Headed to the Studio for a Bit ... Some Background Blogs in the Meantime

I actually am working on a book, and trying to figure out the thread of the focus. It won't be a litany of hurts, that's for sure; it won't be Pollyanna Grows Up In Hell but is GLAD,  either. I'm not good at perky. I think that essentially it is The Prince of Tides without the tiger. And it may be that I wind up having to fictionalize, for the sake of some innocent relatives, and, well because the sociopath is alive. Then, too, that might be kind of fun. While I would love to write a memoir, it might be that to talk about my personal journey, it should be fictionalized; to talk about my mom, however, might be something I could tackle. We'll see.

Regardless, painting dreams seem to be taking over for now, and it's time I paid attention. Often the two forms--writing and painting--feed off one another.

But I've been so lucky to get about thirty new followers in a short time, and some of my entries might make more sense if you look at earlier ones. They might illustrate more of who I am.

I dance on the edges of things, skating the curve between the yin and the yang, the dark and the light, where life and death touch. But the only way I survived all the pain was to cling to the beauty and try to let go of the horror, swinging toward that rainbow on these slender vines of whatever beauty I could see. Sometimes they broke. Sometimes they took me to somewhere safe for a time. Sometimes they took me directly into a pile of ... not good stuff.  I have lived between the extremes, but early on, it taught me to live BY extremes. Too much so often. 'Matt' once told me, "Your love, our love, this love between us was so big it scared me to death. You scared me to death. I had to run away."

SO... I did my best to kill myself off by inches in my twenties, until my broken back saved my life. It was a real, tangible problem to fight, to overcome, to conquer, instead of demons just out of my reach. And conquer it I did, for twenty years longer than they gave me to live or to walk, so far. T I'm here. I walk. I stand. But mostly, I live. And as I have said in previous comments, I use the elves and fairies, the wildflower days and the Lake, the beauty and laughter of Christmas, to cut the demons down.

Blog Entries for While I am Painting, not Writing--for those of you who are so inclined
For any of you newer followers who are interested, I've included some early entries--Losing Dad was the latest and about nine of you were around then, perhaps. I did not remember a thing about the abuse and violence until I lost my dad--Losing dad, finding therapy .  This entry talks about him in a little more depth than the Slayer of Monsters under My Bed.

I could not really start the process of having the distance to write about it all until after my  mom died. I was far too closely entwined with her, her struggles, her failures, her victory. HER life story. (Hence, I am kicking around tackling a memoir that focuses on her and on our relationship.) I could not separate myself properly. I include the following entry, which shows most clearly so far, the wide swings of feelings about her.
Losing Mom, finding my way

When I had lost both parents, then I opened up and began to write about it all, a bit at a time. But I let no one see. I let very few in that deeply even in talking. It took years to truly have it lose the power to  hurt me. But I had my breakthroughs, and life changed. I got new tools to use to actually enjoy pastels in life. Grays even. Balance without boredom was a brand new concept to me at 37, after she died.

I think one such breakthrough came when I stopped blaming Mom for everything, that was a huge step.
Underlying Premise--I cannot blame my mother, dammit.


This next is the beginning of it for me, and it is pretty horrifying, I think... Where the terror and the sociopath were born, but also where the love was born. This was the one story that made my therapist cry, but it is pivotal to the gift I was given to cope, through the Robin Hood Days, and through the days of jumping at the too small sounds in the night, when my other brother came.  Bear in mind I was perhaps a year and a half older than the me in the picture of my window box elves entry -- three and a half!  I don't know that I had more than two followers when I wrote this one. Grace by Any Other Name

I blocked the incident out entirely until I was about 36, just as I did the sessions with Jack, and the rape that made me start carrying a steak knife to my room at night. No one ever said a word about the knife, a small fact that makes me wonder still. I never tried to hide it. In fact, if Jim was in the living room, I made sure it was very visible... Still, my memories were only of elves, until my father died, and Pandora's box flew open, and the demons were let loose for good.

Out of that little bitty girl came a solution for most traumas, most pain. Love. Agape, not emotion so much as the gift. The gift of love.

It was what I used over and over before each of my nine back operations--I would say the names of the people I love, over and over and over -- it was far more powerful than thinking of people who loved me. After all, who would love a woman like me anyway? They all left so fast, and it was so very hard to believe back then that there was anything in me to love ... But there was nothing hard about my naming the ones that I loved, whether or not they loved me back. It helped me get through many situations which scared me.  Cover the fear with love

Funny thing is, most of those people DID love me back, and have loved me ever since.  It kept coming as a shock when these women united so often, catching me before I hit the ground, over and over again. The Women

 ***
I think losing my daughter in 1994, just two years after her father left, broke the final dam of some sort of resistance to share my core with others. I did not think anything could ever be worse than this. (That will undoubtedly be an entry one day--one of the most bizarre experiences, aside from the worst moment of my adult life. Hearing that she was dead.) I moved to Pennsylvania six months later, learned to paint, and simply breathed. Between 1987 and 1994 I lost both my parents, had my  ninth back surgery, went through psychotherapy for post traumatic stress, bought a house with my sister, had both kids leave for college, had my husband leave me for his student teacher who was Jessie's age, and finally lost my daughter.

When I wrote the poem to her in 2005 that is in the next entry, I had lost three best friends and my nephew and my brother as well. I was worn out from  losing people and starting over, but I also knew I was going to lose my sister, too (I wrote about her in January of this year). (From 2000-2006 I lost my minister -- and dear friend--to suicide, two close friends, my nephew who hanged himself, my brother and finally my sister. I was kinda tired. And I was losing my ability to walk. I was starting over for the sixth time in my adult life, I felt.)

This is just a bit of a tribute to my love for my Jessica. She is inextricably entwined in my path to wanting to write again, in wanting to fly if I cannot walk. My Jess

That's enough of the hard stuff. I understand if you don't want to read any of those. I am so grateful for the support you all give me in writing, in letting me know that you don't think it a crazy idea for me to write a book.  Of course, I'd have to write it anyway, because writing is what I do.  I could not stop it, one way or another, if I tried. Like breathing. Like praying, singing, painting.  Like loving. So if I write a book no one wants to publish or read,  I'll keep writing anyway.

If I do not just go down into my studio and get started on those paintings, I will lose my brain altogether, howver. I thought I could create a schedule where I would, oh, paint in the morning, write in the afternoon. Nope. I'll do both in spurts... but as long as I do one or the other every day, then it's fine.

Okay, for those of you newer followers who don't really want to just read the heavy stuff about me, I have other entries that show something else!

NOW About Fairies or Faeries, and other Kinds of Magic
What More you Really Should Oughta Know
For those of you who want the silly and the magic,  Birthing Fairies: the Honest Truth, not the Fake truth    is self-explanatory. Some of you may have not had this in your education and if you have small children or grandchildren, you might need to pay attention to this factual account. Jo over at Majority of Two can corroborate that this is how they are born. She found this out in Canada, so it isn't just me.

Beyond the magic of my mother, I was also given our summers. Huckleberina Finn is a sample of that. Then of course, there was Christmas....

Those three entries are some of the shiny parts of my life.Hence my comparison of my family environment as a rain forest: lush or rotting, with little in between.

As for me, one of the pictures I've dreamed is birthing fairies... a spot on the lake that shines so clear for me still. I finally think I know how to get what I want on paper--the overbright sparkles that get larger as they come to shore. We'll see. And I finally have the right fish for my coral painting... and--Well. I just have to paint is all.

I can't walk away for two months again. Undoubtedly new things to write will start nagging at me softly, then louder I will have to come back and finish them, if only to shut them up. Do you find that, too? That a work of art yells at you to get over there and DO it? That a  story weaves into your dreams and mucks them all up ? Or paintings arrive unannounced and fully blown?

Sometimes the muse is downright rude. Oh. And I've recently begun to write music for the Thursday night group of which I am a part. I never wrote music before in my life. THAT is calling to.

But the thing is? Now I am free. Free of the house that was too much for me, of having to consider anyone else in my days. I am free to fly. And that's WAY easier than walking. My friends dubbed me the Phoenix. I like that, as I said. It's mythical enough, and I am slowly working on a painting of that. Each feather is being cut individually. I work on it when I DO feel weak, when I feel that I cannot take any more pain or loss, or have one more hope placed in my hand to look at and cherish, only to have it taken away and thrown beyond my reach the moment I believe. I mean, really. Who doesn't want to be the center of her own myth? It can be useful when the darkness visits.

