She Lay There Sleeping

That years of love have been forgot
In the hatred of a minute
— Edgar Allan Poe, To —

Whatever is has already been,
and what will be has been before;
and God will call the past to account.
— Ecclesiastes 3.15

She lay there sleeping, the sun shining bright on her face, glistening through her hair. She wore her favorite dress with her plastic toy ponies scattered around her as if they were waiting for her to wake up. They needed her so that they could run and play once more. The cool autumn wind blowing through her hair moved a few strands around, but for the most part they all stayed put in her ponytail. Her father stood there, watching her sleep.

He loved her.

He smiled as he remembered the summers where he tried to spend every minute of the day with her, free from the constraints of having to be somewhere for work. His job as a Special Education teacher at a small school in a small New Hampshire town, afforded him the freedom in the summers to do so.

On the other hand, her mother had a very full-time job working as a manager of a small bank about 80 miles from their home. Since there's not much work for a Special Education teacher outside of the school year, and far from the nearest city filled with other employment opportunities, he had plenty of time to give to his daughter. He supplemented their income the best he could by tutoring a few students throughout the summer, but that was only once a week for a couple of hours in the mornings. It could hardly be considered a part-time job let alone anything meaningful for the family income.

Her mother, though, worked 60-hour weeks bringing in the majority of the household income through her job even when her father was busy with a fresh school year. She never said it, but she resented the fact her husband got to spend so much time with their daughter and mostly doing nothing worthwhile in her eyes while she sacrificed her time and life at work for them all. Tired most days and frustrated, her mother began to keep distance from them both, slowly tearing her apart from the family. In the shadows of relief and regret, she had met another man and found a burgeoning happiness with him that extended her hours away from her husband and daughter. It was, of course, a secret. But time away from this new love drew her attention away from the reality of home life in the evenings and stirred suspicion in her husband.

Since they had such different jobs, her parents had never been able to take time off together. At least her mother was never able to get time off in the summers due to her demanding workload, so summer vacations usually consisted of daughter and father taking a week-long trip wherever they felt like going. Living in New Hampshire, nature provided plentiful opportunity for outdoor adventures with most options involving hiking. A couple summers ago, the two of them went kayaking down the Connecticut River, got lost, and had to hike four miles through wooded mountain terrain in search of civilization, all the while carrying the kayak and paddles, a tough task for an eight-year-old and her almost forty-year-old father. His daughter never complained though. She loved her father and their misadventures.

Last year, for her 10th birthday, her father bought her a baseball glove along with her yearly stock of plastic toy ponies and school clothes, both of which would be worn down through use just in time to get more a year later. Once the snow melted and the mud dried, the two of them began going out to the rundown baseball diamond at the edge of town. They would run and laugh and get dirty, starting their day playing catch but quickly evolving into more elaborate gameplay that took unique forms every day.

As summer progressed, they had to figure out unspoken schedules with others who used the field. At first, they had to wait for the old men to get done with their daily morning exercise routines on the field. Then, various games involving angst-driven high schoolers and college kids who are home for the summer would randomly occur midday. They soon learned that the activity died down by late afternoon, so they spent evenings playing in the field and forgetting to make dinner on time for the days his wife returned home weary and ready to do anything but make dinner herself. After some arguments, her father grew accustomed to making dinner around three in the afternoon for the family and leaving it in the oven to stay warm until her mother got home. Consequently, her mother became accustomed to dry chicken and crusty rice.

The late summer afternoons meant a lot to both father and daughter. The cool breezes split the waters of mugginess as they played, the smells of flowers and sounds of the nearby river embedded this time and moment in their minds forever. The extended hours of daylight provided more time for them to explore, to talk, to sit together in silence, altogether growing in love together.

Near the end of summer, the bank her mom worked at grew large enough to hire more people in management positions, freeing her for some much needed vacation time. A time to reset and reconnect, she thought. They all decided to go to a favorite spot near the Franconia Notch about an hour away. On the drive there the radio provided mostly static, so they continued without it, allowing the muted roar of tires on asphalt and rushing air through slightly opened windows to replace the need for conversation. There had been tension between mother and father for the past year that mostly went unspoken. With both of them spending very little time together, quiet resentments pierced their hearts and pulled them apart. Their daughter was happy if only because they were going on another adventure, yet she still chose to ignore the discomfort she felt when her parents were together but couldn’t fully understand.

Their old station wagon made it up the mountain sure enough despite the heavy need for a fixed transmission, another issue that caused frustration and anger between them. She wanted it fixed quickly by an actual mechanic. He wanted to wait until the school year started so the kids in the high school auto club could work on it. They arrived at their camp site and immediately split up into different tasks to catch their breath after suffocating in the resentment of the trip there. Dad began setting up the new tent. Mom prepared the camp kitchen and cooked dinner. Daughter tried her best to catch frogs instead of stepping on them. Mom and Dad worked silently separately, avoiding eye contact as much as verbal interaction. Their daughter was dragged into their invisible fight as worry and stress built up inside her.

When dinner was finished, hot dogs and baked beans, they all enjoyed a tense, quiet night together disturbed only by various questions and thoughts their daughter spoke out into camp. Thoughts about frogs, about trees, about various insects flew out unreciprocated. Sometimes her parents would smile at her, but, preoccupied by their own thoughts of anger towards one another, never spoke. After dinner they continued to nonverbally communicate despair. Mother cleaned and father got back to setting up the tent, still confused at how everything about the tent was supposed to work, how the tent poles were to connect through the fabric to build a shelter for them, to create a safe environment for them all.

As night drew darker and bedtime arrived, her father placed her in her sleeping bag and kissed her forehead. “I love you,” he said to her. She smiled back and said, “love you too.” She rolled over on her side, away from her father, hugging a small pink pony that bore the scars of rough play. He sat next to her and watched her breathing slow into what he consider sleep. He gathered himself and left the tent.

Outside, in the darkness, an argument kindled by years of neglect caught fire. They argued about everything that night, letting loose all that haunted them for years that they had avoided talking about. Everything they hated about each other, everything they hated about their life together, found an outlet through argument. News about the other man broke out in an attack on her husband’s failures. Resentment at his wife’s absence and distance struck back. As the flames of the fight grew, they tried taking the argument further from camp, using a flashlight to guide them through the mountainous terrain, away from their daughter to not wake her or scare her, unafraid of any wildlife that hid in the shadows. But the more they walked, the louder they became.

Their daughter, alone in her sleeping bag in the emptiness of the tent, awake and scared, hated it. She tried burying her head in her pillow to hide from the awful grinding sound but found no relief. At last, she got up and ran from camp, in the opposite direction of the fire.

There was no moon out that night.

Her father began bawling, tears streaming down his face, his breath loudly heaving. The preacher finished with a moment of silence. Her father stared at his sleeping daughter carefully, not wanting to lose this moment, allowing his love and guilt to share time and space.

Her mother wasn't there.