I ran away from home when I was forty: the spring after my husband took off, my daughter went into treatment, and my sister had a nervous breakdown. Those things are bad enough, but I think it was when the hundred year old oak fell in the middle of the night about six months after the man was gone that I'd had enough. I was wakened by the sounds and sights that looked like the start of ET. Men sounds, shoes through brush and shaking flashlights. At dawn I looked out my office window and saw nothing but branches.
Inside I felt nothing but overwhelmed and weighted down.
That was it.
I'd longed to see Monticello ever since I'd seen something about the place in Smithsonian. I longed for an adventure that was all my own, so I decided that May Day — also my dad's birthday — was the time for a trip. I would go to Longwood Gardens, then wind down toward the south and through the Blue Ridge Mountains. I got the maps and made reservations in Pennsylvania and in Virginia. I planned no further than that.
On April 30, early in the morning, I simply left. There are no words for the feeling of reaching the Delaware Gap without an agenda of any kind. I went the long way and wound down along the river, among the wild forsythia. I had never seen the shrub as it had been intended--a fountain of gold in a clearing. Enormous, tangled, latest growth waving in the breeze.
That first night, I reached the little roadside motel with an unaccustomed peace, and a strange sense of something close to fear. For more than a decade I had been bending to the needs of one person or another. My family for the last twelve, and a friend before that. I had lived in other people's homes until I married--and when I had a home with him, there was always compromise or some small or large tug of war.
That night I realized that, for the first time in my life, I could simply choose my own course, including where to eat. The fact that I found this somewhat disturbing made me smile. A decision just for me? There was no "Oh, whatever you would like, dear. That's fine." No making do.
No excuses. Rats.
No one to blame should the choice prove less than good! I really hated that.
What I was about to find out, though, was that I didn't hate it at all; in fact, the freedom to choose suddenly meant that I was happy with the simple fact that the choices were all mine. Had the trip ended there, it would have been useful.
Fortunately, it didn't. I ate at my first "family style" restaurant — an all you can eat buffet where we sat at trestle tables. Tables for twenty and everyone together. It was ideal for a lone travel and a family promptly adopted me. I played with a three-year-old and a little girl no more than six. They sat on either side of me and we had important conversations about ducks, a toad, and some book about a bear.
I had the remote in the hotel. Need I say more than that?
I'm an early riser, and there were lawn chairs beside each front door, so I took a cup of the motel coffee and settled in the chair to simply watch. The view was simply to the other side of the street, but that side held a six foot embankment with a field above, and perhaps a buggy would go by, just as they went by my friend's cabin outside Lewisburg. That is a settling, calming sight for me. And you just never know what you'll see if you simply watch. It was just after dawn, and the mists were eerily rising from the field. I wasn't sure why, since the day was cloudless and dry.
Then I saw him.
The Paul Bunyan of farming. An Amish man, no more than twenty, tall, muscled, shirtless. Overalled, with gleaming arms, blond hair beneath a straw hat, sticking to the back of his neck. Eyes that were a focused blue that even at this distance, pierced the mist. (At least to my line of sight they did.) Six Percherons strained and heaved before his plough. Looming, sudden giants, emerging from the mists, prehistoric breath hanging in the morning air. The smell of new-turned earth and the sounds of the straining horses, left me breathless.
Or perhaps it was the young man. I'd been alone for months...
May Day, May Day...
For some reason I was really hungry for breakfast down the road.
I was off for Longwood Gardens before 9:00, just an hour's drive from the hotel. I had my cane, but mostly used it as a baton for the morning, as I wandered a hillside of heath and heather, through daffodils and tulips and marvelous early spring plantings. The place should be named "Gardeners' Heaven," but that's okay. I spoke to no one. I bought nothing. I had a backpack with lunch that I'd bought at the restaurant near "home." (When I travel, wherever I sleep becomes home.) I had a towel to sit on and a book to read, and a journal in which to sketch or write. I felt light, young ... happy. Freedom felt sweet, and it occurred to me that being single had a great deal to commend it.
Funny. I suddenly remembered that I had never had a desire to be married; I had wanted kids. When my husband pursued me, I was tired from surgeries and pain. I had nowhere to go. It occurred to me that I had not given him my whole heart at any time. In fact, at that moment in the gardens, I was happier than I had been throughout most, if not quite all, of my marriage. This made me sad; it made me sad for him more than me.
I went to bed that night annoyed with myself. I awoke that Sunday angry and grumpy and ready to be nasty. I'd gotten up early — Maybe my Mythic Ploughsman would be there! No. Not a good start and I nearly slammed the door when I went inside, just remembering in time that there were two rooms on either side.
This was not the way to approach the next five or six hour drive! I was headed for Charlottesville, VA. It would not be at all acceptable to travel like that. I had discovered earlier that I'd forgotten my camera, so I had about ten of those orange cardboard cameras they gave us way back then. Three of them were panoramic view cameras, and took up a little more room. I was in such a bad mood that even this was making me angry and I sort of threw my clothes into the suitcase, rather than packing and wondered why nothing closed.
An hour later, I had showered and decided to wear my prettiest sundress-black, with lilies on it, my cool little shoes, and to wear make up. Sometimes putting on a mask lets me assume an attitude of happiness. Sometimes the assumption sinks in and it seemed worth a try. It worked.
I hit the Blue Ridge highway early, and thought that I would take one of the several numbered routes that cut across the mountains to reach the highway south to the city. What could go wrong with a numbered route? Half an hour into the drive the road became dirt and one lane...
