"Emy, can I ask you a question?"
"Always."
"Can you lose your smile?"
"Lose your smile?"
"Yeah."
"Tell me what you mean?"
"I think I've lost my smile. See."
"Sometimes your smile just needs a rest, like a nap."
Ariel, face stoic, ponders Em's answer then adds: "I'm afraid."
"Of what?"
"It won't come back. I'm afraid my smile is gone forever."
"Oh Ariel, it will come back."
"But what if it doesn't?"
"I promise you. It will."
"Can I tell you something?"
"Sure."
"When I see you smile, it makes me sad."
"Why?"
"Because I want to smile, just like you, and I can't."
Em opened her arms and took Ariel within and the two embraced without speaking. For a long time.
13 comments:
This scene takes place in the days after John's aborted attempt to leave in the exchange for Kyra.
Oh Lord Tree, do you know how this tears at my heart? First of all because she is young and youth is supposed to mean "carefree and happy" and second, because I know how your face feels, how your spirit feels, when you are not able to smile. Novocane in the face and spirit.
Jennifer
Jen-nay, Novocain in the face and spirit sums it up really well. The face feels like a mask, like something sitting on top of your real face and no matter what you do, that mask simply won't change. But there are two stages. The first is the one you have (mask) but don't know you have it, although everyone else knows. The second is the one you know you have, no illusions and that one is not good. Ariel, precocious, has reached stage two at an age that few have the wherewith all to reach, regardless of age.
"I held my last willow flower and blew you a thousand wishes..... That you would smile again."
Magic.
If only Emy could return the favor to Ariel. Unfortunately the child like innocence is gone as well as the magic.
Read through some of the Ariel and John chapters and they make the recent chapters more painful. They were so sweet together at one time. What a loss.
I think I have bugged you enough for one evening. Off to bed in a bit. Nasty weather brewing though - not condusive to a good night's sleep. It's Mother's day tomorrow so maybe I'll get to sleep in, and be served breakfast in bed... not likely!
Jen, Happy Mother's Day.
There will be good days again and sweet days and days of love. We've just hit a bit of rough patch. Might be time to check in on Rog and Yul. They've been awful quiet of late. :-D
I'm down with checkin' in on hottielicious Yul.
I just love how Ariel puts this, though. I'm so copying Ariel the next time I'm down.
'I've lost my smile today, guys. Sorry.'
But, then I probably will smile cos I'll be thinking of Ariel and the Story.
Seriously, I love how through the character of Ariel you have come up with this way to describe this feeling. The feeling of losing your smile and not knowing if you'll ever be able to snap out of it again. That feeling of seeing other people all happy and smiling and wanting that so badly and it making you feel worse cos you just can't get there. I love this. I really do. It's frailing awesome.
Jennifer, Happy Mom's Day. You rock. xo
May you have more than just breakfast in bed...
... today and everyday.
Strumper, I wish this was one time I was creating from my imagination. To have lost your smile and for others to know it and you to know it too and to feel as if there is nothing you can do to bring it back and your only hope is that 'this too shall pass' is a horrific feeling. And by the way, words don't fix this problem and often do more harm than good. When I find out what does, I'll let you know. :-D
HAH! Strumper Dear, I didn't even get breakfast on the couch, which is where I slept because of the Storm. But my Family treated me like I was the Cat's Meow today!
tHaNk YoU for the Happy Mom's Day. You are a sweetheart!!
Oh, Tree? Is that you? Imagine seeing you on YOUR SITE!
*had to acknowledge Strumper's sweet MomDay wishes* :^D
I hope your experience with the smile-less face is of the past. I would much prefer to think of you as the grinning rascal in your thumbnail pic, kicking up your heels and flirting with the fans! And doesn't "this too shall pass" stink out loud?
Jen
Flirt, moi? Really? Oh Jen-nay. :-D
As for the smile, well, nothing a little Jack and good music can't cure. If that fails, well, there are the fans and the hard work of flirting to do. I mean, if I don't do it, who is? :-D
Current top post inspired by a massage I got this afternoon. All I can say is Pamela had the smoothest hands I've ever felt and I do mean ever. When she did my hands, all I could think was "they fit." ROTFLMAO! ;-)
Ha!
Tree.
THAT'S WHERE THAT CAME FROM!!??!
That's awesome.
Ms. Jennifer, I'm glad your day was coolness. You deserve it in massive ways. xox
Strumper, I treat myself to massages quite often and have for a number of years. I've had many great masseuses, but I swear on Papa's Folio I've never felt hands as decadently smooth as I did this afternoon. They just felt perfect and smooth, did I say that--smooth? :-D
I missed 500 as it came (apologies), many congratulations Poppet, to think of all you have created gets me straight slap bang in the heart every time.
Deep blissful sigh, you are the one person who draw so many from deep within. To read this chapter and understand that once again with such an exquisite sense and touch you've taken something large and shown the corner and somehow in doing so made it even more potent. Beautifully done is the direct contrast between the adult speaking freely, or at least as she intends in a one on one interview, with understanding and hindsight and words with which she is able to, as best she can, describe the shadows and the child, who says it as it is and though she told the right, one of the right, people, at the same time there arises a great sense of sadness for will anyone probe, will anyone say what she needs to hear, will anything said or done be what she needs to change things around. Knowing what we know, we know too that there was not, but again, don't we all have memories such as this, where we have attempted to say something, where words have been simple and direct, as losing a smile and being afraid it will never return, and if answered, answered then with something like Em's says - what else could she say - as she assures Ariel that of course it, her smile, will return. How we get cloaked so heavily in words, simple is so often the right and the best way. You do this so well, I can only think of the perfection of nature when I want to compare you to something, every night the sun sets the same way, performs the same action, the waves roll onto the beach, the branches blow in the wind, raindrops fall from the sky and each spring flowers bloom everywhere. Everything in some thing, one and all.
Like those things, Ariel's words evoke an emotional response, her simple statement (question) tugs so, it will be one of those last forgotten, forever remembered.
I love so the words you write.
Sunshine, if you keep telling me how simple my writing is I'm going to develop a complex or overreact and start writing overcomplicated tripe that no one can understand. :-D
I suppose when I have an idea I want to express, my mind goes straight to the end, to that moment where you forget you are breathing. Then again, because I've already imagined the scene in my own mind, perhaps, I don't feel the need to flesh out everything I've already seen so I just cut to the chase. But the truth is this. I really have no idea. I just write in the moment and what you see and what you see. :-D
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