I am finding that some truly beautiful experiences are coming back to me, the more I write. I find that my mother's sweetness knows no bounds, now that I remember the rest. That is such a gift, but I realize it is a gift I will need in order to address the worst of her. It was not liquor. It was psychotic breaks. And I am at a loss as to how to write of them, yet I will have to.
Writing ugly is not easy when you lived a life of oh-so-lovely denial. When I was in college I painted a picture of beauty about my home life, except for the fact that my mother drank. I did not speak of any dark times in childhood, however. My story with her always began in high school, out of thin air. All was beauty and magic, if you listened to me talk about my childhood. The only horrors were at school.
We do that. I also spoke of my relationship with my older brother as special and tragic. He was the whipping boy, the innocent too often blamed for everything. I was his defender. And I was, as it happens. Again, this is so often the case. I tutored him in French for all his high school years. He was fifteen and I was ten! It was after the rape, after he tried to sell me so he could by some "buck" shoes, like Pat Boone's. I had no memory of that. After all, by the time I was fifteen myself, I had turned instant burial into an artform. If the memory was not to my liking I simply denied its existence, like some reject factory part on an old-time conveyor belt. I was afraid for him, and bought into the family line when the New York police were looking for him on drug charges. He was framed, my parents said. They got him to hide out in New Hampshire.
Every holiday season for three or four years, the police would stop by. It got so I would be the one to answer the door and invite them in for coffee or cookies. A standing "joke." Finally, when my brother as married and wanted to come out of hiding, my parents took him with their lawyer to New York and the charges were dropped. He was terrific at posing as a good, reformed family man.
Only he was guilty. And years later, I found out that Jim's discharge from the army was dishonorable. All those bouts of illness when we had not heard from him? The brink. He was court-martialed for bribing an officer.
My family, like so many others, simply acted on the premise that if you say everything is perfect often enough, then everyone will believe it to be so. This was never clearer than the years I tried to tell the truth about my mother, during high school. She primed the school with the "fact" that I was a liar, prone to fantasy. While that was not entirely false, it was not the truth when I tried to get help to deal with Mom. By then her bouts were every morning, before I went to school, and by the time I got home, she was often so drunk that she was barely conscious. Then she would, for no apparent reason, have several months of sobriety, just long enough for me to hope, but short enough for me to be wary at the same time.
I could not begin to look at the whole truth as I knew it, until it impacted my own children. Until I had to, to keep from repeating the tale in my own life's story, too.
Ugliness and great pain is an underpinning for our love story that has to run through the whole. I have spent a great deal of time writing of the many gifts she gave me, and that's the truth. And you know she drank, but sometimes we have to show not tell, as the cliché goes. I know that, too. The funny thing about moving beyond the pain to the beauty is that sometimes I just do not WANT to remember what happened! While this is not a bad thing at ALL in how I lead my life, it's not as good for the writing of the tale.
Mom wouldn't want me to leave it out. I know that for sure. In my core. In my soul. How do you tell the story of a small child, too young to bathe on her own? How do I relate the moving blur of the NOT Mommy face as she tipped my head beneath the surface to rinse the shampoo out? I see her eyes go dead and cold just as the water closed over my own entirely. I see the moving glare of the light and feel myself struggle beneath her hands. I can feel the pain on my heel as I kicked and connected with porcelain, and feel the struggle not to breathe, feel the pain as the light grew dim.
Suddenly I am sitting and I hear the sucking as she pulls me out too quickly and she misjudges and my head just catches the faucet. I see the pink creep through the water as I cough and cough forever, and I hear my mother. "Oh, my GOD, oh NO, oh, NO! Oh, GOD. My Jetty, oh, NO! I'm so sorry!"
She is crying and pulls me to her, but I pull back just a little, to see her eyes, but she is there. Her sweet sky eyes full of tears and she holds me and we cry.
And later she is in her chair, unable to speak, the bottle of amber on her table. Jean Ellen puts me to bed. Mother will not rise until too late for church on Sunday. Daddy is away on a "quick business trip." I remember Jean Ellen tucks me in and she has her worried puppy face. Her brow would pucker instead of wrinkle. She reads a long story and already the horror has dimmed, and all I know is my mother's eyes when she held me close to her.
***
That is the story, too. And it is every bit as much our story as the elves and the drinking and the summers and Christmases of joy. It is my story with her, and my ultimate joy that we had our truths with one another at the end.
And so I write it all for the first time. As I remember it. My truth, which I know was hers. Ironically, alcohol numbed her in a way that did not allow the psychotic breaks. She never raised a finger to us when she drank. She said most of her pain left her when she drank.
And what I feel at last is the pain I know as a mother myself, and how it must have felt when she snapped out of the break and saw what she had done. No one loved a daughter more than she loved me. She hated the monster she could not name, this illness no one could name back then. I know how hard she tried to fight it, to fight an illness over which she had no control at all. I know how much she hated herself.
As I move forward with the book, it is so hard to find the balance in the work. It hurts to write her dramatic and sometimes horrific failures. Yet without them, her magnificence and her strength are lessened. She succeeded more often than she failed, and I cannot under-value the strength she had, nor the toll her tortured life took on her most of all. So I try on the pain again, now strong enough so that it cannot stick any more. It cannot offer more pain, though it can scratch an old wound to discomfort. I hold all her beauty on the other scale, and its weight is ten times the pain. The wound will not open; only the love.
How I miss her still.
***** DIFFERENT Note, for now: Please check out Waystation One, for 1/23/20122's poem
Accidental Spring
"Accidental Spring" This began as the background for painting other papers, but became something else!
Showing posts with label Childhood trauma. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Childhood trauma. Show all posts
Sunday, January 22, 2012
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.
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Robin Hood and Maid Marion: and All My World Grew Still
Be prepared. This memoir draft is neither funny nor light. It was difficult to write, and my guess is that it will be difficult to read. I understand if anyone chooses to wait instead for Runaways to Red Bank III, which I will put online in a couple of days! Thank you, all of you, who somehow keep choosing to read what's uncomfortable.
It is my story, and I have to be able to write "ugly," as I used to say when I could not write anything that was darker than Anne of Green Gables meets Pollyanna. As always, though, the power for me lies in the beauty, the beautiful power of my brother Jack in the face of evil. And the power of a little girl's love.
My brother's and my journey together is in bits and pieces of other blogs, but primarily in Approaching the Pain, Keeping the Love -- "I move to Robin Hood" well down, across from my Blog list. That entry holds pieces that can shed light on more about our years between childhood and his end.
'Tis I, Robin Hood!
When I was three, my brother Jack got a Robin Hood outfit. My mom and Jean Ellen made me a Maid Marion cape with genuine fake diamonds all along the bottom. Together, he and I would listen to our Robin Hood records with the books. You turned the page when Friar Tuck sang. Then we would run into the front yard where the ancient ... magic tree with roots that were above the ground, not just below it, stood.
We had adventures. Sometimes I got to be Friar Tuck or one of the Merry Band, but mostly I was Maid Marion. She was not a wimp, so I got to ride away with my Robin Hood to foil another plot of the bad Sheriff of Nottingham. We had sacks of acorns from the woods to throw to the poor in the village below (our neighbor's three horses in a corral). We smite the mighty smoke-belching Tractor Dragon one evening, sneaking out of the house just before bedtime.
