Thirty-One

Thirty-one

Ten minutes. That’s how long it took me to walk from my house to the corner of Westchester and Wesley Avenues, where the bus stopped each morning around 8:20 in the summer of 1980. Port Chester to White Plains and back again, bus #13 brought me to my summer job at the health department, where I worked logging water samples and reports about bacteria counts from beaches and pools in the area. My first year of teaching just completed, I still needed income for the summer to buy gas for my Chevy Chevette and save money to move out of mom and dad’s home.

Ten minutes. That’s how long it took me to walk from my office to the bus stop at quitting time. Somewhere between my third week of work and my sixth, road construction by my usual bus stop forced me to trudge another block and a half to a different corner. I didn’t much like having to walk the extra distance in the heat or worse, on the occasional rainy day. But I didn’t regret my decision to keep the car parked at home in the driveway; I would have had to pay for parking, and money was tight.

Ten minutes. That’s how long a guy with curly blonde hair, blue eyes, and a killer smile stood staring at me from the alcove of the corner store at my new bus stop, where they sold newspapers and Coca Cola. I was seeing someone at the time, a Social Studies teacher seven years my senior. He was a nice man, but he wasn’t “the one”. I liked that the blonde guy was staring. I was a flirt, I confess, and I wanted to see what would happen. Besides, it was a nice way to spend ten minutes waiting for bus #13. The flirting persisted over several days, until actual words were spoken, and I realized I liked the sound of his voice.

Ten minutes. That’s about how long our first conversation took on the day we first sat side by side on the sticky- hot vinyl seats, where Ken revealed to me that he didn’t own a car and therefore had very little furniture in his apartment. I revealed that I did own a car, and would be happy to drive him downtown to look for a couch and a rug for his living room. In the interest of full disclosure, I mentioned the nice Social Studies teacher boyfriend because I didn’t want this cute blonde guy to make assumptions about my motives. We made plans a few days later to shop at Redi-Cut Carpet and the Salvation Army on Main Street.

Ten minutes. That’s how long we sat on the hood of my car making out (I like the repetition here, but you and I both know it was longer than that), and all thoughts of, and allegiance to, the nice Social Studies teacher had been as easily swept from my brain as tumbleweeds on a breezy day . Just hours before, Ken and I had successfully located a low-pile oriental rug woven in reds and golds, as well as a rust-colored furry couch. (I think furry couches were trendy at the time, even a little bit boho chic.) I was the one to suggest we celebrate our finds at the Cobblestone Restaurant, where I had parked the car where we later, well, you know.

So here we are, thirty-one years later and I realize I have never thanked the city of White Plains, New York, for the excellent upkeep of their streets, especially their bus stops. So thank you to whoever wrote up the work order to dig up the sidewalk where I used to stand and wait. It probably took you all of ten minutes to write it up, but isn’t it amazing how ten minutes here and there can really add up?

Sweet and Sexy!

I am a consumer of junk. I eat junk, I watch junk on television, my husband would say I listen to music that is mostly junk, and I read junk. Malted milk balls, The Bachelor/Bachelorette, Macklemore  (Have you listened to “Thrift Shop” yet? What, What What, What? Poppin’ tags!), tabloids by the grocery store checkout. Preach to me all you want, but junk is FUN!

This week’s junky reading material included People Magazine, specifically the one with the gorgeous country singer on the cover wearing a barely-there cardigan wrapped around her petite frame, one pretty shoulder peeking out of it. I did a double-take when I read the headline. It said, “My Sweet & Sexy Marriage”. The quote underneath was, “I want to be a hot wife.” Once I absorb that critical information, I see that the article will include something about dates at Subway, flirty texting and long-distance love.

If you’re any kind of a real girl, (like I am) as you’re perusing the front cover, you are going to compare yourself to her, as I did. My hair may not be tousled and blonde, but I’m sure I have a sweater just like that, except with pills. I can’t help but have my shoulder stick out of it because apparently wire hangers are bad for polyester blends. But none of that is important. What’s important is comparing her marriage to mine. 

