The God of Endings

by Jacqueline Holland

The most buzzingly alive a person will ever be they are at three, four, five years old. Preschool is a line drive, a Slip ’N Slide, a mad dash to something else. Enjoy, but do not get attached. Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow it all slips away to puberty and acne and angst. Once it’s gone, forget it. New students are at the door, and we begin again.

It seems, unfortunately, that nothing can protect you from your own mind, your knowledge, your memories. The harder you fight to keep thoughts out, the harder they pound the battering ram to get in.

The baby gazes up at me, her pink petal lips sucking at the bottle, her glossy eyes dark and thoughtful. Her fingers—so small and intricate with creases and dimples and fingernails—would require the finest round brush to paint in their delicate detail.

I feel a strange nettling uneasiness, almost tearfulness, that I can’t quite place. I feel … afraid. That’s what it is, fear. I’m afraid for this child, this helpless, vulnerable child, and, in a strange way, I’m afraid of her, afraid of the power she has, precisely by her defenselessness, to bring pain, such terrible pain, to those who love her.

What were her parents thinking, bringing something so vulnerable into this world of crimes and accidents, predators and catastrophes?

Closer. Painting is a recursive process. You make an attempt, which is almost never it, so you make another attempt right on top of the first. It gets you closer, or it gets you farther. Either way, you attempt again. Somewhere between five and forty attempts, you find it. The shape you were searching for. To get it right the first time would be an incredible fluke, like a hole in one on a golf course; a pat on the back would be in order, but only a fool would approach the next tee expecting such lucky results again.

I’m hungry. I’m restless. I’m lonely. I’m scared. I am each of these things to what seems an unendurable degree; these feelings keep me chained to my body, to the reality of my life, the physical space around me; they deny me entry into the other reality of the work.

“What are you doing here, white woman?”

Awesome