The Finding Spot

“A mother’s love is the only thing in the universe that is eternal.”

The old woman now walked with a cane.  She took the cane with her today for the first time, not wanting to risk a fall.  The thought of a trip to the hospital or becoming permanently lamed and not being able to make the weekly visit frightened her and ended the debate.  The cane was a terrifying milestone, the fear of old age and time running out.  

The women in the neighborhood thought her a fool.  The visit that she’d done each Friday, at noon, without interruption for forty-five years, made no sense to them and she’d never offered any reason the few times they’d asked. 

Yes, she told herself, I’ve been a fool—but not for these visits.  Thinking the young sergeant loved me and would marry me.  That was the foolish thing.  Only later did she learn the sergeant had a wife and two children back in his village, to which he disappeared those many years ago.   

She often worried, “What if Friday was the wrong day all these years, or if I picked the wrong time.  Nothing could be done about that,” she sighed.  Buddha would decide, look away or smile.  

The taxicab dropped a middle-aged woman off in front of the gate, which had been freshly painted red.  The guard attending the gate waved, but she pointed to a place nearby and the gate remained closed.  He nodded, as if he understood.

She’d been here before but did not remember, having been a baby the first time, a few days old.  Her mother and father had come here, and later showed her the photographs they’d taken of a small patch of grass next to a stone wall.  A little girl was in other pictures they’d taken a few days later, but not in the one of the small patch of grass.  

She brought the picture with her, along with the address she’d given the driver.  She removed the picture from her backpack and studied it, as if for the first time, though this certainly was not true, for this photo had been a holy relic, a link between past and present, a portal between love and another type of love. 

The patch of grass was to the left of the gate, which would remain closed until the next car or van entered or exited the compound enclosed by the stone wall.  A row of bushes started at the left edge of the patch and marched along the wall until it turned the corner onto the next street.  The bushes were well-trimmed, kept a certain height of about three feet, but the gnarled and thick roots at the base told that they’d been here many years.   

Between the patch and the driveway, over which the gate stood sentinel, were several large stones. The patch of grass and the stones appeared an afterthought, as if they’d run out of bushes to plant all those years ago.  Though the place had been extensively remodeled at the behest of a wealthy benefactor, there was only so much which could be done between the wall surrounding the place and the busy street out front.  So the patch of grass remained, essentially unchanged all these years.

She looked again at the picture.  This was it.  The exact place just as they’d described it to her.

A hand gnarled by years of factory work gripped the cane, as the old woman shuffled along.  Her good eye focused on the sidewalk, looking for the crack or other defect that might risk harm.  It was a warm spring day and the aches in her bones seemed light today.  Exiting the warren of alleyways that made up the part of the city where the old woman dwelled, she entered a main thoroughfare.  The change from the closed-in, bustling alleys, full of cooking oil, ginger, and incense aromas, and the much more modern road abuzz with cars, trucks, and motorcycles was dramatic in noise, speed, and modernity, but she took no notice.  Enough trips had been taken, so the changes were noted over the years and did not surprise or disconcert her.

Not for the first time, she wondered if she should stop these visits.  What foolishness it is to walk here when I could be home sipping tea or playing mahjong with the other old crows.  These ponderings never took hold beyond a perfunctory notion that quickly vanished, pushed aside by a far stronger fortitude which resided within her heart.

The woman put the picture away and bent to touch the grass, as if it contained a sacred memory of some sort that could be coaxed out of the emerald blades, the roots, the soil.  There was an entry button bell on the wall nearby, and she was not sure if it had been there all those years ago.  She tried to convince herself it had been too dark to see the button—she’d been told they found her early on a winter’s morning, bundled warmly in several layers of clothes—so this patch of grass had served its purpose. Yes, it must’ve been dark, and the sidewalk in front of the wall would’ve been busy that morning within a few hours. 

The old woman turned the corner and stopped, as if slapped by an unseen hand.  A woman stood by the landscaping in front of the wall, in the exact spot to which the old woman headed.  She gripped the cane tighter, her legs shaking.  An unexpected terror came over her, and she thought of turning around and scurrying as fast as she could back to the alleyways and the life’s path she’d chosen for both of them. 

Across the street, which back then had been a narrower two-lane road, newly paved and striped in a way that spoked of modern times afoot, she’d waited at a long-gone noodle stand, for an hour that was an eternity, watching the very spot which the woman studied, until she was sure…sure the patch of grass gave up its precious offering, the bundled up, precious thing taken inside the gate.  The shock vanished in a few moments, and the old woman continued on.    

As the woman stared at the grass, she suddenly felt an odd sensation and turned.  Standing a few feet away was an old woman, bent with age, leaning on a cane.  They looked at each other as if across two wide parallel rivers which had decided for a moment to stop in their rush to the sea.     

A tear appeared in the old woman’s eye, the unclouded one, and made a warm path down her sunken cheek.  The younger woman, middle-aged, but with the health and glow of a well-cared for Westerner, burst into sobs and took the old woman into her arms, and the old woman did likewise, frail though her arms might be they held with the iron strength that only a mother can possess.

And with that, the finding spot had served its purpose.  Twice.