Three Photos, an Old Poem, a Painting in my Brain...

... and another ramble from a memory.  In the seventies and early eighties, I had an "aunt and uncle" who built a dreamhouse on Cape Cod. Joy was actually my mom's first cousin, but they grew up around the corner from one another in New York (Flushing), so felt the relationship was more like sisters. She was about ten years younger than mom and we always thought of her as Aunt Joy. It was to her place in Paris my sister and I went during the summer of '74, when I was graduated from college.

My aunt designed and had built a wondrous home at the Cape, to which  my sister, my best friend G, and I would run for a joint birthday celebration of G's and mine. Joy was a gourmet cook and would make us fabulous meals. She was estranged from her daughter and I was the surrogate. Or so she said.

You know what? For now I will cut to the chase. Four years after I was married, she called one day and told us Jack's "Ship had come in." He was a brilliant man--ultimately part of the group that invented the early voice recognition for telephones. A computer scientist who put himself through school playing, as he called it "cocktail hour piano." He relocated from his position for ITT (Then) International to form his own research company and he said that he had sold at long last, one of his patents. Joy was ecstatic and immediately they called me and told me that I would never have to worry about Mark's and my kids' education again. They had a big dinner for all four of us kids and our children to tell us they were setting up college funds for the kids and were giving every adult in the group an income GIFT of $10k a year! To us, it was something.

And if I could not trust my surrogate parents, the aunt who had been there for me during my twenties, when my mom's drinking had overtaken her more than half the time, well...

And they called me especially, telling me that they were sending me fifteen thousand dollars to get a GOOD CAR and pay for the added auto insurance, title fees, etc. The check did not come, but they insisted there were glitches. In the meantime, I called G, who was newly out of law school, that she should plan on a vacation.

One of G's shots related to
where this ramble's headed

She and I were renting a place in New Hampshire to take a long dreamed of vacation together so she could have autumn shots of New Hampshire.  She had an affinity for shots in the mist, taken through foliage, and of reflections.  The Lake beckoned. I kept putting off getting the car, though, wisely thinking it was best to simply pay, not get a short-term loan. But I made our reservations.

Finally, Jack called and said, "I just mailed the check. Why don't you get the car."

Mark said, "Honey. Let's go get that car you picked out and just take the loan and pay it off in a few days. It's the only one on the lot."

We got it. It was the color of my skin when I got a tan. Back then I had only lately given up tanning...

I called Joy and told her, then drove to my folks' house later in the day so that they could see I no longer had the breakdown king of cars. The phone rang. My dad got off the phone.

"It was a lie. Jack was picked up by the police, drunk, trying to buy a gun and shoot himself. He didn't sell a thing. He refinanced their paid for house and made it look like they were rich. He is penniless."

And I had a car we could not pay for.

There is far more to that story, but that is enough. My parents helped us out. And my husband said that we would FIND THE MONEY and to just go on vacation.  We had lately found out that my dad was dying...

part of the image G gave me for my wall

G and I went and it was wonderful. I would park my brand new, comfy car, and she would get herself into contortions to take pictures. And in the course of our adventures, we found this One House Island (that may be our name for it) on, yes, Golden Pond.


 When we got home, of course, all hell broke loose for year after year after year, it seemed.

But along the way, I wrote poetry. I do not say it was good poetry, but it helped me.  And one night I dreamed an image, and the next day wrote a poem so that I would not forget.

The other shot she took

Dream Witch of Holderness
In the mist, a castle-cottage
Rising silent from the water
Like the Loch Ness Monster --
You startle.

Un-turreted, but towering;
Alone, on small island nestled,
Where no safe harbor welcomes --
Only rocks.

Does your dock draw up at night?

Does your long-necked, pine-crowned bough
(So still and silent serpent
Over now day-misted lake)
Snake further still in the dark?

Turning gently to its queen,
"Dear Sorceress within,"
Does it whispering to you ask
"Where do we wander tonight?"

Then silent as owl's flight,
Does my Innisfree arise,
Unfurling gold-scaled dragon wings,
And vanish?

