One Summer in Savannah

by Terah Shelton Harris

Forgiveness is giving up the hope that the past could be any different. —Oprah Winfrey

The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong. —Mahatma Gandhi

“forgiveness…is like a door. You can open yourself up to it or close yourself off from it at any time.” Forgiveness can be a powerful tool. It can loosen the knots we often tie ourselves. It can bandage up wounds, large and small. It can heal traumas, visible and invisible. But withholding forgiveness can also cause more harm than good. It can tighten its grip on you and keep you bound to the person who hurt you.

The truth is, my love for her started much later, when the reality of her conception had faded enough for me to see only her, when I realized that she, like me, was a survivor.

signaling that it was normal for me to love her and reminding me over and over again that having her was well worth the emotional cost.

One thing is for sure: she is all him and none of me. And that single thought terrifies me.

Alana possesses the intensity of someone far beyond her eight years. She is already stronger, more determined, more driven than I was when I had her at eighteen, like she is living her life at a faster clip than everyone else.

Being a mother is a lesson in impossible love.

This cowardice embarrasses and shames me. I know I shouldn’t be afraid of my past, but I am.

Every day, the tide rolls out, new water rolls in, with no memory of yesterday, a fitting refuge.

his accent a topography of dropped consonants and stretched vowels.

I would rather sleep on this boat than ask for their help.

I understood. I’m more comfortable in the stars than I am on Earth, where I feel as if I’m stumbling about with my shoes on the wrong feet.

I was safe in the stars. Safe from her face. Safe from Daniel’s, my family’s, the truth’s light.

She calls me to do this, to follow the instruction of my other new friend, the bookstore owner.

There are too many unknown unknowns in the stars, Daniel once said. As Wylers, that idea encourages, inspires us.

We come alive at night. The moon, our sun. As children, we stayed up too late, our eyes glued to our telescope, trying to spot ever-more-distant stars and planets.

“David.” I blanch at the use of my given name. “Jacob, please,” I remind her.

I absorb her rejection, which hurts more than I expected, and search her eyes for a trace of maternal love, but they are as empty and wanting as the gnats flying around us.

We are a broken family of five, divided by two, remainder of one.

After we pick up our car, we are off on the three-and-a-half-hour drive to Savannah.

Trauma doesn’t punch a clock, but you can set your watch by it. It works overtime most of the time. But it can be smothered like a whisper in a storm.

I’m so calm that it scares me, like it’s not really me driving, not really me in the car, like I’m operating on autopilot.

“It is up to us to give reason and purpose to events that would otherwise be meaningless and arbitrary,”

I’m versed in the art of pretending.

Trauma changes you, hardens you, leaves its scars.

“No.” Two simple letters. A complete sentence. Nothing more.

Her fascination with time aids her obsession with them.

Did no one realize the consequences of boredom in a gifted child?”

“Parents of mentally abled children don’t know how to interact with their children. Does the girl exhibit any abnormal social challenges?”

“Doubt thou the stars are fire, Doubt that the sun doth move, Doubt truth to be a liar, But never doubt I love.”