I Didn't Know It At The Time

Here is this week's prompt for class: I didn’t know it at the time, but everything was about to change.

“Darling, look at you! You look so much like Velma. You’re so beautiful. Joycie, you didn’t tell me how gorgeous she is.”

And so began my relationship with Aunt Bea.

My mom and I had just driven hours from Spokane to the home Bea shared with her daughter, Sal, just south of Seattle. After more than a decade of unexplained silence (how could women raised as sisters stop talking to each other?) Mommy had recently renewed her relationship with her aunt. The boys drove to Portland last summer to meet Bea and the cousins for the first time. This visit to their new home was my turn to get to know my mysterious aunt and my even more mysterious cousin.

Bea’s hug engulfed me with so much affection, energy, and fragrance I could hardly breathe. The fact that her perfume was the exact same Tabu that Mommy wore made my head spin a bit. I hugged her back hard, inhaling the scent – amber, nicotine and scotch - that would forever after put me right back in the center of Bea’s generous love.

She pushed me away, keeping a firm grip on my shoulders. “Let me really look at you. The last time I saw you you were a freckled little girl in braids and bangs and dirty clothes. Now you’re a stunning grown up young woman. You have your grandmother’s Cherokee looks. Don’t you think she looks just like the pictures of your mom, Joycie?”

I looked uneasily at my mom. Bea calls her Joycie? And she talks about my dead Grandma Velma as though it were no big deal? Mommy hated that nickname and refused to talk about her mother: the beautiful, mysterious Cherokee princess who died when Mommy was just a baby. Daring to breach either of those taboos could easily have triggered an angry freeze – would have for sure if I’d been on the other end of the conversation. She shocked me by laughing at Bea and agreeing with her.

Really ? I wanted to say and didn’t. You always told me I look more like you, which is so not true. I’m not prune-skinned with poor fitting dentures, too dark drawn-on eyebrows and over-dyed, shellacked beauty shop curls. I don’t have ugly whiskers sprouting from my witch chin, and I never will.

Tall, chesty, thin-hipped – Bea was the most elegant and sophisticated woman I’d ever met. It was love at first sight. Her hair was a soft wavy silver, styled in a chic cap that framed a beaming carefully made-up face. Her eyebrows were perfectly arched and just a couple of shades darker than her hair. Dressed in black pencil-thin slacks and a bright fuchsia silk top that matched her lipstick, her feet bare, she exuded sensuality that matched perfectly the beautiful lilac point Siamese cat twining around her ankles.

I am related to this woman. Finally I meet someone whose blood I share that I feel connected to and want to be like. I felt disloyal as this thought took up residence in my brain, but exhilarated with the relief of it as well.

Mommy and Bea were giddy in each other’s presence. Talking over each other. Lighting each other’s cigarettes. Drinking like I’d never seen grown women drink before. My mom, whom I’d never seen drunk one time in all my 21 years, became red-faced giggly with Bea. Usually eager to lose myself in the soothing comfort of any form of alcohol, this time I was more interested in watching the relationship between these two women unfold. I didn’t want to miss a moment of it, and sipped my wine with restraint.

Their sisterhood left me out, and after the newness of it wore off, left me feeling confused, alone, and jealous. I excused myself to go for a walk in the soft gray mist of the late fall Puget Sound evening. Before the door clicked shut behind me I heard Bea ask Mommy if I was okay, and my mom’s reply that I often went off by myself – that I was a very private person and it might take me some time to warm up to her.

You don’t understand me at all. I’m not okay, and you should know that. Once I was sure I was out of sight of Bea’s sweet little ranch house, I pulled a pack of Salem Lights out of my jacket pocket, lit one with shaking hands, and inhaled the smoke as though it might save my life. I’d only been smoking for a couple of weeks, so the first few drags made me so dizzy I had to stop walking until my body adjusted to the chemicals.