The demons rarely stay for long any more. And when the fires come, I FLY. Fly straight up and free.

I'll be back in a couple of weeks, but I will be following your blogs. It's how I start and end most days.

Then, too, I may be back writing sooner if new entries interfere with my dreams and then start yarping loudly at me as the paintings did!

In the meantime, as Carl would say, keep makin' art. I am so very lucky to have made blogging friends here... and I think it all started with Carl at Artistic Balance and Jo at Majority of Two.  And built from there.  If the blogs I follow are not familiar to you, I'd also suggest you root around among them, and give some a try! I know that reading such fine words and seeing such beautiful words  have made me think more, feel more deeply--and have lifted my spirits when I needed it.

Runaways to Redbank Part III: Whiffle Ball and Pictures of Dirt

 Lest you think that yesterday's  entry indicated some inner loneliness or sliding into a funk, here's Runaway III. I love traveling alone, and this is partly why--the northern Jersey shore. And I am afraid there will be a Runaways to Redbank IV, because, well, there is my fiftieth birthday trip and the guy on the beach. And, did I ever get to Redbank for more than a pit stop? We'll see... I mean, there was the internationally know rock star, but where? And if I lump them all into one trip, oh well. Tough....

Please note, once again, any photos are included for fun here--they are from various easily accessible websites I found from googling the kind of pictures I wanted.  Except the patterns in the sand... those are mine. MINE I tell ya!

If you are new to my blog and have no clue what I'm talking about, and want to have a clue,  see  Runaway I  , and Rnaway II. This is  continuation of my two days ... (You may also find why I love traveling alone if you root around and find Deliverance I and II)

(And with this entry, I'll be on hiatus for a little while--and I do mean a little--to start a painting or two that have been haunting me for a week.)

Which Way Will She Wander?

I headed back north toward Red Bank from West Long Branch, NJ.  My dear, dear friend David (a professional drummer and brilliant computer scientist I'd known since I was 22) had told me about an old-fashioned music store called Jack's, that famous musicians from all over frequented. And there were what looked to be a wonderful natural foods place and a couple of artisan type shops...

Only there was also Sandy Hook. And it was a blustery, perfect day to walk another beach. Really. I mean, music store .... miniature Cape Cod.  Food store ...  marvelous sand bar formations. Gee. What won? And, of course, West Long Branch had offered such interesting characters, I felt as if I were on a roll. Sandy Hook it was.

The peninsula juts up quite a few miles  toward the city. You can park the car to the right of the road, to stand and facet the ocean, then simply turn around to see the bay. Remains of WWII missile sites hide in among dunes so old that they were more pure white hills with alien dwarfed forests laced by pure white paths to guide the way.  Unlike Cape Cod,Sandy Hook is too small for towns--there is just a military base at the tip. So for miles, all there was to see were bay, ocean, dunes and sky.

And living things, of course, including people.This time around, once again, the Jersey spirits had come out to play.

Barefoot Navigation...
It took perhaps ten minutes to get past the initial cluster of people. I do not move easily over dry sand. One little boy, perhaps ten, saw me lose my footing a little, cane notwithstanding, and offered me his arm, gentleman style. Just his open-faced smile steadied me. You know that kind of look they offer when the world has given them no reason to expect less in return? Well, I could not disappoint him and accepted his arm. When we reached packed sand, he bolted, barely saying good bye, as was right.

An obstacle course lay before me, however, that held potential for decapitation; unmanned fishing poles. The poles stood oh,  between 8 and 47 feet tall, stuck deeply into the sand, with nearly invisible lines angling into the sea. When monsters of the deep pulled, they bent to their own tune, performing a beautiful, if dangerous dance--but only when the fish were running. The dance was wild today, but no one seemed to care but me.

All the men belonging to the poles sat about fifteen feet back, sleeping or drinking their beer, occasionally glancing at the lines, or gawking over mirrored sunglasses at any stray woman who came by.  Let us simply say that today they did not even see me; there was a bikinied trio nearby and rumor had it they were about to turn over. I stared at the chorus line of bodies turned in their chairs, heads turned further still over right shoulders, beers halted in mid-route. They waited, breathless.  The women turned, the men smiled, the poles danced on.

Anyway, the navigation trick was to find the space where one could easily walk along the hardened surface of packed wet sand far enough from the water to avoid the lines, but close enough to the water to find interesting, well, stuff.  I couldn't look down, though, because I had to walk in such a zig zag path that I got a little dizzy.  (No, this was something beyond my normal state.) Finally I gave up, moving to the dry sand, which was far harder for me. Pulling each leg up, loaded with sand at every step very soon caused throbbing pain. Still that beat slicing an eye or worse.
 
I saw a dune and driftwood log and made for it. At this point, I realized the cane was slowing me down, so I pretended it was a baton and I was performing in the circus, and only dropped it four times. When I reached safety, with my accustomed grace, I fell more than sat down. "Ladies and gentleman," I said to my adoring crowd, undoubtedly moved by my twirling,  "with grace, she moves. Nay, verily like a doe doth she walk in the world."

OMG, a Family of Living Elves!
Unfortunately, a laugh from behind some scrub disturbed my soliloquy, and a small curly-headed gnome was giggling at me. I bowed to him and he scampered off toward the protected side of the dune. Through the brush  was a family on which I could spy so easily, it was sinful.  A dad, my 3 or 4-year-old sprite, and another little boy about my internal age--six or seven at most--were getting up from what looked like a feast. Both looked more like Garth Williams' illustrations than real boys, and, since nothing so far that day had felt much like my real life, that seemed just about right.

Dad wore khaki knee-length pants and a tank top,  with wide apart blue eyes on a face that was crowned with unruly, curly light hair. The boys had bright colored, droopy bathing trunks and the same hair. So far, so good. They had piled together the remains of the major food groups: fried chicken, potato salad, chips, cookies, cake, pie, soda, and--what was that? There among the plastic ruins: one Blue Willow china plate, precisely crossed with pistol-handled pewter knife and fork, one cobalt crystal wine glass, a folded sea blue cloth napkin and a silver bucket with a wine bottle in it.

They clearly belonged to Grandma: knee-length skirt, a long-sleeved white blouse with a peter pan color fastened at the neck with some sort of shiny pin. She was barefoot and turned before I quite saw her face, but she, too,  had short curls that could not and would not be tidied into submission.  Wild curls seemed an oxymoron on her. Dad was on his cell phone. Grandma was smoothing her blouse and patting herself as she started to clean up, occasionally seeming to yank her curls into submission. It did not work. The china and curls said Queen of the Fairies, but the clothes? Aha. 'Incognito,' I thought.

The thing about Jersey so far that sang to me, that sang clear down deep in my soul, was that exaggeration was redundant here.  The place was one walking, talking, lounging whopper of a fish story wherever I rested.

Sandy Hook Whiffle World Series Champion
"Grandma, let's play ball! C'mon Grandma, I won't pitch hard. PLLLLEEEEASE." The older elf had the family mass of honey hair that stuck out at all angles like new wood shavings, with one long bit he was perpetually swiping at. Dad snapped the phone, sat back on his heels, and smirked at his mother.

"Yeah, Mom. Show them how it's done," he said as the smirk widened into an outright grin. Suddenly he must have seen me watching and he kind of jerked his head as if to include me in on the joke. I simply smiled, relieved to be accepted, but at this point it would have been moot. I'd come to this theater and dammit, I was gonna see my show!

"Now, Daniel, I have not played ball since I was a child. I don't remember how." Grandma looked down, but she was facing me now and I'm sure her mouth was turned up at the corners. Her hair suddenly seemed to loosen and grow a bit. It had to be a fairy was lurking behind those buttoned down clothes. It showed in the curled toes. Perhaps I am mistaken; she was not that close.

"I'll show you how," the older one said.  "And we won't keep score. Tommy can be the base. Tommy go over there with your shovel and pail so Grandma will know where to run."

"Kay, Danny. I do that. Run to me, Gamma, okay? I have to dig now." And that was almost all we heard from Tommy. He squatted there with his pail and shovel, face focused and body contorted as only a small child can manage. I think he'd found a shell, or perhaps a magic stone.

Danny got an enormous bright red bat and electric blue whiffle ball from a  beach bag the size of Milwaukee. "Okay, now watch me, Grandma. You hold the bat like this and then you swing like this and hit the ball." He was so serious, he almost had a little scowl as he tossed the ball up and swung. He missed the first few times, but then connected. Unconcerned he said, "See? Just like that."

