Jackie Mercurio lives with her husband, five children, and black Lab in New York. She is a freelance writer and editor, who teaches at Concordia College and the Sarah Lawrence College Writing Institute.
My Rock
When I plant flowers near my grandfather's grave, my trowel strikes rock, and I think of the many years I have planted flowers right here in this very spot and have never encountered it. I dig around the stone. I scoop it from the earth. I roll it onto my hand. The rock is smooth and round, slightly smaller than my open palm, and with my index finger I brush away dirt, wondering if it's been buried here all along, the same three decades as my grandfather.
A few feet behind me stands my seventy-five year old father. He leans on his cane. He strokes his gray beard. He's tearful. I make a point not to talk. I look to the rock. Within its black color, there is a streak of silver, glittering metal threading its way through dark mineral, adding light and shine to something not alive. I rub away dirt, the fine lines of my fingerprints now well defined with soil, as if my grandfather is speaking through me: I'm here. I'm with you.
"What's that in your hand?" Dad asks. A former engineer, my father's mind is more mathematical than mine, so I tell him it's just a rock, just a rock, and place it in my cargo pocket. But no rock is just a rock; each one is a clue to the past, a key to unlock history, a memory, and this one reminds me of when I was very young: My grandfather sat me on his lap, and with his voice and eyes, he acted out The Little Gingerbread Man, having me fall in love with words and stories before I even knew what they were. Polio didn't stop him from being active with his youngest granddaughter, even if our activities were limited to sitting. We had each other and we had stories, and we'd sit together in his black leather chair and do amazing things like becoming gingerbread people, where we'd leap off a baking sheet, and run out the door.
I ask Dad if I should plant the pink impatiens in the center of the tombstone or on the edges. "Whatever you want," he says. "You know what to do."
My dad and mom had tried for a son, but after they had a fourth daughter, me, they gave in and decided my grandfather's name would be given to a granddaughter. Jack would be a Jacqueline. And now here I am, Jackie-all-grown-up, married with five kids, kneeling on the cemetery's ground planting pink impatiens for my namesake. I slide bulbs from plastic sleeves, their gray roots like veins in the soil. "Pop," Dad says, his head tilted toward the sky. "A grandson would not have planted flowers for you."
I smile and reach for the rock weighing down my pocket. I'm not a scientist, just a writer, and I don't know the names of minerals that form this stone or where it has been, but I do know where it's going: Home, with me. I'll wash it, place it on my writing desk, and when someone asks what's that, I'll hold it in my hand, think of the man who introduced me to stories, and say, "My rock."
Dad's eyes are pressed shut. His lips move to prayer. And I sit on the back of my heels, admiring how the pink blossoms bring color to the gray tombstone. It may sound absurd to anyone who is not named after Pop, but when I read his engraved name, our name, on that tombstone, I feel him beside me.
We sit together.
Pop, I say in my mind, I want to write about you, to tell your story: how you had to convince a wrestling coach that yes, a man without the use of his legs has enough upper body strength to compete from a seated position; how you had to convince your future father-in-law, that yes, a disabled man was capable of loving and supporting his beautiful daughter; how you had to convince your own son, my father, that yes a handicapped man can play catch while sitting on a park bench.
Pop, your story is inside of me. I guess, like the rock, it's been there all along. All I need to do is dig it out, scoop it up, and place it on my open palm for all to see.
