All I Can Say

#101: Distraught at snack time

I am four years old and in nursery school. One morning my mother is getting a snack ready for my older sister, who is in the second grade at the elementary school, to take for recess. She is wrapping a Pop Tart up in clear cellophane, and I want my mother to wrap one up for me, too. My sister tells me that I don’t get recess at nursery school. My mother tells me that snack is provided by the school, and that I don’t need to bring my own. But I want a Pop Tart to take to school like my sister, and so my mother wraps up another Pop Tart for me, and I tuck it into my coat pocket. On the ride to school in the back of our friends’ VW bug, I keep sliding my hand over the smoothly wrapped rectangle.

When I get to school, I am excited about the secret in my pocket. We take off our coats and hang them on hooks in the coat room. I am bouncing up and down. I can't keep my secret any longer, and show my friend, who is also named Jennifer, what’s in my pocket. I tell her I will share with her later. Her eyes open wide. She loves Pop Tarts too.

After circle and story time and free play, the teachers begin to gather the children for snack, and I slip into the coat room for my treasure. But it isn’t there. It’s not in one pocket; it’s not in the other. I look on the floor to see if it has somehow fallen out, and I notice a crumpled ball of cellophane and some crumbs under my shoe. I begin to wail.

The back of my throat is throbbing as I picture my mother carefully wrapping the Pop Tart up for me. She did this lovingly, just for me, and now I can’t receive her gift. The teachers cannot at first understand what has upset me, and I am having a hard time explaining to them what happened. Eventually they sort it out, and one of the teachers speaks quietly to Jennifer, who is looking on, pale and silent.

Another teacher is trying to console me, and she reminds me that at this school we share snack with our friends, we don’t bring in our own. So I have done something wrong, too. When I am calm again, I sit on the floor among the other children, nibbling on Graham Crackers and drinking sweet apple juice.

The next school day, Jennifer pulls me aside in the middle of free play. She takes my hand and leads me to the coat room. She has brought something to share with me; it's a secret. She takes a Pop Tart out of her coat pocket and breaks it into two pieces. Jennifer is my friend. We are hiding from the others, eating the Pop Tart that we are not supposed to have. But it’s chocolate-filled, a kind my mother doesn’t buy, and I don’t really like it.

#92: Intervention

When my freshman year of college ended, I was invited by a childhood friend — who had also been a boyfriend at various times in my life, and was in fact the first boy I’d ever kissed — to attend his prep school graduation weekend. I had fallen madly in love that spring, my first true love, and was utterly unreachable by anyone else. But I said yes, knowing that J had invited me partly because of my status as a girl who went to college in The States. For both of us, it was a completely platonic arrangement.

All the parents and the “dates” were set up in a little motel about 10 minutes from the school campus. The first events were a cocktail reception and dinner dance. When I went to the bathroom with J’s mother, she eyed me in the mirror and said, “So I heard about the boyfriend.” I couldn’t stop myself from beaming and blurted out, “Yes, his name is D.” I felt thoroughly exhilarated just by being able to speak his name out loud.

It was a school tradition that the graduating class (the fifth formers) would stay up partying and not go to sleep on their last night at the school. None of the rigid rules these boys had observed, or warily broken, over the years applied to them anymore. The graduates took over the faculty library, a paneled and polished room they had rarely if ever set foot in, lounging in the overstuffed chairs and passing bottles of tequila back and forth.

Another tradition was that the graduating class would select one boy from the class below who would stay at school throughout the graduation festivities and act as their lackey — mixing their drinks, lighting their cigarettes, chauffeuring them around, running errands. It was a huge honor, and in the fall, when he was in fifth form, this boy would have the highest social rank in the school.

After the dinner dance, the parents called it a night and the dates went back to the motel to change into jeans, and then returned to the party.

In the wee hours of the morning J and I went up to his dorm room. He had set a couple of chairs up in the window, their legs straddling the sill, so that he could smoke in his room without setting off any alarms. We climbed up there and sat in the open window, smoking and watching the sunrise. Eventually J stumbled to his bed, while I passed out in the chair, probably dreaming of D.