Grandma smiled and nodded. She untucked her blouse and practically glided toward the "playing field," rolling up her sleeves. She shook her head once and the curls grew some more ...  I felt myself sitting forward on my log, and I gripped the straight up stub of a branch beside me.

"Okay, so I won't stand too far away so you can hit the ball," Danny said, and moved perhaps two feet from his grandmother.

"Young man, I will hit YOU with the bat, instead of the ball and I do not think you'd care for that. I might hit YOU clear over the dune," she said, as serious as he. I liked her. I think I liked her a lot. The boys and their dad were clearly in the family of elves with those eyes, so my guess had to be right. This explained the clothes. She had to pass. I wondered at the strain it must have been. She was curiously at home with a bat.

Daniel danced as he backed up, yelling, "Grandma, COME ON."

"The more you yell, the slower I get, so you might as well stop, dear." Something in her voice ... He stopped. Immediately.

She stepped to the sea turtle plate, gently tapped it three times, and she and that bat were one. 'Uh-oh,' I thought. 'Danny, Danny, Danny.'

"Strike one, Grandma," he said. "It's okay. Just keep trying."

I glanced at her son and he was leaning back, smiling broadly. Tommy looked up a moment, but she wasn't running yet, and went back to his shovel, humming tunelessly, but very loud.

After strike two, I held my breath, but no. She gave the ball a tiny tap and trotted -- yes, trotted is the ONLY word -- toward first base. Danny tagged her out. "Too bad, Grandma.  Maybe next time."

He quickly struck out.

When Grandma had her next at bat, she smiled as sweetly as could be. I thought of that poem from childhood, "How doth the little crocodile" ... was that how it started? ... But it ended with " and welcomes little fishes in with gently smiling jaws." She motioned for Danny to move away, but instead he wound up like a pitcher. "Watch THIS one Grandma, then I'll pitch it nice to you, I promise." 

Oh, how Grandma connected. Danny ducked as the ball shot past his ear and it was still headed up when it flew far above Tommy's head. The wind caught it and it danced wildly in the air a moment before the downward arc. I clapped.  I cheered. I couldn't help it.  She turned once toward me, eyes crinkling at the corners, as wide apart as the rest, and gave a slight nod.

Dad was laughing as he went after the ball, Tommy jumped up and down and then ran in circles, Danny stood sort of clueless with lower lip beginning to grow, and Grandma?

She simply trotted to Tommy, picked him up and kissed him, whirling him around a few times, then trotted back toward turtle home, giving  it a little kick with her toe, long before Dad came back. She began to readjust her collar, then stopped, and she left her hair alone. She smiled broadly and opened her arms toward Danny.

He still seemed caught between his ego and pride in his grandma, on the verge of a dramatic pout.  His dad pat him on the head as he passed with the ball, and said, "Most valuable player, girls' softball, 1950-1954. Danny, she had a 310 batting average.  Your grandma is a star, kid."

The boy wheeled and glared at his grandma. "YOU CHEATED Grandma! You really cheated!"

"Yup" was all she said, smiling still.  Then she shrugged and turned to saunter back to the picnic ruins, when Danny ran and threw his arms around her waist from behind, burying his face in her back.

I know my cues; I picked up my stuff and moved on.You can safely spy on the Queen of the Fairies just so long ...

Pictures of Dirt
The fishing lines ended about five minutes further down the beach. I headed toward wet sand, and began to notice bits of interesting things that had been dragged in by the tide which was now receding. Without the poles I could look down, and I came on a formation that intrigued me and I started to snap pictures from every direction.

I loved the patterns in the sand that something else had made, and that lone stone in the middle. I walked all around trying to figure out how the tree pattern had been made when, not too far away, I heard it.

"Bernie. Bernie! Whaddyou think that woman is doing? Bernie, go ask her what she is doing. Bernie, do ya hear me? Guhwan! Ask her."

Now the Jersey accent's not quite Brooklyn, though it's close.  "Ing" ends with a hard 'g.'  And 'er'  is pronounced almost, but not quite like 'ar.' It is harsh, and almost bursts from the mouth." All in all, it is an amalgamation of the most distinctive parts of a New York and Philadelphia twang that jars one into full alert.

I do not believe there is any other sound so harsh as a Jersey woman yelling.

I looked up and there they were, the antithesis of sprites. Sitting in their folding, webbed chairs.  She was in a housecoat. The kind that have those metal snaps, short sleeves and are often in bold floral prints. For some reason, she had two pink rollers on the top of her head, with almost no hair left in them, so they sort of bounced in the breeze. (I bet she also had a bathing cap that had all those little colored bits of rubber sticking out on the top. You know, the kind that flutter with every move and are especially disconcerting in a pool aerobics class.) She also was wearing fuzzy pink mules, not sandals or flip flops. Her hair was bottle-black, which made her skin seem gray. I have no idea how old she was--somewhere between 55 and 93, I'd say.

Bernie was built like a bull. Sitting there, he seemed about as wide as he was tall, from the waist up. He had a very tan, very large and hard belly covered with gray fur, and his head was sort of a tanned bowling ball atop a neck that had tan lines in the creases. He was gripping a beer that was on his left knee. There was some sort of grayish lawn sparsely distributed on his head, with An Oscar the Grouch face--vaguely annoyed with bushy eyebrows that crossed his eyes in an unbroken line.


I tried not to stare because he was also wearing boxer shorts with large hearts that had faces on them. I tried. I really did try. I did not succeed. And I do believe my mouth was hanging open to boot.

"Miss!" he shouted, to appease his wife.

"Yes?" I jumped.

"Waddaya doin?" He did not move.

"I coulda done that, Bernie. Go talk to the woman, fergodsake."

"Shaddup, Gladys." Of COURSE it was Gladys. What else could it be? Gladys and Bernie go to the beach. I should have known.  This was pre-reality shows, or I would have looked for a camera crew.

"I am taking pictures here. There is a beautiful formation in the sand," I said, somewhat lamely.  I just knew the laughing heart shorts would stand up and...yup.  He got up, first bracing a hand on each knee as he straightened. Standing, he still seemed about almost as wide as he was tall. His legs were bowed and he was wearing tennis sneakers with holes so large his big toes stuck out to the knuckle. And the shorts screamed at me. I could hear them.  I looked down and away, but I could feel the giggle well up. I don't think he heard.

His sigh was audible from fifteen feet away. He lumbered to me and looked down.

"See how pretty that is?" I asked.

Bernie looked back up at me, his unibrow unevenly twisted. He was shorter than I.  He glanced down again and up. "You a photographer or something?" Again with the hard 'g."

"Noooo... But I like taking interesting pictures, that's all." He looked down and up again, simply shrugged, Jersey style, bigger than life.

He grunted and turned toward his wife. "Gladys, she's taking pictures of dirt!  She says they're interesting!"  And his arms opened wide and he managed to shrug his entire body. I swear in Jersey, shrugging is a dance form of its own.

"Taking pictures of dirt?"

"Yeah, that's what she's doing. Taking pictures of dirt. Where you from anyway?"

"Connecticut."

"Oh. Well, then, that explains it. Gladys, she's from Connecticut! That's why!"

Gladys nodded, ducked her head as she raised an arm and with a flourish of the hand, said, "There you go!"

He plodded back up toward his chair, silent but with open arms, palms up. She was nodding. I was done.

Character Overload.  (A little known, but somewhat scary syndrome. It involves an immediate need to rock back and forth while mumbling) Red Bank would have to wait. Debriefing time was needed. Besides that night David and I were heading for some place where it was wholly unlikely we'd run into any characters: a bar on open mike night, and he was in the back up band ...

Why I am Done with Dating: How Fondue Changed My Life

I keep getting, every now and then, messages from friends that go something like this:

I was just skimming through xyz online mate hunting [that's what I call it] and I "happened" to look at Connecticut in your area and I found these guys.

After which I am sent the pictures and bios of one to three guys that they think I might be interested in. Up until the reappearance of 'Matt' into my life, this happened every couple of months, from probably four women. Since then it is far less often, but I happened to mention that as I age, I realize sometimes I do get scared. I have cash and I am very frugal, so it will last me at least four years right where I am living now. But I am 59, not 85. When the demons bite deep, well, I get scared. Two other women and I frequently remind one another that we will find a way to hook up and join forces, but a lot can happen in four years.