Do you color these worlds I dream?


In my head I took the dock in the background and combined it with the memory of a giant fallen tree you cannot see from this angle. It snakes into the Lake a good ten feet, but it is from a direction where she could not get a decent picture. There rocks in the right background jutting out to the left.  G took many photos of misty still waters, brilliant foliage breaking through it. She has a painting I did based on her work hanging next to the two inspiration shots at her house, in fact. We used to be like that, working off of each other's art. The image in my head had more the mist of the first painting.

 I dreamed that poem once again. Last night. I have to work on it now. I don't know whether I yet have the skill for it, but I have to try. Eventually I will get it, I know. Plus I have to finish the painting "Snow on October Fire" too. This means I'll not be writing for a bit. Not long, but probably not more--except on comments, of course!  Joy died before Christmas. Jack's senility has made him kind... such a gentle surprise. Many difficult memories reside with these two as well--I may or may not write of them. But I remembered the Joy who was there for me, and tried for thirty-five years to find her again. She left when she lost that Cape House. She never came back...

But has so often been the case, out of a time of pain and turmoil, came nuggets of great beauty and wonder for me, and a simple children's poem, and an image that haunts me still. I had to wait until I could BEGIN to paint it, until I could feel Joy's death as LOSS, to find my way back to it again.

In Arnold's words, "Ah'll be Bahck."

PS
I just finished a sketch that has promise! Kinda excited now.

Spring and the Celebration of the Mother of Mother

I keep thinking that I have written about this subject before, but perhaps it was not here. I think it was probably to someone in an email, or for another project. If I have, I'm sorry, but the story as written here, probably has a different rhythm, and the details will have shifted in emphasis. The truth of my grandma remains the same. I miss her sometimes still, as her joy for simple pleasure reaches through the decades and grabs me by the heart.

The Seasonal Dance ©2009
Here it comes again,
When spring smells stronger than fear,
And familiar dampness spreads like wine through veins.
Here it comes.
Again.

The season of loving
kills sobbing, and shoving
the pains of loss into a drawer,
I taste the juice of spring, 
blasting death—through the greening of grass,
and the yellow of branches ready to burst
with a sun-filled cacophony of over-bright flowers
that will fall to substantial new growth.

Here it comes again,
When spring Heaven beats loneliness,
for the company of colors too noisy to tolerate gray.
Here it comes.
Again.

The dancing in gardens
of steaming up-turned earth,
with worms wriggling back to the dark,
I dance my own ritual to birth—
Through the smoothing of edges, and clearing of space 
around shoots fairly aching to breathe;
through the weeds that have crowded their colors too long;
I discard what we no longer need.

Here it comes again,
When spring trumpets louder than pain,
for this birth that defeats any winter’s worst freeze.
Here it comes.
Again.


I associate Spring with my mom and with her mom... And I know it's Fall, but there is something about feeling one is coming to life again. And perhaps I am.

Seems appropriate somehow to write about Grandam M., Mom's mom.  When I was little, Grandma did the coolest thing for Jack, me and our friends. I was probably about Eight. When she would come, she would take out her teeth AND her glass eye to show us, and tell us all about them. AFTER she put them back. Then she taught us "After the ball was over..."

She also took me on my first wildflower walk and for some reason, all I remember is that the field was full of vetch, which  I thought was a completely gross name for such a gorgeous violet flower. Vetch. She also used to buy Jackie and me toys at Wallach's grocer, the corner equivalent of Seven Eleven® back in the late fifties. Mr. Wallach, like our neighbors two doors over, had come to our country during WWII, and, while he was a little scary, he still knew all our names and what we liked best for candy, and when we'd come to the store looking for milk and bread. But Grandma would buy us stuff. My favorite was the plywood plane with the elastic-driven prop, and my very first kaleidoscope ever.

We cut home through the field and I kept falling into holes because I was busy  looking at the vetch through my toy. Grandma kept talking about daisies, Queen Anne's Lace, and "verdure." God forbid she said something like "all the green" or even "greenery." No. Verdure.

