Memory, Memoir and ... Just a Bunch of Rambling

I realize I've gone longer than I want to without posting. Why? I have been working on a new post and I want to cut some of it, and I have needed to let it percolate a bit.

On the other hand, I always find it interesting reading about the process of writers or artists of any medium. I include the "practical" arts, making little distinction among artisans, artists, writers, what have you. I mean there are cooks/chefs who are artists in my book. ANY time engaging in the creative process is a  large and important part of a person's life, I feel artist is good generic word. I so often see that the process is very much the same. We are inspired to create and we start to act on that inspiration. Sometimes we get all tangled up and must start again. Or we must "edit" our finished product, or it can change along the way. Potters, quilters, cooks who stray from recipes, writers, painters, photographers, metalworkers, sculptors--you name it. I call it art.

I learn from the process as described by others.  I feel less alone. And I feel supported just by reading how other people wind up changing their focus smack in the middle of a project!

But, all this remembering is sure getting in the way of this memoir-writing stuff! It's a total pain in the hoo-hah, I can tell you.

As I started to look at my 300 pages (no exaggeration there) of memoir material and began to choose material where my mother and our relationship were more of a focus, well, then my dad leaped out and said, "GAWDAMMIT! I have something to say." He will not brook SHUT UP from anyone--it was true in life and quite clearly is true from the Great Beyond.

The Demon Was a Boy... Darn it all
And now? Much to my confusion and sometimes distress, the humanity of brother Jim is leaping into my brain. This is hard, yet necessary. It is not so much that I blocked those memories, but for years I had to focus on what I had blocked and simply put them aside.  Now HE won't shut up, either.

The theme broadens then, and I wonder what I want to say and I wonder whether my story will have meaning beyond an interesting read. I find it presumptuous to begin a project and feel that MY handling of life would be any kind of inspiration to follow. Yet what I still find miraculous is the mind that tucks so many wondrous memories in with the horrors, when I blocked out the pain so long ago. It's as if I wrapped the pain up in a whole lot of packing paper, but tucked prisms in there along with each horrific memory. And as I try to figure out where to put the one who was most monstrous, damn it all... turns out that, yes, he was just a baby once upon a time. And a small boy. And a ten-year-old who practically carried his little sister home one day, so she would not burn her bare foot on hot tar. And a teenager capable of showing me true tenderness.

And then, where two of the men start yelling, the third's not far behind.

Jack starts yelling at me, too. "Yo! Jetty. What about when we went to the lake with Feej and sang on the dock. And how I wouldn't let you go in the back room at The Depot when someone was singing up front. And what about when I thought I'd be a minister and you would not hang out the clothes ... and..." Yeah. Right. WhatEVER. So Jack had his dark side even when we were kids.

I look at all the stories, and, believe it or not, I have not told them all in here! I look at them and over and over what I see is a collection of people whose personalities themselves were rain forests of wondrous light and terrifying darkness.

I was the heroine of light, right? Not so much. Inconveniently, I remember my darkness as well.

And Our Heroine Had Her Demons, too  ... No Surprise, I'm Sure
When I was twelve, I was asked to baby sit for a teacher's little girl who was four. When I was there, I kept having images of pushing her down the stairs, of pushing her off a swing, of things that terrified me. I did not do anything to hurt her, but I told Mrs. Richardson that I felt I was too young to care for her little girl. She thanked me for my honesty. I cried through most of that night, believing I must be some sort of demon straight out of hell.  I refused to EVER baby sit through my teens. By my twenties, however, no such visions came to me in the presence of small children.

The lesson was there, though. And I had many demons of my own, biting at my heels. I was hell-bent to self-destruct off and on until at last I sought professional help. And I'm thinking that I cannot leave it out or the book will not state the truth. Truth, as opposed to the facts. Honesty without hiding, without leaving out what is not pretty about me, not just them. (I hate that. It is just so much nicer to stay aloof, to imply that I was pure. But that's also boring, so what the hell.)

So what is the thing I want to say? And do I need to know before I put it all together? The "books" say I should. The "experts" say I should be able to state my theme in a sentence or two--clearly, concisely.

And So It Goes...
And I say, probably I have to simply ramble and THEN see what route I wound up taking. AFTER that, the editing with a HATCHET will be needed.

Unless, of course, I change my mind!

There is something about the men in the house. The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost--those tee-shirts from Jim's girlfriend at the time. The women did not tend to speak up without risking the sarcasm of the Holy Ones. My mother took the brunt of the derision, and that is part of her pain, as well. My sister absented herself from most of the competitive bile from "the boys." She was judged by them, regardless.

I leaped in with both feet, mouth a-blaze, and held my own when I could. I learned to slice people to ribbons at an early age. It saved my skin in junior high, when I was so often the target at school.

Daddy said I came "out the chute going 'Oh, YEAH?' and never looked back." Interesting metaphor... Nevertheless he is right. And I have been struggling for a week with the new stuff that keeps gushing from deep inside, like a geyser from the middle of the sea.  And I am not sure but that this is the thing about it all.  My story reads like a novel. A sweeping southern saga with layer upon layer upon layer.

My mom told me I could NOT be a southern writer, which made me very angry. I was drawn to them. They could tell the scariest, most painful stories without ever losing the beauty of it all.

So I'll just dive in and see where it goes, for all my trying to find focus. I will allow the Carson McCullers and Harper Lee inside run wild.  Maybe there are two books in one. I have no clue. But you are all along for the ride, so ...