Every stereotype I had ever seen of "mountain" people came into my pathetic brain. I laughed at myself, but they stuck. Half an hour later, after passing just two houses, each, YES, lined with old bottles, bits of metal, and even an old bathtub, I was more than a little scared. There were no pulloffs. I could not tell how much further the road would go, nor how long it would take. It wasn't that I was afraid the car would break down, so much as how would I back up if a car came the other way at all? Well, one did. Somehow, though, we managed to inch by one another, doing a dangerous, but careful weave, adjusting, each of us to the furthest edge of our road. We stopped a moment, because we each saw the other was not from Virginia.
"How far have you come?" I asked.
"I'm not sure. Forever. Or maybe about forty-five minutes."
"Same here. About half an hour or so, though, it gets wider and paved. You?"
He shook his head. "Dirt all the way. Nice pull off though haflway along. Good luck. You got enough gas?"
"Plenty. You?"
"Yup."
I felt a little better, and drove along. Sure enough, there was a very generous pull off and I parked the car and got out. And to my left, across the road, was the most beautiful river view I had ever seen. I was so nervous, I'd never noticed the climb to this point. I looked over a cliff to a mountainside covered with pinks, purples and whites of wild rhodedendrons. And there, before the far ridge of, yes, blue mountains, was the Shenandoah River. There were honey bees all around me, but, for perhaps the first time in my life, I was oblivious. I rooted around in my trunk and got out the panoramic camera, as well as my little normal one.
I began to snap pictures. I must have taken a whole roll of normal sized pictures, and I snapped six panoramic, then started back to the car.
There was a loud sound of brush breaking and I stopped cold, in the middle of the road, heart pounding, more afraid than I'd ever been. A bear?
From the woods appeared, rather than emerged, a man about six foot three — my husband's size. Flame red hair and a staff easily a foot taller than he. An army shirt with the sleeves cut off, ripped off filthy jeans, and large muscled arms as glistening as my Mythic Man's. A gap showed between his brown teeth as he slowly grinned at me.
I think I saw bugs hopping on his head. The stench was overwhelming. And in my head, a familiar banjo theme, despite all my best intentions ...
PART II coming Soon--sorry. Have a chance to be with friends Sunday. That trumps blogs!
Accidental Spring
"Accidental Spring" This began as the background for painting other papers, but became something else!
Friday, July 24, 2009
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
In Praise of Summer Memories
After the long and wistful post about my dear Jessie, I had to come back with a memory that perhaps other boomers share. Summer tailgate picnics at the beach. Lake Winnipesaukee has a white sand bottom, and Governor's Island, when I was growing up, had a white sand beach. Pure white and glittering. Back then, we even had enormous white pines, whose boughs swept the water. When we were overtired and over-heated from so much sun, at times we were sent to their shade, where the sand and air were at least ten degrees cooler.
Many weekend days were spent almost entirely there. Two tennis courts, rest rooms, and a drinking fountain. It was before the clubhouse and before someone decided we needed MORE sunny beach and that lawns would be a good idea.
We pooled resources, and the infamous Oreo™ vs Hydrox™ cookie wars began. MY family liked Hydrox™ because the filling had more flavor. Judy's family, pathetic as they were, liked Oreos™ because there was MORE filling. As children we took great delight in stealing one another's cookies--just to test the theories, mind you. We all had fruit--grapes and plums were always there, then whatever fruit was seasonal: strawberries, then blueberries, then peaches. Of course we also had the mayo vs. Miracle Whip™ debates. My mother threatened to banish me because I really, really preferred mayonnaise, particularly Helmann's REAL Mayonnaise™. There were deviled eggs always, from someone or other. Balogna, ham, and good old P,B, & J. Potato chips--yes, it was Wise™ vs Lays™. Occasionally we all had the store brand, and there was unversal agreement that they were wholly unacceptable.
The dads would play GI tennis, wearing bathing suits on the courts; lobbing, spinning, and being pretty loose about the whole deal. During the annual tournament, one year, my dad and Jude's dad, Ted, were the reigning doubles champs. They were playing against a couple of dads who were younger and who were quite serious about winning. My dad had a famous Australian twist serve he'd perfected in the war. He hated to run, you see, so he loved to put spin on the ball and wear his younger opponents out. The other pair were getting quite sick of my dad's and Ted's successful efforts. These guys wore WHITES and resented the bathing trunks. My dad's response to this creeping, as he put it, pretension, was to buy a matching trunks and shirt set--blue and white paisley. Ted, for his part, never wore socks, and always had a paint-stained tee-shirt with his tan trunks.
The final straw was when dad's serve bounced backwards and literally into the net. The opposing receiver turned bright red and threw his racket on the ground, saying that the "Old jerk couldn't just serve like any self-respecting player, but had to make a show of everything."
My dad and Ted looked at one another, and Ted made a sweeping bow toward my father to take the stage. Dad walked up to the net, hand outstretched and said, "It means so much to you, we give you the match. You win. We're done."
The guy looked at him as if Dad were a Martian. "You can't do that! It's a f-ing tournament!"
"Yes, and you may have the trophy. Ted and I really don't care one way or another." And they walked off the court, shedding sneakers and shirts, to run into the water and play with us. I was about twelve and I don't think either Judy or I ever felt prouder of our dads. I remember the guys who won were livid, but none of our tailgate set cared. They swore. We ate and played.
Sometimes after lunch, when our folks were trying to keep us out of the water, Ted and Dad would dig us "cars" in the sand, putting trashcan covers in our hands for the steering wheels. Of course the barrel lids were bigger than we were, but who cared? Long after the official end of lunch, there would be endless fights over who had the last cookie, who got more grapes, whose chips were saltiest. Our folks would sing horribly off key on purpose. Sometimes, for special, they'd grill us hot dogs on the enormous stone grills near the water's edge, rather than go home for supper. Some days we spent all of Saturday there, right into evening.
