I write because I must. I write because if I don't my mind becomes a dark, deserted alley in which scary creatures lurk ready to pounce , holding me hostage and rendering me unrecognizable to myself.
I started writing because there was no one else to talk to. The things that I needed to talk about either got me in trouble or got me feeling like I was some kind of freak.
Freshly remarried on the rebound, mother and my new "father" shunted me off to Florida in the summer of 1966. I was enraged.I was ripped away from a world I had started to build for myself.
If nothing else, my parents' divorce let me know that my mom and dad were individuals with private agendas that had little to do with me. A divorce teaches a kid that they are not the center of their parent's world. New wives, new husbands, new sisters and new brothers were the world into which I was thrown without choice. I hated every damned piece of it. I was filled with an anger so hot that I sought refuge in a world of my own which had nothing to do with family.
If you look for me in the 1966 Plainwell, Michigan yearbook you will find me. I am the pale girl with the black watch kilt and knee socks and the unattractive black pointy eyeglasses. I am standing on a tier along with others for the journalism club photograph.
It was during that, my freshman year, I discovered I had a mind- a good mind that was inquisitive and equally important I had found others with whom I could share this part of me.
I eagerly awaiting Study Hall each afternoon. In hushed tones my cohorts and I discussed such books such as John Howard Griffith's Black Like Me or Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. We debated the newly passed Civil Rights Act and worked feverishly to dissect the cryptic lyrics of Bob Dylan's recently released Subterranean Homesick Blues.
The fact that I was not one of the a pretty, popular girls who looked sexy in their angora sweaters and tight wool skirts. no longer mattered. The fact that I was the only kid in town who had divorced parents (yes, divorce in Waspish midwestern small towns was rareL I had found a niche into which I fit.
On a night in mid June a bit beofre the first day of summer I had stood in our foyer clutching frantically at teh first boy I ever loved as I postponed that inevitable goodbye. next morning with my face swollen from tears i joined Mom in the yellow ford Fairlane packed down with a parakeet named Flower tomove to the lnad of eternal summer.
During that lonely summer of my fourteenth year that my love affair with words got serious. I spent hour upon hour reading and compiling lists of new words that I diligently recorded in a tiny notebook. I would read them last thing before bed and first thing in the morning. Reading and studying made me feel good inside. It gave a form to my day. It gave me something of my own that no one could take from me.
And it was at the modern built-in desk in my new room in our new modern house with the flying roof That I started writing what I referred to as "Letters to God."
I don't recall possessing a strong faith in the existence of the "God" of the churches I attended as a child and certainly not the God of the Sunday school class at St. Lukes in which we little children were forced to sit still and silent in small hardwook chairs. The already cold high-ceilinged room was made chillier by the presence a stern, unsmiling teacher who scared me with pictures of scary- looking angels and tales of what happens to children who don't learn the Bible. The church was not a soft place.
But the library was. During my junior high years my favorite escape during had often been the town's library- a once grand Victorian house whose maze of rooms provided the perfect place for a young girl to hide from the world. The ugliness of my parent's divorce coupled with my ever growing sense of isolation could not find me among the stacks of books. Here was a place of escape and fantasy. Here was a place where no one would or could disturb me. Here were the words.
Mom would only allow me so much time alone in my room behind my desk before she would start her tirade outside my closed door. "A normal 14 year old girl does not want to sit inside her room on a beautiful day. Why don't you go to the pool and make some friends.? she wailed.
I would not budge. I read those books. I made those lists, and I continue to write those letters to God. It was a big part of what I wanted to do, but it was also a wonderful way to get back at her for hauling my teenage self to this hot and sticky land of relentless sunshine- a place where most of our neighbors had gray hair and the lady next door decorated the spikes of her Spanish Bayonet plant with the pink and green styrofoam nests which cradled grocery store egg from the local Winn Dixie.
forcing me to dress, put me in the car and dropped me off at a softball field.
There I stood in my aqua striped surfer shirt and matching shorts. I was thin, tan shy and bookish. I did not know how to "make friends". Those kids alrady had each other. I had been thrust into a the closed society of teenagers most of whom had known one another since elementary school.
To ask myself at the age of sixty, "Who am I really" , or How is it I must now live takes a courage and committment that I am not certain I possess.and So my writing helps lead me to edges that the frightened part of me wants to avoid.
Just last evening a friend asked me if writing helped me make sense of things. I replied that I did not think so. I only know that after I have written a piece, I do feel a sense of relief.
Showing posts with label mamie. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mamie. Show all posts
Friday, November 3, 2017
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
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
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