Now I will delete the old draft, because I've covered it all here! Undoubtedly, you'll read some of the story in here, but I know I have to keep some of it for the book now, not the blog. So I'll write about other things.

PS
I'm not looking for words of support or comfort. It isn't that. However,  if you all have some story of your process--preferably the part that makes you NUTS, that would be great! And by the way, long comments are ALWAYS welcome. And it can be all about you. That's fine with me. I learn from comments-- A LOT sometimes.

On Writing My Memoir

I am finding that some truly beautiful experiences are coming back to me, the more I write.  I find that my mother's sweetness knows no bounds, now that I remember the rest. That is such a gift, but I realize it is a gift I will need in order to address the worst of her. It was not liquor. It was psychotic breaks. And I am at a loss as to how to write of them, yet I will have to.

Writing ugly is not easy when you lived a life of oh-so-lovely denial. When I was in college I painted a picture of beauty about my home life, except for the fact that my mother drank. I did not speak of any dark times in childhood, however. My story with her always began in high school, out of thin air. All was beauty and magic, if you listened to me talk about my childhood. The only horrors were at school.

We do that. I also spoke of my relationship with my older brother as special and tragic. He was the whipping boy, the innocent too often blamed for everything. I was his defender. And I was, as it happens. Again, this is so often the case. I tutored him in French for all his high school years. He was fifteen and I was ten! It was after the rape, after he tried to sell me so he could by some "buck" shoes, like Pat Boone's. I had no memory of that. After all, by the time I was fifteen myself, I had turned instant burial into an artform. If the memory was not to my liking I simply denied its existence, like some reject factory part on an old-time conveyor belt.  I was afraid for him, and bought into the family line when the New York police were looking for him on drug charges. He was framed, my parents said. They got him to hide out in New Hampshire.

Every holiday season for three or four years, the police would stop by. It got so I would be the one to answer the door and invite them in for coffee or cookies. A standing "joke." Finally, when my brother as married and wanted to come out of hiding, my parents took him with their lawyer to New York and the charges were dropped. He was terrific at posing as a good, reformed family man.

Only he was guilty. And years later, I found out that Jim's discharge from the army was dishonorable. All those bouts of illness when we had not heard from him? The brink. He was court-martialed for bribing an officer.

My family, like so many others, simply acted on the premise that if you say everything is perfect often enough, then everyone will believe it to be so. This was never clearer than the years I tried to tell the truth about my mother, during high school. She primed the school with the "fact" that I was a liar, prone to fantasy. While that was not entirely false, it was not the truth when I tried to get help to deal with Mom. By then her bouts were every morning, before I went to school, and by the time I got home, she was often so drunk that she was barely conscious. Then she would, for no apparent reason, have several months of sobriety, just long enough for me to hope, but short enough for me to be wary at the same time.

I could not begin to look at the whole truth as I knew it, until it impacted my own children. Until I had to, to keep from repeating the tale in my own life's story, too.

Ugliness and great pain is an underpinning for our love story that has to run through the whole. I have spent a great deal of time writing of the many gifts she gave me, and that's the truth. And you know she drank, but sometimes we have to show not tell, as the cliché goes. I know that, too. The funny thing about moving beyond the pain to the beauty is that sometimes I just do not WANT to remember what happened! While this is not a bad thing at ALL in how I lead my life, it's not as good for the writing of the tale.

Mom wouldn't want me to leave it out. I know that for sure. In my core. In my soul. How do you tell the story of a small child, too young to bathe on her own? How do I relate the moving blur of the NOT Mommy face as she tipped my head beneath the surface to  rinse the shampoo out? I see her eyes go dead and cold just as the water closed over my own entirely. I see the moving glare of the light and feel myself struggle beneath her hands. I can feel the pain on my heel as I kicked and connected with porcelain, and feel the struggle not to breathe, feel the pain as the light grew dim.

Suddenly I am sitting and I hear the sucking as she pulls me out too quickly and  she misjudges and my head just catches the faucet. I see the pink creep through the water as I cough and cough forever, and I hear my mother. "Oh, my GOD, oh NO, oh, NO! Oh, GOD. My Jetty, oh, NO! I'm so sorry!"

She is crying and pulls me to her, but I pull back just a little, to see her eyes, but she is there. Her sweet sky eyes full of tears and she holds me and we cry.

And later she is in her chair, unable to speak, the bottle of amber on her table. Jean Ellen puts me to bed. Mother will not rise until too late for church on Sunday. Daddy is away on a "quick business trip." I remember Jean Ellen tucks me in and she has her worried puppy face. Her brow would pucker instead of wrinkle. She reads a long story and already the horror has dimmed, and all I know is my mother's eyes when she held me close to her.

***
That is the story, too. And it is every bit as much our story as the elves and the drinking and the summers and Christmases of joy. It is my story with her, and my ultimate joy that we had our truths with one another at the end.

And so I write it all for the first time. As I remember it. My truth, which I know was hers. Ironically, alcohol numbed her in a way that did not allow the psychotic breaks. She never raised a finger to us when she drank. She said most of her pain left her when she drank.

And what I feel at last is the pain I know as a mother myself, and how it must have felt when she snapped out of the break and saw what she had done. No one loved a daughter more than she loved me. She hated the monster she could not name, this illness no one could name back then. I know how hard she tried to fight it, to fight an illness over which she had no control at all. I know how much she hated herself.