We did not need summer camp. Our lives were endless summer camp days, only we were in charge of the games. Jude's mom taught us to swim. My mom taught us to dive. She and Phi, Jude's aunt, did the Sunday crossword under the white pine, in pen... together. Daddy taught us to play tennis when we were five. Tiny, in our flip flops, we'd stand with the enormous rackets, Daddy about five feet away.
"Hit the ball, Jetty. Just hit the ball."
I'd flop the racket and connect, vaguely.
He would cheer, then tap the ball to Jude. When Ted died, he filled in for him, when Jude went off to college, playing with her in the father-daughter games, then years later, for the GI games. Jude and Dad won the mixed doubles championship, the last year my dad every played GI tennis. He figured that was a good time to stop.
The days were long, the weeks lasted forever. Summer ended in a blink of an eye. Somehow the memories of the endless Saturdays with all our families staying until sunset, then wandering back up to Judy's family's "camp" stay clear for me. Every sound lingers in the ear; every laugh echoes, and the sounds of our parents playing Michigan rummy as Jude and I drifted off to sleep tucked above the great room, door open, in her nest of a room. The night sounds of water against rocks, the rocks full of whatever the day had brought.
***
I had to go to a family funeral last weekend, so I had to be back at Jude's for a time. We had some moments alone this time, and we laughed again about just how far a MILE is to row in a leaky boat. More on that particular summer another time. I did my water exercises and watched Mount Washington again, as I felt all remnants of the sorrow of the day before, slip away with the waves. Jude and I ate grilled cheese sandwiches and grapes. I had brought blueberries and she already had the plums.
The loon was out and about this past weekend. It called.
The Lake answered.
Many weekend days were spent almost entirely there. Two tennis courts, rest rooms, and a drinking fountain. It was before the clubhouse and before someone decided we needed MORE sunny beach and that lawns would be a good idea.
We pooled resources, and the infamous Oreo™ vs Hydrox™ cookie wars began. MY family liked Hydrox™ because the filling had more flavor. Judy's family, pathetic as they were, liked Oreos™ because there was MORE filling. As children we took great delight in stealing one another's cookies--just to test the theories, mind you. We all had fruit--grapes and plums were always there, then whatever fruit was seasonal: strawberries, then blueberries, then peaches. Of course we also had the mayo vs. Miracle Whip™ debates. My mother threatened to banish me because I really, really preferred mayonnaise, particularly Helmann's REAL Mayonnaise™. There were deviled eggs always, from someone or other. Balogna, ham, and good old P,B, & J. Potato chips--yes, it was Wise™ vs Lays™. Occasionally we all had the store brand, and there was unversal agreement that they were wholly unacceptable.
The dads would play GI tennis, wearing bathing suits on the courts; lobbing, spinning, and being pretty loose about the whole deal. During the annual tournament, one year, my dad and Jude's dad, Ted, were the reigning doubles champs. They were playing against a couple of dads who were younger and who were quite serious about winning. My dad had a famous Australian twist serve he'd perfected in the war. He hated to run, you see, so he loved to put spin on the ball and wear his younger opponents out. The other pair were getting quite sick of my dad's and Ted's successful efforts. These guys wore WHITES and resented the bathing trunks. My dad's response to this creeping, as he put it, pretension, was to buy a matching trunks and shirt set--blue and white paisley. Ted, for his part, never wore socks, and always had a paint-stained tee-shirt with his tan trunks.
The final straw was when dad's serve bounced backwards and literally into the net. The opposing receiver turned bright red and threw his racket on the ground, saying that the "Old jerk couldn't just serve like any self-respecting player, but had to make a show of everything."
My dad and Ted looked at one another, and Ted made a sweeping bow toward my father to take the stage. Dad walked up to the net, hand outstretched and said, "It means so much to you, we give you the match. You win. We're done."
The guy looked at him as if Dad were a Martian. "You can't do that! It's a f-ing tournament!"
"Yes, and you may have the trophy. Ted and I really don't care one way or another." And they walked off the court, shedding sneakers and shirts, to run into the water and play with us. I was about twelve and I don't think either Judy or I ever felt prouder of our dads. I remember the guys who won were livid, but none of our tailgate set cared. They swore. We ate and played.
Sometimes after lunch, when our folks were trying to keep us out of the water, Ted and Dad would dig us "cars" in the sand, putting trashcan covers in our hands for the steering wheels. Of course the barrel lids were bigger than we were, but who cared? Long after the official end of lunch, there would be endless fights over who had the last cookie, who got more grapes, whose chips were saltiest. Our folks would sing horribly off key on purpose. Sometimes, for special, they'd grill us hot dogs on the enormous stone grills near the water's edge, rather than go home for supper. Some days we spent all of Saturday there, right into evening.
We did not need summer camp. Our lives were endless summer camp days, only we were in charge of the games. Jude's mom taught us to swim. My mom taught us to dive. She and Phi, Jude's aunt, did the Sunday crossword under the white pine, in pen... together. Daddy taught us to play tennis when we were five. Tiny, in our flip flops, we'd stand with the enormous rackets, Daddy about five feet away.
"Hit the ball, Jetty. Just hit the ball."
I'd flop the racket and connect, vaguely.
He would cheer, then tap the ball to Jude. When Ted died, he filled in for him, when Jude went off to college, playing with her in the father-daughter games, then years later, for the GI games. Jude and Dad won the mixed doubles championship, the last year my dad every played GI tennis. He figured that was a good time to stop.
The days were long, the weeks lasted forever. Summer ended in a blink of an eye. Somehow the memories of the endless Saturdays with all our families staying until sunset, then wandering back up to Judy's family's "camp" stay clear for me. Every sound lingers in the ear; every laugh echoes, and the sounds of our parents playing Michigan rummy as Jude and I drifted off to sleep tucked above the great room, door open, in her nest of a room. The night sounds of water against rocks, the rocks full of whatever the day had brought.
