A while back, one of my commenters pointed out that there are worse things than living on the edge of poverty. That reminded me of the story I wrote several entries ago about my dad and me, and how he would show me exactly how the money was handled and where it went. And all sorts of memories have been tumbling into my mind--new and old, alike. It has been two weeks of confusion, joy, and pain. But my dad clamors to be heard, so I write more. This is unedited stream of consciousness today because I want to quiet at least ONE of the cacophonous voices in my head!
Ostensibly, so many talks began around money...
When Dad finally got ahead, back in 1969, it was because he collected a pension in early retirement from the State and then started a new career in Education Administration as the Registrar of a local university. I think his example is another reason I have never been able to subscribe much to the idea that it's too late to start fresh after fifty. Even when he retired as Registrar at 67, he became an administrative consultant to the President of the university. He felt change was usually a good thing, not bad.
My Parents and Their Idea of Wealth
He and my mom faced potential poverty all the time. Sometimes they dipped into the wrong side of that line, but when they were financially secure, what did they do? Turn around and start helping other people when they could. Dad said, "Money is only as good as what you do with it. We have been helped along the way, so it's our turn to help others as we were."
They befriended a waitress at a local restaurant, helping her and her son as they could. Those two were with us for five Christmases, and Dad paid for her education at a local community college, then got her into the university on a scholarship two years later. We had strays at my parents' open house on Christmas Eve nights and we never quite knew what sort of person would appear next. I think they helped about a dozen people before they died.
I remember he asked my opinion about that. He wondered whether I thought he should give the money to the charities that helped people and explained to me that he and mom were a little selfish in wanting to do it this way. "We get to see the effect. But do you think we waste our money?"
I was shocked that he asked my opinion. He said, "Why wouldn't I? You have been through more than the others have and are more mature than any 32 year old I've known. You work in non-profits." That was when I felt like a grown up. I had not thought my parents had noticed much of anything about what my life was really like, or how I had coped with having three operations while I raised two stepchildren and tried to develop an opening for a career. However, I still did not care for the question.
I felt that it was entirely up to them and, in fact, I told him that if this was being selfish, then the world would be better off with a whole lot of selfish people like them. I did ask, "Daddy, I only worry about your getting into trouble spending the money. I know how tough things were when we were growing up."
He looked troubled. "We won't spend away your inheritance." I remember tearing up that he could think that's what I meant.
"DADDY. It's your money! I don't care if you leave us not one dime, don't you know that?"
He had the strangest look on his face, and rare tears were there, making his eyes shine dark, like Jacky's. "How is it that you and your sister have such different perspectives than your brothers? They talk about how they had nothing. You and your sister talk about how your mother gave up her comforts for all of you."
I think the boys never bothered to look; I don't know why. They saw the flaws, as did we all. They just didn't want to see the rest, I guess. Jack wanted to "out-Daddy Daddy" and deliberately went into education. He was mad when he was dying because he would never finish his book and he wanted to beat Dad at that. I suspect being boys in that family was harder in some ways. When my friend dated Jim (pre-memories, mind you) she bought t-shirts for all three: purple, with fancy white printing that said "the Father" "The Son" "The Holy Ghost." Funny. Each one knew which was which and they were PROUD of them; they were proud of their own egos.
Still, it bothered me that the boys never could see the sacrifices both parents made, just for us.
Spinning Gold Into Love
We talked about many things that day. He was was driving me to Boston for one of my "blood-lettings," as we called them. I used to get massive hematomas on my back after surgeries and would go to Boston every three days for a couple of weeks, so that the doctor could aspirate the surgical site and draw out all the old blood. It kept me from getting infections. My husband didn't like to take time off from work for my illness. It wasted too much time, he said. But Dad would sit there and hold my hand, and would grow very pale at the sight of the enormous needle and tube into which blood was literally sucked from the swelling.
We both knew those trips saved my life. It cemented a unique bond between us, as well.
My parents had no desire to be wealthy. Dad wanted Mom to get some things for herself, yes, when he changed jobs. When she'd finished her binge, though, they wanted mostly to "give back." Friends had helped them sometimes and all the friends had said was, "When times get better, don't pay us back. Just turn around and do it for someone else."
I realize that this was the prototype for how my friends and I work as well. There is about five thousand dollars total that seems to float around my circle of 10-15 women--sometimes in a thousand here and there, and sometimes the whole wad. My family and friends who celebrated Christmas Eve together would pick the person with the roughest year for the "Spoiling target"for the year. We would give them an outrageously large Christmas then and spoil them rotten. I learned from my parents that THIS was the REAL fun of the season, and of life.
Spinning Pain Into Love As Well
Why am I writing this tonight? It has been a difficult couple of weeks for me. I do not write that much about my back. I have had bizarre and terrifying experiences in the 1-2 month hospital stays. Lately, I have dreamed about the worst ones. And we are now in the season when I lost both parents. The final weeks of their lives. Mom died on February 16, and Dad died on the 26th. January was full of poignance. And two worst hospital stays were in the winter. I may write about those; possibly not.
But as I think of my parents and remember things to put in my book, I remember Daddy as well. We had an unusual relationship, I think. I was lucky enough to hear both of them talk about their own fears, their disappointments in themselves, not each other, and to hear about parts of their lives I am not sure most kids of my generation got to share.
My father was a womanizer; those of you who have followed my blog a couple of years know that already. He was famous for his business trips... We knew. Well. I knew. The boys remained blind until it was out in the open; denial was always their preference. Most mornings my dad sang one of two songs in the shower: Many Brave Hearts Are Asleep In the Deep or Ah Sweet Mystery of Life at Last I've Found You. On February 1st, when I was giving him some ice chips because eating was so awful for him, he took my hand.
"You know about the women, Jetty. Your mother could have left me. She should have, really. But don't think I did not love your mother. I DID. I DO. But you are too much like me. Don't learn everything the hard way."
I said, "Daddy. I have made big mistakes, but..."
"You are not happy with Mark. I see it all the time. He is not right for you. I know it. I just know it. Jetty, what are you going to do? Oh..." He was so agitated then, all I could do was stroke his forehead and the still thick and silky, silver hair.
He was quiet, but his cheeks were wet and his eyes were glossy, and almost black. "Why did it have to take me DYING Gawddamnit? Why couldn't I have listened to the Gawdamned WORDS, instead of my own voice? 'For tis love and love alone the world is seeking.' Jetty. Promise me you will hear those words. 'Tis the answer, 'tis the end and all of living.' I learned it all too late! Don't you, Jetty. Don't you."
Ah! Sweet Mystery Of Life
Ah! Sweet Mystery of Life
At last,I've found you.
Ah! At last I know the secret of it all.
For the longing, seeking, striving, waiting, yearning,
The burning hopes,
The joy and idle tears that fall.
For 'tis love and love alone,
The world is seeking.
And 'tis love and love alone,
That can repay.
'Tis the answer, 'tis the end and all of living,
For it is love alone that rules for aye.
(LAST STANZA REPEATED AND CLOSES WITH);
For it is love alone
I hear his basso profundo still; or, as I preferred to call it, his basso buffoono. I see his face, the tears. I feel his hands on my face, and see him looking for an answer. I am not sure he knew who I was in that searching.
All I said was, "I know, Daddy. I know."
He smiled and nodded, let go of my face and he slept.
And the Question and the Answer Were the Same
He and my mother, both. In the dying, turning to me to give me something all the while begging for a promise. The telling. The listening. To me. I was the writer. Of course it was to me.
Regardless of what came from moving lips, the sound from their souls was simple: love.
What more could any parents leave?
Accidental Spring
"Accidental Spring" This began as the background for painting other papers, but became something else!
Showing posts with label forgiveness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label forgiveness. Show all posts
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Sunday, January 22, 2012
On Writing My Memoir
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
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
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.
Sunday, September 11, 2011
The slayer of Monsters Under My Bed
It was the fifties and early sixties, and, well, let's face it: most dads were not hyper-involved in the child-rearing. "Wait 'til I tell your father" or "Wait 'til your father gets home" were really the main references to dads by my friends' mothers. On the other hand, my friends' dads took them on family picnics and family outings on the Mohawk Trail or to the Big E (Springfield Mass's agricultural regional fair--a HUGE deal for people who lived within an hour and a half of the place). My dad?
"Gawd, I hate togetherness."
Yeah, but he also taught us to play tennis and never seemed to lose his temper. He built us little cars in the sand. Launched us from his shoulders into the Lake. He did more than his share of one-on-one things. Plus, I could sit in his lap when I was little, nestling into his chest and feel the gentlest hands in the world stroke my neck and shoulders. That was the thing. His voice scared me, it was so deep and rumbly, sometimes. But my daddy never harmed a hair on my head. If anything he touched me more as if I were some little miracle that might break.