As I move forward with the book, it is so hard to find the balance in the work. It hurts to write her dramatic and sometimes horrific failures. Yet without them, her magnificence and her strength are lessened. She succeeded more often than she failed, and I cannot under-value the strength she had, nor the toll her tortured life took on her most of all. So I try on the pain again, now strong enough so that it cannot stick any more. It cannot offer more pain, though it can scratch an old wound to discomfort.  I hold all her beauty on the other scale, and its weight is ten times the pain. The wound will not open; only the love.

How I miss her still.


***** DIFFERENT Note, for now: Please check out Waystation One, for 1/23/20122's poem

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Existence of elves, Revisited (July, 2009)

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

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

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

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

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

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

Me, around 2
in ecstasy over a feather

Flying Lessons: Proof of the Existence of Elves

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Precisely.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

The furniture had been moved and the bows were gone.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

Small Addendum

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

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

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

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

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

 'Tis I, Robin Hood!

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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


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

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

"Maid Marion, the Sheriff has gone!"

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

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

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

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

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

Brotherssong

A hole fills my heart where a childhood should breathe

 and a blood-dripping moon floods my dreams.

The bats start flying

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

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

 his hands in my night sprout to claws.

Then the bats start biting while my brother grins on

while the moon drips blood from his jaws.

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

a dead wind rattles at the door.

While the bats bite deeper and my other brother screams

the half moon's bleeding on the floor.

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

and Mother grows drunk on the tears.

While my father keeps reading and my brother grins on,

while my other brother withers with the years.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And we cried ...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Runaways to Red bank, NJ, Part II: Do I Look Like I Gottittagive?

 (I'd suggest reading Ruanways to Red Bank, NJ, Part I first. And maybe both of them when you have food and beverage to take you through. As always, I have run off at the pen. I can't help myself. My mind wanders, and I feel compelled to force you to wander, too.)

 Breakfast was silly. Truly. It was like the day Jean Ellen and I went shopping in Viana do Castelo, Portugal. At the shop with the gorgeous shawls, the shopkeeper realized we were the Americans and she just had to know about our country. First of all, you gotta understand that Europeans back then, who had not traveled could not at first grasp the size of the USA. Oh for Heaven's sake, until I went to New Mexico then California, neither could I.  I could simply pretend I did. The shopkeeper asked whether we had been to someplace called Mendocino, CA "in the recent."

We tried to explain that we'd never been and she looked confused. Apparently, in Italian, she asked my sister how we could have come to France and Portugal, but not been to all of our own country? I told Jean Ellen to tell her it would have been like their traveling to Moscow, it's so far. When Jean Ellen told her this, her eyes grew so wide I thought they would pop. Still, we managed to communicate in Italian, Spanish, French, and Portuguese. She put the closed sign on the door and we drew, laughed, talked  and finally understood that  her daughter was in Mendocino, and they had never been. I think that was the only store we got to that day in Viana.

All of this I tried to tell the Da Silva's, and they just wouldn't let me leave, plying me with more food than I'd eaten in a year. The Da Silvas were like that. The men who had long since gone off to fish, and this was their time; they sat down with me for their breakfast and plunked the baby in my lap, while a four-year-old named Stefan ran around then would come back and look up at me intently and kiss my knee. And one of the relatives had been to Viana do Castelo and seen Santa Luzia at night.  She understood completely what I meant about the magic. She was from Oporto.

I had ... ummm... ovos estralados (The non-accented first and third "s's pronounced with "SH") Fried eggs. It's all I could order in Portuguese and I told them I'd wanted to impress them. The rest of the time I said, in Portuguese, that I didn't speak it. This endeared me, so they only spoke in English, fluent or choppy. BOY, were they easy. We spoke of Portuguese embroidery and I told them I owned five shawls, and then we got to the men men--Portuguese men. We all blushed. Never mind. That's another blog, perhaps. When I am drunk. Oh. Wait. I don't drink any more. Still, another time, perhaps.  What we all recognized was that we had something to blush about.

I spent a completely carefree hour and a half. The baby slept, Stefen climbed on my lap, too, and I folded him a swan from the placemat. Life was good.

West Long Branch, N.J. -- a Shabby Sort of Heaven
It was just about 10:00 when I finally left in search of adventure. Naturally, they would take no money. My car headed south from Sea Bright, so I went with it.  Fifteen minutes later, there appeared the boardwalk of West Long Branch, calling loudly to me to the left. Partway down was an old diner, and some older men outside, lounging, drinking coffee and smoking cigars. This looked promising.

Having learned the joys of flying solo, I knew that grabbing a table two tables from the men, tucked away under the overhang, they would probably forget my existence within a minute and a half. One of the men looked like Burt Lancaster in Field of Dreams.  He was long, lean, wore a snappy vest over a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up. He was not in sneakers; no, indeed. He had on highly polished brown shoes that went with his cocoa pants and muted paisley vest. And he had on a jaunty cap. He had stepped directly out of the thirties, I think. And handsome, in the way that age cannot touch.

He tipped his cap to me, winked, and nodded. Yes, I blushed. I'm not the kind of woman anyone bothers with, really. Middle aged, heavy, with a pronounced and floppy limp. Still, for that moment I can tell you I was acutely aware that I was a woman being noticed.

His gaze shifted as a man about half his age began to become a bit agitated over something. "I'm tellin' ya, I ain't got it ta give, Lou."

