I am busy actually STARTING my Christmas Eve preparations and I am also painting. I'm hoping to get back into my blog world before Christmas--I have several pieces started--but I am not really sure I will. But it is NOT for any bad reasons. I miss writing and I miss reading! Still, sometimes I have to oh, go ahead and LIVE my life so I fill the well, so to speak.
I first published this one in 2009, and it explains why I really am an all out, absolute, completely wacko Christmas nut. Not in the sense of buying new decorations or oodles of presents; I love the peace, the music, the silliness, the love that has always been mine for the giving and receiving. My family did it right. Sorry to bore those who read this, but I enjoyed reading it again because all of it flooded back and put me into the mood again.
I also know I referred to this in October--I think I published this again now for my own sake! A relative who was less than kind to me sometimes, but very kind at others, has died... and it has brought up some, well, disturbing memories. They may find their way into another entry, but I think I wanted to focus on something joyous... on a time when I got to be nothing more or less than an excited, happy child.
It is not meant to replace my entries--I realized tonight, as I revisited this post, that it was "birthing" a new one. The hour is late now, as I add these last two paragraphs, but reviewing and editing this piece did the trick. Joy is the woman who died, and I like visualizing her here, at Christmas, with my mom.
Lately I have been returning to this blog myself, just to bring that feeling back--how lucky I am to have such memories! So, have a wonderful holiday season! I'll READ some blogs, but somehow, even though I mean to write, I get side-tracked.
Here goes... no pictures, no more apologies... just my family at its very best!
Norman Rockwell Ain't Got Nuthin' On Our Christmases
It's hard for me to choose a Christmas from childhood. Two or three may be mixed together here, but I don't care. To me, it was idyllic. Jim did not torment us. Jacky and I were small children together, even up until he was about eleven. Jean Ellen was a keeper of magic and secrets to rival our mother. And Dad and Mom? Well, they had to be experienced.
So the Roots of my Love for the Season Grew Deep and Immortal Here...
My mother not only looked like Mrs. Claus, she acted like her. And it always began the day after Thanksgiving.
Jacky and I, and sometimes even Jimmy, Would race downstairs on Friday morning to see five presents perched on the top shelf of the extra tall white bookcase in the dining room. The Five Foot Shelf fit on one shelf, that bookcase was so wide... And the books on the top shelf reached the top of Daddy's head, so it was six feet tall. I grew up in a home with a bookcase in every room. It was just not a room without books, even in the bathrooms. And we had a BATH AND A HALF!
At this point, the books were still on that shelf, too, so the presents were annoyingly out of reach. We would climb on chairs, wondering how it was that Mommy had managed to pile the presents so that just enough of each tag was visible, so we could read the name, but we could not move a single package without the whole pile's tumbling to the floor. Inevitably we'd blow it and the pile would fall.
Mom would come from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her first of seven Christmas aprons, and say, simply, "Good thing nothing was breakable. Go ahead and open them and ruin your surprise. I don't much care..."
Then, as she was heading for the kitchen, she would toss back, "Not quite sure how Santa would feel, but that's your problem." We would feign our disappointment and put each one back, rattling them, squishing, doing our best to know what was inside, but Mom was too smart. We never could figure it out. It took until I was about twelve to be bothered that there never was something for Mommy there. Jean Ellen and I took to wrapping something for HER the morning after Thanksgiving, because it just felt all wrong. She was in college and it was a ritual we enjoyed together. I think it was the first of many she and I developed around the holiday together.
Let me reinforce this; until I was about 20, my mother never drank between Thanksgiving and Christmas. NOTHING. She would empty the huge "Silver Satin" port jug and there were never stray rum and cokes around. In fact, she didn't buy Coca Cola® at all until just before the holiday.
From then on, every day held a surprise. She didn't do a lot that Thanksgiving weekend, but wrap a new present or five each day, and the pile would grow more precarious until, by Sunday, Daddy took the books from that shelf and put them in a box tucked in the footwell of his desk. "GAWD knows none of you will let me have any peace between now and that day. MY life is over now. Nothing but shelling out money, having to run around to get GAWD knows what. Bah."
Tiny Tim in Scrooge Clothing
He never said humbug until the day. He also was the least convincing Scrooge alive, since he read us the Christmas Carol and checked with Mother every single night, asking her whether maybe ONCE she might come up with something on her own list that didn't involve her doing more work around the house. The truth was, my dad spent more on Christmas presents than anyone else, and would get scolded at by my mother constantly, often punctuated by a wet dishtowel on his head, which sat there for at least fifteen minutes, at whatever angle it had landed.
My parents were in love. That was the miracle of them. For all his womanizing, for all her drinking, for the myriad fights in between? They loved one another with a passion that would have been embarrassing if it had not been so wonderful to see. They liked to talk late into the evening, just about books, about politics, about philosophy. About their days. My father said that Mom was the most highly educated person he'd ever known and she never went to college. He would walk up behind her in the kitchen and simply put his arms around her sometimes, and they would stand there, singing softly, saying nothing.
(That's what I wanted in my life, and knew I could never settle for less than that, that alone would be better than less. I do not regret that choice at all.) I will not spoil this by moving into the present, though. I will return safely to that time, as a child, through my early teens, when I saw that my parents were clearly lovers at every age. I felt, though would never have said so, that I was lucky to witness those private moments, and that my parents did not find it wrong to let us see them.
Their love was palpable at Christmas. And the house was full of the good kinds of secrets. This Christmas brought us the birth of the "Christmas Spider," As Mom and Jean Ellen dubbed it. A hanging thingy made of glitter gold paper, on a large hook. When you draped it from a chandelier, pointy tentacle/leg things draped in many layers from the center and it seemed alive in a particularly grotesque way.
It moved around the house, from dining room, to kitchen, to a curtain rod, to the lamp next to Mom' chair--wherever Jean Ellen or Mom chose. the damned thing lasted for 25 years! And there was the wrapping of the "spoon rest" if it was Mom's turn. She and Grandma LeSure, Dad's mom, had an ongoing exchange with that. Granny'd gotten it for her donation to the Navaho Indian Tribe (back then). It was pale pea green, with three spoon rest depressions. Made of plastic, it was a "French" artiste in the center with his paintbrush, surrounded by his palette spoon rests. Half his moustached was missing from the get-go. The ugliest thing I ever saw. Granny gave it to Mom, then Mom gave it back for Mother's Day, then Granny gave it back on Mom's birthday, and here it was being re-wrapped in the same box, same interior tissue, same tag with all the cross-outs, for her.
We had traditions coming out our ears in our family. Most of them had to do with laughing.
But some had to do with the season. In late September, for instance, when I was little, Mom took me for a walk and we brought a pillow case. We'd go into the wildflower field and fill it with drying grass. Then Mommy would hang it in the attic and, along around December 20th, there was hay for the manger. She and Jean Ellen would put the crèche (nativity--we are French) together on the little table by the front door. We did not do the British custom of leaving the baby Jesus for Christmas morning, but that's okay. Mommy wanted us to have one thing that would remind us of the day's origin. When I was big enough, she let me sound out the words of the story--we were born reading, so that was fine. We knew it by heart anyway. So Jack or I would tell the story while they put the crèche together. Jean Ellen always made a star that covered the normal painting there. Sometimes silver, abstract on black paper. You never knew. Sometimes a big star in a cluster of smaller ones in a field of blue.
And the baking. I would sit cross-legged on the counter and "help" with the doughs, hand mixing in the chocolate chips. Or I would sprinkle the sugar cookie stars. Mostly I licked the bowl because it made it easier for Mom to clean. I think that Jean Ellen and I learned to bake through osmosis. I don't measure much, to this day. Mommy baked by feel, she said. We had six kinds of cookies, and the butter cookies without leavening were made two weeks in advance, and other doughs were frozen. She never froze cookies.
"They never taste quite the same," she said. I think she was right. And we NEVER used margarine. Margarine was a sin in our house.
We went shopping for presents for Mommy on their double bed, Jack and I. Daddy would have a miraculous display of things my mother wanted all around the perimeter, with price tags on every item--price tags he had made himself, to suit our budget. He as fair, though, because he had certain items out of our range--they were his presents. And he trusted US NOT TO TELL, and we never did. Through the year Mom thought of ways we could earn money for Christmas. We'd get paid and she had little jars with our names on them, NOT TO BE TOUCHED. Some things were practical, and some pretty, but there was always enough so that Jack and I could truly choose up until we were around nine. There were often twenty items there--all bought by Daddy, all re-marked. And then he helped us wrap them in tissue papers, and he had a stash of glitter and star stickers and ribbon so that we could make them "special." My Scroogey Dad.
****
I am the youngest. The miracle for me? Christmas Eve. By then, there was a ham coming out of the oven by 1:00 and a turkey going IN, for a late buffet at night. The trimming party was that night! While Jack and Jim were rooting around for a missed present or whether or not Santa REALLY was out there, I sat cross-legged on the living room floor with my dad. I wish I had a picture. I was not more than five or six. I was tiny. He six one. And we tested the bulbs, consulting over how he might plan which should have reflectors. Counting sockets and bulbs. Sometimes the count was wrong and he'd say, "Road trip, Jetty, get your coat." We'd run to Wallach's grocer and get some bulbs of the color we needed adn somehow or other, Daddy's find something that someone just HAD to have, just to even things out you know.
But I would hand Daddy the bulbs or reflectors and he would string the tree, from the bottom up. He didn't even bothe with the spire until the end. We knew it would get tipped. We worked quietly and fast, for guests arrived by 4:00 and we had to also unpack the ornaments, so people could decorate when they came. I loved unwrapping the blown glass ornaments. Mommy never hid breakable things from us. If we broke and item, she's say, "Did you mean to? Will you be more careful next time?" And that was that. We didn't mean to, and we WERE more careful and very little got broken.
That Christmas, when I think I was six, Grandma and Grandpa LeSure were there for BOTH days and were staying in a hotel! And Aunt Joy was coming. She wasn't married then, and was ten years younger than Mommy and was GLAMOROUS. The tree-trimming party mostly had friends of my parents when I was little. I loved sitting in a corner and hearing the adult conversation. Grandma LeSure told me I could go INTO her purse and try her lipstick. When I did though, Grandpa SLAPPED me and I yelled at him for it.
When Grandma explained, he had the oddest smirk on his face and said, "Well, Missy, I guess no one will push you around in this life. Excuse me." I found it a wholly unsatsifactory apology and avoided him all night.
Slowly the beauty of the tree emerged, amidst the singing and the laughing and the stories, the ham, the turkey, the spilled drinks--not Mom's, other people's ... she had me TASTE hers even--the boys nearly tipping the tree over from an over-rambunctious game of throw the dish towel around...
As the night lengthened, it all blurred for me. It seemed to me that our tree glittered more than anyone's. Then Mom and Joy had the obligatory fight over not having garland tinsel. We had the long, leaded icicles then. And Mom and Jean Ellen would not let ANYONE help with that. Every piece had to drape free. Grandma LeSure got that, too, and so did I, but when I started to help, suddenly, Daddy said, "Santa comes soon, Jetty! You have to run to bed!"
Run I did, and so did Jack. Jim and Jean Ellen stayed up later, but I didn't mind. I never saw the thing done. For me? For me, the last glimpse of Christmas Eve was a room full of people laughing, JE draping tinsel over Daddy's head, the boys NOT fighting, but playing cards, Mommy talking with Grandma, Grandpa standing back, holding his stomach, smoking his pipe, but looking happy. Joy working on the tree and clucking at the lack of garland, and two to six other adults laughing, singing, or talking. We always sang "Lullay thou Little Tiny Child" when I went to bed.
***
That early Christmas I leaped out of my bed though, pretty late and looked at the roof below our window. It was the roof to the den and there were HOOFPRINTS. "JEAN ELLEN!"
Now, my sister HATED to be wakened. We were not allowed to rouse her OR Jim until 7 for stockings, but I JUMPED ON HER. She opened one eye and grunted, but she got up and came to the window and said, "Oh, Jetty. Honey. Santa must be HERE right now. Quick. Back to bed." She went to bed, I flew into the hall, STRAIGHT into my dad.
"WhAT ARE YOU DOING?"
"Santashereisawtheprintsontehroofandiwanttosayhiand go---"
He had a huge turkey platter in his hand. It was NOT one of the presents we'd seen."DADDY?"
He simply squatted down and said, "Jetty. Santa is so frazzled this year, he's asked ME to wrap this for your mom. See? He already had me put the stockings at the top of the stair. Now, don't you think he might be a little upset to have to carry on polite conversation with a little snigglefritz who is supposed to be in bed NOW?"
"YOU are helping SANTA?"
He looked so solemn with the weight of this honor. "Yes. And I need to do a good job, so off to bed."
No problem.
***
The morning between 7 and about 8:30 was a cacophony of stocking openings and playing games until Daddy allowed us to get him up. On this ONE day, he insisted on showering first, just to torture us. Jim would dig out his slippers--again worn once a year--and his robe and we'd wait. UGH.
Then HE woulds schlump downstairs, grumbling and turn on the lights and this was MY FIRST look. Presents from one wall all the way to the front window, presents as high as my chest, and the most beautiful Christmas tree EVER. And we were allowed ONE PRESENT before breakfast. Only one. It was okay. We learned very early that our Christmases lasted longer than anyone's because we took turns and we took breaks. We had to PLAY with our toys. WE read our books. We watched the grown ups. We all shared the jokes.
If it sounds like Heaven, it's because it was. Sheer Heaven. This Christmas was all about trains, though. JACK GOT his Lionel trains from Grandpa, and five billion miles of track and little houses and trees and, well EVERYTHING. I had good stuff too, but it was the trains.
When Daddy's last present was opened, along around TWO--he HOARDED them under his chair and we had to watch him open his all at the end. Rotten man. And he won at the can you unwrap tissue without ripping it game. Excruciating. Mommy was festooned in bows and she and Grandma and Jean Ellen were busy with dinner plans. Jim wanted to listen to his record albums and call his friends.
Jack, Grandpa and I went into the basement and built a city. We had hills and had to measure the angles--Grandpa was a vice president of the Pennsylvania Railroad. And engineer... WITH A REAL ENGINEER'S CAP! He put it on and he we built our railroad route, complete with a mountain, a skyscraper we could drive it THROUGH and a cave and tunnel. We only had four crashes before it was complete at Five.
And Grandpa looked like a little boy, when we threw the switch and the train began to run. He ran around the tables with us as every obstacle was successfully managed. I threw the switch correctly--we had TWO trains--and they avoided one another neat as can be.
When it was done, He threw his cap in the air and DANCED. It was the only time I remember seeing him smile, let alone dance. My grandpa, my brother, and me, we danced a jig and sang a railroad song on Christmas.
***
There were no pictures taken or home movies. Grandpa died the following summer. But I see him in his cap, I hear him and I remember forgiving him the slap for the call, of "GREAT JOB THERE, LITTLE ONE" when I threw the switch for engine number two.
Grandpa was a railroad man. And for one Christmas morning, so was Jack and so was I. Three guys on the tracks, just doing our job.
On one magic Christmas when I was only six, and the world was new, and Santa landed on my roof.
***
The tree held presents and gave them up at night, after we were all in our nightclothes again. Mommy doled them out and all were labeled from the tree. They were always special--jewelry, a matchbox car, something special to the particular child. That year, mine was Santa in a Snow globe, only it was about three inches tall, with a tiny note affixed that said, "Thank you for not bothering me. It was a busy night. You are such a good girl. Love, Santa"
***
There is no one left from that time but me. Even Grandpa's hat is gone. But I hear him still. the magic of that Christmas, of many others, remains with me still. But that one Christmas, Grandpa let us see his back yard, the boy, the man who loved trains, the man who loved us. And I see the tree shimmering as I glanced at it over my daddy's shoulder as he carried me to bed, humming so that his chest rumbled and tickled me. I see the tinsel on his head, and Jean Ellen slapping Jimmy's hand as he looped the stuff in a clump. I feel my heart speeding up at the memory of almost seeing Santa.