Just as we were about to revel in victory, "John Harvey and Jeannette Louise, YOU GET HOME NOW!" My father's voice could be heard three towns away, we thought.
A typical ending of our days -- mostly running home.
I followed him like a puppy, and not once in my memory did he shoo me away.
I had the measles when I was four, right after we moved, and nearly died of kidney failure and double pneumonia. Jacky was by my side more often than not. A head would pop in my door. "Tis I, Robeen Hoooood!" he would cry, and bow before his lady in her room-darkened bed.
"You sound like an owl, not a hero," I'd say. And he would wing around the room "Hoooooooting" for me, making me laugh. Then I would start to cough and he would stop, a study in worry. He would sit on the side of my bed and hold my hand, stroke my forehead. I was deathly ill, but I don't remember that; I remember how kind everyone was, especially Jacky.
"Jetty, get better, now," he'd whisper. "We have to build that city for my trains, remember? You promised. You know I stink at making the trees and all the little stuff right. I just break everything. I need you." That was the thing, you know; Jacky needed me. I got better.
Our dragon-slaying days had ended, though; we had a greater fight.
The Monster who Lived in our House
Our older brother Jim was the Sheriff of Nottingham. I will never know how Robin Hood truly fared in the tower he shared with Jim. I had Princess Jean Ellen in mine; he had Jim. I was protected until she left the house when I was in third grade, at least at night. But daytime was a different story long before she went away. The Princess was seldom home in the afternoon...
Sometimes the queen fell into a deep, deep slumber, with her royal glass of amber on the table by her throne. Worse still, sometimes she went on royal errands and left the Sheriff in charge. Those days Jack's call held urgency, "Jetty run and hide! He's coming!" Wherever I was in the house I ran like hell for my daddy's bedroom closet. The back had a slanted floor for the bathroom plumbing, but there was a little ledge at the top. I could just crawl behind Daddy's Old Spice clothing and tuck myself in tight, wrapped in a sports jacket, and simply wait. To wait and wait where no one ever came.
I would hear the muffled cries, the sounds of a chair scraped over wood. Other sounds. The laugh, a barrage of staccato explosions. I tried to cover my ears. There were other sounds I could not name. I would wait in the safety of my father-smelling dark. I would wait. Wait for the only sound I wanted to know.
"Maid Marion, the Sheriff has gone!"
Out I would fly to Robin, to my brothers' room. I'd look out the bathroom window first, making sure the sheriff was headed down the road, whistling usually. Then I would go to the boy in a chair, just a boy no more than six or seven, tied up and silent, with dark eyes and long lashes heavy from trapped tears. I would untie his hands and let him be, while I fetched the cotton balls, the iodine, and held a facecloth under the cold water. I did not rush. Robin Hood did not want me to see him cry. Heroes are like that.
Our ritual was silent. Full. Maid Marion dressed the tiny wounds, and turned the dampened, cold cloth on his forehead. I would kiss the places where blood was drawn, but there never were many. The sheriff grew quite skilled at leaving no marks beyond pin pricks all over his skin. He hurt the places that never showed; it was a mission for him.
Sometimes Jim found me, but only when Jacky was not there. Besides which, Jim preferred to find me at night...
And the reign of terror did not end until I was in seventh grade, and Jim moved out for good.
Those years held too much darkness, and so I learned to forget; to forget all but the fairy tale, to forget the reasons my brother's light simply dimmed, and finally went out. I became expert at forgetting the moment something happened, keeping only what I chose. And yet, somehow we know. I began to remember in 1987, after my father died. I wrote this poem after waking from a "nightmare," however, in 1980.
Too Soon Gone...
He was only 50 and I was not yet 48. His son, John, had hanged himself in February and I had not seen Jack for several months when I saw him at the cemetery. He had aged at least a decade and could not walk without a cane. Jack seemed shorter, smaller entirely and his hair and beard were white now. But he eyes were there, the eyes that got to me always, darker brown than the deepest wood, with thick long lashes that made them stand out all the more. And they were so very large and lost that day.
He was surrounded, though, by teenagers. Teenagers with piercings and tatoos. Teenagers with pink hair, purple hair, no hair, black hair. Punked out, gangsta'd, of all types. So sweet, so tender to him. When they found out I was the baby sister of his stories they surrounded me and I saw what the real Jack's life was all about. I will not take away from the love for his children, but in the love Jack gave these emotionally bereft, hurt, abandoned, throw away children, I saw that Robin Hood lived for them. And they loved him back. His colleagues knew me, too. I was surprised, since I had been non-existent in his adult life.
When I walked to him, he opened his arms, but when he held me, I knew Jack was leaning on me, this time. And he was as nothing in my arms. I pulled away a moment, looking him straight in those grief-haunted eyes. "You're dying," was all I said.
"I'll call you," was all he said. But I knew.
His liver was shot and the only answer was a liver transplant. This was now April and he was at my house. It was late. His visits were always at night. His banjo was in his hands, because it was easier for him to talk that way.
"Why don't we test mine?" I asked. "Jean Ellen's not a possibility because of her diabetes, but I don't have diabetes."
He smiled and reached his hand out as Daddy had always done, stroking a wandering strand near my face. "No. Not a possibility. You need your liver."
"I KNOW THAT, But they can take just a lobe and--"
"NO, Jetty. NO." His voice was harsh. "No. Don't you get it? I told you. I'm not going to stop drinking. I'm not a candidate for a transplant. I don't care what they do for celebrities. It's wrong. I did this to myself and I know it. Just the way Mom did, I did this. And I have NO desire to stop drinking." He stopped a moment, and registered that I was shaking. He took my hand, again with the familiar Daddy gentleness. "Jetty, the fact is, I really don't much care about living. I've had to retire. My back is worse and pretty soon I won't be able to walk at all. I won't be able to take care of my family; they'd have to take care of me. Jetty, you gotta let me go."
And it just burst out of me, "But, Jacky, I just got you BACK!"
And we cried ...
In May, he was admitted to intensive care, where he stayed for the next two weeks. He could not run away from me. I was editing catalogs for Northeastern University at the time, and Jack's wife was still teaching, as were all his friends. So during the day I got to see him. The first day he could still talk a little and he said he' would never go home. I saw tubes coming out of him in all directions. I knew what came next. The hepatic coma, where he could sense everything done to him, but would not be able to speak, where he might come in and out of it, but would slowly become someone who did not resemble himself. I knew the swelling in the feet, then the hands. I knew, I knew, I knew.
I said, "But why do you have to be hooked up? Why can't you just GO, Jacky?" I was sobbing. I was useless to him like this. He looked wildly at me, but speech was so hard for him.
I heard "Family" and I realized. I held his hand and said I was sorry at least a dozen times. I told him I understood and would never mention it again. I promised. He was letting his family prepare; he would let his wife pick the time. It was his last act of love--an overwhelmingly selfless act of love. We both became calm and we simply held hands in silence.
I asked whether I could come back every day and work beside his bed, if I promised not to be maudlin. Jack usually disliked company in the hospital. I awaited the answer. His eyes filled with tears and I felt him squeeze my hand. He nodded. He did not stop nodding for the longest time.
