Again, this won't be a long entry. Well. For me, it's not that long. Oh, who am I kidding? It's long.
Writer's Block Is Painter's Block
I have been blocked at the painting table this last week. I have been dreaming paintings for weeks, but the moment I sat down to paint after the week of storm chaos, nothing.
I sat with my taped down paper, all my beautiful brushes, my tissue papers, everything out for me to use and... nothing.
The demon voices from childhood clamored instead, in their original forms and in the "grown up" permutations.
"You? An artist? Your sister was the artist, not you." This voice is the counterpart to the "You? A writer? Daddy wrote the book. You haven't published a goddamned word, except for that Stanford stuff. Advertising, really. Just schlock."
Clever voices, those. You all know enough of my family to be able to figure out how those got there. And here is one of my favorites, interchangeable for singing, song-writing, regular writing AND painting. I call her Mom's 'Demon for All Seasons.'
"You just like the sound of it. I am an Artist. A Writer. I am apart from the rest of you somehow. Who do you think you are? You're not such a much, any more than anyone else. Do something real with your life. Something practical. If you won't be a teacher, get into banking, or something that will pay the bills. An artist. Save that for the weekends."
That one is the age old WASP voice of New England. Modesty is THE virtue above all virtues, followed closely by practicality.
And there is the one that goes, "You know you'll screw it up. You haven't really screwed something up in a while, so this one is going to fail. Really. Why even bother?" And I sit there, with a loaded brush, poised, terrified to put it onto the paper.
Yes. Terrified. And what will happen anyway if I "screw it up?" Yes. The earth WILL swallow me whole and spit me out as unfit. Even the earth will find me objectionable. Yup. And the painting will be so awful it will confirm the other demon voices and I will never paint anything someone will want; I will never paint another painting I like; I will run out of money because I never paint another painting that is anything; I will have a shopping cart and sleep in a cardboard box and wind up having to use a surf board with wheels to get around.
And I get so engrossed with that bizarre image that the paint dries on the brush and I start laughing and give up for the day.
That was a game Jessie and I used to play when she got into her own "I'm a loser because I cannot write this paper perfectly" mode. We'd play, "What's the worst that can happen?"
And Jessie and I would build this elaborately ridiculous story of how her life would be over, she'd lose her friends, all of her family would reject her and--Jessie liked this--we would spit at her when she entered the room, and she would become homeless and die. This usually got her writing just so she could "Get it over with and be homeless and done with it all." (And she rarely got lower than a B+, much to her brother's disgust.)
Only with me, I would simply start laughing and then remember Jess and tear up and then walk away.
We also have the "Your ideas suck and who the HELL wants to read your drivel or see your torn paper scribbles?"
Any of these voices sound familiarly inane? And toxic?
Okay, so I do know that you simply have to keep showing up at the blank paper, no matter what. I have done that with my writing--whether it's with the work I do offline or my blog. I have looked at the blinking cursor for so long that I've written songs to its beat. Bad songs, but songs, nonetheless. In my head, where I cannot possibly see them as productive work. God forbid I should actually admit to myself that writing songs, good or bad, is showing up at the page! After all, my intent was to work on that poem I thought of when I was cleaning the kitchen, NOT some song that no one will ever sing because it is so pathetic.
Finally, we get to "You are almost sixty. Who on this EARTH will care what a sixty year old, overweight woman who walks like the Hunchback of Notre Dame has to say or paint? Where on earth do you get OFF even trying at this late stage? You are no one." Yeah. That one is my favorite.
Light through the Wall of Voices
Only finally, I hear Julia Cameron talking to me. I was lucky enough to do a workshop with her several years back. I see her and hear her voice. "If you wait to start, then you'll be even older than you are now, so why not start?" Sometimes she words it differently, but always the point is the same. So you feel you are too old to start now, so you are going to wait even longer to do what you love? And is the only reason you do this to make money? NO. I have no idea whether I can make a dime more. And I'll certainly have no idea if I do not produce anything.
I write because it is the only way I can process my life EVER. I started my first journal when I was twelve. It wasn't a diary. It was a journal, and it's where I first wrote that poem about the old man and his shack, with the eagle. Since that time, I filled more than forty journals. I tend not to have journals per se any more. I have random musings in a folder on my desk top, and a beautiful handmade "journal" by my bed for snippets when I awaken in the morning. But writing was a habit I developed long ago. And when I peek into a really old journal I see drawings, too...
When I get to the voices I've acquired through the years that are NOT demons, I feel the change inside. I feel something fomenting. First it is anger and all those pathetic tapes that run no matter how hard I try to silence them. And I start telling each one off. You may laugh at me in this, but it is the only way I know how to ditch them. They will never shut up permanently--they are ingrained. However, I have learned how to get them to shut up long enough for me to find my groove again. And once I start, I am very glad I live alone, because I do it aloud.
I scream at them. "Jean Ellen would be HAPPY that I am painting! And Dad would LOVE it that I wrote for Stanford. How DARE you tell me that was schlock. It was good work. It was wonderful work and IT WAS WRITING MY BEST! I can be an artist if I want to be!"
Oh, yes. God forbid I do anything quietly or rationally. Did I ever mention that when I went off to college, I thought I would be an actress? Big surprise there, right? I address them all. That happened Friday morning. I was just plain ANGRY.
The Transformation begins
And Friday night I lugged a formless, nameless painting --the one I began on my retreat -- upstairs. I did not work on the one I thought I would begin. I worked on one where all I knew is that it kind of looks like choppy water. I said aloud, "PLAY with it, for God's sake. Don't worry about what it is, what it may be, just play with it. Screw the voices. To hell with anything but the process. JUST PLAY." I stomped my foot, which, of course, hurt, but when you are six, you don't care whether or not it hurts. If you are mad, you're mad. Stomping is what you do, at least, if you are six-year-old Jetty.
So I played. And then it began to look like the Lake on a choppy day, the way it did when I'd gaze, unfocused, down from the picture window in the cottage, the one by the giant field stone fireplace my grandpa built--on the daybed, tucked there under the window, with the enormous wood box at its head, the old record player in its beautiful wood encasing at the foot. The room always smelled like pine. Sometimes I would open the wood box top and just smell. I'd climb onto the wood box, crouching, and leap from the box onto the daybed, making sure my feet never touched the floor so that the alligator under the bed could not get me; a cheetah pouncing. Then I'd lie on my stomach and slither up to the window, lean on my elbows that rested on the sill, push my nose against the glass and stare. I was a hissing cobra, and my elbows and head were the hood. But finally I would simply lose myself, seeing nothing but the water, dancing. White caps and sparkles and every shade of blue. Sometimes a maple leaf would drift in my line of sight, and I would blink.
And Grandpa would bring me back home with his laugh, having witnessed my transmutations.
And so I began painting nothing but water. I collaged long lengths of tissue with the flat side down, curves and bumps on top, in every shade of blue I could make.
When I was done for the evening, I stood my lake against the oak desk that was at the cottage, too. The one Grandpa did his paper work at, by the one light, in the evenings. If I peeked in after bedtime, opening the swinging door from the bedroom hall, I would see him bent over papers.
"Jet. Aren't you supposed to be in bed?" I would see an eyebrow raise and I would giggle and run to my room again.
I played last night, too. And again, for just a little while this morning--long enough to get that darker blue just so, there, toward the top, to balance something or other that I cannot name.
But now I have to shower and get ready to go tutor my nephew. He is working on an essay about the difference between Lao Tzu and Confucius. And then he needs help understanding Mendel's Principles and how to make and use a Punnett Square. And he wants to get the jump on mitosis...
My brain will hurt by the time I get home on Monday, so I will leave my playground upstairs for now, so that I can use it and recover.
But here's my point. I am working on a painting for real again! And I like it. And maybe no one else in the world will like it, too, when I am done, but it does not matter. And that's the point, isn't it? Today I will be doing something that matters for and WITH my nephew. We manage to have fun in the misery of it all! I love science, which is why I loved my work for Stanford. All of it is real.
Life's a gamble most of the time, isn't it? Every day it is a 30-70 shot whether or not my legs will work. The odds are in my favor, but as the day progresses, the odds shift drastically. Yet I get up. I show up and I make them work. I'm not so sure that my painting and my writing are so very different. I have a friend who asked me why I bother trying so hard to keep walking, since I cannot do the things that are FUN--hiking, going to art shows and museums, taking a trip to New York and things like that.
I walk because I can. I walk because I can still take care of myself as long as I keep on walking. I'll do other things for fun and take the trips inside my head. And I don't know what I might miss if I STOPPED walking just because it's hard.
What will I miss if I stop writing just because I don't know whether or not other people will want to read what I write, let alone pay money for it? And what will I miss if I stop painting? I remembered my grandpa again. He lived for me as I painted. I had not thought of those days in a long, long time. I can smell the cottage again. All from playing with my papers and paint. What will I be missing if I do not try to paint the autumn leaf that will drift into my view, there, over the blues of that water? What will I remember when I paint a few sparkles there, among the white caps?
I don't know. It isn't worth the risk, the not trying. Isn't that why we do what we do? Isn't that why we search for the picture to snap? The painting to create? The story to tell? Is that why the Stanford professors just had to start another business when the first, second, and third didn't quite work? Are they afraid they will miss something important if they do not take the risk?
Somewhere or other, with people who are driven to create, to explore, the risks of missing something outweigh safety. I don't think that would necessarily be the right thing for every person to do, but perhaps it is what drives some of us. I don't get a rush from the risk itself; I get the rush from the process and then something indescribable when it works. I don't like the uncertainty, actually. I hate it; but I need to do it anyway. It has little to do with courage, though. I simply love to fly.
Not an original thought among any I wrote today, but they are the thoughts that get in my way, and the thoughts that take me home ... and the thoughts that allow me to fly.
What about you? what are your demons and what thoughts are the sails that catch the wind for you?
Oops. I had best at least get my shower taken! Have a wonderful couple of days? (well. More than that, but it will be tomorrow night before I get back.) Editing will not do for today, and I hope that I read about your demons and what you do to shut them the hell up.
Showered, dressed, and studying my Mendel. I had to turn my painting to the wall, so that I am not distracted. Bye for now.
Accidental Spring
"Accidental Spring" This began as the background for painting other papers, but became something else!