I see it as clearly as any movie could bring it. It shines there for me to run whenever I need it; there, just by my heart, with Mommy close by, laughing.
So forgive me if I indulge myself in festooning and laughing and singing my way around my new home, making cookie dough to freeze, ordering some gifts, putting up my tree, repeating the story of every ornament. And planning my own Christmas Eve celebration with nine of my family, here. In my home. And there will be stockings from TWO Santas under my tree Christmas morning. And there will be toys. There will be singing deliberately off key.
And there will be more love than any one woman could possibly hope for. Here. In my home. You all are invited. Just let me know by the end of next week, so I know how big a turkey to order!
Accidental Spring
"Accidental Spring" This began as the background for painting other papers, but became something else!
Showing posts with label joy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label joy. Show all posts
Thursday, December 1, 2011
Sunday, November 13, 2011
Finally! Translating inspiration into a Painting
Again, this won't be a long entry. Well. For me, it's not that long. Oh, who am I kidding? It's long.
Writer's Block Is Painter's Block
I have been blocked at the painting table this last week. I have been dreaming paintings for weeks, but the moment I sat down to paint after the week of storm chaos, nothing.
I sat with my taped down paper, all my beautiful brushes, my tissue papers, everything out for me to use and... nothing.
The demon voices from childhood clamored instead, in their original forms and in the "grown up" permutations.
"You? An artist? Your sister was the artist, not you." This voice is the counterpart to the "You? A writer? Daddy wrote the book. You haven't published a goddamned word, except for that Stanford stuff. Advertising, really. Just schlock."
Clever voices, those. You all know enough of my family to be able to figure out how those got there. And here is one of my favorites, interchangeable for singing, song-writing, regular writing AND painting. I call her Mom's 'Demon for All Seasons.'
"You just like the sound of it. I am an Artist. A Writer. I am apart from the rest of you somehow. Who do you think you are? You're not such a much, any more than anyone else. Do something real with your life. Something practical. If you won't be a teacher, get into banking, or something that will pay the bills. An artist. Save that for the weekends."
That one is the age old WASP voice of New England. Modesty is THE virtue above all virtues, followed closely by practicality.
And there is the one that goes, "You know you'll screw it up. You haven't really screwed something up in a while, so this one is going to fail. Really. Why even bother?" And I sit there, with a loaded brush, poised, terrified to put it onto the paper.
Yes. Terrified. And what will happen anyway if I "screw it up?" Yes. The earth WILL swallow me whole and spit me out as unfit. Even the earth will find me objectionable. Yup. And the painting will be so awful it will confirm the other demon voices and I will never paint anything someone will want; I will never paint another painting I like; I will run out of money because I never paint another painting that is anything; I will have a shopping cart and sleep in a cardboard box and wind up having to use a surf board with wheels to get around.
And I get so engrossed with that bizarre image that the paint dries on the brush and I start laughing and give up for the day.
That was a game Jessie and I used to play when she got into her own "I'm a loser because I cannot write this paper perfectly" mode. We'd play, "What's the worst that can happen?"
And Jessie and I would build this elaborately ridiculous story of how her life would be over, she'd lose her friends, all of her family would reject her and--Jessie liked this--we would spit at her when she entered the room, and she would become homeless and die. This usually got her writing just so she could "Get it over with and be homeless and done with it all." (And she rarely got lower than a B+, much to her brother's disgust.)
Only with me, I would simply start laughing and then remember Jess and tear up and then walk away.
We also have the "Your ideas suck and who the HELL wants to read your drivel or see your torn paper scribbles?"
Any of these voices sound familiarly inane? And toxic?
Okay, so I do know that you simply have to keep showing up at the blank paper, no matter what. I have done that with my writing--whether it's with the work I do offline or my blog. I have looked at the blinking cursor for so long that I've written songs to its beat. Bad songs, but songs, nonetheless. In my head, where I cannot possibly see them as productive work. God forbid I should actually admit to myself that writing songs, good or bad, is showing up at the page! After all, my intent was to work on that poem I thought of when I was cleaning the kitchen, NOT some song that no one will ever sing because it is so pathetic.
Finally, we get to "You are almost sixty. Who on this EARTH will care what a sixty year old, overweight woman who walks like the Hunchback of Notre Dame has to say or paint? Where on earth do you get OFF even trying at this late stage? You are no one." Yeah. That one is my favorite.
Light through the Wall of Voices
Only finally, I hear Julia Cameron talking to me. I was lucky enough to do a workshop with her several years back. I see her and hear her voice. "If you wait to start, then you'll be even older than you are now, so why not start?" Sometimes she words it differently, but always the point is the same. So you feel you are too old to start now, so you are going to wait even longer to do what you love? And is the only reason you do this to make money? NO. I have no idea whether I can make a dime more. And I'll certainly have no idea if I do not produce anything.
I write because it is the only way I can process my life EVER. I started my first journal when I was twelve. It wasn't a diary. It was a journal, and it's where I first wrote that poem about the old man and his shack, with the eagle. Since that time, I filled more than forty journals. I tend not to have journals per se any more. I have random musings in a folder on my desk top, and a beautiful handmade "journal" by my bed for snippets when I awaken in the morning. But writing was a habit I developed long ago. And when I peek into a really old journal I see drawings, too...
When I get to the voices I've acquired through the years that are NOT demons, I feel the change inside. I feel something fomenting. First it is anger and all those pathetic tapes that run no matter how hard I try to silence them. And I start telling each one off. You may laugh at me in this, but it is the only way I know how to ditch them. They will never shut up permanently--they are ingrained. However, I have learned how to get them to shut up long enough for me to find my groove again. And once I start, I am very glad I live alone, because I do it aloud.
I scream at them. "Jean Ellen would be HAPPY that I am painting! And Dad would LOVE it that I wrote for Stanford. How DARE you tell me that was schlock. It was good work. It was wonderful work and IT WAS WRITING MY BEST! I can be an artist if I want to be!"
Oh, yes. God forbid I do anything quietly or rationally. Did I ever mention that when I went off to college, I thought I would be an actress? Big surprise there, right? I address them all. That happened Friday morning. I was just plain ANGRY.
The Transformation begins
And Friday night I lugged a formless, nameless painting --the one I began on my retreat -- upstairs. I did not work on the one I thought I would begin. I worked on one where all I knew is that it kind of looks like choppy water. I said aloud, "PLAY with it, for God's sake. Don't worry about what it is, what it may be, just play with it. Screw the voices. To hell with anything but the process. JUST PLAY." I stomped my foot, which, of course, hurt, but when you are six, you don't care whether or not it hurts. If you are mad, you're mad. Stomping is what you do, at least, if you are six-year-old Jetty.
So I played. And then it began to look like the Lake on a choppy day, the way it did when I'd gaze, unfocused, down from the picture window in the cottage, the one by the giant field stone fireplace my grandpa built--on the daybed, tucked there under the window, with the enormous wood box at its head, the old record player in its beautiful wood encasing at the foot. The room always smelled like pine. Sometimes I would open the wood box top and just smell. I'd climb onto the wood box, crouching, and leap from the box onto the daybed, making sure my feet never touched the floor so that the alligator under the bed could not get me; a cheetah pouncing. Then I'd lie on my stomach and slither up to the window, lean on my elbows that rested on the sill, push my nose against the glass and stare. I was a hissing cobra, and my elbows and head were the hood. But finally I would simply lose myself, seeing nothing but the water, dancing. White caps and sparkles and every shade of blue. Sometimes a maple leaf would drift in my line of sight, and I would blink.
And Grandpa would bring me back home with his laugh, having witnessed my transmutations.
And so I began painting nothing but water. I collaged long lengths of tissue with the flat side down, curves and bumps on top, in every shade of blue I could make.
When I was done for the evening, I stood my lake against the oak desk that was at the cottage, too. The one Grandpa did his paper work at, by the one light, in the evenings. If I peeked in after bedtime, opening the swinging door from the bedroom hall, I would see him bent over papers.
"Jet. Aren't you supposed to be in bed?" I would see an eyebrow raise and I would giggle and run to my room again.
I played last night, too. And again, for just a little while this morning--long enough to get that darker blue just so, there, toward the top, to balance something or other that I cannot name.
But now I have to shower and get ready to go tutor my nephew. He is working on an essay about the difference between Lao Tzu and Confucius. And then he needs help understanding Mendel's Principles and how to make and use a Punnett Square. And he wants to get the jump on mitosis...
My brain will hurt by the time I get home on Monday, so I will leave my playground upstairs for now, so that I can use it and recover.
But here's my point. I am working on a painting for real again! And I like it. And maybe no one else in the world will like it, too, when I am done, but it does not matter. And that's the point, isn't it? Today I will be doing something that matters for and WITH my nephew. We manage to have fun in the misery of it all! I love science, which is why I loved my work for Stanford. All of it is real.
Life's a gamble most of the time, isn't it? Every day it is a 30-70 shot whether or not my legs will work. The odds are in my favor, but as the day progresses, the odds shift drastically. Yet I get up. I show up and I make them work. I'm not so sure that my painting and my writing are so very different. I have a friend who asked me why I bother trying so hard to keep walking, since I cannot do the things that are FUN--hiking, going to art shows and museums, taking a trip to New York and things like that.
I walk because I can. I walk because I can still take care of myself as long as I keep on walking. I'll do other things for fun and take the trips inside my head. And I don't know what I might miss if I STOPPED walking just because it's hard.
What will I miss if I stop writing just because I don't know whether or not other people will want to read what I write, let alone pay money for it? And what will I miss if I stop painting? I remembered my grandpa again. He lived for me as I painted. I had not thought of those days in a long, long time. I can smell the cottage again. All from playing with my papers and paint. What will I be missing if I do not try to paint the autumn leaf that will drift into my view, there, over the blues of that water? What will I remember when I paint a few sparkles there, among the white caps?
I don't know. It isn't worth the risk, the not trying. Isn't that why we do what we do? Isn't that why we search for the picture to snap? The painting to create? The story to tell? Is that why the Stanford professors just had to start another business when the first, second, and third didn't quite work? Are they afraid they will miss something important if they do not take the risk?
Somewhere or other, with people who are driven to create, to explore, the risks of missing something outweigh safety. I don't think that would necessarily be the right thing for every person to do, but perhaps it is what drives some of us. I don't get a rush from the risk itself; I get the rush from the process and then something indescribable when it works. I don't like the uncertainty, actually. I hate it; but I need to do it anyway. It has little to do with courage, though. I simply love to fly.
Not an original thought among any I wrote today, but they are the thoughts that get in my way, and the thoughts that take me home ... and the thoughts that allow me to fly.
What about you? what are your demons and what thoughts are the sails that catch the wind for you?
Oops. I had best at least get my shower taken! Have a wonderful couple of days? (well. More than that, but it will be tomorrow night before I get back.) Editing will not do for today, and I hope that I read about your demons and what you do to shut them the hell up.
Showered, dressed, and studying my Mendel. I had to turn my painting to the wall, so that I am not distracted. Bye for now.
Writer's Block Is Painter's Block
I have been blocked at the painting table this last week. I have been dreaming paintings for weeks, but the moment I sat down to paint after the week of storm chaos, nothing.
I sat with my taped down paper, all my beautiful brushes, my tissue papers, everything out for me to use and... nothing.
The demon voices from childhood clamored instead, in their original forms and in the "grown up" permutations.
"You? An artist? Your sister was the artist, not you." This voice is the counterpart to the "You? A writer? Daddy wrote the book. You haven't published a goddamned word, except for that Stanford stuff. Advertising, really. Just schlock."
Clever voices, those. You all know enough of my family to be able to figure out how those got there. And here is one of my favorites, interchangeable for singing, song-writing, regular writing AND painting. I call her Mom's 'Demon for All Seasons.'
"You just like the sound of it. I am an Artist. A Writer. I am apart from the rest of you somehow. Who do you think you are? You're not such a much, any more than anyone else. Do something real with your life. Something practical. If you won't be a teacher, get into banking, or something that will pay the bills. An artist. Save that for the weekends."
That one is the age old WASP voice of New England. Modesty is THE virtue above all virtues, followed closely by practicality.
And there is the one that goes, "You know you'll screw it up. You haven't really screwed something up in a while, so this one is going to fail. Really. Why even bother?" And I sit there, with a loaded brush, poised, terrified to put it onto the paper.
Yes. Terrified. And what will happen anyway if I "screw it up?" Yes. The earth WILL swallow me whole and spit me out as unfit. Even the earth will find me objectionable. Yup. And the painting will be so awful it will confirm the other demon voices and I will never paint anything someone will want; I will never paint another painting I like; I will run out of money because I never paint another painting that is anything; I will have a shopping cart and sleep in a cardboard box and wind up having to use a surf board with wheels to get around.
And I get so engrossed with that bizarre image that the paint dries on the brush and I start laughing and give up for the day.
That was a game Jessie and I used to play when she got into her own "I'm a loser because I cannot write this paper perfectly" mode. We'd play, "What's the worst that can happen?"
And Jessie and I would build this elaborately ridiculous story of how her life would be over, she'd lose her friends, all of her family would reject her and--Jessie liked this--we would spit at her when she entered the room, and she would become homeless and die. This usually got her writing just so she could "Get it over with and be homeless and done with it all." (And she rarely got lower than a B+, much to her brother's disgust.)
Only with me, I would simply start laughing and then remember Jess and tear up and then walk away.
We also have the "Your ideas suck and who the HELL wants to read your drivel or see your torn paper scribbles?"
Any of these voices sound familiarly inane? And toxic?
Okay, so I do know that you simply have to keep showing up at the blank paper, no matter what. I have done that with my writing--whether it's with the work I do offline or my blog. I have looked at the blinking cursor for so long that I've written songs to its beat. Bad songs, but songs, nonetheless. In my head, where I cannot possibly see them as productive work. God forbid I should actually admit to myself that writing songs, good or bad, is showing up at the page! After all, my intent was to work on that poem I thought of when I was cleaning the kitchen, NOT some song that no one will ever sing because it is so pathetic.
Finally, we get to "You are almost sixty. Who on this EARTH will care what a sixty year old, overweight woman who walks like the Hunchback of Notre Dame has to say or paint? Where on earth do you get OFF even trying at this late stage? You are no one." Yeah. That one is my favorite.
Light through the Wall of Voices
Only finally, I hear Julia Cameron talking to me. I was lucky enough to do a workshop with her several years back. I see her and hear her voice. "If you wait to start, then you'll be even older than you are now, so why not start?" Sometimes she words it differently, but always the point is the same. So you feel you are too old to start now, so you are going to wait even longer to do what you love? And is the only reason you do this to make money? NO. I have no idea whether I can make a dime more. And I'll certainly have no idea if I do not produce anything.
I write because it is the only way I can process my life EVER. I started my first journal when I was twelve. It wasn't a diary. It was a journal, and it's where I first wrote that poem about the old man and his shack, with the eagle. Since that time, I filled more than forty journals. I tend not to have journals per se any more. I have random musings in a folder on my desk top, and a beautiful handmade "journal" by my bed for snippets when I awaken in the morning. But writing was a habit I developed long ago. And when I peek into a really old journal I see drawings, too...
When I get to the voices I've acquired through the years that are NOT demons, I feel the change inside. I feel something fomenting. First it is anger and all those pathetic tapes that run no matter how hard I try to silence them. And I start telling each one off. You may laugh at me in this, but it is the only way I know how to ditch them. They will never shut up permanently--they are ingrained. However, I have learned how to get them to shut up long enough for me to find my groove again. And once I start, I am very glad I live alone, because I do it aloud.
I scream at them. "Jean Ellen would be HAPPY that I am painting! And Dad would LOVE it that I wrote for Stanford. How DARE you tell me that was schlock. It was good work. It was wonderful work and IT WAS WRITING MY BEST! I can be an artist if I want to be!"