Maid Marion's Turn to Rescue
The ritual became a staple for his longest days. I would get there at about 11, after the cleaning and the poking and the prodding were done. By then there was a tube down his mouth and he was on total life support. The sound of the respirator gave us privacy. I was given permission to untie him every day for the durations of my visits. His hands danced, just as Mommy's had, only they grabbed at the wires and the tubes--randomly, not with purpose. They grabbed at the sheets resting against over-sensitive legs. I knew what to do. I was more experienced than they knew. I would create a tent of the sheet over his legs, so they would not touch the calves, so swollen and mottled purple now. I combed his hair as HE liked it, so the follicles could rest from over-stimulation.
Sometimes he got angry, because I had to grab his hands to keep him from pulling out the wires or tubes and his angry eyes were like Rasputin's. My eyes would fill; I couldn't help it. Robin Hood NEVER looked at Marion so.
I had to raise my voice to reach through this lightest of comas. I don't know why they even called it a coma, but it really doesn't matter. He had slipped into it before his mind was gone, so I could bring him back just enough, at times. "YOU HAVE to STAY ALIVE, JACK. You promised yourself. JACK. I have to keep your hands from dancing there, dance them over here!" And I would point to somewhere safe.
And suddenly, after what seemed like hour-long seconds, something would click and the eyes would soften. On the two occasions when he reallized he'd hit at me, he started to cry and I had to get him to stop by threatening to sing "Muskrat Love" to him.
Gradually the eyes would soften, the hands would drop to rest at his sides, and usually by noon he was thoroughly relaxed. I would sing softly, the songs we both knew, while I'd work for an hour or so. By around 1:00, he would drift into what looked like sleep, and I'd stay awhile longer, watching him when he looked comfortably at rest. When he could not see me cry.
The nurses saw, and would usually come over in another fifteen minutes or so and ease me out of the room so they could do their afternoon care. It was all right then, because I knew his family would be there by 3:00. They did not know I came every day.
I was his only visitor. And all I could give him were those minutes when his hands were free.
Singing Our Way Home
The day came at last; the nurse told me that his wife had made the call that morning. She had asked that they wait until after she had visited at dinner time. I asked how that could work so he would die alone, and the nurse said they expected he would be able to breathe for a little while but that the effort would be too much for him within a few hours at most. I didn't get it; I didn't have to. But I knew it would be the last day.
He was looking for me and I asked him if he would like me to sing the entire Wildflowers album. He blinked and his eyes seemed to smile. I untied his hands, but he seemed almost present there that day.
I began to sing and forgot to sing softly; a nurse came in and I began to apologize.
"No, no," she said. "May we open the curtain a little longer, so we can hear?" It made me shy a moment, but Jacky took my hand.
I knew it all by heart. We had so many songs and I could hear his guitar in my heart as I sang. He began to drift away it seemed, but, well, I AM his baby sister. I got to "The Sisters of Mercy" and deliberately botched the words and his eyes flew open, glaring at me.
I know my grin was evil. "Oh. Gee. Let me see. Squeeze my hand once, for Jetty I love you so. Twice for you colossal little bitch." Two squeezes and all was right with the world; I finished the album without further incident.
By the end, I knew he was resting, and I sang my final song, changing the words just a little. James Taylor's Close Your Eyes. I often sang that to him. Only this time I ended with my own reprise,
"Darlin' close your eyes.
You know ... I'll always love you."
I got up to go, but he grabbed me and squeezed my hand just once. I kissed him and left.
***
His wife called me at 11 and said he was going and I could go to the hospital if I wanted. I took off. I raced to the hospital, but I was too late. No, I probably was exactly on time for Jack. The doctor was removing the stethoscope and the monitor was turned off. His eyes were open.
I shooed them out and said, "Let me do this." Both had seen me before and the nurse touched my shoulder gently as she left. I slowly removed the restraints for the last time.
"Robin Hood. It's Maid Marion. Sheriff Nottingham's gone for good and no one will tie you up ever again." I smoothed his johnny and washed each hand, then gently crossed them over the sheet I tucked it around him, as if he were sleeping.
And I began to sing "Close Your Eyes" again. I heard a gasp from somewhere nearby, but I kept going. It got so quiet. I brushed his hair as I sang. His silky, pure white hair .. and I combed his beard. Robin Hood lay there so very still. And I finally got there,
"So I'll close your eyes
'll just close your eyes, cause it's all right.
I'll sing you this last love song.
But I won't sing the blues any more.
Cause we have sung our songs.
And I'll still sing your songs, now you're gone.
I've closed your eyes.
You know I'll always love you."
As I walked to my car, making this one last trip, all I could think was this:
Robin Hood slept; Marion wept. Now all the world is still.
It is my story, and I have to be able to write "ugly," as I used to say when I could not write anything that was darker than Anne of Green Gables meets Pollyanna. As always, though, the power for me lies in the beauty, the beautiful power of my brother Jack in the face of evil. And the power of a little girl's love.
My brother's and my journey together is in bits and pieces of other blogs, but primarily in Approaching the Pain, Keeping the Love -- "I move to Robin Hood" well down, across from my Blog list. That entry holds pieces that can shed light on more about our years between childhood and his end.
'Tis I, Robin Hood!
When I was three, my brother Jack got a Robin Hood outfit. My mom and Jean Ellen made me a Maid Marion cape with genuine fake diamonds all along the bottom. Together, he and I would listen to our Robin Hood records with the books. You turned the page when Friar Tuck sang. Then we would run into the front yard where the ancient ... magic tree with roots that were above the ground, not just below it, stood.
We had adventures. Sometimes I got to be Friar Tuck or one of the Merry Band, but mostly I was Maid Marion. She was not a wimp, so I got to ride away with my Robin Hood to foil another plot of the bad Sheriff of Nottingham. We had sacks of acorns from the woods to throw to the poor in the village below (our neighbor's three horses in a corral). We smite the mighty smoke-belching Tractor Dragon one evening, sneaking out of the house just before bedtime.
Just as we were about to revel in victory, "John Harvey and Jeannette Louise, YOU GET HOME NOW!" My father's voice could be heard three towns away, we thought.
A typical ending of our days -- mostly running home.
I followed him like a puppy, and not once in my memory did he shoo me away.
I had the measles when I was four, right after we moved, and nearly died of kidney failure and double pneumonia. Jacky was by my side more often than not. A head would pop in my door. "Tis I, Robeen Hoooood!" he would cry, and bow before his lady in her room-darkened bed.
"You sound like an owl, not a hero," I'd say. And he would wing around the room "Hoooooooting" for me, making me laugh. Then I would start to cough and he would stop, a study in worry. He would sit on the side of my bed and hold my hand, stroke my forehead. I was deathly ill, but I don't remember that; I remember how kind everyone was, especially Jacky.
"Jetty, get better, now," he'd whisper. "We have to build that city for my trains, remember? You promised. You know I stink at making the trees and all the little stuff right. I just break everything. I need you." That was the thing, you know; Jacky needed me. I got better.
Our dragon-slaying days had ended, though; we had a greater fight.