Lou apparently didn't believe this, but I could tell only by his body language.  Burt's buddy, a stocky bull of a man, kind of snorted, jerking his head toward the younger pair. Even his smile was bullish. I thought of Rod Steiger in Oklahoma, playing Judd. No class, a little pathetic in his attempts to flirt--he smiled at me when Burt did, but it just wasn't the same--and the look of a man who probably had hairy toes and liked to stroke his own chest hairs when he was alone with a woman, as his brand of foreplay. (Maybe I've been alone too long. Oh, well. The women will know what I mean.)

The discussion clicked up a notch.  "Yeah, but Tony, I gotta have it," said Lou. "Ya told me you'd give it this week, and this week was last week."

"Yeah, but I DON'T GOTTITTAGIVE!" Tony turned to Burt. "Pop! Help me here. Lou, do I look like I gottit ta give? If I haddittagive I'd give it, but I DON"t Gotitta GIVE. Pop! Tell 'im."

Burt stretched his legs out straight in front of him, unrushed, unrattled, slowly crossing them at the ankles. He shrugged and clasped his hands behind his neck, "Lou. He don't gottitta give. Look at 'im. He don'tlook like he gottit, does he? No, he don't. But IF he haddittagive, he'd give it, yeah."

He turned to me suddenly. "Look at 'im. WhaddaYOU think?"

I could not stop myself. "He don't look like he gottitta give, but I think he'd give it if he hadditta give, but he don't got it. ... I think."

There was absolute silence for the longest three beats of my life. They all laughed, Burt stood up and bowed to me, then sat down again and motioned our waitress --whose name WAS, no lie, Bella. Furthermore, clearly she had forgotten to shave that morning so she had a stubble, and her slip showed below her uniform, but she also adored Burt. She came over with the coffee pot and said, "Breakfast's on him. Ain't he a doll?"

I nodded. But after I smiled at Burt, I looked down, and started to read like crazy. As I finished my coffee and fumbled for a tip, Burt began to sing some song that started "Just because you are mine, I love you..." I can't remember the rest, because Rod and he stood and sang in harmony to me, while Lou and Tony grinned.

I curtsied and ran to the car. I could hear them laughing, but it was the okay kind. And for once in my life, I didn't feel old and invisible.

Before I got in, still blushing, I turned to stare down the nine billion steps to the deserted, stony beach. Nope. Couldn't leave. I got out my camera, my backpack, and my photographer's vest. (It had come in handy shooting Pennsylvania holiday parades and festivals. People thought I was a reporter.) I gritted my teeth and headed down. I walked and walked. Then I walked. New Jersey was near the end of the process of eliminating stone breakwaters that had no gap from the buildings (usually hotels) to the sea. AS I said in my earlier post, their goal was to make every beach in the state accessible--no one could own the shore. Too bad Connecticut never followed suit.

Anyway, after an hour or so, I kicked off my shoes, took my journal out of my backpack, sat on a log and wrote. And I wrote. And then I wrote some more.  This photograph is the only tangible thing I have from that day.

It was somehow close to 4:00,  by the time I climbed back into my car, exhausted, in pain, and contented down to those sand-filled shoes. 'And,' I thought, 'I still have tomorrow!  That's it. I'll go to Red Bank tomorrow.'

Why Part 2 is delayed--a GOOD reason

I was distracted. TOTALLY distracted. I am about two/thirds done with a coral painting and I decided to give you my work in progress. As you all know I do not have a camera, and the original is about 18 by 22 inches. I had to scan it in seven sections, then tile and blend, and LORD. Anyway, here is a rough idea of what it looks like. Let's see if I can get this inserted properly.

Well, I am not sure how to insert the picture in the right place, but it doesn't matter. I want to put in a particularly lovely coral called a gorgonian fan. It is large, very lacy, and has distinct veining. I have some more subtle touches for othercoral as well, to get the soft coral contrast to hard coral, but perhaps you have an idea. The detailing is left out in some areas because I had to reduce the size of my file. Life with computers. Anyway,  I got so excited when I figured out how to get the effects I wanted that writing flew out of my mind. I bet you all understand.

Oh! There. I fixed it. Simple enough and good enough for my needs.

EXTRA NOTE about the pieced together scan: the water is different. It does not have the puffs effects, but, instead, looks like water instead of sky. The scan bothers me that way. I got tired of tiling in scans that ALL had different color intensities and the sea was just AWFUL in my scan, but i see that in trying to just throw sea in there, it's not right. Oh, well. I am writing this when three people have given me wonderful feedback on it, but it's bothered me since I made the document! Okay. Enough. AND, now I have the gorgonian fan corals on there, and have started placing "orange basslets"--a golden orange fish that is longer than it is wide. I may put a couple of the butterfly fish in it. By the way, the particular colors and corals were inspired by a picture of a Red Sea coral bank. Apparently they go nearly to the surface, and down as much as a thousand feet! Why I have the fascination, I don't know--the gardener I think.

In the meantime, back in "Runaways to redbank" mode....

You will be meeting the Da Silvas, who remain a cacophonous, marvelous blur, as well as a gentleman on the boardwalk who looked like Burt Lancaster in Field of Dreams, a buttoned up grandma with perfectly precise pixie haircut,  playing whiffle ball in her pleated skirt and blouse with the Peter Pan collar, a couple who found both me and my penchant for taking pictures of sand formations somewhat odd, and a furry gentleman from some country that borders the Mediterranean Sea, who thought I should spend my fiftieth birthday with him because he was just such a durned stud. I don't know... they FIND me. Plus, I'll throw in whatever flies into my brain. I am undoubtedly blurring my trips into one endless adventure, but I'm sure I really don't care. The incidents live as if they were yesterday's vacation. I doubt you all care, either.