He also was the one who came for every nightmare, telling us to chase those monsters away. "Tell 'em, 'BOO, Go away!' and it works every time. Under-the-bed monsters are well-known to be cowards. Otherwise, why would they wait until dark and only scare children?"
It worked!
And if the fear was nameless, he simply took me in his arms and stroked my hair and said, so very softly, "I'm here, Jetty. It's okay. You are home. I'm here."
And when he did bother to be home, he was very much there. It was just that he was away "on business" too much for a man who worked for the State. Somewhere far too young, I registered what sort of business he was away on. But, naturally, we did not speak of it with Mom, just among ourselves.
The thing is, though, my dad slayed the daymare monsters, too. For me, that monster was the "poor house." On several mornings, because I got up so early and would catch them enjoying breakfast alone, I heard them fighting about money before they knew I was there. One time it was really bad, and Mom said, "Jim, you can't drive us to the poor house! We can't live like this! I'm TIRED OF THIS, living from month to month, one disaster away from ruined! I can't." She was crying.
I walked in and simply looked at them, not knowing what to do. I was about six and had gotten up before my sister, even, who was in high school. (I loved how quiet it was first thing in the morning. I had Mommy and Daddy all to myself. Of course, I didn't think then that they would be anything other than thrilled to have me crash their only alone time!)
To make my long story longer, Daddy spoke first. "Well, snigglefritz, it's not as bad as it sounds." He sort of smiled, but his eyes didn't. And Mommy was standing at the sink.
"Where are you driving us Daddy? What's a poor house? I like my house!" I was worried.
"Your mother was using a figure of speech. You know what that is, right?"
"Words that don't mean what they sound like."
Dad shrugged and went on. "It was a grown up discussion, honey, and sometimes we just lose our tempers a little. You do that, too."
I wasn't convinced and a particular tendency I had when I felt someone was lying to me popped up. I tilted my head and looked angry at my father. "What is a poor house, Daddy, and why is Mommy crying?"
He smiled for real, which made me mad. He always did that when I was mad at him. "Daddy, it's NOT FUNNY!" I wanted to cry. The kitchen felt like the air pieces were bashing into each other.
"Honey, it's okay. Really. Tell you what. You know how I stay in the den every Saturday morning for a couple of hours with my yellow paper?"
I nodded because a couple of times I'd crept in, just to sit in his chair and be quiet. He'd let me, but I could see him writing numbers with a pencil, long columns of numbers, with words next to them. I could not read the words because he did not print. All of us could read before school because, well, I don't know. We just sort of knew how to, the way you learn how to walk or something. I had been in trouble at school in Miss Clafflin's class because I found Dick, Jane and Sally boring and said so. My friends did, too, but they knew enough to shut up.
Anyway, my dad told me he would show me what the numbers were for, so I wouldn't have to worry. Daddy always kept his word.
I still was scared, though, when he called me into the den and he had a high stool next to his desk chair, and all those papers spread out. He talked to me about numbers first, telling me to look at the farthest left number and then count how many numbers there were up to the period. "Daddy, that's a decimal point. It's only a period with letters."
He started. "How did you know that?"
"Mommy taught me."
"Then you can tell which are the biggest numbers?"
I was insulted. "Of COURSE. I am NOT a baby." Right. After all, I was in first grade now. I had projects to do for school, like the others. I could add and subtract. I knew a LOT, I informed him.
"Pardon me, snigglefritz. My mistake." He went over what the numbers meant, so much for clothes, for food, for the lights, for something called a mortgage. All of it. And when he added them up, it said how much was spent in a whole month. Then we had other figures for his income. Just two though, and they were the same. That meant he had that much money to spend.
Well, he said it was a great thing when the two figures together were bigger than all those other numbers added together.
"But they aren't, Daddy. Not this month."
"Aha, but here's what we do, Jetty." And he showed me other months, when sometimes he had more money at the end of the month, because they didn't spend it. And he could add it on. And he talked about something called credit and interest and things I really didn't get. What I did get was that he wasn't worried. That the numbers always worked in the end, and he would never ever drive me anywhere away from home where I couldn't come back again. Ever.
"There isn't a poor house?"
"No, honey. And it would be nice if the figures could match up every month, but sometimes they just don't. But that's how lots of people have to do it. And plenty of times the numbers are just fine. You can ask to look at the numbers any time and I'll show you. That's the best way not to be scared. Just know as much as you can."
For the rest of that year I asked every couple of weeks, and he started showing me how he did his taxes and that all the numbers for a whole year went onto the white papers and he had to pay those things called taxes. By about third grade, I rarely asked, but still went over the taxes, just to be sure.
It calmed me down because this was a persistent daymare for our family. Mom and Dad frequently forgot I was around and fought about that poor house a good bit. No matter what, though, Dad fought off that dragon of poverty and he allowed me to understand the fight. I was insistent on seeing those taxes again sixth grade, when my sister and brother were BOTH in school, and the fights were building weekly. He was weary of the battle, and this time he was a little scared.
"Well, this year's harder, honey, but we'll be okay. The numbers are a little worse than you're used to, but I think I've got it covered, and your sister's got a job at school, so I think..." But his voice trailed off, and I saw the worry in his eyes.
... until I chased it away with a sudden, "Dad! LOOK! You added wrong. REALLY wrong, right here!" He didn't have an adding machine. We all did math the long way. I was right. "And it makes the numbers look WAY better!"
"Good Gawd, you're right." He stood up suddenly, marched to his big chair, pulling me with him, and plopped me onto his lap, though I was a tad large for that. I didn't care. All he said was, with tears making his eyes shine, "Who's slaying the monster under the bed this time, snigglefritz? Thank you."
I breathed in the Old Spice of him and I was small again, and safe. I suddenly laughed and sat up and went, "Boo! Go away!'
And ran off to play football down by the church.
"Gawd, I hate togetherness."
Yeah, but he also taught us to play tennis and never seemed to lose his temper. He built us little cars in the sand. Launched us from his shoulders into the Lake. He did more than his share of one-on-one things. Plus, I could sit in his lap when I was little, nestling into his chest and feel the gentlest hands in the world stroke my neck and shoulders. That was the thing. His voice scared me, it was so deep and rumbly, sometimes. But my daddy never harmed a hair on my head. If anything he touched me more as if I were some little miracle that might break.
He also was the one who came for every nightmare, telling us to chase those monsters away. "Tell 'em, 'BOO, Go away!' and it works every time. Under-the-bed monsters are well-known to be cowards. Otherwise, why would they wait until dark and only scare children?"
It worked!
And if the fear was nameless, he simply took me in his arms and stroked my hair and said, so very softly, "I'm here, Jetty. It's okay. You are home. I'm here."
And when he did bother to be home, he was very much there. It was just that he was away "on business" too much for a man who worked for the State. Somewhere far too young, I registered what sort of business he was away on. But, naturally, we did not speak of it with Mom, just among ourselves.
The thing is, though, my dad slayed the daymare monsters, too. For me, that monster was the "poor house." On several mornings, because I got up so early and would catch them enjoying breakfast alone, I heard them fighting about money before they knew I was there. One time it was really bad, and Mom said, "Jim, you can't drive us to the poor house! We can't live like this! I'm TIRED OF THIS, living from month to month, one disaster away from ruined! I can't." She was crying.
I walked in and simply looked at them, not knowing what to do. I was about six and had gotten up before my sister, even, who was in high school. (I loved how quiet it was first thing in the morning. I had Mommy and Daddy all to myself. Of course, I didn't think then that they would be anything other than thrilled to have me crash their only alone time!)
To make my long story longer, Daddy spoke first. "Well, snigglefritz, it's not as bad as it sounds." He sort of smiled, but his eyes didn't. And Mommy was standing at the sink.
"Where are you driving us Daddy? What's a poor house? I like my house!" I was worried.
"Your mother was using a figure of speech. You know what that is, right?"
"Words that don't mean what they sound like."
Dad shrugged and went on. "It was a grown up discussion, honey, and sometimes we just lose our tempers a little. You do that, too."
I wasn't convinced and a particular tendency I had when I felt someone was lying to me popped up. I tilted my head and looked angry at my father. "What is a poor house, Daddy, and why is Mommy crying?"
He smiled for real, which made me mad. He always did that when I was mad at him. "Daddy, it's NOT FUNNY!" I wanted to cry. The kitchen felt like the air pieces were bashing into each other.
"Honey, it's okay. Really. Tell you what. You know how I stay in the den every Saturday morning for a couple of hours with my yellow paper?"