The Monster who Lived in our House
Our older brother Jim was the Sheriff of Nottingham. I will never know how Robin Hood truly fared in the tower he shared with Jim. I had Princess Jean Ellen in mine; he had Jim. I was protected until she left the house when I was in third grade, at least at night. But daytime was a different story long before she went away. The Princess was seldom home in the afternoon...
Sometimes the queen fell into a deep, deep slumber, with her royal glass of amber on the table by her throne. Worse still, sometimes she went on royal errands and left the Sheriff in charge. Those days Jack's call held urgency, "Jetty run and hide! He's coming!" Wherever I was in the house I ran like hell for my daddy's bedroom closet. The back had a slanted floor for the bathroom plumbing, but there was a little ledge at the top. I could just crawl behind Daddy's Old Spice clothing and tuck myself in tight, wrapped in a sports jacket, and simply wait. To wait and wait where no one ever came.
I would hear the muffled cries, the sounds of a chair scraped over wood. Other sounds. The laugh, a barrage of staccato explosions. I tried to cover my ears. There were other sounds I could not name. I would wait in the safety of my father-smelling dark. I would wait. Wait for the only sound I wanted to know.
"Maid Marion, the Sheriff has gone!"
Out I would fly to Robin, to my brothers' room. I'd look out the bathroom window first, making sure the sheriff was headed down the road, whistling usually. Then I would go to the boy in a chair, just a boy no more than six or seven, tied up and silent, with dark eyes and long lashes heavy from trapped tears. I would untie his hands and let him be, while I fetched the cotton balls, the iodine, and held a facecloth under the cold water. I did not rush. Robin Hood did not want me to see him cry. Heroes are like that.
Our ritual was silent. Full. Maid Marion dressed the tiny wounds, and turned the dampened, cold cloth on his forehead. I would kiss the places where blood was drawn, but there never were many. The sheriff grew quite skilled at leaving no marks beyond pin pricks all over his skin. He hurt the places that never showed; it was a mission for him.
Sometimes Jim found me, but only when Jacky was not there. Besides which, Jim preferred to find me at night...
And the reign of terror did not end until I was in seventh grade, and Jim moved out for good.
Those years held too much darkness, and so I learned to forget; to forget all but the fairy tale, to forget the reasons my brother's light simply dimmed, and finally went out. I became expert at forgetting the moment something happened, keeping only what I chose. And yet, somehow we know. I began to remember in 1987, after my father died. I wrote this poem after waking from a "nightmare," however, in 1980.
Brotherssong
A hole fills my heart where a childhood should breathe
and a blood-dripping moon floods my dreams.
The bats start flying
In the house of my death and the songs of my night spin to screams.
There's a blank at the table where my brother's face should feed;
his hands in my night sprout to claws.
Then the bats start biting while my brother grins on
while the moon drips blood from his jaws.
A newspaper breathes where my father's face should see,
a dead wind rattles at the door.
While the bats bite deeper and my other brother screams
the half moon's bleeding on the floor.
There's a dead mouse in the dark where my other brother cries
and Mother grows drunk on the tears.
While my father keeps reading and my brother grins on,
while my other brother withers with the years.
Too Soon Gone...
He was only 50 and I was not yet 48. His son, John, had hanged himself in February and I had not seen Jack for several months when I saw him at the cemetery. He had aged at least a decade and could not walk without a cane. Jack seemed shorter, smaller entirely and his hair and beard were white now. But he eyes were there, the eyes that got to me always, darker brown than the deepest wood, with thick long lashes that made them stand out all the more. And they were so very large and lost that day.
He was surrounded, though, by teenagers. Teenagers with piercings and tatoos. Teenagers with pink hair, purple hair, no hair, black hair. Punked out, gangsta'd, of all types. So sweet, so tender to him. When they found out I was the baby sister of his stories they surrounded me and I saw what the real Jack's life was all about. I will not take away from the love for his children, but in the love Jack gave these emotionally bereft, hurt, abandoned, throw away children, I saw that Robin Hood lived for them. And they loved him back. His colleagues knew me, too. I was surprised, since I had been non-existent in his adult life.
When I walked to him, he opened his arms, but when he held me, I knew Jack was leaning on me, this time. And he was as nothing in my arms. I pulled away a moment, looking him straight in those grief-haunted eyes. "You're dying," was all I said.
"I'll call you," was all he said. But I knew.
His liver was shot and the only answer was a liver transplant. This was now April and he was at my house. It was late. His visits were always at night. His banjo was in his hands, because it was easier for him to talk that way.
"Why don't we test mine?" I asked. "Jean Ellen's not a possibility because of her diabetes, but I don't have diabetes."
He smiled and reached his hand out as Daddy had always done, stroking a wandering strand near my face. "No. Not a possibility. You need your liver."
"I KNOW THAT, But they can take just a lobe and--"
"NO, Jetty. NO." His voice was harsh. "No. Don't you get it? I told you. I'm not going to stop drinking. I'm not a candidate for a transplant. I don't care what they do for celebrities. It's wrong. I did this to myself and I know it. Just the way Mom did, I did this. And I have NO desire to stop drinking." He stopped a moment, and registered that I was shaking. He took my hand, again with the familiar Daddy gentleness. "Jetty, the fact is, I really don't much care about living. I've had to retire. My back is worse and pretty soon I won't be able to walk at all. I won't be able to take care of my family; they'd have to take care of me. Jetty, you gotta let me go."
And it just burst out of me, "But, Jacky, I just got you BACK!"
And we cried ...
In May, he was admitted to intensive care, where he stayed for the next two weeks. He could not run away from me. I was editing catalogs for Northeastern University at the time, and Jack's wife was still teaching, as were all his friends. So during the day I got to see him. The first day he could still talk a little and he said he' would never go home. I saw tubes coming out of him in all directions. I knew what came next. The hepatic coma, where he could sense everything done to him, but would not be able to speak, where he might come in and out of it, but would slowly become someone who did not resemble himself. I knew the swelling in the feet, then the hands. I knew, I knew, I knew.
I said, "But why do you have to be hooked up? Why can't you just GO, Jacky?" I was sobbing. I was useless to him like this. He looked wildly at me, but speech was so hard for him.
I heard "Family" and I realized. I held his hand and said I was sorry at least a dozen times. I told him I understood and would never mention it again. I promised. He was letting his family prepare; he would let his wife pick the time. It was his last act of love--an overwhelmingly selfless act of love. We both became calm and we simply held hands in silence.
I asked whether I could come back every day and work beside his bed, if I promised not to be maudlin. Jack usually disliked company in the hospital. I awaited the answer. His eyes filled with tears and I felt him squeeze my hand. He nodded. He did not stop nodding for the longest time.
Maid Marion's Turn to Rescue
The ritual became a staple for his longest days. I would get there at about 11, after the cleaning and the poking and the prodding were done. By then there was a tube down his mouth and he was on total life support. The sound of the respirator gave us privacy. I was given permission to untie him every day for the durations of my visits. His hands danced, just as Mommy's had, only they grabbed at the wires and the tubes--randomly, not with purpose. They grabbed at the sheets resting against over-sensitive legs. I knew what to do. I was more experienced than they knew. I would create a tent of the sheet over his legs, so they would not touch the calves, so swollen and mottled purple now. I combed his hair as HE liked it, so the follicles could rest from over-stimulation.