I was torn from sleep by someone grabbing me around the waist and pulling me out of the window. It was the fourth form boy. He set me down on the floor, where I fell back to sleep on top of J’s dry cleaning, my cheek pressed into the plastic.

A few hours later, the boy returned to J’s room and offered to take me back to my motel. On the way, he told me how he had been driving down the lane leading out of the school and was almost at the gates when something had made him check the rear-view mirror. He saw something askew with the façade of the building: me slumped in the third floor window. He yanked the car around and sprinted up to J’s room to pull me inside. We laughed about it, even though we both knew it was deadly serious. Not until I was much older did I let myself think about what could have happened that morning, J’s last morning waking up at his beloved prep school.

What was it that made that boy look, really look, in the rear-view mirror at that moment? I believe something intervened on my behalf.

I've never forgotten that boy — the chosen one — and how he saved my life.

#83: The Getchell house

Shortly after JH and I got married, we bought our first house. It wasn’t the house we were looking for, but it was the house we wanted — and it seemed to want us, too. It was advertised as a “Victorian cottage,” built sometime in the late 1800s as a summer residence. Luckily, it had never been divested of its original details like wide-plank pine floors, unpainted beadboard and stained glass windows. It had survived all those years intact, a little jewel.

The neighborhood was a loosely organized seaside association, with a common area and private beach and docks. Originally, the land had been parceled out into tent sites, and the lots were all tiny and non-conforming. We had very little yard to speak of, but there were large pine trees bordering our property that provided some privacy, and gave the second and third floors the feeling of being up in a treehouse.

The neighbors were a close-knit community going back generations, and some had lived on the street since they were children. When we started to meet our new neighbors we learned that, although we had bought it from more recent owners, our house was still known as “the Getchell house.” It was clear that even though we held the title and paid the mortgage and taxes, we were merely custodians of the Getchell house — a role that amused us at first, but that grew on us, and one we ultimately took quite seriously.

The Getchells were an elderly couple, and we were told they had lived on the first floor of the tiny house — essentially a single room — and operated an antiques business on the upper two floors. Around Christmastime they would invite the neighborhood children in and allow them to choose a small item to give to their parents for Christmas. All night, every night, the windows on the first floor would flicker reassuringly with blue light from their TV. In time we were told of the awful car accident that had killed them both instantly as they traveled up the interstate and crashed into a guardrail. That was the way to die, JH and I agreed: in old age, quick and together.

Always, I could feel their warmth in that house, as though they welcomed us there and offered us good fortune. Both our children were conceived and brought home to the Getchell house. I know that in our whole lives, the best things we will ever accomplish happened there.

When someone mentioned that they had seen the old Getchells Antiques sign at an antique shop a few towns away, we found the place and bought the sign, ridiculously overpriced at $200. I couldn't wait to get it home, and sat in the car next to JH with the sign resting in my lap. It was a small wooden sign, painted white with black lettering and a black border. It was simple and perfect, and we threaded a thick cream-colored ribbon through the eyescrews at the top, tied a floppy bow, and hung it proudly on the wall.

When we were ready to move on, the house seemed willing to let us go, and we sold it ourselves in three weeks. We made sure the new owners agreed to these unwritten covenants: that the sign continue to hang in the house; and that the sign must remain with the house if they should sell it. So we assume, although it's changed hands twice since then, that the sign hangs there still. In the Getchell house.

#64: Christmas '88

It’s been a while since I’ve been here: sitting in front of my computer attempting to express something of myself and put it out there on the internet for anyone to see. I don’t know who reads this blog, now or ever, and I try not to get discouraged that it hasn’t hooked a steady readership. But then I remind myself that All I Can Say is about the process of writing, and I’m committed to it for my own reasons.

Have been thinking about Christmas, quite naturally. Every year JH and I take a day to go shopping together, which we did yesterday. But instead of feeling anxious and under pressure as we usually do, we felt relaxed and prepared. We even took time for a lovely, leisurely lunch, sipping a glass of wine in the middle of the day. It was so decadent and festive!