I nodded because a couple of times I'd crept in, just to sit in his chair and be quiet. He'd let me, but I could see him writing numbers with a pencil, long columns of numbers, with words next to them. I could not read the words because he did not print. All of us could read before school because, well, I don't know. We just sort of knew how to, the way you learn how to walk or something. I had been in trouble at school in Miss Clafflin's class because I found Dick, Jane and Sally boring and said so. My friends did, too, but they knew enough to shut up.
Anyway, my dad told me he would show me what the numbers were for, so I wouldn't have to worry. Daddy always kept his word.
I still was scared, though, when he called me into the den and he had a high stool next to his desk chair, and all those papers spread out. He talked to me about numbers first, telling me to look at the farthest left number and then count how many numbers there were up to the period. "Daddy, that's a decimal point. It's only a period with letters."
He started. "How did you know that?"
"Mommy taught me."
"Then you can tell which are the biggest numbers?"
I was insulted. "Of COURSE. I am NOT a baby." Right. After all, I was in first grade now. I had projects to do for school, like the others. I could add and subtract. I knew a LOT, I informed him.
"Pardon me, snigglefritz. My mistake." He went over what the numbers meant, so much for clothes, for food, for the lights, for something called a mortgage. All of it. And when he added them up, it said how much was spent in a whole month. Then we had other figures for his income. Just two though, and they were the same. That meant he had that much money to spend.
Well, he said it was a great thing when the two figures together were bigger than all those other numbers added together.
"But they aren't, Daddy. Not this month."
"Aha, but here's what we do, Jetty." And he showed me other months, when sometimes he had more money at the end of the month, because they didn't spend it. And he could add it on. And he talked about something called credit and interest and things I really didn't get. What I did get was that he wasn't worried. That the numbers always worked in the end, and he would never ever drive me anywhere away from home where I couldn't come back again. Ever.
"There isn't a poor house?"
"No, honey. And it would be nice if the figures could match up every month, but sometimes they just don't. But that's how lots of people have to do it. And plenty of times the numbers are just fine. You can ask to look at the numbers any time and I'll show you. That's the best way not to be scared. Just know as much as you can."
For the rest of that year I asked every couple of weeks, and he started showing me how he did his taxes and that all the numbers for a whole year went onto the white papers and he had to pay those things called taxes. By about third grade, I rarely asked, but still went over the taxes, just to be sure.
It calmed me down because this was a persistent daymare for our family. Mom and Dad frequently forgot I was around and fought about that poor house a good bit. No matter what, though, Dad fought off that dragon of poverty and he allowed me to understand the fight. I was insistent on seeing those taxes again sixth grade, when my sister and brother were BOTH in school, and the fights were building weekly. He was weary of the battle, and this time he was a little scared.
"Well, this year's harder, honey, but we'll be okay. The numbers are a little worse than you're used to, but I think I've got it covered, and your sister's got a job at school, so I think..." But his voice trailed off, and I saw the worry in his eyes.
... until I chased it away with a sudden, "Dad! LOOK! You added wrong. REALLY wrong, right here!" He didn't have an adding machine. We all did math the long way. I was right. "And it makes the numbers look WAY better!"
"Good Gawd, you're right." He stood up suddenly, marched to his big chair, pulling me with him, and plopped me onto his lap, though I was a tad large for that. I didn't care. All he said was, with tears making his eyes shine, "Who's slaying the monster under the bed this time, snigglefritz? Thank you."
I breathed in the Old Spice of him and I was small again, and safe. I suddenly laughed and sat up and went, "Boo! Go away!'
And ran off to play football down by the church.
Friday, January 22, 2010
Flying into Dawn: Memories of My Sister
I've tried a dozen times to write about her, to capture her. What it was to have a sister who lived her life with on section of her soul in past lives, one part in this life, and one part in whatever came next. She always expressed her spirituality in terms of our being on an eternal continuum, that this time here, now, was just a section along the way. She'd have visceral feelings of déja vu, but talked about them to very few people.
She was seen as odd. Well, she WAS odd, and I've always felt that our world would be infinitely better with more odd souls like hers. She was incapable of violence. Seriously incapable. As she said, had she ever been attacked, she doubted she'd have even put her hands up to protect herself. "I'm a vessel in this life; I have received gifts and lessons, then I pour them out in teaching and in my art. That is what I am. I do not understand all this talk about life being an 'adventure,' that we must all somehow go after things because they are a 'challenge.' I loathe those words. I do not care to be challenged. I want to do what I want to do, nothing more. And of course nothing less!"
She once took an Italian class with her best friend, in her twenties. I was in college at the time and she came to pick me up one Saturday. She often did that; come to rescue me on a Saturday morning and we'd go for "a drive." Once from Storrs, CT all the way to New Hampshire and back, just so we could walk on the beach on the island for a bit.
But this time, she was laughing because Nancy was furious with her. It seemed Jean Ellen had received a C+ on an exam and was happy with it. Nancy had studied for hours and hours for her A and could not understand why Jean Ellen had gone out dancing the night before. Jean Ellen's response? "I am not taking this for certification or credit or pride. I simply want to be able to go to Italy and understand what they say and be understood. Nothing more. I don't care about the grade."
Nancy, apparently yelled at her and said, "How can you NOT want to do better than that? The professor even told you you could be the best in the class if you studied."
Jean Ellen looked at me and I smiled at her. I understood Nancy because I was more like that, but I knew my sister. "You have never cared about being the best in the class in your life."
"Right. It's an irrelevant argument to me."
"Now if the Professor had told you that the Italians will not want to TALK to you if you do this poorly---"
"I'd have given up the dancing. Grudgingly, however."
We once spent an entire drive making up swear words because we were bored with the old stand bys. We were headed to the Cape and on the other side of Providence, RI, I found the one. "BULL DROOL." Yup. That was our keeper of all of them. Unfortunately my sister began to laugh so hard, she drove into a small ditch and it took ten minutes to get OUT.
By then, though, I was able to make her laugh at everything. I think I was about 25 and she was , then, 34. I turned to her and said, "You know, from now on, I bet I can say the word 'apple' to you in a certain tone and you will always laugh." She shrieked.
Two days before she died, she was feeling very sad and frustrated. She could no longer speak very easily, the tumors having spread higher in her central nervous system. A visitor had tried her patience to the point where I literally escorted the woman out the door and told her that she had to listen to ME about leaving and that she could come back once more if need be, but only to say good bye. The woman was furious because she felt my sister was "faking."
I sat on her bed, stroking her forehead, her tears rolling unrestricted... I dabbed them because she had long since lost the ability to use her hands. I took her face in my hands and said, "Apple."
All was right in our world.
***
For my graduation present from college, Jean Ellen took me to Paris and Portugal for six weeks. I had not flown since I was sixteen, but had slept through some of that. Jean Ellen had us leave at night because she said I HAD to experience flying straight into dawn. I thought she was nuts, but was accustomed to her living on some sort of poetic edge I didn't understand. We were drawing on the plane a lot. We often drew left-handed, just for practice, to free up the right brain. She taught me about asymmetry when I was seven.
"Which of these arrangements is more appealing?" she had asked, showing me a drawing of a wall with three equally sized drawings of flowers, and one with three differently sized drawings, arranged so there was balance. I immediately chose the one with the different sizes.
"Why?" she asked, a teacher then, at only sixteen.
"That one's boring. Blah. I like this one." She was pleased with her Jetty and said, "You are an artist, Jetty. You just don't know it."
We did a similar lesson with incomplete line and then she taught me to make paper doll clothes in pen and ink, using lessons of incomplete line, and observing how various fabrics draped and how folds REALLY look, that really there were very few straight lines when it came to people....
Anyway, so on the plane we played with our left hand drawings and were laughing, when suddenly she said, LOOK OUT THE WINDOW...
I had the window, in front of the wing and could see where we were going... We were flying into a pool of red, and there was a line in the sky between dark and light, between night and day and we jetted into dawn, just like that... I began to cry.
Jean Ellen said, "THIS is why I had to bring you. YOU are the only other friend I have who cries at flying into dawn."
Friend. I was my big sister's friend and nothing from then on would ever be the same.
We flew straight into dawn, and we took Paris by storm, these two odd sisters. We drew with our feet when we were rained into the apartment one day. We spent three HOURS drawing with our feet. We bought rabbit at the grocery store and brought it home to cook. It was sold in PARTS, so we didn't have to deal with it as an animal... we thought. But when we opened the package, its little HEAD was there, with teeth and ears. Jean Ellen covered its head with paper towels and quickly chopped it off and threw the head down the garbage shoot. We prepared it with garlic and seasonings and wine. We had fresh vegetables and rice. We drank a bottle of wine before we even ate...
