by Sue Zueger
There are no guard rails on Norwood Hill. The first time I experience the climb from the San Miguel River Canyon to Wright’s Mesa, I make the mistake of looking over the edge. At 7000 feet above sea level, the world is all pitch and angle, all crag, red rock, sagebrush, and pine.
I gasp. I close my eyes. I visualize tragedy in its many forms: icy roads, rain-drenched pavement, hydroplaning, all that would send my daughter’s Kia flying into the abyss.
The first time she drives us down Norwood Hill, this time hugging the mountainside, I consider the rocks that balance there, some behind mesh, most just loose and waiting for a fateful seismic shift.
“I hate Norwood Hill,” I proclaim.
“No one likes Norwood Hill,” she says with one hand on the steering wheel, completely forgetting the ten and two, my dad taught her.
The myth starts with Persephone alone, picking wildflowers in a field. Poppies astonish the green and yellow grass, cause a commotion in her veins. Until now the world has only been Mother, only defined by Mother. Even the Sun keeps his rays off the girl’s shoulders. Even the licking ocean waves stop below her knees.
But Persephone tires of the confines her mother has made for her. She wishes to venture beyond the shores where she digs in the sand, where she builds colossal fortresses surrounded by deep moats fed from the ocean. She tells her mother lies and runs through the meadows with the nymphs.
While Persephone plucks the red poppies, the mountain clefts. Someone has been watching. He takes her beyond her mother’s reach. She’s not afraid of him, not sad, ready for adventure.
Her mother, Demeter, shuts down the earth – rain stops, sun hides, wheat dies. Zeus works out the details: Persephone will be returned to her mother.
Does her mother know she ate the pomegranate seed on purpose? Does Demeter know Persephone wants a life that bridges the precipice of death and life?
When my daughter shoves my fear aside, I am all astonish, all wide eyes, all surprise. Who are you, daughter? Where have you gone? I remember all the times I put up mesh to stop the avalanche of pain I didn’t want her to feel. I remember the conversation with the mother of the boy who asked to see her boobies. I remember the angry knocking, doorbelling to reprimand the neighbor and her lunging dog.
Norwood Hill terrifies me as we descend, heading to Telluride where my daughter makes big decisions for San Miguel County. Lily shifts into third, doesn’t think about whatever the red quartzite could send her way, doesn’t think too far past right now. She is always daughter, always goddess. Not prisoner, not kidnapped, at least not by fear, not now. The hill, the mountain is alive, and so is she.
I gasp. I close my eyes. I visualize tragedy in its many forms: icy roads, rain-drenched pavement, hydroplaning, all that would send my daughter’s Kia flying into the abyss.
The first time she drives us down Norwood Hill, this time hugging the mountainside, I consider the rocks that balance there, some behind mesh, most just loose and waiting for a fateful seismic shift.
“I hate Norwood Hill,” I proclaim.
“No one likes Norwood Hill,” she says with one hand on the steering wheel, completely forgetting the ten and two, my dad taught her.
The myth starts with Persephone alone, picking wildflowers in a field. Poppies astonish the green and yellow grass, cause a commotion in her veins. Until now the world has only been Mother, only defined by Mother. Even the Sun keeps his rays off the girl’s shoulders. Even the licking ocean waves stop below her knees.
But Persephone tires of the confines her mother has made for her. She wishes to venture beyond the shores where she digs in the sand, where she builds colossal fortresses surrounded by deep moats fed from the ocean. She tells her mother lies and runs through the meadows with the nymphs.
While Persephone plucks the red poppies, the mountain clefts. Someone has been watching. He takes her beyond her mother’s reach. She’s not afraid of him, not sad, ready for adventure.
Her mother, Demeter, shuts down the earth – rain stops, sun hides, wheat dies. Zeus works out the details: Persephone will be returned to her mother.
Does her mother know she ate the pomegranate seed on purpose? Does Demeter know Persephone wants a life that bridges the precipice of death and life?
When my daughter shoves my fear aside, I am all astonish, all wide eyes, all surprise. Who are you, daughter? Where have you gone? I remember all the times I put up mesh to stop the avalanche of pain I didn’t want her to feel. I remember the conversation with the mother of the boy who asked to see her boobies. I remember the angry knocking, doorbelling to reprimand the neighbor and her lunging dog.
Norwood Hill terrifies me as we descend, heading to Telluride where my daughter makes big decisions for San Miguel County. Lily shifts into third, doesn’t think about whatever the red quartzite could send her way, doesn’t think too far past right now. She is always daughter, always goddess. Not prisoner, not kidnapped, at least not by fear, not now. The hill, the mountain is alive, and so is she.
Sue Zueger is a middle school teacher and writer who spends part of her year on the sweeping prairies of South Dakota and part on the western slope of Colorado. Her work has been published in Emerge Literary Journal, Ricochet Magazine, Pasque Petals, and the Scurfpea anthology, The Scandalous Lives of Butterflies. She was a guest editor for the 2017 Scurfpea publication, Trees in This Neighborhood Remember Me.
Emerge Literary Journal 