I also started writing plans for running storytelling techniques for nonfiction workshops out of my home... early on I know I referred to my friend's book. I'll get to that another day as well. I don't want to make my fortune doing that... I think it would be fun, and I would like to have it be something that has the potential to be ongoing and pay me enough for the planning, the hosting and, well, thinking to do it. And I would not compete with published authors--it would be a discovery opportunity for all of us, perhaps. We'll see.

As you can see, though, I've not been absent because of some sort of relapse into morosity... I KNOW the word is "moroseness," but I prefer my word. I did, however, decide that my one big gift to myself from the back Disability money would be a GOOD recumbent bike. It is the one vigorous exercise I can do now, and when I can get to the gym, I really work at it, riding at levels 16-20 for a full 50 minutes. I love the adrenaline rush. Oh, hell, it seems ironic in the extreme that a woman with the heart of an Amazon was put into such a fragile body. On the other hand, I may just have the strongest back on the planet, to have withstood so much and STILL support me enough to keep walking... albeit a tad oddly at times, and not for long periods.

Non-Sequiturs R Us
I am rambling, aren't I. I have never been diagnosed with any sort of bipolar disorder, but I find, when I am truly myself, when my body gives me the most trouble, my mind gets manic. The painting I have included has been done in fifteen minute stints over the course of ten days, with only one day off... and I have probably painted 12-14 times a day, with breaks in between. PLUS I made a homemade shepherd's pie--cooking the lamb ahead, boning it then skimming off ALL fat, caramelizing vadelia onions in sherry and garlic with shitake mushrooms, layering the casserole, making mashed potatoes to put on top... it's a long process to do it the old-fashioned way my mom did, so it would never be greasy.

What else did I do? Tutor. But mostly paint, cook, draw up a little business plan and research and order my bike. Sorry I have not written, but ON to reading what YOU all have written. Did I say before how great it is to be back in here? I have an ongoing argument with a friend who just loathes computers. She feels that all connections that are made and remain online or virtual are not real. I've given up arguing but have told her that I'd have felt hopelessly cut off from the world without my computer. Blogging, to me, is the modern equivalent of old-fashioned letter-writing and correspondence friendships. We can do it all faster, and there are "social networking" venues and business networking venues. And there are blogs, which, for me, are satisfyingly rich and varied. Words from people who think and write differently from me--this is SO important. To think, to wake up, to learn. And if here and there someone has pretended to be from a country he or she is not from, oh, well.

That's all for today. No. Really. I promise.

Time, Memoir, and... I have absolutely NO clue what this is about!

I saw a Facebook thread which loosely talked about time. A friend said something to the effect that we might consider that the moment we experience as now holds many other moments in it. He was trying not to talk about past or future because thinking of time so linearly might not be the way to go. (Forgive me, David, if I have blown my paraphrase.)

I have no clue where his mind was running, but mine ran to memoir. To this blog and why I have schizophrenically included another. I may eliminate the blog, but fold the old entries into this. I am not sure. I was trying, at one point, to figure out where my past could end and my next path start--as if they were separate in any way! In fact, I think the point of the memoirs I love the most blur any sense of time, really. One writes in terms of events, of experiences and growth. We blur the sequencing in memory and often the details. And, truly, does that make one iota's worth of difference? I don't think so. We try to preserve the broader truths, and the enormous truths contained in details, but few of those have much to do with linear time.

Before I remembered events from childhood, I clung to a myth and to a bogglingly detailed memory of each school year, what I learned, who my teachers were, what the weather was. I had no gaps of time, I thought, because I knew the chronologies, events that surrounded the big events. I could reconstruct things in every year. It was the way I could surround the terror with detail and tell myself that I had nothing more to remember.

The healing came when I wrote the rest of the time line, in truth. What I called "Time line of Terror: Time line of Grace." In fact, I had HUGE gaps and blanks. I remembered almost nothing that happened in my home except at Christmas for probably ten years of my life. The trivia found its level, like water, filling in the cracks. So I had to let go of my ridiculous chronology by writing a different sort of chronology. There were not years listed. I had experiences, eras of pain without dates attached. On the left were the punctuation marks of pain in my life, and it was chillingly long, I thought, as I began. In fact I would not and should not subject readers to such a lengthy mess, I thought.

On the right, however, was a list easily four times as long. For every single atrocity I made myself list the graces that got me through. THAT was and remains the sheer wonder of my life.

I remembered the people, the Christmases, the little kindnesses and overwhelming love of some. I remembered silly events that made me laugh. My list of graces took up four times the space, but in numbers? I think they outnumbered the terrors six or seven to one. To me, to this four-year-old and eight-year-old heart, the graces were as tiny as a feather I found on a beach. They required little explanation.

What has this to do with time? I think that when I let go of worrying about what happened when, when I let go of this fear that I misremembered things, that I was not journalistic enough, the real growth began. Like Louise, these other pains held the yin/yang of my life. At every turn we can choose light/love/feeding life or the Other, whatever that is. Sometimes, if you are as lucky as I, you are given markers, nudges toward that love and forget to even LOOK at the other part of our circle. That's the thing; at every turn someone or other pointed me toward beauty.