But we took one look at supper, at each other and went, "BUNNY." So much for that.
We sat at the Champs y Lysée (Sp--I'm lazy) and we sketched. I sketched an aging hooker, about fifty pounds overweight, with a ruffled hat and a tiny silk bag on a long ribbon, SKIPPING through the park. I wrote poetry and she sketched the gardens at a tiny restaurant across the street. We'd count the languages at the cafe outside the metro stop at La Place de la Concorde... We had affairs, each of us, with a different waiter at the local restaurant called Le Tahare, around the corner from our apartment. The place was our uncle's, but he was in the states with his wife and daughter for the summer. Two young women for ONE MONTH in Paris. Then we flew to Portugal, northern Portugal. Viana do castello. All the houses were limestone or marble, and there was a castle on the mountain that, at night, shone white, floating above the town. We were the only American tourists there for the annual August holiday. The town was in a triangle between mountains, a river, and the sea. I sat the beach and everything was BACKWARDS because I faced west. I'd not been to California, just the East Coast. A young man ran across town to get me my cigarettes and would not take a tip. One left tips in an envelope for everyone, at the end of one's stay. The head waiter, wine steward, and hotel manager treated us to our last two days at the hotel because we had been so much fun. We'd been fun? I knew what it was to be a princess for that week.
We played. We walked. We drew. We spoke to everyone we met, especially shopkeepers and hotel help... they took us on little side trips to "nowhere," and my sister and I felt that no one had ever had such fun before, nor been treated so wonderfully. I can still see the castle, shining bright white against the mountain at night, floating over the equally shining town.
We left Lisbon during the socialist overthrow of the Portuguese government, an experience of its own, and finally boarded an old DC 10 cargo plane for home. The stuffing was coming out of the seats, but we were safe and boarded. All we could talk about was the magic, as we left the revolution behind.
And we flew home straight into night; still we felt our hearts leap nonetheless as the plane flew low over the coast and we saw the glittering ribbon that was home.
I do not know how to describe the sister who thought that the greatest gift of the second half of the twentieth century was her baby sister Jetty. I was beautiful to her, some sort of jewel that went unappreciated in the world. She did not understand how men could be so cruel to me... she felt it was that they couldn't bear someone so open and loving. I tended to think it was that I had bad taste and was stupid, but I Much preferred her take on it. She mourned my not pursuing art, but understood. In our family the cutthroat comparison factors made us avoid taking up another's interest. Daddy wrote. He, Jack, AND Jean Ellen were teachers. Mom was a math genius... so was I, but I hated math. Mom wanted me to go into that because she hadn't. Jack played guitar and banjo and clarinet. I tried not to duplicate. Daddy sang in the Robert Shaw Chorale... So, while I could sing, paint, write, and play the piano... I avoided pursuing anything much. I was afraid. I blame no one but me. I saw how brutal Dad could be when performance was not perfection. He never really appreciated my sister's worth because she was severely obese and he could not admit there was beauty there. LOTS of men could, but not Dad. And of course that hurt her.
But Jean Ellen and I found our balance with one another through most of our lives. We were each other's number one fan. She was the sort of teacher who bothered to show up at a student's HOME when she feared the girl was suicidal. She was the kind of teacher who did not sleep until she had corrected her papers and made comments that were positive on every single one, even those who failed. She started preparing for September on August first. "I have to find something new to do, even though it's the same curriculum. If I am stale, then it will be stale to my kids." She taught all out, with all of her soul, just as she drew and painted with nothing held back.
I learned all I know about letting myself live with every fiber of my being from her. She was not brave in the conventional sense... until it came time for her to leave. She did not mourn that her life would end at sixty-two. She said, "I have done every single thing I ever wanted to do except go to Athens. EVERYTHING. I was an artist, a teacher, a big sister. I went to Paris six times. I went to England and Italy, to California, to the wild west. I made love and was loved. I have you as my sister and I've had you taking care of me these last years, no matter what. YOU have made sure I could stay here, where I wanted to be. My adventuress, my phoenix. I kept clipping your wings. When I go you will finally fly. Promise me you will fly."
The day she died I brought in all her favorite music--Harry Belafonte, and folk music. I kicked people out and told the nurses that she could not have anyone but me from then on. I sang to her, "Close your eyes." I stroked her head. She began to drown, though, along toward midnight. She choked. The nurses managed to get her cleared out a bit, but had gone down to get some horrible equipment for the next round. Jean Ellen, who was SO READY to go, was fighting for breath.
When the nurse left, I took her face in my hands and shouted, "LOOK AT ME!" Blue eyes wide and startled... My brown eyes hard and determined.
"They have gone to get some medieval atrocity to help you keep breathing. Jean Ellen. Remember? You want to go, so for God's sake, get the HELL OUT OF DODGE!"
The smile appeared. She breathed. She choked. She breathed in a long breath... and nothing happened...
My sister flew the hell out of Dodge, straight into morning...
The Nurse came in as I said, "Well, sure. FINE. Be that way." And I was closing her eyes. All she said was, "Well, you two are certainly related."
But when I looked into her eyes from my sister's, the smile flew away and she said, "I'm shutting the door for a few minutes, dear."
I sat with my sister and sang that song "Close your eyes, you can close your eyes, it's all right." I sang to her, as I had to my brother, just four years before. I rocked and I sang for the longest time, and I drew a pen and ink picture of flowers, all in a tumble, beautiful, overabundant, asymmetrical, with incomplete line. It began almost going OFF the sheet to the left, but the images became less complete, fading into white space to the right. She had come from someplace full, that she remembered and used to tell me about, and had filled my life and hers with more beauty than twelve sisters, then faded bit by bit before my eyes, two years before she died, moving away from me, from all of us, leaving this part of the continuum. I drew and I sang and I cried because I could not see where she'd gone. Fading into white, a picture still being drawn by her, but incomplete for me... for me, left behind.
Before I left the room for the people to take her away, all I could think to say was, "I'll fly into dawn, honey. If it takes me til I'm ninety, I promise. I'll fly."
I kissed her now closed eyes, put the portrait on her chest, and walked into my mourning.
At dawn.
She was seen as odd. Well, she WAS odd, and I've always felt that our world would be infinitely better with more odd souls like hers. She was incapable of violence. Seriously incapable. As she said, had she ever been attacked, she doubted she'd have even put her hands up to protect herself. "I'm a vessel in this life; I have received gifts and lessons, then I pour them out in teaching and in my art. That is what I am. I do not understand all this talk about life being an 'adventure,' that we must all somehow go after things because they are a 'challenge.' I loathe those words. I do not care to be challenged. I want to do what I want to do, nothing more. And of course nothing less!"
She once took an Italian class with her best friend, in her twenties. I was in college at the time and she came to pick me up one Saturday. She often did that; come to rescue me on a Saturday morning and we'd go for "a drive." Once from Storrs, CT all the way to New Hampshire and back, just so we could walk on the beach on the island for a bit.
But this time, she was laughing because Nancy was furious with her. It seemed Jean Ellen had received a C+ on an exam and was happy with it. Nancy had studied for hours and hours for her A and could not understand why Jean Ellen had gone out dancing the night before. Jean Ellen's response? "I am not taking this for certification or credit or pride. I simply want to be able to go to Italy and understand what they say and be understood. Nothing more. I don't care about the grade."
Nancy, apparently yelled at her and said, "How can you NOT want to do better than that? The professor even told you you could be the best in the class if you studied."
Jean Ellen looked at me and I smiled at her. I understood Nancy because I was more like that, but I knew my sister. "You have never cared about being the best in the class in your life."
"Right. It's an irrelevant argument to me."
"Now if the Professor had told you that the Italians will not want to TALK to you if you do this poorly---"
"I'd have given up the dancing. Grudgingly, however."
We once spent an entire drive making up swear words because we were bored with the old stand bys. We were headed to the Cape and on the other side of Providence, RI, I found the one. "BULL DROOL." Yup. That was our keeper of all of them. Unfortunately my sister began to laugh so hard, she drove into a small ditch and it took ten minutes to get OUT.
By then, though, I was able to make her laugh at everything. I think I was about 25 and she was , then, 34. I turned to her and said, "You know, from now on, I bet I can say the word 'apple' to you in a certain tone and you will always laugh." She shrieked.
Two days before she died, she was feeling very sad and frustrated. She could no longer speak very easily, the tumors having spread higher in her central nervous system. A visitor had tried her patience to the point where I literally escorted the woman out the door and told her that she had to listen to ME about leaving and that she could come back once more if need be, but only to say good bye. The woman was furious because she felt my sister was "faking."