Showing posts with label Childhood. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Childhood. Show all posts
Sunday, November 13, 2011
Saturday, October 29, 2011
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.
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.
Monday, October 17, 2011
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...
***
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?
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 |
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."
***
“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.
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?
Sunday, September 11, 2011
The slayer of Monsters Under My Bed
It was the fifties and early sixties, and, well, let's face it: most dads were not hyper-involved in the child-rearing. "Wait 'til I tell your father" or "Wait 'til your father gets home" were really the main references to dads by my friends' mothers. On the other hand, my friends' dads took them on family picnics and family outings on the Mohawk Trail or to the Big E (Springfield Mass's agricultural regional fair--a HUGE deal for people who lived within an hour and a half of the place). My dad?
"Gawd, I hate togetherness."
Yeah, but he also taught us to play tennis and never seemed to lose his temper. He built us little cars in the sand. Launched us from his shoulders into the Lake. He did more than his share of one-on-one things. Plus, I could sit in his lap when I was little, nestling into his chest and feel the gentlest hands in the world stroke my neck and shoulders. That was the thing. His voice scared me, it was so deep and rumbly, sometimes. But my daddy never harmed a hair on my head. If anything he touched me more as if I were some little miracle that might break.
He also was the one who came for every nightmare, telling us to chase those monsters away. "Tell 'em, 'BOO, Go away!' and it works every time. Under-the-bed monsters are well-known to be cowards. Otherwise, why would they wait until dark and only scare children?"
It worked!
And if the fear was nameless, he simply took me in his arms and stroked my hair and said, so very softly, "I'm here, Jetty. It's okay. You are home. I'm here."
And when he did bother to be home, he was very much there. It was just that he was away "on business" too much for a man who worked for the State. Somewhere far too young, I registered what sort of business he was away on. But, naturally, we did not speak of it with Mom, just among ourselves.
The thing is, though, my dad slayed the daymare monsters, too. For me, that monster was the "poor house." On several mornings, because I got up so early and would catch them enjoying breakfast alone, I heard them fighting about money before they knew I was there. One time it was really bad, and Mom said, "Jim, you can't drive us to the poor house! We can't live like this! I'm TIRED OF THIS, living from month to month, one disaster away from ruined! I can't." She was crying.
I walked in and simply looked at them, not knowing what to do. I was about six and had gotten up before my sister, even, who was in high school. (I loved how quiet it was first thing in the morning. I had Mommy and Daddy all to myself. Of course, I didn't think then that they would be anything other than thrilled to have me crash their only alone time!)
To make my long story longer, Daddy spoke first. "Well, snigglefritz, it's not as bad as it sounds." He sort of smiled, but his eyes didn't. And Mommy was standing at the sink.
"Where are you driving us Daddy? What's a poor house? I like my house!" I was worried.
"Your mother was using a figure of speech. You know what that is, right?"
"Words that don't mean what they sound like."
Dad shrugged and went on. "It was a grown up discussion, honey, and sometimes we just lose our tempers a little. You do that, too."
I wasn't convinced and a particular tendency I had when I felt someone was lying to me popped up. I tilted my head and looked angry at my father. "What is a poor house, Daddy, and why is Mommy crying?"
He smiled for real, which made me mad. He always did that when I was mad at him. "Daddy, it's NOT FUNNY!" I wanted to cry. The kitchen felt like the air pieces were bashing into each other.
"Honey, it's okay. Really. Tell you what. You know how I stay in the den every Saturday morning for a couple of hours with my yellow paper?"
I nodded because a couple of times I'd crept in, just to sit in his chair and be quiet. He'd let me, but I could see him writing numbers with a pencil, long columns of numbers, with words next to them. I could not read the words because he did not print. All of us could read before school because, well, I don't know. We just sort of knew how to, the way you learn how to walk or something. I had been in trouble at school in Miss Clafflin's class because I found Dick, Jane and Sally boring and said so. My friends did, too, but they knew enough to shut up.
Anyway, my dad told me he would show me what the numbers were for, so I wouldn't have to worry. Daddy always kept his word.
I still was scared, though, when he called me into the den and he had a high stool next to his desk chair, and all those papers spread out. He talked to me about numbers first, telling me to look at the farthest left number and then count how many numbers there were up to the period. "Daddy, that's a decimal point. It's only a period with letters."
He started. "How did you know that?"
"Mommy taught me."
"Then you can tell which are the biggest numbers?"
I was insulted. "Of COURSE. I am NOT a baby." Right. After all, I was in first grade now. I had projects to do for school, like the others. I could add and subtract. I knew a LOT, I informed him.
"Pardon me, snigglefritz. My mistake." He went over what the numbers meant, so much for clothes, for food, for the lights, for something called a mortgage. All of it. And when he added them up, it said how much was spent in a whole month. Then we had other figures for his income. Just two though, and they were the same. That meant he had that much money to spend.
Well, he said it was a great thing when the two figures together were bigger than all those other numbers added together.
"But they aren't, Daddy. Not this month."
"Aha, but here's what we do, Jetty." And he showed me other months, when sometimes he had more money at the end of the month, because they didn't spend it. And he could add it on. And he talked about something called credit and interest and things I really didn't get. What I did get was that he wasn't worried. That the numbers always worked in the end, and he would never ever drive me anywhere away from home where I couldn't come back again. Ever.
"There isn't a poor house?"
"No, honey. And it would be nice if the figures could match up every month, but sometimes they just don't. But that's how lots of people have to do it. And plenty of times the numbers are just fine. You can ask to look at the numbers any time and I'll show you. That's the best way not to be scared. Just know as much as you can."
For the rest of that year I asked every couple of weeks, and he started showing me how he did his taxes and that all the numbers for a whole year went onto the white papers and he had to pay those things called taxes. By about third grade, I rarely asked, but still went over the taxes, just to be sure.
It calmed me down because this was a persistent daymare for our family. Mom and Dad frequently forgot I was around and fought about that poor house a good bit. No matter what, though, Dad fought off that dragon of poverty and he allowed me to understand the fight. I was insistent on seeing those taxes again sixth grade, when my sister and brother were BOTH in school, and the fights were building weekly. He was weary of the battle, and this time he was a little scared.
"Well, this year's harder, honey, but we'll be okay. The numbers are a little worse than you're used to, but I think I've got it covered, and your sister's got a job at school, so I think..." But his voice trailed off, and I saw the worry in his eyes.
... until I chased it away with a sudden, "Dad! LOOK! You added wrong. REALLY wrong, right here!" He didn't have an adding machine. We all did math the long way. I was right. "And it makes the numbers look WAY better!"
"Good Gawd, you're right." He stood up suddenly, marched to his big chair, pulling me with him, and plopped me onto his lap, though I was a tad large for that. I didn't care. All he said was, with tears making his eyes shine, "Who's slaying the monster under the bed this time, snigglefritz? Thank you."
I breathed in the Old Spice of him and I was small again, and safe. I suddenly laughed and sat up and went, "Boo! Go away!'
And ran off to play football down by the church.
"Gawd, I hate togetherness."
Yeah, but he also taught us to play tennis and never seemed to lose his temper. He built us little cars in the sand. Launched us from his shoulders into the Lake. He did more than his share of one-on-one things. Plus, I could sit in his lap when I was little, nestling into his chest and feel the gentlest hands in the world stroke my neck and shoulders. That was the thing. His voice scared me, it was so deep and rumbly, sometimes. But my daddy never harmed a hair on my head. If anything he touched me more as if I were some little miracle that might break.
He also was the one who came for every nightmare, telling us to chase those monsters away. "Tell 'em, 'BOO, Go away!' and it works every time. Under-the-bed monsters are well-known to be cowards. Otherwise, why would they wait until dark and only scare children?"
It worked!
And if the fear was nameless, he simply took me in his arms and stroked my hair and said, so very softly, "I'm here, Jetty. It's okay. You are home. I'm here."
And when he did bother to be home, he was very much there. It was just that he was away "on business" too much for a man who worked for the State. Somewhere far too young, I registered what sort of business he was away on. But, naturally, we did not speak of it with Mom, just among ourselves.
The thing is, though, my dad slayed the daymare monsters, too. For me, that monster was the "poor house." On several mornings, because I got up so early and would catch them enjoying breakfast alone, I heard them fighting about money before they knew I was there. One time it was really bad, and Mom said, "Jim, you can't drive us to the poor house! We can't live like this! I'm TIRED OF THIS, living from month to month, one disaster away from ruined! I can't." She was crying.
I walked in and simply looked at them, not knowing what to do. I was about six and had gotten up before my sister, even, who was in high school. (I loved how quiet it was first thing in the morning. I had Mommy and Daddy all to myself. Of course, I didn't think then that they would be anything other than thrilled to have me crash their only alone time!)
To make my long story longer, Daddy spoke first. "Well, snigglefritz, it's not as bad as it sounds." He sort of smiled, but his eyes didn't. And Mommy was standing at the sink.
"Where are you driving us Daddy? What's a poor house? I like my house!" I was worried.
"Your mother was using a figure of speech. You know what that is, right?"
"Words that don't mean what they sound like."
Dad shrugged and went on. "It was a grown up discussion, honey, and sometimes we just lose our tempers a little. You do that, too."
I wasn't convinced and a particular tendency I had when I felt someone was lying to me popped up. I tilted my head and looked angry at my father. "What is a poor house, Daddy, and why is Mommy crying?"
He smiled for real, which made me mad. He always did that when I was mad at him. "Daddy, it's NOT FUNNY!" I wanted to cry. The kitchen felt like the air pieces were bashing into each other.
"Honey, it's okay. Really. Tell you what. You know how I stay in the den every Saturday morning for a couple of hours with my yellow paper?"
I nodded because a couple of times I'd crept in, just to sit in his chair and be quiet. He'd let me, but I could see him writing numbers with a pencil, long columns of numbers, with words next to them. I could not read the words because he did not print. All of us could read before school because, well, I don't know. We just sort of knew how to, the way you learn how to walk or something. I had been in trouble at school in Miss Clafflin's class because I found Dick, Jane and Sally boring and said so. My friends did, too, but they knew enough to shut up.
Anyway, my dad told me he would show me what the numbers were for, so I wouldn't have to worry. Daddy always kept his word.