Despite cutting way back on Christmas, it’s still a big job, and puts me in awe of my mother, who adored Christmas and, I think because she had so little growing up herself, tried to make it truly enchanting for her children. After she and my stepfather married and our blended family numbered eight, I can’t imagine how she continued to do it. It exhausts me to think of the shopping, the wrapping, the organizing, the stowing away of the contents for six stockings and six equitable stacks of presents (which never were quite equitable; my older sister got the mother lode every year). Added to this effort was the traditional neighborhood party we hosted on Christmas Eve, welcoming every family we knew. There was always a mountain of presents under the tree, and I remember as I grew older feeling self-conscious about how much we got, even though the spoils were divided among eight of us.

Christmas morning my mother served champagne and peach juice in crystal goblets, along with homemade coffeecake and quiche. Dinner was a three or four course meal, enhanced by china, silver and all the decorations — campy and cozy in the 70s, and sophisticated and understated in the 80s. Hers was a talent perfectly suited for creating magic at Christmas, and I take it as my legacy to replicate some of that for my own family to bask in, though on a much, much smaller scale.

I was thinking today of her final Christmas. She was physically quite diminished, but still tall and willowy and beautiful. She didn't go through chemo, and so she never lost her hair. She wore a glossy satin blouse in emerald green with her black leather pants. The whole family was playing Pictionary after Christmas dinner, but Mom was distracted and unable to keep up her end of the fast-paced game. We were partners, and it was her turn to illustrate some word that I was supposed to identify. She held the pen tentatively and drew an oval. She drew a square below it, going over its lines a second time. She drew some arrows pointing to the middle of the oval. She urgently tapped the tip of her pen up and down on the paper, looking to me hopelessly. She had no idea how to communicate her word. But in an instant I got it. Her drawing was useless, but somehow I understood her. I yelled, “chef.” “Yes!” she cried, stunned, and up went her hands. We threw our arms around each other.

Earning that point so quickly and with so little to go on seemed like proof of a special bond between us, and she was absolutely triumphant. It was the last time I saw that smile, genuine, with her eyes open wide and glistening. Christmas 1988.

#57: Five funerals

When I was a very young girl (why does it seem like so many of my writings start with this very same sentence? Right — because so many of them do.) my parents were going to a funeral and I was intensely curious and wanted to come along. I was fixated on the possibility that I might see a dead body. I begged them to take me, imagining myself seated in the back of the car, with my parents up front all to myself. I think half the allure of being allowed to go with them was about having their full attention, truly a rarity, and feeling for an afternoon what it would be like to be an only child. As I continued to plead with them, it looked briefly like my mother might yield. But my father said no, insisting it was inappropriate for children to attend the funerals of people they did not know, so in the end I was not allowed to accompany them.

It was only a couple of years later that I was not only welcome at a funeral, but I played a central, if silent role. It was my father’s funeral, and I was no longer curious about its rituals, nor was I hoping to catch a glimpse of his dead body. At the church service, my siblings and I stood off to the side in the matching outfits that we had worn only a couple of months earlier at Christmas. The dresses the girls wore were navy blue knitted shifts with a fair isle pattern on top. They were unbearably itchy at Christmas, but at my father’s funeral not one of us complained, scratched or fidgeted. I don’t remember feeling or seeing much of anything.

And for a time, nobody died. I knew my friends were curious about the fact that I had lost my father, but they would never bring it up. Yet if anyone did have the courage to ask me about it (although never by way of direct words like dead, death or dying), instead of feeling sad, I was more than willing — and even proud — to talk about my father and how he had died. He was someone important I had loved. And his death was something important I had endured.

Then when I was 24, my mother died of cancer. Her cancer was everywhere by the time they discovered the cause of the strange back pains she had been suffering from, and ravaged her body in only a few short months. The disease was swift and she was not much of an opponent. I was living in Boston while she was sick, far enough away that I was able to remain in deep denial almost until the very end. Fortunately, I snapped out of my delusion in time to accompany my mother to Toronto through a week of experimental treatments. She was frail as a bird, hollow and jaundiced in the face, and her standard authoritative voice was reduced to a tentative rasp. But she held my hand and said she got strength from it. Not long after our week together, she died. And somehow I survived. Almost instantly, this strong, clear conviction emerged: I wanted to be a mother myself. I would become a mother.

