Mrs. Margaret Vaughn adjusted the thick black frames of her spectacles with her thumb and forefinger as she explained, “Happiness is weedlike, once it gets into your life it grows wild and out of control.”

I would be lying if I told you that I listened carefully to her warbling voice. I heard her, mostly, and I thought about what she was trying to say, but rather than respond, I shook my head and walked away.

I didn’t hear or think of Mrs Vaughn again until the day I read her obituary in the Journal. It was oddly juxtaposed next to an article about the Hamilton County Fair and Mr. Thomas Johnson’s prize winning donkey.

I read about her career, her family, her community involvement and her volunteer work helping those with mental handicaps. I didn’t have anyone to tell, to explain, “this woman changed who I am.”

So I let the universe gently shift away from joy and started to shave. The razor blade scraped away little bits of me from me, and I remembered looking at her. My mind wound around those endless hours carefully examining her every curve, the pale of her skin and the revelation of the myriad ways a woman can be beautiful. Yes, Mrs. Vaughn was the reason for a young man’s first knowing  blush.

It just seemed right to head back to where it all started, so I drove downtown and parked my old Buick by a stenchy little fens and a fat man selling cheap balloons. The circus was in town and no matter how vexing a clown might be when a soul is searching for meaning in a unexpected loss, I still smiled at him, and even considered buying a red one from his pudgy fingers.

I wondered if the bones of hope are like Mrs. Margaret Vaughn’s bones, or the picture of a prize winning ass. If hope can hold up a body, or if it means less than nothing at all.

Answers come, sometimes suddenly. I walked up to the wrought iron fence and realized the old library and 4-room school house were gone. The dirt lot on the other side of the wetlands was mottled with weeds and rocks and black rotted remnant of some old shrub-like plant. I stopped, my hand on the  spiky top of the fence , listened as a garbage truck rumbled past.

“Hey boyo, wha’ choo lookin’ at?” some bum in stained blue rags and dress shoes covered in buckles asked from behind me.

“Nothing, nothing at all. Just thinking,” I muttered at him so he couldn’t really hear, then I turned back to my car.

I could hear the bum all scotched-up braying about how good a ciggie would be. There seemed no point to add my words to this pathetic flourish.

I got into my car and drove past the vacant lot one more time. The weeds of happiness weren’t really copulating, and Mrs. Vaughn was still dead. Even all these decades later, the echoes of her body, her bones, her heart and  words were educational.

I never looked back again at that old lot, but sometimes, I think of it – of her.

“Wha’ choo lookin’ at boyo?”

Nothing. Nothing at all. Just thinking.