I once told her, "Grandma, you speak in crossword puzzle words."

"Yes, darling girl, I do. But isn't it more fun than just using the same old words all the time?"

I shrugged, but I kind of thought she was right. She and my  mom fought constantly. Dad said, "Jean, the truth is  Helen just isn't all that bright."

Mom would  hold her palms out and just go, "AAAAAAHHHHHRRRRRR."

My favorite fight was this one.  I have no idea what the fight was about, but my mom was in the kitchen and Grandma was at the table, eating her obligatory soda crackers in milk... this means it was around 3:00. I walked in from school, and I was around 12.  I had recently realized I'd outgrown Grandma, because she had been on and on about trains the last time I'd seen her. Mom had taken me with her to Grandma's little efficiency flat and she'd dragged me into her bedroom, shouting, "Darling GIRL! Look at this!"

I waited and waited. Suddenly, there was a train. Yes. A train went by. Her hands went up in our familiar gresture of delight, "Dighdy dighdy DOH!" She would sing her arms abover her head, twisting her hands and arms from the elbows. I could not figure out why she loved the trains, but I managed to go, "Yeah, Grandma, that's great!" while humming the Twilight Zone music in my head.

She did that, though, over her soda crackers and whenever we had string beans. I just didn't get the thrill, but that was Grandma.

I walked into this fight, however. And Mom went, "MOTHER! You KNOW I am right, why MUST you persist in arguing with me."

"JEAN. I am your MOTHER. I don't care whether or not I'm wrong. Even when I'm wrong, I'm RIGHT."

And she got up in all the mighty dignity her 4'10" allowed and stomped out of the room.

I stood there just looking at my mom, who stared, mouth agape, back at me, until we both started laughing so hard we had to cover our mouths.

But this was Grandma.

***
I grew back into her, though. When I was about 31, I went to see her in the nursing home, one town away from us. She was in a full-care facility by then, and was 92. Her one eye had little vision, she'd had a hip replacement, but was pretty well lame. I know she was in pain, but something had happened when she hit 85.

We'd thrown her a big party, and she turned to my mom at the banquet and said, "Dahling girl, everything else is just gravy. I think I better make up to you now, while I can."

I was sitting across from them, and I felt I was watching part of movie, shot through one of those hazy filters--the kind that used around movie stars before you could simply touch up their faces in editing... Everyone else seemed preoccupied with their own conversations. Mom was looking at Grandma with an expression close to shock.

"Mother, it's all right.  I know you--"
"No, Jean. It isn't all right. I've mistreated you your whole life, making you  not go to college, but sending your brother. Always fighting. Always angry with you. I love you. You're my Jeanie. My girl. Right now, today, I'm changing. Dahling girl, it's never too late as long as I'm breathing and I'm not going to do that to you any more."

My mother cried and grabbed her mom. And Grandma never fought with her again.  They had another nine years of something very special.

But I knew she was fragile seven years later, and I had an impulse to visit her one May, because it was lush everywhere, and because the lilacs were in bloom. I grabbed and armful from a neighbor's yard, because she called me her "lilac girl."

I found her in the rec room, bowling. Yes. Table bowling. I stood at a distance, while four people cheered her on, shouting, "Come on Helen. Just one pin. Come on, you can do it."

She missed the table, forget the pins, which sent her into "Dighdy, dighdy, DOH." And delighted laughter.

"Grandma," I said, thinking dementia was now hardcore. "What are you DOING? I thought you didn't like bowling anyway... and--"

"I HATE, bowling, Dahling girl, oh, LILACS! My lilac girl, oh, pretty."  And she handed them round and looked at my confused face, squinting her eye, trying to focus. "What's that you are wearing? Purple and blue. What a pretty blouse. Oh, dear, you just make my heart dance."

Now, really. Who gets to hear that from anyone? But I was on my one track. "So if you don't like bowling, why do you?"

She simply shook her head at me and said, "Because that's what they HAVE. They have bowling, so I bowl. I sure as hell am not going to sit in my room and die. They have bowling, I bowl. they have rhythm band, I clop.  They have ring toss, I toss."