But before that could happen, another funeral. This time it was my sister, who was living a ski bum's life in Whistler, far away from all family. While setting up gates on a racecourse, she was torpedoed by a skier who thought he would just have a go at the closed course. One of those split-second decisions that changed lives in indeterminable ways. Anyway she lived — with numerous broken ribs, crushed vertebrae, etc. But the main damage was a head injury from which she understood she would never fully recover. So one night, she calmly walked 20 or so miles to a nearby waterfall where many had chosen to end their lives. She slipped into the water, planning/imagining/ hoping that she would be pulled into the current and over. But she didn’t get swept away by the current; she idled in her spot, and died of hypothermia. Peacefully, I understand, although who can honestly say? Out of all the deaths I've known, this was the hardest to bear. She was a good and loving person. She became unanchored when our mother died. And if not for the accident, I believe she would have come through it. I would have helped her, if I could. But she was far away. She had chosen to be far away.

Now tomorrow, another funeral. This time it is remarkable Regina, who lived to be 103. My entire body relaxes when I think of her life, and yes, even her death. She made it around the track once, and then some. She was always moving, going, doing. Is this the secret of life?

I did have that baby that I knew I would have when my mother died. And then I had another. And in this way I have become about life instead of death. The two states seem like natural opposites, but I can see how they are the same. We are all connected, like a string of lights. The light passes along the string, from one to the next. When it’s your turn, your light is shining. But even when it goes out, you are still part of the chain.

#49: If I did it, here's how it happened

Dear Mom and Dad:

Remember when I was fifteen, and you went away to Sea Island for a weekend of golfing and relaxing? You decided that, at almost sixteen, I was mature enough to stay at home for a couple of nights with little bro and little sis because I was such a reliable, responsible girl. Well, if I completely abused your trust in me and premeditated a rip-roaring party while you were away, this is how it happened.

To set the stage, I had just endured four years of private/parochial education, going to school every day in my kilt, with girls only, and I had three more years of the same ahead of me. But this year, tenth grade, things were starting to look up. I was finally breaking out of my cocoon, and I had some new friends. And some of my new friends had older brothers. This was the year when my awkwardness finally broke, like some hideous fever, and I found myself going to parties, meeting boys and drinking beer. This was the year of my first boyfriend, let’s call him Joe, who was sixteen and had his license.

I decided that having a party while you were away was just the thing for elevating my social standing, so I mentioned the idea to some of my friends one day in the cafeteria. Enthusiasm all 'round — no one could think of a single reason why not. I have to admit, I was conflicted — with feelings of excitement about the party, anxiety that I might get caught, and terror that no one would show up.

On Monday, we spread word of the party among the cool girls at school. Tuesday, we handed photocopied flyers announcing the party to I’s older brother to post at the boy’s school across the street. Wednesday, it was clear that this was going to be a major event; everyone was talking about it and everyone was coming. Thursday, a rumor circulated that someone had put up posters at the public high school (a.k.a. Juvie High) advertising our address, and recommending revelers “bring chainsaws.” This news was a little alarming, but there was no way I was going to humiliate myself by canceling at the last minute. The ball was rolling. Downhill. And anyway, I was fifteen. I couldn’t imagine that anything bad would happen.

On Friday morning you left, all chipper, and after school my friends and I prepared the house, shrewdly drawing a map of your liquor cabinet, stowing all of the bottles away in a locked closet downstairs, and blocking off the dining room and bedrooms upstairs. We admired ourselves for our careful planning. One of my friends (I refuse to divulge who) was reliably able to get served at the Beer Store, and she got us our six-packs. A little primping and sweater swapping, and it was showtime.

The party for me was a visual jumble of faces, mostly unfamiliar, and an audible drone of murmured conversations and laughter, with undertones of the Regatta de Blanc album by the Police. After my three beers, Joe and I retired upstairs, apparently so that I could give him a hickey. I didn’t even know what a hickey was, let alone how to give one. (That is, I didn’t know I knew how to give one.) Now relax here. No need to worry, my virginity was quite secure for at least a few more years.

