what I know about myself is that the farther away I get from my truth the more obsessed I become with trying to control the small stuff- the stuff that shouldn't matter- the stuff they say you won't remember when you are dying- the stuff that we do to keep us from really facing the important stuff
I was always messy. I started one project before putting away the materials of another. I draped my clothes over chairs and beds. I slept in a bed with kitty fur, cookie crumbs and piles of papers.
i was okay with this until one day when i got the idea that external order trumped all else.
Staying busy straightening and cleaning is a way that I have avoided answering the questions that need to be answered.
Stay busy with repetitive chores is a way that I have kept myself in sort of a anesthetized state. repetitive chores give me an artificial sense of rightness about the way in which I am living my life.
And even as I participate in them the truer part of me knows that I am not getting away with anything. All I am doing is filling up time and space, so that I do not have to deal with what writer Suzaane Braun Levine calls "the fertile void"
I have lived a long time. I had a thirty-four year long career. When I left teaching, at first I felt as though I was a kid with a pockerful of nickels in a candy store.
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Friday, July 29, 2011
Her Blue Kitchen
if for one half hour I can
I go back to my grandmother's kitchen
she stands behind her sink in her low-heeled shoes
her feet are long and slender
her legs go forever
one day when I am in my teens
my grandfather will take me aside and point to my grandmother as she stands at that sink
He will say, "Did you ever see legs like that on a seventy year old woman?
He calls her Queenie, and she called him Father.
They are the parents in my dream book.
She appreciates her things. When I arrive at her home I run in to the kitchen first for a glass of water. She will serve it to me in one of her colorful aluminum tumblers. She will explain with pride that her water tastes so good because she has an artesian well.
there will be Beulah bakery bread with fresh butter, and for breakfast we will have pancakes which she makes on her long griddle. She will make mine Mickey Mouse.
Everything is special. The approach to the backdoor can be had by walking betwwen two huge cedars that have been allowed to grow together. They make a darkened little play forest for my little girl self. I will serve my dolls tea inside.
I am sitting in the built-in banquette
I feel so safe
sitting there
chatting about nothing and everything
with my Mamie
who will guide me through the day
make certain that I am clean and fed
and rested
I close my eyes, and I can feel her cheek again my little girl face. She smells of talcum powder and
Hers is a house in which the beds are always made.
and now I think of all she gave to me
she gave me her time
lots of it
she was almost fifty when I was born
she had already raised her own children
but she tended me and my sister
when my mother could not
I go back to my grandmother's kitchen
she stands behind her sink in her low-heeled shoes
her feet are long and slender
her legs go forever
one day when I am in my teens
my grandfather will take me aside and point to my grandmother as she stands at that sink
He will say, "Did you ever see legs like that on a seventy year old woman?
He calls her Queenie, and she called him Father.
They are the parents in my dream book.
She appreciates her things. When I arrive at her home I run in to the kitchen first for a glass of water. She will serve it to me in one of her colorful aluminum tumblers. She will explain with pride that her water tastes so good because she has an artesian well.
there will be Beulah bakery bread with fresh butter, and for breakfast we will have pancakes which she makes on her long griddle. She will make mine Mickey Mouse.
Everything is special. The approach to the backdoor can be had by walking betwwen two huge cedars that have been allowed to grow together. They make a darkened little play forest for my little girl self. I will serve my dolls tea inside.
I am sitting in the built-in banquette
I feel so safe
sitting there
chatting about nothing and everything
with my Mamie
who will guide me through the day
make certain that I am clean and fed
and rested
I close my eyes, and I can feel her cheek again my little girl face. She smells of talcum powder and
Hers is a house in which the beds are always made.
and now I think of all she gave to me
she gave me her time
lots of it
she was almost fifty when I was born
she had already raised her own children
but she tended me and my sister
when my mother could not
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Sing Me a Lullaby
MeSummer of 1952
My eyes, my nose, my ears and my skin do not lie to me. They yield the truth of any given moment. And it is to the moments that I turn more and more as the years pass.
Days are swallowed into weeks, and a month no longer seems a large measure of time. And, of course, I find this awareness to be more than unsettling. It is downright frightening at times.
My earliest memory takes place in the backyard of the LaCrosse Street house.
Mama has placed me on the lawn atop the old fringed bedspread.
My eyes widen with wonder as I watch an ant climb a blade of grass up one side and down the other until it disappears into the tiny forest of the lawn. The late June sun feels good, and I feel safe because Mama is nearby.