And once in a great while, I am simply lonely, until I remember how NOT alone I really am. Nevertheless what sticks with people are those few times I express the fear or loneliness, not the 98% of the time when I kinda LIKE being alone, and realize that when I want company, I have it with my friends. 

Regardless, they try to "help" me. Furthermore, I did read an interesting piece in another blog about how it should not be put down if a woman treats finding a mate like any other dream, where she goes after it systematically and all out. After all, isn't this one of the most important things you would ever do with your life? Why would you think, especially after a certain age, that it will somehow come to you?

The thought of doing that makes me want to toss my cookies. Besides which, until Matt came back, men were entirely off my radar. I frankly had no interest or time to worry about dating, small talk, dealing with strangers because maybe I might want to live with one. Nope. The one reason I sometimes wish I'd never let him in the door is that it woke the woman up entirely and now she has nowhere to go.  But the trade off still doesn't seem worth it.

Besides which, I have a mirror. I am not someone any man would go ga-ga over. He might grow not to care about the imperfections and over-abundance, if he found me funny, interesting, and smart;  still, we'd have to get over that initial first impressions stuff. And, then, too, so would I.

But I find it interesting what these women think I will want. The men all love walks on the beach. Okay. I can't walk. One wants a fit woman who loves the outdoors. Yeah. Well. So much for that. I love the outdoors, but mostly I have to watch it from a porch or a window. Another guy--and I really love this--wants a woman between 45 and 55 "who enjoys long walks and has no baggage."

Long Walks and No Baggage Issues: Small Talk at 59
Let's look at that, shall we? I'm 59. Both friends who sent this particular guy to me, said, "Lie." Uh huh. "They all do that." Oh, goodie. This makes what really amounts to slicked up blind dating extra special. I then point out that if a woman that age has no "baggage" she's lived in a cave, in which case she most certainly does have baggage because she would have had to avoid living life! "Oh, you know what they meant."

Yeah. I do. Dear Readers, if you have read the last four entries in this blog, how on earth could I be a person without baggage? In my background we have alcoholism up the wazoo, and older brother who may or may not be alive but we do know was in prison for three years and has been gun runner and drug dealer, two suicides, sexual abuse, divorce, losing a child -- you name it. Something for EVERYONE in my life.

"So don't talk about it."

Okie doke. Piece of cake.  That would presume I'm interested in casual dating or relatively casual sex. I'm not. I'm more interested in pursuing creativity than a man. But let's just look at that, in case I wanted to know someone. In case the fear of the future outweighed my faith that things will work out.

We have a first date and go out to dinner. He sees clearly that I don't look as good as the photo I may have put together for the online dating hoo-ha. But, then, neither does he. That's okay. We both get over that and laugh. But he also sees that, as we are walking to our table, I got the dragging one leg thing going for me and I keep having to straighten up because I tend to lean more and more forward as I walk. It's really pretty.

He's a good guy, though. We sit down. I quickly ask him the first question because, like, I don't want to, like, let him know who I actually am. And besides, I know that the strain of walking through the restaurant has brought beads of sweat to my forehead, and my eyes are kind of shot. Fortunately, all that disappears quickly, so I'm okay in a minute. He talks about his two grown kids and that he and his ex-wife are on speaking terms as long as they are not in the same room for more than an hour, with the kids and grandkids. I get him to keep talking for fifteen minutes, but, as I said, he's a good guy.

Long Walks
"So what about you? I noticed that you had some trouble walking there. Are you okay? How did you hurt yourself?"

I don't know how to field this. Do I minimize it and, well, lie, just so maybe I have a second date where I'll have to explain why I lied?  Okay, you can just tell him about the back and be strong. "I had a lot of back surgery a long, long time ago, and now I have the problems that happen later in life. You know, some arthritis and nerve damage, but I'm working on it every day. I just have trouble walking is all."

Lame. The words sound so lame. He is quiet a minute and says, "Well why did you have all that surgery?"

"I fell down the stairs. Slipped on black ice." I've fielded this one before, when I didn't want to say that actually, I have had back trouble all my life, but I thought everyone did ...  that it started when my brother used to push me down the stairs and then would go, "Mommy, Jetty fell!" Baggage. So I hope he does not pursue the back stuff.

"So.... how many back operations?" Oh, GOD no. So much for small talk there.

OR, he doesn't ask about the back. He really doesn't feel like he wants to know just yet about the limp. Already he is, in his head going, 'She's really overweight. She can't walk across a room, let alone on the beach. Well. She is kinda pretty anyway. She's funny, too. I'll ask her about her family. That's safe.'

Got Kids?
"You have any kids?"

Inside my heart hurts. My Jessie. My Jessie. And I know that this just is not a topic for a first date. But I cannot leave her out. She was my daughter. Okay, I have to be honest, because when people find out that she was my Stepdaughter, lots of times they get annoyed that I was not clear from the start Of course that always makes me really mad, because when I love someone, there is no step-ANYTHING. But do I lay this on someone now? There is no graceful...

"Hello...." he might say, little laugh. "I didn't want this to be a trick question."

I blurt, "I had two. I raised my ex-husbands two kids. I had a son and daughter." And there it is. That silence that I know so well, from a man or woman.

"I'm afraid to ask. Had?"

And there we go...

Let's try a third angle! Surely there is a safe area. Even if we start with books and movies and things like that, and it's okay. Somewhere in that conversation will come up family. And the second area of family questions is...

So. You  have brothers and sisters?
"Do you have brothers or sisters?"  "Are your parents still with us?" Things along that line. And somehow it will get to They are all dead.  Granted, many have lost their parents by now, and possibly a sibling if they are the youngest. But most haven't lost them all. Most didn't lose both parents when they, the kids, were in their thirties. Most haven't had their siblings die and get the bonus of a gun-running, drug-running brother who has had two contracts on his head. It's dramatic, but my guess is it also qualifies as baggage.

Bottom line? There is no small talk for me, when it comes to my health or my family, that will not devolve by the third round of back and forth into baggage.

Baggage--We All Have Baggage, and Shouldn't We?
Maybe the guy has had a life full of baggage too. Well, of course, to some extent, and that's a good thing.  I don't really want to date a man who is younger than 55 or older than 64. Why? Because, quite frankly, we wouldn't have some crucial sensibilities in common.

The teenage and college lives of most people I've met who are more than five or six years older than I are far more like people of the generation up to ten years older than like the kids who hit their teens in about 1962 - 1972, give or take.  The Beatles. The Stones. Viet Nam. The Kennedy assassinations. Martin Luther King. No curfews in college. Wearing jeans in high school. Marijuana. Acid rock. Work shirts. Fraying your bell bottoms--not buying them that way. Ironing hair. Afros. "You look like Jesus." Post Elvis. Just after the height of the Detroit sound, and moving into folk rock and James Brown...

So many things like that, that were part of my sensibility. And a woman's being a little uncomfortable at the chivalry of past generations--I like simple courtesies.  And I enjoy being pampered, but I also like to pamper. There is a feeling of condescension sometimes for me in chivalry, which puts me on edge. I don't like it when a man gets annoyed that, on a first date, I want it dutch.  And far too often I have found, even when I was much, much younger, that we just had such different experiences that it's too hard to get through. I like the idea that there will be that generational shorthand that comes with generally shared experiences.

The point is that, my generation, like any, will have had baggage unless we have lived in a tree--a really boring tree at that. If some of it is shared already, where it's a given that we were award of protests, feminism, a guy's fear of the draft lottery, the way vets were mistreated when they came home, the rise of divorces, so MANY things--if we already know all of that, we can have more relaxed conversations.

And if a man does not want a woman with baggage, he ain't gonna want me. Period. And if he has none, I don't want him.

But do I want to learn and deal with a man's baggage from scratch, at our age? 
That is a question my friends and I have been addressing now. And, for all the mess, and as short as his re-entry into my life was,  I still miss Matt. I will always miss him somewhere inside, just as I did for thirty years. But it is not even near the end of the world. And even if I was out of balance for a time, I  found it again.

But the thing was, I knew his baggage. I knew him. I knew his flaws, his strengths. I knew where he stumbles. I knew where he flies. And I already had intimacy there. And he remembered me when I was young and, well, yes, pretty darned good-looking. I remember him that way as well. It took half an hour and one kiss for me to simply see him young again. I really do not care about the years of living that changed his appearance. And he behaved at least as if he didn't care either, and the truth is, he knew my stuff, too.  Our small talk lasted half an hour and we were in synch again. And I allowed myself to be that vulnerable, inappropriately, because I knew him, because it was so very easy, so very quickly.