And then, inevitably, we got busted. Your good friends, the Bs, noticed the traffic on our street and came bursting in to break it up. Mr. B rounded everyone up and expelled them — including Joe and his ravaged neck, and including all my girlfriends, who suddenly had to find somewhere else to sleep that night.

The clean up was a colossal task — beer bottles and pizza leftovers everywhere, ashtrays overflowing, vomit on the cream carpet in the living room — and I didn’t have my crew to help me. I was ashamed and remorseful, and completely mortified by the whole hickey episode. But damn! I threw the best party of the year!

Of course, you found out all about it, but I maintained my position of innocence. My story, and I stuck to it, was that I had invited a couple of kids over, and it had just gotten out of hand. You believed and forgave me, because I was the good girl, the responsible one, and I had nice friends. So here’s the cautionary part of this tale: it’s the good and responsible ones you should never trust, because they will push the envelope farther than anyone, knowing they can get away with just about anything.

If it happened, it was the biggest transgression I ever "got away with" in my whole life. But Mom and Dad, you’ll be pleased to know that even so, I learned my lesson. I never tried that again. And I am truly sorry for the deception and the lack of respect and poor judgment.

But then, remember a couple of years later when I went off to college and I eventually became a creative writing major? Well that’s what all this is. Pure fiction. Even still, I can’t tell you what a relief it is to spill it after so much time.

Wounds for the healing

I am feeling the need to elaborate on my statement that a happy childhood is one that hasn’t been fully examined. At least I think I said some such thing, two posts down.

My early childhood was touched by death, both directly and indirectly, so I know I experienced a unique trauma that most people can’t identify with. And I also know I can’t say to you that you didn’t have a happy childhood, or even more distressing, that you aren’t creating happy childhoods for your own children right now. Only you know your truth. But I believe that the difficulties we have in our lives in adulthood are an extension of the difficulties we experienced as children. For most of us, there is some hurt there that needs attending to.

In order to grow up, we need to go through a series of separations from our parents that are pretty painful for both parties. I think this process starts early and lasts until the child has become an independent adult, at which point the relationship with the parents needs to be redefined.

How many of us were raised by parents who were in some way emotionally unavailable? This was part of my story, and I’m trying to think of anyone I know today who is complete and healthy and able to raise a child with precisely the right mixture of protection and freedom, love and acceptance. I know I am not. I try, but I constantly fall short. And I know that my parents tried their best, too, and I forgive them for not being perfect. What an absurd thing to expect of someone!

Rejecting the happy childhood myth is not about blaming parents. It’s a reality check, a way to reconnect with that child that was lonely, neglected, not respected as an individual, or whatever the issue was, and nurture and love that child for who she was — and what she didn’t get that she needed. I think the myth has to be dispelled in order to proceed through a happy and productive adulthood, and to live a life with passion. There are wounds we all have that need healing.

Never fully dressed without a smile

When I was a little girl, maybe 10 or so, I used to spend a lot of time staring at my face in the mirror. But never smiling. I wasn’t at all interested in what I looked like with a smile on my face. I was interested in what I looked like in sorrow, with my mouth soft and slightly down-turned, my eyes glassy and beseeching. I liked how I looked in pain, and calculated its beauty.

How did I in adolescence come to see myself so tragically? What did I find so beautiful about that verge-of-tears expression? I think there is a part of me that still finds that little girl’s pain irresistible. It was me without the camouflage of my happy childhood, which wasn’t really all that happy, come to think of it. It had its moments, to be fair, and I’m not sure I believe in happy childhoods anyway. Show me a happy childhood, and I will show you a childhood that hasn’t been thoroughly considered. Am I wrong?

Franz Ferdinand is dead and forgotten

So much knowledge is lost. Things I had reasonable confidence that I used to know are just not available to me now, as though the information got deposited into some bank account that was closed long ago. Today G wanted to know who we were fighting in the first world war. Just something to ponder over his Ovaltine. Germany, I said, always Germany. And then I couldn’t remember if Russia was with us or against us in this one. I knew Italy waffled and Switzerland was neutral. The powder keg of Europe, imperialism, the Ottoman Empire and other vague concepts from my ninth grade World History class weren’t adding up to anything. I could picture my teacher, Mr. Delaphranier, lecturing at the chalkboard, enlivened by history and his vocation enlightening young minds with it.