***
I had to go to a family funeral last weekend, so I had to be back at Jude's for a time. We had some moments alone this time, and we laughed again about just how far a MILE is to row in a leaky boat. More on that particular summer another time. I did my water exercises and watched Mount Washington again, as I felt all remnants of the sorrow of the day before, slip away with the waves. Jude and I ate grilled cheese sandwiches and grapes. I had brought blueberries and she already had the plums.
The loon was out and about this past weekend. It called.
The Lake answered.
Monday, July 20, 2009
Recalling My Jessica
Let's just say I gave birth to an eleven-year-old, but only after her mom let me. My stepdaughter's name was Jessica and her mom's name is Marilyn. Marilyn gratefully and gracefully allowed me to be a mom in the areas she knew she could not--so I got to have a daughter. The word stepdaughter from here on won't be used. Marilyn would agree; there was no STEP in our relationship.
I met her for the first time, when she was six, and huddled with her brother on top of a picnic table because of a BIG, black, scary dog. They were friends with other children I knew, back when I was the traveling surrogate aunt to all my friends' kids. I calmed down the dog and led him away and, for some strange reason, Jason, Jessie's brother, began calling me Santa Claus. Back then, I was not fat, nor particularly jolly. NEVER had a beard, not even now, at 58. But he liked calling me that. He was not yet 4.
Jessie had hair to her waist, and loved to run and to skate, her hair streaming like one of those banners behind a prop plane. "I am HERE!" her hair proclaimed. Most of the time, she was too shy to let people know she was there at all, except when crossed. Then her nimble brain came out in sarcasm and few kids crossed her more than once. The second time was to see whether the first was a fluke. I got her when she was hitting puberty. Some might think this was a mighty tough time to get a child. They would be right; yet Jessie didn't test me the way I've heard others test stepmoms.
The one time she tried to play her mother and me off one another ... Marilyn was picking up the kids from our apartment at dinner time, and I had made Jessica do a couple of chores. This was in the first months of marriage, and I was in a body cast. I needed help with things, and I was the primary caregiver most days. My ex-husband worked late from the first week we were married through that first year. I picked the kids up from school and sometimes fed them if Marilyn was late. This day, Jessie was annoyed that I had made her--dare I say it--empty the dishwasher.
She hugged her mother and was overly affectionate. Jessie's normal greeting was, "Yeah, Mom. I'll be ready in a minute," rather than, oh, say, "Hello." Today? "Oh, Mom, I missed you. I'm all ready."
She buried her head in her mom's body and Marilyn looked at me. I had a smirk plastered on my face. "Yes, she's ready. I made her empty the dishwasher."
Jessie came out for air, glaring at me. Marilyn took a step toward me and we looked at our child, together. She was so confident. "MOM. She makes me do chores. YOU would never do these things to me, right?"
I felt Marilyn's arm around my waist and I rested an arm on her shoulder. Jessie took her favorite pose. Hip out with a hand on it, the other hand behind her back. "Well. I can see THIS isn't gonna work at all!" And the smile broke across her face like dawn, and she giggled her way down the hall.
This was the thing about her. Her fears were enormous as was her anger. Yet she could find the humor as an escape almost all the time. Almost. We used to play "What's the worst that can happen?" with her fears, and it always end that she was homeless in the parking lot of K-Mart, without money for a Blue light special. And so it would end with us laughing.
When we had the "Feminine products" talk--that she would HAVE to learn to get them herself, and, to her absolute disgust, she realized that even grown women still felt a little ooky buying them from teenage boys, she said, "So growing up does NOT make all this stuff go away?"
I said, "No, we just learn to cope with it all better, that's all."
"Well THAT'S just peachy. What on earth is the point?"
"Beats me, Jess, but at least you won't be in it alone."
"In the words of my stepmother who shall remain nameless, BIG WHOOP." And she got out of my car to buy her first box of that which will not be named. I wrote this for her and left it on her bed a couple of nights later.
Jessica's Lullaby © May 5, 1989
Tears my heart, when cries her soul in the night:
Her tongue too loose
Too stiff her walk;
Her passion too slow
Too swift her mind;
Her courage too faint
Too stout her convictions.
All new woman feeling all wrong
In this wrong-feeling all new place;
Alone, afraid,
Hush.
Soothing words and enfolding arms,
Small comforts in her night:
Rest.
You are enough as yourself --
More than enough, though less than all,
A symphony in yourself,
Sleep.
Now stroke her hair and kiss her eyes: You are enough as yourself,
Dream.
Then rests her soul in the night,
With enfolding arms and soothing words.
But how long will comfort last
When she wakes to find nothing changed? Hush.
We are enough as ourselves,
Rest
Dream
Believe.
Jessie knocked on our door at about 1:00 a.m. the night she found that poem. I went into her room, and it was clear she'd been crying. She loved the poem, but there was something bothering her. (It seemed to me that Jessie had a law that nothing would hit her until after midnight.) I sat there and, as was our custom, I gathered her in my arms and rocked a while. Finally, she came out with it. "I can't seem to keep a grandpa and they are both dead now, and even my grandmas are dying."
My parents had died in 1987 and 1989. Her dad's dad had died in 1984. For some reason, it was getting to her. "What are they doing? Is there Heaven and if there is, maybe GRANDMA wouldn't mind flying around with a harp, but that would be kinda boring, right?"
"Well, what would their ideas of Heaven be?"
She thought and thought, then said, "Cards. First all three of them play and Grandma beats the pants off them both, but she gets bored and... she has a huge, enormous garden and she goes in it with the elves and a swing."
"Sounds about right. But the grandpas?"
