me breakfast and told me that she thought the mist was like the farms coat of armor, and that the dragonflies were making it even stronger by sewing their trail of sparks in it. They were making us a shield, in other words, so that our farm would be safe.

It worked. Aunt Edith blew through our house that very night.

Remember the great author Willa Cather, Polly, Aunt Edith commanded as she breezed in. She said, I shall not die of a cold. I shall die of having lived. She reached down and hugged me quickly, then straightened up. Trust me, she said. Everything will be okay. Now where can I put my coat?

By the next morning, the mist had disappeared. The plants had lifted their leaves and the lake calmed down, and by noon the clouds had gathered and the sky had turned gray. And just like every Monday of my life, it rained at precisely one oclock.