The truth is I do not want to try to get to that place with someone new. I don't care enough about having a man as my companion to bother. I prefer the company of women.  The male/female intimacy and that sense that I was fully safe for all time, that I had with Matt... hey. I kissed a multitude of frogs before and after him, and they just didn't fit. Had I stumbled across someone back then, within a few years of my divorce, before another twenty years of living, failed relationships, serious health issues, and profound losses? SURE. It might have been fine, even though different.

NOT NOW. I am at a different point, a different beginning now.

But why is it that some women and men, for that matter, refuse to believe? Why must people tell me that somewhere out there is just the man for me? Well, yeah. there is. But he is not available and no one will know me as well as he. It's done.  There is not time.  I have too much to do with the time I have left to devote dinners to small talk. It's time for my personal, artistic soul to fly and do whatever dance it may. Solo. Why won't people understand that? Must we be coupled to be happy? No. Any rational answer is "no." Love comes in friendships, too. As do companionship and support.

The final straw was when one of my friends sent a match.com picture where the guy was a born again, fundamentalist Christian who plays guitar and sings the gospel, and wants a good, traditional Christian woman to be his "help mate." I said, "You have known me for fifteen years now. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with this man's ad. He's far more straightforward than most, and I think that's great. HOWEVER, you know me. Let's see, fundamentalist Christian, wants a helpmate??  What on earth made you think he and I would have anything at all in common, and, frankly, that my meeting him would not be a waste of HIS time, let alone mine?"

"He plays the guitar."

Flash back to 1979: Up "Psycho" Theme
Which took me back to the only blind date I went on, right after Matt dumped me the first time, and I was 27 and had pretty much decided that being single made more sense than dealing with men.  I'd lately been dumped by Matt... so I was being fixed up or encouraged to date anything that moved.   It was the 70's as well: so for a time, I sort of "goed with the flow" anyway, despite what I felt inside. Yeah. I was 27. One of my best friends insisted I have a date with this guy, at her house. She even made the dinner.  I figured, if this couple thought we might hit it off, well, hey. What the hell?

He was about thirty and sort of pasty colored, a bit heavy, which wasn't a particular problem except that it supported his comment of, "Nature is over-rated. I like being in a dark movie theater with a horror flick bigger than life, and a bag of popcorn. There's nothing like being so scared you pee your pants."

For some unknown reason, picturing him that way was not that big of a turn on. I told him I loved to hike--back then I was extremely strong and could walk just fine, despite the pain I often had--and preferred films that made me laugh, not scream. I kept it light and partly thought, maybe it was a joke and he was just trying to break the ice. An odd approach, perhaps, but after all, my friends knew me really well.

He leaned in toward me, "But really, EVERYONE should experience a good scare now and then, you know?"

Okay. My life. I looked at him and blinked twice. I smiled my best "YOU asshole" smile and said, "Life holds enough of those without going to look for them."

He leaned back and had one of those self-satisfied looks that sometimes evokes thoughts of violence in me. Forget about the movies. "You're one of those women with baggage, right? Man, why the hell would they stick me with you... Right. We're a great match."

"You  are absolutely right, " I said."Well, this dates over. Let me give you a doggy bag to take home. You can eat it while you watch a movie."  And I did, and he left.

When I asked the COUPLE why they had fixed me up with him, the husband said, "He's single?"

Tableware Trauma
 Jean Ellen was having a friend over for dinner the next night, and persuaded me to join them because he had a friend visiting. Yeah. Well. Whatever. I said, "Okay, sure, but please do  not consider it a date."

She said, "Well what would you call it then?"

"FINE. Call it a date. But it's tomorrow, and it it will be done with,  and I really don't care." (Clearly, I was a very evolved, mature 27.)

I worked at a university library in the early days of Library of Congress electronic filing and inter library loan. I was part of the cataloguing department and a good part of my job involved computer research for the catalog librarian. We received a great many text books that had no official classification yet, and so we had to develop the call numbers and the correct research card classifications. It was as nerdy a job as one could have back then, which suited me. Besides which I got to meet an awful lot of faculty, and I could take free courses.

As turned out to be the case for every job I had outside of my freelance career, I was the ear of the director, and I was also in charge of developing and writing training materials for the department of which I was part. Mrs. C., my boss, was from Korea and was, by her own admission, old school. She was uncomfortable with other people's emotions and would inappropriately laugh with an old-fashioned machine gun rattle (Not as loud a sound as today's automatic weapons sounds) at people who were in pain, or who were emotionally distraught. She also had a habit of dragging me into the conference room to vent at the top of her lungs, forgetting the gap at the top of the walls, that allowed every sound to escape into the surrounding walls.  And she would slip into a clichéd version of a Korean accent, forgetting her tenses, articles, and pronunciation. She would lose control, basically, because she trusted me.

Lucky me.

The date night was to be Wednesday.  At work that day, Mrs. C. had begun to chastise me for some error on the research slips I had given her. We had enormous catalog books that weighed about 15 pounds each and were 30 inches tall by 12 inches wide. I had looked up the obscure composer's name, and then the various works this new book discussed, and created several citations for her, but they were not enough. When I balked at her, she screamed, as she dragged me into the conference room.

"You cannot take Criticism! Do you think I like it here? Don't you think I would like to work at  exciting place? You do not belong here any more than I. You are Renaisssance woman, taking Spanish and French, writing poetry, singing, acting in plays, taking education courses. You do NOT BELONG HERE. Just like me!" It never ceased to amaze me that her tirade was almost always not about my bad work, but about feeling trapped. "I have son and husband and I am stuck here with this so SMALL  JOB. I should be in New York. In California. Some place where I meet international people. And you should be too. You should go to school and get OUT OF HERE!"

But I transgress.  What a shock.

I drove home that night knowing she was right. I was full of my own frustration, mostly because I could not figure out what I truly wanted. I thought that adult education was the direction I cared about--helping adults who wanted to climb up in the world to do it.  But I knew this meant grad school, and a whole lot of work to figure out how to get there.  I wanted to forget about it for a while, and just breathe first.  It was in this frame of mind that I came home to find the entire kitchen a mass of sauce pans and smelling of hot peanut oil. Jean Ellen was in a nightgown, drenched from making I don't know what.

"We are having fondue. Beef fondue and I have made six sauces for us to dip in. The ice box cake is in the refrigerator. They will be here at 7 and I have to shower. Will you help me finish up?" It was only about 5:15, but it also was not my favorite thing to do when I walked in the door--clean dishes.  The "boys" were coming at 7:30, also not my favorite time to start dinner. It was a work night. And she had to be out the door by 6:30 tomorrow herself. One night. Who cared?

Fondue. I think it's a waste of time, having to skewer some tiny bit of beef, hold it in boiling fat, then dipping it in a sauce. All those little dishes to spill, all that effort. It was "the thing" back then, so whatever. The guys came and were very nice, but something seemed odd. It was as if Norm and Ron had some shorthand language at all, and really, Norm was not the least bit datish toward me. None of that shyness or anything.

It occurred to me, when the three others were talking, that I might do better to put a couple of hunks of beef on the fork, thereby making the process more efficient. The only sauce I liked was teryaki anyway. I stuck an extra one on... cool.

Wait. Norm and Ron were talking about their place. Hold it. "You two live together?"

"Yeah, we've been dating for more than a year and Norm--"

"Jean Ellen? Why didn't you tell me?" I was kind of pissed. I would have been totally relaxed, but no. She insists it's date?

She looked down and said, "Well, I wasn't sure you'd say yes. I figured it had to be a date."

"YOU IDIOT" I said, and laughed, thinking, oh, GOOD, I could relax.

With which I stuck the third piece onto the fork as I laughed, but had to use a bit more force. Success! I skewered the meat and my left hand, both at once!

There I sat, facing my sister, who was at the end of the table. She went, "Oh, no! oh, no!"

I was looking down at the odd effect of a long fork, a few pieces of meat on it, jiggling back and forth.

Ron went, "Pull it out! Pull it out!"

Norm, next to me and unable to see, went, "What's wrong? What's wrong?"

I pulled it out, forgetting it is barbed. It made a peculiar sound and I felt ill. My hand was covered with a comingly of beef and Jeannette juice.  I found myself thinking, "Thank God it's NOT a date."

When Norm realized what had happened, he put a gentle hand on my shoulder. "Jeannette, when was your last tetanus shot?"