She has a sweet and sexy marriage?  Well, so do I! For instance, she says she feels “bad” that she isn’t home often enough to make sure there’s food in the refrigerator for her husband. All that time spent making gazillions of dollars singing to packed houses is sure to make going to the local grocery store an event that doesn’t happen too often. Ha! That’s nothing! I’m home ALL the time and there is nothing to eat around here.

Flirty texting? Puh-leeze! Here’s how my husband and I flirt: Every few days he replaces the roll of toilet paper in the bathroom but he does it WRONG. On purpose! There is a sweet and sexy reason he installs the roll incorrectly. He knows darn well, after being married to me for almost 31 years, I prefer to pull the paper OVER and down, not UNDER. Sometimes I think, How adorable! He’s teasing me. He’s saying, “See honey? I’m thinking of you every moment. Even in the bathroom!” I hardly ever grumble anymore while I turn it around and install it the correct way. Take that, Carrie Underwood!

They like to go to Subway for “dates”? Does anyone besides me think that’s ridiculous? If I had a gazillion dollars, I would cease and desist with the Subway sandwiches. In fact, Ken and I refuse to go on dates at all, to Subway or anywhere else. We don’t need no stinkin’ dates. We can stay home and have just as much fun, if not more, eating a more respectable rotisserie chicken from Stop ‘n Shop whilst watching “Dancing With the Stars.” Is there a better date than that? I think not.

Let’s discuss long-distance love. First of all, it doesn’t work. I mean, sure, it’s a novelty in the beginning. Absence makes the heart grow fonder and all that. And then you’re all hot for each other because you haven’t had sex (in theory) for a long time. But I’m a firm believer that being away from your spouse for weeks at a time is a recipe for disaster. At some point he’s going to come home and suddenly have an interest in weird food that some co-worker introduced him to. Like sushi and something called shabu shabu. Or worse, he’ll start doing Tai chi in the back yard in full view of the neighbors. She’ll think, what the hell is on this plate and why is he waving his arms around like that? Is he sick? You’ll make him come back into the house and ask, “Who are you and what have you done with my husband?” When you finally train him back to some semblance of normalcy, it’s only a matter of time until he has to go away again and the cycle repeats itself until you want to stab yourself in the ears when he brings home yet another fusion jazz CD that he purchased from the piano player at the hotel lounge.

My husband and I don’t have to worry about long-distance love. Besides the fact that we never go anywhere (and we like it that way), Ken works in the basement. If I need him, all I have to do is start vacuuming the kitchen. He stomps upstairs to remind me he’s on a conference call and ‘WTF, it sounds like a train arriving at the station above my head’. But it all turns out okay in the end because now he knows the garbage disposal is stopped up.

The best thing about his working from a home office is I don’t have to worry about him cheating on me. Unless he’s got her stashed in the storage room next to his office, I don’t have any doubts about whether he’s faithful to me. Also, I almost never have to vacuum.

I love that Carrie Underwood is worried about her weight, which is somewhere in the 100 to 101 lb. range. She says, “I want to be a hot wife” and uses a personal trainer when she’s on the road, presumably to make sure she works off all the Subway sandwiches she eats. I weigh about a smidge more than she does, and by smidge I mean, well, never mind. I used to have a personal trainer, but had to give her up because I have a slight problem with authority. She was always telling me what to do!  Still, in the “hot wife” department, Carrie has nothing on me! Even if I’m wearing skimpy lingerie, I’m so hot we need to turn the fan on. No, really, we have to turn the fan on. I’ll say something sexy to Ken like, “Hot flash! Turn on the fan and hose me down!” It’s a real turn-on for him, I have to admit.

By the time I finish reading the People article, I almost feel sorry for Miss Carrie Underwood. What she knows about how marriage works over the long haul is about as much as I know about how to fix a garbage disposal. For instance, since neither of them is home for very long before one of them has to leave again, they can “both kind of enjoy missing each other.” Her husband is a hockey player, and he’s on the road a lot. But being a hockey player means he’ll retire sooner than most guys because you hardly ever see an old guy playing hockey.  So she hopes he’ll find another job after that because otherwise he’ll be home all the time and end up miserable, which will make her miserable.  