I still was scared, though, when he called me into the den and he had a high stool next to his desk chair, and all those papers spread out. He talked to me about numbers first, telling me to look at the farthest left number and then count how many numbers there were up to the period. "Daddy, that's a decimal point. It's only a period with letters."
He started. "How did you know that?"
"Mommy taught me."
"Then you can tell which are the biggest numbers?"
I was insulted. "Of COURSE. I am NOT a baby." Right. After all, I was in first grade now. I had projects to do for school, like the others. I could add and subtract. I knew a LOT, I informed him.
"Pardon me, snigglefritz. My mistake." He went over what the numbers meant, so much for clothes, for food, for the lights, for something called a mortgage. All of it. And when he added them up, it said how much was spent in a whole month. Then we had other figures for his income. Just two though, and they were the same. That meant he had that much money to spend.
Well, he said it was a great thing when the two figures together were bigger than all those other numbers added together.
"But they aren't, Daddy. Not this month."
"Aha, but here's what we do, Jetty." And he showed me other months, when sometimes he had more money at the end of the month, because they didn't spend it. And he could add it on. And he talked about something called credit and interest and things I really didn't get. What I did get was that he wasn't worried. That the numbers always worked in the end, and he would never ever drive me anywhere away from home where I couldn't come back again. Ever.
"There isn't a poor house?"
"No, honey. And it would be nice if the figures could match up every month, but sometimes they just don't. But that's how lots of people have to do it. And plenty of times the numbers are just fine. You can ask to look at the numbers any time and I'll show you. That's the best way not to be scared. Just know as much as you can."
For the rest of that year I asked every couple of weeks, and he started showing me how he did his taxes and that all the numbers for a whole year went onto the white papers and he had to pay those things called taxes. By about third grade, I rarely asked, but still went over the taxes, just to be sure.
It calmed me down because this was a persistent daymare for our family. Mom and Dad frequently forgot I was around and fought about that poor house a good bit. No matter what, though, Dad fought off that dragon of poverty and he allowed me to understand the fight. I was insistent on seeing those taxes again sixth grade, when my sister and brother were BOTH in school, and the fights were building weekly. He was weary of the battle, and this time he was a little scared.
"Well, this year's harder, honey, but we'll be okay. The numbers are a little worse than you're used to, but I think I've got it covered, and your sister's got a job at school, so I think..." But his voice trailed off, and I saw the worry in his eyes.
... until I chased it away with a sudden, "Dad! LOOK! You added wrong. REALLY wrong, right here!" He didn't have an adding machine. We all did math the long way. I was right. "And it makes the numbers look WAY better!"
"Good Gawd, you're right." He stood up suddenly, marched to his big chair, pulling me with him, and plopped me onto his lap, though I was a tad large for that. I didn't care. All he said was, with tears making his eyes shine, "Who's slaying the monster under the bed this time, snigglefritz? Thank you."
I breathed in the Old Spice of him and I was small again, and safe. I suddenly laughed and sat up and went, "Boo! Go away!'
And ran off to play football down by the church.
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
More Lush than Rotting: Huckleberina Finn et al.
Maybe I should have broken this into two entries... it's a novella. Oh, well! I hope you enjoy...
Summers in Utopia... as Ever, the Lake
Our memories never seem to move in nice, predictable paths. Our minds wander, like willful children determined to explore the forbidden territory beyond the next block. We will cross the street, open the drawer, even go into the woods alone. You’d think it would change once we become “grown ups,” but it doesn’t. We knock down the locked doors, sometimes seemingly against our own will.
Summers in Utopia... as Ever, the Lake
Our memories never seem to move in nice, predictable paths. Our minds wander, like willful children determined to explore the forbidden territory beyond the next block. We will cross the street, open the drawer, even go into the woods alone. You’d think it would change once we become “grown ups,” but it doesn’t. We knock down the locked doors, sometimes seemingly against our own will.
I see the endless, island beach days -- white bright and singing throughout my childhood. And yet I see the inside of my father’s closet, smell his cologne. I feel the floor and ceiling nearly meeting at the back, where it narrows, floor reaching up, ceiling bending low. I am small enough to fit in the one safe spot, curled into a ball, silent, waiting.
I hear my brother's cries. I hear him call, “Jetty, run and hide!”
I hear my brother's cries. I hear him call, “Jetty, run and hide!”
No one can find me here because I’m the smallest; but, like a bull, Jim has been distracted by the nearest moving object, Jack. I stare into the safe and fragrant dark, even now.
But then I blink, and I see the white pine boughs kissing The Lake. The water laughing with sparkles in wind-driven sunlight. I first learned the word “diaphanous” there. Until Mommy told me that word, I had none to describe what I saw. So white-bright, it could blot out the darkness of "regular" life at home. There were no dark corners in my summers; my soul danced bare, shining, and safe.
Who gets to spend summers in Utopia? I did. And it shines as brightly through fifty-eight summers, today.
Even Jimmy lost the darkness, had others to distract him. Or perhaps, even he rediscovered innocence there, from time to time. I know that Jim never went to the Lake; only Jimmy.
***
When I was newly five, one July, I was really busy when Mom wanted to go home for our lunch break. It probably was only about 11:30 or so, but Mommy really didn't like the noonday sun. She'd take us home and, unless I stayed with Judy the way I normally did, I wouldn't get back to the beach until after 2:00. And this particular day, Jude was visiting relatives at some beach by the sea somewhere.
I was building a sandcastle at the time and Jim and two of his girlfriends were helping me. They were really helping, not teasing--Jimmy never played with me and I liked it. Jack had been with other kids and wanted to go home, but I did not.
"Mom, I'll bring her home by 1:00, okay? Let her finish the castle."
Mom left her watch with him and we finished our castle. It was BEAUTIFUL, with two moats and a driftwood drawbridge. Jimmy and the others built a breakwater so the 1:00 Mount Washington cruise ship run would not ruin it with its waves. We left at 12:35 because he even accounted for my five-year-old legs vs his ten-year-old ones. I was missing a flip-flop. Jimmy weighed late vs a lost shoe, and decided late was worse.
I was upset, but he said, "Oh, forget about that. Ma won't mind. You can't remember everything at five anyway."
We got to the top of the beach entrance and Jimmy stopped cold. They'd paved the road while we were playing. The new tar was steaming in the heat, and he looked at my tiny foot. At home, he would have relished watching me have to put my bare foot on the hot pavement, smiled at the pain, and then would have stopped just short of letting my feet blister.
Lake Jimmy? He simply said, "Well. I guess I better carry you, huh. I can't let that little foot burn."
I said, "I can walk. I'm big." But he laughed and grabbed me up onto his shoulders as if I were a twig. About halfway home, though, there was a grassy island for the stop sign at the bottom of the last hill, and he put me down. He was nervous because it was 1:00, and we were still ten minutes from home. I couldn't tell time, but I knew that the little hand was on the one and knew just enough.
My brother's face was bright red. "I'll hop on one foot for a while, Jimmy."
And I did. And I'd hop to a grassy yard, then walk a bit, and hop. But after four yards, he stopped me, smiled, and simply picked me up and had me hook my legs around his waist, then jogged with me on his back.
Mom was waiting for us. Apparently, they had paved AFTER she got home. She'd driven up and over the island, so she had not seen the pavers go past. She took a look at my foot, at my brother, and she said, "Jetty, WHERE IS YOUR FLIP FLOP?"
She was kind of angry at me. But Jimmy put me down and rested his hand on my hair. "Ma, we're hungry. Come on, it's just a flip flop. She's little."
Mommy kissed him, shook her head at me, and we went in to lunch.
But that's how he was in the summer. Lake Jimmy. I loved summers and I loved him that day.
Utopia. I spent summers in Utopia.
***
***
When I was newly five, one July, I was really busy when Mom wanted to go home for our lunch break. It probably was only about 11:30 or so, but Mommy really didn't like the noonday sun. She'd take us home and, unless I stayed with Judy the way I normally did, I wouldn't get back to the beach until after 2:00. And this particular day, Jude was visiting relatives at some beach by the sea somewhere.
I was building a sandcastle at the time and Jim and two of his girlfriends were helping me. They were really helping, not teasing--Jimmy never played with me and I liked it. Jack had been with other kids and wanted to go home, but I did not.
"Mom, I'll bring her home by 1:00, okay? Let her finish the castle."
Mom left her watch with him and we finished our castle. It was BEAUTIFUL, with two moats and a driftwood drawbridge. Jimmy and the others built a breakwater so the 1:00 Mount Washington cruise ship run would not ruin it with its waves. We left at 12:35 because he even accounted for my five-year-old legs vs his ten-year-old ones. I was missing a flip-flop. Jimmy weighed late vs a lost shoe, and decided late was worse.
I was upset, but he said, "Oh, forget about that. Ma won't mind. You can't remember everything at five anyway."
We got to the top of the beach entrance and Jimmy stopped cold. They'd paved the road while we were playing. The new tar was steaming in the heat, and he looked at my tiny foot. At home, he would have relished watching me have to put my bare foot on the hot pavement, smiled at the pain, and then would have stopped just short of letting my feet blister.
Lake Jimmy? He simply said, "Well. I guess I better carry you, huh. I can't let that little foot burn."
I said, "I can walk. I'm big." But he laughed and grabbed me up onto his shoulders as if I were a twig. About halfway home, though, there was a grassy island for the stop sign at the bottom of the last hill, and he put me down. He was nervous because it was 1:00, and we were still ten minutes from home. I couldn't tell time, but I knew that the little hand was on the one and knew just enough.
My brother's face was bright red. "I'll hop on one foot for a while, Jimmy."
And I did. And I'd hop to a grassy yard, then walk a bit, and hop. But after four yards, he stopped me, smiled, and simply picked me up and had me hook my legs around his waist, then jogged with me on his back.
Mom was waiting for us. Apparently, they had paved AFTER she got home. She'd driven up and over the island, so she had not seen the pavers go past. She took a look at my foot, at my brother, and she said, "Jetty, WHERE IS YOUR FLIP FLOP?"
She was kind of angry at me. But Jimmy put me down and rested his hand on my hair. "Ma, we're hungry. Come on, it's just a flip flop. She's little."
Mommy kissed him, shook her head at me, and we went in to lunch.
But that's how he was in the summer. Lake Jimmy. I loved summers and I loved him that day.
