Dust

The world is being ground to bits. Dust from that friction spirals in the sunlight before me, a galaxy of gleaming specks. With a steady fall that might sound, if amplified, like tribal drumming, dust settles onto the dark walnut surface of the table where I sit on our front porch. Night and day, indoors and out, the rain of infinitesimal debris never ceases. My family and I make our share by tracking dirt into the house, shredding lint from sheets and rugs and clothes, shedding hair and skin, nicking the woodwork, burning loaves by accident and logs on purpose. In the corners of hallways, beneath our beds and couches, behind our dressers, fluff gathers in wispy clouds. Through our windows the breeze delivers soil from plowed fields, soot from fires, ash from volcanoes, spew from cars and trucks, the spawn of bacteria, the spores of plants, the grit of meteors and quarries and mines, the down of birds, slivers of insects, scraps of whatever is broken, abraded, blown. Sitting here on the porch, warming my hands on a cup of tea, I swallow bits of world with every breath.

I am brooding about dust because my neighbor Malcolm and his family have just driven off to a nearby woods, where they will scatter the ashes of his mother, who died last week. Her name was Jane, this beaming, boisterous woman who shone like a lantern. I first encountered her several years ago, at a concert in the park. My wife and kids and I were chewing chicken and listening to the music when Jane crawled onto our blanket in pursuit of a roving grandchild. Age had whitened her hair and thickened her torso and charged her smile with a disarming radiance. She took a breather in our midst, inquiring about us between puffs. When she found out that we lived next door to her son, she told us gaily, “Oh, that Malcolm, he was a mistake. Born years and years after I thought I’d had my last child. He was a mistake, all right. Best one I ever made!” She laughed uproariously, proof that she had recovered breath. Excusing herself, she crawled off in search of the child. Her white hair flared among the darker heads of the crowd.