I admire people who can keep this kind of information straight — names, dates, places, details. I can’t seem to hold onto any of it, but what is my head so occupied with? Seventeen years of schooling, thousands of hours of studying and memorizing. At the end of every year, I couldn’t wait to forget what I had learned. When I graduated from college, I felt so free knowing I would never have to write another paper or study for another exam. And it wasn’t that I didn’t like school — I loved it and was a reasonable student. But there was a feeling of being overburdened with information that didn’t have any immediate or practical purpose for me. I wanted to shed it all.

Did I sabotage my own memory this way? Do people generally remember things like the events leading up to World War I? In seventh grade I was taught how to compose music, and today I am pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to craft a proper treble clef. Where did that knowledge go? I wonder how my life would be different if I had more storage capacity, if I could instantly locate information I had at one time absorbed. I’m sure I would be a much better conversationalist, more confident, more interesting to talk to and to know. I would absolutely be a better writer.

One of the greatest gifts that comes with having children is that you get to experience so many things a second time around. (Although the trick for many is to experience with the appropriate distance, to look but not touch.) Your eight year old wants to know about the first world war, and since you can’t tell him anything definitively, you do some research together. And you get to learn about it again, only this time because you want the knowledge, not because you want to pass ninth grade. So maybe this time around I’ll retain the critical event causing the first global military conflict: the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Sorry, Mr. Delaphranier. How could I have forgotten?

Halloween costumes I have worn

(beyond the last four years, the dates are a complete stab in the dark)

Banana ‘06
Pedro (as in vote for) ‘05
Dirty laundry ‘04
Oktoberfest fraulein ‘03
A lamp ’99?
Solar eclipse ’95?
Bottle of Cuervo ’94?
A bruise ‘90
M&M packet ‘88
Fig Newton ’80 (way too old to be trick or treating)
Blues brother ’78
Kiss member ’77 (went as guy with star over eye)
Mork ‘76
A hobo ‘75
Raggedy Ann ‘73
A witch ‘72

There must have been so many more, but I have no recollection of any other costumes. My most elaborate costume, and most conceptual, was the solar eclipse I wore to a party one year. I wore a huge yellow disk on my back with golden arrays bursting out, and a black disk on my front. It was a work of art, but beyond cumbersome, and most people didn’t get it anyway, so after about an hour I ditched the whole thing. My lamest effort would have to be when I went as a bruise and simply wore black and blue clothing. And the year I dressed as a lamp was my dullest Halloween ever, despite fulfilling a longtime wish to wear a lampshade to a party. I stood in a corner for much of the night, holding my flashlight steady and trying to stay in character. Another socially restrictive costume was dirty laundry. I stepped into a laundry basket with the bottom cut out, creating a two foot barrier all around me and making conversation difficult at such a loud party (aren’t they all!). I think we left early that night. I had the most fun in my dirndl dancing the polka for hours to music you would never hear in a Munich beerhall.

These days I’m relieved when Halloween is over because I never feel quite equal to the demands of decorating and dressing up. I broke a cardinal rule this year by purchasing my costume at one of those Halloween stores that pop up in September and in a week from now will be transformed into a Christmas extravaganza. Thus I went to a Halloween party on Saturday as a banana. At least I made the effort of improving the lurid yellow foam banana suit by applying some realistic shading and brown spots, and anyway I was warm.

I get the appeal of Halloween. It’s a chance to completely step outside of yourself and slip into a new identity. Kids get to dress up and go out in the dark and collect candy from strangers — what could be a bigger mind blow than that? For one night each year, all the rules change, or there don’t seem to be any. Eat as much candy as your stomach can hold and drool chocolate into your pillow all night. Why not? In our house, all the leftover candy gets thrown out the day we put up the Christmas tree. So friends there’s that to look forward to!