Sometimes he got angry, because I had to grab his hands to keep him from pulling out the wires or tubes and his angry eyes were like Rasputin's. My eyes would fill; I couldn't help it. Robin Hood NEVER looked at Marion so.
I had to raise my voice to reach through this lightest of comas. I don't know why they even called it a coma, but it really doesn't matter. He had slipped into it before his mind was gone, so I could bring him back just enough, at times. "YOU HAVE to STAY ALIVE, JACK. You promised yourself. JACK. I have to keep your hands from dancing there, dance them over here!" And I would point to somewhere safe.
And suddenly, after what seemed like hour-long seconds, something would click and the eyes would soften. On the two occasions when he reallized he'd hit at me, he started to cry and I had to get him to stop by threatening to sing "Muskrat Love" to him.
Gradually the eyes would soften, the hands would drop to rest at his sides, and usually by noon he was thoroughly relaxed. I would sing softly, the songs we both knew, while I'd work for an hour or so. By around 1:00, he would drift into what looked like sleep, and I'd stay awhile longer, watching him when he looked comfortably at rest. When he could not see me cry.
The nurses saw, and would usually come over in another fifteen minutes or so and ease me out of the room so they could do their afternoon care. It was all right then, because I knew his family would be there by 3:00. They did not know I came every day.
I was his only visitor. And all I could give him were those minutes when his hands were free.
Singing Our Way Home
The day came at last; the nurse told me that his wife had made the call that morning. She had asked that they wait until after she had visited at dinner time. I asked how that could work so he would die alone, and the nurse said they expected he would be able to breathe for a little while but that the effort would be too much for him within a few hours at most. I didn't get it; I didn't have to. But I knew it would be the last day.
He was looking for me and I asked him if he would like me to sing the entire Wildflowers album. He blinked and his eyes seemed to smile. I untied his hands, but he seemed almost present there that day.
I began to sing and forgot to sing softly; a nurse came in and I began to apologize.
"No, no," she said. "May we open the curtain a little longer, so we can hear?" It made me shy a moment, but Jacky took my hand.
I knew it all by heart. We had so many songs and I could hear his guitar in my heart as I sang. He began to drift away it seemed, but, well, I AM his baby sister. I got to "The Sisters of Mercy" and deliberately botched the words and his eyes flew open, glaring at me.
I know my grin was evil. "Oh. Gee. Let me see. Squeeze my hand once, for Jetty I love you so. Twice for you colossal little bitch." Two squeezes and all was right with the world; I finished the album without further incident.
By the end, I knew he was resting, and I sang my final song, changing the words just a little. James Taylor's Close Your Eyes. I often sang that to him. Only this time I ended with my own reprise,
"Darlin' close your eyes.
You know ... I'll always love you."
I got up to go, but he grabbed me and squeezed my hand just once. I kissed him and left.
***
His wife called me at 11 and said he was going and I could go to the hospital if I wanted. I took off. I raced to the hospital, but I was too late. No, I probably was exactly on time for Jack. The doctor was removing the stethoscope and the monitor was turned off. His eyes were open.
I shooed them out and said, "Let me do this." Both had seen me before and the nurse touched my shoulder gently as she left. I slowly removed the restraints for the last time.
"Robin Hood. It's Maid Marion. Sheriff Nottingham's gone for good and no one will tie you up ever again." I smoothed his johnny and washed each hand, then gently crossed them over the sheet I tucked it around him, as if he were sleeping.
And I began to sing "Close Your Eyes" again. I heard a gasp from somewhere nearby, but I kept going. It got so quiet. I brushed his hair as I sang. His silky, pure white hair .. and I combed his beard. Robin Hood lay there so very still. And I finally got there,
"So I'll close your eyes
'll just close your eyes, cause it's all right.
I'll sing you this last love song.
But I won't sing the blues any more.
Cause we have sung our songs.
And I'll still sing your songs, now you're gone.
I've closed your eyes.
You know I'll always love you."
As I walked to my car, making this one last trip, all I could think was this:
Robin Hood slept; Marion wept. Now all the world is still.
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Time, Memoir, and... I have absolutely NO clue what this is about!
I saw a Facebook thread which loosely talked about time. A friend said something to the effect that we might consider that the moment we experience as now holds many other moments in it. He was trying not to talk about past or future because thinking of time so linearly might not be the way to go. (Forgive me, David, if I have blown my paraphrase.)
I have no clue where his mind was running, but mine ran to memoir. To this blog and why I have schizophrenically included another. I may eliminate the blog, but fold the old entries into this. I am not sure. I was trying, at one point, to figure out where my past could end and my next path start--as if they were separate in any way! In fact, I think the point of the memoirs I love the most blur any sense of time, really. One writes in terms of events, of experiences and growth. We blur the sequencing in memory and often the details. And, truly, does that make one iota's worth of difference? I don't think so. We try to preserve the broader truths, and the enormous truths contained in details, but few of those have much to do with linear time.
Before I remembered events from childhood, I clung to a myth and to a bogglingly detailed memory of each school year, what I learned, who my teachers were, what the weather was. I had no gaps of time, I thought, because I knew the chronologies, events that surrounded the big events. I could reconstruct things in every year. It was the way I could surround the terror with detail and tell myself that I had nothing more to remember.
The healing came when I wrote the rest of the time line, in truth. What I called "Time line of Terror: Time line of Grace." In fact, I had HUGE gaps and blanks. I remembered almost nothing that happened in my home except at Christmas for probably ten years of my life. The trivia found its level, like water, filling in the cracks. So I had to let go of my ridiculous chronology by writing a different sort of chronology. There were not years listed. I had experiences, eras of pain without dates attached. On the left were the punctuation marks of pain in my life, and it was chillingly long, I thought, as I began. In fact I would not and should not subject readers to such a lengthy mess, I thought.
On the right, however, was a list easily four times as long. For every single atrocity I made myself list the graces that got me through. THAT was and remains the sheer wonder of my life.
I remembered the people, the Christmases, the little kindnesses and overwhelming love of some. I remembered silly events that made me laugh. My list of graces took up four times the space, but in numbers? I think they outnumbered the terrors six or seven to one. To me, to this four-year-old and eight-year-old heart, the graces were as tiny as a feather I found on a beach. They required little explanation.
What has this to do with time? I think that when I let go of worrying about what happened when, when I let go of this fear that I misremembered things, that I was not journalistic enough, the real growth began. Like Louise, these other pains held the yin/yang of my life. At every turn we can choose light/love/feeding life or the Other, whatever that is. Sometimes, if you are as lucky as I, you are given markers, nudges toward that love and forget to even LOOK at the other part of our circle. That's the thing; at every turn someone or other pointed me toward beauty.
I live on the edges of things. I've said that before. In the old days, Olympic skaters had to do compulsory exercises, one of which involved skating an eight on one blade over and over and over, repeating that same line. I think I aim toward that line in the yin/yang sign. I think I see life that way, and experience my own life that way. I want to skate on that edge, leaning on the side of the blade toward wonder and the things that feed our lives.