I live on the edges of things. I've said that before. In the old days, Olympic skaters had to do compulsory exercises, one of which involved skating an eight on one blade over and over and over, repeating that same line. I think I aim toward that line in the yin/yang sign. I think I see life that way, and experience my own life that way. I want to skate on that edge, leaning on the side of the blade toward wonder and the things that feed our lives.

When I hit fifty I tasted my first fresh fig. Rivaled the pluot, I must say. It's not the time, it's the alliteration ...  It's not my brother's foot on my tiny hand as I tried to protect a trapped mouse when I was four --the foot coming down on the hand, murdering a mouse. It was the choice presented like a gift to me, to guard future mice in traps so no foot would ever again end their days. I sat by the mice in the traps and I sang to them.  It doesn't matter what happened before or after--it's the experience and what that teeny girl drew on to cope. Love. A gift. A gift that has never left me.

When I finish my book, I want it to be about flying and wonder,  and my true goal is take my readers on a joyous, if somewhat terrifyingly beautiful flight with me. And I want it to be abundantly clear that none of us is strong all by ourselves. Those of us who survive the most appalling abuse, who have had to cope with pain and perhaps overcome many odds--to say we were just not quitters, or that we were somehow better than... I think that teaches nothing. It simply makes those who are floundering feel less than... as if we do not ALL flounder at times? Oops. Time. That word.

I was taught to look for the magic, to expect to find it everywhere. I was taught that love is a gift we give and may receive. It is not an emotion and we do not take it from someone. I was taught that the lessons were in the giving more than the receiving; in the receiving we found joy and laughter and wonder, sure. But to give the love when it was not easy? My parents believed that this was what made it love.

How do I say, then, that my parents are gone when their voices live so clearly in my heart and mind? Where does that past end, when its lessons still live? I named the pain Louise. That was easy. Embracing my mother was easier after my time line. Over and OVER, even when she was the terror, she was the grace as well.

And she still is. Jack, Jean Ellen, Jessie, Daddy, Mom, so many people not walking on this earth live inside of me. The years are meaningless. In the act of writing I don't let go of the past; I hug it to me and reveal its power. In these last few months, what I see is that I have let go of WANTING it to be "in the past." I let go of wishing I were someone else.

I don't; I would rather have had my own life than another's. I do not think things happen for a reason. I think the free will lies in whether or not we stand up and decide to use the horrors to create beauty or to enrich life, or whether we choose to hold onto our identity as ACOAs, or "Survivors" or something that sets us apart from all humanity, from this earth. We choose to continue on paths of self-destruction or bit by bit, we learn to choose life. But I don't think God or Anything in particular sends us pain, abuse, abandonment, loss, or even hurricanes for a reason. Whatever God is, or whatever Energy feeds and sustains life? It sends the magic and the joy to find ways to ride or even fly out of and above the rest. It's what allows us the capacity to be a phoenix.

Mind you, I have not arrived on that Tibeten Mountain Top there, with the great Zen masters. Not hardly. I'm simply thinking that past, future, where I'm going, how I thought of the future as "starting over," it's all bunk. I start over one way or another every day... don't you?

Memoir is self-involved, but somehow or other, the best ones have reached to all who read them. We search for what we all can share, regardless of the "niceness" of our families. We take our little teeny lives and find what resonates, we HOPE. That's the goal anyway. To find something beyond the littleness of ONE life, to touch and perhaps help or support or validate other lives.

Of course, then we can eat a pluot or a fig and simply live in the joy of juice running down our chin, and to HELL with reaching for anything more.

And if you can make sense of any of this ramble, you are "a better man than I am Gunga Din," as my mother used to say. It was fun to write it anyway!

***
This is unedited or reviewed stream of consciousness dribble. I just need to make writing my habit once again!

Approaching the Pain, Keeping the Love

I am coming upon the end of my first year of this blog. And I want to say up front that there will be some  uncomfortably vivid entries about my life. The hints have been  here, a couple of stories ... memoir includes the ugly sometimes, if ugly is there. I do not live in the dark places, but those places made me myself as well. Surviving them and using the gifts of mother and sister, other brother and father--using those gifts of people at their best allowed me to fly out of the worst.

Anyway, I will not include those entries without caveat, so that those who would rather not read, who are used to my blog, have the choice to wait for a lighter day. Abuse is never pretty. Another blogger I follow pointed out the our past has only the weight we give it. I think of it in terms of power.  The things that no longer rule my nights, confuse my days, those things have no power left over me.  Now that I think about it, nor do they have weight.

Yet they are part of my truth, part of what has ripped me to shreds, part of why I was and am so determined to be whole, to love, to try to act out of love when it is hard to feel love, why I would prefer to slough off anger or bitterness as soon as I can honestly do it after being hurt or wronged. I do not always succeed particularly well, but I try and I'm getting better at it as I get older.

This Entry May be One of Those!  
I have no problem if people pass this over. I still have to write it, for my own sake, because I am a writer and because I think every person's story can offer comfort or hope or benefit to others.  I see that over and over in the blogs I follow--stories of HEALTHY families offer as many lessons, and offer me joy. I love reading about solid marriages and families that treat each other well. I do not assume there are dark secrets, or that other families are perfect. The voices of the writers and your visions are powerful, from wherever you come.