"Huh?" (See, I was articulate, even back then.)

"Raw beef juice and metal? Shouldn't we get you to the ER?"

"Shit. Yeah, I guess so. But you guys can finish dinner first," I said, as the two blue spots on the front and back of my hand, straddling, YES, the middle finger, really began to let loose.

We went to the hospital.  I went to the check in lady, hand bound and held UP the whole time and had to tell her, "I stuck a fondue fork through my hand."

She moved her eyes up, but not her head. "Really? I mean, really? You stuck a fork in your hand?"


"Yes. well. You see, I figured if I could get two pieces of beef on the thing, why not three? And I did, but I sort of got my hand, too."

"Uh huh. I see. So, clearly you pulled it out, but oh, yes. Well. This is a first. On the other hand," She looked up at me and smiled, "Last night I was here and you should have seen the man who had used the attachment to the Hoover Beats as It Sweeps Vacuum..."

I paused, but said most politely, "I think I am glad that I did not."

She smiled at me and ushered me into my cubicle. In what seemed like a second, an extremely handsome, oh, twelve-year-old-intern stuck his head between the incidents and asked in a revoltingly cheery voice, "Is this the forking incident?" and came in.

Inside I went, gay or straight, never again. NEVER. AGAIN. I don't care if it is a match sent from God, never again. "Yes."

"I see. Oh, my, look at how that finger is dipping. That's going to be a problem for you for a while, I am afraid. There looks to be some nerve damage. Oh. And it went all the way through. You were hungry?" And the thing is, though the corners of his mouth twitched, he did not crack a smile. And he didn't even look UP, the coward.

"Am I going to live? May I please just have my shot?"

When he gave that to me, he said, "Seriously, if you have to use your hands a lot for work tomorrow, you will have a problem possible. You may find you have a serious reaction in your right arm, since you haven't had one of these since childhood. You may not, but be prepared."

He bandaged the left hand so I could not really move my fingers, but, yes, the middle finger was not moving at all, and dipped below the others, which, when relaxed, curled. It remained straight. Lovely.

As I left, he said, "Really, Ms L., there are more effective ways to ingest your food than shooting it up," and his laugh was really a rather engaging one. I did not set foot in that hospital again for at least a decade, just in case.

Well. Picture the next morning, when I could move NEITHER hand well. My right arm throbbed, and my left hand as well. I had to call Mrs. C and tell her what happened. Let's just say the following day I had to show her both the wound, and the ER slip. She could not stop laughing all day, especially, when I went to wave good bye to a friend while I was writing something,  and flipped her the finger, instead.

***
The night after I told Jessie and Jay this story, I asked her to set the table for dinner. I sat down and saw a spoon at my place. We were having pork shops. She smiled sweetly and said, "I love you, Jeannette. I don't want you to hurt yourself."


Eight years ago Jean Ellen and I had yard sale, to clear out junk.  We laughed about the fondue set I was tagging.  Well, let me warn you about something.  My four friends who "helped" us are my witnesses.  We put out one set, with the original avocado green lettering. When the sale was over, there were three sets.

They reproduce. (Up Psycho music once more...)

The Existence of elves, Revisited (July, 2009)

My family life was pretty much about living in a rain forest: lush or rotting, with little in between. I've said that on many occasions. Lately, I've been writing about the hard stuff, and I know that both Robin Hood, from yesterday, and When I Awoke to the Notion of Being a Writer from a couple of weeks ago are two such entries. I have been given so much support for them, that it has renewed the impetus as I move forward with my book.

However, I wanted to revisit an early entry here. I had a whole lot of magic in my early life, and when I started writing the blog I began with some of them. I had almost no followers. Not that it's a crowd now, but quantity hasn't been my goal. I simply wanted to work on my writing--the craft, the art, and the notion that one can convey pain without graphically sticking to horrifying detail!  However, more people have decided to stay and perhaps you might be getting a skewed view of what my childhood was!

One commenter felt he could not live my life with all I have gone through.  I put this little piece in here once more, for those who have never read it, to remind you that I LOVE my mom. And that Jack and I had some magical times. That our world held every single color imaginable, and, yes, to lighten up.

NOTE: I have scattered a few Garth Williams illustrations because THIS is the image of elves I had as a child, from the book Elves and Fairies.  I just thought it might evoke memories for boomers, and give others a feel for the fifties, when my memories were the living events.  At one time I asked my mom whether I could grow up to be Garth Williams and she told me that I would have to work on growing up to be Jetty.  I sulked for easily a whole fifteen minutes.

Enough intro  ... Onward... From July, 2009--moved to today

... [There] were moments of pure joy and absolute beauty in my childhood. In fact, they took up more time and space, and as I explore this art form of memoir in my blog, I think I would rather start here. I would rather begin with the magic that was my mom, Jean Margaret. We'll leave the darkness for other times...
***

Me, around 2
in ecstasy over a feather

Flying Lessons: Proof of the Existence of Elves

Spirituality is a strange thing in the heart of a child. It has wings sometimes; it flies up from the leaves, the grass, through water, from everywhere at once. More than half a century later, I feel it and taste it, hear the echoes of that day. Grown ups call what children feel so deeply “magic,” then try to teach them it’s God. They don’t seem to ever get it; children need no teaching. We know it is all the same, whatever name we give It. The Keeper of all Magic is God.

On the other hand, when I was not yet four and my brother was already six, for us, the Keeper of the Magic was Mommy.

Especially on sunny mornings, when the light threw rainbows all over the kitchen, and she'd wipe her hands on her apron, not even finishing the breakfast dishes, turn to us and whisper, "picnic!" Out would come the hard-boiled eggs ever-ready in the fridge, for deviling. Jacky would make the chocolate milk. I would rinse the grapes. Before you knew it, Jack's enormous red wagon appeared, the thermos was full, picnic packed, and we were gone.

This particular day, Mommy had said to me, "Always remember, Jetty, there is always something more compelling in life than housework."

***

We always stopped on the dirt road beside the hole in the bridge. She’d let us look down at the water rushing miles below. It was on our picnic that particular day that we learned about elves.

“Lie on your backs and don’t make a sound,” said Mommy, doing this herself. “Just look at the clouds and listen.”

At first I didn’t hear much, but gradually I heard it. Soft rustlings, small feet, rushing sounds that had no familiarity.

“Now look at where you hear the sounds,” she said. “You can’t see anything, can you, except a few ants. They are much too small to make such sounds.”

We were stumped. We waited, looking at our mother with full confidence that some new axiom was about to be shared.

“Elves,” she said. “Well, and fairies, too, but primarily elves because fairies tend to fly. It’s the only explanation. They are invisible to us, but they make sounds. What else could it be? If it were birds or animals, we’d have seen them. We have them all around here.” She waved her arms, encompassing the whole woods, it seemed. “And we have them outside the kitchen window, too. Jean Ellen saw them yesterday. We decided you two should know about it, because we want you to help us make them some furniture.”

“In the window box, Mom?” asked Jacky.

“Precisely.”

We sat up and opened our sandwich cookies in solemn wonder. Elves. At our house. First a picnic, now this. Lunchtime drifted lazily into early afternoon, as we named cloud shapes, studied three ants trying to move one large crumb to their home. Mommy wouldn’t let us squash it.

“Only in the house. Outside, this is their spot and we’re guests.”

And so it came to pass that Daddy came home for dinner to find four of his family painting folded paper furniture, and stringing twig bows for a family of window box-elves with whom he wasn’t even formally acquainted. My older brother Jim was watching T.V. He was nine and too old for this “junk.” Jean Ellen was twelve and it didn’t phase her in the least. It was all right, though, because Jim wasn’t much into anything Jacky and I cared about.

Daddy said, “Elves. I see. I’ll go read the paper for a while.” He didn’t even grump about dinner. Just got a beer from the fridge and wandered, chuckling, into the living room. We put the furniture and three bows into the window box and tried not to look for signs of life more than ten times before bed.

I was in the kitchen by 6:00 the next morning, when Mom was putting the water on for hers and Daddy’s tea. I dragged a chair to the window, knocking into washing machine and the mop bucket.

“Hold your horses, Jetty, just hold your horses,” Daddy’s voice was his laughing voice as his hands lifted me onto the chair.

The furniture had been moved and the bows were gone.

“Jacky!” I shrieked. Fortunately, he was on his way down the stairs.