She saw I was not smiling. She did not see the tears filling my eyes.

Suddenly, she whipped something out from underneath her lap robe. A large trophy. "Besides, where else could I get this!"

Engraved on a brass plaque,  no less, were the words, "World's worst bowler in the history of time"

And we laughed. She wanted to walk to the courtyard that day. This meant it was a very good day for her. Mostly she leaned on my arm, but since she was, by now about 4'8" and weighed only 85 pounds, it was no trouble. I don't think it would have been any trouble to me if she were twice her size.  She used her cane mostly to point out the flowers, daffodils, scilla, and a few peonies were coming out early. It was one of those springs that had come in a jumble, when suddenly the temperature jumped to 80 degrees for five days in a row, so the plants were confused. No gradual spring, this one. It was more like a Beethoven symphony--all the stops were pulled out. Or perhaps Vivaldi.

When I took her to her room, I helped her onto the bed and she asked that I open the drapes. Her roommate liked the dark, but she was home for an overnight. Grandma drank in the light, turning her hands in the warmth of the day. I sat beside her and something made me start to cry and I rested my head beside her there. I felt her hand stroking my hair, like a breeze, she was so gentle.

"My lilac girl, my little girl. Your mother ... she's  not lilacs. She's peonies. She is all bright colors and so ripe she cannot bear up under the weight of her beauty." I started at such a description. I didn't know Grandma knew my mother so well.

Then she sighed, and I looked up at her. She was crying herself. "Grandma? Are you all right?"

"Of course, dear. Of course. I'm old. You know I'll have to leave soon.  But the hardest thing of all? To leave all these colors. How can I leave all these bright shining colors behind?"

And this was Grandma.

***
If I am to be poor, if I am to live at the mercy of others' care, if I am to find that my world grows smaller before my time? I will do it like Grandma— with unbridled joy, and clinging to all the colors she saw through her one half-functioning eye. Her eye was the truest of any I have ever known.

Today is Better

Phoenix  © 1992, 2009
No room for desperation in the ruins of my heart;
I must be strong.
I am strong from my core that holds my infinite flame;
I have a flame.

It holds passions beyond desire.
Beyond ruins of tortured body,
I am more beautiful than Hippolyta;
I have the Amazon soul.

No room for desperation in this soul where burns my flame;
Only love.
From love born in faith in beauty beyond mirrors;
I see only light.

My soul has no need for mirrors.
It spreads joy,
without begging for a feeding of the flame.
My soul is no stranger to waiting;

It can dance by itself.

I am the patience of mountains;
with my flame, from my soul, I can wait.
I have seen this soul; it is worth the wait.
From the ruins it rises, whole.




Born July 25, 1992, She rises again, today.




I wrote this the day after I confronted my ex-husband about the fact that I had figured out that he was leaving me, not thinking about it.  He was busy running around fixing exterior lights.  I had asked him to go to the Home Depot to get an indoors ladder the day before. He fought me about it, saying I would kill myself on it. I looked at him and half-smiled, saying, "You won't though."

He came home without one, saying, "They didn't have any."  Our son was en route to Indiana, to go back to school. Jessie was still working, still home for another two weeks.

I went into the basement and saw him busy trying to fix something I'd asked him about for weeks--and replacing ALL the ceiling lights.  "Fixing the lights will not keep me all safe and Fine when you leave. You ARE leaving, right?"

He turned and blanched. He began to shake. "Yes."

"You had no intention to stay, to work on things."

"No. But I'm moving into Jay's room down here, so you can get acclimated."

"ACCLIMATED?" I screamed. Next to me was the Hoover Upright, Beats as It Sweeps. Mind you, I was fresh out of the hospital for my tenth round of back crap. I picked it up with one hand, and then with both, I THREW It at him.

He looked so surprised when he caught it.

That was the one moment of laughter in two months of hell, but laugh we did.