When I hit fifty I tasted my first fresh fig. Rivaled the pluot, I must say. It's not the time, it's the alliteration ... It's not my brother's foot on my tiny hand as I tried to protect a trapped mouse when I was four --the foot coming down on the hand, murdering a mouse. It was the choice presented like a gift to me, to guard future mice in traps so no foot would ever again end their days. I sat by the mice in the traps and I sang to them. It doesn't matter what happened before or after--it's the experience and what that teeny girl drew on to cope. Love. A gift. A gift that has never left me.
When I finish my book, I want it to be about flying and wonder, and my true goal is take my readers on a joyous, if somewhat terrifyingly beautiful flight with me. And I want it to be abundantly clear that none of us is strong all by ourselves. Those of us who survive the most appalling abuse, who have had to cope with pain and perhaps overcome many odds--to say we were just not quitters, or that we were somehow better than... I think that teaches nothing. It simply makes those who are floundering feel less than... as if we do not ALL flounder at times? Oops. Time. That word.
I was taught to look for the magic, to expect to find it everywhere. I was taught that love is a gift we give and may receive. It is not an emotion and we do not take it from someone. I was taught that the lessons were in the giving more than the receiving; in the receiving we found joy and laughter and wonder, sure. But to give the love when it was not easy? My parents believed that this was what made it love.
How do I say, then, that my parents are gone when their voices live so clearly in my heart and mind? Where does that past end, when its lessons still live? I named the pain Louise. That was easy. Embracing my mother was easier after my time line. Over and OVER, even when she was the terror, she was the grace as well.
And she still is. Jack, Jean Ellen, Jessie, Daddy, Mom, so many people not walking on this earth live inside of me. The years are meaningless. In the act of writing I don't let go of the past; I hug it to me and reveal its power. In these last few months, what I see is that I have let go of WANTING it to be "in the past." I let go of wishing I were someone else.
I don't; I would rather have had my own life than another's. I do not think things happen for a reason. I think the free will lies in whether or not we stand up and decide to use the horrors to create beauty or to enrich life, or whether we choose to hold onto our identity as ACOAs, or "Survivors" or something that sets us apart from all humanity, from this earth. We choose to continue on paths of self-destruction or bit by bit, we learn to choose life. But I don't think God or Anything in particular sends us pain, abuse, abandonment, loss, or even hurricanes for a reason. Whatever God is, or whatever Energy feeds and sustains life? It sends the magic and the joy to find ways to ride or even fly out of and above the rest. It's what allows us the capacity to be a phoenix.
Mind you, I have not arrived on that Tibeten Mountain Top there, with the great Zen masters. Not hardly. I'm simply thinking that past, future, where I'm going, how I thought of the future as "starting over," it's all bunk. I start over one way or another every day... don't you?
Memoir is self-involved, but somehow or other, the best ones have reached to all who read them. We search for what we all can share, regardless of the "niceness" of our families. We take our little teeny lives and find what resonates, we HOPE. That's the goal anyway. To find something beyond the littleness of ONE life, to touch and perhaps help or support or validate other lives.
Of course, then we can eat a pluot or a fig and simply live in the joy of juice running down our chin, and to HELL with reaching for anything more.
And if you can make sense of any of this ramble, you are "a better man than I am Gunga Din," as my mother used to say. It was fun to write it anyway!
***
This is unedited or reviewed stream of consciousness dribble. I just need to make writing my habit once again!
I have no clue where his mind was running, but mine ran to memoir. To this blog and why I have schizophrenically included another. I may eliminate the blog, but fold the old entries into this. I am not sure. I was trying, at one point, to figure out where my past could end and my next path start--as if they were separate in any way! In fact, I think the point of the memoirs I love the most blur any sense of time, really. One writes in terms of events, of experiences and growth. We blur the sequencing in memory and often the details. And, truly, does that make one iota's worth of difference? I don't think so. We try to preserve the broader truths, and the enormous truths contained in details, but few of those have much to do with linear time.
Before I remembered events from childhood, I clung to a myth and to a bogglingly detailed memory of each school year, what I learned, who my teachers were, what the weather was. I had no gaps of time, I thought, because I knew the chronologies, events that surrounded the big events. I could reconstruct things in every year. It was the way I could surround the terror with detail and tell myself that I had nothing more to remember.
The healing came when I wrote the rest of the time line, in truth. What I called "Time line of Terror: Time line of Grace." In fact, I had HUGE gaps and blanks. I remembered almost nothing that happened in my home except at Christmas for probably ten years of my life. The trivia found its level, like water, filling in the cracks. So I had to let go of my ridiculous chronology by writing a different sort of chronology. There were not years listed. I had experiences, eras of pain without dates attached. On the left were the punctuation marks of pain in my life, and it was chillingly long, I thought, as I began. In fact I would not and should not subject readers to such a lengthy mess, I thought.
On the right, however, was a list easily four times as long. For every single atrocity I made myself list the graces that got me through. THAT was and remains the sheer wonder of my life.
I remembered the people, the Christmases, the little kindnesses and overwhelming love of some. I remembered silly events that made me laugh. My list of graces took up four times the space, but in numbers? I think they outnumbered the terrors six or seven to one. To me, to this four-year-old and eight-year-old heart, the graces were as tiny as a feather I found on a beach. They required little explanation.
What has this to do with time? I think that when I let go of worrying about what happened when, when I let go of this fear that I misremembered things, that I was not journalistic enough, the real growth began. Like Louise, these other pains held the yin/yang of my life. At every turn we can choose light/love/feeding life or the Other, whatever that is. Sometimes, if you are as lucky as I, you are given markers, nudges toward that love and forget to even LOOK at the other part of our circle. That's the thing; at every turn someone or other pointed me toward beauty.
I live on the edges of things. I've said that before. In the old days, Olympic skaters had to do compulsory exercises, one of which involved skating an eight on one blade over and over and over, repeating that same line. I think I aim toward that line in the yin/yang sign. I think I see life that way, and experience my own life that way. I want to skate on that edge, leaning on the side of the blade toward wonder and the things that feed our lives.
When I hit fifty I tasted my first fresh fig. Rivaled the pluot, I must say. It's not the time, it's the alliteration ... It's not my brother's foot on my tiny hand as I tried to protect a trapped mouse when I was four --the foot coming down on the hand, murdering a mouse. It was the choice presented like a gift to me, to guard future mice in traps so no foot would ever again end their days. I sat by the mice in the traps and I sang to them. It doesn't matter what happened before or after--it's the experience and what that teeny girl drew on to cope. Love. A gift. A gift that has never left me.
When I finish my book, I want it to be about flying and wonder, and my true goal is take my readers on a joyous, if somewhat terrifyingly beautiful flight with me. And I want it to be abundantly clear that none of us is strong all by ourselves. Those of us who survive the most appalling abuse, who have had to cope with pain and perhaps overcome many odds--to say we were just not quitters, or that we were somehow better than... I think that teaches nothing. It simply makes those who are floundering feel less than... as if we do not ALL flounder at times? Oops. Time. That word.
I was taught to look for the magic, to expect to find it everywhere. I was taught that love is a gift we give and may receive. It is not an emotion and we do not take it from someone. I was taught that the lessons were in the giving more than the receiving; in the receiving we found joy and laughter and wonder, sure. But to give the love when it was not easy? My parents believed that this was what made it love.