She had an evil smile, that child. "Okay... The grandpas still play cards and tell very bad jokes to each other and Grandpa Jim tells Poppa stories that have no end, just lots of big words... and Poppa beats the pants off of HIM!"
We both loved that, because my dad had an ego the size of Milwaukee. But then Jessie took my hand and said, "But, you know, maybe Grandpa Jim LETS him win because, you know how they played with Jay and me every New Year's Eve? Grandpa let Jay win at least one game. I asked him why and he said, 'Because Jay's the littlest and I want him to like coming.' And I asked why did it matter so much and he said, 'Because you two are Heaven to me.' So... But we aren't in Heaven, so..." And then she cried more.
I said, "I don't know what Heaven is, but if there is any possibility for him to do it, my dad is seeing this and he's shaking his head at you and telling you, what?"
"None of this SCHMALTZY STUFF!"
Bits and pieces of my daughter. Her life. Her walk. Her gestures. They all seem profound now and so precious. I cling to them all and retell them in my head at night this time of year. Jessie talked backwards. She tried out for drill team FOUR times, until she finally made it. She was content to understudy for the musical and then got to be in it, finally, because a girl broke an ankle. She felt guilty being glad that she was in it. She wrote stories when she was eight, about Albert the Hippo who lived in a house on top of a flagpole, and whose mother would tuck him in after an adventure, and feed him chicken soup.
"As you may imagine, the climb up to home was not easy for a Hippo to make," she wrote.
She died when she was just 21. Her heart gave out from bulimia and alcoholism--she knew she had not licked the problems. She promised me to get help in September, but died in August. My amazing girl. My young woman so close to finding her niche in life, her reason to be.
Don't try to tell me she was not extraordinarily special. That her gestures and fears were just like those of other children. Oh, no. Don't try to say that Jessie was average in any way. Only superlatives fit our children. Period.
Mother and Child Reunion © August, 2005
Entering her empty room, I pause.
I hear her heart cry,
See her in her chair, long hair to one side
so she won’t catch it as she leans back,
arms bracing bridged body.
She struggles to retrieve a pencil from the floor,
Fully stretched, big toe reaching without leaving her seat.
Giggling, prehensile victory as she contorts,
Her knee pointed sideways, penciled foot chest high,
she grabs her prize,
looks up at me with tilted head and smiles.
“I guess now I’ll have to work,” she says,
More laugh than whine, and turns away.
I touch my chest at the dimming light of her hair,
Translucent image floating, still.
I reach.
I hear my heart scream.
“I guess now I’ll have to live,” I say,
More sob than sigh, and turn away.
My Jessie talked backwards, but she lived too full-tilt forward I think. There will never be enough superlatives to capture Jessie's heart.
I met her for the first time, when she was six, and huddled with her brother on top of a picnic table because of a BIG, black, scary dog. They were friends with other children I knew, back when I was the traveling surrogate aunt to all my friends' kids. I calmed down the dog and led him away and, for some strange reason, Jason, Jessie's brother, began calling me Santa Claus. Back then, I was not fat, nor particularly jolly. NEVER had a beard, not even now, at 58. But he liked calling me that. He was not yet 4.
Jessie had hair to her waist, and loved to run and to skate, her hair streaming like one of those banners behind a prop plane. "I am HERE!" her hair proclaimed. Most of the time, she was too shy to let people know she was there at all, except when crossed. Then her nimble brain came out in sarcasm and few kids crossed her more than once. The second time was to see whether the first was a fluke. I got her when she was hitting puberty. Some might think this was a mighty tough time to get a child. They would be right; yet Jessie didn't test me the way I've heard others test stepmoms.
The one time she tried to play her mother and me off one another ... Marilyn was picking up the kids from our apartment at dinner time, and I had made Jessica do a couple of chores. This was in the first months of marriage, and I was in a body cast. I needed help with things, and I was the primary caregiver most days. My ex-husband worked late from the first week we were married through that first year. I picked the kids up from school and sometimes fed them if Marilyn was late. This day, Jessie was annoyed that I had made her--dare I say it--empty the dishwasher.
She hugged her mother and was overly affectionate. Jessie's normal greeting was, "Yeah, Mom. I'll be ready in a minute," rather than, oh, say, "Hello." Today? "Oh, Mom, I missed you. I'm all ready."
She buried her head in her mom's body and Marilyn looked at me. I had a smirk plastered on my face. "Yes, she's ready. I made her empty the dishwasher."
Jessie came out for air, glaring at me. Marilyn took a step toward me and we looked at our child, together. She was so confident. "MOM. She makes me do chores. YOU would never do these things to me, right?"
I felt Marilyn's arm around my waist and I rested an arm on her shoulder. Jessie took her favorite pose. Hip out with a hand on it, the other hand behind her back. "Well. I can see THIS isn't gonna work at all!" And the smile broke across her face like dawn, and she giggled her way down the hall.
This was the thing about her. Her fears were enormous as was her anger. Yet she could find the humor as an escape almost all the time. Almost. We used to play "What's the worst that can happen?" with her fears, and it always end that she was homeless in the parking lot of K-Mart, without money for a Blue light special. And so it would end with us laughing.
When we had the "Feminine products" talk--that she would HAVE to learn to get them herself, and, to her absolute disgust, she realized that even grown women still felt a little ooky buying them from teenage boys, she said, "So growing up does NOT make all this stuff go away?"
I said, "No, we just learn to cope with it all better, that's all."
"Well THAT'S just peachy. What on earth is the point?"
"Beats me, Jess, but at least you won't be in it alone."
"In the words of my stepmother who shall remain nameless, BIG WHOOP." And she got out of my car to buy her first box of that which will not be named. I wrote this for her and left it on her bed a couple of nights later.