A small, bumpy blue bag was on the edge of the box by the house, in the left corner, the spot most accessible from the kitchen. I let Jacky pick it up and he let me unfold the small note inside, as he emptied out a small mound of marbles of every description. In the tiniest printing that ever was, Daddy read, 'Thank you for the furniture. It’s very comfortable. And the bows work great. Yours truly, the window box elves.'

Later that summer, when I was four, Mommy said we were moving to a new house in someplace called Manchester a whole twenty minutes away. I started crying because there would be no elves.

The very first thing she did, when she got me out of the car at the new house, was take me to our side yard. There was a tree with twisty branches and giant leaves, as big as plates.

“This is a catalpa tree, Jetty. I prefer to call it an elf’s tree.”

I looked hard at the tree, expecting to see a tiny pair of eyes look back.

“Elves use these leaves for clothing, for their bows and arrows, to make their homes, and they use the catalpa beans for food and the pods for boats. It’s the perfect tree for them. Just last week, I believe your father saw an elf or two right on our back porch. Next week, we’ll have to make some gifts as a sort of housewarming, okay?”

Years later, I found her talking to my soon-to-be stepdaughter at the picnic table beneath that tree. All I heard were the words “What else could those sounds be? Catalpa trees are elf trees, actually…” and I went back into the house. Jessie started calling my mother grandma that very day.

***

That was one type of punctuation to bracket regular life. Most days we told her we were bored and had nothing to do, to which she would absently pat our heads, kiss us, and say, “That’s too bad. I’m not.” And she’d leave us to find something to do, not knowing how to be mad at her exactly. She yelled at us when we were bad, shooed us when she was busy, was impatient more than was probably right at times. She was the rule-maker and the sun at the center of our lives, like most Moms. She also held a terrible darkness that could block out the brightest day.

Most of our days, though, as small children, were the stuff of everyone’s childhood in the 1950s and early 60s. The difference was the magic of a Mom who would drop everything to give us pure joy, to find the adventure in an ordinary moment. We had elves. We had rainbows. And we had lazy, deviled-egg picnics that supplanted housework on the priority list for living.

This morning I saw a dust rhino gallop across the living room floor. I thought I'd best vacuum. The sun hit the prism in my window and I went out into the garden instead. I am not sure, but I may have seen an elf leap off the six foot tall lily by my front door.

Small Addendum

How many people got a mom like that? Or ever really KNEW about elves and fairies? Or knew there was something more important, more compelling than housework. Like blogging, for instance?  I miss my mom. On the other hand, I DID teach Claire and Adam all about Santa Claus and how I knew about him through my dad. Yes, and of course, they did not have an elf TREE, but they had a birdhouse with a magic garden around it, and ultimately the elves found that... There is no garden or catalpa tree. I guess next spring, I'll have to make an elf planter because I am really  not sure I want to live somewhere they cannot be, you know?

Robin Hood and Maid Marion: and All My World Grew Still

Be prepared. This memoir draft is neither funny nor light.   It was difficult to write, and my guess is that it will be difficult to read. I understand if anyone chooses to wait instead for Runaways to Red Bank III, which I will put online in a couple of days! Thank you, all of you, who somehow keep choosing to read what's uncomfortable.

It is my story, and I have to be able to write "ugly," as I used to say when I could not write anything that was darker than  Anne of Green Gables meets Pollyanna. As always, though, the power for me lies in the beauty, the beautiful power of my brother Jack in the face of evil. And the power of a little girl's love.

My brother's and my journey together is in bits and pieces of other blogs, but primarily in  Approaching the Pain, Keeping the Love  --  "I move to Robin Hood" well down, across from my Blog list.  That entry holds pieces that can shed light on more about our years between childhood and his end.

 'Tis I, Robin Hood!

When I was three, my brother Jack got a Robin Hood outfit. My mom and Jean Ellen made me a Maid Marion cape with genuine fake diamonds all along the bottom. Together, he and I would listen to our Robin Hood records with the books. You turned the page when Friar Tuck sang. Then we would run into the front yard where the ancient ... magic tree with roots that were above the ground, not just below it, stood.

We had adventures. Sometimes I got to be Friar Tuck or one of the Merry Band, but mostly I was Maid Marion. She was not a wimp, so I got to ride away with my Robin Hood to foil another plot of the bad Sheriff of Nottingham. We had sacks of acorns from the woods to throw to the poor in the village below (our neighbor's three horses in a corral).  We smite the mighty smoke-belching Tractor Dragon one evening, sneaking out of the house just before bedtime.


Just as we were about to revel in victory, "John Harvey and Jeannette Louise, YOU GET HOME NOW!" My father's voice could be heard three towns away, we thought.

A typical ending of our days -- mostly running home.

I followed him like a puppy, and not once in my memory did he shoo me away.

I had the measles when I was four, right after we moved, and nearly died of kidney failure and double pneumonia. Jacky was by  my side more often than not.  A head would pop in my door.  "Tis I, Robeen Hoooood!" he would cry, and bow before his lady in her room-darkened bed.

"You sound like an owl, not a hero," I'd say. And he would wing around the room "Hoooooooting" for me, making me laugh. Then I would start to cough and he would stop, a study in worry. He would sit on the side of my bed and  hold my hand, stroke my forehead. I was deathly ill, but I don't remember that; I remember how kind everyone was, especially Jacky.

"Jetty, get better, now," he'd whisper.  "We have to build that city for my trains, remember? You promised. You know I stink at making the trees and all the little stuff right.  I just break everything. I need you." That was the thing, you know; Jacky needed me. I got better.

Our dragon-slaying days had ended, though; we had a greater fight.


The Monster who Lived in our House
Our older brother Jim was the Sheriff of Nottingham. I will never know how Robin Hood truly fared in the tower he shared with Jim. I had Princess Jean Ellen in mine; he had Jim. I was protected until she left the house when I was in third grade, at least at night. But daytime was a different story long before she went away. The Princess was seldom home in the afternoon...


Sometimes the queen fell into a deep, deep slumber, with her royal glass of amber on the table by her throne. Worse still, sometimes she went on royal errands and left the Sheriff in charge. Those days Jack's call held urgency, "Jetty run and hide! He's coming!" Wherever I was in the house I ran like hell for my daddy's bedroom closet. The back had a slanted floor for the bathroom plumbing, but there was a little ledge at the top. I could just crawl behind Daddy's Old Spice clothing and tuck myself in tight, wrapped in a sports jacket, and simply wait. To wait and wait where no one ever came.

I would hear the muffled cries, the sounds of a chair scraped over wood. Other sounds. The laugh, a barrage of staccato explosions. I tried to cover my ears. There were other sounds I could not name. I would wait in the safety of my father-smelling dark. I would wait. Wait for the only sound I wanted to know.

"Maid Marion, the Sheriff has gone!"

Out I would fly to Robin, to my brothers' room. I'd look out the bathroom window first, making sure the sheriff was headed down the road, whistling usually. Then I would go to the boy in a chair, just a boy no more than six or seven, tied up and silent, with dark eyes and long lashes heavy from trapped tears.  I would untie his hands and let him be, while I fetched the cotton balls, the iodine, and held a facecloth under the cold water.  I did not rush. Robin Hood did not want me to see him cry. Heroes are like that.

Our ritual was silent. Full. Maid Marion dressed the tiny wounds, and turned the dampened, cold cloth on his forehead.  I would kiss the places where blood was drawn, but there never were many. The sheriff grew quite skilled at leaving no marks beyond pin pricks all over his skin.  He hurt the places that never showed; it was a mission for him.

Sometimes Jim found me, but only when Jacky was not there. Besides which, Jim preferred to find me at night...

And the reign of terror did not end until I was in seventh grade, and Jim moved out for good.

Those years held too much darkness, and so I learned to forget; to forget all but the fairy tale, to forget the reasons my brother's light simply dimmed, and finally went out. I became expert at forgetting the moment something happened, keeping only what I chose. And yet, somehow we know. I began to remember in 1987, after my father died. I wrote this poem after waking from a "nightmare," however, in 1980.

Brotherssong

A hole fills my heart where a childhood should breathe

 and a blood-dripping moon floods my dreams.

The bats start flying

In the house of my death and the songs of my night spin to screams.

There's a blank at the table where my brother's face should feed;

 his hands in my night sprout to claws.

Then the bats start biting while my brother grins on

while the moon drips blood from his jaws.

A newspaper breathes where my father's face should see,

a dead wind rattles at the door.

While the bats bite deeper and my other brother screams

the half moon's bleeding on the floor.