And then I went straight to a friend's house, with the words, "Be sure you've figured out where you are going to live when I com back." Not a problem, since he'd already  moved his girlfriend into her own apartment.

But I wrote this poem when I came home the next day. I turned some sort of a corner and was resolved. I felt I was stronger in my pinky finger, than he was in his whole being, and I started to plan. I enrolled in the classes I'd wanted, regardless of my circumstances.  I took steps to make sure I'd be okay for a while. I was determined to succeed, to fly despite the SOB.

And I did... I flew.

Yesterday was difficult, beyond words. Primarily I felt afraid of where I may wind up. Of whether I will find financial solutions in time. Of whether or not my latest DOWN-tick with my back will level off for some years. Afraid that the beginnings of an awakening for this woman's heart (Dormant for ten years, hiding for far longer) would fizzle into nothing again. Oh, hell. Fear is fear is fear.,

I was simply stone-cold, paralyzed with fear. I am not going to make it pretty or worry about the sound of that. It was numbing and horrible.

But by midnight, so much was better. So much. Words from friends. Words from a couple of readers. And some strange resolve inside. I found the poem at 2:00 a.m. This poem from another time, another era. Yet it has been something I have returned to at other times, the losses of Jessie, my nephew, my brother, two of my dearest friends, and my sister. When I have once before thought I would lose everything and a friend gave me enough of a lifeline to be able to breathe, to think.

I return to the Phoenix and Hippolyta. Rising from ashes, whole... and the strength of a mighty woman. I never longed to be a sylph, even when our image of  beauty was a model named Twiggy, all bone and eyes. Nope Not for me. I wanted to be STRONG. I wanted to stand tall, but be, most definitely, a woman.

I read this poem aloud, there in the dark, perhaps three times. Perhaps more. Don't know, don't care.

Today is better.

There are no answers today. All that has changed is me.  Perhaps that's all that needs to change.

About Forgiveness

So My Mother Died ©2004
When my mother died the eleven o'clock news said nothing.
The flag flew high at the post office.
My morning coffee still smelled good.
My kids still wanted their supper.
When my mother died the sun still found my prisms
And my Christmas cactus bloomed.
When my mother died the willows didn't weep real tears;
I did.

My mom was a miracle of a mom ... when she was not drunk and when psychosis was not her mistress. This means that most of the time, my mom was a miracle of a mom.

But to deny the depth of her darkness is to deny the depth of our love, the depth of both our strengths. I am not sure that forgiveness is about accepting that horrible things were done and we say it's okay. I am not sure but that real forgiveness lies in looking at the darkness full in the face and accepting that there were riches we gleaned from the very worst of the other person. That the person we want to forgive was, perhaps, a source of magic in part because of the darkness.

I start with two poems I wrote about my mother's pain and of my worst responses to it. When my mom was in a psychotic state, she was violent. She lost control. She would then, after the haze was lifted, remember... and drink to forget. There were three moms. Drunk mom, Mommy, and "Not mommy." She fought the psychosis with every fiber of her being, but sometimes she lost--rarely, in fact. Yet those times when she did lose the fight were horrific and terrifying. And it took me many, many years to understand just how much she worked to cage that. To kill it. I wrote this early on, when I was trying to understand, trying to put myself in her position and experience what her pain must have been.

Lion's Eye ©1985
Spring-tight tension, beyond my control
It watches without blinking,
Ready to attack; I'm held rooted, fixed by
The lion's eye.

Gold-brown, glittering mellow,
Colors of sun-dried grass,
Glints of blind-bright dancing water, my joy,
My lion's eye.

My child cries so close,
I refuse to hear, so hypnotized
By the dry-ice murdering beauty behind
My lion's eye.

Her fear encroaches,
I wrench free her bleeding hand
To loft my molten topaz, sacred cup,
This lion's eye.

Back-hand slap. There, she’s silent.
Amber-kissed lips parted,
I drink deep the warming flame from the lid of
The lion's eye.

Fangs pierce my soul without pain,
Claws rip my flesh without blood,
Blessed Southern silk-gold Comfort, sweetest love,
My lion's eye.