Oh, yes. God forbid I do anything quietly or rationally. Did I ever mention that when I went off to college, I thought I would be an actress? Big surprise there, right? I address them all. That happened Friday morning. I was just plain ANGRY.
The Transformation begins
And Friday night I lugged a formless, nameless painting --the one I began on my retreat -- upstairs. I did not work on the one I thought I would begin. I worked on one where all I knew is that it kind of looks like choppy water. I said aloud, "PLAY with it, for God's sake. Don't worry about what it is, what it may be, just play with it. Screw the voices. To hell with anything but the process. JUST PLAY." I stomped my foot, which, of course, hurt, but when you are six, you don't care whether or not it hurts. If you are mad, you're mad. Stomping is what you do, at least, if you are six-year-old Jetty.
So I played. And then it began to look like the Lake on a choppy day, the way it did when I'd gaze, unfocused, down from the picture window in the cottage, the one by the giant field stone fireplace my grandpa built--on the daybed, tucked there under the window, with the enormous wood box at its head, the old record player in its beautiful wood encasing at the foot. The room always smelled like pine. Sometimes I would open the wood box top and just smell. I'd climb onto the wood box, crouching, and leap from the box onto the daybed, making sure my feet never touched the floor so that the alligator under the bed could not get me; a cheetah pouncing. Then I'd lie on my stomach and slither up to the window, lean on my elbows that rested on the sill, push my nose against the glass and stare. I was a hissing cobra, and my elbows and head were the hood. But finally I would simply lose myself, seeing nothing but the water, dancing. White caps and sparkles and every shade of blue. Sometimes a maple leaf would drift in my line of sight, and I would blink.
And Grandpa would bring me back home with his laugh, having witnessed my transmutations.
And so I began painting nothing but water. I collaged long lengths of tissue with the flat side down, curves and bumps on top, in every shade of blue I could make.
When I was done for the evening, I stood my lake against the oak desk that was at the cottage, too. The one Grandpa did his paper work at, by the one light, in the evenings. If I peeked in after bedtime, opening the swinging door from the bedroom hall, I would see him bent over papers.
"Jet. Aren't you supposed to be in bed?" I would see an eyebrow raise and I would giggle and run to my room again.
I played last night, too. And again, for just a little while this morning--long enough to get that darker blue just so, there, toward the top, to balance something or other that I cannot name.
But now I have to shower and get ready to go tutor my nephew. He is working on an essay about the difference between Lao Tzu and Confucius. And then he needs help understanding Mendel's Principles and how to make and use a Punnett Square. And he wants to get the jump on mitosis...
My brain will hurt by the time I get home on Monday, so I will leave my playground upstairs for now, so that I can use it and recover.
But here's my point. I am working on a painting for real again! And I like it. And maybe no one else in the world will like it, too, when I am done, but it does not matter. And that's the point, isn't it? Today I will be doing something that matters for and WITH my nephew. We manage to have fun in the misery of it all! I love science, which is why I loved my work for Stanford. All of it is real.
Life's a gamble most of the time, isn't it? Every day it is a 30-70 shot whether or not my legs will work. The odds are in my favor, but as the day progresses, the odds shift drastically. Yet I get up. I show up and I make them work. I'm not so sure that my painting and my writing are so very different. I have a friend who asked me why I bother trying so hard to keep walking, since I cannot do the things that are FUN--hiking, going to art shows and museums, taking a trip to New York and things like that.
I walk because I can. I walk because I can still take care of myself as long as I keep on walking. I'll do other things for fun and take the trips inside my head. And I don't know what I might miss if I STOPPED walking just because it's hard.
What will I miss if I stop writing just because I don't know whether or not other people will want to read what I write, let alone pay money for it? And what will I miss if I stop painting? I remembered my grandpa again. He lived for me as I painted. I had not thought of those days in a long, long time. I can smell the cottage again. All from playing with my papers and paint. What will I be missing if I do not try to paint the autumn leaf that will drift into my view, there, over the blues of that water? What will I remember when I paint a few sparkles there, among the white caps?
I don't know. It isn't worth the risk, the not trying. Isn't that why we do what we do? Isn't that why we search for the picture to snap? The painting to create? The story to tell? Is that why the Stanford professors just had to start another business when the first, second, and third didn't quite work? Are they afraid they will miss something important if they do not take the risk?
Somewhere or other, with people who are driven to create, to explore, the risks of missing something outweigh safety. I don't think that would necessarily be the right thing for every person to do, but perhaps it is what drives some of us. I don't get a rush from the risk itself; I get the rush from the process and then something indescribable when it works. I don't like the uncertainty, actually. I hate it; but I need to do it anyway. It has little to do with courage, though. I simply love to fly.
Not an original thought among any I wrote today, but they are the thoughts that get in my way, and the thoughts that take me home ... and the thoughts that allow me to fly.
What about you? what are your demons and what thoughts are the sails that catch the wind for you?
Oops. I had best at least get my shower taken! Have a wonderful couple of days? (well. More than that, but it will be tomorrow night before I get back.) Editing will not do for today, and I hope that I read about your demons and what you do to shut them the hell up.
Showered, dressed, and studying my Mendel. I had to turn my painting to the wall, so that I am not distracted. Bye for now.
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Runaways to Redbank Part III: Whiffle Ball and Pictures of Dirt
Lest you think that yesterday's entry indicated some inner loneliness or sliding into a funk, here's Runaway III. I love traveling alone, and this is partly why--the northern Jersey shore. And I am afraid there will be a Runaways to Redbank IV, because, well, there is my fiftieth birthday trip and the guy on the beach. And, did I ever get to Redbank for more than a pit stop? We'll see... I mean, there was the internationally know rock star, but where? And if I lump them all into one trip, oh well. Tough....
Please note, once again, any photos are included for fun here--they are from various easily accessible websites I found from googling the kind of pictures I wanted. Except the patterns in the sand... those are mine. MINE I tell ya!
If you are new to my blog and have no clue what I'm talking about, and want to have a clue, see Runaway I , and Rnaway II. This is continuation of my two days ... (You may also find why I love traveling alone if you root around and find Deliverance I and II)
(And with this entry, I'll be on hiatus for a little while--and I do mean a little--to start a painting or two that have been haunting me for a week.)
Which Way Will She Wander?
I headed back north toward Red Bank from West Long Branch, NJ. My dear, dear friend David (a professional drummer and brilliant computer scientist I'd known since I was 22) had told me about an old-fashioned music store called Jack's, that famous musicians from all over frequented. And there were what looked to be a wonderful natural foods place and a couple of artisan type shops...
Only there was also Sandy Hook. And it was a blustery, perfect day to walk another beach. Really. I mean, music store .... miniature Cape Cod. Food store ... marvelous sand bar formations. Gee. What won? And, of course, West Long Branch had offered such interesting characters, I felt as if I were on a roll. Sandy Hook it was.
The peninsula juts up quite a few miles toward the city. You can park the car to the right of the road, to stand and facet the ocean, then simply turn around to see the bay. Remains of WWII missile sites hide in among dunes so old that they were more pure white hills with alien dwarfed forests laced by pure white paths to guide the way. Unlike Cape Cod,Sandy Hook is too small for towns--there is just a military base at the tip. So for miles, all there was to see were bay, ocean, dunes and sky.
And living things, of course, including people.This time around, once again, the Jersey spirits had come out to play.
Barefoot Navigation...
It took perhaps ten minutes to get past the initial cluster of people. I do not move easily over dry sand. One little boy, perhaps ten, saw me lose my footing a little, cane notwithstanding, and offered me his arm, gentleman style. Just his open-faced smile steadied me. You know that kind of look they offer when the world has given them no reason to expect less in return? Well, I could not disappoint him and accepted his arm. When we reached packed sand, he bolted, barely saying good bye, as was right.
An obstacle course lay before me, however, that held potential for decapitation; unmanned fishing poles. The poles stood oh, between 8 and 47 feet tall, stuck deeply into the sand, with nearly invisible lines angling into the sea. When monsters of the deep pulled, they bent to their own tune, performing a beautiful, if dangerous dance--but only when the fish were running. The dance was wild today, but no one seemed to care but me.
All the men belonging to the poles sat about fifteen feet back, sleeping or drinking their beer, occasionally glancing at the lines, or gawking over mirrored sunglasses at any stray woman who came by. Let us simply say that today they did not even see me; there was a bikinied trio nearby and rumor had it they were about to turn over. I stared at the chorus line of bodies turned in their chairs, heads turned further still over right shoulders, beers halted in mid-route. They waited, breathless. The women turned, the men smiled, the poles danced on.
Anyway, the navigation trick was to find the space where one could easily walk along the hardened surface of packed wet sand far enough from the water to avoid the lines, but close enough to the water to find interesting, well, stuff. I couldn't look down, though, because I had to walk in such a zig zag path that I got a little dizzy. (No, this was something beyond my normal state.) Finally I gave up, moving to the dry sand, which was far harder for me. Pulling each leg up, loaded with sand at every step very soon caused throbbing pain. Still that beat slicing an eye or worse.
I saw a dune and driftwood log and made for it. At this point, I realized the cane was slowing me down, so I pretended it was a baton and I was performing in the circus, and only dropped it four times. When I reached safety, with my accustomed grace, I fell more than sat down. "Ladies and gentleman," I said to my adoring crowd, undoubtedly moved by my twirling, "with grace, she moves. Nay, verily like a doe doth she walk in the world."
OMG, a Family of Living Elves!
Unfortunately, a laugh from behind some scrub disturbed my soliloquy, and a small curly-headed gnome was giggling at me. I bowed to him and he scampered off toward the protected side of the dune. Through the brush was a family on which I could spy so easily, it was sinful. A dad, my 3 or 4-year-old sprite, and another little boy about my internal age--six or seven at most--were getting up from what looked like a feast. Both looked more like Garth Williams' illustrations than real boys, and, since nothing so far that day had felt much like my real life, that seemed just about right.
Dad wore khaki knee-length pants and a tank top, with wide apart blue eyes on a face that was crowned with unruly, curly light hair. The boys had bright colored, droopy bathing trunks and the same hair. So far, so good. They had piled together the remains of the major food groups: fried chicken, potato salad, chips, cookies, cake, pie, soda, and--what was that? There among the plastic ruins: one Blue Willow china plate, precisely crossed with pistol-handled pewter knife and fork, one cobalt crystal wine glass, a folded sea blue cloth napkin and a silver bucket with a wine bottle in it.
They clearly belonged to Grandma: knee-length skirt, a long-sleeved white blouse with a peter pan color fastened at the neck with some sort of shiny pin. She was barefoot and turned before I quite saw her face, but she, too, had short curls that could not and would not be tidied into submission. Wild curls seemed an oxymoron on her. Dad was on his cell phone. Grandma was smoothing her blouse and patting herself as she started to clean up, occasionally seeming to yank her curls into submission. It did not work. The china and curls said Queen of the Fairies, but the clothes? Aha. 'Incognito,' I thought.
The thing about Jersey so far that sang to me, that sang clear down deep in my soul, was that exaggeration was redundant here. The place was one walking, talking, lounging whopper of a fish story wherever I rested.
Sandy Hook Whiffle World Series Champion
"Grandma, let's play ball! C'mon Grandma, I won't pitch hard. PLLLLEEEEASE." The older elf had the family mass of honey hair that stuck out at all angles like new wood shavings, with one long bit he was perpetually swiping at. Dad snapped the phone, sat back on his heels, and smirked at his mother.
"Yeah, Mom. Show them how it's done," he said as the smirk widened into an outright grin. Suddenly he must have seen me watching and he kind of jerked his head as if to include me in on the joke. I simply smiled, relieved to be accepted, but at this point it would have been moot. I'd come to this theater and dammit, I was gonna see my show!
"Now, Daniel, I have not played ball since I was a child. I don't remember how." Grandma looked down, but she was facing me now and I'm sure her mouth was turned up at the corners. Her hair suddenly seemed to loosen and grow a bit. It had to be a fairy was lurking behind those buttoned down clothes. It showed in the curled toes. Perhaps I am mistaken; she was not that close.
"I'll show you how," the older one said. "And we won't keep score. Tommy can be the base. Tommy go over there with your shovel and pail so Grandma will know where to run."
"Kay, Danny. I do that. Run to me, Gamma, okay? I have to dig now." And that was almost all we heard from Tommy. He squatted there with his pail and shovel, face focused and body contorted as only a small child can manage. I think he'd found a shell, or perhaps a magic stone.
Danny got an enormous bright red bat and electric blue whiffle ball from a beach bag the size of Milwaukee. "Okay, now watch me, Grandma. You hold the bat like this and then you swing like this and hit the ball." He was so serious, he almost had a little scowl as he tossed the ball up and swung. He missed the first few times, but then connected. Unconcerned he said, "See? Just like that."
Grandma smiled and nodded. She untucked her blouse and practically glided toward the "playing field," rolling up her sleeves. She shook her head once and the curls grew some more ... I felt myself sitting forward on my log, and I gripped the straight up stub of a branch beside me.
"Okay, so I won't stand too far away so you can hit the ball," Danny said, and moved perhaps two feet from his grandmother.
"Young man, I will hit YOU with the bat, instead of the ball and I do not think you'd care for that. I might hit YOU clear over the dune," she said, as serious as he. I liked her. I think I liked her a lot. The boys and their dad were clearly in the family of elves with those eyes, so my guess had to be right. This explained the clothes. She had to pass. I wondered at the strain it must have been. She was curiously at home with a bat.
Daniel danced as he backed up, yelling, "Grandma, COME ON."
"The more you yell, the slower I get, so you might as well stop, dear." Something in her voice ... He stopped. Immediately.
She stepped to the sea turtle plate, gently tapped it three times, and she and that bat were one. 'Uh-oh,' I thought. 'Danny, Danny, Danny.'
"Strike one, Grandma," he said. "It's okay. Just keep trying."
I glanced at her son and he was leaning back, smiling broadly. Tommy looked up a moment, but she wasn't running yet, and went back to his shovel, humming tunelessly, but very loud.
After strike two, I held my breath, but no. She gave the ball a tiny tap and trotted -- yes, trotted is the ONLY word -- toward first base. Danny tagged her out. "Too bad, Grandma. Maybe next time."
He quickly struck out.
When Grandma had her next at bat, she smiled as sweetly as could be. I thought of that poem from childhood, "How doth the little crocodile" ... was that how it started? ... But it ended with " and welcomes little fishes in with gently smiling jaws." She motioned for Danny to move away, but instead he wound up like a pitcher. "Watch THIS one Grandma, then I'll pitch it nice to you, I promise."
Oh, how Grandma connected. Danny ducked as the ball shot past his ear and it was still headed up when it flew far above Tommy's head. The wind caught it and it danced wildly in the air a moment before the downward arc. I clapped. I cheered. I couldn't help it. She turned once toward me, eyes crinkling at the corners, as wide apart as the rest, and gave a slight nod.
Dad was laughing as he went after the ball, Tommy jumped up and down and then ran in circles, Danny stood sort of clueless with lower lip beginning to grow, and Grandma?
She simply trotted to Tommy, picked him up and kissed him, whirling him around a few times, then trotted back toward turtle home, giving it a little kick with her toe, long before Dad came back. She began to readjust her collar, then stopped, and she left her hair alone. She smiled broadly and opened her arms toward Danny.
He still seemed caught between his ego and pride in his grandma, on the verge of a dramatic pout. His dad pat him on the head as he passed with the ball, and said, "Most valuable player, girls' softball, 1950-1954. Danny, she had a 310 batting average. Your grandma is a star, kid."
The boy wheeled and glared at his grandma. "YOU CHEATED Grandma! You really cheated!"