No one in my family knew I smoked. I wasn’t ready yet to tell them, in part for fear I’d be compared one more time to Mommy. The fact that I wouldn’t be caught dead smoking unfiltered Pall Malls wouldn’t have mattered to anyone making the comparison. I briefly considered switching to the elegant Virginia Slims Bea was smoking, but decided they fit her much better than they did me – at least for now.

I was curious if (or what) my cousin Sal smoked. All the way over from Spokane my mom talked about Bea’s daughter as though she were the daughter Mommy was meant to have, so much more like her in personality than I was – tomboyish, serious, mechanically inclined, athletic, pragmatic. I hoped Bea might return the favor and wish I were her daughter, the two of us sharing traits the exact opposite of Mommy’s list: feminine, happy, creative, sensual, romantic.

I wondered if, when we met for dinner later that night, I would like my oldest girl cousin on my mom’s side of the family. Would Sal’s two-year age advantage, her famous refusal to follow social conventions like being polite if it didn’t suit her, and our opposite personalities leave any room for us to like each other? Could I like someone so much like Mommy? Was it possible for her to like someone who had made such a mess of her life?

Photo from Flickr

Jay Wisdom

Sometime in the last few days all the big leaf maples turned from tired green to soft pumpkin gold. As the skies faded to infinite shades of gray, the space between above and below began to glow with the light of thousands and thousands of leaves in their last moments of glory.

Jays, both Steller's and Scrub, are the predominant birds in the yard right now. Raucous, imitative, fractious creatures whose flight pattern is balletic. Flap, flap, soar - with tail feathers fanned behind like a mermaid's tail - repeated over and over until they land with firm confidence in a tree or on the ground.

Mostly invisible just a few weeks ago, the jays now spark against the lowering clouds like leftover slices of the summer sky. In some mythology jays are bestowed the ability to link the heavens and the earth. In my yard they weave through big leaf maples, silk cyan ribbons whose blue vibrance makes the gold of the leaves intensify even more.

I can't seem to take my eyes off these magnificent birds, and something about the explosion of color when blue shimmers across gold tickles my awareness. I've been watching jays for weeks now, spotting them far in the distance with an inner nod to their distinct silhouette. I find myself watching them dip from tree to tree, all of my senses, not just sight, responding deeply to the flashes of blue. Their ratchety chatter frequently breaks through whatever fog of concentration has me in its thrall.

Are they trying to tell me something? Had Bald Eagles been gathering in my yard for weeks, I would have paid attention immediately. New messengers for a new life?

Before seeking outside wisdom, I explore my own response to these jays. The words flow as easily as their flight: happy, confident, fearless.

Research reveals many other symbolic traits, all of which sing power: clarity, voice, assertion, curiosity, truth, endurance, patience, loyalty, vision, strength. And it offers these meanings, which sooth a heart hurt that grows with each new rejection and each new day of no clear direction: My visiting jays apparently are here to "teach me how to develop great talent." They represent "a time of greater resourcefulness and adaptability" and remind me there will be "ample opportunities to develop and use my abilities."

Unlike many of the other birds in my yard, the jays don't leave for the winter. They'll be here during the long dark cold months reminding me of our connection when I forget where to find my light.

And for good measure, one of the primary symbolic meanings of the maple tree: Balance.

Message received.

photos from Flickr

Pretending

For this week's assignment we were given a selection of themes from which to choose for the focus of our writing. I chose pretending. There was a limit of a thousand words, which Carrie (who chose sugar as her theme) met brilliantly, and which I came close to.

The gathering was called so we could process the news I’d received the previous week – news that changed everything without really changing anything at all. We were in Frank’s spacious suburban daylight basement, just the four of us without spouses or kids. For the first time ever, I was unsure of my status as big sister, and didn’t know where to begin.

I looked at my three younger brothers, noting the curly hair and bright blue eyes they all shared. The oldest, Frank, the athlete he’d been in high school still very evident in his tall frame, now a doctor. Mark, looking so much like Tom Selleck, with a quiet gentle presence that never quite fit my picture of a football coach. And Geoff, the spoiled afraid-of-nothing youngest; small, wiry, working as a mechanic – so different from his older brothers. Looking back at me they would have seen a short, plump, middle-aged teacher with wavy hair, hazel eyes, and a sharp if-it’s-true-it’s-good-for-you tongue.

