JADE&C     MPASS 

DETOUR​

“Those steps lead to nowhere,” Chris remarked, as he and his running partner, Tova, took a  water break during their run. 
Tova had selected this day’s route, taking them to a tree-lined street set between a residential area and a modern business campus. Chris knew this route, having run it with her many times  before. 
Off the road, on an edge of sloping grass, there were multiple sets of three broad, flat steps  made of aged gray concrete. The steps were spaced at regular intervals and set back from a  crumbling asphalt sidewalk. It was clear that the steps formerly led to buildings set a uniform  distance apart. 
The grassy incline was barricaded at its rear with a black metal fence, the type that  commercial campuses use. Magnificent oaks peppered the property, testifying to decades of  since-discontinued habitation. 
“I used to live here,” Tova said. “There were apartments on this street. The Parkwood  Apartments. Old, but affordable, and within walking distance of the Texas Medical Center. 
Dreams lived here once; now there are only a few scattered steps that used to lead to where those  dreams were dreamt. These very steps,” she stood on the old stairs, “Are where I walked up into  my apartment, cradling newborn Nimi when we came home from the hospital after she had been  born. Paul was so excited about his little sister coming home. Paul, Nimi, and I lived here for  years. Some people had lived here decades; they had really fixed up their apartments. It was a  quiet neighborhood, with hardly any real crime. Then the land was repurposed. We all received  eviction notices in advance of the apartments being demolished. They weren’t the fanciest of  places, I’ll admit. Low rent, no

resort-style frills. The last day to move out was Halloween. One  resident was so distraught about losing his home that he hung himself in the front hallway of his  building. The demolition crew thought he was a macabre Halloween decoration, until someone  realized he was a real dead body.” 

 “Why come back here?” Chris asked. The wind was beginning to gain intensity. It was the  day before Thanksgiving; they needed to finish their run before the cold front arrived.  “This is the last place I was happy,” Tova confessed. “I dream about it all the time. Hoping  time will disappear and I’ll be back here, with Paul and Nimi.” 
“Paul and Nimi are grown and have their own lives now,” Chris replied gently. “They are  wonderful people.” 
“But I’m a mess,” Tova lamented. “I can’t figure out where I went wrong. I should be in a  better position than I am. I’ve made so many mistakes.” 
“You’ve done extremely well,” Chris objected. He and his husband had known Tova for  years; she was an inexhaustible font of good deeds and comfort for others. It perplexed him she  seemed to find so little comfort in herself. “You can’t keep mourning the past. It’s already done.  Do you know how to turn your mourning into morning?” he asked: “Take ‘u’ out of mourning.”

 “You should design greeting cards,” she said, raising on eyebrow. 
“Maybe I should,” Chris replied. “Why do you keep running past here?”  “Part of me hopes that if I come here often enough, I can bring back that part of time,” Tova  suggested. “This oak tree, for example,” she said, walking up to a century old oak tree standing  next to the old steps. “This tree used to stand outside my bedroom window. It was a rickety old  window. Fitted with single pane glass. I reinforced it with clear tape and had to put draft stoppers  at its base. I even covered some of the windows with tinted plastic wrap, as if it was a private  cathedral. Now the building is gone, my bedroom is gone; even the garden I planted behind the  apartment is gone. I planted a sweet olive that flourished here. It was a good tree. There was no  reason to remove it. But this oak remains. Is the ghost of who I was lingering here, beneath its  constant branches? Waiting for me to rediscover my peace?” 
She took out her cell phone, turning on a camera app, to take a selfie of herself in front of the  tree. 
“Don’t,” Chris said gently. 
“Maybe I capture a ghost of myself,” Tova replied. 
“That’s the problem,” Chris answered. “You are a spirit, not a ghost. A ghost implies you  have passed, that you have no place in this time or space. But your spirit – your spirit doesn’t  have any restrictions in time or space. It can find happiness anywhere, any time. Whatever you  haunt yourself with, Tova, let it go. It is a cruel illusion cast by the choices you did not make.”  The wind picked up, tossing oak leaves around them. The breeze whispered between the  branches, speaking through the leaves. 

 “Psithurism,” Tova stated. 
“No need to be rude. ”

“I’m not being rude,” Tova smiled. “Psithurism is the word for the whispering sound made by  an unseen force moving through observable objects – like the wind filtering through the trees. I  like the sound. I remember hearing the wind rustling through the branches of this very tree. When I would sit on the couch and nurse Nimi.” 
“Tova, make your peace with time,” Chris urged. “Have lunch at an outdoor café with Nimi  and Paul. Listen to the wind filter through other trees.” 
“Will the nightmares stop then?” she asked. 
“Nightmares are dreams without closure,” he suggested. “Dreams you have to wake up from to end.” 

 

* * * * *

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Months later, Tova ran by her old haunting grounds again. This time alone.  The location had been erased. The steps had been dug up and discarded; the gentle grassy  slope leveled and reduced to ugly taupe mud, sticky and industrial. The oak trees, after decades  of protection, had been eliminated. 
The anchor to her memories was being replaced with a modern multi-level parking garage. The slippery mud engulfed her shoes as she took a photo of a place that had once been.   Knowing that her memory was now an epitaph. 

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