Tiny Mountains

“Did you know I built this swing with your Uncle David?”

Posey stifled her laugh. Her small feet painted lines in the dirt as the porch swing rose
and fell with her Grandpa’s slow heartbeat. He began telling of an evening years ago as Posey
watched the dying sun reaching its arms over the horizon. Reaching and grabbing at anything to prolong its bedtime. The sun’s golden fingers grasped at the long wrinkles of Grandpa’s face stretching them deep and wide like canyons. Posey’s parents took her to the Grand Canyon once. She remembered standing close to the edge and peering down into the deep cavern. She wondered how deep Grandpa’s canyons were and what would happen if she fell in. Posey began counting the lines on his forehead and under his clear eyes, certain that each wrinkle was deeper than the last.

Grandpa told of what it meant to build a swing. He liked clear stories with clear parts.
The slight squeak of the swing reminded him of the crackling of his own bones. He had been a young man once, but many years had passed and many grandchildren had come. Each year
falling away as quickly as the swing rose and fell.

“Your Uncle David was about your size then.”

“My size?” That was enough to make Posey lose track of counting wrinkles. “But how
could he be my size? I’m only six and he’s so big.”

Grandpa chuckled low and soft. “He was small once. Just like everyone. I was your size
once too.”

Posey’s laugh shook the swing. “Now I know you're teasing me. You’ve always been old,
Grandpa.”

Grandpa’s eyes shrank into slivers as he smiled. He opened his mouth to talk, but
instead gave the sun a low whistle goodnight. The wooden swing creaked in reply.

His six year old granddaughter was right. He had always been old. Just as everyone
had. And just as everyone had always been young. It had nothing to do with time. The oldness
and youngness lived inside both Posey and Grandpa.

Fourteen years old. Swinging his ax up and down. The heavy earth protested as he cut
into it. The hole was almost deep enough. He traded his ax for a shovel to try and tear the
hardened surface. The earth had been so warm and welcoming in the Spring. His mom cradling the bud of warmth swelling in her middle. But now the earth closed itself up, building an outer wall against the cold. Now his mother’s stomach was flat. He set his shovel down, his hands red. He blew into his hands and was surprised to feel tears there. Real tears climbing down his face and spreading into the small grave he had dug. He wiped the tears away so his mother would not see.

Twenty three years old. The earth moving back and forth. Laughing. Too loud against
the quieted calm of the bush. All his fellow soldiers telling him to shut up with individualized
obscenities. He covered his mouth with his hand blackened with dry blood. His laugh struggled climbing up his throat and his body shook like a giggling child. He was a soldier filled with invincibility and unafraid of Sergeant Croft. Unafraid of anything. Seconds before large shells had shaken the ground. He felt dizzy and light headed. His pack weighed heavily against his back. He saw the images of his friends dispersed bodies every time he blinked. And somehow it all was funny. The anger and defeat launching out of his body in his laugh. Laughing against the stale air.

Seventy-six. The strong line on the monitor rose and fell with his wife’s heartbeat. It
beeped at the peak of every tiny mountain. Her hands were calloused and freckled and so
beautiful in his. Thinking of all the stories. All the things those hands held: ice cream, movie
theater tickets, children grown. Tracing his nose and eyebrows with her soft fingers. Each story breathing through every scar, mark, line of her body. All beautiful. He waited for her eyebrows to raise as he told her the date of the next car show. He watched her eyes, so often deep and brown like warm earth. He waited for them to open and warm him now. But her eyes were closed and her eyebrows unconcerned. All the age in her body slipped away leaving behind the girl he met fifty years ago. The girl who stole him away from his own date to dance and then kept stealing from him. Stealing his breath, his hands, his dreams, his soul. Oldness was stealing her away from him now, but the girl in the hospital bed, his love, looked so young. He touched the small curve of her jaw. Her skin was loose and wrinkled. The monitor line bounced quicker up and down until it rested flat.

And now. Swinging back and forth with his curly-haired granddaughter. Her name
escaped him. But he was happy she was not buried in the ground. Happy when she laughed.
Happy, the brown eyes of his wife looked back at him. Because the human experience is not young then old. It’s young and old. It’s then and now. It’s clean and messy. It’s back and forth then back again. Like a swing.

The sun gave its last yawn before lying beneath the horizon's blanket. The summer air
breathed hot whispers on his aging skin. He looked at Posey with her warm eyes.

“Did you know I built this swing with your Uncle David?”

Posey stifled another laugh and wondered at the oldness of Grandpa. She slipped her
tiny hand into his.