It’s all in one’s point of view

I’ve been struggling with a story, trying to decide how I’ll tell it, and from which point of view.  It started out with three….all at the same time. Maybe that’s because I know all three main characters, and what they thought or did at the time the events in my story occurred.  Or maybe it’s because I have three favorite views.

When I was a child, I loved the view from my bedroom window.  I drove to my childhood home today, to the farm where my great-great grandparents homesteaded, my great grandparents toiled , and where my father  purchased and operated until he became  disenchanted and disengaged from the land , from us, and from himself.  I wanted an often- missed glimpse of what I still call “home.”  That view never fails me.

Daddy thought everyone should get up when he did.  He’d rush down the hall before daylight, switching on the overhead 100-watt bulbs, yelling for us all to get up, get our chores done, and get on the bus.  I hate waking up like that, and promised myself that I would never rudely awaken anyone unless it was an emergency.   There was one good part of those hectic mornings…the sun coming up over the Caprock.  The white gypsum and red clay which make up the geological shelf of the western edge of the Llano Estacado and underneath, the Permian Basin, turn into the world’s biggest fire opal at dawn.  Mica, quartz crystals and the Pecos River reflect off the sunrise, painting a landscape of purple, silver, apricot and the purest of pinks.  It’s a special gift to an early riser looking eastward from the farmland in our valley.  A buffering from my father.

There is a hill on what was once my maternal grandparents’ ranch where one can see  in panorama, the Caprock, El Capitan peak, and the entire Sierra Blanca range.  Standing there, drinking in sunshine, the vastness, and the rugged peaks, gives me a sense of how small I am.  Buzzards circle overhead, little black ants in the sky that is, from my viewpoint,  a perfect dome, a sort of bell jar.  No clouds, no sounds, no water.  Just me and whatever force is holding me here.  I wish I could take a 360-degree photo, but  I am reluctant to share.

US 285 north of Santa Fe offers a narrow point of view until the dynamited slices of the hills the road travels through widen, opening into the Pojoaque Valley and beyond.  This is perhaps the most freeing from the ordinary I have without leaving New Mexico.  Wide mesas, chewed out of rock by some mythological god, into the most fantastical shapes span the horizon. Camel Rock, and beyond that, multiple wind-formed chimneys and spires of sandstone, only to be bested by the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, dusted in snow.  Open the car window.  Listen to the wind.  I can feel the spirits of the ones who came before.  Piñon smoke and purple sage are my favorite perfumes.  I can see forever.  I feel spiritual. I become forever.

Whatever point of view I choose for the story of Lillian and her garden, I have three examples.  Maybe they’re not the ones found in my writing manuals, but if I think about the three physical views and how they provide me with different perspectives in my own thought process, I’m sure to find the right literary point for Lillian and her fellow characters.