PIE IN THE SKYE

by Lynn Alison Trombetta

Preface

I’ve never worried about my age, yet I’ve always been very conscious of the passage of time. There’s always been a sense of, “Wait, slow down, something important may be overlooked” and then often, the regretful feeling of longing for the chance to go back, see the things I missed and really absorb the lessons that present themselves in every waking moment.
In my twenties and thirties I raised two sons and was very busy with the “busy-ness” of life. Still, something not quite remembered was ever present. A longing for something that seemed to have slipped away, just out of reach in my present life whispered in my mind.
When the boys were grown, I returned to a previous interest of music. I began performing on flute with my future husband, guitarist Rick Cyge. We named our duo Meadowlark and performed original nature-inspired compositions for audiences around the country. It quickly became apparent that the music contained some “magic ingredient” that filled in the gaps of some long forgotten places inside for the listener. The satisfaction of sharing in this way has lifted us airborne and carried us along in our dream for nearly ten years. Still, in the fall of 2001, my longing for that “forgotten something” became overwhelming.
Then, while walking on the prairie in Northern Arizona with my six-year-old grandson, I recalled the words he said to me when he was only three. “We were old once together”, he had said. “We sat on the porch in the country. And we laughed and rocked together. It was simple. Laughing and rocking was all we ever needed.” Remembering his words caused a sudden cascade of longing for a more simple time. I reveled in the pure creative imagination he danced with as we walked and he led me to a place where he and his friends had thought they’d seen a UFO.
The concept of “something forgotten”, some “magic” just out of reach called to me from somewhere deep inside. The unbridled imagination of my childhood must surely be the key. More than the memory of the words he’d spoken, it was the connection I felt to all time and all things when I looked into his eyes in that moment that launched the story of “Pie in the Skye.”
I’d just completed my first draft when the September 11th terrorist attacks rocked our sense of safety and reality. I remember the sense of burrowing away in a darkened room and escaping into the possibilities of my own creative imagination. It was this deep searching that revealed to me, once again, the magic and the miracle that is life itself. I hope “Pie in the Skye” brings you comfort and leads the way to your own path, your own part in our ever-changing world.

Most of all, I hope you remember the wonder of it all!

- Lynn
 

All grown-ups were once children - although few of them remember it.
ANTOINE DE SAINT - EXUPERY

Chapter One: "The Longing"

“Honest, Grandma!” six year old Jeremy announces. “We saw the UFO. It was round. It was white and then it was red!” His eyes shine bright with moonlit excitement. “They went to a field by our house and killed a cow. That’s what they always do! Then they take the head bones and the butt bones away and they keep them high on a shelf on the wall where they live.”
I decide not to question him further on this as he stares deep into my eyes. I’m sure that it is only his imagination fueled by a low flying aircraft or other easily explained encounter.

He has been a creative spirit since the day of his birth. That nursery incubator held a most precious cargo. The tiny being clinging to life was clothed only in a soft blue cap knitted by hospital volunteers. As I peered in through the clear side of his bed, he opened the little slits where his eyes were hidden. In one sparkling moment we were connected to each other in the fullest sense. It was pure, instant love.
He has grown healthy and strong and his imagination is one of the things I love most about him. He is bravely creative and brilliantly playful. As he stands before me, waiting for my response, I fall into the innocence of those eyes and longing washes over me.

I want to go there with him, into his imagination and escape the harried, complicated life I have. Oh, to go to where the sunflowers are taller than I am and the clouds are the shapes of my favorite animals! I long to muse the orange dragonfly on a rock in the wide part of the creek. The crystal clear creek where my toes look fat and round when I dip them into the cool, still water.
Most of all, I want to find my way back to the wonder of it all.

“Look Grandma. I’ll show you,” he insists. He leads me by the hand across the rural road near his home and into the field where the cows graze every morning. I feel youthful with him, rediscovering the world at every turn. As we pick our way across the darkness and prairie grass shadows, stepping around small pools of rain left by the afternoon’s thunderstorm, he stops.
“It was right here,” he gestures at the raw earth. “I saw them take the bones!”
Jeremy tugs at my arm. “Grandma! Are you listening?”
I nod, shaking away a distant childhood memory of innocent times. I wish he could experience the world the way it was when I was a child instead of this world he’s growing up in now, the world I’m growing old in. How I wish I could go back in time and take him with me, if only for a little while.
“Look!” He points at a strange hieroglyph scored into the flat face of a large rock outcropping. Tufts of purple sage wedge up through crevices between the mass. “Grandma! What letter is that?” Crusty blue-green shawls of scaly lichen cling to the rocks and an eerie moonlit mist cloaks the newly discovered symbol as it changes shape right before my eyes!
“I - I don’t know, Jeremy.” I glance quickly around. I suddenly feel so vulnerable in the darkness that surrounds us. My senses are acute. I can smell every blade of dried prairie grass and crushed sage leaf. I hear the soft whisper of low breezes through the crevices in the rocks. The blanket of stars above us is dizzying in its vastness. My heartbeat pounds in my ears as I search the heavens and wonder if what Jeremy had said he’d seen was real.
Jeremy breaks my thoughts with a playful grin (sans the tooth we pulled earlier today) as he climbs onto the flat rock. “C’mon, Grandma”. He lies down. “Make an X with your body,” he throws his arms and legs wide. “It’s the only way to signal them that we just really want to play!”
“Them?” I think to myself. The rock is an easy climb and I lie down next to him, making the required X. The horizonless ocean of space above us takes my breath away. Soft breezes caress my face and the rock is cool and hard against my spine, instantly comforting and reassuring me with the feeling of earth as my support.

“Tic”....”tic”....”tic.”..

My senses begin to focus on a soft, rhythmic sound, like the dripping of water from the very tip of a melting icicle. We raise our eyes to the large, waxy white flower of the night blooming cactus that fences the backside of our resting rock. A bead of clear fluid gathers on the lip of a lower flower petal. It swells and then drops slowly, heavy as honey onto the rock below.
I reach back and put out a finger to catch the next drop as it expands. It isn’t falling in time and rhythm with the others, but instead grows larger and larger. At last it breaks free and floats gently down, like a beautiful soap bubble toward my hand. How enchanting!
We sit up straight to admire this crystal sphere as it comes to rest softly into my cupped palms. Together we stare into the reflections of our faces, there in rainbow moonlight. Jeremy is smiling at our images and the last thing that I see before the bubble disappears into the air is the reflection of my own face as it was when I was six.