Hope Is The Thing

Yia Lor

Hope is the thing that soaks patiently in vinegar brine. You forget it’s waiting in the basement next to the cobwebs and crickets. Spiders, you get, but crickets? You still don’t know how they find their way inside. At least their music chirps you to sleep on summer nights, though you must sweep what’s left in the fall. 

It’s not until your favorite restaurant sits empty, your sister is laid off, and yellow tape drapes along the playground equipment that you decide maybe it’s time to finally paint the spare room. Steamed milk, like the master bedroom. Are paint stores still open? You’re not sure but also don’t check.

Then you remember the leftover paint from when you did the master bedroom a few years ago. You don’t know the rules to painting. Does it expire? You will not have enough for even one wall, but you are desperate for something to keep you from holding your breath so you will use the old paint regardless of the rules. 

In the basement, you find yourself next to the water heater, webs, and  crickets. So many. The shelves are mostly empty, except for the can of paints with its lid clearly not shut. That can’t be good. You are desperate though so you grab the can anyway. 

That’s when you see the jar hidden behind a box full of lids and rings. It’s dated 7/21/2019. You pickled on your anniversary, and you know right away it wasn’t Nick’s idea. You decide to hold off on painting and bring the jar upstairs. You wipe off the dust and webs. Thank goodness, there are no crickets. You take a butter knife along the edge of the lid and pop it open. Bits of dill, onion, garlic cloves, red pepper flakes, and whole black peppercorns sit on top of pinkie-sized pieces of hope that Mama helped you pick after you complained of the sticky summer heat and how it would surely kill you. It did not. You grab a bit of hope from the jar. 

When you bite into it, there is a burst of summer in your mouth. You can smell the tangled cucumber vines and your brother grilling another feast. The kids are taking turns on the tree swings Papa set up a few years ago. Your sisters are mixing bean thread noodles with cabbage, and you’re wondering why it’s always the hottest day when your family gathers to fry a couple hundred egg rolls. 

This summer, hope will grow despite what happens. You and Mama will spend early mornings picking little prickly pieces of it before the sun rises too high. You’ll stuff it into many, many jars, and you’ll wonder why you always grow so much hope. You’ll give most away before the holidays, and sometime when the end of winter rolls around or even into spring, you’ll have forgotten that last jar sitting in the dark basement with the cobwebs and crickets.

Yia Lor is a writer who collects rocks, houseplants, and recipes.