I forget the ants, and I look toward her. She is hanging laundry on the twirly gig clothes line. She wears madras plaid short shorts and pointed red flats. Her legs are long and tan.
Mom is only twenty-one . She has married young not because she was ready, but because she was pregnant with me. She and my dad won't make it, but she does not know this as she hangs her laundry while keeping an eye on me.
Flap. Flap. The sheets snap in the wind.
Off and on, Mama comes over to me and dances a bit of a jig as she sings "Chicky Boom Chicky Boom. Chicky Boom Chicky Boom."
Her words send a carnival of joy up and down my spine. I can only gurgle in response, for it will be some time before words will become a part of my world. And with those words I will start to analyze experience. I will use language to separate myself from myself. I will often trust my thoughts more than I trust my feelings.
The laundry basket is empty. Mama scoops me off to the bed with the high sides, her lips to my ear as she sings:
"Sleepy time in the pastureland
Dreaming. Dreaming.
Here we come with our pails in hand.
Mary, Molly and I."
Dreaming. Dreaming.
Here we come with our pails in hand.
Mary, Molly and I."
I close my eyes and I see the girls with the pails of milk coming over the hill. They will be there for me when I allow myself to close my eyes and remember. They will calm me during the scary times when sleep eludes me.
They will be there to bring me back to a sunny day in which clean sheets and ants and Mama were all I needed.
Saturday, July 23, 2011
I Will Be a Pine Tree
The swiftness at which change sweeps into my life these days still surprises me. I have observed that the older I get the greater is my ability to take things in stride. What might have seemed to be a major drama in my thirties becomes a matter of course as I approach sixty.
Loss may mound as I age, but I am always grateful when I remember to see the gifts inherent in the loss.
The older I get the less it takes to make me glad. Glad means getting to experience a big string of regular predictable days in which nothing momentous occurs good or bad.
What I might once have called a boring day is the very kind of day I now give thanks for. I call these days my Smooth Days.
Smooth Days are days in which I get to set the tempo; I live free form.
Smooth Days are days in which I can wander about inside and out taking the time to play with my cats and to nuzzle my face in their sun-warmed furry tummies.
Smooth Days are day in which I take the time to peel and chop mounds of different vegetables so that I can have a ready made salad bar in my refrig.
Smooth Days happen when I let myself trust my gut about what to do next.
Shall I continue working on a project?
Shall I garden?
Shall I read? Shall I just lie flat on my back on my bed looking through the skylight at my longleaf pine tree.
I lie on my back on my bed as I write.
I see the huge old pine from my skylight.
I feel a connection to this tree.
It stands tall and proud, for it has braved hurricane force winds, frosty Florida winter nights and searing summer Florida suns.
I will be a pine tree.
I will live three hundred years of life in this life I have left.
Thursday, July 21, 2011
Mamie
Pearl was all about appearances, or so she appeared to those who did not know her well.
And most did not know her well. Because that's what she wanted.
But I did.
Pearl Vera Nevius Marshall was my grandmother.
The woman who told me funny stories about a little old lady she called Granny who always wore a hat with a bird on top. And in each story that my grandmother told Granny always had a different bird on her hat.
\ "Oh, Mamie, I would cry, "what kind of bird does Granny have on today. Granny was always up to something sneaky or stupid or both. She was ditsy like Gracie Allen, Granny was nothing like my grandmother, the delight with which she conjured her stories shown in her face, and I suspected that there was a little bit of granny in my very dignified grandmohter, or atleast she liked to fancy that.
Birds were a thing with my grandmother. She and my grandfather had a house on the lake which they called the Bird's Nest. That is because my aunt and uncle lived that for a piece when they were young married.
And there was were several bird figurines about my grandmother's house.
Clippety clop clippety clop. I am a babe in Mamie's arms, and she is making a horse trotting noises as she carried me up the stairs into the 1926 Sears and Roebuck bed in she spent her wedding night. It is my bed now when I visit and before that is was Mama's.
I stay with Pearl and John often. I want to be ethere as often as possible, for their house is my safe place. Their house is a house of soft sounds and predictable events. Breakfast is on time at the table in the kitchen. Same for lunch. I hear the bells ring as my grandfather opens the front door for lunch. They eat like rabbits. hardly much at all. But everything is good at Mamie's house. Lunch is usually cottage cheese with saltines and canned peaches or sometimes tuna salad sandwiches which Pearl cuts in to four triangles. She and my grandfather eat one triangle each. Lunch is small because dessert is big. There is always pie. Warm homemade pie made from berries my grandfather and I pick.