Jessica's Lullaby © May 5, 1989
Tears my heart, when cries her soul in the night:
Her tongue too loose
Too stiff her walk;
Her passion too slow
Too swift her mind;
Her courage too faint
Too stout her convictions.
All new woman feeling all wrong
In this wrong-feeling all new place;
Alone, afraid,
Hush.
Soothing words and enfolding arms,
Small comforts in her night:
Rest.
You are enough as yourself --
More than enough, though less than all,
A symphony in yourself,
Sleep.
Now stroke her hair and kiss her eyes: You are enough as yourself,
Dream.
Then rests her soul in the night,
With enfolding arms and soothing words.
But how long will comfort last
When she wakes to find nothing changed? Hush.
We are enough as ourselves,
Rest
Dream
Believe.
Jessie knocked on our door at about 1:00 a.m. the night she found that poem. I went into her room, and it was clear she'd been crying. She loved the poem, but there was something bothering her. (It seemed to me that Jessie had a law that nothing would hit her until after midnight.) I sat there and, as was our custom, I gathered her in my arms and rocked a while. Finally, she came out with it. "I can't seem to keep a grandpa and they are both dead now, and even my grandmas are dying."
My parents had died in 1987 and 1989. Her dad's dad had died in 1984. For some reason, it was getting to her. "What are they doing? Is there Heaven and if there is, maybe GRANDMA wouldn't mind flying around with a harp, but that would be kinda boring, right?"
"Well, what would their ideas of Heaven be?"
She thought and thought, then said, "Cards. First all three of them play and Grandma beats the pants off them both, but she gets bored and... she has a huge, enormous garden and she goes in it with the elves and a swing."
"Sounds about right. But the grandpas?"
She had an evil smile, that child. "Okay... The grandpas still play cards and tell very bad jokes to each other and Grandpa Jim tells Poppa stories that have no end, just lots of big words... and Poppa beats the pants off of HIM!"
We both loved that, because my dad had an ego the size of Milwaukee. But then Jessie took my hand and said, "But, you know, maybe Grandpa Jim LETS him win because, you know how they played with Jay and me every New Year's Eve? Grandpa let Jay win at least one game. I asked him why and he said, 'Because Jay's the littlest and I want him to like coming.' And I asked why did it matter so much and he said, 'Because you two are Heaven to me.' So... But we aren't in Heaven, so..." And then she cried more.
I said, "I don't know what Heaven is, but if there is any possibility for him to do it, my dad is seeing this and he's shaking his head at you and telling you, what?"
"None of this SCHMALTZY STUFF!"
Bits and pieces of my daughter. Her life. Her walk. Her gestures. They all seem profound now and so precious. I cling to them all and retell them in my head at night this time of year. Jessie talked backwards. She tried out for drill team FOUR times, until she finally made it. She was content to understudy for the musical and then got to be in it, finally, because a girl broke an ankle. She felt guilty being glad that she was in it. She wrote stories when she was eight, about Albert the Hippo who lived in a house on top of a flagpole, and whose mother would tuck him in after an adventure, and feed him chicken soup.
"As you may imagine, the climb up to home was not easy for a Hippo to make," she wrote.
She died when she was just 21. Her heart gave out from bulimia and alcoholism--she knew she had not licked the problems. She promised me to get help in September, but died in August. My amazing girl. My young woman so close to finding her niche in life, her reason to be.
Don't try to tell me she was not extraordinarily special. That her gestures and fears were just like those of other children. Oh, no. Don't try to say that Jessie was average in any way. Only superlatives fit our children. Period.
Mother and Child Reunion © August, 2005
Entering her empty room, I pause.
I hear her heart cry,
See her in her chair, long hair to one side
so she won’t catch it as she leans back,
arms bracing bridged body.
She struggles to retrieve a pencil from the floor,
Fully stretched, big toe reaching without leaving her seat.
Giggling, prehensile victory as she contorts,
Her knee pointed sideways, penciled foot chest high,
she grabs her prize,
looks up at me with tilted head and smiles.
“I guess now I’ll have to work,” she says,
More laugh than whine, and turns away.
I touch my chest at the dimming light of her hair,
Translucent image floating, still.
I reach.
I hear my heart scream.
“I guess now I’ll have to live,” I say,
More sob than sigh, and turn away.
My Jessie talked backwards, but she lived too full-tilt forward I think. There will never be enough superlatives to capture Jessie's heart.
Friday, July 10, 2009
Still There
I went to Governor's Island at "the Lake" in New Hampshire. And if you've ever been there, you know what "the Lake" is. Nope, not gonna say.
Judy and I have spent all but seven birthdays--fifty birthdays--of hers together at her Adirondack-style camp. From her deep, dark front porch, we spend hours looking at the Sandwich and Ossipee Mountains. We listen to the lake sounds. For instance, water on rocks in the morning sounds a bit hollow. It's as if the rocks gather substance throughout the day, simply from the waves that hit. At night, the sounds are more muffled. We wait for the loons. They are rarer now on the Lake, at least in our area. Too much boat chop.
We are ten days apart, Judy and I. Our parents were best friends, and we spent our summers running between our little cottage and her camp. I admit it; her place was closer to the beach, so mostly I was at her place. On rainy days, however, or on afternoons when we just had had enough of the beach, we'd play hide and seek at my place. You'd be surprised how many crannies can hide a small child in a cottage of a thousand square feet. We built card houses out of about six incomplete card decks. Her dad was in the Reserves and brought us mess kits, so we were soldiers. There was a seventeenth century cemetery sort of near my place. The ruins of the British Governor's mansion from colonial times.
Judy and I go back to roots, and all other people from that far back in my life are gone. We sit. We read. We reminisce. We dream and say nothing, but know we have spoken volumes to each other's hearts. She is my other sister, and was before my blood sister died. I am so lucky.