I sat on her bed, stroking her forehead, her tears rolling unrestricted... I dabbed them because she had long since lost the ability to use her hands. I took her face in my hands and said, "Apple."
All was right in our world.
***
For my graduation present from college, Jean Ellen took me to Paris and Portugal for six weeks. I had not flown since I was sixteen, but had slept through some of that. Jean Ellen had us leave at night because she said I HAD to experience flying straight into dawn. I thought she was nuts, but was accustomed to her living on some sort of poetic edge I didn't understand. We were drawing on the plane a lot. We often drew left-handed, just for practice, to free up the right brain. She taught me about asymmetry when I was seven.
"Which of these arrangements is more appealing?" she had asked, showing me a drawing of a wall with three equally sized drawings of flowers, and one with three differently sized drawings, arranged so there was balance. I immediately chose the one with the different sizes.
"Why?" she asked, a teacher then, at only sixteen.
"That one's boring. Blah. I like this one." She was pleased with her Jetty and said, "You are an artist, Jetty. You just don't know it."
We did a similar lesson with incomplete line and then she taught me to make paper doll clothes in pen and ink, using lessons of incomplete line, and observing how various fabrics draped and how folds REALLY look, that really there were very few straight lines when it came to people....
Anyway, so on the plane we played with our left hand drawings and were laughing, when suddenly she said, LOOK OUT THE WINDOW...
I had the window, in front of the wing and could see where we were going... We were flying into a pool of red, and there was a line in the sky between dark and light, between night and day and we jetted into dawn, just like that... I began to cry.
Jean Ellen said, "THIS is why I had to bring you. YOU are the only other friend I have who cries at flying into dawn."
Friend. I was my big sister's friend and nothing from then on would ever be the same.
We flew straight into dawn, and we took Paris by storm, these two odd sisters. We drew with our feet when we were rained into the apartment one day. We spent three HOURS drawing with our feet. We bought rabbit at the grocery store and brought it home to cook. It was sold in PARTS, so we didn't have to deal with it as an animal... we thought. But when we opened the package, its little HEAD was there, with teeth and ears. Jean Ellen covered its head with paper towels and quickly chopped it off and threw the head down the garbage shoot. We prepared it with garlic and seasonings and wine. We had fresh vegetables and rice. We drank a bottle of wine before we even ate...
But we took one look at supper, at each other and went, "BUNNY." So much for that.
We sat at the Champs y Lysée (Sp--I'm lazy) and we sketched. I sketched an aging hooker, about fifty pounds overweight, with a ruffled hat and a tiny silk bag on a long ribbon, SKIPPING through the park. I wrote poetry and she sketched the gardens at a tiny restaurant across the street. We'd count the languages at the cafe outside the metro stop at La Place de la Concorde... We had affairs, each of us, with a different waiter at the local restaurant called Le Tahare, around the corner from our apartment. The place was our uncle's, but he was in the states with his wife and daughter for the summer. Two young women for ONE MONTH in Paris. Then we flew to Portugal, northern Portugal. Viana do castello. All the houses were limestone or marble, and there was a castle on the mountain that, at night, shone white, floating above the town. We were the only American tourists there for the annual August holiday. The town was in a triangle between mountains, a river, and the sea. I sat the beach and everything was BACKWARDS because I faced west. I'd not been to California, just the East Coast. A young man ran across town to get me my cigarettes and would not take a tip. One left tips in an envelope for everyone, at the end of one's stay. The head waiter, wine steward, and hotel manager treated us to our last two days at the hotel because we had been so much fun. We'd been fun? I knew what it was to be a princess for that week.
We played. We walked. We drew. We spoke to everyone we met, especially shopkeepers and hotel help... they took us on little side trips to "nowhere," and my sister and I felt that no one had ever had such fun before, nor been treated so wonderfully. I can still see the castle, shining bright white against the mountain at night, floating over the equally shining town.
We left Lisbon during the socialist overthrow of the Portuguese government, an experience of its own, and finally boarded an old DC 10 cargo plane for home. The stuffing was coming out of the seats, but we were safe and boarded. All we could talk about was the magic, as we left the revolution behind.
And we flew home straight into night; still we felt our hearts leap nonetheless as the plane flew low over the coast and we saw the glittering ribbon that was home.
I do not know how to describe the sister who thought that the greatest gift of the second half of the twentieth century was her baby sister Jetty. I was beautiful to her, some sort of jewel that went unappreciated in the world. She did not understand how men could be so cruel to me... she felt it was that they couldn't bear someone so open and loving. I tended to think it was that I had bad taste and was stupid, but I Much preferred her take on it. She mourned my not pursuing art, but understood. In our family the cutthroat comparison factors made us avoid taking up another's interest. Daddy wrote. He, Jack, AND Jean Ellen were teachers. Mom was a math genius... so was I, but I hated math. Mom wanted me to go into that because she hadn't. Jack played guitar and banjo and clarinet. I tried not to duplicate. Daddy sang in the Robert Shaw Chorale... So, while I could sing, paint, write, and play the piano... I avoided pursuing anything much. I was afraid. I blame no one but me. I saw how brutal Dad could be when performance was not perfection. He never really appreciated my sister's worth because she was severely obese and he could not admit there was beauty there. LOTS of men could, but not Dad. And of course that hurt her.
But Jean Ellen and I found our balance with one another through most of our lives. We were each other's number one fan. She was the sort of teacher who bothered to show up at a student's HOME when she feared the girl was suicidal. She was the kind of teacher who did not sleep until she had corrected her papers and made comments that were positive on every single one, even those who failed. She started preparing for September on August first. "I have to find something new to do, even though it's the same curriculum. If I am stale, then it will be stale to my kids." She taught all out, with all of her soul, just as she drew and painted with nothing held back.
I learned all I know about letting myself live with every fiber of my being from her. She was not brave in the conventional sense... until it came time for her to leave. She did not mourn that her life would end at sixty-two. She said, "I have done every single thing I ever wanted to do except go to Athens. EVERYTHING. I was an artist, a teacher, a big sister. I went to Paris six times. I went to England and Italy, to California, to the wild west. I made love and was loved. I have you as my sister and I've had you taking care of me these last years, no matter what. YOU have made sure I could stay here, where I wanted to be. My adventuress, my phoenix. I kept clipping your wings. When I go you will finally fly. Promise me you will fly."
The day she died I brought in all her favorite music--Harry Belafonte, and folk music. I kicked people out and told the nurses that she could not have anyone but me from then on. I sang to her, "Close your eyes." I stroked her head. She began to drown, though, along toward midnight. She choked. The nurses managed to get her cleared out a bit, but had gone down to get some horrible equipment for the next round. Jean Ellen, who was SO READY to go, was fighting for breath.
When the nurse left, I took her face in my hands and shouted, "LOOK AT ME!" Blue eyes wide and startled... My brown eyes hard and determined.
"They have gone to get some medieval atrocity to help you keep breathing. Jean Ellen. Remember? You want to go, so for God's sake, get the HELL OUT OF DODGE!"
The smile appeared. She breathed. She choked. She breathed in a long breath... and nothing happened...
My sister flew the hell out of Dodge, straight into morning...
The Nurse came in as I said, "Well, sure. FINE. Be that way." And I was closing her eyes. All she said was, "Well, you two are certainly related."
But when I looked into her eyes from my sister's, the smile flew away and she said, "I'm shutting the door for a few minutes, dear."
I sat with my sister and sang that song "Close your eyes, you can close your eyes, it's all right." I sang to her, as I had to my brother, just four years before. I rocked and I sang for the longest time, and I drew a pen and ink picture of flowers, all in a tumble, beautiful, overabundant, asymmetrical, with incomplete line. It began almost going OFF the sheet to the left, but the images became less complete, fading into white space to the right. She had come from someplace full, that she remembered and used to tell me about, and had filled my life and hers with more beauty than twelve sisters, then faded bit by bit before my eyes, two years before she died, moving away from me, from all of us, leaving this part of the continuum. I drew and I sang and I cried because I could not see where she'd gone. Fading into white, a picture still being drawn by her, but incomplete for me... for me, left behind.
Before I left the room for the people to take her away, all I could think to say was, "I'll fly into dawn, honey. If it takes me til I'm ninety, I promise. I'll fly."
I kissed her now closed eyes, put the portrait on her chest, and walked into my mourning.
At dawn.
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Equal Time for Daddy
I hint about him, his gentleness, his womanizing, the big man on the periphery. I mostly focus on my mother with my brother Jim in the shadows, lurking.
But I had a Dad and a Daddy, both. Too absent, sometimes, but not always. Not at bedtime when I was smaller than the length of his legs. Not when I had to be lifted into his big chair, the chair that held the scent of him a full year after he died. Old Spice and something uniquely him. Snigglefritz and bitty bit. I was his Jetty, mostly.