The best is the blackberry pie because blackberries are precious. I know this because on the hottest days in August my grandfather bundles me u in one of his Woolrich plaid wool hunting shirts, and I must itche and sweat in order to brave the stickers of the blackberry bushes.
We always go home with a big pailful and know that dessert tomorrow will feature blackberry pie a la mode.
My grandmother is an immaculate housekeeper. She dresses up every day in a pressed tailored blouse, a straight skirt and earrings. the seams in her stockings always line up as she stands behind the sink in her low heeled leather pumps. My grandmother has more class behind her sink than most will ever achieve in a lifetime.
I love her. I adore her, but I am very careful around her. There are lines you don't cross with her. Words of this sort have never been uttered but a sudden aloofness might overtake her which chills me a bit or long manicured nails may be dug into my forearm when the girlchild me has shown an inkling of crossing one of my grandmother's lines.
People don't yell and cry and call each other names. People don't throw things at one another across the dinner table. A woman does not stand outside in a flinsy nightgown at night while smoking a cigarette in order to get enough of a grip to come inside and tuck her daughters in bed.
My grandmother taught me about words and the music they can make. She taught albeit a bit self-conscioulsly how to do the Charleston, and she shared afternoon teaparties with me during those long summer afternoons as we watched As the World Turns and The Loretta young Show.
She was their with a big dry towel in which she would bundle me as i emerged from the cold water of Crystal Lake.
each week I received a letter addressed just to me written in her beautiful Palmer method longhand.
She made me feel smart and important and proud. She taught me care about myself and to expect good things for myself.
She showed me beauty and elegance as she let me try her gorgeous clothes on and parage about her home.
But after lunch was Pearl's time. She promply went up the stairs to her bedroom where she would liek for one hour in a darkened room for her rest. I was not to come upstairs during this time. I was to be quiet as a mouse while my grandmother had her rest.
She was forty-five years old when I was born. And she was like a mother to me.
but my grandmother grew very very old
her husband was gone
her friends were gone
but she still wanted to go out and buy some shoes
but mainly she stayed alone in her small room
reading and waiting for a visitor
for her son to come to see her and perhaps take her to the
assisted living home where her older sister lived
I guess she had the telephone.
And I went every week when I was in Michigan
and then one day in January of 1997 she called me
and here voice was low
and she barely had a word to say
and then she died a week or so later
and I know she had called to say
goodbye
And most did not know her well. Because that's what she wanted.
But I did.
Pearl Vera Nevius Marshall was my grandmother.
The woman who told me funny stories about a little old lady she called Granny who always wore a hat with a bird on top. And in each story that my grandmother told Granny always had a different bird on her hat.
\ "Oh, Mamie, I would cry, "what kind of bird does Granny have on today. Granny was always up to something sneaky or stupid or both. She was ditsy like Gracie Allen, Granny was nothing like my grandmother, the delight with which she conjured her stories shown in her face, and I suspected that there was a little bit of granny in my very dignified grandmohter, or atleast she liked to fancy that.
Birds were a thing with my grandmother. She and my grandfather had a house on the lake which they called the Bird's Nest. That is because my aunt and uncle lived that for a piece when they were young married.
And there was were several bird figurines about my grandmother's house.
Clippety clop clippety clop. I am a babe in Mamie's arms, and she is making a horse trotting noises as she carried me up the stairs into the 1926 Sears and Roebuck bed in she spent her wedding night. It is my bed now when I visit and before that is was Mama's.
I stay with Pearl and John often. I want to be ethere as often as possible, for their house is my safe place. Their house is a house of soft sounds and predictable events. Breakfast is on time at the table in the kitchen. Same for lunch. I hear the bells ring as my grandfather opens the front door for lunch. They eat like rabbits. hardly much at all. But everything is good at Mamie's house. Lunch is usually cottage cheese with saltines and canned peaches or sometimes tuna salad sandwiches which Pearl cuts in to four triangles. She and my grandfather eat one triangle each. Lunch is small because dessert is big. There is always pie. Warm homemade pie made from berries my grandfather and I pick.
The best is the blackberry pie because blackberries are precious. I know this because on the hottest days in August my grandfather bundles me u in one of his Woolrich plaid wool hunting shirts, and I must itche and sweat in order to brave the stickers of the blackberry bushes.