It rained at some point every day but one. The temperature never topped seventy. The first time I went swimming, on my first FULL day there, it was sunny-ish in the morning, and I lasted twenty minutes and got out before my teeth chattered. I warmed up and then helped with some projects until my legs gave out, as is their custom. I read four books, the rain was so complete. It was too damp to paint because the paints would not have dried. We ate HUGE lobsters on the fourth, celebrating a day early, the first installment of her birthday. We compared gardens, the five who gathered, talked about birds and trees and remembered the beach of childhood.
Where now there is lawn, once there were white sand and white pines whose boughs scraped the water. We counted backwards from a thousand, Judy, my brother Jack, Judy's little brother Pete, and I--to punish parents who made us wait to swim after lunch. We had a gang of four one summer, Pickle-Lily Dinah-Sewer... based on various distortions of middle and last names. We four raided the old grouch's blueberry patch at the top of the island. We made half the population ill because we decided to dive for freshwater clams and stuff them as a "treat." We were kicked out of kitchens and off property. We rowed to Timber Island, got stung, then rowed back--in a leaky metal boat. Got caught in a thunderstorm in that boat and were towed home by the Lake patrol. We were grounded for a week, but I believe were given a reprieve because we were far too hard to keep home. We'd scream "OH. Sweet PEA. Wontcha dance with me!" while walking in the middle of the road, or Little Red Riding Hood, or Wild Thing. We were imaginative, mischievous, noisy, and silly, and pains in the butt.
We were children as very few children get to be. Absolutely free. Absolutely safe.
On the other day of sun, I was in the water by seven; this time I did my deep water exercises for over half an hour. I watched Mount Washington appear from behind the other ranges. I walked up to the camp, lips blue, smiling and teeth chattering. I could not get warm.
Judy said, "Why did you go into that freezing lake again and stay so long?"
"Because it was there."
"No, because you are you."
"Same thing." We smiled and I happily spent most of the rest of the day wrapped in a down comforter or sitting in the patch of afternoon sun that moved along the bits of half-hearted lawn between porch and water. You had to move your chair every fifteen minutes.
Twenty years ago, for her birthday I wrote this.
Lake Fragments ©1989
Finally, I learned the Lake trees;
White and black birch,
Beech, white pine and hemlock.
And I learned about putting in docks
And why pine forests have clean floors.
You taught me.
This does not change the magic, though,
It just puts you at its center.
But, then, you always were.
ii
The beach has slipped away
As man-sown grass encroaches.
It hides, embraced by the Lake, safe
Until men lose interest in mowing.
Then it will return,
The Lake's shining gift to the Island.
iii
Damn these holiday boats
Buzzing and groaning from one end to the other.
Churning the surface, they leave a slick
Until the Lake reeks
Of old rags in my grandpa's garage.
Yet tomorrow -- tomorrow at dawn,
When I am two hundred miles away --
The Lake will breathe silent again,
And will smell once again like peace.
iv
Midday in August
Cicada heat jams the air,
Even the Lake can't breathe.
The buzz saws rip the day
And three more birches fall.
All the same, next morning,
In the rising mists of dawn
The Lake will waken, smiling.
And still the loons will call,
And still the Lake will answer.
I go every year, just like some bird flying to its nesting spot. My grandparents' cottage has been razed and rebuilt three times. The home I grew up in has had so many remodels, I barely know it. My two brothers, my sister, my parents, grandparents--gone. Judy's parents gone. We remain for now. We go to one another a few times throughout the year. We talk on the phone.
But every July I fly to my home in New Hampshire. I sit in the presence of the little eight-year-old's dearest companion, content. I know nothing of water temperatures and reason. I must go into the water and sing to the mountains that never laugh at my aging, over-large and semi-crippled body. I tell them my stories while I work muscles that do not ache in the water. I cry. I laugh. I swim. I helicopter. I porpoise. I remember two giant fathers holding their breaths and diving in from the opposite end of the beach; Judy and I wait in breathless, almost fearful anticipation. I feel her father's giant hands cup me from below and launch me HIGH into the air, and a I fly, then land like a goony bird, butt first, sliding across the water briefly, before I sink -- and I hear Judy beside me, launched from my father's long-fingered catapult. I leap up and then submerge, for the joy in the memories and in the moment. We meet one another's eyes and the pains and ecstasies of fifty-seven years need no words.
We remain together, needing only these few days in each other's company to strengthen a bond as deep and as far reaching as the roots of the century-old trees around the camp. Our grandmothers were friends in their gardens. We have plantings from their rhythms as well. Plantings from our mothers' gardens. Memories of each other's fathers' rumbling voices in chests against which we lay. This is not vacation with her. It is tilling my soil and fertilizing my roots. It is the knowledge of home in the bones.
***
Judy has leukemia... not a treatable kind. In the miracle she has always been, after eight years, she still remains asymptomatic. She remains the strong, gentle, quiet Jude. I remain the chatterbox, silly, gentle, Jet.
Every July, I run to the Lake and jump in. Why? Because it's still there.
Every July, we aim our souls toward each other and jump in. Why? Because we're still there.
...Together
Judy and I have spent all but seven birthdays--fifty birthdays--of hers together at her Adirondack-style camp. From her deep, dark front porch, we spend hours looking at the Sandwich and Ossipee Mountains. We listen to the lake sounds. For instance, water on rocks in the morning sounds a bit hollow. It's as if the rocks gather substance throughout the day, simply from the waves that hit. At night, the sounds are more muffled. We wait for the loons. They are rarer now on the Lake, at least in our area. Too much boat chop.
