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It was a heron there, lumbering above the water—always auspicious, or so I had deemed these sightings years earlier. This was a new road, to another person, a home visit, the dispensing of some help, or hope, as the job requires. Sometimes a call comes from a nearby street, sometimes on a road miles away.
Hard to offer hope when life dispenses bad news. Incurable diseases, life-altering accidents, or something gone wrong from birth: this is the world I see day after day, home after home. I offer not hope, though, but options, or so my job says. I offer options for people to stay in their homes, or anywhere out of a nursing home or whatever other institution may beckon the likes of them. I offer options for lives gone wrong, for lives to be right.
What I offer more is time, and ears to hear the stories of these lives, often long, memories entangled among old thorns that grow sharper as the years go. I wish to tell these stories, but to do so would be betrayal. I absorb the stories instead, and hang them to the roads I see, the birds, the trees and paths that lead me to them and away.
These miles are oddly satisfying. Wandering has never been my forté, despite youthful dreams of faraway places. The town, the people: yes! That sort of adventure… But in my adult life, I have sought roots, community, company, laughter, support. For all the wishes for exotic locales, I found adventure, then grew up. I craved what I might have left behind. The lonesome road never held much appeal for me, at least, not as a way of life.
Some hitch a ride with the wayward wind and head off to never-ending adventure. Such is the cult of the cowboy, the loner, the rebel. It is a romantic notion, this wandering, this quest. It may offer refuge, in its way. The road may offer a way out.
And you? Wander on, go, if you like. If you do, your door remains shut, your home ever empty. Perhaps I’ll never find you.
The road may offer a way in. I had forgotten that. I had forgotten the road long and winding that leads not to wandering, but to a door, the door. I had forgotten the odyssey. I had forgotten you.
Perhaps I’ll find you.
It was a quilting party that day, my mother remembers. A quilting party, and she, little girl then, was allowed to stitch her part between two of her mother’s friends. It may have been one of the quilts that are downstairs on beds now, pink fabric uniting the memories of a family’s wardrobe, worn and recycled in this most marvelous of ways. So my mother, lady that she was at the advanced age of four years old, sewed, and then was distracted.
The distraction was a knock at the door. A man with a camera offered his services, and my grandmother, feeling generous that day, as she did many other days it appeared by the cat symbol on their fencepost, let him in. Yes, a picture would be quite nice, it was decided, and my mother positioned herself on the wicker couch. Her mother put a bow in her hair. Inky, one of the black cats (the other being Egbert, not present), jumped up on my mom’s lap, and the picture was complete.
The photographer visited for perhaps three years, and made pictures all of those years. Some of those photographs seem to be missing now. But this one–my mother’s favorite picture of herself–remains on a shelf in her living room, with all the memories of a childhood and a life whose pieces, retold, are precious layers of our own lives.
Warm rain Wednesday put me into a more apt mood for the month, a mood of bliss, a reconsideration of the landscape and the season. Who could not be enthusiastic about March’s longer days, the kiss of sun, however short-lived?
This mood juxtaposes that of my previous post, I realize. What a grump! I was gently reminded of the idea that spring could be a good thing just shortly after I posted that last installment, called simply “march”. Well, that hardly sums it up.
The reminder of what the season symbolizes brought me to past years, when winter was so long. By winter, I mean deprivation and suffering, cold isolation and pain. I realize that the season can have its beauty, and indeed, the cold period of my life did have its brightness, too.
In Vermont, spring is a long and tortuous process, as the world buried beneath snow reappears, rusted, aged, rotted, or at least a bit worn down. Sap runs, and steam rises from the maple houses for some time as the days get longer. Ice still coats the surface, until at last the ground softens, oozing, cracking and heaving. Ferns pop up magically, and the hills change from white and gray to pink, then green.