So let me get this straight: they’ve been married all of three years, and she’s already worrying about him being underfoot when he isn’t “working” anymore? Can’t she just set him up in the East Wing of their mansion? That way, if things are getting moldy in the sweet and sexy department, she can always leave him there for a few weeks and pretend she’s not  home so they can “enjoy missing each other,” just like the old days. Actually, there are times I’ve considered locking the basement door, but just for a few hours while I blast my Justin Bieber album and finish reading The National Enquirer in peace. Then, when I start to miss Ken, I can let him out. What a sweet and sexy time that would be!

Seriously though, I’d like to see the People Magazine cover about thirty years from now, just to catch up with those two lovebirds. That is, if she ever lets him out of the East Wing.

 

Choices

How many choices do we make in a single day? Fifty, a hundred, a thousand? And of those choices, how many are simple decisions like what to eat and how much, or which route to take on your drive home? What of those choices that carry more importance like whether you’ll quit your job, ask someone to marry you, spend money you don’t have, have the baby.  Each choice, large and small, has a reward or a consequence, and nowhere in our imaginations is there a thought that one seemingly harmless choice could carry a weight we may not have the strength to bear. Sometimes, that is precisely what happens.

Sixteen years ago, Ken and I made the choice to move to Massachusetts for a new job and the reward of a better quality of life for our family. It has taken a long time for me to feel at home here, as I had left many friends behind, both mine and those of our children. The closest family members are three hours from here. The transition wasn’t easy, but at some point along the way, I chose to bloom where I was planted.

That choice, like so many choices I’ve made, was for the stability and happiness of my husband and children. Massachusetts is a fantastic place to live, a place full of culture, of natural beauty, of devoted Red Sox fans. We have the best hospitals in the world, some of the best colleges and universities, parks and beaches. Boston has duck boats. Boston has the North End and the Freedom Trail, the Public Garden and Faneuil Hall. We have Quincy Market.

We celebrate Patriot’s Day, and on Patriot’s Day, we have the Boston Marathon.

Thousands of people made the choice to take part in the Marathon as runners, helpers, spectators or fundraisers. There were people of all ages who ran for the sake of running, the challenge of Heartbreak Hill, in memory of or in honor of someone special, or to proudly say they’d done it. Mothers and fathers brought their children, choosing that day to do something fun and exciting, perhaps something out of the ordinary. Some came to support friends or family who had qualified after training for months. For some it was a first foray into an important part of the culture of Boston, while for others, it was a tradition begun years ago.

That Monday, April 15, 2013, the Boston Marathon became a place where tragedy, incomprehensible and heartbreaking, would take the place of an ordinary day. Someone made a choice to place pressure-cooker bombs in benign-looking trash cans. Someone packed each one with BBs, nails and metal brads along with explosives. Someone wanted to inflict grave harm, to make innocent people suffer trauma, injury or death.  The choice was so fraught with hatred that no one standing ten deep in front of the grandstand could have possibly understood it. Who can truly understand that kind of evil intent?

Certainly not an eight-year old boy holding a sign that read, “No more hurting people. Peace”. Certainly not his father, mother and sister standing with him. Certainly not two young women who had their whole lives ahead of them.  And certainly none of the men, women and children whose blood pooled in the street by the finish line.

It’s impossible not to think of the simple choices made that day by a staggering number of unsuspecting victims. Where shall we stand? What time should we stand there? Shall we stay a bit longer? They will never, ever forget what they said to themselves that day, in full expectation of the happy rewards inherent in the spectacle of the triumphant finishers. In the pursuit of an extraordinary day, they instead came away to sit vigil with memories of chaos and pain, loss and grief.

We lost our innocence that day, but not our resolve to maintain our exuberance for life despite the sick efforts of others to erase it.

 As long as I live, New York will always be my first home. But two days ago, on a beautiful sun-filled afternoon of devastating consequences, Massachusetts became my true home. That is my choice. I stand with Boston Strong.



I have asked a friend and fellow writer for her permission to print a powerful piece she wrote on the subject of the Boston Marathon bombings. She has kindly allowed it.