We are ten days apart, Judy and I. Our parents were best friends, and we spent our summers running between our little cottage and her camp. I admit it; her place was closer to the beach, so mostly I was at her place. On rainy days, however, or on afternoons when we just had had enough of the beach, we'd play hide and seek at my place. You'd be surprised how many crannies can hide a small child in a cottage of a thousand square feet. We built card houses out of about six incomplete card decks. Her dad was in the Reserves and brought us mess kits, so we were soldiers. There was a seventeenth century cemetery sort of near my place. The ruins of the British Governor's mansion from colonial times.
Judy and I go back to roots, and all other people from that far back in my life are gone. We sit. We read. We reminisce. We dream and say nothing, but know we have spoken volumes to each other's hearts. She is my other sister, and was before my blood sister died. I am so lucky.
It rained at some point every day but one. The temperature never topped seventy. The first time I went swimming, on my first FULL day there, it was sunny-ish in the morning, and I lasted twenty minutes and got out before my teeth chattered. I warmed up and then helped with some projects until my legs gave out, as is their custom. I read four books, the rain was so complete. It was too damp to paint because the paints would not have dried. We ate HUGE lobsters on the fourth, celebrating a day early, the first installment of her birthday. We compared gardens, the five who gathered, talked about birds and trees and remembered the beach of childhood.
Where now there is lawn, once there were white sand and white pines whose boughs scraped the water. We counted backwards from a thousand, Judy, my brother Jack, Judy's little brother Pete, and I--to punish parents who made us wait to swim after lunch. We had a gang of four one summer, Pickle-Lily Dinah-Sewer... based on various distortions of middle and last names. We four raided the old grouch's blueberry patch at the top of the island. We made half the population ill because we decided to dive for freshwater clams and stuff them as a "treat." We were kicked out of kitchens and off property. We rowed to Timber Island, got stung, then rowed back--in a leaky metal boat. Got caught in a thunderstorm in that boat and were towed home by the Lake patrol. We were grounded for a week, but I believe were given a reprieve because we were far too hard to keep home. We'd scream "OH. Sweet PEA. Wontcha dance with me!" while walking in the middle of the road, or Little Red Riding Hood, or Wild Thing. We were imaginative, mischievous, noisy, and silly, and pains in the butt.
We were children as very few children get to be. Absolutely free. Absolutely safe.
On the other day of sun, I was in the water by seven; this time I did my deep water exercises for over half an hour. I watched Mount Washington appear from behind the other ranges. I walked up to the camp, lips blue, smiling and teeth chattering. I could not get warm.
Judy said, "Why did you go into that freezing lake again and stay so long?"
"Because it was there."
"No, because you are you."
"Same thing." We smiled and I happily spent most of the rest of the day wrapped in a down comforter or sitting in the patch of afternoon sun that moved along the bits of half-hearted lawn between porch and water. You had to move your chair every fifteen minutes.
Twenty years ago, for her birthday I wrote this.
Lake Fragments ©1989
Finally, I learned the Lake trees;
White and black birch,
Beech, white pine and hemlock.
And I learned about putting in docks
And why pine forests have clean floors.
You taught me.
This does not change the magic, though,
It just puts you at its center.
But, then, you always were.
ii
The beach has slipped away
As man-sown grass encroaches.
It hides, embraced by the Lake, safe
Until men lose interest in mowing.
Then it will return,
The Lake's shining gift to the Island.
iii
Damn these holiday boats
Buzzing and groaning from one end to the other.
Churning the surface, they leave a slick
Until the Lake reeks
Of old rags in my grandpa's garage.
Yet tomorrow -- tomorrow at dawn,
When I am two hundred miles away --
The Lake will breathe silent again,
And will smell once again like peace.
iv
Midday in August
Cicada heat jams the air,
Even the Lake can't breathe.
The buzz saws rip the day
And three more birches fall.
All the same, next morning,
In the rising mists of dawn
The Lake will waken, smiling.
And still the loons will call,
And still the Lake will answer.
I go every year, just like some bird flying to its nesting spot. My grandparents' cottage has been razed and rebuilt three times. The home I grew up in has had so many remodels, I barely know it. My two brothers, my sister, my parents, grandparents--gone. Judy's parents gone. We remain for now. We go to one another a few times throughout the year. We talk on the phone.
But every July I fly to my home in New Hampshire. I sit in the presence of the little eight-year-old's dearest companion, content. I know nothing of water temperatures and reason. I must go into the water and sing to the mountains that never laugh at my aging, over-large and semi-crippled body. I tell them my stories while I work muscles that do not ache in the water. I cry. I laugh. I swim. I helicopter. I porpoise. I remember two giant fathers holding their breaths and diving in from the opposite end of the beach; Judy and I wait in breathless, almost fearful anticipation. I feel her father's giant hands cup me from below and launch me HIGH into the air, and a I fly, then land like a goony bird, butt first, sliding across the water briefly, before I sink -- and I hear Judy beside me, launched from my father's long-fingered catapult. I leap up and then submerge, for the joy in the memories and in the moment. We meet one another's eyes and the pains and ecstasies of fifty-seven years need no words.
We remain together, needing only these few days in each other's company to strengthen a bond as deep and as far reaching as the roots of the century-old trees around the camp. Our grandmothers were friends in their gardens. We have plantings from their rhythms as well. Plantings from our mothers' gardens. Memories of each other's fathers' rumbling voices in chests against which we lay. This is not vacation with her. It is tilling my soil and fertilizing my roots. It is the knowledge of home in the bones.
***
Judy has leukemia... not a treatable kind. In the miracle she has always been, after eight years, she still remains asymptomatic. She remains the strong, gentle, quiet Jude. I remain the chatterbox, silly, gentle, Jet.
Every July, I run to the Lake and jump in. Why? Because it's still there.
Every July, we aim our souls toward each other and jump in. Why? Because we're still there.
...Together
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