Enough. It is enough for now to alert you followers, for whom I am grateful. You all are giving my writer's voice a power I never knew I had in me.  If I want to write a memoir, I MUST be able to find a public voice for what is not pretty, and this blog is the place where I am finding that voice. Sometimes I may not do it as well as I want, but writing is a learning process. I hope to learn to tell fewer and fewer of the details, but still make it clear what happened. I want the living details to be about seriously flawed, yet remarkably human people bound by MORE than just their illnesses or pain.

***
"What doesn't kill us makes us strong." Perhaps, but sometimes I have wondered whether, I mean really, just how strong do people have to BE anyway? I never liked that statement. Sometimes one can wonder what the definition of "kill" is. Killing innocence does not necessarily make anyone strong. Plenty of people are strong without that. And sometimes those whatevers DO kill. Why should survival of the fittest include surviving what is unconscionable to most of our culture, to most of the world?

Yet I accept that, if we are given tools from somewhere within or without, withstanding enormous adversity has created remarkably strong people in some. I was given something very early on--a child's faith. God is Love. Why I got that at three, I'll never know, but I did. And I am so grateful. I have written of this. And that was my secret weapon against my brother Jim--I loved him out loud and it usually threw him so far off, he would stop... for a while. I loved my mom and it allowed me to see beyond her psychoses and ultimately opened the door to our closeness by the end--a reconciliation that my siblings never had with her.

I did not learn that all by myself. It was a gift given to me... probably BY my mom, when she was neither drunk nor psychotic.  I am surrounded by love for much of my life now. The phoenix women, laundry eagles. My sister's love wraps around me, all around me in my home and in my heart, as do my mother's, my father's, and my brother Jack's.

I survived. Sometimes the survivor of suburbia has survivor's guilt. Why did I get the gifts that my siblings did not? It's not an important question, nor even relevant. The fact is, I am here and I love life more than the others did. All I can do is hold onto that, to honor it, and to honor the two siblings who gave me the safety and the love to be here now, ready to start fresh. To tell the whole story to the best of my memory and ability, to include the music of their lives, not just the pain, is my only way to honor what they gave to me. I think their souls are worth revealing, and the stories worth the telling.

In the telling of these stories, I try to recreate them as I experienced them at the time.   I write them that way, but understand that I no longer have flashbacks. I no longer feel conflict about my family. There was a lot of work, therapy, pain--all of it. But now? Now there is sadness, sure, but  mostly there is love. And a deep-seeded appreciation for that rain forest of a family: lush or rotting, with little in between.  And for the exquisite beauty of each member when they were at their best. I may have gotten each person's worst at some point; I also got their best. In that, I think I was uniquely blessed among my siblings. I am not sure that any of the others got the absolute BEST from all five other family members.

It is a hard story, this story of my family. We take it in stride when we read The Prince of Tides because it's fiction. But, in real life, sometimes families hold the same horror and beauty, humor and meanness, kindness and cruelties--and over-the-top stories. We had no tiger. we had other things.

Onward to today's attempt.

***
I move to Robin Hood. My brother Jack.

My protector, when he was big enough to stave off Jim's attacks long enough for me to run and hide in my father's sloping closet, perched on the shelf at the back, wrapped in Old Spiced jackets with patches on their sleeves.  I would hear the muffled mysteries. "Whatever" did kill him, just slowly.  I watched alcohol kill him by inches, and he died at only 50.

The year before, he showed up at my house one early summer's  night. I had not seen him for three years, and he realized inside he was ill, and that his own pain had made him refuse to see his little sister who had been, for 23 years,  his best friend and confidante--until he got married. Then he cut me off and cut Jean Ellen off. Just like that. Boom.

I saw death in him that night... I had seen it in my father's and mother's eyes, and it was there in his that night. His skin was just beginning to be tinged with yellow. But his gentle spirit seemed to have returned, and he sat very near me, holding my hand. I tried to remember the last time he had done that.

***
The day my daughter died.

Jacky came from school and sat beside me. We did not know where her body was, how she had died, or even where she had died. We knew only that she had. Jack volunteered to go to Jessie's Mom's house and to go to the police station. I'd been given  no answers in calling, but, then, by that time, I had already called our senator's office to locate Jessie's Mom in el Salvador, tried to locate her father and his new wife off on a vacation, and had had to tell my son, on the phone, that his sister was dead, and arrange a flight for him to come. I was all out of practical.

That afternoon he sat with me, silent for ten minutes. Just as we had when we were children, we were face to face, and he leaned toward me and we rested our foreheads together a moment.

"I will find her." He left, and an hour later, he had found out all we needed to know for that time.

That night, her dad had come to give ME the news, having driven seven hundred miles to try to get to me first, and he and I had gone into my sister's living room to escape the twelve women who hated him for deserting me.  I'd had to tell HIM what had happened--he knew only that she was dead. The police had called to tell him to come home, she was dead, and had hung up! So I comforted him, to the disgust of my friends. I had had to tell her MOM what had happened--on the phone to el Salvador! EVERYONE came to me for answers, for comfort. Five kids came over to cry. But the women came, and they managed to flutter the rest away. When they, too, left, it was Jean Ellen, Nancy (her best friend and my non-related big sister) and me. We heard guitar music on the front porch. I walked out to Jack and he said, "Come out and set a while and we will sing each other to peace." He was NOT drunk, and Nancy took my sister up to her side of the house.

We sat outdoors,  with the nighttime cacophony of August insects, and we sang. I drifted off, and he began some familiar old riffs, then suddenly all was silent. My brother took me by the hand and walked me to my room, sat me on my bed, removed my shoes and tucked me in. I heard him play a while more, the sound drifting through the distance of three rooms and I finally slept.