"Yup" was all she said, smiling still. Then she shrugged and turned to saunter back to the picnic ruins, when Danny ran and threw his arms around her waist from behind, burying his face in her back.
I know my cues; I picked up my stuff and moved on.You can safely spy on the Queen of the Fairies just so long ...
Pictures of Dirt
The fishing lines ended about five minutes further down the beach. I headed toward wet sand, and began to notice bits of interesting things that had been dragged in by the tide which was now receding. Without the poles I could look down, and I came on a formation that intrigued me and I started to snap pictures from every direction.
I loved the patterns in the sand that something else had made, and that lone stone in the middle. I walked all around trying to figure out how the tree pattern had been made when, not too far away, I heard it.
"Bernie. Bernie! Whaddyou think that woman is doing? Bernie, go ask her what she is doing. Bernie, do ya hear me? Guhwan! Ask her."
Now the Jersey accent's not quite Brooklyn, though it's close. "Ing" ends with a hard 'g.' And 'er' is pronounced almost, but not quite like 'ar.' It is harsh, and almost bursts from the mouth." All in all, it is an amalgamation of the most distinctive parts of a New York and Philadelphia twang that jars one into full alert.
I do not believe there is any other sound so harsh as a Jersey woman yelling.
I looked up and there they were, the antithesis of sprites. Sitting in their folding, webbed chairs. She was in a housecoat. The kind that have those metal snaps, short sleeves and are often in bold floral prints. For some reason, she had two pink rollers on the top of her head, with almost no hair left in them, so they sort of bounced in the breeze. (I bet she also had a bathing cap that had all those little colored bits of rubber sticking out on the top. You know, the kind that flutter with every move and are especially disconcerting in a pool aerobics class.) She also was wearing fuzzy pink mules, not sandals or flip flops. Her hair was bottle-black, which made her skin seem gray. I have no idea how old she was--somewhere between 55 and 93, I'd say.
Bernie was built like a bull. Sitting there, he seemed about as wide as he was tall, from the waist up. He had a very tan, very large and hard belly covered with gray fur, and his head was sort of a tanned bowling ball atop a neck that had tan lines in the creases. He was gripping a beer that was on his left knee. There was some sort of grayish lawn sparsely distributed on his head, with An Oscar the Grouch face--vaguely annoyed with bushy eyebrows that crossed his eyes in an unbroken line.
I tried not to stare because he was also wearing boxer shorts with large hearts that had faces on them. I tried. I really did try. I did not succeed. And I do believe my mouth was hanging open to boot.
"Miss!" he shouted, to appease his wife.
"Yes?" I jumped.
"Waddaya doin?" He did not move.
"I coulda done that, Bernie. Go talk to the woman, fergodsake."
"Shaddup, Gladys." Of COURSE it was Gladys. What else could it be? Gladys and Bernie go to the beach. I should have known. This was pre-reality shows, or I would have looked for a camera crew.
"I am taking pictures here. There is a beautiful formation in the sand," I said, somewhat lamely. I just knew the laughing heart shorts would stand up and...yup. He got up, first bracing a hand on each knee as he straightened. Standing, he still seemed about almost as wide as he was tall. His legs were bowed and he was wearing tennis sneakers with holes so large his big toes stuck out to the knuckle. And the shorts screamed at me. I could hear them. I looked down and away, but I could feel the giggle well up. I don't think he heard.
His sigh was audible from fifteen feet away. He lumbered to me and looked down.
"See how pretty that is?" I asked.
Bernie looked back up at me, his unibrow unevenly twisted. He was shorter than I. He glanced down again and up. "You a photographer or something?" Again with the hard 'g."
"Noooo... But I like taking interesting pictures, that's all." He looked down and up again, simply shrugged, Jersey style, bigger than life.
He grunted and turned toward his wife. "Gladys, she's taking pictures of dirt! She says they're interesting!" And his arms opened wide and he managed to shrug his entire body. I swear in Jersey, shrugging is a dance form of its own.
"Taking pictures of dirt?"
"Yeah, that's what she's doing. Taking pictures of dirt. Where you from anyway?"
"Connecticut."
"Oh. Well, then, that explains it. Gladys, she's from Connecticut! That's why!"
Gladys nodded, ducked her head as she raised an arm and with a flourish of the hand, said, "There you go!"
He plodded back up toward his chair, silent but with open arms, palms up. She was nodding. I was done.
Character Overload. (A little known, but somewhat scary syndrome. It involves an immediate need to rock back and forth while mumbling) Red Bank would have to wait. Debriefing time was needed. Besides that night David and I were heading for some place where it was wholly unlikely we'd run into any characters: a bar on open mike night, and he was in the back up band ...
Please note, once again, any photos are included for fun here--they are from various easily accessible websites I found from googling the kind of pictures I wanted. Except the patterns in the sand... those are mine. MINE I tell ya!
If you are new to my blog and have no clue what I'm talking about, and want to have a clue, see Runaway I , and Rnaway II. This is continuation of my two days ... (You may also find why I love traveling alone if you root around and find Deliverance I and II)
(And with this entry, I'll be on hiatus for a little while--and I do mean a little--to start a painting or two that have been haunting me for a week.)
Which Way Will She Wander?
I headed back north toward Red Bank from West Long Branch, NJ. My dear, dear friend David (a professional drummer and brilliant computer scientist I'd known since I was 22) had told me about an old-fashioned music store called Jack's, that famous musicians from all over frequented. And there were what looked to be a wonderful natural foods place and a couple of artisan type shops...Only there was also Sandy Hook. And it was a blustery, perfect day to walk another beach. Really. I mean, music store .... miniature Cape Cod. Food store ... marvelous sand bar formations. Gee. What won? And, of course, West Long Branch had offered such interesting characters, I felt as if I were on a roll. Sandy Hook it was.
The peninsula juts up quite a few miles toward the city. You can park the car to the right of the road, to stand and facet the ocean, then simply turn around to see the bay. Remains of WWII missile sites hide in among dunes so old that they were more pure white hills with alien dwarfed forests laced by pure white paths to guide the way. Unlike Cape Cod,Sandy Hook is too small for towns--there is just a military base at the tip. So for miles, all there was to see were bay, ocean, dunes and sky.
And living things, of course, including people.This time around, once again, the Jersey spirits had come out to play.
Barefoot Navigation...
It took perhaps ten minutes to get past the initial cluster of people. I do not move easily over dry sand. One little boy, perhaps ten, saw me lose my footing a little, cane notwithstanding, and offered me his arm, gentleman style. Just his open-faced smile steadied me. You know that kind of look they offer when the world has given them no reason to expect less in return? Well, I could not disappoint him and accepted his arm. When we reached packed sand, he bolted, barely saying good bye, as was right.
An obstacle course lay before me, however, that held potential for decapitation; unmanned fishing poles. The poles stood oh, between 8 and 47 feet tall, stuck deeply into the sand, with nearly invisible lines angling into the sea. When monsters of the deep pulled, they bent to their own tune, performing a beautiful, if dangerous dance--but only when the fish were running. The dance was wild today, but no one seemed to care but me.
All the men belonging to the poles sat about fifteen feet back, sleeping or drinking their beer, occasionally glancing at the lines, or gawking over mirrored sunglasses at any stray woman who came by. Let us simply say that today they did not even see me; there was a bikinied trio nearby and rumor had it they were about to turn over. I stared at the chorus line of bodies turned in their chairs, heads turned further still over right shoulders, beers halted in mid-route. They waited, breathless. The women turned, the men smiled, the poles danced on.Anyway, the navigation trick was to find the space where one could easily walk along the hardened surface of packed wet sand far enough from the water to avoid the lines, but close enough to the water to find interesting, well, stuff. I couldn't look down, though, because I had to walk in such a zig zag path that I got a little dizzy. (No, this was something beyond my normal state.) Finally I gave up, moving to the dry sand, which was far harder for me. Pulling each leg up, loaded with sand at every step very soon caused throbbing pain. Still that beat slicing an eye or worse.
I saw a dune and driftwood log and made for it. At this point, I realized the cane was slowing me down, so I pretended it was a baton and I was performing in the circus, and only dropped it four times. When I reached safety, with my accustomed grace, I fell more than sat down. "Ladies and gentleman," I said to my adoring crowd, undoubtedly moved by my twirling, "with grace, she moves. Nay, verily like a doe doth she walk in the world."
OMG, a Family of Living Elves!
Unfortunately, a laugh from behind some scrub disturbed my soliloquy, and a small curly-headed gnome was giggling at me. I bowed to him and he scampered off toward the protected side of the dune. Through the brush was a family on which I could spy so easily, it was sinful. A dad, my 3 or 4-year-old sprite, and another little boy about my internal age--six or seven at most--were getting up from what looked like a feast. Both looked more like Garth Williams' illustrations than real boys, and, since nothing so far that day had felt much like my real life, that seemed just about right.Dad wore khaki knee-length pants and a tank top, with wide apart blue eyes on a face that was crowned with unruly, curly light hair. The boys had bright colored, droopy bathing trunks and the same hair. So far, so good. They had piled together the remains of the major food groups: fried chicken, potato salad, chips, cookies, cake, pie, soda, and--what was that? There among the plastic ruins: one Blue Willow china plate, precisely crossed with pistol-handled pewter knife and fork, one cobalt crystal wine glass, a folded sea blue cloth napkin and a silver bucket with a wine bottle in it.
They clearly belonged to Grandma: knee-length skirt, a long-sleeved white blouse with a peter pan color fastened at the neck with some sort of shiny pin. She was barefoot and turned before I quite saw her face, but she, too, had short curls that could not and would not be tidied into submission. Wild curls seemed an oxymoron on her. Dad was on his cell phone. Grandma was smoothing her blouse and patting herself as she started to clean up, occasionally seeming to yank her curls into submission. It did not work. The china and curls said Queen of the Fairies, but the clothes? Aha. 'Incognito,' I thought.
The thing about Jersey so far that sang to me, that sang clear down deep in my soul, was that exaggeration was redundant here. The place was one walking, talking, lounging whopper of a fish story wherever I rested.
Sandy Hook Whiffle World Series Champion
"Grandma, let's play ball! C'mon Grandma, I won't pitch hard. PLLLLEEEEASE." The older elf had the family mass of honey hair that stuck out at all angles like new wood shavings, with one long bit he was perpetually swiping at. Dad snapped the phone, sat back on his heels, and smirked at his mother.
"Yeah, Mom. Show them how it's done," he said as the smirk widened into an outright grin. Suddenly he must have seen me watching and he kind of jerked his head as if to include me in on the joke. I simply smiled, relieved to be accepted, but at this point it would have been moot. I'd come to this theater and dammit, I was gonna see my show!
"Now, Daniel, I have not played ball since I was a child. I don't remember how." Grandma looked down, but she was facing me now and I'm sure her mouth was turned up at the corners. Her hair suddenly seemed to loosen and grow a bit. It had to be a fairy was lurking behind those buttoned down clothes. It showed in the curled toes. Perhaps I am mistaken; she was not that close.
"I'll show you how," the older one said. "And we won't keep score. Tommy can be the base. Tommy go over there with your shovel and pail so Grandma will know where to run."
"Kay, Danny. I do that. Run to me, Gamma, okay? I have to dig now." And that was almost all we heard from Tommy. He squatted there with his pail and shovel, face focused and body contorted as only a small child can manage. I think he'd found a shell, or perhaps a magic stone.
Danny got an enormous bright red bat and electric blue whiffle ball from a beach bag the size of Milwaukee. "Okay, now watch me, Grandma. You hold the bat like this and then you swing like this and hit the ball." He was so serious, he almost had a little scowl as he tossed the ball up and swung. He missed the first few times, but then connected. Unconcerned he said, "See? Just like that."
Grandma smiled and nodded. She untucked her blouse and practically glided toward the "playing field," rolling up her sleeves. She shook her head once and the curls grew some more ... I felt myself sitting forward on my log, and I gripped the straight up stub of a branch beside me.
"Okay, so I won't stand too far away so you can hit the ball," Danny said, and moved perhaps two feet from his grandmother.
"Young man, I will hit YOU with the bat, instead of the ball and I do not think you'd care for that. I might hit YOU clear over the dune," she said, as serious as he. I liked her. I think I liked her a lot. The boys and their dad were clearly in the family of elves with those eyes, so my guess had to be right. This explained the clothes. She had to pass. I wondered at the strain it must have been. She was curiously at home with a bat.
Daniel danced as he backed up, yelling, "Grandma, COME ON."
"The more you yell, the slower I get, so you might as well stop, dear." Something in her voice ... He stopped. Immediately.She stepped to the sea turtle plate, gently tapped it three times, and she and that bat were one. 'Uh-oh,' I thought. 'Danny, Danny, Danny.'
"Strike one, Grandma," he said. "It's okay. Just keep trying."
I glanced at her son and he was leaning back, smiling broadly. Tommy looked up a moment, but she wasn't running yet, and went back to his shovel, humming tunelessly, but very loud.
After strike two, I held my breath, but no. She gave the ball a tiny tap and trotted -- yes, trotted is the ONLY word -- toward first base. Danny tagged her out. "Too bad, Grandma. Maybe next time."
He quickly struck out.
When Grandma had her next at bat, she smiled as sweetly as could be. I thought of that poem from childhood, "How doth the little crocodile" ... was that how it started? ... But it ended with " and welcomes little fishes in with gently smiling jaws." She motioned for Danny to move away, but instead he wound up like a pitcher. "Watch THIS one Grandma, then I'll pitch it nice to you, I promise."
Oh, how Grandma connected. Danny ducked as the ball shot past his ear and it was still headed up when it flew far above Tommy's head. The wind caught it and it danced wildly in the air a moment before the downward arc. I clapped. I cheered. I couldn't help it. She turned once toward me, eyes crinkling at the corners, as wide apart as the rest, and gave a slight nod.
Dad was laughing as he went after the ball, Tommy jumped up and down and then ran in circles, Danny stood sort of clueless with lower lip beginning to grow, and Grandma?
She simply trotted to Tommy, picked him up and kissed him, whirling him around a few times, then trotted back toward turtle home, giving it a little kick with her toe, long before Dad came back. She began to readjust her collar, then stopped, and she left her hair alone. She smiled broadly and opened her arms toward Danny.
He still seemed caught between his ego and pride in his grandma, on the verge of a dramatic pout. His dad pat him on the head as he passed with the ball, and said, "Most valuable player, girls' softball, 1950-1954. Danny, she had a 310 batting average. Your grandma is a star, kid."
The boy wheeled and glared at his grandma. "YOU CHEATED Grandma! You really cheated!"
"Yup" was all she said, smiling still. Then she shrugged and turned to saunter back to the picnic ruins, when Danny ran and threw his arms around her waist from behind, burying his face in her back.
I know my cues; I picked up my stuff and moved on.You can safely spy on the Queen of the Fairies just so long ...
Pictures of Dirt
The fishing lines ended about five minutes further down the beach. I headed toward wet sand, and began to notice bits of interesting things that had been dragged in by the tide which was now receding. Without the poles I could look down, and I came on a formation that intrigued me and I started to snap pictures from every direction.I loved the patterns in the sand that something else had made, and that lone stone in the middle. I walked all around trying to figure out how the tree pattern had been made when, not too far away, I heard it.
"Bernie. Bernie! Whaddyou think that woman is doing? Bernie, go ask her what she is doing. Bernie, do ya hear me? Guhwan! Ask her."
Now the Jersey accent's not quite Brooklyn, though it's close. "Ing" ends with a hard 'g.' And 'er' is pronounced almost, but not quite like 'ar.' It is harsh, and almost bursts from the mouth." All in all, it is an amalgamation of the most distinctive parts of a New York and Philadelphia twang that jars one into full alert.
I do not believe there is any other sound so harsh as a Jersey woman yelling.