GUEST POST:  by Evelyn Zepf

April 15,2013

 

About suffering they were never wrong,

The Old Masters; how they understood

 Its human position; how it takes place

While someone else is eating, or opening a window,

or just walking dully along

                                                W.H.Auden – Musée des Beaux Arts

 

I think of this poem whenever I hear of senseless, brutal violence against innocents.  After the sick churning in my stomach has passed, and the tears that well up in my eyes have dried on my cheeks; after I see in my imagination what people must be experiencing when their normal lives become a tragedy in just an instant – then, as I come back to myself and feel the sun on my face, I continue on with the task at hand, and I think of this poem:

About suffering they were never wrong,

The Old Masters; how they understood

 Its human position; how it takes place

While someone else is eating, or opening a window,

or just walking dully along

 

After learning of disaster, we have to choose how to respond.  If there is no immediate connection, nobody to go to to offer comfort or practical help; if, practically speaking there is no action to take that will make a difference at this moment; I carry on, drive home, cut up vegetables and eat dinner.  My life goes on, but what do I do with the residual miasma of sadness and dread that lingers?  Is there any practical action to take to counter adversity?  Should I tense up, avoid crowds, make my children move out of the city, be ever vigilant?  All of that is energy wasted.  There is no protection against random violence.

 

I choose to let the emotions wash over me.  The miasma of sadness and dread will linger until a breeze blows it away and I recognize that there is still joy in the world, still the joy of simply living.  I know there is pain and suffering but I also know that joy is inherent in the universe. 

As long as I have a choice, I must choose joy. 

 

This Moment

 

When her son was born with Down syndrome, thus began the season of her life she had named “The Changing Season”. His arrival had rearranged everything—her focus, her purpose, her future, and her general view of life. She was no longer responsible for just herself; the world could be cruel and uninviting and she needed for it to change. The season would run the span of the rest of her life, but she believed it an honor and the opportunity of her lifetime, one which she considered a gift bestowed upon her for some greater purpose.

He became a watched child at every age. These days not a child exactly at 28, but still, her child.

At night there are moments when she stands in his room after a he’s had a bad dream, if that’s what it was (she doesn’t know for certain why he wakes up from time to time shouting, “No!” over and over), until his eyes close again and his breathing seems less apneic. She watches him chew his food in fewer bites than is healthy, saying, “Slow down, Cutie Pie. I don’t want you to choke.” She watches him for signs of illness or for boredom, for dry skin or hunger, for icy patches on the driveway he could fall down on, for speeding cars in the road, and for proof he is unaware of people's stares.  She watches because he is a child who must be watched; the probability she’ll miss something is too high. Lately, she’s been watching him for other signs she keeps expecting to see but that haven’t materialized yet. What the hell she’s looking for is not so clear, but she’s hoping to recognize it the way one might recognize a watermelon growing in a strawberry patch.

There is a slim hope nothing will materialize, and that would be best. Considering how close her son was to his grandfather, however, she knew down deep that line of thinking was unrealistic. Each time they travel to visit her mother, she is certain he senses his grandfather’s absence in the rooms he wanders through. On their most recent visit, when Grandpa had been gone for a month, her son listened to the music on his iPod, rhythmically pacing Grandma’s living room. He stopped for long moments to gaze at Grandpa’s picture as he passed it, the one taken at Christmas and placed prominently on the piano. The last time he’d seen it was at the funeral home on a table next to the casket. In the picture, Grandpa is sitting in the dining room with his arms crossed, looking slightly over his right shoulder directly at the camera. It reminds her of  paintings in a museum, the ones with eyes that appear to follow you wherever you move. Except, Grandpa’s expression is more benign, and seems to say, “I’m still here, watching over you, loving you beyond this life” …so it doesn’t surprise her that her son is mesmerized by it.

 “In this moment, I am halfway into the next.” The quote from a Saul Bellow novel was the best description she’d ever heard about the nature of anxiety. It was how she had lived her entire life, a bothersome thing that created disasters in her head—car crashes, planes falling from the sky, broken bones, broken hearts, failures. Each day she fought against it, winning some days and losing others. Most times she kept the sound of it at a steady hum, but from time to time it would rise to a crescendo before she beat it back down into manageable beats.

