Category: Memories

. . . light the corners of my mind.

A Few Notes About My Girl

My daughter has to coil herself into my lap now, she’s so long. She curls her legs up and scrunches her head down to fit.

She has discovered the joy of the small chair. I bought a little kid-sized table for my kitchen and she carries the little chair around so she can reach stuff. Today, while I showered, she brought her orange chair from her room to the bathroom, so she could stand on the counter and brush her teeth. She likes to make faces at herself while she brushes. And she handles the toothpaste tube by herself, proclaiming, “I can do it all . . . by . . . my . . . self!”

She woke up last night at 1:00 a.m. and when I told her it was nighttime, still, she agreed to be rocked. I picked her up and then turned off the bright light. Alarmed that I was going to put her back in her crib, she shouted, “I rock you!” I love how she still says things like, “I hold you” instead of “You hold me.”

She sounds emphatic most of the time because she puts the “not” right in front of the action. For instance, “Today I am going to NOT hit my friend.” Or “I am going to NOT cry when you put me to bed.” “I am going to NOT pee my pants!”

At night, she arranges a collection of seven dollies in her crib on the foot end. She covers the dollies carefully with a crocheted blanket. Then, she settles back on her own little pillow, pulling a tiny napkin-sized crocheted blanket over herself. This miniature blanket is meant for a doll and covers only her belly. She insists on following this routine each night.

I just turned into “Mommy.” For a long time I’ve been “Mom” and “Mama,” but now suddenly and without official notification, she calls me “Mommy.”

She passed gas the other day. She feigned surprise, looked at me and said, “Did you hear that? What was that?” Then she grinned. I wonder where she learned that? (The correct answer to her question is what my dad taught me to say when faced with such a question: “Spiders barking!”)

Happy Birthday

I stood at my kitchen sink, washing the bowls from the cake–and cupcakes–and thought, today, I should be making this cake for someone else. I would have made chocolate frosting, as fudgy as possible, and worried about what to get someone who doesn’t care about cologne or neckties. Today, my dad would have been sixty-three years old. He was born in 1942 and died in 1989.

I reminisced about him while I beat the butter and sugar into frosting and I tried to remember celebrating his last birthday, his forty-seventh. But I couldn’t. Did I bake a cake? I don’t know. Did we go out to eat dinner? I can’t remember. The last few weeks of his life, he slept up to twenty hours a day.

I hate that I can’t remember. I probably have something written in a spiral bound journal somewhere, but my stack of journals in my bedroom closet doesn’t have a search feature like google, unfortunately. All I can really remember are the last eleven days, starting with that day after work when I returned home. He stood waiting, told me he needed to go to the hospital immediately. His shoulder pain (due to steroid treatments) was unbearable. He needed better medication.

He insisted I drive his car to the hospital and I made uneasy smalltalk on the way. We waited in the waiting room for a long time and he grew more and more aggravated. Finally, an intake nurse asked him a bunch of questions and when he admitted to chest pain, he was whisked back to a room.

A different nurse walked in, focused on a clipboard. She said, “Mrs. M_____? What seems to be the problem?”

And he said wryly, “I haven’t had my period.”

Then she looked at his face and said, “Oh. Mr. _____. Sorry.”

I kissed him goodbye right before he was admitted. We were not a touchy-feely family and that is one of the only times I remember kissing him goodbye. Now I wish I’d stayed longer, held his hand, asked him about his life and and been some comfort. How difficult it is to shift roles, though. He was still my father, that impenetrable fortress of a man who didn’t cry or shake with fear or loneliness. I figured I’d pick him up the next day. No big deal.

The next day, when I called from work, I was transferred to critical care. What? Critical care? The nurse said, “Oh, we are so glad you called. We’ve been trying to reach you.” My dad had a seizure during his MRI and they’d injected him with morphine to stop the seizing. He’d been sedated ever since.

But the news was worse. We knew about his brain tumor, but now they knew that cancer had obliterated his liver. He had only a short time to live. The doctors couldn’t offer any further treatment. That night, I still didn’t go to the hospital. He was unconscious. He wouldn’t even know if I were there or not. I stayed home and made phone calls, rallying support.

His best friend drove two hours to sit by his bedside. The entire eleven days he was in the hospital, I’d find my grandmother sitting vigil, or an uncle standing solemnly in his room. Sometimes we’d have odd makeshift sort of parties, a group of us laughing and joking and him, eyes mere slits, either asleep or awake, who could tell? One day, they moved him to a chair. His hands were like giant starfish clinging to the arms of the chair. My mother (yes, divorced from him for thirteen years, the same length of time she’d been married to him)looked at him and joked, “I bet I could beat you in Pictionary now!”