I looked up and there they were, the antithesis of sprites. Sitting in their folding, webbed chairs. She was in a housecoat. The kind that have those metal snaps, short sleeves and are often in bold floral prints. For some reason, she had two pink rollers on the top of her head, with almost no hair left in them, so they sort of bounced in the breeze. (I bet she also had a bathing cap that had all those little colored bits of rubber sticking out on the top. You know, the kind that flutter with every move and are especially disconcerting in a pool aerobics class.) She also was wearing fuzzy pink mules, not sandals or flip flops. Her hair was bottle-black, which made her skin seem gray. I have no idea how old she was--somewhere between 55 and 93, I'd say.
Bernie was built like a bull. Sitting there, he seemed about as wide as he was tall, from the waist up. He had a very tan, very large and hard belly covered with gray fur, and his head was sort of a tanned bowling ball atop a neck that had tan lines in the creases. He was gripping a beer that was on his left knee. There was some sort of grayish lawn sparsely distributed on his head, with An Oscar the Grouch face--vaguely annoyed with bushy eyebrows that crossed his eyes in an unbroken line.
I tried not to stare because he was also wearing boxer shorts with large hearts that had faces on them. I tried. I really did try. I did not succeed. And I do believe my mouth was hanging open to boot.
"Miss!" he shouted, to appease his wife.
"Yes?" I jumped.
"Waddaya doin?" He did not move.
"I coulda done that, Bernie. Go talk to the woman, fergodsake."
"Shaddup, Gladys." Of COURSE it was Gladys. What else could it be? Gladys and Bernie go to the beach. I should have known. This was pre-reality shows, or I would have looked for a camera crew.
"I am taking pictures here. There is a beautiful formation in the sand," I said, somewhat lamely. I just knew the laughing heart shorts would stand up and...yup. He got up, first bracing a hand on each knee as he straightened. Standing, he still seemed about almost as wide as he was tall. His legs were bowed and he was wearing tennis sneakers with holes so large his big toes stuck out to the knuckle. And the shorts screamed at me. I could hear them. I looked down and away, but I could feel the giggle well up. I don't think he heard.
His sigh was audible from fifteen feet away. He lumbered to me and looked down.
"See how pretty that is?" I asked.
Bernie looked back up at me, his unibrow unevenly twisted. He was shorter than I. He glanced down again and up. "You a photographer or something?" Again with the hard 'g.""Noooo... But I like taking interesting pictures, that's all." He looked down and up again, simply shrugged, Jersey style, bigger than life.
He grunted and turned toward his wife. "Gladys, she's taking pictures of dirt! She says they're interesting!" And his arms opened wide and he managed to shrug his entire body. I swear in Jersey, shrugging is a dance form of its own.
"Taking pictures of dirt?"
"Yeah, that's what she's doing. Taking pictures of dirt. Where you from anyway?"
"Connecticut."
"Oh. Well, then, that explains it. Gladys, she's from Connecticut! That's why!"
Gladys nodded, ducked her head as she raised an arm and with a flourish of the hand, said, "There you go!"
He plodded back up toward his chair, silent but with open arms, palms up. She was nodding. I was done.
Character Overload. (A little known, but somewhat scary syndrome. It involves an immediate need to rock back and forth while mumbling) Red Bank would have to wait. Debriefing time was needed. Besides that night David and I were heading for some place where it was wholly unlikely we'd run into any characters: a bar on open mike night, and he was in the back up band ...
Friday, January 28, 2011
Weeding to the Music of Lilacs
"In the right light, at the right time, everything is extraordinary." Aaron Rose
This quote was used as part of Pauline's Writing Down the Words: January 28 entry That particular quote made me remember the role that gardening has played in so much of my healing time of the last twenty years, the years of home ownership, and visiting without words.And it reminded me of the extraordinary friendships forged around ordinary routines.
When I was in my twenties I did a great deal of visiting over toddlers and folding laundry. I was single; my friends were not. (See "Laundry Eagles" for an understanding of what I mean.) I was a thoroughly obnoxious sort of friend. I'd watch their children for an hour or two when they had errands to run, hang around to help unload the groceries, the laundry, whatever and, when the little ones began to implode along around 3:00, I would smile so sweetly and say, "Ha ha ha, ha HA HA, I think I'll go HOME now." They all threatened me with much future suffering, but continued to allow me into their homes nonetheless. NOt only that, they fed me, listened to me, and held me close when my heart was broken and my body followed.
During that decade we visited with talking. Endlessly deep, profound and mundane conversations over coffee, stolen lunches out, when one child or another invariably slumped into her soup, sound asleep. When my parents went off on vacation, I would overrun their home and entertain the lot of them, husbands, wives AND children. I would make some Julia Child wonder of a meal, insist on no help and have everyone at the table together. The children would be bundled en mass onto my parents' bed, and the adults had hours to laugh, watch bad t.v. and discuss everything from politics to the dangers of the new something on the horizon called "Total phone" and the clunkiness of mobile phones. The best night was watching the Miss America Pageant and feigning disagreement over whether or not Miss Oklahoma's singing "I am Woman" while dressed in a ridiculously frilly apron and riding a tricycle trumped Miss Nebraska's attempt to sing "Send in the Clowns" while dressed as Bozo. I had served coq au vin with a magnicient four layer Boston Cream Pie (Made entirely from scratch) and flopped onto the couch, saying, "Someone peel me a grape." I was ignored.
Ten minutes later Andrea appeared with my mother's hexagonal silver tray with one peeled grape in its center.
It's the little things.
But our friendships were loud. We danced and had parties. We lounged by the pool, watching with one eye, the endless games of Marco Polo as toddlers grew to double digit children. I was the neighborhood silly mobile aunt. I loved it. I knew I should not have children with the back I'd been dealt. I did not have my first surgery until I was twenty-eight. I was diagnosed with severe problems at just 23. So I exercised like a fiend to avoid surgery. I did weights when it was not fashionable, and tried the weights machines, only to find that it made a difference that they were designed for men. I hurt myself. My PT guy said I was the only woman he'd ever met who overdid it in the pool to the point of injury.
What's this nonsense anyway about moderation being good? BULL.
I dreamed big. I Mean BIG. I would write the best novel ever and Oprah would have me on. I would be "Discovered" at a poetry reading by Coventry Lake. I would go to grad school and become an expert on Adult Learning, and write the definitive light reading books for adults--compelling and interesting, not glorified kids' books. So many dreams. My friends had them, too, and they were not so big. How was it, then, that my friend who spoke English as her second language got her masters in international accounting, and another became a nationally known and respected program director for Public Broadcasting, and another went to law school at thirty? I talked about the big dreams, and so did they, but when it came down to it, after all the talking and laughing and sharing, in my thirties I watched the others run after their dreams while I spent five years in hospitals, raising half-grown children in between the four to six-week stints? I felt my life slipping away, I thought. The noise seemed to die down, but not the chaos.
I did not lose these friends at all. On the contrary, I was the stay-at-home mom for my daughter's best friend. I was the one who would suddenly show up at whichever home "the gang was hangin" with a tray full of Slurpees® and a bright smile. As my son said, "It was impossible to, like, be that mad. I mean, you didn't stay. You sat down and you asked us about our days, brought the drinks and sometimes cookies and smiled and then left after fifteen minutes. And come back later because you forgot your wallet or something. You always forgot something."
I would smile at his recollection and then he'd say, "DAMN. You didn't forget, huh. But we NEVER knew if you'd come."
"Exactly."
The life was mundane and my pleasures were tiny, mostly. An unexpected hug from my son. Dinner time laughter that included Mark AND the kids. And, of course, hanging out with my friends for cookouts. Still, mostly we talked. And, sad to say, mostly I envied them their marriages, their vacations, their big homes. I felt that not only had I disappeared, but my family was not likely to move forward. Of course, it was my fault. I was disabled and brought in almost no money. I banked all of the kids', and used my own for necessities. I had no right to buy luxuries. The money was Mark's, not mine...
But somewhere along the line, I realized that I was not seeing my life. I had not held up the proper light to it. Others seemed to see me as a success. (Not my family, of course. There, my Aunt Joy summed it up when they were dissecting me as if I were absent. Joy said, "Well, Jean, she IS a wonderful mother. Let's give her that much.) My friends saw more, for which I am beyond grateful, but they told me I was either seeing myself and my life in a funny mirror, or I needed new light bulbs in my brain.
It began after the eight operation, when I was confined to bed because I had gotten up on my own to use the loo, and had lost my mind in a sea of blood in the bathroom. It was a new procedure, trying to avoid my normal hematomas. The fourteen inch incision was sutured very loosely so the pressure would not build, and blood could escape in a controlled way, but I went into the bathroom and, well, the thing exploded, splattering blood all around me and I had a flashback. My first. Right there and then, blood on porcelain and I was gone to another place. The sound. The sight. The fear. I remember nothing more.
I awoke tied to my bed, and life changed immediately. I did not then confront the flashback; it was too soon for that. Yet at last I knew that there was something to confront. As I looked next to me at my drug-addicted, far older roommate, a woman whose husband would come into the hospital and say, "Why don't you simply DIE, Annie, and help us all out?" .... as I looked at her, and looked back at my panic-stricken husband beside me, my life took on a new sheen. Our marriage felt strong and real. And I remembered something about Jessie.
One day she had come home with a papier maché daffodil from middle school art class. "I can't even show this to Mom or Dad. They'll laugh at it. I can't laugh at it. Jeannette, it's pathetic." Well, yes, it truly was. It had a stem the size of a Grecian column and a blossom the size of a thimble. It was lopsided and one leaf was fat and squat, the other tall and leaf-like. "She gave me a B out of pity and for the good leaf." There she stood, hair to her butt, one arm behind her back, the other holding this monstrosity toward me, eyes pleading for help.
"Well, Jess. I can't throw it out. My guess is you worked hard on it." Her tears were falling and she nodded. "I know, I'll put it on MY shelf in the closet and I'll think of you every day." She brightened up enormously, but every time she saw it in the closet she'd come out and look at me, shaking her head.
A couple of years later she said, "You really don't have to."
I always said, "I love it. Especially when I knock something near it and it falls on my head." She would laugh and kiss me.
But when the ceramic vase came home, lopsided and unevenly glazed, she begged me not to put in the living room. "No, REALLY Jeannette. You can't do it. There is nothing that you can make look okay in this. Nothing."
I'd said, "Trust me, honey. You wait." Jess ran into her room crying because she thought it would be humiliating.
I found some beautiful silk flowers and dried boughs of who knows what? I put it in the corner of the shelves, and you saw only the ruffled line of the lip of the shining forest green vase, and the curve of the base, and a profusion of delicate color, there in the center corner.
She looked at it and began to tear up and smiled, "You made something beautiful out of something ugly. You always DO that for me." And she hugged me, holding on longer than I did, and I was never as whole in my life. It was the sweetest compliment I'd ever known. An ordinary act of motherhood, I thought, seen through the eyes of an extraordinary child who did not know her power yet.
I lay in my hospital bed, tied down, thinking of her and a dozen other little sweet things that suddenly felt huge, and how I'd nearly blown up my marriage. And I apologized for the billionth time for the pain I had caused Mark, only this time he looked at me and said simply, "I want you home. I want you not to hurt so much. I can't reach where your pain is, Jeannette. It's always out of reach."
But he kissed it away just the same and I remember it as a series of the best kisses of our marriage.
Something changed. I was thirty-five and was about to learn the heaviest of life's lessons, but I began to listen to silence and look harder at the small things of my life. I stopped paying so damned much attention on the big successes of my friends, and looked at my small successes. I could stand when they told me I'd fall down. I was not an addict. And I was determined to stand STRAIGHT. I was able to do the laundry within two weeks, and for the first time in three years—I started dancing around like Rocky for the accomplishment. There, with no one to hear or see the mountain I had climbed, I danced.
Sometimes simply tying one's shoes is an extraordinary act. That's what I was showing Dad--that I could tie my shoes--while quietly and slowly the subject drifted away. I was always quiet with him toward the end. Noise confused him. But because I was happy to simply BE with him, I had the opportunity to meet the man behind the FATHER, even more than when we'd commuted together. He gave me the journal of his last months, a revelation of pain, selfish arrogance and humble regrets. Anyway, on this particular day, I'd told him how hard it had been to learn to do and how much harder it was to appreciate an act I'd done thousands of times, and he nodded. Then he said, "I've sung Ah Sweet Mystery of LIfe at Last I've Found Thee easily a thousand times. Why did I have to be dying to listen to the words? Love was next to me all my life, sweetie. Don't be like me. Mark hurt you. I know that. We know that. He isn't the man we thought he was. Dear, you can do anything. Listen to your words when you sing them. Listen to your life as you live it. Listen. I never listened." There were many small moments with them both, while they were consciously preparing to go. I'll save them for another time, but when they were gone, and we had bought our house, I began to garden.
The quietest thing I know, gardening. My friends gardened, too. Sometimes we would work together and say nothing, yet felt we had visited all the way through to our cores. Perhaps we had. We would be filthy, sweaty, make-up-less and aging. Yet sometimes I thought that Andrea was most beautiful with her hair unruly, her unmatching eyes glittering, her pale skin still shining from her sunblock. There seemed nothing ordinary to me about many of the flowers, especially peonies.
I mean really. Every peony is its own statement of life -- no, of LIFE, with flourishes of trumpet as well. Their coloring is as delicate as Dresden, but the flowers themselves? A subtle peony is an oxymoron. I was weeding in my lilac island when I thought about that one very early morning. I liked to weed when the sun still cast gold in the sky, there on the far side of my yard.
I was laughing at myself because I love their showiness, revealed only through the never-ending ordinary march of ants to soften their buds. Ants. What is more ordinary than an ant? The lilac island was my first garden, designed, planted, dug with my own hands out of the twenty-year-old perfect turf. My mother's and sister's favorite flower is the lilac and, since Jean Ellen lived here, I wanted to have my first garden be for her and for Mom, whose soul I had clearly channeled, against my will I tell ya, against my will! (I loathed gardening as a child, as I stood by her holding the trowel, the watering can, and some worms to put in the holes. Worms, it appeared, were the key to every garden success. They were the best thing about it all, because the rest of gardening seemed the most boring thing in the world. Put in some nameless tiny green thing and when you were done? It looked like a limp clump of weed. And a clump of junk we had to be careful not to let the kick- soccer- foot- or baseball get into.)
So I chose four different lilac varieties, then found the Miss Kim, and realized that I could have a whole month of lilac blooming with one of those, if they did not all bloom at once because of a hot spell. And I had to admit that subtlety had not been what I was going for here, either. The double blossom shrub was nearly bent to the ground from the weight of the eight-inch long pregnant blossoms.
That season we had had a hot spell, though, and I saw that every single bush was budded, from the doubles of the deepest violet bush to the white. None were in bloom, but they would be any moment. Oh, well. I shrugged and decided how beautiful our enormous vases would be with five shades of blooms, if only for a few days.
I shook my head a moment because a decade before I had planted them too close together, and had actually put a peony plant in there, not realizing how big both got. A common mistake for new gardeners. Furthermore, lilac island across from an open field, so nameless horrid weeds invaded all the time, including the Chinese vine I SHALL NOT NAME. I call it KUJO, for the killer dog. I had just finished wrestling one 20-foot obsenity out by its roots from the very center of my "grove", and had removed, painfully, no fewer than EIGHT thistle plants when, as I unbent my body to breathe, I heard the rain. I looked up and the sky was blue with the barest hints of rose and gold on the horizon.I stood very, very still; stunned, in fact. Gentle rain engulfed me, yet all was dry.
"A miracle?" I asked aloud.
No. An ordinary act of nature, the sound of lilacs blooming.
Clearly, though, I should have answered, "Yes."
This quote was used as part of Pauline's Writing Down the Words: January 28 entry That particular quote made me remember the role that gardening has played in so much of my healing time of the last twenty years, the years of home ownership, and visiting without words.And it reminded me of the extraordinary friendships forged around ordinary routines.