I had left Vermont by the time I found a spring in my life. I looked around at what stuck out as the sun shone upon it, and found myself emboldened to tell a secret that I thought incredible. When the person I told believed me, I ran home and wrote it down. Like finding a precious clue buried beneath layers of dirt, I scrubbed the surface of that life, there all along, and found that the secret was much bigger than I realized. I wrote for many days, and then went back and showed my words to that person again. My words, written, held the truth of my world as I discovered it–there always, only invisible. My words, ultimately, transformed that world. But not by themselves. No, this renewal came only half from its creation; it had to have a reader, a helper, to make it real.
Spring comes here melting and blooming, and brings a summer that we do not yet know. What will grow in this climate? What was planted there? And what will we do in this landscape? The sun will shine, soon, and in the heat of the day, we will watch the world grow, trim it, edit and transform it as if it had never been dead to us. This is as it should be. We will change our growing world, and take it for granted, and love it, even as we create still another season in our life.
I am amazed still, everyday, at the full and utter abandonment our society encourages for those who find their lives altered in a single moment. Illness strikes, an accident, and life somehow becomes smaller in some ways. Alone, some face a future that treats them differently, as less human, simply because they need help. Indeed, this need is what defines us perhaps most as human.
Surprisingly, cynicism has not yet caught me. I see a rainbow of sorts, black and white and all shades of gray, a light however dim at the end of the tunnel. I remain astounded by hope and adaptation, and by the goodness of those who do care. I remain shocked by impatient staff who snap at people who have done no wrong, as much as I may see the plight of the underpaid worker. I remain shocked at the efforts of the kindest workers, underpaid, undervalued for the work they do in these most human moments.
We may find our humanity in our own moment of crisis, but perhaps a better measure is in our response to the crises of others. Can we forgive helplessness, or does it push us away at its demands for our assistance? Can we simply stop, listen, or are we ever distracted by the noise of a world that ignores all but the strong?
Listen. The voices are quiet sometimes, impatient themselves at other times. They tell stories, grand stories, of times not so distant, of people and faces that look different now, but still are a part of our own conscience, and of ourselves. Help. A small gesture, perhaps. A knock on the door, an errand run. It is the stuff that makes us alive and beyond appearances richer.
People age, more and more. People live through illnesses that would have killed them in the past. In this we may expect eternal youth and wellness, but in this life, extended, we are challenged, redefined. Challenge our humanity; let us meet the challenge. Forget no one, fear not, do not look away. Remember, this is us. It is our humanity, and it is the best thing we have.
(n.) The termination of something by causing so much damage to it that it cannot be repaired or no longer exists.
He found them. He found the journals I had written when I was young, younger, youngest–before I knew him. He found the journals I had written when I was dreaming. In the page he found, I had written about a boy who thrilled me, a boy who gave me more time to create him from my own mind than to know him in any sort of reality. I knew I would never really have him, was never sure I wanted him. I wrote then, so long ago, as if to contain my glee, to keep it safe and still to dream, to imagine myself, desired. I defend those ancient words–my words–whatever they were, now.
But then, after the storm, I found the pages, and wrapped them up, wondered where I might hide them first. I could not hide them, not forever, so I burned them. Words of my past went up in flames, with the letters to a me who was never good enough for my husband, letters to me hidden in a cigar box. “Te Amo,” the box spelled, words of love and summer and youth in that box, memories of me, testing out me on the world. I cherished that me, but left it behind, severed it from my body as if to save myself.
I look back, wonder why I let myself disappear, or why he wanted me to. They say this kind of thing happens slowly, insidiously, as charm turns to coldness and cruelty. That is the only explanation I can find, some sort of hypnotism. That is the only thing that could explain why I woke up one day and realized that I was lost.
My husband did not tell me when he had found those long-preserved thoughts. That summer evening, I returned with his parents from the movies. They came in, wondered where their son was, and left. My husband was there nearby all along, in the dark, in the high-ceilinged room where we had set up shelves, the computer, in this home-to-be. The boxes from my childhood home were emptied, and pages sat open. I knew then, but scarcely remembered what he might have learned of me, the me I was before he had begun to create a more suitable me.