“Start from the beginning. Did she offer you half-and-half for your coffee? How did she tell you? And why then?” Geoff, still the baby in our eyes at 30, and already making jokes about the situation, prodded me into a story they’d all heard pieces of in the preceding days.

I took a deep breath, sat on my hands to still the tremors that moved in the day our Great Aunt Bea revealed the family secret, and relived the story one more time.

“Bea and I were visiting in her apartment like we always do. The clutter wasn’t any worse than usual and the fact that a 19^th floor studio in a subsidized building could have such an amazing view of Portland still left me in awe. I’d gone over because I was confused about my feelings around Daddy’s dementia and I knew she would help me sort through things. She sat like a queen (can’t you just see her?) in her wing chair under a thick cloud of Tabu and Virginia Slims smoke. I sat across from her on my usual kitchen chair under my matching but subtler cloud of Oscar and Salem Menthols. Go ahead and laugh. I know. We are so much alike.

“After we talked a bit about Bea’s latest health drama, and had our usual laugh about how hard it is to be a big sister – her with Mommy and me with you guys, she asked about Daddy. I told her how tough it is for Mommy to deal with a husband who’s slipping further into dementia every day. I told her the four of us were worried this might be Alzheimer’s because it can run in families, especially when it strikes young. I told her we didn’t want to have to consider that our lives might end before we hit sixty; I couldn’t quite wrap my mind around having only twenty more years to look forward to.

“As we often do, Bea and I talked about what a mean, self-centered jerk Daddy has always been. How it was one of the reasons it took so long to diagnose his illness. How we all thought his anger and stubbornness were only a bit more extreme than usual. How it took his walking naked up the railroad tracks in the middle of the day to cut through the denial. I told her I couldn’t bear the thought of ending up like him.

“ ‘Darling, I have something to tell you. I can’t stand to see you worry like this.’ 
You know her voice – whisky-soaked and purring and full of that happy regret she gets when she’s gearing up to say something she’s not supposed to.

“I know it sounds weird, but I knew what Bea was going to say; like I’d been waiting my entire life for that one moment. Time slowed like it did that summer the car almost went off the cliff. My whole world narrowed to Bea's pale powdered face framed in those elfin silver curls, the sparkle and arch of her eyes, and that bright pink lipstick.

“Then she said, ‘He's not really your father.’ 


“I think I said something stupid back like, What do you mean?

“I can still hear her answer as clearly as if she’s sitting right here. ‘Your mother was married before she married your daddy, and she and her first husband had you. He left her before you were even born. You deserved to know sooner, but they wouldn't let us tell. Your mom said she’d never speak to us again, we’d never get to see you kids again, if any of us breathed a word.’

“Bea kept saying us and I asked her what she meant. She said, ‘Everyone else in both families knew. Even the cousins. You and the boys were the only ones who weren’t told.’ ”

This was a part of the story I hadn’t shared before, so I stopped, took a deep breath, and searched the faces of my brothers for their reactions.

Frank, jittering with excitement, jumped in before I’d exhaled. “Remember when I found that mistake in Grandpa’s Bible when we were little? Remember when Grandma said someone had written the date wrong and then she changed it? The date wasn’t wrong and Grandma knew! You were born in 1951 and Mommy and Daddy weren’t married until 1953 because she was married to this other guy in 1950.”

Mark, with a look of stunned concern on his face, shook his head and said, “Leave it to Bea to find a way to tell the secret. I still remember when she told me about your daughter, which none of us boys knew about either.”

And Geoff, laughing like this was the funniest story he’d ever heard, said to his bossy big sister, “Since you’re really only a half, does that mean we only have to listen to you half the time now”

photo from Flickr

Open House

Here's a message from Angie and Kat, who have been working very hard to make this event happen:

You are cordially invited to attend an "open house" beginning Wednesday, October 14, in honor of the newly renovated Rose &Thorn Journal:http://www.roseandthornjournal.com

Drop by, sign up for the newsletter, check out the new digs (and blog!), follow them on Twitter and Facebook, leave them your comments/thoughts, and wish them well!