Utopia. I spent summers in Utopia.
***
Oh, the endless adventures, the magic of islands that turned to dragons and swept me to lands unknown. I watched fairies come to life. The giant Daddy Whales emerged beneath us, vaulting Judy and me into the sky, like baby dolphins. No, none of the rotting of our lives touched us at the Lake. I had Judy, and we all had communal parents, and tumbled about the Island like bear and wolf cubs.
There were family cookouts where all the station-wagoned families pooled food, love and nonsense. Evening games of Michigan Rummy in which my mom cleaned up. She would bid, staring with china doll, wide-open eyes around the table. Mrs. Claus with a dealer's visor and a mind like a computer. She’d stutter, feign innocence. And clean up.
Jacky and I never could understand how everyone could be that dumb about her. She was smarter than anyone there, except maybe her best friend Phi. (Fee) Phi spoke seven languages and was a world-famous anthropologist. She stood fully six feet, an Amazon. Classic features and a Jane Russell body. Hair in a French twist. Every man on the beach just stared, slack mouthed when Phi went for a swim. She and my mother played intellectual leap frog with the Sunday Times crossword, seeing who would complete it in pen first.
The birthplace for myths, if one chose to conceive. Rich. The freedom. That’s the thing. I was absolutely free there. Judy and I would meet by 9:00 and be together until supper time. Sometimes we’d see each other after supper, too. Taking turns running the half mile between our summer homes.
I never had to hide in the dark.
But the mind goes to the darkness anyway. I would dream images of dead mice in traps, feel a shove at the top of the stairs while safely tucked in bed, feel the blood on my legs, but will them away with the images of sun on water. The Lake taught me the art of forgetting. We learn to put it away, sometimes for years, these particular punctuation marks of pain, of terror too ugly to fix our gaze, too harsh for little hearts meant for fairyland and mythical battles where good always wins. My world had Medusa in the corners, and I learned the art of blindness. I learned the beauty of the sidelong glance, the ability to look away just before the monster appeared. Look away to the mountain that always steadied my gaze.
I ran to my spot by the bridge every morning before breakfast, starting when I was just seven, after first grade. I could walk down from the road, and sit on a rock, just hidden from view, and I would look off toward the Sandwich Mountains. They never changed; they never mocked my fears, nor laughed at my dreams of greatness. My mountain never left me alone. I would watch until the sun was high enough to make the fairies come, then I knew I had to go home.
Usually that was about 7:30. And by my third or fourth day there, the monsters did not bother even trying to come back. And summer began for real. I found the time and the room and the freedom to lock my closets and stuff the drawers full of whatever I could not bear. It was very hard work, but I was tenacious. I filled my days with adventures with my pirate/Merry Band/vagabond friends.
Maleness is not a prerequisite for a Mark Twain sort of summer.
It was the Season of Exile. The Reign of Terror of the Gang of Four: Judy, Marge, Geri and I were kicked out of, well, everywhere, pretty much. Pickle, Lily, Dinah, and... yes... I was Sewer. Those of you who know my last name, know it's a play on that. Judy and I felt we were kind of done in on that part, but, since we WERE the ring leaders, perhaps it was only fair.
Deep Sea Diving: Poisoning Our Parents
Pickle had lately discovered stuffed clams and had the idea that we could stuff mussels. We had also been mocking the t.v. show "Treasure Hunt" in which Lloyd Bridges deep sea dived every week and wrestled giant octopii, squids, terrorists, thieves, and sharks... and seemed to almost always narrowly escape a life-threatening case of something called "the bends." The best we could figure when we were littler was that they called it that because everyone was always bent over in agony and then they died. And it involved coming up for air too fast; you couldn't beat your air bubbles.
Lily required some assurance from our parents that diving off the raft for fresh water clams would not put us in mortal danger. Pickle and I were best at the diving anyway, having been tried by our fathers in the art of holding our breath and letting it out slowly.
We probably collected fifty. In the process, we found a couple of sunken ships and probably a billion dollars worth of doubloons. All in a day's work. I had just turned twelve, and Judy was due to turn. I was not keen on being a teenager ever, and was terrified of seventh grade, a new school and the great unknown. Fortunately, we four felt pretty much the same, except for Geri (Dinah). She was born boy-crazy, but she liked our games, too. That summer, especially.
Once we had the mussels, though, we realized that they needed cleaning, grinding and preparation. Pickle's Aunt Phi was a gourmet cook, so Pickle lifted one of her cookbooks for us to use, and absconded with the necessary spices. This was good, since we were headed for our kitchen. Grandma's cottage was the smallest place, but had the biggest kitchen. Her spices included salt, pepper, and... salt and pepper. Dad never met a seasoning he was comfortable with and Grandpa'd been no different.
We headed through the garage, slamming into the house with our six buckets of mussels and Grandma met us at the side door, barracading us from setting FOOT in the house until we'd cleaned the nasty things in the lake. That took us three hours. She was NOT easily satisfied; Dinah and Lily left before the job was done, with orders for us to call when the cooking began. Pickle and Sewer? My grandmother was not about to let us off.
Then we had to boil and open and gut and season and cook… we finished our works of art at 8 that night. Phi and Pickle's and Dinah's mothers were brave enough to try one and were violently ill for hours. On top of that, my grandmother’s kitchen was dripping in mussel juice. We spent the next morning scrubbing and were informed that her kitchen was off-limits, period. For life.
Hey, There, Little Red Riding Hood...
Another friend, Julie, was a year older. SHE got to take the enormous teak INBOARD boat out in the evening. We'd tear through dinner, Pickle, Dinah, and I, and head for their place. Lily wasn't allowed, usually. There is nothing like the sound of those old inboard motor boats. A comforting, low, gurgling sound. They rode low, smooth, and fast. Julie would take us flying out toward the Broads, the widest part of the lake. It was several miles, unobstructed by any of the Lakes couple of hundred islands. And usually, she'd cut the engine and we'd drift.
That night, we decided we would sing, or something approximating that. We lost track of the drifting, until we heard a little thunk, and the boat kissed THE WITCHES. The Witch Rocks, in July, barely broke the surface in the Broads. A nest of rocks there in the widest, deepest part of the Lake, they covered a surface of a a few hundred square yards, and were very clearly marked. But there we were, and Julie panicked.
Pickle and I grabbed the oars, and Dinah held a big old floodlight of a flashlight so we could push our way out of the mess. No harm done, but Julie still did not want to go home yet, so we anchored about halfway between her place and one of the islands straight across.
We sang, "OH. Sweet Pea. Wontcha dance with me. Wontcha, wontcha wontcha dance with Me-e-e-e." We were screaming byth etime we reached "Wontcha be my girl." Unfortunately, we then decided to follow with "She Loves You" and, finally, "Little Red Riding Hood." When we howled, to our horror, we saw lights go on on Governor's Island AND the other Island and, through the last of the daylight, heard versions of
"SHUT THE HELL UP!"
"Knock it OFF!"
"STOP!"
"I'm GONNA THROW UP!"
Then a voice that sounded like a familiar bass... "HOME! NOW!"
It was my dad. He was at Jude's house, which was not all that close to Julie's, we thought. Funny. When trouble hit, our names returned. We were cooked, parboiled, fried, and most definitely banned from Julie's boat. So was she. We were not allowed on a power boat ride through whole two weekends!
Betty Crocker, Redux...
Hey, There, Little Red Riding Hood...
Another friend, Julie, was a year older. SHE got to take the enormous teak INBOARD boat out in the evening. We'd tear through dinner, Pickle, Dinah, and I, and head for their place. Lily wasn't allowed, usually. There is nothing like the sound of those old inboard motor boats. A comforting, low, gurgling sound. They rode low, smooth, and fast. Julie would take us flying out toward the Broads, the widest part of the lake. It was several miles, unobstructed by any of the Lakes couple of hundred islands. And usually, she'd cut the engine and we'd drift.
That night, we decided we would sing, or something approximating that. We lost track of the drifting, until we heard a little thunk, and the boat kissed THE WITCHES. The Witch Rocks, in July, barely broke the surface in the Broads. A nest of rocks there in the widest, deepest part of the Lake, they covered a surface of a a few hundred square yards, and were very clearly marked. But there we were, and Julie panicked.
Pickle and I grabbed the oars, and Dinah held a big old floodlight of a flashlight so we could push our way out of the mess. No harm done, but Julie still did not want to go home yet, so we anchored about halfway between her place and one of the islands straight across.
We sang, "OH. Sweet Pea. Wontcha dance with me. Wontcha, wontcha wontcha dance with Me-e-e-e." We were screaming byth etime we reached "Wontcha be my girl." Unfortunately, we then decided to follow with "She Loves You" and, finally, "Little Red Riding Hood." When we howled, to our horror, we saw lights go on on Governor's Island AND the other Island and, through the last of the daylight, heard versions of
"SHUT THE HELL UP!"
"Knock it OFF!"
"STOP!"
"I'm GONNA THROW UP!"
Then a voice that sounded like a familiar bass... "HOME! NOW!"
It was my dad. He was at Jude's house, which was not all that close to Julie's, we thought. Funny. When trouble hit, our names returned. We were cooked, parboiled, fried, and most definitely banned from Julie's boat. So was she. We were not allowed on a power boat ride through whole two weekends!
Betty Crocker, Redux...
So we moved on to blueberry muffins. We snuck up to old Mr. D’s hill at about 6:00 a.m. about four days later, and began picking blueberries. I mean, his property must have gone up a quarter mile to the house, and it was nothing but blueberries. We picked really fast, and I don't think we laughed more than about four or five times at the retelling of my father's puns. Mr. D. came barreling out at about 8 yelling at us and we took off. He called us each by our name and told us that he would loose the dogs on us if we ever even walked BY his house again. Right.
I said to Pickle, "Yeah, like there's a law against walking? Like he could ever eat even a tenth of those berries or--"
I shut up because I heard barking then and we RAN all the way to the top of the beach road, where we quickly ducked into the bushes, just in case, and checked our stash.
Even after spilling about a quarter of them, when we combined our take, we realized we had enough berries to feed all our families! And I mean, after all, even we couldn't poison anyone with muffins.