We always go home with a big pailful and know that dessert tomorrow will feature blackberry pie a la mode.
My grandmother is an immaculate housekeeper. She dresses up every day in a pressed tailored blouse, a straight skirt and earrings. the seams in her stockings always line up as she stands behind the sink in her low heeled leather pumps. My grandmother has more class behind her sink than most will ever achieve in a lifetime.
I love her. I adore her, but I am very careful around her. There are lines you don't cross with her. Words of this sort have never been uttered but a sudden aloofness might overtake her which chills me a bit or long manicured nails may be dug into my forearm when the girlchild me has shown an inkling of crossing one of my grandmother's lines.
People don't yell and cry and call each other names. People don't throw things at one another across the dinner table. A woman does not stand outside in a flinsy nightgown at night while smoking a cigarette in order to get enough of a grip to come inside and tuck her daughters in bed.
My grandmother taught me about words and the music they can make. She taught albeit a bit self-conscioulsly how to do the Charleston, and she shared afternoon teaparties with me during those long summer afternoons as we watched As the World Turns and The Loretta young Show.
She was their with a big dry towel in which she would bundle me as i emerged from the cold water of Crystal Lake.
each week I received a letter addressed just to me written in her beautiful Palmer method longhand.
She made me feel smart and important and proud. She taught me care about myself and to expect good things for myself.
She showed me beauty and elegance as she let me try her gorgeous clothes on and parage about her home.
But after lunch was Pearl's time. She promply went up the stairs to her bedroom where she would liek for one hour in a darkened room for her rest. I was not to come upstairs during this time. I was to be quiet as a mouse while my grandmother had her rest.
She was forty-five years old when I was born. And she was like a mother to me.
but my grandmother grew very very old
her husband was gone
her friends were gone
but she still wanted to go out and buy some shoes
but mainly she stayed alone in her small room
reading and waiting for a visitor
for her son to come to see her and perhaps take her to the
assisted living home where her older sister lived
I guess she had the telephone.
And I went every week when I was in Michigan
and then one day in January of 1997 she called me
and here voice was low
and she barely had a word to say
and then she died a week or so later
and I know she had called to say
goodbye
Post on Emotional Dishonesty
I started mental help therapy when I was twenty-two years old. I just knew that I needed some guidance.
A bit of backstory.
I had given myself over completely to a man whom from here on out will be referred as Beatnik Man for he was so that- a man nine years my senior. I allowed myself to be his Pygmalion. I assumed that he knew best. black turtlenecks, meerschun pipe, beard, poetic. He taught me about art. He flattered me by loving my mind. He told me I was a voluptuary, and one night as we lay in bed on a hot summer night, he said that with my dark tan I looked like an Indian princess. No man had ever spoken to me that way, and I was putty in his hands.
Good things came from this union. Firstly, my meeting him got me out of marrying Sweet Guy to whom I was engaged. We were far from just engaged. Wedding dress had been purchased. Wedding inviations sat in their box ready to be sent. The Fort Harrison had been reserved for the reception.
As I walked about campus feeling that I could not get married was something I could not avoid.
I, try like many to avoid feeling the real scary stuff , but this I could not. I can only describe this experience of that there was thunder in my ears. I was so frightened. Every part of me I had to face this attraction to Beatnik Man and make a decision about my college years Sweet Guy.
I sought refuge from the free campus counseling service. I spilled my guts, and the older woman who sat on the other side of the desk said, "Well, it sounds to me as though you do not want to get married."
I needed that validation. I went to my dorm room, placed the ruby and diamond engagement ring in its box, called Sweet Guy on the phone and ended a three year romance. I arranged for him to pick-up the ring knowing that I would make certain I was not in my dormitory room when he came by. My roomate handed him a note and a box. I never saw Sweet Guy again.
Within twelve months of cohabiting with Beatnik Man, he started treating me like he probably had treated his two former wives. He started staying out later. He started finding fault with little things about me. He started making stabbing remarks towards me when I did not know the meaning of a word he used. Intellect was everything to him. He spend that first summer of our love affair putting the finishing touches on his eight hundred page novel.
The day in which he boxed up the transcript and mailed it off to a publisher was a momentous day. I believe that he really believed his book would be published. I knew it was a bad book- too verbose, ridiculously complicated piles of compound complex sentences styled so that he could show off his impressive vocabulary. The book had veritbly no plot, but he was to be the next Kerousa or so he thought.