We curled up in his chair, Jacky and I, one on each leg, while her read Wind in the Willows, doing every single voice just so. Or Robin Hood and, finally, the Scarlet Pimpernell. I do not remember the stories, just the rumble of his voice against my ear. He tickled. I never stayed awake, and somewhere between Toad and Mole, Marion and Friar Tuck, somewhere in the halfway world of voice and sleep, my daddy's arms held me above the mess. Held me above the dangers, the worries, the day's trapped noises, carrying me to my bed as if I were nothing but a rather small pillow. I hear him talking to Jack, falling deeper, I feel the sandpaper on my cheek, smell his late day, tired smell.
And the covers would tuck beneath my chin, just so, cool sheet folded so the scratchy wool never touched my skin. He always remembered to prop the extra pillow for turning, against the plastered walls. Gone already, some part of me heard his "Night Snigglefritz." Feel his dry kiss on my hair, and one last barely felt drift of his long hands across my hair.
And when the monsters attacked in the night, my father came. He came bigger than anything, fiercer still. He heard the scream before it left my mouth, I swear. And he taught me more important things, like how to make the Bahbo go. My first room, with Jacky, was haunted by a giant creature, sometimes rabbit, sometimes unknown creature, I called the Bahbo. After four nights running, my dad said, "Let me teach you secrets of chasing monsters, Jetty. They are cowards. All they want is to THINK that they can scare you, you know."
I would grab the sides of his pajama top and bury my head in his chest mumbling something profound like, " I AM scared, Daddy."
He made me sit up and said, "Now. We're going to practice. Say, BOO. Go a-WAY."
"Boogoaway."
"Jetty, I've heard you yell at Jacky better than that. Okay. BAHBO. BOO. Go a-WAY."
And we practiced until I passed muster. The next night, I woke again and Daddy wasn't there. IT WAS, though. Leaning over Jacky's bed. I SCREAMED, "BOO! Bahbo! GO AWAY!" It turned and walked toward ME, but I did it. I shook my three-year-old finger at it. I was mad. "GO AWAY!"
And it did.
And Daddy came to let me know he was proud of me. I buried my head in his top anyway.
It was the in-between years that were a bit rough. He was gone. He was busy running like all hell from OLD. I understand that. I think I understood it then, and it wasn't so much I minded the fact that he was cheating on mom. We ALL knew that, somehow. It was the leaving that hurt. He left me to the sickness. The torture. The madness. He left his little Jetty to slay dragons that I never seemed to see in time.
James, Sr. was human. Go figure.
But when I was graduated from college, he came back to me. He gave me What Color Is Your Parachute, first edition. He told me that I should never, EVER seriously pursue a traditional line of work. "You'll try, my Jetty. You'll think you should because your mother wants it. And you'll think you are supposed to fit. It's okay. It will eat you up and spit you out, but you'll learn. Don't worry about change. Enjoy change. If you learn nothing else, Snigglefritz, get these two things. Change can be a wonderful thing, and that the comment 'life isn't fair' is wholly irrelevant to anything that matters. FAIR has nothing to do with life. And security is an illusion that we all will try to make for ourselves. You were not made to fit any mold I've seen, honey." He kissed me and got me a job when I was floundering, at the university where he worked.
We commuted together. I saw that he promoted every woman and person of color he could, before anyone said he should. He would say, "Why not give the underdog the shot? Usually they will work harder and do a more creative job anyway." He was beloved and we would have the most wonderful, far-reaching, leaping conversations with other faculty at lunch. He opened my eyes to the idea that education should be part of our whole lives, and he was so proud when, after two semesters of Spanish, I was offered an upper class independent study.
I was one of those daughters who got to move into friendship with her father, all the while I knew his failings. I watched my mother sink as he rose, worshiped by women around him. Mommy dimmed. But I shone too, so I did not defend her. Perhaps I was too young. I was not yet twenty-five. On my own with my sister. Free, wild, working, on fire intellectually and physically.
Silver hair, long hands, and the voice that rumbled across the room, though it was seldom loud. I could write of the flashes of temper, the difference in how he loved me better than the rest. I'll get there. Not tonight, though. Tonight I remember when I visited him in the hospital, the night before exploratory surgery. I sat by his bed and held those long, smooth hands and he looked up at me. I was married. He already knew my marriage was in trouble. He already knew that the light had gone from his Jetty's eyes.
But we looked at one another and he said, simply, "You know, don't you."
I said, "Yes, Daddy. I know. But I guess you need the surgery to let everyone else know?"
He nodded. "You'll be around?"
"Always, Daddy."
And the next morning, I drove to a nearby Lake. Late August morning, and I drove there, to be by the lake at dawn, when I knew they were getting him into surgery.
Canada Geese © 1986
I grabbed his hand and looked in the darkening eyes. "You DID, Daddy. Most days you did. You lived them more often than most, Daddy. It's all done now."
But I had a Dad and a Daddy, both. Too absent, sometimes, but not always. Not at bedtime when I was smaller than the length of his legs. Not when I had to be lifted into his big chair, the chair that held the scent of him a full year after he died. Old Spice and something uniquely him. Snigglefritz and bitty bit. I was his Jetty, mostly.
We curled up in his chair, Jacky and I, one on each leg, while her read Wind in the Willows, doing every single voice just so. Or Robin Hood and, finally, the Scarlet Pimpernell. I do not remember the stories, just the rumble of his voice against my ear. He tickled. I never stayed awake, and somewhere between Toad and Mole, Marion and Friar Tuck, somewhere in the halfway world of voice and sleep, my daddy's arms held me above the mess. Held me above the dangers, the worries, the day's trapped noises, carrying me to my bed as if I were nothing but a rather small pillow. I hear him talking to Jack, falling deeper, I feel the sandpaper on my cheek, smell his late day, tired smell.
And the covers would tuck beneath my chin, just so, cool sheet folded so the scratchy wool never touched my skin. He always remembered to prop the extra pillow for turning, against the plastered walls. Gone already, some part of me heard his "Night Snigglefritz." Feel his dry kiss on my hair, and one last barely felt drift of his long hands across my hair.
And when the monsters attacked in the night, my father came. He came bigger than anything, fiercer still. He heard the scream before it left my mouth, I swear. And he taught me more important things, like how to make the Bahbo go. My first room, with Jacky, was haunted by a giant creature, sometimes rabbit, sometimes unknown creature, I called the Bahbo. After four nights running, my dad said, "Let me teach you secrets of chasing monsters, Jetty. They are cowards. All they want is to THINK that they can scare you, you know."
I would grab the sides of his pajama top and bury my head in his chest mumbling something profound like, " I AM scared, Daddy."
He made me sit up and said, "Now. We're going to practice. Say, BOO. Go a-WAY."
"Boogoaway."
"Jetty, I've heard you yell at Jacky better than that. Okay. BAHBO. BOO. Go a-WAY."
And we practiced until I passed muster. The next night, I woke again and Daddy wasn't there. IT WAS, though. Leaning over Jacky's bed. I SCREAMED, "BOO! Bahbo! GO AWAY!" It turned and walked toward ME, but I did it. I shook my three-year-old finger at it. I was mad. "GO AWAY!"
And it did.
And Daddy came to let me know he was proud of me. I buried my head in his top anyway.
It was the in-between years that were a bit rough. He was gone. He was busy running like all hell from OLD. I understand that. I think I understood it then, and it wasn't so much I minded the fact that he was cheating on mom. We ALL knew that, somehow. It was the leaving that hurt. He left me to the sickness. The torture. The madness. He left his little Jetty to slay dragons that I never seemed to see in time.
James, Sr. was human. Go figure.
But when I was graduated from college, he came back to me. He gave me What Color Is Your Parachute, first edition. He told me that I should never, EVER seriously pursue a traditional line of work. "You'll try, my Jetty. You'll think you should because your mother wants it. And you'll think you are supposed to fit. It's okay. It will eat you up and spit you out, but you'll learn. Don't worry about change. Enjoy change. If you learn nothing else, Snigglefritz, get these two things. Change can be a wonderful thing, and that the comment 'life isn't fair' is wholly irrelevant to anything that matters. FAIR has nothing to do with life. And security is an illusion that we all will try to make for ourselves. You were not made to fit any mold I've seen, honey." He kissed me and got me a job when I was floundering, at the university where he worked.
We commuted together. I saw that he promoted every woman and person of color he could, before anyone said he should. He would say, "Why not give the underdog the shot? Usually they will work harder and do a more creative job anyway." He was beloved and we would have the most wonderful, far-reaching, leaping conversations with other faculty at lunch. He opened my eyes to the idea that education should be part of our whole lives, and he was so proud when, after two semesters of Spanish, I was offered an upper class independent study.