When I was in my twenties I did a great deal of visiting over toddlers and folding laundry. I was single; my friends were not. (See "Laundry Eagles" for an understanding of what I mean.) I was a thoroughly obnoxious sort of friend. I'd watch their children for an hour or two when they had errands to run, hang around to help unload the groceries, the laundry, whatever and, when the little ones began to implode along around 3:00, I would smile so sweetly and say, "Ha ha ha, ha HA HA, I think I'll go HOME now." They all threatened me with much future suffering, but continued to allow me into their homes nonetheless. NOt only that, they fed me, listened to me, and held me close when my heart was broken and my body followed.
During that decade we visited with talking. Endlessly deep, profound and mundane conversations over coffee, stolen lunches out, when one child or another invariably slumped into her soup, sound asleep. When my parents went off on vacation, I would overrun their home and entertain the lot of them, husbands, wives AND children. I would make some Julia Child wonder of a meal, insist on no help and have everyone at the table together. The children would be bundled en mass onto my parents' bed, and the adults had hours to laugh, watch bad t.v. and discuss everything from politics to the dangers of the new something on the horizon called "Total phone" and the clunkiness of mobile phones. The best night was watching the Miss America Pageant and feigning disagreement over whether or not Miss Oklahoma's singing "I am Woman" while dressed in a ridiculously frilly apron and riding a tricycle trumped Miss Nebraska's attempt to sing "Send in the Clowns" while dressed as Bozo. I had served coq au vin with a magnicient four layer Boston Cream Pie (Made entirely from scratch) and flopped onto the couch, saying, "Someone peel me a grape." I was ignored.
Ten minutes later Andrea appeared with my mother's hexagonal silver tray with one peeled grape in its center.
It's the little things.
But our friendships were loud. We danced and had parties. We lounged by the pool, watching with one eye, the endless games of Marco Polo as toddlers grew to double digit children. I was the neighborhood silly mobile aunt. I loved it. I knew I should not have children with the back I'd been dealt. I did not have my first surgery until I was twenty-eight. I was diagnosed with severe problems at just 23. So I exercised like a fiend to avoid surgery. I did weights when it was not fashionable, and tried the weights machines, only to find that it made a difference that they were designed for men. I hurt myself. My PT guy said I was the only woman he'd ever met who overdid it in the pool to the point of injury.
What's this nonsense anyway about moderation being good? BULL.
I dreamed big. I Mean BIG. I would write the best novel ever and Oprah would have me on. I would be "Discovered" at a poetry reading by Coventry Lake. I would go to grad school and become an expert on Adult Learning, and write the definitive light reading books for adults--compelling and interesting, not glorified kids' books. So many dreams. My friends had them, too, and they were not so big. How was it, then, that my friend who spoke English as her second language got her masters in international accounting, and another became a nationally known and respected program director for Public Broadcasting, and another went to law school at thirty? I talked about the big dreams, and so did they, but when it came down to it, after all the talking and laughing and sharing, in my thirties I watched the others run after their dreams while I spent five years in hospitals, raising half-grown children in between the four to six-week stints? I felt my life slipping away, I thought. The noise seemed to die down, but not the chaos.
I did not lose these friends at all. On the contrary, I was the stay-at-home mom for my daughter's best friend. I was the one who would suddenly show up at whichever home "the gang was hangin" with a tray full of Slurpees® and a bright smile. As my son said, "It was impossible to, like, be that mad. I mean, you didn't stay. You sat down and you asked us about our days, brought the drinks and sometimes cookies and smiled and then left after fifteen minutes. And come back later because you forgot your wallet or something. You always forgot something."
I would smile at his recollection and then he'd say, "DAMN. You didn't forget, huh. But we NEVER knew if you'd come."
"Exactly."
The life was mundane and my pleasures were tiny, mostly. An unexpected hug from my son. Dinner time laughter that included Mark AND the kids. And, of course, hanging out with my friends for cookouts. Still, mostly we talked. And, sad to say, mostly I envied them their marriages, their vacations, their big homes. I felt that not only had I disappeared, but my family was not likely to move forward. Of course, it was my fault. I was disabled and brought in almost no money. I banked all of the kids', and used my own for necessities. I had no right to buy luxuries. The money was Mark's, not mine...
But somewhere along the line, I realized that I was not seeing my life. I had not held up the proper light to it. Others seemed to see me as a success. (Not my family, of course. There, my Aunt Joy summed it up when they were dissecting me as if I were absent. Joy said, "Well, Jean, she IS a wonderful mother. Let's give her that much.) My friends saw more, for which I am beyond grateful, but they told me I was either seeing myself and my life in a funny mirror, or I needed new light bulbs in my brain.
It began after the eight operation, when I was confined to bed because I had gotten up on my own to use the loo, and had lost my mind in a sea of blood in the bathroom. It was a new procedure, trying to avoid my normal hematomas. The fourteen inch incision was sutured very loosely so the pressure would not build, and blood could escape in a controlled way, but I went into the bathroom and, well, the thing exploded, splattering blood all around me and I had a flashback. My first. Right there and then, blood on porcelain and I was gone to another place. The sound. The sight. The fear. I remember nothing more.
I awoke tied to my bed, and life changed immediately. I did not then confront the flashback; it was too soon for that. Yet at last I knew that there was something to confront. As I looked next to me at my drug-addicted, far older roommate, a woman whose husband would come into the hospital and say, "Why don't you simply DIE, Annie, and help us all out?" .... as I looked at her, and looked back at my panic-stricken husband beside me, my life took on a new sheen. Our marriage felt strong and real. And I remembered something about Jessie.
One day she had come home with a papier maché daffodil from middle school art class. "I can't even show this to Mom or Dad. They'll laugh at it. I can't laugh at it. Jeannette, it's pathetic." Well, yes, it truly was. It had a stem the size of a Grecian column and a blossom the size of a thimble. It was lopsided and one leaf was fat and squat, the other tall and leaf-like. "She gave me a B out of pity and for the good leaf." There she stood, hair to her butt, one arm behind her back, the other holding this monstrosity toward me, eyes pleading for help.
"Well, Jess. I can't throw it out. My guess is you worked hard on it." Her tears were falling and she nodded. "I know, I'll put it on MY shelf in the closet and I'll think of you every day." She brightened up enormously, but every time she saw it in the closet she'd come out and look at me, shaking her head.
A couple of years later she said, "You really don't have to."
I always said, "I love it. Especially when I knock something near it and it falls on my head." She would laugh and kiss me.
But when the ceramic vase came home, lopsided and unevenly glazed, she begged me not to put in the living room. "No, REALLY Jeannette. You can't do it. There is nothing that you can make look okay in this. Nothing."
I'd said, "Trust me, honey. You wait." Jess ran into her room crying because she thought it would be humiliating.
I found some beautiful silk flowers and dried boughs of who knows what? I put it in the corner of the shelves, and you saw only the ruffled line of the lip of the shining forest green vase, and the curve of the base, and a profusion of delicate color, there in the center corner.
She looked at it and began to tear up and smiled, "You made something beautiful out of something ugly. You always DO that for me." And she hugged me, holding on longer than I did, and I was never as whole in my life. It was the sweetest compliment I'd ever known. An ordinary act of motherhood, I thought, seen through the eyes of an extraordinary child who did not know her power yet.
I lay in my hospital bed, tied down, thinking of her and a dozen other little sweet things that suddenly felt huge, and how I'd nearly blown up my marriage. And I apologized for the billionth time for the pain I had caused Mark, only this time he looked at me and said simply, "I want you home. I want you not to hurt so much. I can't reach where your pain is, Jeannette. It's always out of reach."
But he kissed it away just the same and I remember it as a series of the best kisses of our marriage.
Something changed. I was thirty-five and was about to learn the heaviest of life's lessons, but I began to listen to silence and look harder at the small things of my life. I stopped paying so damned much attention on the big successes of my friends, and looked at my small successes. I could stand when they told me I'd fall down. I was not an addict. And I was determined to stand STRAIGHT. I was able to do the laundry within two weeks, and for the first time in three years—I started dancing around like Rocky for the accomplishment. There, with no one to hear or see the mountain I had climbed, I danced.
Sometimes simply tying one's shoes is an extraordinary act. That's what I was showing Dad--that I could tie my shoes--while quietly and slowly the subject drifted away. I was always quiet with him toward the end. Noise confused him. But because I was happy to simply BE with him, I had the opportunity to meet the man behind the FATHER, even more than when we'd commuted together. He gave me the journal of his last months, a revelation of pain, selfish arrogance and humble regrets. Anyway, on this particular day, I'd told him how hard it had been to learn to do and how much harder it was to appreciate an act I'd done thousands of times, and he nodded. Then he said, "I've sung Ah Sweet Mystery of LIfe at Last I've Found Thee easily a thousand times. Why did I have to be dying to listen to the words? Love was next to me all my life, sweetie. Don't be like me. Mark hurt you. I know that. We know that. He isn't the man we thought he was. Dear, you can do anything. Listen to your words when you sing them. Listen to your life as you live it. Listen. I never listened." There were many small moments with them both, while they were consciously preparing to go. I'll save them for another time, but when they were gone, and we had bought our house, I began to garden.
The quietest thing I know, gardening. My friends gardened, too. Sometimes we would work together and say nothing, yet felt we had visited all the way through to our cores. Perhaps we had. We would be filthy, sweaty, make-up-less and aging. Yet sometimes I thought that Andrea was most beautiful with her hair unruly, her unmatching eyes glittering, her pale skin still shining from her sunblock. There seemed nothing ordinary to me about many of the flowers, especially peonies.
I mean really. Every peony is its own statement of life -- no, of LIFE, with flourishes of trumpet as well. Their coloring is as delicate as Dresden, but the flowers themselves? A subtle peony is an oxymoron. I was weeding in my lilac island when I thought about that one very early morning. I liked to weed when the sun still cast gold in the sky, there on the far side of my yard.
I was laughing at myself because I love their showiness, revealed only through the never-ending ordinary march of ants to soften their buds. Ants. What is more ordinary than an ant? The lilac island was my first garden, designed, planted, dug with my own hands out of the twenty-year-old perfect turf. My mother's and sister's favorite flower is the lilac and, since Jean Ellen lived here, I wanted to have my first garden be for her and for Mom, whose soul I had clearly channeled, against my will I tell ya, against my will! (I loathed gardening as a child, as I stood by her holding the trowel, the watering can, and some worms to put in the holes. Worms, it appeared, were the key to every garden success. They were the best thing about it all, because the rest of gardening seemed the most boring thing in the world. Put in some nameless tiny green thing and when you were done? It looked like a limp clump of weed. And a clump of junk we had to be careful not to let the kick- soccer- foot- or baseball get into.)
So I chose four different lilac varieties, then found the Miss Kim, and realized that I could have a whole month of lilac blooming with one of those, if they did not all bloom at once because of a hot spell. And I had to admit that subtlety had not been what I was going for here, either. The double blossom shrub was nearly bent to the ground from the weight of the eight-inch long pregnant blossoms.
That season we had had a hot spell, though, and I saw that every single bush was budded, from the doubles of the deepest violet bush to the white. None were in bloom, but they would be any moment. Oh, well. I shrugged and decided how beautiful our enormous vases would be with five shades of blooms, if only for a few days.
I shook my head a moment because a decade before I had planted them too close together, and had actually put a peony plant in there, not realizing how big both got. A common mistake for new gardeners. Furthermore, lilac island across from an open field, so nameless horrid weeds invaded all the time, including the Chinese vine I SHALL NOT NAME. I call it KUJO, for the killer dog. I had just finished wrestling one 20-foot obsenity out by its roots from the very center of my "grove", and had removed, painfully, no fewer than EIGHT thistle plants when, as I unbent my body to breathe, I heard the rain. I looked up and the sky was blue with the barest hints of rose and gold on the horizon.I stood very, very still; stunned, in fact. Gentle rain engulfed me, yet all was dry.
"A miracle?" I asked aloud.
No. An ordinary act of nature, the sound of lilacs blooming.
Clearly, though, I should have answered, "Yes."
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
WOO HOO
I have been awarded Social Security Disability. I am eligible immediately for Medicare. The first hurdle toward my reconstructed self has been CLEARED.
I have dreamed of coral reefs two nights in a row now. Time for a new painting, I guess, while I work on the two unfinished.
Such a New Year's gift. The judge wrote her decision BEFORE the Christmas break, only a couple of weeks after the hearing. She was clear and, well, it validated a good deal, this judgment of hers. I will be able to be financially okay for at least ten months and, hopefully my house will sell before that time is done.
I find myself hoping only to move forward, to not just reconstruct myself as an artist and writer, as one who creates solely what is in my heart and imagination, but to feel that I can tutor as well. I LOVE helping kids unlock their curiosity, finding the words that help them over their own hurdles. It is challenging and fun, too. I am only eight in my brain, so it seems a natural fit, no?
I want the new year to propel me toward simple peace, toward loving my friends better, toward more productivity and choices that keep me on the planet a LONG time. I want to write the wonder of my life, which was the gift that got me through the pain--the gifts of my mother, my father, and my sister, really. Each had their own whimsy and sense of the absurd that they gave to me. And the wonder that was my brother Jack's willingness to protect me the best he could from the violence of the other brother. And of our friendship as children and teenagers. In his own disease, he committed one horror, but ONLY one. Mostly, as his birthday draws near, I remember Robin Hood, calling to me as I hid in the closet. Calling to me when his own torture was over and the monster had wandered off, losing interest in causing him pain. "Maid Marion, Maid Marion. The Sheriff is Gone. It's safe to come out."
And I would untie him and bathe the cuts or the bruises myself. Jack gave me my very life, I think.
It is a new year. Some of the limbo has suddenly ended. I am acutely aware that I was given more gifts than my share, I think. I called my friends who had been long awaiting good news. It took three hours of laughing and crying and just being happy.
I have virtual friends in here, many of whom have reached out to me beyond the blog. I have thanked you all before, but I simply must again. The progress on the book is slow, but it has to be. I have made peace with many things in these months of chaos and pain.
Long ago, in the early days of biofeedback pain therapy, I named the pain Louise. My middle name and my paternal grandma's name. I may have mentioned this elsewhere. I did this because my grandma taught me many things as a small child, and I adored cooking next to her, eating lunches she made for Jude and me at the Lake on rainy days--we sat at a lace-edged tableclothed card table, on the screened in porch, eating egg salad sandwiches cut on the diagonals with the crusts off, off of special plates with a spot on them for the chocolate milk-filled glasses. And we had M&M's for dessert. Grandma would serve her two little wild girls as if we were grand ladies. It made us giggle, as we sat in overalls and t-shirts, barefoot. Huck Finn girls with Lady Louise. Grandma mourned the demise of whale-bone corsets. She showed me how to dip candles for fun and we churned butter.
But when I hit puberty I learned that Louise was mean to my mother. She spied on us. She was bitter. A vicious gossip sometimes. Louise was not likable, barely lovable, in fact--but she was my grandma, part of my being, part of who I was, part of my life.
The Louise of my body, born of spinal disease, has tamed my tendency to self-destruct. Pain is not something we want. I don't want it. But it's here. It is part of my life. Louise is here and saved my life and made it hell and I cannot discard it. I must live with it and use my heart and soul to find the ways to use it to FORCE me into going after the dream.
I never gave myself permission to paint, to sing, to write simply what I WANTED. To create from my own music for the sake of creation. Well, I can't do it on deadlines any more. There is no path left for me but to do what I want!
So, tell me. What sort of irony is in that? I mean, talk about a dope learning things the hard way!
I will be getting the first step of financial respite. I have accepted what IS in relation to my spine. I KEEP ON STANDING UP. But I know enough to sit down or lie down when I have to.
It IS a happy new year. Thank you to any of you who keep no looking for me to write. There will be more.
Woo HOO.