Rose &Thorn is a quarterly literary journal featuring the voices of emerging and established authors, poets and artists, and well worth reading.

Restless

Restlessness plagues me today. A kitten attacking my toes or climbing my leg, not a mountain lion stalking me for food, but enough of a distraction I can't seem to settle into anything. Like a kitten, she skitters away when I try to get close enough to put her out or snuggle her into calmness.

The rains are due by this evening. Temperatures have been unseasonably cool. The wind, usually a gentle afternoon companion, has been singing in the chimes and making the branches dance since before dawn. When I step outside I hear her voice whispering secrets in the tops of the firs that line our property.

My heart follows the wind to friends who are suffering today: two whose best friends recently left this life; one whose youngest son's mental illness nearly cost him his life; one whose only sister struggles valiantly with cancer; one whose marriage resists healing regardless of love and effort; one whose own mental illness keeps her imprisoned and unable to claim her own life.

Our bird area is packed with squirrels, ten or more, going about the serious business of fattening up in preparation for long winter days when it's too cold and miserable to leave their nests. The goldfinches have been gone for weeks, the winter siskins not yet arrived. Only chickadees and juncoes remain in large numbers, steady and seasonless residents of our world.

Most of the flowers are tired, with increasingly smaller splashes of color laughing amidst foliage turned brown. Only the wildflowers, planted late, don't seem to realize their season is done. They continue to vibrate life against a broad backdrop of leaves breathing out one last gasp of life into the narrowing hours of light.

The sunlight which has streamed into the house with brilliant golden abandon all summer is muted into the quiet ivory of old lace by celestial rotation and spiders spinning webs against their mortality on the windows.

It's such a potent mixture of life and death, color and pallor, light and dark. Like humanity itself sitting on the edge, with equal measures of all opposites on either side. The balance ready to shift, ready to release the tension, ready to fall into next.

Time to bundle, leash Toby up, and head for the river. Kick through some leaves, exchange kisses with the wind, open my heart to find the message she seeks. If I follow the voice of my restlessness, rather than resist, perhaps she'll offer me wisdom for the winter ahead.

photo by Walt

Biblical Mistake

Here's my homework for today's writing class, based on this prompt:

Your assignment this week is to write about a secret. It can be an important secret or a seemingly small secret. It can be kept for a good reason or an evil reason or a silly reason or an "I am ashamed" reason.

Focus on writing the first scene of the story in a cinematic style--using dialogue and visual details (other sensory details are great, too), so that we can really SEE the scene. In this scene, one of the characters has a secret that he or she is not revealing.

You may simply bring this first scene, or you may continue with the story--following it wherever it takes you as a writer--perhaps to the moment when the secret is revealed to the reader, perhaps to the moment it is revealed to the other characters, or perhaps to some other outcome.

Biblical Mistake

“Grandma, I think there’s a mistake in your Bible.” I look at Frank with all the big-sister scorn I can muster – just short of what I really feel, just short of the power of one of Mommy’s looks, just short of what will get me into trouble and ruin everything. So typical of a nine-year-old, and especially know-it-all Frank, to believe it’s even possible for a Bible to have mistakes. God doesn’t make mistakes and Frank is not smarter than God.

He’s not even supposed to be in the kitchen with us women. He’s supposed to be playing in the parlor with Mark and Geoff. For once he was told to make sure our little brothers stay out of trouble, and instead he’s interrupting my time. And I know the Bible, which we’re not supposed to ever touch without a grownup helping, sits on the bookcase in the living room. It’s not in the parlor with the baby grand piano we’re not allowed to touch and the basket of old baby toys we’re supposed to play with where he was told to be. I slip from annoyance to anticipation of the great trouble Frank’s about to get into. I look at Mommy, expecting her to ask what he was doing looking at the Bible, or where the other two boys are, but she’s just sitting there with a funny look on her face.