The more rejection letters which appeared in the mailbox the more beer he drank and the more was I the target of his bitter sarcasm about all things that existed in the world at large.
One day he came home and told me he was bored with me. I panicked. I believe that I must be boring. My self-esteem took a skydive.
Fortunately, I had the sense to move-out. And for months thereafter I kept believing that it would just be a matter of time before he realized how much he missed me and would call me back to share his home.
What caused me to start mental health therapy is that there was that still powerful but very quiet voice in me telling me that I was an interesting young woman. And yes, logically I got get that, but what I could not understand is why I felt like I was now just a half of me and why in Hell did I feel that I needed him to make me complete. Intuitively I knew that a woman should not need anyone that much to the point that she feels lacking as a whole person. good God.
I wanted to stand on my own two sturdy feet and feel whole. Whole like i felt as a toddler when I remember sitting in the grass feel totally at one with the ants that were crawling from one blade of grass to another. I felt complete then. I did not think about whether I was enough of anything. I just knew that the grass, the ants, the sunshine and my eyes that noticed was enough. I had not learned to separate myself from the all of experience, and to see myself as seperate when i was a baby girl.
It was later as I ventured out into the society of others that I learned to compare myself to others, or worse yet, learned to believe that what others said about me was the truth. I spent many many years of my younger womanhood trying to be better.
One of the gifts of being older is that I don't try to be better anymore. I think I am good enough.
No one gets to try to take my joy by telling me who I am. I know who I am.
A bit of backstory.
I had given myself over completely to a man whom from here on out will be referred as Beatnik Man for he was so that- a man nine years my senior. I allowed myself to be his Pygmalion. I assumed that he knew best. black turtlenecks, meerschun pipe, beard, poetic. He taught me about art. He flattered me by loving my mind. He told me I was a voluptuary, and one night as we lay in bed on a hot summer night, he said that with my dark tan I looked like an Indian princess. No man had ever spoken to me that way, and I was putty in his hands.
Good things came from this union. Firstly, my meeting him got me out of marrying Sweet Guy to whom I was engaged. We were far from just engaged. Wedding dress had been purchased. Wedding inviations sat in their box ready to be sent. The Fort Harrison had been reserved for the reception.
As I walked about campus feeling that I could not get married was something I could not avoid.
I, try like many to avoid feeling the real scary stuff , but this I could not. I can only describe this experience of that there was thunder in my ears. I was so frightened. Every part of me I had to face this attraction to Beatnik Man and make a decision about my college years Sweet Guy.
I sought refuge from the free campus counseling service. I spilled my guts, and the older woman who sat on the other side of the desk said, "Well, it sounds to me as though you do not want to get married."
I needed that validation. I went to my dorm room, placed the ruby and diamond engagement ring in its box, called Sweet Guy on the phone and ended a three year romance. I arranged for him to pick-up the ring knowing that I would make certain I was not in my dormitory room when he came by. My roomate handed him a note and a box. I never saw Sweet Guy again.
Within twelve months of cohabiting with Beatnik Man, he started treating me like he probably had treated his two former wives. He started staying out later. He started finding fault with little things about me. He started making stabbing remarks towards me when I did not know the meaning of a word he used. Intellect was everything to him. He spend that first summer of our love affair putting the finishing touches on his eight hundred page novel.
The day in which he boxed up the transcript and mailed it off to a publisher was a momentous day. I believe that he really believed his book would be published. I knew it was a bad book- too verbose, ridiculously complicated piles of compound complex sentences styled so that he could show off his impressive vocabulary. The book had veritbly no plot, but he was to be the next Kerousa or so he thought.
The more rejection letters which appeared in the mailbox the more beer he drank and the more was I the target of his bitter sarcasm about all things that existed in the world at large.
One day he came home and told me he was bored with me. I panicked. I believe that I must be boring. My self-esteem took a skydive.
Fortunately, I had the sense to move-out. And for months thereafter I kept believing that it would just be a matter of time before he realized how much he missed me and would call me back to share his home.
What caused me to start mental health therapy is that there was that still powerful but very quiet voice in me telling me that I was an interesting young woman. And yes, logically I got get that, but what I could not understand is why I felt like I was now just a half of me and why in Hell did I feel that I needed him to make me complete. Intuitively I knew that a woman should not need anyone that much to the point that she feels lacking as a whole person. good God.