Now Lily was one of eleven kids (no lie), I was one of four, and Pickle's family had Dinah's family AND Phi. We’re talking serious numbers of muffins, but since all of our homes were entertainment centers, there were serious numbers of muffin tins as well. Lily’s house had two ovens, so that was our natural destination. We each robbed our respective cottages of all the muffin tins and set to work. Scratch muffins, so we had to cadge flour and eggs from each home, too. We figured we'd be done before anyone noticed anything was done. How we thought that a couple dozen eggs, eight cups of milk and five pounds of flour, give or take would not be missed eludes me now. We were normally considered intelligent...
I said to Pickle, "Yeah, like there's a law against walking? Like he could ever eat even a tenth of those berries or--"
I shut up because I heard barking then and we RAN all the way to the top of the beach road, where we quickly ducked into the bushes, just in case, and checked our stash.
Even after spilling about a quarter of them, when we combined our take, we realized we had enough berries to feed all our families! And I mean, after all, even we couldn't poison anyone with muffins.
Now Lily was one of eleven kids (no lie), I was one of four, and Pickle's family had Dinah's family AND Phi. We’re talking serious numbers of muffins, but since all of our homes were entertainment centers, there were serious numbers of muffin tins as well. Lily’s house had two ovens, so that was our natural destination. We each robbed our respective cottages of all the muffin tins and set to work. Scratch muffins, so we had to cadge flour and eggs from each home, too. We figured we'd be done before anyone noticed anything was done. How we thought that a couple dozen eggs, eight cups of milk and five pounds of flour, give or take would not be missed eludes me now. We were normally considered intelligent...
Furthermore, we didn’t ask. We took. We were invincible.
We marched down the road with our haul, chanting, "Pickle. Lily. DinaaaahhhhSEWER!"
Lily's Mom had gone out with the three littlest kids to the library and store. She'd be gone forever. The older ones were working. And really, who cared about the two boys who were left? They went off on their bikes with candy bar bribes in their pockets. We would surprise everyone and all our sins would be forgiven.
Muffins. We wanted them to be generous sized, so we filled the cups accordingly. We couldn’t find liners, so we greased the cups. Have you ever greased twelve dozen muffin cups? The last fifty or so don’t get as much. When we carved out the centers of the muffins, about eighty were really very nearly presentable. It took us two and a half hours to clean the tins, though. And there was a matter of batter drippings between stove and counter. Lily's dad was not pleased... And it turns out we used up the milk and, Jude's mom had planned on using the eggs for an angel food cake and...
After all of us were over our three-day grounding for taking stuff, we decided we’d had enough of domesticity.
We're Bloody Buccaneers.. UGH.
And Each a Murderous Crook... UGH. (Adventure on the High Seas)
It was time to explore the frontiers beyond the island, sail off to the distant shore. Or row.
Row to Timber Island, to be precise. How far could it be? And there were four of us. We’d just go on a calm morning. Leave a note that we’d be home after lunch. Hadn’t we all been taught to tip a boat and tread water for half an hour? Pickle and I brought the food this time. Veri-Thin® Pretzel sticks, white seedless grapes, eight cans of soda, half a package of Oreos® and some Viking® Doughnuts. (Those were the days of the Viking® Bakery delivery truck and the milkman, going to the laundromat, and grocery day and such. TV at the cottages was superfluous.) Life was good.
A perfectly flat lake at 6:45, a large aluminum rowboat and we were gone.
It’s about a mile to Mark or Timber Island. It didn’t feel too bad then, but the lake was flat and we took turns, rowing in pairs. (though Pickle and I seemed always to be part of the pair) But Dinah was company and it was Lily's boat. Seemed fair, and Pickle and I had our rhythm in all things anyway. We sang the Pirate song from the Musical Peter Pan. It helped us keep time with the strokes. Especially the "yo ho's."
We're Bloody Buccaneers.. UGH.
And Each a Murderous Crook... UGH. (Adventure on the High Seas)
It was time to explore the frontiers beyond the island, sail off to the distant shore. Or row.
Row to Timber Island, to be precise. How far could it be? And there were four of us. We’d just go on a calm morning. Leave a note that we’d be home after lunch. Hadn’t we all been taught to tip a boat and tread water for half an hour? Pickle and I brought the food this time. Veri-Thin® Pretzel sticks, white seedless grapes, eight cans of soda, half a package of Oreos® and some Viking® Doughnuts. (Those were the days of the Viking® Bakery delivery truck and the milkman, going to the laundromat, and grocery day and such. TV at the cottages was superfluous.) Life was good.
A perfectly flat lake at 6:45, a large aluminum rowboat and we were gone.
It’s about a mile to Mark or Timber Island. It didn’t feel too bad then, but the lake was flat and we took turns, rowing in pairs. (though Pickle and I seemed always to be part of the pair) But Dinah was company and it was Lily's boat. Seemed fair, and Pickle and I had our rhythm in all things anyway. We sang the Pirate song from the Musical Peter Pan. It helped us keep time with the strokes. Especially the "yo ho's."
When we got to the cove, the romance began to die. There was nowhere to land and the island seemed a mass of dense undergrowth and granite. Huckleberry and blueberry bushes, sumac. Rocks. We rowed halfway around the island and found a small, bug infested beach.
“What are we, sissies?” Pickle growled.
Inside, I said, 'Uh, yeah. I hate bugs.'
But I got out. Pickle and Lily forged ahead and stepped into a ground wasps nest. They each got stung only about twice, but that was enough for some pretty mean pain, so we ran for the boat. The wasps were slow, thank God. We were not. Pickle and Lily then looped their legs over the boat to soak their bitten ankles and calves as we rowed away. I spotted another cove and this one seemed better. There was a breeze, so there weren’t the bugs, and there were huge flat rocks to stand on. The boat kathunked against one, but it was metal. No cause for alarm. We pulled the boat onto one of the rocks by the shore and waded in. We made mudpacks for the stings and we had our lunch, splashed around, sang loud obnoxious songs…
It was curiously dark before we’d finished the pretzels or the cookies.
“Damn! Thunderstorm!” Jude looked at me. Suddenly, we were just ourselves again.
We did not care to remember her father’s words or my grandfather’s. The words you live by in the summer at The Lake among the mountains. When the lake is flat until eight, there will be trouble in the afternoon. There were whitecaps and the water was molten lead.
We threw the food in the bottom of the boat, in a tangle with our sneakers and shoved off. About 100 strokes out from the island we felt the water at our feet. There was a leak.
“You bail, I’ll row!” Judy yelled.
“No, Jude, move over and we’ll both row while they bail,” I said. We rowed and rowed, getting nowhere of significance.
Then Geri screamed. “OH MY GOD! WORMS!”
All over the bottom of the boat, were puffy, horrible white worms wriggling. About three inches long. Everywhere. It was a total infestation. All we could think was somehow or other, they'd got on while we were beached. It was disgusting, but there was nothing for it.
“Shut up and keep bailing!”
The waves got bigger, the sky got darker and we went absolutely nowhere after less than half a mile. Then the thunder came.
We were four idiots in a leaky metal rowboat in the middle of a lake with a thunderstorm bearing down and a boat full of worms.
Then we saw it. A police cruiser. To our absolute mortification and total relief, we were rescued.
The waves got bigger, the sky got darker and we went absolutely nowhere after less than half a mile. Then the thunder came.
We were four idiots in a leaky metal rowboat in the middle of a lake with a thunderstorm bearing down and a boat full of worms.
Then we saw it. A police cruiser. To our absolute mortification and total relief, we were rescued.
Summarily ordered on board, the two officers could do nothing but shake their heads in disgust. When Judy said her name, they knew where she lived and we were quickly deposited on Judy’s dock, leaky boat in tow.
Ted was there, waiting for his daughter, for us all, his 6’4” enormous frame clearly visible from a quarter of a mile away. I snuck a look at the police and they were smiling, rather sinisterly, I thought.
One said, "We've come to deposit your girls here. We couldn't find an arrestable offense called terminal stupidity, so here you go, Ted. Good luck with them." (Ted knew everyone. I mean everyone. And anyone he didn't know, Mommy knew. We were toast.)
We tried to explain, which was pathetic, really. All that came out was, “Adventure … we were explorers … we know how to swim … boat leaked and stung by wasps and didn’t see the storm worms everywhere.”
“Worms?” Ted asked. It was the only comment he felt warranted attention. The rest was meaningless static. “What do you mean worms everywhere?”
Eager to distract him from the inevitable lecture and further grounding, we led him to the boat. He looked at the boat, then back to us, then back to the boat. He bent over and picked something up, then turned around.
“Worms,” he said, as he held up a now empty box of pretzel sticks.
***
We pretty much went back to playing tennis and swimming to the raft after that for summer excitement. After another week's grounding. I mean, we could play on the beach for an hour in the morning, then we had to go to our own homes, and got sprung maybe another hour in the afternoon. I got really good at Canasta and read To Kill a Mockingbird for the first time. This was when I decided to grow up to be a southern writer, and my mom informed me that this was not likely to happen, considering I was a Yankee.
Great. It had only been a year and a half since she'd told me I could never be a linebacker for the New York Giants.
I moped around for at least a day, until I discovered Lad, a Dog and, my favorite, Wolf. And Grandma's books from childhood. Judy said she started reading all the books on the shelf beside her mother's chair. When we each wound up telling our parents that we didn't know why people hated grounding, I think they gave up on us entirely.
***
What I hold onto is how bright the summer was. That summer before teenagehood, I had already put all the horrors of rape and torture in a locked vault, covered with Utopian New Hampshire days. It was the last summer of holding onto childhood, but the first summer I latched onto a brand new dream of becoming a Writer. Judy and I felt destiny called. No. DESTINY called. There were no lower case moments that summer.
I think we each created our own adventures there, creating our own versions of Heaven and haven, even Jimmy. He found his own freedom, too, perhaps, when he was there. I never knew what his prison was. I only knew my own.
Great. It had only been a year and a half since she'd told me I could never be a linebacker for the New York Giants.
I moped around for at least a day, until I discovered Lad, a Dog and, my favorite, Wolf. And Grandma's books from childhood. Judy said she started reading all the books on the shelf beside her mother's chair. When we each wound up telling our parents that we didn't know why people hated grounding, I think they gave up on us entirely.