My belly pushed on pants that used to fit, I felt the pushing on my skin, my shape, felt it change me as I knew the life inside of me. The pages were open, and my husband looked at me, me: disgusting to him, vomit on the floor, worse. He told me that I had no right to lie to him. I had deceived him.
Glimmers of forgotten scenes of our life together flashed in my mind. I only remembered them at times like these, times that I thought he really might leave me. A long-distance phone call while he was out of town–an old friend (male) set off a string of accusations (from him) and defenses (from me). His mistrust and lashing out seemed so unreal. Then, words softened, returned to the good stuff. That was the first time.
I never realized it then, but I was more careful after that, discarded the less acceptable parts of myself, when I could. Pieces still came through. I longed for music, music, and bought tickets to see Sonny Rollins. When my boyfriend stood up during the second song and announced he was bored, I left, too, looking back at the empty seats, wondering what I had left behind. My boyfriend expressed his distrust of reggae, Dylan, democrats and George Eliot; I avoided the undesirable (when I understood it), found other things, compromised, abandoned parts of myself to shelves that grew dusty over the years. I became farther and farther from myself, subtly. He disliked my old friends; I feared they might reveal the best of me to him, and left them alone, as if to preserve myself. He disliked my family, got me to see their shortcomings, insisted they never cared, not really. I felt guilty–or more than that, sad. He claimed that he was the only one who understood me, and after a while, he was.
My boyfriend was careful with me, and watched out for me. He protected me, and walked me home from work, took me to doctors’ appointments. He drove me to the store. I had no use for a car, and sold mine. “Good, we need the money,” he said, and we did not, but we spent it, on things that defined our love: motorcycles, car race tickets, things I never liked but tried, for him. My friends, my invitations, my curiosity evaporated as we drove off on some adventure together, far, far away from the world, in our own world, beyond the world. My boyfriend cherished me, and I married him.
My husband suspected me. The foreign men whistled in Vienna. I tested higher than he did in German. These things were my fault, my attempt to make a fool of him. But publicly he threatened someone, said it was impossible that I was better than he was, changed the grades. “I know how much you like it when they want you,” he lamented late into the night, late so I could never sleep, late so I could prove I loved him, and together we avoided night, Heurigen, Kaffee, blue Danube, Ringstrasse, and I prayed he would stop, fall asleep there where there was no way to leave him, I wanted to leave him. Men whistled, followed, and he mocked me when I told him I was scared of them. I wanted to leave. I dreamed of it, waited for the moment back home when I would pack my bags and walk away. I was scared, and then, I asked him to save me. He trusted me again. It was as if it never happened. But once in a while, he whispered a word, looked at me in a certain way. I shuddered, and turned away, but I remembered.
That night, when I trembled, pregnant, depending on him for my whole world, he found my writing. I felt myself drawn forever to him through the blood of a child, and I was. I knew my love, never strayed, gave up all I knew, my degree, my work, for the life of a child, a home, a family. I gave up myself to prove it all, so desperate I was by then, and still, he made a promise that day.
“You make me sick,” he said, first. I reassured, swore my thoughts were simply thoughts, tried to remember, felt my words quoted, twisted, rearranged into something I could not have been or said, something sick, something he did not want. I tried to explain, justify, calm him. Why?, I wondered, I pondered what I could have done, or not done, what I could have said or not said, what could have made him so upset. I swore I would never write another word.
“You could be like my mom,” he said. Oh not her, I thought. No, lonely mother, depraved–or so the in-laws claimed–not crazy, certainly not ill. Not her. “You could lose everything,” my husband said. He told me, that day, the beginning of our new home, our new lives, that he had to approve of my actions. He told me to behave. He told me that if he found out I was different from the person he wanted me to be, he would consider it grounds for divorce. I looked around at the stained glass, his baby pictures, my spoons, our lives melded together forever now through a beating heart. I looked at our lives, my love, and wondered who he was. I looked deeper, and tried to remember who I was. He promised that if he ever divorced me, he would destroy me.