How do I say, then, that my parents are gone when their voices live so clearly in my heart and mind? Where does that past end, when its lessons still live? I named the pain Louise. That was easy. Embracing my mother was easier after my time line. Over and OVER, even when she was the terror, she was the grace as well.
And she still is. Jack, Jean Ellen, Jessie, Daddy, Mom, so many people not walking on this earth live inside of me. The years are meaningless. In the act of writing I don't let go of the past; I hug it to me and reveal its power. In these last few months, what I see is that I have let go of WANTING it to be "in the past." I let go of wishing I were someone else.
I don't; I would rather have had my own life than another's. I do not think things happen for a reason. I think the free will lies in whether or not we stand up and decide to use the horrors to create beauty or to enrich life, or whether we choose to hold onto our identity as ACOAs, or "Survivors" or something that sets us apart from all humanity, from this earth. We choose to continue on paths of self-destruction or bit by bit, we learn to choose life. But I don't think God or Anything in particular sends us pain, abuse, abandonment, loss, or even hurricanes for a reason. Whatever God is, or whatever Energy feeds and sustains life? It sends the magic and the joy to find ways to ride or even fly out of and above the rest. It's what allows us the capacity to be a phoenix.
Mind you, I have not arrived on that Tibeten Mountain Top there, with the great Zen masters. Not hardly. I'm simply thinking that past, future, where I'm going, how I thought of the future as "starting over," it's all bunk. I start over one way or another every day... don't you?
Memoir is self-involved, but somehow or other, the best ones have reached to all who read them. We search for what we all can share, regardless of the "niceness" of our families. We take our little teeny lives and find what resonates, we HOPE. That's the goal anyway. To find something beyond the littleness of ONE life, to touch and perhaps help or support or validate other lives.
Of course, then we can eat a pluot or a fig and simply live in the joy of juice running down our chin, and to HELL with reaching for anything more.
And if you can make sense of any of this ramble, you are "a better man than I am Gunga Din," as my mother used to say. It was fun to write it anyway!
***
This is unedited or reviewed stream of consciousness dribble. I just need to make writing my habit once again!
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.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Grace by Any Other Name
Perhaps the beginning of my book... we'll see. The time has come to be brave I think.
***
Our family was a rain forest: lush and rotting, with little in between. When I was flailing between childhood and adulthood, I never knew whether it was a blessing or a curse — I had to learn a different language to finally accept it as both. The pivotal word in that language is “grace”. I gradually came to realize that I had been aware of moments of grace in my life right from the time I had words at my disposal for speaking — perhaps even earlier. "Grace" itself, however, was a word that I would not find until much later.
HOW I GOT RELIGION ©2007
And there were angels in the willows,
And fairies on the water,
All singing,
All sighing,
All circling her soul.
Closing ranks, they called Hosannas
To the God who saved a child,
flying to her in a mouse,
In the shine on water,
And the sound of silent saviors
Who cleared the wayward strand
from wide eyes too terrified to see,
Who wiped big tears
from the face too tiny to know death and blood.
Yet she knew.
They circled her soul in innocence,
And in the stillness of a mouse
beneath her hand,
She heard the answer “Love.”
She already knew.
And there are angels in the willows, still,
And the fairies on the water dance.
And the question and the answer are the same.
... And she knows.
We had mice in our first home, a gingerbread Victorian farmhouse in Connecticut. Mousetraps were a part of country life, and I knew full well not to touch them; and I knew what the telltale snap meant. I was always the first one to rise, from the day I discovered how to escape from my crib. Even at three, I loved the solitude of the dawn, before my mother must have been aware that her youngest was on the prowl and it was time for her day to begin as well. That morning, as I wandered into the kitchen, I heard the snap in the basement, and decided that was the day to explore.
To my dismay, it squeaked. The mouse. It squeaked and I thought it was wriggling.
I ran to get my brother, Jim. His room was the nearest. “Jimmy, Jimmy. Get UP! We have to make it stop!”
I remember pulling at him, and I remember his face: cold, dark, masked. He hated being wakened, but I was too little to understand what that meant. I knew only that I could not play with the trap and that the mouse needed our help. “Come ON, Jimmy. NOW!” I pulled at him and he quietly accompanied me downstairs.
I remember his looking at me, down to the mouse, and back at me. He smiled and said, “Put your hand on him to keep him calm, Jetty.” Jim walked away and I squatted down. The mouse was warm, but he was quiet; I must have calmed him down. He was very soft and warm.
“We’ll stop him now,” Jim said. He gently placed a board on my hand, and in the time it took me to look up to ask why, his foot met the board and my hand met something different. In that meeting of my hand and another life, I met God.
My God, forever the God of a three-year-old. I might have come away with only horror, or, even worse, a sense of myself as a murderer, but I did not. Instead, I became The Watcher, defender of all mice. I was their companion and friend. Every morning I checked the traps and, if a mouse was there, just to be sure, I would sit by it for a time, stroking it with my pinky, whispering that soon it would be okay. I simply loved them, and I loved them simply.
My innocence died with the meeting of my flesh and a mouse’s, but I clung to something greater. I knew only that Love was It. That simple thought, “Love is God.” No more, no less.
***
And this is grace, to me. Through the moments of terror, agony, and loss, Grace has surrounded me — a cloud that envelopes me to usher me home, rather than an epiphany or some grand wisdom from within. I was far too little to understand the enormity of my brother’s act, and too little to wrap my mind around the feel of death beneath my hand. It was the birth of the writer, perhaps more than the death of innocence. I transformed the horrible into Myth, at the center of which was Me, the hero. I liked that. Who wouldn’t? It was a way to rise above most anything that happened. I spun episodes of torture into television episodes of Robin Hood and Maid Marion, Flash Gordon, Sky King. If I was the hero, then Jim could not really touch me. God was my buddy; Love was my mantle of invincibility. It worked for me.
Unfortunately, it never went over big with some adults. Particularly the minister’s wife. She taught Sunday school at our Baptist church, back when I was nine. That’s when I was expelled from Sunday school.
Mrs. E. told us we were to pray to Jesus, and I asked, “Why?”
I can still hear her gasp and see her shudder. “Jeannette, what do you mean, Why?”
I couldn’t figure out why she was so mad, but I explained what was obvious to me. “Well, look. Jesus taught us to pray saying ‘Our Father, who art in Heaven,’ right?”
She nodded, but still didn’t seem to get it. And she was still mad.
“Well, he didn’t teach us to pray saying, ‘Our Jesus who art in Heaven,’ so what do I need to pray to Jesus for? I can pray straight to God.”
She grabbed me by the shoulder and shouted at me to stand up. She pushed me to the front of the class and said, “Don’t any of you listen to this girl. She is a sinner. Jeannette, you go home right now, and you think about this blasphemy. I will be calling your mother. Go on like this, child, and you’ll find yourself in Hell.”
I suppose I should have been terrified when she made me walk home. It was a pretty long walk, a couple of miles at least. I was embarrassed, and I was vaguely disturbed about the Hell business, but it was a sunny day, and it was warm, and there were flowers in bloom and I found myself singing instead, and reasonably sure that God and I were still buddies.