I wanted to stand on my own two sturdy feet and feel whole. Whole like i felt as a toddler when I remember sitting in the grass feel totally at one with the ants that were crawling from one blade of grass to another. I felt complete then. I did not think about whether I was enough of anything. I just knew that the grass, the ants, the sunshine and my eyes that noticed was enough. I had not learned to separate myself from the all of experience, and to see myself as seperate when i was a baby girl.
It was later as I ventured out into the society of others that I learned to compare myself to others, or worse yet, learned to believe that what others said about me was the truth. I spent many many years of my younger womanhood trying to be better.
One of the gifts of being older is that I don't try to be better anymore. I think I am good enough.
No one gets to try to take my joy by telling me who I am. I know who I am.
Monday, July 18, 2011
Mama Beautiful Mama of Mine
Mom and Me
Venice, 1966
My broken leg and my cracked ribs have changed lots of stuff for me this summer.The good part is that I have allowed myself to receive from others again. As I have aged, I have become increasingly uncomfortable about receiving from others. And I believe that losing my mother played a huge part in this manner of being.
Somehow or other I had receiving and needing and independence all screwed up in my head. I knew that the men in my life did not want me needing too much. I felt that no one wanted an adult woman who was too vulnerable, so I became fiercely independent, proud and aloof, for to need too much was something I found to be both terrifying and repugnant.
No matter how difficult my relationship with Mom could be, I always knew one thing for truly sure - Mom loved me. She was in the background of my life. Sort of like a comfy old sweater. She was there if I needed her. On call. Waiting.
During my first adult heartbreak when I was twenty-two, I visited her. I lay in her bed frozen with pain sobbing. She lay down beside me, and she cried too. She said she would trade places with me if she could. She told me that things would get better. And they did.
She never missed an opportunity to champion my cause, to express her pride in me or to listen to me at length when asked to do so.
But my mother's need of me was too big for me to satisfy, for I needed to become my own woman, and I could not do it with Mama in my life too much. Her life had been focused on her two daughters. She called us her proudest achievements.And she did not want to let us go.
Years of a push/pull dynamic ensued between us. Guilt trips. Pathetic and desperate phone calls in the middle of the night. Threats of suicide. Mean letters. I distanced myself more from her with each bout.
Then one day Mom was dying. A phone call on the evening of November 12,1990 confirmed that. Lung cancer. Small cell. Bone and Liver involvement.
Mom -always dramatic- described herself to us as "eaten-up".
Thus began a period in which I fell in love with Mom all over again. I allowed myself to feel my great need for her- a need that was so huge that it frightened me, for I feared losing myself in it. I cuddled with her. I allowed her to brush my hair. We sat in her bed with our arms around one another to have our picture taken.
Over the weeks as the cancer took her body, we lay in her bed holding hands while laughing and crying over old photographs.
For her sixty-first birthday I placed a dozen yellow roses on the dresser that was opposite her bed. Three days later she asked me to remove them. She said she could not take them where she was going.
A few days later, she told me to go home to my husband and not come back. She said she had the nurses, and that I belonged in my own home where my life was. I remember crying and telling her that I wanted to stay by her. I did not want to leave her alone. I told her I wanted to be strong for her.
What I did not understand then was that she needed to be alone, so that she could get on with the business of dying. She could not perform the largest act of letting go that any of us will get to do, with her blue-eyed daughters and a vase of yellow roses too near.
She had to withdraw into a new place in order to die.
I last saw my mother on Monday, February 18, 1991. She died the following Monday.
6:40 in the evening Monday, February 25, my sister and I are talking about the hell that is being played out in my mother's blue bedroom . Her suffering has gone beyond what anyone should have to endure. And we want it to end.
A click over the phone line. My sister asks me to hold while she takes another call. Within seconds, she returns , "Mom died a few minutes ago" she said.
Death makes you feel like you have to get up and do something, as if in the act of doing you can make it go away. I looked out my living room window. My husband was coming down the sidewalk with a bag of Mexican take-out.
Minutes later, we are driving the seventy-some miles to Mom's condo.
Once there, I rush to see Mom. She is lying at a diagonal in the ugly hospital bed. She is dressed in her powder blue Vanity Fair nightie. Her blue eyes are open and staring far beyond me.
She looks like a fallen seabird.
I stopped letting myself feel any real need after Mom was gone. I guess I thought that needing hurt too much.
The accident has put me in touch with my need to need again. And I think I am turning a new corner as I approach my sixtieth birthday.
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