This is the first year I’ve been invited to sit at the kitchen table with Mommy and Grandma while Grandma keeps an eye on the turkey, and it’s not fair that he’s butting in. Just a minute ago the three of us were sitting alone at Grandma’s gray metal table with an African violet blooming on the side under the window, talking about how well I’m doing in junior high and how grown up I’m getting. I just turned twelve, and because I’m in seventh grade now I don’t have to wear my hair in braids any more. I’m really proud of the curls that Mommy gave me with the Toni home permanent kit.

“I don’t know why she insisted on having curls. I’ve always hated mine.” Mommy gives Grandma her what-am-I-going-to-do-with-her look. Grandma looks at me and twinkles her eyes without smiling so I know she likes my hair, but so she doesn’t make Mommy mad. Grandma’s look makes me brave and I talk back to Mommy just a little, “I’m the only one who didn’t have curls.” Which is how I convinced her to give me the permanent in the first place – Mommy, Daddy and all three boys have really curly hair. Mine is sort of wavy, but in a boring way. So now all three of us sit at this table with pretty curly hair, Grandma’s gray, Mommy’s black, and mine reddish brown.

Even though it’s just November, a plate of Grandma’s special Christmas gingerbread cookies sits in the middle of the table. I like the gingerbread men the best because they’re bigger than the trees and stars, so there’s more hard frosting and redhots and those hard little silver things to eat. I’ve had two already and may not ask for more.

Earlier I spotted the Red Riding Hood cookie jar that is my favorite thing in this house. It’s on the counter next to Grandma’s cool electric stove with buttons instead of knobs. I think I might be able to sneak a couple of cookies on my way to the bathroom when everyone is eating dinner in the dining room. I know I can get the lid off quietly, and the drawer she keeps the extra cookies in squeaks, so it will have to be the cookie jar or nothing.

I’m on the side of the table facing the back door and the covered porch filled with ferns and wool coats and crisp laundry smell. I’ve been watching the door, praying that Grandpa and Daddy won’t come in from Grandpa’s shop and end this special time. Mommy’s on the side facing the dining room so she can watch the boys in the parlor on the other side of the dining room, and Grandma sits across from the window, between us, closest to the oven. The air is full of turkey and pumpkin pie and the clean but old smell that is Grandma’s starchy kind of love.

Daddy says Grandma is that way, sort of stiff, because she’s German. Daddy is half German from Grandma and half Irish from Grandpa, so that means us kids are a quarter German and Irish, plus half of Mommy which is English, Welsh, German and Cherokee Indian. Mommy says it’s the German that makes Daddy and Grandma so stubborn. She says I’m stubborn, too, so I guess it must be the German in me.

I like Grandma, even though she scares me a little because Mommy says she was a mean mom to Daddy. She’s tiny like an elf and is the first grownup I ever knew with glasses. I really like the rhinestones in the pointy corners. She always buys me Nancy Drew or Trixie Belden books for my birthday, even though I don’t read little kid books like that any more. She talks to me like I’m a grownup, and she convinces Mommy to let me do things I never could do at home. “Joyce, let her have a sip of sherry. It’s Thanksgiving, and it won’t hurt her.” I even got my own little glass, a pretty crystal one, just like Mommy’s and Grandma’s. Sherry tastes really good, but not as good as gingerbread. I like how it makes me feel: warm and swooshy and big.

“Grandma, really, your Bible has a mistake in it. Come see.” I notice Frank is not looking at Mommy at all. Smart move, but I know she’ll get him when we get home.

“Let’s take a look, honey.” Grandma gets up to follow Frank through the curved doorway into the living room. Mommy doesn’t move, and when I start to get up, she looks at me hard. “Sit down. This is none of your business.” Her voice is angry, and I have no idea how I ended up in trouble. I feel a little mad back at her, but do what she says. Then she gets up without looking at me again, and goes after Grandma and Frank. I wait, consider the cookies, consider my sherry glass, consider how much trouble I’m going to be in if I get caught disobeying. Curiosity wins out, and I tiptoe through the doorway, past the formal cherry wood table and chairs, set with Grandma’s best linen and china and silver for dinner, into the living room.