***
What I hold onto is how bright the summer was. That summer before teenagehood, I had already put all the horrors of rape and torture in a locked vault, covered with Utopian New Hampshire days. It was the last summer of holding onto childhood, but the first summer I latched onto a brand new dream of becoming a Writer. Judy and I felt destiny called. No. DESTINY called. There were no lower case moments that summer.
I think we each created our own adventures there, creating our own versions of Heaven and haven, even Jimmy. He found his own freedom, too, perhaps, when he was there. I never knew what his prison was. I only knew my own.
And at the Lake, I broke free and flew.
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Setting the Stage for the Reign of Terror of the Terrible Tweens: Pickle-lily Dinah-Sewer
I just found this poem, and it just sort of seemed to fit with the last entry.
I first saw what we always called "One House Island" on Squam Lake (Golden Pond), back when I was about ten and Jude's family was taking us to ride the Cog Railway on Mt. Washington. We pulled off the road to simply look. There was room barely to walk the rocks around the island, and the dock must have been on the far side. There was simply a long tree that snaked out over the water to the left, and a giant, many-gabled house among the trees. Years later, I wrote this poem. But as child, I would fall asleep, and dream stories of being the Good Witch of New Hampshire, guarding children in all the lakes, flying off on adventures far greater than the Pan, more sleepsending than any sandman...
Dream Witch of Holderness
In the mist, a castle-cottage
Rising silent from the water
Like the Loch Ness Monster --
You startle.
Un-turreted, but towering;
Alone, on small island nestled,
Where no safe harbor welcomes --
Only rocks.
Does your dock draw up at night?
Does your long-necked, pine-crowned bough
(So still and silent serpent
Over now day-misted lake)
Snake further still in the dark?
Turning gently to its queen,
"Dear Sorceress within,"
Does it whispering to you ask
"Where do we wander tonight?"
Then silent as owl's flight,
Does my Innisfree arise,
Unfurling gold-scaled dragon wings,
And vanish?
Do you color these worlds I dream?
***
We did not need summer camp, the terrible four. We had lakes and islands. Freedom. We had a seventeenth century graveyard and the remains of the Governor's Summer Castle from the 17th and 18th centuries. We had imaginations and parents who thought it was perfectly understandable that islands take flight and fairies were born on water and there might just be a black panther somwhere among the ruins. And perhaps the cast iron train on the mantle ran when no one watched, and we knew Grandpa's soldiers had bowling matches on the weekends we were away.
But there was one summer when we terrorized Heaven, were grounded for life and banned from every kitchen we knew. There was the summer of the worms, deep sea diving, poisoning our parents, and barely missing the Witch Rocks for our over-enthusiastic rendition of "Oh. Sweet Pea." People had DIED on the Witches and everyone knew that. We were banned from all power boats, but there was always a rowboat.
Yes, there was that summer when we were out of the summer before our teens with a police escort, for sheer stupidity...
But that's for another day.
I first saw what we always called "One House Island" on Squam Lake (Golden Pond), back when I was about ten and Jude's family was taking us to ride the Cog Railway on Mt. Washington. We pulled off the road to simply look. There was room barely to walk the rocks around the island, and the dock must have been on the far side. There was simply a long tree that snaked out over the water to the left, and a giant, many-gabled house among the trees. Years later, I wrote this poem. But as child, I would fall asleep, and dream stories of being the Good Witch of New Hampshire, guarding children in all the lakes, flying off on adventures far greater than the Pan, more sleepsending than any sandman...
Dream Witch of Holderness
In the mist, a castle-cottage
Rising silent from the water
Like the Loch Ness Monster --
You startle.
Un-turreted, but towering;
Alone, on small island nestled,
Where no safe harbor welcomes --
Only rocks.
Does your dock draw up at night?
Does your long-necked, pine-crowned bough
(So still and silent serpent
Over now day-misted lake)
Snake further still in the dark?
Turning gently to its queen,
"Dear Sorceress within,"
Does it whispering to you ask
"Where do we wander tonight?"
Then silent as owl's flight,
Does my Innisfree arise,
Unfurling gold-scaled dragon wings,
And vanish?
Do you color these worlds I dream?
***
We did not need summer camp, the terrible four. We had lakes and islands. Freedom. We had a seventeenth century graveyard and the remains of the Governor's Summer Castle from the 17th and 18th centuries. We had imaginations and parents who thought it was perfectly understandable that islands take flight and fairies were born on water and there might just be a black panther somwhere among the ruins. And perhaps the cast iron train on the mantle ran when no one watched, and we knew Grandpa's soldiers had bowling matches on the weekends we were away.
But there was one summer when we terrorized Heaven, were grounded for life and banned from every kitchen we knew. There was the summer of the worms, deep sea diving, poisoning our parents, and barely missing the Witch Rocks for our over-enthusiastic rendition of "Oh. Sweet Pea." People had DIED on the Witches and everyone knew that. We were banned from all power boats, but there was always a rowboat.
Yes, there was that summer when we were out of the summer before our teens with a police escort, for sheer stupidity...
But that's for another day.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
White Icing
Today I drove to PT in a snow storm, not thinking about the fact that I had to WALK from the car into the building. But never mind, I made it. Sort of. I went because my therapist had never seen me "fully compromised," which means I am walking like one of the astronauts fully geared... flat-footed and VERY SLOWLY. It's as if my legs are always a beat behind my brain, and every step requires my WILLING the legs to move.
It seems that way because, on days like this, it IS that way. I am glad I went. I accomplished something with this day and did not allow the pain to interfere with that part.
My reward? Right now, as the sun is lowering toward sleep, the horizon is glowing peach to rose, slanting bright, pastel light across new snow. And there is white icing on all the tree limbs, so they glow as well. There should be a shade of paint called "afternoon snow blue." I can simply swivel in my chair here, on the second floor, to face the setting sun and simply watch the slow dance as night rises with the sun's fall.
At no time of the year, and no other sort of day, do I get this feeling as the day closes. This fall into February holds the pain of too many losses, but sometimes the intensity of loss simply highlights how much I had to feel such loss. The love of so many. The flipside of loss is fullness.
But this beauty. How did I come to feel it like a pulsing through my whole body, almost pain? And aching of the heart, this stillness.
Not often do we have the pristine of new snow for more than two hours, or the icing on the trees for much more--to have them both at once at this time of day? There is no wind. Just now there are no cars. No squirrel tracks on this new three inches. This silence is rare as well, because it is not the season of mowing and whacking and sawing, of children playing outdoors.
Just the silence only snow-muffled evenings know. I've opened the window, cold or no, to let it fill me for these moments. I skate in my mind, tracing the fine, even curve between the yin and the yang, and I let the tears fall freely.
***
I love chocolate. MY mom always asked me why it was I wanted white icing on chocolate cake for my birthday, instead of chocolate. My birthday is in late June, when all is at its most lush and hottest, and the days are long. There was no air conditioning then for us.
"It reminds me of when the trees have frosting, Mom. And the cold. I get Winter in Summer, and I like that, Mom."
She would simply shake her head, kiss me on my nose as was her custom and say, "Me, too. Winter in Summer cake it is. White icing for my Jetty."
***
I love my mom.
I'll close the window for now, though.
It seems that way because, on days like this, it IS that way. I am glad I went. I accomplished something with this day and did not allow the pain to interfere with that part.
My reward? Right now, as the sun is lowering toward sleep, the horizon is glowing peach to rose, slanting bright, pastel light across new snow. And there is white icing on all the tree limbs, so they glow as well. There should be a shade of paint called "afternoon snow blue." I can simply swivel in my chair here, on the second floor, to face the setting sun and simply watch the slow dance as night rises with the sun's fall.
At no time of the year, and no other sort of day, do I get this feeling as the day closes. This fall into February holds the pain of too many losses, but sometimes the intensity of loss simply highlights how much I had to feel such loss. The love of so many. The flipside of loss is fullness.
But this beauty. How did I come to feel it like a pulsing through my whole body, almost pain? And aching of the heart, this stillness.
Not often do we have the pristine of new snow for more than two hours, or the icing on the trees for much more--to have them both at once at this time of day? There is no wind. Just now there are no cars. No squirrel tracks on this new three inches. This silence is rare as well, because it is not the season of mowing and whacking and sawing, of children playing outdoors.
Just the silence only snow-muffled evenings know. I've opened the window, cold or no, to let it fill me for these moments. I skate in my mind, tracing the fine, even curve between the yin and the yang, and I let the tears fall freely.
***
I love chocolate. MY mom always asked me why it was I wanted white icing on chocolate cake for my birthday, instead of chocolate. My birthday is in late June, when all is at its most lush and hottest, and the days are long. There was no air conditioning then for us.
"It reminds me of when the trees have frosting, Mom. And the cold. I get Winter in Summer, and I like that, Mom."
She would simply shake her head, kiss me on my nose as was her custom and say, "Me, too. Winter in Summer cake it is. White icing for my Jetty."
***
I love my mom.
I'll close the window for now, though.
Friday, January 22, 2010
Flying into Dawn: Memories of My Sister
I've tried a dozen times to write about her, to capture her. What it was to have a sister who lived her life with on section of her soul in past lives, one part in this life, and one part in whatever came next. She always expressed her spirituality in terms of our being on an eternal continuum, that this time here, now, was just a section along the way. She'd have visceral feelings of déja vu, but talked about them to very few people.
She was seen as odd. Well, she WAS odd, and I've always felt that our world would be infinitely better with more odd souls like hers. She was incapable of violence. Seriously incapable. As she said, had she ever been attacked, she doubted she'd have even put her hands up to protect herself. "I'm a vessel in this life; I have received gifts and lessons, then I pour them out in teaching and in my art. That is what I am. I do not understand all this talk about life being an 'adventure,' that we must all somehow go after things because they are a 'challenge.' I loathe those words. I do not care to be challenged. I want to do what I want to do, nothing more. And of course nothing less!"
She once took an Italian class with her best friend, in her twenties. I was in college at the time and she came to pick me up one Saturday. She often did that; come to rescue me on a Saturday morning and we'd go for "a drive." Once from Storrs, CT all the way to New Hampshire and back, just so we could walk on the beach on the island for a bit.
But this time, she was laughing because Nancy was furious with her. It seemed Jean Ellen had received a C+ on an exam and was happy with it. Nancy had studied for hours and hours for her A and could not understand why Jean Ellen had gone out dancing the night before. Jean Ellen's response? "I am not taking this for certification or credit or pride. I simply want to be able to go to Italy and understand what they say and be understood. Nothing more. I don't care about the grade."