On one particular day, when her family had traveled to Grandma’s house to celebrate his birthday, she was especially worried because his birthday was one day before Grandpa’s and he would expect Grandpa to be there like he always was. He knew that Grandpa had died but she thought he might not remember or understand the permanence of it. Every birthday they had sat together and sang, wore silly hats and blew out candles. Together, always together.  

When the time arrived to sit at the table in front of his birthday cake, she sang as well as she could though her throat had swelled until it felt like she had swallowed a walnut. But this was the best day of the year, better even, than Christmas, so he was smiling and singing along in his atonal style. Her sister had the idea to sing a second rendition of Happy Birthday to their father, in case he was present in an Other-Dimension. Her son sang to his Grandpa and looked around at his aunts, uncles, cousins and siblings, laughing and laughing. He didn’t cry, nor did he yell, “No!” in the manner of his nocturnal disturbances. His face showed no confusion at singing to someone we couldn't see.

 

 

Sometime later, after the cake and presents, her daughter said excitedly, “Mom, do you see Cliff?” and pointed to her watched brother, his new birthday headphones closing off all but the music in his ears. A sudden quiet descended on the room, because everyone had stopped talking to look over by the piano where he lingered in front of Grandpa’s picture. She understood something essential at that moment, in the midst of grieving and watching, waiting for the anvil to fall: The more she watched, the less she could see. Watching was not free; there was a cost. Her daughter’s delighted observation of her brother brought clarity to the epic fail of the past weeks. All the watching and waiting and worrying had made no difference, except that she had missed so much. At that moment, she did see. It is not within her power to prevent pain or sadness in this child or in her other children for that matter. In seeing, she allowed herself to let go and simply be.

 

Cliff swayed in small movements with the music, his head tilted as if contemplating where to place a puzzle piece. Gazing at the expression on my father’s face, Cliff laughed because Grandpa was there after all.

 

 

A Time to Grieve

My dad died last month. Because he had many friends and relatives, we wanted to make it possible for all of them to pay their respects, prompting us to wake him for two nights instead of one. There we were in the funeral home, all of us completely broken up by the sight of my father’s body, when in came Cliff, my adult son, accompanied by my husband and my other son and daughter. I had been worried about how Cliff would react to seeing his beloved Grandpa this way, but it was important for him to be part of this process of saying goodbye. We watched with curiosity, waiting for what he might do. Through the two nights’ duration of the wake and the subsequent Mass and burial we watched him, wondering what, if anything, would happen. The two of them had a close bond. In truth, all the grandchildren were special to my dad; Cliff, however, is the only grandchild with Down syndrome and had known him the longest—almost twenty-eight years—except for the oldest grandchild, forty-two-year-old Gerry.

For a person with Cliff’s intellectual challenges, there is a significant delay in processing abstract ideas such as death and time. When Cliff was thirteen, we moved from New York to Massachusetts and it was a good two months before he understood that we weren’t going to return to his yellow house on Lakeside Drive. He wasn’t able to verbalize how much he missed his school, his friends, neighborhood, his room, all the articulations of “home”. Suddenly, he seemed to have lost all interest in what once made him happy. He stayed in his room more, smiled less, and his colorful personality turned a dim gray. Tears fell from his eyes at random times for no reason apparent to me. Cliff is a young man who doesn’t cry, another anomaly I can’t explain. I couldn’t remember a time when he cried other than when he was small. I brought these concerns to the finest doctor I knew, Boston’s Dr. Allen Crocker, who met Cliff and me one afternoon in his office at Children’s Hospital; he surmised that Cliff was depressed. I had suspected as much, and was both dismayed and clueless about how to help him. We decided the best course of action was to begin a regimen of anti-depressant medication as well as a search for activities that he might enjoy. At first, I had to practically drag him kicking and screaming to each activity but once there, he perked up. Within a couple of weeks of starting the anti-depressant, the black curtain was pulled back, revealing once again the sunny disposition with which he was born. Three months later, the medication was discontinued and he was happily acclimated to his new surroundings.