I loved her.

When I was little and climbed into her lap for comfort, when I was too small to understand that the vacant stare and amber drink meant stay away, I would find myself on the floor before I'd even found my comfy spot. I would sit, stunned, holding my hand to the burning spot on my cheek. I was lucky. I had my sister to whisk me away to her land of drawings and paper dolls and color wheels and asymmetry and other big words. I also had Mommy as herself 59 days out of 60, and, back then drunk Mommy only about 3 days out of 30. Yet you know something's amiss. You sensed that the house wasn't right, that always, always, there was an undercurrent, the possibility of an explosion. Maybe that's why Jean Ellen was always there, ready to soothe at just the right times.

It was not until I was around thirteen that I began to again sense, more than understand why it was that mother got very strange when our father went on his semi-annual business trips with his secretary. Or why my mother wanted the gift of the secretary's piano in the basement, where she never saw it; or why she left the house when Jean Ellen was given the blue convertible Marie had driven for so long.

I learned that my father was not faithful and early on, I learned to be variously angry with him for his arrogance and sleaziness and angry with her for "driving him away." Oh, the allure of the country western song. The drama of it all.

In college, she once crashed a party I was at. She humiliated me, called me names, rambled on about wanting my father to come home. I was furious, but something about her, after I'd brought her home and she let her hair down and danced in the moonlight. My heart opened. I did not understand to what, exactly. Not until my own loneliness in my marriage, in almost every relationship I ever knew, smacked me in the face. Not to ever feel pretty enough, smart enough... enough. Or to be told you are too smart, too attractive, too alive. All of them added up to a loneliness I saw in my mother.

I learned that she was a woman who was desperately alone, who loved people with every fiber of her being, never leaving enough to be able to love herself. She had subjugated her own dreams to my dad's. She had settled for less than she knew she could be, and she began, once I was out of the house, to kill herself a bit faster, to drink more and to do it more often. I left her alone.

Naturally.

Dervish of the Empty Nest ©2001
Mama dances all alone in the moonlight,
When Daddy doesn’t bother to lie,
Kickin’ off the saddle shoes, Lettin’ down her braids,
Waltzing with her bottle of Rye.

Mumbling to the boys from the college,
Prettiest faculty bride.
Young men tussled for a dance, for a twirl,
For a midday tumbledown ride.

Mama silhouetted by the starlight,
Round eyes lifted to the sky:
Dulled ears listening, straining for his footsteps,
While tears start their tumbledown slide.

She dances on, lonely in the moonlight,
Praying for my father to lie,
Barefoot and glowing; dervish in the dead night,
Whispering to her bottle of Rye.


I learned to see my mother as she really was, her wit, her compassion, her pain, her passionate love for my dad and the best of who he was, her imagination and her many talents. She was not her drinking. That was a sickness that ate her up and spit her out.

Perhaps the biggest thing to learn about forgiveness is that very often there is nothing to forgive; instead we accept the absolute humanity and we choose to love that and let all the rest fly away.

I did not understand my own poem until after my father died. In those two years, as my mother's drinking cycled so far out of control that I had to walk away from her entirely unless she got help, and, ironically, only then did I come to understand her. Thank God I did. I will always be grateful. My own stupidity, selfishness, struggles, and pain opened at last that enormous castle door I'd shut against her. Six months before she died, she got sober. Mom and I were able to talk, to connect, to be with one another in a way that none of the others were able to do. I don't know why; it doesn't matter.

Jetty got Mommy back. And the daughter got to know the woman at last.

Before she went into the hospital, before the liver failure killed her. we were sitting in her living room, sharing some iced tea. She was looking at some empty liquor bottles she had made my brother Jack and me leave there. We had not discussed that she was dying, though I knew it. I was the only child who had said to her that I knew this was so, and we had agreed to leave it alone. I was so sick of secrets, though, I had had to say that much. She was staring into an empty bourbon bottle and then looked at me, tears in her eyes.