I did wake up. Something in me was not destroyed, completely. He kept trying, though, but now, years later, he has stopped pushing me on the stairs, yelling in my face, threatening me in the streets. He has learned that lesson well–he was always smart enough not to bruise or break. Now he knows more subtle forms of torture. He steers clear from the overt abuse that bears witnesses. It is quieter now, more abstract. A letter from a lawyer. A motion to modify. An order. A statement: lack of evidence. Denial. It all seems legal, not out of line. He is upset, sometimes–who wouldn’t be?? I am so difficult at times. Everyone knows that. “No, she can barely hold herself together.” “No, she seems to jump for no reason.” No, she imagines things, the rattling of the door at night, his car driving by the street once, twice, the missing book, the coincidences. No one could believe the terror, the fear he can still inspire with a glance in my direction. No one could believe the loss and the pain, and worse, perhaps, they may believe it, and fear it, too.
Four hearts beat now, depending on the forces that brought them into this world. Four hearts tell me how they want to hide how they feel, and I feel the vulnerability in that desire to hide from the destruction. They want to be loved for who they are, and not for what they have to be to survive life in a reality that someone else imagines. Four hearts need strength, not shields: they need love to love themselves.
No, make that five. One more heart beating, not destroyed, stronger perhaps, even without the validation. At times I still feel the strikes. At times I still feel desperate.
But then, on second thought, yes. Destroy me. Destroy, (v.) Middle English, from Anglo-French destroy-, destrui-, stem of destrure, from Vulgar Latin *destrugere, alteration of Latin destruere, from de- + struere to build to un-build. No, on third thought, let me destroy the me that he created, let me take apart my life, block by block, wonder what might have remained if his creation had remained standing–or was it ever capable of that? Let me ponder what sort of creature it was that could love, even as it was being destroyed. Yes, I loved him once: destruction began not after the divorce, but far earlier, from the moment he first knew that I loved him.
I find myself in my own destruction, as I take a pen. I find myself again, deconstructing my heart, wondering what it was, that heart that still beats, that person, wonder, simply wonder why. And in that wonder, I rebuild.
n
It is time for a journey. It is time to venture out onto the long-lost roads of fate, away from time as we know it in the everyday world, time to create markers for the time line of our lives. “Remember when?…” we’ll say years from now when we glance at one another, and we’ll both know exactly what that means.
It must be now, a bag packed hastily, a toothbrush, a camera, a swimsuit. You put your sunglasses in the overhead compartment above the front seat, clean out the mileage notebook and parking receipts, the half-finished Dr. Pepper from Burger King that your client left in the car last Saturday. I’ll stack blankets to throw in the back–in case of stars, a warm night, a field. I’ll pack a basket, grapes, burn CDs frantically before you pick me up–Johnny Cash, Cesaria Evora, Bach–then just give up as I hear your old car turning up the street. I scoop up all of them, all the songs I ever heard, and yes, the matching panties, and yes, the perfume, and yes, the wine glasses, and yes, that dress (you never know).
Your tie is gone, and you are wearing cologne, as you never do. Your hair is combed back. I wore the dress, after all, and the hat, and the world is waiting.
Yesterday at the market, I picked up the bottle with the red top. Not the blue. Not the green. Red. It is a treat.
Forever, it seems–at least since I was a chubby child–low-fat dairy habits lead me to skim. Doctors insist. Mothers comply. But are they right? Skim, as if to skim off… something. Milk with its nutrients, but not whole. Not a whole food. This certainly could not be good.
It is easy to grow accustomed to going without, to withdrawing pleasure just as it is about to complete us. It is tempting to improve, to discard the most volatile and unseemly (or unfashionable) parts of a thing, but I wonder how this alters us as we choose only that. What happens when we refine more often than we simply appreciate?