I have been preparing Cliff for my dad’s death for several months. Taking walks at our town common, helping him with his bath, putting him to bed, all became opportunities to talk about it. “Grandpa is old and his body hurts him,” I’d say. I would tell him that when someone’s body doesn’t “work” right, they die and go to Heaven, and we can’t see that person anymore. “I think Grandpa will die soon and go to Heaven, Cliff. We’re going to miss him and that will be a sad, sad time.” It is not clear to me what he absorbed of those conversations.

On a snowy, cold night in January, the moment I had dreaded had arrived. Cliff entered the room in which his Grandpa was laid out. I went to him, taking his hand and leading him to the kneeler. I said, “Cliff, we’re going to say a prayer for Grandpa and tell him we love him.” Smiling, he approached, kneeling next to me. What he did then, and what he did subsequently, speaks to the innocence with which he deals with the aspects of life he doesn’t understand. He draped himself over the high part of the kneeler like a blanket and reached his hand out to touch the silky insides of the casket, observing the still form of someone he had loved in life, and who loved him back. He looked from Grandpa to me, smiling and emitting what sounded like a soft, sustained staccato-like giggle. It’s the sound he makes when he’s nervous or confused.

“Tell Grandpa ‘I love you’”, I coaxed him.

“Love you Gampa”, he said. We stood up and he walked over to my mother and hugged her for a long time. The rest of the evening and into the next one, Cliff sat contentedly in a chair, saying hello and hugging anyone who asked for hugs, and some who didn’t. He never complained once, which under normal circumstances wherein he’s sitting around for hours without food, drink or his iPod, he most certainly would have. His understanding of the situation was present on some level; he knew something awful had happened, that people were sad enough to cry, and he had to be quietly patient. I believe people with Down syndrome, particularly my son, do have the capability of insight. Because Cliff is mostly non-verbal, he has a good “EQ”, or emotional quotient, and can be sensitive to the emotions of others. In the book, Mental Wellness in Adults with Down Syndrome, the authors state that “one of the ways people with DS may compensate for a lack of abstract thinking is by being very sensitive to the feelings and emotions of others (what we call ‘emotional radar’). They often interpret and respond to other people’s behavior through this lens of understanding.”

I should add that people with Down syndrome (and let me say there are exceptions to this rule) when faced with the death of a loved one, can take up to six months to process that loss and all its implications .He/She will come to think, If my loved one is gone forever, that means he won’t sing to me anymore, won’t take me places, won’t make me laugh or hug me anymore.  This is a huge worry, naturally. I have no earthly idea how or when Cliff will show his grief at a monumental loss such as this one.

When we returned to New York and visited with Grandma earlier this week, he hugged her for a long time. “Gramma, Gramma”, he said into her ear. Does he know the depth of her sadness? I tend to think he does, but whether he does or doesn’t, she felt comforted, if only for a moment. That’s all we can hope for this early in the game. If the time comes when Cliff grieves in earnest, I hope to recognize it and make it all okay, as my dad would have done for him once upon a time.

Questions

You may think this post is a departure from what I usually write for my blog about marriage, family and having a son with Down syndrome. You may be right. I've discovered it's important for me to write in different genres from time to time, and about ideas that interest me. So...this one is a poem I've been working on for several months. It's gone through many edits, with several writer friends giving me their helpful feedback. The origin of the poem came from the suggestion of a professor in a continuing education class I took called "The Writing Life." He came up with a writing prompt which was to complete this sentence: There are two kinds of people in the world--people who (fill in the blank) and people who (fill in the blank).With very little hesitation, I filled in the blanks with 'people who are afraid of everything and people who are afraid of nothing'. Why did I choose these two groups of people? Ah, wouldn't you like to know! Let's just say some people I know and love are at a crossroads in their lives and have been "stuck" in a groove out of which they have not moved in a long time.
Think of it as a meditation on fear and on what keeps us from pursuing our dreams.

Celia

                                                               QUESTIONS

                                          What are you afraid of? Does it feel

                                          like the dark water of a chill autumn lake,                                               

                                         where you are underneath, struggling to breathe?        

                                          Or do you feel the weight of fear

                                          inside your roiling belly,

                                          a fierce ache

                                          soothed only by flight?