(My dad and I were unbeatable. He was talented, could draw like a cartoonist. I am an imaginative, intuitive guesser and a pretty good drawer. My mother was a liability in that game, a horrible guesser and a worse drawer. We showed no mercy.)

My dad sat slouched in that chair, trapped in his dying body and shook his head no. And we all roared with laughter.

I remember the details of those somber days and the rare moments of laughter. But I can’t remember his birthday.

A hole gapes in my heart where he should be. And so I celebrate my bright sunshiny daughter’s third birthday–she is a miracle, the unexpected baby girl the doctors said it was unlikely I’d ever conceive–and I cry for the grandfather she never knew. Joy and sorrow, side by side, hand in hand.

Happy birthday, Daddy. Happy birthday, Babygirl.

Distractions

My dad married his second wife in September of 1976. I wore a polyester dress with large peach colored polka-dots and looked as ugly as a twelve-year old girl can look.

My father wore a plaid jacket of some sort and my stepmother-to-be wore a cotton wedding dress she sewed herself. It had a collar and buttoned up the front and looked exactly like a suit shirt, except it had a voluminous skirt, billows and bilows of white cotton fabric.

Someone drove us to the wedding, which took place at a private residence overlooking the Puget Sound in Anacortes, I think. I’m sure my mother didn’t have the task of chauffering us, but I can’t remember who did.

The wedding itself was odd and took place on a patio which sat on a bluff. I remember my father declaring in his wedding vows that his children would come first. I really had no idea he felt that strongly about us or even that he felt any particular way about us at all. In fact, I kind of wondered why we were even going through this ceremony because if we were truly first, why did he leave our family?

I think now that it was a bad idea to tell his new bride that she had to stand in line behind us. But that is not the point of my story. Neither is the fact that they had cheesecake instead of wedding cake nor the fact that I didn’t know any of the other wedding guests.

About six months after my dad’s wedding, my mother married her second husband. He drove a yellow van and had blond hair and he made me a little queasy. But no matter. The second she married him, my dad took custody of us and just like that, my mother was free of the burden of having four children. I never lived with her again until she moved in with us in 2002. (She stayed for almost two years–I think the noise got to her.)

That Christmas–1978–I was thirteen. My dad and stepmom thought it would be easier on us, the children, to spend Christmas away from home. Our previous Christmas had been a surreal experience–my dad brought his new wife to his old home and my mom invited her new boyfriend and they all acted like it was fine and dandy. All the photographs show children slouching with dead expressions on their faces–except for my baby sister, who was only 5. To her, more people meant more presents and more attention.

So, Christmas of 1978 found us driving across the country in our little blue hatchback, a Renault, I think it was. (My dad drove a series of little hatchbacks in his lifetime, due to the superior gas mileage. He’d keep track of the odometer reading every time he filled up his car with gas and write it in a little book in pencil.) As soon as we crossed the Cascade Mountains, we realized the heater didn’t really work in the car. We’d sit on each other’s feet in the backseat to keep them warm. We rode bundled in our jackets all the way to Ohio.
And once there, we spent a dismal Christmas in my paternal grandparents’ home that smelled of moth balls and canned tuna in oil. I can’t recall any presents, nor a tree, nor a church service or Christmas music. In short, it was a truly horrible Christmas.

But my dad and stepmother were right. That Christmas trip did distract me from the shambles of my broken family, which was their hope.

At least when I try to distract my children, I use chocolate.

My Grandmother’s Gift

She was twenty years old when she married H.G., a minister who was ten years her senior. Her rose-colored dress featured inlays of lace and three panels of lace in the skirt. She wore pearls and carried tea roses and baby’s breath. After the ceremony, the new couple went to the photographer’s studio where they were photographed, but she said this was the only picture that turned out, and she didn’t think it was a very good picture, either.

Then, they boarded a train in Minnesota and journeyed toward North Dakota, where his family lived. He was the youngest of seven boys, four of whom became ministers. The train stopped overnight before reaching their destination, so they spent their wedding night in a hotel before continuing on their trip.

He pastored several churches and she described each place by which child had been born in which place. She had five boys in twelve years and then, four years later, her last child was born. At last, a baby girl! That baby girl is my mother.

The Depression was hard on everyone and my grandparents felt the pinch of poverty and desperate times. In the midst of the dark days, my grandmother cut apart her wedding dress and fashioned into a little girl’s dress for a girl in the church who had no Easter dress.

