Teressa Rose Ezell’s short story “Water and Fire” will be included in Main Street Rag’s spring 2015 themed anthology, and her poetry and creative nonfiction have appeared or are forthcoming in the Mulberry Fork Review, Apeiron Review, and 99 Pine Street Literary Journal. She has published nonfiction articles on a wide variety of topics and will soon receive her MFA in Creative Writing from Lindenwood University.
Teressa shares an ancient house near Tower Grove Park in St. Louis with her husband, three of her six children, one grandchild, a wolfish dog, and an owl-faced cat.
Garden Mosaic
Teressa Rose Ezell
The floor of my front porch has a flower in the middle, made of round colored tiles—white, grey, yellow, pink, and green. It looks like a rug, the white background extending outward to meet multiple borders, two blue and one green, white, and red. When we moved here late last April and found such dirt and disappointment, one of the first things I did was move the large damp doormat, and then I cleaned the mosaic treasure I discovered underneath. We had rented the place sight unseen, had driven moving trucks for five hours, fueled by excited anticipation of our new city home, only to walk into a house that was unnervingly filthy and derelict. But I chose to mop the front porch first, and I must have looked mad.
Now, plants line the short walls of this portal onto Arsenal Street, this open-air window overlooking Tower Grove Park with its ancient groves and running feet. Herbs and succulents, ornamentals and medicinals create an oasis, especially in combination with bright hanging bells from India, bamboo and brass wind chimes, and the hand-fashioned copper dancer who turns strong pirouettes in the slightest breeze, his outstretched hand brushing a geranium with every spin. Beside the front door, a painted concrete Green Man looks softer than most of his kind. Beneath his leaves hangs a piece of brown and black pottery—a resting place for outgoing mail—created by our ceramicist son. It looks like an enormous holy water font. Colorful Tibetan prayer flags hang above the top of the stairs, waving welcome home.
Our old wicker chairs fit perfectly into three of the porch’s corners. These weathered relics of another place, another life, serve us like the worn-out stalwarts they are, offering up space to sit and share thoughts and insights, joys and anxieties, or to simply listen to the constant whoosh of traffic, the occasional chorus of raised voices not our own. Here is where my husband and I often sit to read and write. This is the spot from which our young grandson marvels at city buses and extension-leashed dogs. This compact porch, where the stroller springs up from its flat position and our own dog strains at his bright blue harness and red leash, is the stage from which our first St. Louis jack-o-lanterns greeted the world, and a few hopeful trick-or-treaters approached to see what we had to offer.
As grown children from far away have come and gone throughout the summer and fall months, I have stood on that mosaic flower, kissing and crying hellos and goodbyes. This tiny outdoor room, the first that felt like home, has supported our tenuous new roots, nourishing our spirits while our house has become livable and our bodies and souls have settled. It is a brick and tile garden, with its single bold blossom withstanding the elements in colorful perfection, an enduring reminder of why we are here.