by Jessica Kraker
My mug is the chipped one, it’s worn, jagged edge biting into my lip if I’m not careful. Uncle’s mug is blue and brown, handmade and ribbed – as solid and genuine as he is. He makes us lemon tea with honey and biscuits and we sit in his little house on the hill, across from the church. From the kitchen table I can look into the yard at the towering trees and Uncle’s little red shed that houses his lawn mower. Uncle always lets me have run of the place and I spend the warm days traipsing about his yard, rolling in the grass until I get dizzy and can do nothing but stare up at marshmallow clouds in an ocean of sky.
Some days Uncle and I sit on the porch as he breathes in the Pennsylvania air and I devour whatever novel I stuffed in my bag before hopping on the train south, and getting stuck next to a British woman whose young son kept sneaking away from where he sat with some French boys to pester her. It’s a good book. I watch the birds flock to Uncle’s bird feeder, the tiny house shaking with the weight of them.
In the evening he will make leftovers and we’ll talk about school and his life in the old country as a World War 2 documentary plays in the background. After an ice cream dessert that he always calls a surprise, we’ll watch Jeopardy and scream out answers over each other, the loudest we’ve been all day. And as Uncle falls asleep on the couch afterwards, I will drink more tea out of my chipped mug, watching the sun set on this peaceful town.
The silence is so powerful I wish I could let it keep me. I wish I could keep it, but it is not mine to possess. I wish one day my chipped mug won’t sit in the sink without his. But that is not mine to wish.