"You know what really stinks now, Jetty? All this time I've worked so hard to kill myself? Well, now that I've actually gone and succeeded, turns out I really don't much want to die. Isn't that a kicker?"

I loved my mother. I love her so much my heart hurts. Isn't that a kicker?

Recalling My Jessica

Let's just say I gave birth to an eleven-year-old, but only after her mom let me. My stepdaughter's name was Jessica and her mom's name is Marilyn. Marilyn gratefully and gracefully allowed me to be a mom in the areas she knew she could not--so I got to have a daughter. The word stepdaughter from here on won't be used. Marilyn would agree; there was no STEP in our relationship.

I met her for the first time, when she was six, and huddled with her brother on top of a picnic table because of a BIG, black, scary dog. They were friends with other children I knew, back when I was the traveling surrogate aunt to all my friends' kids. I calmed down the dog and led him away and, for some strange reason, Jason, Jessie's brother, began calling me Santa Claus. Back then, I was not fat, nor particularly jolly. NEVER had a beard, not even now, at 58. But he liked calling me that. He was not yet 4.

Jessie had hair to her waist, and loved to run and to skate, her hair streaming like one of those banners behind a prop plane. "I am HERE!" her hair proclaimed. Most of the time, she was too shy to let people know she was there at all, except when crossed. Then her nimble brain came out in sarcasm and few kids crossed her more than once. The second time was to see whether the first was a fluke. I got her when she was hitting puberty. Some might think this was a mighty tough time to get a child. They would be right; yet Jessie didn't test me the way I've heard others test stepmoms.

The one time she tried to play her mother and me off one another ... Marilyn was picking up the kids from our apartment at dinner time, and I had made Jessica do a couple of chores. This was in the first months of marriage, and I was in a body cast. I needed help with things, and I was the primary caregiver most days. My ex-husband worked late from the first week we were married through that first year. I picked the kids up from school and sometimes fed them if Marilyn was late. This day, Jessie was annoyed that I had made her--dare I say it--empty the dishwasher.

She hugged her mother and was overly affectionate. Jessie's normal greeting was, "Yeah, Mom. I'll be ready in a minute," rather than, oh, say, "Hello." Today? "Oh, Mom, I missed you. I'm all ready."

She buried her head in her mom's body and Marilyn looked at me. I had a smirk plastered on my face. "Yes, she's ready. I made her empty the dishwasher."

Jessie came out for air, glaring at me. Marilyn took a step toward me and we looked at our child, together. She was so confident. "MOM. She makes me do chores. YOU would never do these things to me, right?"

I felt Marilyn's arm around my waist and I rested an arm on her shoulder. Jessie took her favorite pose. Hip out with a hand on it, the other hand behind her back. "Well. I can see THIS isn't gonna work at all!" And the smile broke across her face like dawn, and she giggled her way down the hall.

This was the thing about her. Her fears were enormous as was her anger. Yet she could find the humor as an escape almost all the time. Almost. We used to play "What's the worst that can happen?" with her fears, and it always end that she was homeless in the parking lot of K-Mart, without money for a Blue light special. And so it would end with us laughing.

When we had the "Feminine products" talk--that she would HAVE to learn to get them herself, and, to her absolute disgust, she realized that even grown women still felt a little ooky buying them from teenage boys, she said, "So growing up does NOT make all this stuff go away?"

I said, "No, we just learn to cope with it all better, that's all."

"Well THAT'S just peachy. What on earth is the point?"

"Beats me, Jess, but at least you won't be in it alone."

"In the words of my stepmother who shall remain nameless, BIG WHOOP." And she got out of my car to buy her first box of that which will not be named. I wrote this for her and left it on her bed a couple of nights later.

Jessica's Lullaby © May 5, 1989
Tears my heart, when cries her soul in the night:
Her tongue too loose
Too stiff her walk;
Her passion too slow
Too swift her mind;
Her courage too faint
Too stout her convictions.
All new woman feeling all wrong
In this wrong-feeling all new place;
Alone, afraid,
Hush.

