Grandmother’s Backyard

A forest green sedan zips by an inch from the girl’s nose. The wind rustles her hair. Across the intersection, the bright red hand flashes red. High above, the clouds brush against where the city towers reach into the sky. 

People move around her, but she doesn’t see them. She’s staring up at the sky, the sun’s rays expanding across her vision like a budding flower. The red hand still flashes in the corner of her vision. 

The summer day is warm—even the wind, but not in a stifling way. Days like these always reminded her of clovers. Of sitting in her grandmother’s yard, the morning dew staining her knees green and a breeze making the wind chimes sing. It was her favorite spot in the world, her grandmother’s backyard. Sometimes, on the really good days, in and amongst the grass, there even grew clovers. 

The girl remembers those sacred visits to her grandmother’s backyard, fit into the days between school and her mother’s work. On those special days, usually just after church on Sunday, her grandmother would open the door and, before her mother had even put the car in park, the girl was racing across the hot cement and into her grandmother's arms. Next always came a cup of chamomile tea. Together, the three of them would sit outside sipping from the steaming mugs, but as soon as hers was drained, with only the dregs of fallen tea leaves left swirling at the bottom, the girl would launch off the bench and onto the dewy grass where she would search reverently for clovers until her grandmother, also having finished her tea, would join her. 

Four-leaf clovers are a sign of good luck, her grandmother would always say, but finding them is rare. It takes hard work and careful searching.

Will you help me find one, Grandma? The little girl would always ask. And then they’d set to work searching through fields of green, counting leaves until the girl grew weary and her eyes began to droop. Grandmother would pick her up from the grass and take her inside, whispering a gentle goodbye to the clovers outside. 

Then the cycle would repeat again, every rare day that the girl could make it to her grandmother’s backyard—until one day the trips stopped altogether. 

The last trip to her grandmother’s backyard, a cold December day a few weeks before Christmas, wasn’t the same. When they pulled up in the driveway, her grandmother wasn’t waiting by the door. The girl stayed put in the car until it came to a full stop, and when she slowly stepped out she almost slipped on the cold, frozen ice that coated the cement in a dangerous sheet. Inside the house it still smelled like chamomile, but the mugs were all vacant, still inside her grandmother’s now-abandoned cabinet. Out in the yard, the grass wasn’t green. Any color at all was sucked out by the people the girl knew dressed head-to-toe in black. They never found that four-leaf clover. 

Back in the city, the girl still stares at the sky. The day today is warm; there's no hint of that December chill. The wind dances through the clouds above the city, and in that breeze the girl sees a hint of green. She squints at the sky as the breeze drifts the little green object down closer and, as if guided by some force, it lands in her outstretched palm. I get it now, Grandma, she thinks as she stares at the little four-leaf clover. The girl’s eyes fill with tears and the light across the street turns green.