 

                                         What are you afraid of? Does it bring

                                         you to your knees, collapsed on the

                                         tired linoleum, fists raised to Heaven,

                                         forsaken and hopeless?

                                         Or do you sit alone in your room and close the shades,

                                        surrendering to your episodic apathy,

                                        and sleep’s escape for rescue?

 

                                        What are you afraid of? Do you see

                                        fear reflected on your face, as in a funhouse mirror,

                                        distorting your thoughts until it seems the world is

                                        too wide, too harsh, and unable to love you?

                                       Or do you look around at others, meekly

                                       measuring the caliber of their stature

                                       against your own?

 

                                       What are you afraid of? Is this your life?

                                       Can you ask yourself

                                       to abandon dread and panic,

                                       to risk, to jump in blindly with calm expectation

                                      of bursting up and out?

                                      Is this all? Or can you widen your narrow scope

                                      to see the promising landscape?

 

                                     What are you afraid of? Will you stop

                                     hating yourself long enough to take a chance,

                                     to push off the edge like a swimmer who,

                                     to gain momentum, plants her feet against

                                     the sides--knees bent, and eyes wide open,

                                    concentrating on the win, and fully committed

                                    to this journey?

 

 

 

 

 

Birds in the Fog

She could not seem to find her way out of the melancholy that had become her companion in the weeks before Christmas. It was not depression exactly, nor could it be qualified as the blues. Despondence perhaps, or a poverty of the soul.  When her husband asked, “Are you feeling okay?” she smiled wanly, replying with all the energy she could, “Yeah, sure. I’m good. Just tired, I guess.” She did not know how to tell him what she felt; she didn’t want to have to try to explain feelings that were as difficult to discern as a bird flying through evening fog. He was black and white, exacting and no-nonsense. If one felt sad, one should be able to express the source without fuss or forethought. Figure it out, acknowledge it. Move on. He was used to her gloomy moods after thirty years, and was generally sweet about it, hugging her by the kitchen sink, helpless to cure whatever it was she denied with her false cheer. She became adept at quietly stepping into the bathroom and closing the door to cry, to avoid the questions she could not answer for herself.

She imagined the Christmas he had a month after his father died. 1973. It must have been impossible to feel any joy when you were fifteen and you missed your dad terribly, and you worried about your mom and sisters. He must have had to be so strong for them. She cried just thinking about it, her husband as a boy, crying in his own bathroom with the door closed.

This is what she did when the curtain dropped over her, like those heavy, dark velvet stage drapes falling in a musty theater when the show ends, and the euphoria of a moment before begins its descent into memory. This is what she did: she found places to cry—the shower, the car, the roads leading away from her house, and then she thought about ten other reasons to be sad, hoping to put it all out there at once for practicality purposes. Like cleaning out a cluttered closet so that when you walked back into it, there was order and a clearer path with no shoes to trip over.

She knew this much—she was lonely for her children who were growing up and felt less and less like being with her. She had spent all that time growing them but they seemed to have germinated like dandelion fluff, and spread far from the genesis of her body. She was lonely for her family, the closest of whom lived almost 200 miles away. Everything she did to get ready for the holidays, she did mostly alone, so that in her gloom, she wondered why. When she tried to answer her own question, it made her choke up; her children had friends and lovers, and they had taken precedence over family traditions of tree decoration and watching holiday movies together. She supposed that was the way things worked, how it was for everyone, but it didn’t make her feel any less bereft.

One day, she decided on a whim, to step into a church instead of the bathroom. The heavy door opened into the dim lights used between Masses, and to the mounds of red and white poinsettias on the altar. Walking slowly up the aisle, it felt unexpectedly and surprisingly familiar, like a cherished photograph unearthed from a long-forgotten box stored in a bottom drawer. At the altar, she knelt and crossed herself, as she had learned to do as a child. When she sat down and looked up, she realized she had found a new place to cry, in the fourth pew of St. Mary’s Church. As she dabbed her wet cheeks, she finally felt the comfort she had not remembered was here. Her tears dropped to the folds of her smiling mouth, and the presence of God smiled back.