It is a chilly morning, not cold in the typical January sort of way: warm enough that I smell the diesel fuel of trucks passing, cold enough to form a thin layer of ice on the sidewalk. I open the door to wave goodbye, cup in hand. My coffee, dark rich coffee, with hot whole milk, steaming. The coffee sticks to the fat of the milk, recreates the caramel hot, coats my mouth in heaven, protecting perhaps, or at the very least.. satisfying. No, indeed: not at the least. Satisfaction is sublime. I drink this coffee, savor in the complete contentment of a moment, a morning, the beginning of a new day.
Here she comes again, no bike helmet, but that would be très uncool. The neighbor kid is cute, I’ll admit. You know the type: dark hair, impish smile, the middle school principal knows him well enough to know where he is after school, generally an area off limits during the rest of the day, where older kids hang out. That type. Trouble.
Of course our neighbor never notices how many times she has come past here, which she does not realize is probably a good thing. She is hardly the type to get noticed, after all, shorts and a t-shirt from Target–I don’t even remember what color. Hair like dark sand, not chocolate or golden, drab. And she would die of embarrassment if anyone asked why she keeps riding past. But still, there is something to this girl, something special about the way she looks back, out of breath, when she reaches the end of our short street, looks at her watch, checks her time, keeps going and assumes, like all kids who have crushes, that no one thinks it’s odd that she is doing time trials on a street so many blocks away from home. She thinks no one has ever done that before, that no one notices a kid riding up and down in front of another kid’s house.
My summer for the crush was when I turned twelve. He was the lifeguard, and tossed a Nerf ball back and forth to me in some act of mercy. He was eighteen, about to go to school in California. I listened to old Beach Boys records, partly because he looked like Al Jardine, really, just like him. The lifeguard’s family was so much cooler than mine, no grass in the front yard; they had wildflowers. Of course I knew his phone number. I got up the nerve to ask his mom if he was home the night before he left for college. He talked. On. The. Phone. To me. And that was it. Never saw him again. I used to see their mom swimming laps at the Y. I understand the girl with sandy hair. I myself still live under the assumption that no one in my crush’s family ever realized I was doing anything other than riding past to go to the pool.
Our pre-teen visitor has gone by once more, but it is close to five o’clock. She may come by once more this evening, hard to say. Maybe not. Maybe life is waiting for her, too, right around the next corner.
He sat in the hot dog counter of the local Target in his dress pants and neatly pressed shirt, heavy dark eyebrows over an intense gaze. “Must get out,” I imagined him saying before he left his house–too hot, humid, lonely–on a Sunday afternoon. An excuse, needing paper towels, shampoo, light bulbs. An excuse, but nothing is really in short supply; only seeing another person is. So Target it is, and while we’re at it, a soda, yes make it a Coke.
It’s nice to look your best when you go out, but not that shirt, too old, used to wear it to work. This one: casual, but needs ironing. So, it’s 2:00, fine I’ll iron it. Now it’s 3:00, still not too late, still time to get those paper towels and see what else is there, who else is there. Don’t forget to comb hair, wash hands. Always make a good impression. There. Perfect.
Three years ago, I would have written a very different post on this day. The symbolic gesture could not have been coincidental: why else would he have chosen that day to move out?
Independence had a somewhat different meaning for me then. Before then, I had felt free, only realized I was not when I started to stray beyond the expected, with results not unlike those offered by an electric fence.
At first it was about small things: being able to make my own choices, playing music I liked, walking through my own house and my own life without fear…
Writing.
The last three years have demonstrated that freedom is a concept that I had never fully appreciated before I lost it; otherwise I would have done more to protect it. At the same time, this end of tyranny was not an altogether independent action. I owe it to so many people who came into my life. I did not, do not feel that I ever could not need anyone. Far from it.
I cherish my freedom to be who I am, but I am no island. I cherish interdependence, as we depend on one another in this world. Today I celebrate life. I celebrate liberty. And yes, I celebrate that pursuit of happiness, that maslovian step up, that thing that pushes us toward greater things, and to holding fast to those principles that protect and define us.