Grandma and Frank are bent over the huge old Bible that came over from Ireland with Grandpa’s family. It’s a little funny that they’re almost the same height – two curly heads, one gray, one brown – side-by-side, but I’m careful not to laugh. Mommy has stopped at the edge of the living room. She’s always a little weird here because she doesn’t really like Grandma very much, but she’s always extra sweet to her no matter what. Now she looks really really mad. I hope she doesn’t turn around and see me standing right behind her because if she does I’ll be spanked and grounded even before we get home.

“Look, Grandma. In this family tree part. It says you and Grandpa had two children, Daddy and Aunt Bev. And then it says Bev married Gene and had Sherry and Ricky, and Daddy married Mommy and had Debbie and me and Mark and Geoff. But look. This date is wrong. How could Mommy and Daddy be married in 1953 when it says Debbie was born in 1951?”

“Oh, honey, let me see that. You’re so right. That is a mistake.”

Something feels wrong, although I can’t tell what. So God didn’t make a mistake, but apparently whoever wrote in the Bible did. Mommy stands so still, with both her beautiful hands smoothing the white flowery doily on the back of Grandma’s scratchy green rocking chair. She’s leaning so hard into the chair it tips forward a bit. Grandma goes back to the kitchen, and even though she has to walk right past me, doesn’t seem to see me at all.

She returns from the kitchen with a pen, stops under the large arch between the dining room and living room, and looks at Mommy. When I realize that I’m invisible to them both, I shiver a little bit. Frank doesn’t even notice their look, he’s so busy trying to find more mistakes, but for some reason it makes me scared. Mommy’s face doesn’t move, her eyes don’t blink, but her hands keep smoothing and smoothing. Grandma finally looks away and walks over to Frank and the Bible. Under his watchful eye, she carefully turns the three into a zero.

“There you go. You’re such a smart boy to find that mistake. I can’t imagine who put that wrong date in there. Come on, let’s get you a gingerbread man.”

photo by Jason Robb from Flickr

Red

I seem to see red everywhere. As summer fades into fall and the turning begins, the color that stands out most this year is red. Autumn is my favorite season, has always been, and I anticipate and revel in its unique palette with the same enthusiasm as a quilter in a fabric store. I know fall colors. This red is not one I've ever seen before.

Sumac, oak, vine maple. Burning bush, parrotia, blueberry. Dogwood, purple ash, sweet gum. All reliable painters of the season. All with their own particular combinations of traditional fall colors. Each sharing this year, at least for a moment or two of their transformation, this amazing red.

There is a translucent, liquid quality that twinkles amidst the fading greens and emerging yellows, reflecting the light of a sideways sun like rubies revealed in a long hidden chamber. Like the first perfect droplet of blood escaping from a cut, this red is life revealed. As striking as the crimson-tipped wing-feathers of the cedar waxwing, the color is burned into memory, heart, and soul.

It stirs something in me, this red. Every new day it shines out from a different place. Even as the rich golds and deep rusts and muted purples begin to emerge, even as other thicker reds warm the hillsides, even as gray shadows soften everything - this red continues to glimmer.

From within the timeless rhythm of the season when lush life is transformed to austere death, this red speaks of the unexpected and unknown. In fifty-seven autumns, I've come to believe I know all there is to know about the season. Until this September, five decades of those autumns were defined by the beginning of a school year, and all the anticipation and predictability and security they offered.

I travel a new road these days - planned, prepared and intentional. Except at every turn, what I thought might be, is not. The map I created with such care all those months ago doesn't match the landscape. Instead of free and easy, I feel uncomfortable and uncertain. I flip from delight, gratitude, and wonder to fear, anxiety, and despair - and back again - hundreds of times a day.

This new red seems a gift to light my way. I'm not lost. It's okay to leave the map on a stump, to set my plans in the grass by the side of the road, and to follow the brightness that beckons.

photo by Jeff Loomis from Flickr