There's a dead mouse in the dark where my other brother cries

and Mother grows drunk on the tears.

While my father keeps reading and my brother grins on,

while my other brother withers with the years.

Too Soon Gone...
He was only 50 and I was not yet 48.  His son, John, had hanged himself in February and I had not seen Jack for several months when I saw him at the cemetery.  He had aged at least a decade and could not walk without a cane. Jack seemed shorter, smaller entirely and his hair and beard were white now. But he eyes were there, the eyes that got to me always, darker brown than the deepest wood, with thick long lashes that made them stand out all the more. And they were so very large and lost that day.

He was surrounded, though, by teenagers. Teenagers with piercings and tatoos. Teenagers with pink hair, purple hair, no hair, black hair. Punked out, gangsta'd, of all types. So sweet, so tender to him. When they found out I was the baby sister of his stories they surrounded me and I saw what the real Jack's life was all about. I will not take away from the love for his children, but in the love Jack gave these emotionally bereft, hurt, abandoned, throw away children, I saw that Robin Hood lived for them. And they loved him back. His colleagues knew me, too. I was surprised, since I had been non-existent in his adult life.

When I walked to him, he opened his arms, but when he held me, I knew Jack was leaning on me, this time. And he was as nothing in my arms. I pulled away a moment, looking him straight in those grief-haunted eyes. "You're dying," was all I said.

"I'll call you," was all he said. But I knew.

His liver was shot and the only answer was a liver transplant. This was now April and he was at my  house. It was late. His visits were always at night. His banjo was in his hands, because it was easier for him to talk that way.

"Why don't we test mine?" I asked.  "Jean Ellen's not a possibility because of her diabetes, but I don't have diabetes."

He smiled and reached his hand out as Daddy had always done, stroking a wandering strand near my face. "No. Not a possibility. You need your liver."

"I KNOW THAT, But they can take just a lobe and--"

"NO, Jetty. NO." His voice was harsh. "No. Don't you get it? I told you. I'm not going to stop drinking. I'm not a candidate for a transplant. I don't care what they do for celebrities. It's wrong. I did this to myself and I know it. Just the way Mom did, I did this. And I have NO desire to stop drinking." He stopped a moment, and registered that I was shaking. He took my hand, again with the familiar Daddy gentleness. "Jetty, the fact is, I really don't much care about living. I've had to retire. My back is worse and pretty soon I won't be able to walk at all. I won't be able to take care of my family; they'd have to take care of me. Jetty, you gotta let me go."

And it just burst out of me, "But, Jacky, I just got you BACK!"

And we cried ...

In May, he was admitted to intensive care, where he stayed for the next two weeks. He could not run away from me. I was editing catalogs for Northeastern University at the time, and Jack's wife was still teaching, as were all his friends. So during the day I got to see him. The first day he could still talk a little and he said he' would never go home. I saw tubes coming out of him in all directions. I knew what came next. The hepatic coma, where he could sense everything done to him, but would not be able to speak, where he might come in and out of it, but would slowly become someone who did not resemble himself. I knew the swelling in the feet, then the hands. I knew, I knew, I knew.

I said, "But why do you have to be hooked up? Why can't you just GO, Jacky?" I was sobbing. I was useless to him like this. He looked wildly at me, but speech was so hard for him.

I heard "Family" and I realized. I held his hand and said I was sorry at least a dozen times. I told him I understood and would never mention it again. I promised. He was letting his family prepare; he would let his wife pick the time. It was his last act of love--an overwhelmingly selfless act of love. We both became calm and we simply held hands in silence.

I asked whether I could come back every day and work beside his bed, if I promised not to be maudlin. Jack usually disliked company in the hospital. I awaited the answer. His eyes filled with tears and I felt him squeeze my hand. He nodded. He did not stop nodding for the longest time.

Maid Marion's Turn to Rescue
The ritual became a staple for his longest days. I would get there at about 11, after the cleaning and the poking and the prodding were done. By then there was a tube down his mouth and he was on total life support. The sound of the respirator gave us privacy. I was given permission to untie him every day for the durations of my visits. His hands danced, just as Mommy's had, only they grabbed at the wires and the tubes--randomly, not with purpose. They grabbed at the sheets resting against over-sensitive legs. I knew what to do. I was more experienced than they knew. I would create a tent of the sheet over his legs, so they would not touch the calves, so swollen and mottled purple now. I combed his hair as HE liked it, so the follicles could rest from over-stimulation.

Sometimes he got angry, because I had to grab his hands to keep him from pulling out the wires or tubes and his angry eyes were like Rasputin's.  My eyes would fill; I couldn't help it. Robin Hood NEVER looked at Marion so.

I had to raise my voice to reach through this lightest of comas. I don't know why they even called it a coma, but it really doesn't matter. He had slipped into it before his mind was gone, so I could bring him back just enough, at times. "YOU HAVE to STAY ALIVE, JACK. You promised yourself. JACK. I have to keep your hands from dancing there, dance them over here!" And I would point to somewhere safe.

And suddenly, after what seemed like hour-long seconds, something would click and the eyes would soften. On the two occasions when he reallized he'd hit at me, he started to cry and I had to get him to stop by threatening to sing "Muskrat Love" to him.

Gradually the eyes would soften, the hands would drop to rest at his sides, and usually by noon he was thoroughly relaxed. I would sing softly, the songs we both knew, while I'd work for an hour or so. By around 1:00, he would drift into what looked like sleep, and I'd stay awhile longer, watching him when he looked comfortably at rest. When he could not see me cry.

The nurses saw, and would usually come over in another fifteen minutes or so and ease me out of the room so they could do their afternoon care. It was all right then, because I knew his family would be there by 3:00. They did not know I came every day.

I was his only visitor. And all I could give him were those minutes when his hands were free.

Singing Our Way Home
The day came at last; the nurse told me that his wife had made the call that morning. She had asked that they wait until after she had visited at dinner time.  I asked how that could work so he would die alone, and the nurse said they expected he would be able to breathe for a little while but that the effort would be too much for him within a few hours at most. I didn't get it; I didn't have to. But I knew it would be the last day.

He was looking for me and I asked him if he would like me to sing the entire Wildflowers album. He blinked and his eyes seemed to smile. I untied his hands, but he seemed almost present there that day.
I began to sing and forgot to sing softly; a nurse came in and I began to apologize.

"No,  no," she said. "May we open the curtain a little longer, so we can hear?" It made me shy a moment, but Jacky took my hand.

I knew it all by heart. We had so many songs and I could hear his guitar in my heart as I sang. He began to drift away it seemed, but, well, I AM his baby sister. I got to "The Sisters of Mercy" and deliberately botched the words and his eyes flew open, glaring at me.

I know my grin was evil. "Oh. Gee. Let me see. Squeeze my  hand once, for Jetty I love you so. Twice for  you colossal little bitch." Two squeezes and all was right with the world; I finished the album without further incident.

By the end, I knew he was resting, and I sang my final song, changing the words just a little. James Taylor's Close Your Eyes. I often sang that to him. Only this time I ended with my own reprise,
"Darlin' close your eyes.
You know ... I'll always love you."

I got up to go, but he grabbed me and squeezed my hand just once. I kissed him and left.

***
His wife called me at 11 and said he was going and I could go to the hospital if I wanted. I took off. I raced to the hospital, but I was too late. No, I probably was exactly on time for Jack. The doctor was removing the stethoscope and the monitor was turned off. His eyes were open.

I shooed them out and said, "Let me do this." Both had seen me before and the nurse touched my shoulder gently as she left. I slowly removed the restraints for the last time.

"Robin Hood. It's Maid Marion. Sheriff Nottingham's gone for good and no one will tie you up ever again."  I smoothed his johnny and washed each hand, then gently crossed them over the sheet I tucked it around him, as if he were sleeping.

And I began to sing "Close Your Eyes" again. I heard a gasp from somewhere nearby, but I kept going. It got so quiet. I brushed his hair as I sang. His silky, pure white hair .. and I combed his beard. Robin Hood lay there so very still. And I finally got there,
"So I'll close your eyes
'll just close your eyes, cause it's all right. 
I'll sing you this last love song. 
But I won't sing the blues any more. 
Cause we have sung our songs. 
And I'll still sing your songs, now you're gone. 
I've closed your eyes. 
You know I'll always love you."

As I walked to my car, making this one last trip, all I could think was this:
Robin Hood slept; Marion wept. Now all the world is still.