I have dreamed of coral reefs two nights in a row now. Time for a new painting, I guess, while I work on the two unfinished.
Such a New Year's gift. The judge wrote her decision BEFORE the Christmas break, only a couple of weeks after the hearing. She was clear and, well, it validated a good deal, this judgment of hers. I will be able to be financially okay for at least ten months and, hopefully my house will sell before that time is done.
I find myself hoping only to move forward, to not just reconstruct myself as an artist and writer, as one who creates solely what is in my heart and imagination, but to feel that I can tutor as well. I LOVE helping kids unlock their curiosity, finding the words that help them over their own hurdles. It is challenging and fun, too. I am only eight in my brain, so it seems a natural fit, no?
I want the new year to propel me toward simple peace, toward loving my friends better, toward more productivity and choices that keep me on the planet a LONG time. I want to write the wonder of my life, which was the gift that got me through the pain--the gifts of my mother, my father, and my sister, really. Each had their own whimsy and sense of the absurd that they gave to me. And the wonder that was my brother Jack's willingness to protect me the best he could from the violence of the other brother. And of our friendship as children and teenagers. In his own disease, he committed one horror, but ONLY one. Mostly, as his birthday draws near, I remember Robin Hood, calling to me as I hid in the closet. Calling to me when his own torture was over and the monster had wandered off, losing interest in causing him pain. "Maid Marion, Maid Marion. The Sheriff is Gone. It's safe to come out."
And I would untie him and bathe the cuts or the bruises myself. Jack gave me my very life, I think.
It is a new year. Some of the limbo has suddenly ended. I am acutely aware that I was given more gifts than my share, I think. I called my friends who had been long awaiting good news. It took three hours of laughing and crying and just being happy.
I have virtual friends in here, many of whom have reached out to me beyond the blog. I have thanked you all before, but I simply must again. The progress on the book is slow, but it has to be. I have made peace with many things in these months of chaos and pain.
Long ago, in the early days of biofeedback pain therapy, I named the pain Louise. My middle name and my paternal grandma's name. I may have mentioned this elsewhere. I did this because my grandma taught me many things as a small child, and I adored cooking next to her, eating lunches she made for Jude and me at the Lake on rainy days--we sat at a lace-edged tableclothed card table, on the screened in porch, eating egg salad sandwiches cut on the diagonals with the crusts off, off of special plates with a spot on them for the chocolate milk-filled glasses. And we had M&M's for dessert. Grandma would serve her two little wild girls as if we were grand ladies. It made us giggle, as we sat in overalls and t-shirts, barefoot. Huck Finn girls with Lady Louise. Grandma mourned the demise of whale-bone corsets. She showed me how to dip candles for fun and we churned butter.
But when I hit puberty I learned that Louise was mean to my mother. She spied on us. She was bitter. A vicious gossip sometimes. Louise was not likable, barely lovable, in fact--but she was my grandma, part of my being, part of who I was, part of my life.
The Louise of my body, born of spinal disease, has tamed my tendency to self-destruct. Pain is not something we want. I don't want it. But it's here. It is part of my life. Louise is here and saved my life and made it hell and I cannot discard it. I must live with it and use my heart and soul to find the ways to use it to FORCE me into going after the dream.
I never gave myself permission to paint, to sing, to write simply what I WANTED. To create from my own music for the sake of creation. Well, I can't do it on deadlines any more. There is no path left for me but to do what I want!
So, tell me. What sort of irony is in that? I mean, talk about a dope learning things the hard way!
I will be getting the first step of financial respite. I have accepted what IS in relation to my spine. I KEEP ON STANDING UP. But I know enough to sit down or lie down when I have to.
It IS a happy new year. Thank you to any of you who keep no looking for me to write. There will be more.
Woo HOO.
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
More Lush than Rotting: Huckleberina Finn et al.
Maybe I should have broken this into two entries... it's a novella. Oh, well! I hope you enjoy...
Summers in Utopia... as Ever, the Lake
Our memories never seem to move in nice, predictable paths. Our minds wander, like willful children determined to explore the forbidden territory beyond the next block. We will cross the street, open the drawer, even go into the woods alone. You’d think it would change once we become “grown ups,” but it doesn’t. We knock down the locked doors, sometimes seemingly against our own will.
Summers in Utopia... as Ever, the Lake
Our memories never seem to move in nice, predictable paths. Our minds wander, like willful children determined to explore the forbidden territory beyond the next block. We will cross the street, open the drawer, even go into the woods alone. You’d think it would change once we become “grown ups,” but it doesn’t. We knock down the locked doors, sometimes seemingly against our own will.
I see the endless, island beach days -- white bright and singing throughout my childhood. And yet I see the inside of my father’s closet, smell his cologne. I feel the floor and ceiling nearly meeting at the back, where it narrows, floor reaching up, ceiling bending low. I am small enough to fit in the one safe spot, curled into a ball, silent, waiting.
I hear my brother's cries. I hear him call, “Jetty, run and hide!”
I hear my brother's cries. I hear him call, “Jetty, run and hide!”
No one can find me here because I’m the smallest; but, like a bull, Jim has been distracted by the nearest moving object, Jack. I stare into the safe and fragrant dark, even now.
But then I blink, and I see the white pine boughs kissing The Lake. The water laughing with sparkles in wind-driven sunlight. I first learned the word “diaphanous” there. Until Mommy told me that word, I had none to describe what I saw. So white-bright, it could blot out the darkness of "regular" life at home. There were no dark corners in my summers; my soul danced bare, shining, and safe.
Who gets to spend summers in Utopia? I did. And it shines as brightly through fifty-eight summers, today.
Even Jimmy lost the darkness, had others to distract him. Or perhaps, even he rediscovered innocence there, from time to time. I know that Jim never went to the Lake; only Jimmy.
***
When I was newly five, one July, I was really busy when Mom wanted to go home for our lunch break. It probably was only about 11:30 or so, but Mommy really didn't like the noonday sun. She'd take us home and, unless I stayed with Judy the way I normally did, I wouldn't get back to the beach until after 2:00. And this particular day, Jude was visiting relatives at some beach by the sea somewhere.
I was building a sandcastle at the time and Jim and two of his girlfriends were helping me. They were really helping, not teasing--Jimmy never played with me and I liked it. Jack had been with other kids and wanted to go home, but I did not.
"Mom, I'll bring her home by 1:00, okay? Let her finish the castle."
Mom left her watch with him and we finished our castle. It was BEAUTIFUL, with two moats and a driftwood drawbridge. Jimmy and the others built a breakwater so the 1:00 Mount Washington cruise ship run would not ruin it with its waves. We left at 12:35 because he even accounted for my five-year-old legs vs his ten-year-old ones. I was missing a flip-flop. Jimmy weighed late vs a lost shoe, and decided late was worse.
I was upset, but he said, "Oh, forget about that. Ma won't mind. You can't remember everything at five anyway."
We got to the top of the beach entrance and Jimmy stopped cold. They'd paved the road while we were playing. The new tar was steaming in the heat, and he looked at my tiny foot. At home, he would have relished watching me have to put my bare foot on the hot pavement, smiled at the pain, and then would have stopped just short of letting my feet blister.
Lake Jimmy? He simply said, "Well. I guess I better carry you, huh. I can't let that little foot burn."
I said, "I can walk. I'm big." But he laughed and grabbed me up onto his shoulders as if I were a twig. About halfway home, though, there was a grassy island for the stop sign at the bottom of the last hill, and he put me down. He was nervous because it was 1:00, and we were still ten minutes from home. I couldn't tell time, but I knew that the little hand was on the one and knew just enough.
My brother's face was bright red. "I'll hop on one foot for a while, Jimmy."
And I did. And I'd hop to a grassy yard, then walk a bit, and hop. But after four yards, he stopped me, smiled, and simply picked me up and had me hook my legs around his waist, then jogged with me on his back.
Mom was waiting for us. Apparently, they had paved AFTER she got home. She'd driven up and over the island, so she had not seen the pavers go past. She took a look at my foot, at my brother, and she said, "Jetty, WHERE IS YOUR FLIP FLOP?"
She was kind of angry at me. But Jimmy put me down and rested his hand on my hair. "Ma, we're hungry. Come on, it's just a flip flop. She's little."
Mommy kissed him, shook her head at me, and we went in to lunch.
But that's how he was in the summer. Lake Jimmy. I loved summers and I loved him that day.
Utopia. I spent summers in Utopia.
***
***
When I was newly five, one July, I was really busy when Mom wanted to go home for our lunch break. It probably was only about 11:30 or so, but Mommy really didn't like the noonday sun. She'd take us home and, unless I stayed with Judy the way I normally did, I wouldn't get back to the beach until after 2:00. And this particular day, Jude was visiting relatives at some beach by the sea somewhere.
I was building a sandcastle at the time and Jim and two of his girlfriends were helping me. They were really helping, not teasing--Jimmy never played with me and I liked it. Jack had been with other kids and wanted to go home, but I did not.
"Mom, I'll bring her home by 1:00, okay? Let her finish the castle."
Mom left her watch with him and we finished our castle. It was BEAUTIFUL, with two moats and a driftwood drawbridge. Jimmy and the others built a breakwater so the 1:00 Mount Washington cruise ship run would not ruin it with its waves. We left at 12:35 because he even accounted for my five-year-old legs vs his ten-year-old ones. I was missing a flip-flop. Jimmy weighed late vs a lost shoe, and decided late was worse.
I was upset, but he said, "Oh, forget about that. Ma won't mind. You can't remember everything at five anyway."
We got to the top of the beach entrance and Jimmy stopped cold. They'd paved the road while we were playing. The new tar was steaming in the heat, and he looked at my tiny foot. At home, he would have relished watching me have to put my bare foot on the hot pavement, smiled at the pain, and then would have stopped just short of letting my feet blister.
Lake Jimmy? He simply said, "Well. I guess I better carry you, huh. I can't let that little foot burn."
I said, "I can walk. I'm big." But he laughed and grabbed me up onto his shoulders as if I were a twig. About halfway home, though, there was a grassy island for the stop sign at the bottom of the last hill, and he put me down. He was nervous because it was 1:00, and we were still ten minutes from home. I couldn't tell time, but I knew that the little hand was on the one and knew just enough.
My brother's face was bright red. "I'll hop on one foot for a while, Jimmy."
And I did. And I'd hop to a grassy yard, then walk a bit, and hop. But after four yards, he stopped me, smiled, and simply picked me up and had me hook my legs around his waist, then jogged with me on his back.
Mom was waiting for us. Apparently, they had paved AFTER she got home. She'd driven up and over the island, so she had not seen the pavers go past. She took a look at my foot, at my brother, and she said, "Jetty, WHERE IS YOUR FLIP FLOP?"
She was kind of angry at me. But Jimmy put me down and rested his hand on my hair. "Ma, we're hungry. Come on, it's just a flip flop. She's little."
Mommy kissed him, shook her head at me, and we went in to lunch.
But that's how he was in the summer. Lake Jimmy. I loved summers and I loved him that day.
Utopia. I spent summers in Utopia.
***
Oh, the endless adventures, the magic of islands that turned to dragons and swept me to lands unknown. I watched fairies come to life. The giant Daddy Whales emerged beneath us, vaulting Judy and me into the sky, like baby dolphins. No, none of the rotting of our lives touched us at the Lake. I had Judy, and we all had communal parents, and tumbled about the Island like bear and wolf cubs.
There were family cookouts where all the station-wagoned families pooled food, love and nonsense. Evening games of Michigan Rummy in which my mom cleaned up. She would bid, staring with china doll, wide-open eyes around the table. Mrs. Claus with a dealer's visor and a mind like a computer. She’d stutter, feign innocence. And clean up.
Jacky and I never could understand how everyone could be that dumb about her. She was smarter than anyone there, except maybe her best friend Phi. (Fee) Phi spoke seven languages and was a world-famous anthropologist. She stood fully six feet, an Amazon. Classic features and a Jane Russell body. Hair in a French twist. Every man on the beach just stared, slack mouthed when Phi went for a swim. She and my mother played intellectual leap frog with the Sunday Times crossword, seeing who would complete it in pen first.
The birthplace for myths, if one chose to conceive. Rich. The freedom. That’s the thing. I was absolutely free there. Judy and I would meet by 9:00 and be together until supper time. Sometimes we’d see each other after supper, too. Taking turns running the half mile between our summer homes.
I never had to hide in the dark.
But the mind goes to the darkness anyway. I would dream images of dead mice in traps, feel a shove at the top of the stairs while safely tucked in bed, feel the blood on my legs, but will them away with the images of sun on water. The Lake taught me the art of forgetting. We learn to put it away, sometimes for years, these particular punctuation marks of pain, of terror too ugly to fix our gaze, too harsh for little hearts meant for fairyland and mythical battles where good always wins. My world had Medusa in the corners, and I learned the art of blindness. I learned the beauty of the sidelong glance, the ability to look away just before the monster appeared. Look away to the mountain that always steadied my gaze.
I ran to my spot by the bridge every morning before breakfast, starting when I was just seven, after first grade. I could walk down from the road, and sit on a rock, just hidden from view, and I would look off toward the Sandwich Mountains. They never changed; they never mocked my fears, nor laughed at my dreams of greatness. My mountain never left me alone. I would watch until the sun was high enough to make the fairies come, then I knew I had to go home.
Usually that was about 7:30. And by my third or fourth day there, the monsters did not bother even trying to come back. And summer began for real. I found the time and the room and the freedom to lock my closets and stuff the drawers full of whatever I could not bear. It was very hard work, but I was tenacious. I filled my days with adventures with my pirate/Merry Band/vagabond friends.
Maleness is not a prerequisite for a Mark Twain sort of summer.
It was the Season of Exile. The Reign of Terror of the Gang of Four: Judy, Marge, Geri and I were kicked out of, well, everywhere, pretty much. Pickle, Lily, Dinah, and... yes... I was Sewer. Those of you who know my last name, know it's a play on that. Judy and I felt we were kind of done in on that part, but, since we WERE the ring leaders, perhaps it was only fair.
Deep Sea Diving: Poisoning Our Parents
Pickle had lately discovered stuffed clams and had the idea that we could stuff mussels. We had also been mocking the t.v. show "Treasure Hunt" in which Lloyd Bridges deep sea dived every week and wrestled giant octopii, squids, terrorists, thieves, and sharks... and seemed to almost always narrowly escape a life-threatening case of something called "the bends." The best we could figure when we were littler was that they called it that because everyone was always bent over in agony and then they died. And it involved coming up for air too fast; you couldn't beat your air bubbles.
Lily required some assurance from our parents that diving off the raft for fresh water clams would not put us in mortal danger. Pickle and I were best at the diving anyway, having been tried by our fathers in the art of holding our breath and letting it out slowly.
We probably collected fifty. In the process, we found a couple of sunken ships and probably a billion dollars worth of doubloons. All in a day's work. I had just turned twelve, and Judy was due to turn. I was not keen on being a teenager ever, and was terrified of seventh grade, a new school and the great unknown. Fortunately, we four felt pretty much the same, except for Geri (Dinah). She was born boy-crazy, but she liked our games, too. That summer, especially.
Once we had the mussels, though, we realized that they needed cleaning, grinding and preparation. Pickle's Aunt Phi was a gourmet cook, so Pickle lifted one of her cookbooks for us to use, and absconded with the necessary spices. This was good, since we were headed for our kitchen. Grandma's cottage was the smallest place, but had the biggest kitchen. Her spices included salt, pepper, and... salt and pepper. Dad never met a seasoning he was comfortable with and Grandpa'd been no different.
We headed through the garage, slamming into the house with our six buckets of mussels and Grandma met us at the side door, barracading us from setting FOOT in the house until we'd cleaned the nasty things in the lake. That took us three hours. She was NOT easily satisfied; Dinah and Lily left before the job was done, with orders for us to call when the cooking began. Pickle and Sewer? My grandmother was not about to let us off.