Soothing words and enfolding arms,
Small comforts in her night:
Rest.
You are enough as yourself --
More than enough, though less than all,
A symphony in yourself,
Sleep.
Now stroke her hair and kiss her eyes: You are enough as yourself,
Dream.

Then rests her soul in the night,
With enfolding arms and soothing words.
But how long will comfort last
When she wakes to find nothing changed? Hush.
We are enough as ourselves,
Rest
Dream
Believe.

Jessie knocked on our door at about 1:00 a.m. the night she found that poem. I went into her room, and it was clear she'd been crying. She loved the poem, but there was something bothering her. (It seemed to me that Jessie had a law that nothing would hit her until after midnight.) I sat there and, as was our custom, I gathered her in my arms and rocked a while. Finally, she came out with it. "I can't seem to keep a grandpa and they are both dead now, and even my grandmas are dying."

My parents had died in 1987 and 1989. Her dad's dad had died in 1984. For some reason, it was getting to her. "What are they doing? Is there Heaven and if there is, maybe GRANDMA wouldn't mind flying around with a harp, but that would be kinda boring, right?"

"Well, what would their ideas of Heaven be?"

She thought and thought, then said, "Cards. First all three of them play and Grandma beats the pants off them both, but she gets bored and... she has a huge, enormous garden and she goes in it with the elves and a swing."

"Sounds about right. But the grandpas?"

She had an evil smile, that child. "Okay... The grandpas still play cards and tell very bad jokes to each other and Grandpa Jim tells Poppa stories that have no end, just lots of big words... and Poppa beats the pants off of HIM!"

We both loved that, because my dad had an ego the size of Milwaukee. But then Jessie took my hand and said, "But, you know, maybe Grandpa Jim LETS him win because, you know how they played with Jay and me every New Year's Eve? Grandpa let Jay win at least one game. I asked him why and he said, 'Because Jay's the littlest and I want him to like coming.' And I asked why did it matter so much and he said, 'Because you two are Heaven to me.' So... But we aren't in Heaven, so..." And then she cried more.

I said, "I don't know what Heaven is, but if there is any possibility for him to do it, my dad is seeing this and he's shaking his head at you and telling you, what?"

"None of this SCHMALTZY STUFF!"

Bits and pieces of my daughter. Her life. Her walk. Her gestures. They all seem profound now and so precious. I cling to them all and retell them in my head at night this time of year. Jessie talked backwards. She tried out for drill team FOUR times, until she finally made it. She was content to understudy for the musical and then got to be in it, finally, because a girl broke an ankle. She felt guilty being glad that she was in it. She wrote stories when she was eight, about Albert the Hippo who lived in a house on top of a flagpole, and whose mother would tuck him in after an adventure, and feed him chicken soup.

"As you may imagine, the climb up to home was not easy for a Hippo to make," she wrote.

She died when she was just 21. Her heart gave out from bulimia and alcoholism--she knew she had not licked the problems. She promised me to get help in September, but died in August. My amazing girl. My young woman so close to finding her niche in life, her reason to be.

Don't try to tell me she was not extraordinarily special. That her gestures and fears were just like those of other children. Oh, no. Don't try to say that Jessie was average in any way. Only superlatives fit our children. Period.

Mother and Child Reunion © August, 2005
Entering her empty room, I pause.
I hear her heart cry,
See her in her chair, long hair to one side
so she won’t catch it as she leans back,
arms bracing bridged body.
She struggles to retrieve a pencil from the floor,
Fully stretched, big toe reaching without leaving her seat.
Giggling, prehensile victory as she contorts,
Her knee pointed sideways, penciled foot chest high,
she grabs her prize,
looks up at me with tilted head and smiles.
“I guess now I’ll have to work,” she says,
More laugh than whine, and turns away.
I touch my chest at the dimming light of her hair,
Translucent image floating, still.
I reach.
I hear my heart scream.
“I guess now I’ll have to live,” I say,
More sob than sigh, and turn away.

My Jessie talked backwards, but she lived too full-tilt forward I think. There will never be enough superlatives to capture Jessie's heart.