I was one of those daughters who got to move into friendship with her father, all the while I knew his failings. I watched my mother sink as he rose, worshiped by women around him. Mommy dimmed. But I shone too, so I did not defend her. Perhaps I was too young. I was not yet twenty-five. On my own with my sister. Free, wild, working, on fire intellectually and physically.
Silver hair, long hands, and the voice that rumbled across the room, though it was seldom loud. I could write of the flashes of temper, the difference in how he loved me better than the rest. I'll get there. Not tonight, though. Tonight I remember when I visited him in the hospital, the night before exploratory surgery. I sat by his bed and held those long, smooth hands and he looked up at me. I was married. He already knew my marriage was in trouble. He already knew that the light had gone from his Jetty's eyes.
But we looked at one another and he said, simply, "You know, don't you."
I said, "Yes, Daddy. I know. But I guess you need the surgery to let everyone else know?"
He nodded. "You'll be around?"
"Always, Daddy."
And the next morning, I drove to a nearby Lake. Late August morning, and I drove there, to be by the lake at dawn, when I knew they were getting him into surgery.
Canada Geese © 1986
Late that summer at dawn,
I sat shivering on the still warm hood of my car.
Clear-eyed sky above mists
Blanketed geese sleeping, still, on the beach.
I heard your cry.
Then geese and fog rose together.
They fled, calling, one cacophony of joy.
Crying, I called after "Please!
Take me with you--" but they didn't hear me.
Silly geese.
Later, holding your withered, gentle hand,
Your death-stamped eyes said more than your words
As I stood by your too-sterile bed.
I realized in horror, the geese had made a mistake.
They took you instead.
You know I've always said
that's the trouble with geese, Daddy;
they just never listen.
My father was opened at 7:30 a.m. that day, and closed up at 8:05. I don't think most children of my generation are given the opportunity to escort their fathers with full disclosure to their final departure. He had six months to make as much right as he could; he did well. He wasted no time with dancing around difficult truths, and he bluntly admitted to his conceit, his need to feel younger than his years, how it hurt his marriage and his relationships with every child except me. Somehow or other, he thought that I had been oblivious to his lies. I let him know that I had always known the truth, but that I'd loved him. But he was increasingly worried long after he could no longer eat. After his feet had become too bony to stand, even to pivot to the bedside commode.
I had been the one to insist we wrap the mattress before it was necessary, learn the bedroll to change his sheets without disturbing him unnecessarily, and shift his position on schedule, although the bedsores appeared despite our efforts. I bought the swabs for his mouth, made the crushed ice, found the nurses. My mother sat helpless and hopeless in her chair.
"I'm glad you are here," she said, "He needs a wife. I can't be one." She couldn't. She was too far gone. And I did the dance with them, daughter, head of household, living by day in my parents' dissolving world; returning in the afternoon to a dissolving world of my own, but trying to hold on. I do not regret being there. And it is too many years ago to even feel anger toward my absent siblings as anything more than the return of a horsefly. I shoo it away.
There was far more grace to hold onto. The House of Extremes had as much Love and Light as it did sickness and darkness.
****
I had been the one to insist we wrap the mattress before it was necessary, learn the bedroll to change his sheets without disturbing him unnecessarily, and shift his position on schedule, although the bedsores appeared despite our efforts. I bought the swabs for his mouth, made the crushed ice, found the nurses. My mother sat helpless and hopeless in her chair.
"I'm glad you are here," she said, "He needs a wife. I can't be one." She couldn't. She was too far gone. And I did the dance with them, daughter, head of household, living by day in my parents' dissolving world; returning in the afternoon to a dissolving world of my own, but trying to hold on. I do not regret being there. And it is too many years ago to even feel anger toward my absent siblings as anything more than the return of a horsefly. I shoo it away.
There was far more grace to hold onto. The House of Extremes had as much Love and Light as it did sickness and darkness.
****
The day he died, I was on the bed next to him, reading something to him. His bony hand covered mine and he said, "I should have listened to the words in the shower, when I bellowed them."
His favorite wake up song was, "Ah, sweet mystery of life at last I've found thee."
"I was so damned busy with the sound of my own voice. I should have listened more, honey. For it's love and love alone the world is after. Why didn't I listen?"
I grabbed his hand and looked in the darkening eyes. "You DID, Daddy. Most days you did. You lived them more often than most, Daddy. It's all done now."
"Really?"
I remember his hanging onto my face, hoping for something. As if I could absolve him somehow of sins I simply sensed rather than knew. But I let him keep my gaze and simply said, "We know you love us, Daddy. It's okay. You can go now."
And he did.
Saturday, September 5, 2009
About Forgiveness
So My Mother Died ©2004
When my mother died the eleven o'clock news said nothing.
The flag flew high at the post office.
My morning coffee still smelled good.
My kids still wanted their supper.
When my mother died the sun still found my prisms
And my Christmas cactus bloomed.
When my mother died the willows didn't weep real tears;
I did.
My mom was a miracle of a mom ... when she was not drunk and when psychosis was not her mistress. This means that most of the time, my mom was a miracle of a mom.
But to deny the depth of her darkness is to deny the depth of our love, the depth of both our strengths. I am not sure that forgiveness is about accepting that horrible things were done and we say it's okay. I am not sure but that real forgiveness lies in looking at the darkness full in the face and accepting that there were riches we gleaned from the very worst of the other person. That the person we want to forgive was, perhaps, a source of magic in part because of the darkness.
I start with two poems I wrote about my mother's pain and of my worst responses to it. When my mom was in a psychotic state, she was violent. She lost control. She would then, after the haze was lifted, remember... and drink to forget. There were three moms. Drunk mom, Mommy, and "Not mommy." She fought the psychosis with every fiber of her being, but sometimes she lost--rarely, in fact. Yet those times when she did lose the fight were horrific and terrifying. And it took me many, many years to understand just how much she worked to cage that. To kill it. I wrote this early on, when I was trying to understand, trying to put myself in her position and experience what her pain must have been.
Lion's Eye ©1985
Spring-tight tension, beyond my control
It watches without blinking,
Ready to attack; I'm held rooted, fixed by
The lion's eye.
Gold-brown, glittering mellow,
Colors of sun-dried grass,
Glints of blind-bright dancing water, my joy,
My lion's eye.
My child cries so close,
I refuse to hear, so hypnotized
By the dry-ice murdering beauty behind
My lion's eye.
Her fear encroaches,
I wrench free her bleeding hand
To loft my molten topaz, sacred cup,
This lion's eye.
Back-hand slap. There, she’s silent.
Amber-kissed lips parted,
I drink deep the warming flame from the lid of
The lion's eye.
Fangs pierce my soul without pain,
Claws rip my flesh without blood,
Blessed Southern silk-gold Comfort, sweetest love,
My lion's eye.
I loved her.
When I was little and climbed into her lap for comfort, when I was too small to understand that the vacant stare and amber drink meant stay away, I would find myself on the floor before I'd even found my comfy spot. I would sit, stunned, holding my hand to the burning spot on my cheek. I was lucky. I had my sister to whisk me away to her land of drawings and paper dolls and color wheels and asymmetry and other big words. I also had Mommy as herself 59 days out of 60, and, back then drunk Mommy only about 3 days out of 30. Yet you know something's amiss. You sensed that the house wasn't right, that always, always, there was an undercurrent, the possibility of an explosion. Maybe that's why Jean Ellen was always there, ready to soothe at just the right times.
It was not until I was around thirteen that I began to again sense, more than understand why it was that mother got very strange when our father went on his semi-annual business trips with his secretary. Or why my mother wanted the gift of the secretary's piano in the basement, where she never saw it; or why she left the house when Jean Ellen was given the blue convertible Marie had driven for so long.
I learned that my father was not faithful and early on, I learned to be variously angry with him for his arrogance and sleaziness and angry with her for "driving him away." Oh, the allure of the country western song. The drama of it all.
In college, she once crashed a party I was at. She humiliated me, called me names, rambled on about wanting my father to come home. I was furious, but something about her, after I'd brought her home and she let her hair down and danced in the moonlight. My heart opened. I did not understand to what, exactly. Not until my own loneliness in my marriage, in almost every relationship I ever knew, smacked me in the face. Not to ever feel pretty enough, smart enough... enough. Or to be told you are too smart, too attractive, too alive. All of them added up to a loneliness I saw in my mother.