Then we had to boil and open and gut and season and cook… we finished our works of art at 8 that night. Phi and Pickle's and Dinah's mothers were brave enough to try one and were violently ill for hours. On top of that, my grandmother’s kitchen was dripping in mussel juice. We spent the next morning scrubbing and were informed that her kitchen was off-limits, period. For life.
Hey, There, Little Red Riding Hood...
Another friend, Julie, was a year older. SHE got to take the enormous teak INBOARD boat out in the evening. We'd tear through dinner, Pickle, Dinah, and I, and head for their place. Lily wasn't allowed, usually. There is nothing like the sound of those old inboard motor boats. A comforting, low, gurgling sound. They rode low, smooth, and fast. Julie would take us flying out toward the Broads, the widest part of the lake. It was several miles, unobstructed by any of the Lakes couple of hundred islands. And usually, she'd cut the engine and we'd drift.
That night, we decided we would sing, or something approximating that. We lost track of the drifting, until we heard a little thunk, and the boat kissed THE WITCHES. The Witch Rocks, in July, barely broke the surface in the Broads. A nest of rocks there in the widest, deepest part of the Lake, they covered a surface of a a few hundred square yards, and were very clearly marked. But there we were, and Julie panicked.
Pickle and I grabbed the oars, and Dinah held a big old floodlight of a flashlight so we could push our way out of the mess. No harm done, but Julie still did not want to go home yet, so we anchored about halfway between her place and one of the islands straight across.
We sang, "OH. Sweet Pea. Wontcha dance with me. Wontcha, wontcha wontcha dance with Me-e-e-e." We were screaming byth etime we reached "Wontcha be my girl." Unfortunately, we then decided to follow with "She Loves You" and, finally, "Little Red Riding Hood." When we howled, to our horror, we saw lights go on on Governor's Island AND the other Island and, through the last of the daylight, heard versions of
"SHUT THE HELL UP!"
"Knock it OFF!"
"STOP!"
"I'm GONNA THROW UP!"
Then a voice that sounded like a familiar bass... "HOME! NOW!"
It was my dad. He was at Jude's house, which was not all that close to Julie's, we thought. Funny. When trouble hit, our names returned. We were cooked, parboiled, fried, and most definitely banned from Julie's boat. So was she. We were not allowed on a power boat ride through whole two weekends!
Betty Crocker, Redux...
Hey, There, Little Red Riding Hood...
Another friend, Julie, was a year older. SHE got to take the enormous teak INBOARD boat out in the evening. We'd tear through dinner, Pickle, Dinah, and I, and head for their place. Lily wasn't allowed, usually. There is nothing like the sound of those old inboard motor boats. A comforting, low, gurgling sound. They rode low, smooth, and fast. Julie would take us flying out toward the Broads, the widest part of the lake. It was several miles, unobstructed by any of the Lakes couple of hundred islands. And usually, she'd cut the engine and we'd drift.
That night, we decided we would sing, or something approximating that. We lost track of the drifting, until we heard a little thunk, and the boat kissed THE WITCHES. The Witch Rocks, in July, barely broke the surface in the Broads. A nest of rocks there in the widest, deepest part of the Lake, they covered a surface of a a few hundred square yards, and were very clearly marked. But there we were, and Julie panicked.
Pickle and I grabbed the oars, and Dinah held a big old floodlight of a flashlight so we could push our way out of the mess. No harm done, but Julie still did not want to go home yet, so we anchored about halfway between her place and one of the islands straight across.
We sang, "OH. Sweet Pea. Wontcha dance with me. Wontcha, wontcha wontcha dance with Me-e-e-e." We were screaming byth etime we reached "Wontcha be my girl." Unfortunately, we then decided to follow with "She Loves You" and, finally, "Little Red Riding Hood." When we howled, to our horror, we saw lights go on on Governor's Island AND the other Island and, through the last of the daylight, heard versions of
"SHUT THE HELL UP!"
"Knock it OFF!"
"STOP!"
"I'm GONNA THROW UP!"
Then a voice that sounded like a familiar bass... "HOME! NOW!"
It was my dad. He was at Jude's house, which was not all that close to Julie's, we thought. Funny. When trouble hit, our names returned. We were cooked, parboiled, fried, and most definitely banned from Julie's boat. So was she. We were not allowed on a power boat ride through whole two weekends!
Betty Crocker, Redux...
So we moved on to blueberry muffins. We snuck up to old Mr. D’s hill at about 6:00 a.m. about four days later, and began picking blueberries. I mean, his property must have gone up a quarter mile to the house, and it was nothing but blueberries. We picked really fast, and I don't think we laughed more than about four or five times at the retelling of my father's puns. Mr. D. came barreling out at about 8 yelling at us and we took off. He called us each by our name and told us that he would loose the dogs on us if we ever even walked BY his house again. Right.
I said to Pickle, "Yeah, like there's a law against walking? Like he could ever eat even a tenth of those berries or--"
I shut up because I heard barking then and we RAN all the way to the top of the beach road, where we quickly ducked into the bushes, just in case, and checked our stash.
Even after spilling about a quarter of them, when we combined our take, we realized we had enough berries to feed all our families! And I mean, after all, even we couldn't poison anyone with muffins.
Now Lily was one of eleven kids (no lie), I was one of four, and Pickle's family had Dinah's family AND Phi. We’re talking serious numbers of muffins, but since all of our homes were entertainment centers, there were serious numbers of muffin tins as well. Lily’s house had two ovens, so that was our natural destination. We each robbed our respective cottages of all the muffin tins and set to work. Scratch muffins, so we had to cadge flour and eggs from each home, too. We figured we'd be done before anyone noticed anything was done. How we thought that a couple dozen eggs, eight cups of milk and five pounds of flour, give or take would not be missed eludes me now. We were normally considered intelligent...
I said to Pickle, "Yeah, like there's a law against walking? Like he could ever eat even a tenth of those berries or--"
I shut up because I heard barking then and we RAN all the way to the top of the beach road, where we quickly ducked into the bushes, just in case, and checked our stash.
Even after spilling about a quarter of them, when we combined our take, we realized we had enough berries to feed all our families! And I mean, after all, even we couldn't poison anyone with muffins.
Now Lily was one of eleven kids (no lie), I was one of four, and Pickle's family had Dinah's family AND Phi. We’re talking serious numbers of muffins, but since all of our homes were entertainment centers, there were serious numbers of muffin tins as well. Lily’s house had two ovens, so that was our natural destination. We each robbed our respective cottages of all the muffin tins and set to work. Scratch muffins, so we had to cadge flour and eggs from each home, too. We figured we'd be done before anyone noticed anything was done. How we thought that a couple dozen eggs, eight cups of milk and five pounds of flour, give or take would not be missed eludes me now. We were normally considered intelligent...
Furthermore, we didn’t ask. We took. We were invincible.
We marched down the road with our haul, chanting, "Pickle. Lily. DinaaaahhhhSEWER!"
Lily's Mom had gone out with the three littlest kids to the library and store. She'd be gone forever. The older ones were working. And really, who cared about the two boys who were left? They went off on their bikes with candy bar bribes in their pockets. We would surprise everyone and all our sins would be forgiven.
Muffins. We wanted them to be generous sized, so we filled the cups accordingly. We couldn’t find liners, so we greased the cups. Have you ever greased twelve dozen muffin cups? The last fifty or so don’t get as much. When we carved out the centers of the muffins, about eighty were really very nearly presentable. It took us two and a half hours to clean the tins, though. And there was a matter of batter drippings between stove and counter. Lily's dad was not pleased... And it turns out we used up the milk and, Jude's mom had planned on using the eggs for an angel food cake and...
After all of us were over our three-day grounding for taking stuff, we decided we’d had enough of domesticity.
We're Bloody Buccaneers.. UGH.
And Each a Murderous Crook... UGH. (Adventure on the High Seas)
It was time to explore the frontiers beyond the island, sail off to the distant shore. Or row.
Row to Timber Island, to be precise. How far could it be? And there were four of us. We’d just go on a calm morning. Leave a note that we’d be home after lunch. Hadn’t we all been taught to tip a boat and tread water for half an hour? Pickle and I brought the food this time. Veri-Thin® Pretzel sticks, white seedless grapes, eight cans of soda, half a package of Oreos® and some Viking® Doughnuts. (Those were the days of the Viking® Bakery delivery truck and the milkman, going to the laundromat, and grocery day and such. TV at the cottages was superfluous.) Life was good.
A perfectly flat lake at 6:45, a large aluminum rowboat and we were gone.
It’s about a mile to Mark or Timber Island. It didn’t feel too bad then, but the lake was flat and we took turns, rowing in pairs. (though Pickle and I seemed always to be part of the pair) But Dinah was company and it was Lily's boat. Seemed fair, and Pickle and I had our rhythm in all things anyway. We sang the Pirate song from the Musical Peter Pan. It helped us keep time with the strokes. Especially the "yo ho's."
We're Bloody Buccaneers.. UGH.
And Each a Murderous Crook... UGH. (Adventure on the High Seas)
It was time to explore the frontiers beyond the island, sail off to the distant shore. Or row.
Row to Timber Island, to be precise. How far could it be? And there were four of us. We’d just go on a calm morning. Leave a note that we’d be home after lunch. Hadn’t we all been taught to tip a boat and tread water for half an hour? Pickle and I brought the food this time. Veri-Thin® Pretzel sticks, white seedless grapes, eight cans of soda, half a package of Oreos® and some Viking® Doughnuts. (Those were the days of the Viking® Bakery delivery truck and the milkman, going to the laundromat, and grocery day and such. TV at the cottages was superfluous.) Life was good.
A perfectly flat lake at 6:45, a large aluminum rowboat and we were gone.
It’s about a mile to Mark or Timber Island. It didn’t feel too bad then, but the lake was flat and we took turns, rowing in pairs. (though Pickle and I seemed always to be part of the pair) But Dinah was company and it was Lily's boat. Seemed fair, and Pickle and I had our rhythm in all things anyway. We sang the Pirate song from the Musical Peter Pan. It helped us keep time with the strokes. Especially the "yo ho's."
When we got to the cove, the romance began to die. There was nowhere to land and the island seemed a mass of dense undergrowth and granite. Huckleberry and blueberry bushes, sumac. Rocks. We rowed halfway around the island and found a small, bug infested beach.
“What are we, sissies?” Pickle growled.
Inside, I said, 'Uh, yeah. I hate bugs.'
But I got out. Pickle and Lily forged ahead and stepped into a ground wasps nest. They each got stung only about twice, but that was enough for some pretty mean pain, so we ran for the boat. The wasps were slow, thank God. We were not. Pickle and Lily then looped their legs over the boat to soak their bitten ankles and calves as we rowed away. I spotted another cove and this one seemed better. There was a breeze, so there weren’t the bugs, and there were huge flat rocks to stand on. The boat kathunked against one, but it was metal. No cause for alarm. We pulled the boat onto one of the rocks by the shore and waded in. We made mudpacks for the stings and we had our lunch, splashed around, sang loud obnoxious songs…
It was curiously dark before we’d finished the pretzels or the cookies.
“Damn! Thunderstorm!” Jude looked at me. Suddenly, we were just ourselves again.
We did not care to remember her father’s words or my grandfather’s. The words you live by in the summer at The Lake among the mountains. When the lake is flat until eight, there will be trouble in the afternoon. There were whitecaps and the water was molten lead.
We threw the food in the bottom of the boat, in a tangle with our sneakers and shoved off. About 100 strokes out from the island we felt the water at our feet. There was a leak.
“You bail, I’ll row!” Judy yelled.
“No, Jude, move over and we’ll both row while they bail,” I said. We rowed and rowed, getting nowhere of significance.
Then Geri screamed. “OH MY GOD! WORMS!”
All over the bottom of the boat, were puffy, horrible white worms wriggling. About three inches long. Everywhere. It was a total infestation. All we could think was somehow or other, they'd got on while we were beached. It was disgusting, but there was nothing for it.
“Shut up and keep bailing!”
The waves got bigger, the sky got darker and we went absolutely nowhere after less than half a mile. Then the thunder came.
We were four idiots in a leaky metal rowboat in the middle of a lake with a thunderstorm bearing down and a boat full of worms.
Then we saw it. A police cruiser. To our absolute mortification and total relief, we were rescued.
The waves got bigger, the sky got darker and we went absolutely nowhere after less than half a mile. Then the thunder came.
We were four idiots in a leaky metal rowboat in the middle of a lake with a thunderstorm bearing down and a boat full of worms.
Then we saw it. A police cruiser. To our absolute mortification and total relief, we were rescued.
Summarily ordered on board, the two officers could do nothing but shake their heads in disgust. When Judy said her name, they knew where she lived and we were quickly deposited on Judy’s dock, leaky boat in tow.
Ted was there, waiting for his daughter, for us all, his 6’4” enormous frame clearly visible from a quarter of a mile away. I snuck a look at the police and they were smiling, rather sinisterly, I thought.
One said, "We've come to deposit your girls here. We couldn't find an arrestable offense called terminal stupidity, so here you go, Ted. Good luck with them." (Ted knew everyone. I mean everyone. And anyone he didn't know, Mommy knew. We were toast.)
We tried to explain, which was pathetic, really. All that came out was, “Adventure … we were explorers … we know how to swim … boat leaked and stung by wasps and didn’t see the storm worms everywhere.”
“Worms?” Ted asked. It was the only comment he felt warranted attention. The rest was meaningless static. “What do you mean worms everywhere?”
Eager to distract him from the inevitable lecture and further grounding, we led him to the boat. He looked at the boat, then back to us, then back to the boat. He bent over and picked something up, then turned around.
“Worms,” he said, as he held up a now empty box of pretzel sticks.
***
We pretty much went back to playing tennis and swimming to the raft after that for summer excitement. After another week's grounding. I mean, we could play on the beach for an hour in the morning, then we had to go to our own homes, and got sprung maybe another hour in the afternoon. I got really good at Canasta and read To Kill a Mockingbird for the first time. This was when I decided to grow up to be a southern writer, and my mom informed me that this was not likely to happen, considering I was a Yankee.
Great. It had only been a year and a half since she'd told me I could never be a linebacker for the New York Giants.
I moped around for at least a day, until I discovered Lad, a Dog and, my favorite, Wolf. And Grandma's books from childhood. Judy said she started reading all the books on the shelf beside her mother's chair. When we each wound up telling our parents that we didn't know why people hated grounding, I think they gave up on us entirely.
***
What I hold onto is how bright the summer was. That summer before teenagehood, I had already put all the horrors of rape and torture in a locked vault, covered with Utopian New Hampshire days. It was the last summer of holding onto childhood, but the first summer I latched onto a brand new dream of becoming a Writer. Judy and I felt destiny called. No. DESTINY called. There were no lower case moments that summer.
I think we each created our own adventures there, creating our own versions of Heaven and haven, even Jimmy. He found his own freedom, too, perhaps, when he was there. I never knew what his prison was. I only knew my own.
Great. It had only been a year and a half since she'd told me I could never be a linebacker for the New York Giants.
I moped around for at least a day, until I discovered Lad, a Dog and, my favorite, Wolf. And Grandma's books from childhood. Judy said she started reading all the books on the shelf beside her mother's chair. When we each wound up telling our parents that we didn't know why people hated grounding, I think they gave up on us entirely.
***
What I hold onto is how bright the summer was. That summer before teenagehood, I had already put all the horrors of rape and torture in a locked vault, covered with Utopian New Hampshire days. It was the last summer of holding onto childhood, but the first summer I latched onto a brand new dream of becoming a Writer. Judy and I felt destiny called. No. DESTINY called. There were no lower case moments that summer.
I think we each created our own adventures there, creating our own versions of Heaven and haven, even Jimmy. He found his own freedom, too, perhaps, when he was there. I never knew what his prison was. I only knew my own.
And at the Lake, I broke free and flew.
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