Nancy, apparently yelled at her and said, "How can you NOT want to do better than that? The professor even told you you could be the best in the class if you studied."
Jean Ellen looked at me and I smiled at her. I understood Nancy because I was more like that, but I knew my sister. "You have never cared about being the best in the class in your life."
"Right. It's an irrelevant argument to me."
"Now if the Professor had told you that the Italians will not want to TALK to you if you do this poorly---"
"I'd have given up the dancing. Grudgingly, however."
We once spent an entire drive making up swear words because we were bored with the old stand bys. We were headed to the Cape and on the other side of Providence, RI, I found the one. "BULL DROOL." Yup. That was our keeper of all of them. Unfortunately my sister began to laugh so hard, she drove into a small ditch and it took ten minutes to get OUT.
By then, though, I was able to make her laugh at everything. I think I was about 25 and she was , then, 34. I turned to her and said, "You know, from now on, I bet I can say the word 'apple' to you in a certain tone and you will always laugh." She shrieked.
Two days before she died, she was feeling very sad and frustrated. She could no longer speak very easily, the tumors having spread higher in her central nervous system. A visitor had tried her patience to the point where I literally escorted the woman out the door and told her that she had to listen to ME about leaving and that she could come back once more if need be, but only to say good bye. The woman was furious because she felt my sister was "faking."
I sat on her bed, stroking her forehead, her tears rolling unrestricted... I dabbed them because she had long since lost the ability to use her hands. I took her face in my hands and said, "Apple."
All was right in our world.
***
For my graduation present from college, Jean Ellen took me to Paris and Portugal for six weeks. I had not flown since I was sixteen, but had slept through some of that. Jean Ellen had us leave at night because she said I HAD to experience flying straight into dawn. I thought she was nuts, but was accustomed to her living on some sort of poetic edge I didn't understand. We were drawing on the plane a lot. We often drew left-handed, just for practice, to free up the right brain. She taught me about asymmetry when I was seven.
"Which of these arrangements is more appealing?" she had asked, showing me a drawing of a wall with three equally sized drawings of flowers, and one with three differently sized drawings, arranged so there was balance. I immediately chose the one with the different sizes.
"Why?" she asked, a teacher then, at only sixteen.
"That one's boring. Blah. I like this one." She was pleased with her Jetty and said, "You are an artist, Jetty. You just don't know it."
We did a similar lesson with incomplete line and then she taught me to make paper doll clothes in pen and ink, using lessons of incomplete line, and observing how various fabrics draped and how folds REALLY look, that really there were very few straight lines when it came to people....
Anyway, so on the plane we played with our left hand drawings and were laughing, when suddenly she said, LOOK OUT THE WINDOW...
I had the window, in front of the wing and could see where we were going... We were flying into a pool of red, and there was a line in the sky between dark and light, between night and day and we jetted into dawn, just like that... I began to cry.
Jean Ellen said, "THIS is why I had to bring you. YOU are the only other friend I have who cries at flying into dawn."
Friend. I was my big sister's friend and nothing from then on would ever be the same.
We flew straight into dawn, and we took Paris by storm, these two odd sisters. We drew with our feet when we were rained into the apartment one day. We spent three HOURS drawing with our feet. We bought rabbit at the grocery store and brought it home to cook. It was sold in PARTS, so we didn't have to deal with it as an animal... we thought. But when we opened the package, its little HEAD was there, with teeth and ears. Jean Ellen covered its head with paper towels and quickly chopped it off and threw the head down the garbage shoot. We prepared it with garlic and seasonings and wine. We had fresh vegetables and rice. We drank a bottle of wine before we even ate...
But we took one look at supper, at each other and went, "BUNNY." So much for that.
We sat at the Champs y Lysée (Sp--I'm lazy) and we sketched. I sketched an aging hooker, about fifty pounds overweight, with a ruffled hat and a tiny silk bag on a long ribbon, SKIPPING through the park. I wrote poetry and she sketched the gardens at a tiny restaurant across the street. We'd count the languages at the cafe outside the metro stop at La Place de la Concorde... We had affairs, each of us, with a different waiter at the local restaurant called Le Tahare, around the corner from our apartment. The place was our uncle's, but he was in the states with his wife and daughter for the summer. Two young women for ONE MONTH in Paris. Then we flew to Portugal, northern Portugal. Viana do castello. All the houses were limestone or marble, and there was a castle on the mountain that, at night, shone white, floating above the town. We were the only American tourists there for the annual August holiday. The town was in a triangle between mountains, a river, and the sea. I sat the beach and everything was BACKWARDS because I faced west. I'd not been to California, just the East Coast. A young man ran across town to get me my cigarettes and would not take a tip. One left tips in an envelope for everyone, at the end of one's stay. The head waiter, wine steward, and hotel manager treated us to our last two days at the hotel because we had been so much fun. We'd been fun? I knew what it was to be a princess for that week.
We played. We walked. We drew. We spoke to everyone we met, especially shopkeepers and hotel help... they took us on little side trips to "nowhere," and my sister and I felt that no one had ever had such fun before, nor been treated so wonderfully. I can still see the castle, shining bright white against the mountain at night, floating over the equally shining town.
We left Lisbon during the socialist overthrow of the Portuguese government, an experience of its own, and finally boarded an old DC 10 cargo plane for home. The stuffing was coming out of the seats, but we were safe and boarded. All we could talk about was the magic, as we left the revolution behind.
And we flew home straight into night; still we felt our hearts leap nonetheless as the plane flew low over the coast and we saw the glittering ribbon that was home.
I do not know how to describe the sister who thought that the greatest gift of the second half of the twentieth century was her baby sister Jetty. I was beautiful to her, some sort of jewel that went unappreciated in the world. She did not understand how men could be so cruel to me... she felt it was that they couldn't bear someone so open and loving. I tended to think it was that I had bad taste and was stupid, but I Much preferred her take on it. She mourned my not pursuing art, but understood. In our family the cutthroat comparison factors made us avoid taking up another's interest. Daddy wrote. He, Jack, AND Jean Ellen were teachers. Mom was a math genius... so was I, but I hated math. Mom wanted me to go into that because she hadn't. Jack played guitar and banjo and clarinet. I tried not to duplicate. Daddy sang in the Robert Shaw Chorale... So, while I could sing, paint, write, and play the piano... I avoided pursuing anything much. I was afraid. I blame no one but me. I saw how brutal Dad could be when performance was not perfection. He never really appreciated my sister's worth because she was severely obese and he could not admit there was beauty there. LOTS of men could, but not Dad. And of course that hurt her.
But Jean Ellen and I found our balance with one another through most of our lives. We were each other's number one fan. She was the sort of teacher who bothered to show up at a student's HOME when she feared the girl was suicidal. She was the kind of teacher who did not sleep until she had corrected her papers and made comments that were positive on every single one, even those who failed. She started preparing for September on August first. "I have to find something new to do, even though it's the same curriculum. If I am stale, then it will be stale to my kids." She taught all out, with all of her soul, just as she drew and painted with nothing held back.
I learned all I know about letting myself live with every fiber of my being from her. She was not brave in the conventional sense... until it came time for her to leave. She did not mourn that her life would end at sixty-two. She said, "I have done every single thing I ever wanted to do except go to Athens. EVERYTHING. I was an artist, a teacher, a big sister. I went to Paris six times. I went to England and Italy, to California, to the wild west. I made love and was loved. I have you as my sister and I've had you taking care of me these last years, no matter what. YOU have made sure I could stay here, where I wanted to be. My adventuress, my phoenix. I kept clipping your wings. When I go you will finally fly. Promise me you will fly."
The day she died I brought in all her favorite music--Harry Belafonte, and folk music. I kicked people out and told the nurses that she could not have anyone but me from then on. I sang to her, "Close your eyes." I stroked her head. She began to drown, though, along toward midnight. She choked. The nurses managed to get her cleared out a bit, but had gone down to get some horrible equipment for the next round. Jean Ellen, who was SO READY to go, was fighting for breath.
When the nurse left, I took her face in my hands and shouted, "LOOK AT ME!" Blue eyes wide and startled... My brown eyes hard and determined.
"They have gone to get some medieval atrocity to help you keep breathing. Jean Ellen. Remember? You want to go, so for God's sake, get the HELL OUT OF DODGE!"
The smile appeared. She breathed. She choked. She breathed in a long breath... and nothing happened...
My sister flew the hell out of Dodge, straight into morning...
The Nurse came in as I said, "Well, sure. FINE. Be that way." And I was closing her eyes. All she said was, "Well, you two are certainly related."
But when I looked into her eyes from my sister's, the smile flew away and she said, "I'm shutting the door for a few minutes, dear."
I sat with my sister and sang that song "Close your eyes, you can close your eyes, it's all right." I sang to her, as I had to my brother, just four years before. I rocked and I sang for the longest time, and I drew a pen and ink picture of flowers, all in a tumble, beautiful, overabundant, asymmetrical, with incomplete line. It began almost going OFF the sheet to the left, but the images became less complete, fading into white space to the right. She had come from someplace full, that she remembered and used to tell me about, and had filled my life and hers with more beauty than twelve sisters, then faded bit by bit before my eyes, two years before she died, moving away from me, from all of us, leaving this part of the continuum. I drew and I sang and I cried because I could not see where she'd gone. Fading into white, a picture still being drawn by her, but incomplete for me... for me, left behind.
Before I left the room for the people to take her away, all I could think to say was, "I'll fly into dawn, honey. If it takes me til I'm ninety, I promise. I'll fly."
I kissed her now closed eyes, put the portrait on her chest, and walked into my mourning.
At dawn.
She was seen as odd. Well, she WAS odd, and I've always felt that our world would be infinitely better with more odd souls like hers. She was incapable of violence. Seriously incapable. As she said, had she ever been attacked, she doubted she'd have even put her hands up to protect herself. "I'm a vessel in this life; I have received gifts and lessons, then I pour them out in teaching and in my art. That is what I am. I do not understand all this talk about life being an 'adventure,' that we must all somehow go after things because they are a 'challenge.' I loathe those words. I do not care to be challenged. I want to do what I want to do, nothing more. And of course nothing less!"