He came to the funeral mean drunk, though. That afternoon he slurred, "You need anything more?"

"Not today, no. thank you. I'll call you if I need more."

"ONE day offer. You're just like Ma. Give one thing, you ask for it all."

My son said, "Jack, go home now." We looked at one another and Jay said, "I think he's next."

That had been the last time I saw my brother for three years. When I called at Christmas to get together, the response was, "Well, if nothing better comes up, maybe you could come over for a while." My sister and I declined the offer, tempting though it was. I moved to PA the following May, for two years. I sent Christmas and birthday cards from there, but apparently no one noticed. They sent joint cards to Jean Ellen and never looked at mine. I had sent them a note with the card, but it was thrown away.

***
The night he called to come over, it was because he'd heard from his best friend that I was back home after being in Pennsylvania for two years; Jack realized he'd never known I had left. It haunted him. He told me, "Jetty, I made the mistake of throwing out you and Jean Ellen because you both made me remember Jim, just because you are part of my family. I could not look at you without... without remembering things I hate."

"I've been a crappy brother to you since I got married, haven't I."

I looked him full in his impossibly deep brown eyes. "Yes, Jack, you have."

"Is it too late for me to be your brother now?"

"Never. You're Robin Hood and I'm Maid Marion."

The tears made his eyes shine in the dim light. I saw the hollows around them, that muted brown-gray of pain.
"You're not well, Jack."

"Well, no. It seems I'm more like Mom than you ever were or will be. It would seem I am drinking myself to death."

"You gonna stop?"

"Nope. Just some nights, like tonight. I go some weeks sometimes, when I feel like actually seeing my life. Which isn't all that much. But tonight I want to see."

He had my hand by then and I asked, "What is it you want to see?"

"Did Jimmy rape you?"

I said, "Yes, Jack."

"Was I in the house? How come I didn't stop it?"

"You were over at your friend's house, Jack. You weren't even there. Jim was there with Mom and me and Mom was, well. Drunk in her chair of course." The horrified laugh escaped us both.

But Jack was shaking now. "Well if I wasn't there, why do I remember? How come I KNOW?"

I said nothing for a while. We had never spoken of it. Well. We'd never had a conversation. "I'm not sure," I lied.

"Okay, did Daddy backhand Jim into a wall at dinner?"

"Yes Jacky."

Pause.

"Do you want to know more than that, Jack?"

Excruciating pause, and my brother began to shake. And he mouthed "not about that." No sound came out.

"HOW DO I KNOW WHAT JIMMY DID?"  He was in agony now. And then, "Did I rape you, too? Oh, GOD, did I do it, too?"

I looked at him, his fear palpable, his pain intense. He had been 21 and I just 19. He had been stumbling drunk and I'd run to his and Jean Ellen's place because Mom had been drinking and was rather more horrid than usual. Dad was "away on business" and I did not want to be alone with her.

Jack shared some more wine with me, and we were sitting together on the couch, watching tv.

"God, you know how gorgeous you are?" he'd said.

His tone was weird, but I simply said, "Yup." And he had his arm around me and I stood up. So did he, and he came at me and kissed me on the  mouth.

When I could pull away, he was touching my breasts and I smacked him. Then I shouted and smacked precisely,  "NOT"--smack--"YOU"-- smack-- "TOO!" Punch, right in the kisser.

With which he went, "huh?"And he tipped over like a felled tree onto the floor. I stood over him and screamed, "YOU are NOT JIM. YOU ARE NOT HIM!" And I left, humiliated, shocked, disgusted, hurt. But mostly inordinately sad.

But I was absolutely right.

He was not Jim. It never happened again and until that moment, I assumed it had happened in one of Jack's alcoholic blackouts. There, I was only partly right. But maybe that's the nature of blackouts--you remember dim images of the truth, but cannot sort it out.  I took both  his hands, and I turned to face him full in his horrified and pained face.  We tipped forward once more, foreheads touching, tears dropping into our laps. Robin Hood had come home and I did not have to lie or hedge.

I simply said, "No, Jack. Not you, too. You did not rape me." Something made me smile a little, and I added, "Honey, you are not our brother Jim. Nothing like our brother Jim.  And you never really came CLOSE."

He looked as if he wanted to say more, to respond to that crack in the door to come clean, to face that demon. He tried, but the words stuck. We were crying, those big tears that it seems only children have... silent tears. It was more than enough for me, so I did not ask for more.

I released one hand and sang, "Ride, ride, ride, won't you let it ride."

And he picked up his guitar, which he'd brought with him... the same guitar he'd brought to play outside my house, just for me. We moved outside and sang, as was our custom, from back in high school, on the hot summer nights when Mom was drunk, Dad was "away" and we needed the cool of a nearby lake and the peace of music. And our tears ran into the "Song of the Great Silke" and faded into the accompanying chorus of late spring tree frogs.

No brother loved a sister more. No sister misses a brother more. I missed him for those decades he could not face us, could not bear the memories that haunted him until he drank to go numb. I did not force him to remember what I, myself, had blocked for so long. His secrets and pain were not mine to expose.

 I had my brother again, if only for that year. I am alive because he was there to save me and to spare me pain he endured too many times. Robin Hood died; Maid Marion lives. That story is for another time.

I have to stop here for now. I have to listen to Judy Collins' Wildflowers CD and sing to him a spell.

***
It's a start.