Of course, then I saw my mother’s face and it was clear that Mrs. E. had called. That held far more fear than Hell.
“What happened, Missy?” The dreaded 'Missy.' Nevertheless I looked her straight in the eyes, took a deep breath and auto-fired the entire story in one breath, ending with, “I don’t get why that was so bad, Mom.”
She came to me, then, and tipped my face up toward her, as was her custom, two fingers under my chin. She didn’t look all that mad. “Do you think you were sinful and bad?”
“No!” The force of the word scared me quiet a moment, but my mom was smiling then, so I added, “I think God likes me just fine.” I could feel myself scowling and the stupid tears would make an appearance then.
But there was my mother’s kiss, right on the tip of my nose and her only answer, more whisper than spoken, “I think He does, too.”
I never went back and my mother never even asked me to. Furthermore, I never did pray to Jesus, preferring to take it all to the Big Kahuna, directly.
***
Grace came to me crashing or creeping; who’s to say which was what? Sometimes as simple as the love in my mother’s eyes. To my child’s line of sight, the moments loomed large, and God danced around in them all. To my older eyes? It all dances pretty much the same.
***
Our family was a rain forest: lush and rotting, with little in between. When I was flailing between childhood and adulthood, I never knew whether it was a blessing or a curse — I had to learn a different language to finally accept it as both. The pivotal word in that language is “grace”. I gradually came to realize that I had been aware of moments of grace in my life right from the time I had words at my disposal for speaking — perhaps even earlier. "Grace" itself, however, was a word that I would not find until much later.
HOW I GOT RELIGION ©2007
And there were angels in the willows,
And fairies on the water,
All singing,
All sighing,
All circling her soul.
Closing ranks, they called Hosannas
To the God who saved a child,
flying to her in a mouse,
In the shine on water,
And the sound of silent saviors
Who cleared the wayward strand
from wide eyes too terrified to see,
Who wiped big tears
from the face too tiny to know death and blood.
Yet she knew.
They circled her soul in innocence,
And in the stillness of a mouse
beneath her hand,
She heard the answer “Love.”
She already knew.
And there are angels in the willows, still,
And the fairies on the water dance.
And the question and the answer are the same.
... And she knows.
We had mice in our first home, a gingerbread Victorian farmhouse in Connecticut. Mousetraps were a part of country life, and I knew full well not to touch them; and I knew what the telltale snap meant. I was always the first one to rise, from the day I discovered how to escape from my crib. Even at three, I loved the solitude of the dawn, before my mother must have been aware that her youngest was on the prowl and it was time for her day to begin as well. That morning, as I wandered into the kitchen, I heard the snap in the basement, and decided that was the day to explore.
To my dismay, it squeaked. The mouse. It squeaked and I thought it was wriggling.
I ran to get my brother, Jim. His room was the nearest. “Jimmy, Jimmy. Get UP! We have to make it stop!”
I remember pulling at him, and I remember his face: cold, dark, masked. He hated being wakened, but I was too little to understand what that meant. I knew only that I could not play with the trap and that the mouse needed our help. “Come ON, Jimmy. NOW!” I pulled at him and he quietly accompanied me downstairs.
I remember his looking at me, down to the mouse, and back at me. He smiled and said, “Put your hand on him to keep him calm, Jetty.” Jim walked away and I squatted down. The mouse was warm, but he was quiet; I must have calmed him down. He was very soft and warm.
“We’ll stop him now,” Jim said. He gently placed a board on my hand, and in the time it took me to look up to ask why, his foot met the board and my hand met something different. In that meeting of my hand and another life, I met God.
My God, forever the God of a three-year-old. I might have come away with only horror, or, even worse, a sense of myself as a murderer, but I did not. Instead, I became The Watcher, defender of all mice. I was their companion and friend. Every morning I checked the traps and, if a mouse was there, just to be sure, I would sit by it for a time, stroking it with my pinky, whispering that soon it would be okay. I simply loved them, and I loved them simply.
My innocence died with the meeting of my flesh and a mouse’s, but I clung to something greater. I knew only that Love was It. That simple thought, “Love is God.” No more, no less.
***
And this is grace, to me. Through the moments of terror, agony, and loss, Grace has surrounded me — a cloud that envelopes me to usher me home, rather than an epiphany or some grand wisdom from within. I was far too little to understand the enormity of my brother’s act, and too little to wrap my mind around the feel of death beneath my hand. It was the birth of the writer, perhaps more than the death of innocence. I transformed the horrible into Myth, at the center of which was Me, the hero. I liked that. Who wouldn’t? It was a way to rise above most anything that happened. I spun episodes of torture into television episodes of Robin Hood and Maid Marion, Flash Gordon, Sky King. If I was the hero, then Jim could not really touch me. God was my buddy; Love was my mantle of invincibility. It worked for me.
Unfortunately, it never went over big with some adults. Particularly the minister’s wife. She taught Sunday school at our Baptist church, back when I was nine. That’s when I was expelled from Sunday school.
Mrs. E. told us we were to pray to Jesus, and I asked, “Why?”
I can still hear her gasp and see her shudder. “Jeannette, what do you mean, Why?”
I couldn’t figure out why she was so mad, but I explained what was obvious to me. “Well, look. Jesus taught us to pray saying ‘Our Father, who art in Heaven,’ right?”
She nodded, but still didn’t seem to get it. And she was still mad.
“Well, he didn’t teach us to pray saying, ‘Our Jesus who art in Heaven,’ so what do I need to pray to Jesus for? I can pray straight to God.”
She grabbed me by the shoulder and shouted at me to stand up. She pushed me to the front of the class and said, “Don’t any of you listen to this girl. She is a sinner. Jeannette, you go home right now, and you think about this blasphemy. I will be calling your mother. Go on like this, child, and you’ll find yourself in Hell.”
I suppose I should have been terrified when she made me walk home. It was a pretty long walk, a couple of miles at least. I was embarrassed, and I was vaguely disturbed about the Hell business, but it was a sunny day, and it was warm, and there were flowers in bloom and I found myself singing instead, and reasonably sure that God and I were still buddies.
Of course, then I saw my mother’s face and it was clear that Mrs. E. had called. That held far more fear than Hell.
“What happened, Missy?” The dreaded 'Missy.' Nevertheless I looked her straight in the eyes, took a deep breath and auto-fired the entire story in one breath, ending with, “I don’t get why that was so bad, Mom.”
She came to me, then, and tipped my face up toward her, as was her custom, two fingers under my chin. She didn’t look all that mad. “Do you think you were sinful and bad?”
“No!” The force of the word scared me quiet a moment, but my mom was smiling then, so I added, “I think God likes me just fine.” I could feel myself scowling and the stupid tears would make an appearance then.
But there was my mother’s kiss, right on the tip of my nose and her only answer, more whisper than spoken, “I think He does, too.”
I never went back and my mother never even asked me to. Furthermore, I never did pray to Jesus, preferring to take it all to the Big Kahuna, directly.
***
Grace came to me crashing or creeping; who’s to say which was what? Sometimes as simple as the love in my mother’s eyes. To my child’s line of sight, the moments loomed large, and God danced around in them all. To my older eyes? It all dances pretty much the same.
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