She once took an Italian class with her best friend, in her twenties. I was in college at the time and she came to pick me up one Saturday. She often did that; come to rescue me on a Saturday morning and we'd go for "a drive." Once from Storrs, CT all the way to New Hampshire and back, just so we could walk on the beach on the island for a bit.
But this time, she was laughing because Nancy was furious with her. It seemed Jean Ellen had received a C+ on an exam and was happy with it. Nancy had studied for hours and hours for her A and could not understand why Jean Ellen had gone out dancing the night before. Jean Ellen's response? "I am not taking this for certification or credit or pride. I simply want to be able to go to Italy and understand what they say and be understood. Nothing more. I don't care about the grade."
Nancy, apparently yelled at her and said, "How can you NOT want to do better than that? The professor even told you you could be the best in the class if you studied."
Jean Ellen looked at me and I smiled at her. I understood Nancy because I was more like that, but I knew my sister. "You have never cared about being the best in the class in your life."
"Right. It's an irrelevant argument to me."
"Now if the Professor had told you that the Italians will not want to TALK to you if you do this poorly---"
"I'd have given up the dancing. Grudgingly, however."
We once spent an entire drive making up swear words because we were bored with the old stand bys. We were headed to the Cape and on the other side of Providence, RI, I found the one. "BULL DROOL." Yup. That was our keeper of all of them. Unfortunately my sister began to laugh so hard, she drove into a small ditch and it took ten minutes to get OUT.
By then, though, I was able to make her laugh at everything. I think I was about 25 and she was , then, 34. I turned to her and said, "You know, from now on, I bet I can say the word 'apple' to you in a certain tone and you will always laugh." She shrieked.
Two days before she died, she was feeling very sad and frustrated. She could no longer speak very easily, the tumors having spread higher in her central nervous system. A visitor had tried her patience to the point where I literally escorted the woman out the door and told her that she had to listen to ME about leaving and that she could come back once more if need be, but only to say good bye. The woman was furious because she felt my sister was "faking."
I sat on her bed, stroking her forehead, her tears rolling unrestricted... I dabbed them because she had long since lost the ability to use her hands. I took her face in my hands and said, "Apple."
All was right in our world.
***
For my graduation present from college, Jean Ellen took me to Paris and Portugal for six weeks. I had not flown since I was sixteen, but had slept through some of that. Jean Ellen had us leave at night because she said I HAD to experience flying straight into dawn. I thought she was nuts, but was accustomed to her living on some sort of poetic edge I didn't understand. We were drawing on the plane a lot. We often drew left-handed, just for practice, to free up the right brain. She taught me about asymmetry when I was seven.
"Which of these arrangements is more appealing?" she had asked, showing me a drawing of a wall with three equally sized drawings of flowers, and one with three differently sized drawings, arranged so there was balance. I immediately chose the one with the different sizes.
"Why?" she asked, a teacher then, at only sixteen.
"That one's boring. Blah. I like this one." She was pleased with her Jetty and said, "You are an artist, Jetty. You just don't know it."
We did a similar lesson with incomplete line and then she taught me to make paper doll clothes in pen and ink, using lessons of incomplete line, and observing how various fabrics draped and how folds REALLY look, that really there were very few straight lines when it came to people....
Anyway, so on the plane we played with our left hand drawings and were laughing, when suddenly she said, LOOK OUT THE WINDOW...
I had the window, in front of the wing and could see where we were going... We were flying into a pool of red, and there was a line in the sky between dark and light, between night and day and we jetted into dawn, just like that... I began to cry.
Jean Ellen said, "THIS is why I had to bring you. YOU are the only other friend I have who cries at flying into dawn."
Friend. I was my big sister's friend and nothing from then on would ever be the same.
We flew straight into dawn, and we took Paris by storm, these two odd sisters. We drew with our feet when we were rained into the apartment one day. We spent three HOURS drawing with our feet. We bought rabbit at the grocery store and brought it home to cook. It was sold in PARTS, so we didn't have to deal with it as an animal... we thought. But when we opened the package, its little HEAD was there, with teeth and ears. Jean Ellen covered its head with paper towels and quickly chopped it off and threw the head down the garbage shoot. We prepared it with garlic and seasonings and wine. We had fresh vegetables and rice. We drank a bottle of wine before we even ate...
But we took one look at supper, at each other and went, "BUNNY." So much for that.
We sat at the Champs y Lysée (Sp--I'm lazy) and we sketched. I sketched an aging hooker, about fifty pounds overweight, with a ruffled hat and a tiny silk bag on a long ribbon, SKIPPING through the park. I wrote poetry and she sketched the gardens at a tiny restaurant across the street. We'd count the languages at the cafe outside the metro stop at La Place de la Concorde... We had affairs, each of us, with a different waiter at the local restaurant called Le Tahare, around the corner from our apartment. The place was our uncle's, but he was in the states with his wife and daughter for the summer. Two young women for ONE MONTH in Paris. Then we flew to Portugal, northern Portugal. Viana do castello. All the houses were limestone or marble, and there was a castle on the mountain that, at night, shone white, floating above the town. We were the only American tourists there for the annual August holiday. The town was in a triangle between mountains, a river, and the sea. I sat the beach and everything was BACKWARDS because I faced west. I'd not been to California, just the East Coast. A young man ran across town to get me my cigarettes and would not take a tip. One left tips in an envelope for everyone, at the end of one's stay. The head waiter, wine steward, and hotel manager treated us to our last two days at the hotel because we had been so much fun. We'd been fun? I knew what it was to be a princess for that week.
We played. We walked. We drew. We spoke to everyone we met, especially shopkeepers and hotel help... they took us on little side trips to "nowhere," and my sister and I felt that no one had ever had such fun before, nor been treated so wonderfully. I can still see the castle, shining bright white against the mountain at night, floating over the equally shining town.
We left Lisbon during the socialist overthrow of the Portuguese government, an experience of its own, and finally boarded an old DC 10 cargo plane for home. The stuffing was coming out of the seats, but we were safe and boarded. All we could talk about was the magic, as we left the revolution behind.
And we flew home straight into night; still we felt our hearts leap nonetheless as the plane flew low over the coast and we saw the glittering ribbon that was home.
I do not know how to describe the sister who thought that the greatest gift of the second half of the twentieth century was her baby sister Jetty. I was beautiful to her, some sort of jewel that went unappreciated in the world. She did not understand how men could be so cruel to me... she felt it was that they couldn't bear someone so open and loving. I tended to think it was that I had bad taste and was stupid, but I Much preferred her take on it. She mourned my not pursuing art, but understood. In our family the cutthroat comparison factors made us avoid taking up another's interest. Daddy wrote. He, Jack, AND Jean Ellen were teachers. Mom was a math genius... so was I, but I hated math. Mom wanted me to go into that because she hadn't. Jack played guitar and banjo and clarinet. I tried not to duplicate. Daddy sang in the Robert Shaw Chorale... So, while I could sing, paint, write, and play the piano... I avoided pursuing anything much. I was afraid. I blame no one but me. I saw how brutal Dad could be when performance was not perfection. He never really appreciated my sister's worth because she was severely obese and he could not admit there was beauty there. LOTS of men could, but not Dad. And of course that hurt her.
But Jean Ellen and I found our balance with one another through most of our lives. We were each other's number one fan. She was the sort of teacher who bothered to show up at a student's HOME when she feared the girl was suicidal. She was the kind of teacher who did not sleep until she had corrected her papers and made comments that were positive on every single one, even those who failed. She started preparing for September on August first. "I have to find something new to do, even though it's the same curriculum. If I am stale, then it will be stale to my kids." She taught all out, with all of her soul, just as she drew and painted with nothing held back.
I learned all I know about letting myself live with every fiber of my being from her. She was not brave in the conventional sense... until it came time for her to leave. She did not mourn that her life would end at sixty-two. She said, "I have done every single thing I ever wanted to do except go to Athens. EVERYTHING. I was an artist, a teacher, a big sister. I went to Paris six times. I went to England and Italy, to California, to the wild west. I made love and was loved. I have you as my sister and I've had you taking care of me these last years, no matter what. YOU have made sure I could stay here, where I wanted to be. My adventuress, my phoenix. I kept clipping your wings. When I go you will finally fly. Promise me you will fly."
The day she died I brought in all her favorite music--Harry Belafonte, and folk music. I kicked people out and told the nurses that she could not have anyone but me from then on. I sang to her, "Close your eyes." I stroked her head. She began to drown, though, along toward midnight. She choked. The nurses managed to get her cleared out a bit, but had gone down to get some horrible equipment for the next round. Jean Ellen, who was SO READY to go, was fighting for breath.
When the nurse left, I took her face in my hands and shouted, "LOOK AT ME!" Blue eyes wide and startled... My brown eyes hard and determined.
"They have gone to get some medieval atrocity to help you keep breathing. Jean Ellen. Remember? You want to go, so for God's sake, get the HELL OUT OF DODGE!"
The smile appeared. She breathed. She choked. She breathed in a long breath... and nothing happened...
My sister flew the hell out of Dodge, straight into morning...
The Nurse came in as I said, "Well, sure. FINE. Be that way." And I was closing her eyes. All she said was, "Well, you two are certainly related."
But when I looked into her eyes from my sister's, the smile flew away and she said, "I'm shutting the door for a few minutes, dear."
I sat with my sister and sang that song "Close your eyes, you can close your eyes, it's all right." I sang to her, as I had to my brother, just four years before. I rocked and I sang for the longest time, and I drew a pen and ink picture of flowers, all in a tumble, beautiful, overabundant, asymmetrical, with incomplete line. It began almost going OFF the sheet to the left, but the images became less complete, fading into white space to the right. She had come from someplace full, that she remembered and used to tell me about, and had filled my life and hers with more beauty than twelve sisters, then faded bit by bit before my eyes, two years before she died, moving away from me, from all of us, leaving this part of the continuum. I drew and I sang and I cried because I could not see where she'd gone. Fading into white, a picture still being drawn by her, but incomplete for me... for me, left behind.
Before I left the room for the people to take her away, all I could think to say was, "I'll fly into dawn, honey. If it takes me til I'm ninety, I promise. I'll fly."
I kissed her now closed eyes, put the portrait on her chest, and walked into my mourning.
At dawn.
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