I learned that she was a woman who was desperately alone, who loved people with every fiber of her being, never leaving enough to be able to love herself. She had subjugated her own dreams to my dad's. She had settled for less than she knew she could be, and she began, once I was out of the house, to kill herself a bit faster, to drink more and to do it more often. I left her alone.
Naturally.
Dervish of the Empty Nest ©2001
Mama dances all alone in the moonlight,
When Daddy doesn’t bother to lie,
Kickin’ off the saddle shoes, Lettin’ down her braids,
Waltzing with her bottle of Rye.
Mumbling to the boys from the college,
Prettiest faculty bride.
Young men tussled for a dance, for a twirl,
For a midday tumbledown ride.
Mama silhouetted by the starlight,
Round eyes lifted to the sky:
Dulled ears listening, straining for his footsteps,
While tears start their tumbledown slide.
She dances on, lonely in the moonlight,
Praying for my father to lie,
Barefoot and glowing; dervish in the dead night,
Whispering to her bottle of Rye.
I learned to see my mother as she really was, her wit, her compassion, her pain, her passionate love for my dad and the best of who he was, her imagination and her many talents. She was not her drinking. That was a sickness that ate her up and spit her out.
Perhaps the biggest thing to learn about forgiveness is that very often there is nothing to forgive; instead we accept the absolute humanity and we choose to love that and let all the rest fly away.
I did not understand my own poem until after my father died. In those two years, as my mother's drinking cycled so far out of control that I had to walk away from her entirely unless she got help, and, ironically, only then did I come to understand her. Thank God I did. I will always be grateful. My own stupidity, selfishness, struggles, and pain opened at last that enormous castle door I'd shut against her. Six months before she died, she got sober. Mom and I were able to talk, to connect, to be with one another in a way that none of the others were able to do. I don't know why; it doesn't matter.
Jetty got Mommy back. And the daughter got to know the woman at last.
Before she went into the hospital, before the liver failure killed her. we were sitting in her living room, sharing some iced tea. She was looking at some empty liquor bottles she had made my brother Jack and me leave there. We had not discussed that she was dying, though I knew it. I was the only child who had said to her that I knew this was so, and we had agreed to leave it alone. I was so sick of secrets, though, I had had to say that much. She was staring into an empty bourbon bottle and then looked at me, tears in her eyes.
"You know what really stinks now, Jetty? All this time I've worked so hard to kill myself? Well, now that I've actually gone and succeeded, turns out I really don't much want to die. Isn't that a kicker?"
I loved my mother. I love her so much my heart hurts. Isn't that a kicker?
When my mother died the eleven o'clock news said nothing.
The flag flew high at the post office.
My morning coffee still smelled good.
My kids still wanted their supper.
When my mother died the sun still found my prisms
And my Christmas cactus bloomed.
When my mother died the willows didn't weep real tears;
I did.
My mom was a miracle of a mom ... when she was not drunk and when psychosis was not her mistress. This means that most of the time, my mom was a miracle of a mom.
But to deny the depth of her darkness is to deny the depth of our love, the depth of both our strengths. I am not sure that forgiveness is about accepting that horrible things were done and we say it's okay. I am not sure but that real forgiveness lies in looking at the darkness full in the face and accepting that there were riches we gleaned from the very worst of the other person. That the person we want to forgive was, perhaps, a source of magic in part because of the darkness.
I start with two poems I wrote about my mother's pain and of my worst responses to it. When my mom was in a psychotic state, she was violent. She lost control. She would then, after the haze was lifted, remember... and drink to forget. There were three moms. Drunk mom, Mommy, and "Not mommy." She fought the psychosis with every fiber of her being, but sometimes she lost--rarely, in fact. Yet those times when she did lose the fight were horrific and terrifying. And it took me many, many years to understand just how much she worked to cage that. To kill it. I wrote this early on, when I was trying to understand, trying to put myself in her position and experience what her pain must have been.
Lion's Eye ©1985
Spring-tight tension, beyond my control
It watches without blinking,
Ready to attack; I'm held rooted, fixed by
The lion's eye.
Gold-brown, glittering mellow,
Colors of sun-dried grass,
Glints of blind-bright dancing water, my joy,
My lion's eye.
My child cries so close,
I refuse to hear, so hypnotized
By the dry-ice murdering beauty behind
My lion's eye.
Her fear encroaches,
I wrench free her bleeding hand
To loft my molten topaz, sacred cup,
This lion's eye.
Back-hand slap. There, she’s silent.
Amber-kissed lips parted,
I drink deep the warming flame from the lid of
The lion's eye.
Fangs pierce my soul without pain,
Claws rip my flesh without blood,
Blessed Southern silk-gold Comfort, sweetest love,
My lion's eye.
I loved her.
When I was little and climbed into her lap for comfort, when I was too small to understand that the vacant stare and amber drink meant stay away, I would find myself on the floor before I'd even found my comfy spot. I would sit, stunned, holding my hand to the burning spot on my cheek. I was lucky. I had my sister to whisk me away to her land of drawings and paper dolls and color wheels and asymmetry and other big words. I also had Mommy as herself 59 days out of 60, and, back then drunk Mommy only about 3 days out of 30. Yet you know something's amiss. You sensed that the house wasn't right, that always, always, there was an undercurrent, the possibility of an explosion. Maybe that's why Jean Ellen was always there, ready to soothe at just the right times.
It was not until I was around thirteen that I began to again sense, more than understand why it was that mother got very strange when our father went on his semi-annual business trips with his secretary. Or why my mother wanted the gift of the secretary's piano in the basement, where she never saw it; or why she left the house when Jean Ellen was given the blue convertible Marie had driven for so long.
I learned that my father was not faithful and early on, I learned to be variously angry with him for his arrogance and sleaziness and angry with her for "driving him away." Oh, the allure of the country western song. The drama of it all.
In college, she once crashed a party I was at. She humiliated me, called me names, rambled on about wanting my father to come home. I was furious, but something about her, after I'd brought her home and she let her hair down and danced in the moonlight. My heart opened. I did not understand to what, exactly. Not until my own loneliness in my marriage, in almost every relationship I ever knew, smacked me in the face. Not to ever feel pretty enough, smart enough... enough. Or to be told you are too smart, too attractive, too alive. All of them added up to a loneliness I saw in my mother.
I learned that she was a woman who was desperately alone, who loved people with every fiber of her being, never leaving enough to be able to love herself. She had subjugated her own dreams to my dad's. She had settled for less than she knew she could be, and she began, once I was out of the house, to kill herself a bit faster, to drink more and to do it more often. I left her alone.
Naturally.
Dervish of the Empty Nest ©2001
Mama dances all alone in the moonlight,
When Daddy doesn’t bother to lie,
Kickin’ off the saddle shoes, Lettin’ down her braids,
Waltzing with her bottle of Rye.
Mumbling to the boys from the college,
Prettiest faculty bride.
Young men tussled for a dance, for a twirl,
For a midday tumbledown ride.
Mama silhouetted by the starlight,
Round eyes lifted to the sky:
Dulled ears listening, straining for his footsteps,
While tears start their tumbledown slide.
She dances on, lonely in the moonlight,
Praying for my father to lie,
Barefoot and glowing; dervish in the dead night,
Whispering to her bottle of Rye.
I learned to see my mother as she really was, her wit, her compassion, her pain, her passionate love for my dad and the best of who he was, her imagination and her many talents. She was not her drinking. That was a sickness that ate her up and spit her out.
Perhaps the biggest thing to learn about forgiveness is that very often there is nothing to forgive; instead we accept the absolute humanity and we choose to love that and let all the rest fly away.
I did not understand my own poem until after my father died. In those two years, as my mother's drinking cycled so far out of control that I had to walk away from her entirely unless she got help, and, ironically, only then did I come to understand her. Thank God I did. I will always be grateful. My own stupidity, selfishness, struggles, and pain opened at last that enormous castle door I'd shut against her. Six months before she died, she got sober. Mom and I were able to talk, to connect, to be with one another in a way that none of the others were able to do. I don't know why; it doesn't matter.
Jetty got Mommy back. And the daughter got to know the woman at last.
Before she went into the hospital, before the liver failure killed her. we were sitting in her living room, sharing some iced tea. She was looking at some empty liquor bottles she had made my brother Jack and me leave there. We had not discussed that she was dying, though I knew it. I was the only child who had said to her that I knew this was so, and we had agreed to leave it alone. I was so sick of secrets, though, I had had to say that much. She was staring into an empty bourbon bottle and then looked at me, tears in her eyes.
"You know what really stinks now, Jetty? All this time I've worked so hard to kill myself? Well, now that I've actually gone and succeeded, turns out I really don't much want to die. Isn't that a kicker?"
I loved my mother. I love her so much my heart hurts. Isn't that a kicker?
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