My grandfather was a minister all his life and my grandmother tended the home. She loved to sew and sewed all the clothes, even the dress shirts the boys wore. She gardened and preserved food for her family and tended to her rambunctious boys while her husband was often traveling and working. But when the children all grew, she worked alongside my grandfather in a nursing home. I suppose that was when she developed such a soft place in her heart for elderly people. When I was a child, she and my grandfather would take me with them on their visitations to the nursings homes. I’d stand and sing Sunday School sings and we’d make the rounds and touch the hands of as many wheelchair and bedridden folks as we could.

My gradmother was a meticulous housekeeper. Never in my life have I ever seen a pile of papers on her kitchen counter, nor a stray sock on the floor. Her home never saw a speck of lingering dust until she lost her eyesight a few years back.

She wore her hair long until she was well past eighty-five years old, but it became too much for her to twist and pin up and she finally had it cut into an old lady’s curly perm.

My grandmother does not believe in clutter nor disorganization and even now, she knows where every item she owns belongs. She can locate anything in an instant. She lives alone, still, in the last house she and my grandfather purchased. It’s a tiny three bedroom in a rapidly deteriorated neighborhood, but the flowers near her driveway are always in bloom. My aunt replants each season so something lovely is growing and showing off. When I was a child, my grandparents lived in a different house and I can still see the wildness of the lilies blooming alongside the garage and the round gooseberry bush with its sharp needles and green marble-like berries.

My son asked her a half-dozen questions. He wondered how she lives without sight, what she misses about being young, how she gets groceries. She told me she misses reading a lot. He said, “Great-grandma, you should have memorized books when could still see.” And I said, “Did you know Grandma did memorize a lot of the Bible?”

And so, she quoted Psalms 1 and then Psalms 23: “The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever.”

She was old when I was born, already near sixty, but she seemed ageless to me. Several summers I spent a week with her and my grandfather–for awhile, until his death, my 98-year old great-grandfather, her father, lived with them. I remember him giving me pink mints and playfully hooking me with his cane when I walked close to him. He was a small, crooked man by then, but he’d been a harsh father when my grandmother was a girl.

One of my clearest memories of my summer stays was the day I unexpectedly opened the door of my room and saw my grandparents locked in an embrace. They loved each other steadily, passionately, gently until the day my grandfather died on their sixty-first anniversary. He was 91.

And now, Grandma has lived alone for over eighteen years. She has friends who help her with things she can no longer do, like sending out the birthday cards to every grandchild, great-grandchild and great-great grandchild. (There are nineteen grandchildren.) Yesterday, when she answered the phone, I wandered over to the piano to look at family pictures and opened the cover of a book that my uncle had written. Inside the front cover was a twenty dollar bill, which I thought was a funny bookmark.

She had set out that book for me, a little gift.

She must know that the gift I left with, though, was much bigger than that slim volume. Throughout my forty years, she has given me a living example of steady faith. She has given me love, the kind of love that prays for me each day and believes in me and keeps really old pictures of me and my junior-high haircut on her wall. She’s the only person on earth who calls me by my first and middle names. She still sends me birthday money in a card every January.

I can’t begin to imagine a world without her, yet I believe that my grandfather awaits her arrival and I know she’s looking forward to being with her beloved husband again. Meanwhile, she sits and she prays and she studies her Sunday School lesson, eager to learn more about the Bible and the God she has served all these years.

First Day of Summer Vacation

We celebrated our first day of summer vacation yesterday by whipping up a batch of cantaloupe sorbet and swimming at the pool. Well, I use the word “celebration” very loosely, because I grumbled through the creation of the cantaloupe sorbet and only half of us went to the pool.

My twin 12-year-old boys are avid fans of the Food Network. Which is why when TwinBoyA saw a cantaloupe sitting on the sugar cannister, he said, “Oh! We can make sorbet!” This is a child who has never in his life eaten sorbet, or cantaloupe, either. This is the cantaloupe that I lovingly picked out by sniffing its brown scaly skin and waving it in the air to gauge its weight to size ratio.

Creating sorbet requires digging the food processor out of the front closet, which required shoving aside a Costco-sized package of DaycareKid’s diapers (which he no longer wears), removing entirely the dead vacuum cleaner and moving the box from a Hickory Farms Christmas gift which ought to be inspected and tossed, most likely.

Then, I traipsed to the laundry room, where I was compelled to switch clothes from washer to dryer and dryer to basket and basket to couch and dirty clothes to washer. That done, I pulled the ice cream maker from my utility room cupboard where it has been sitting unused for six and a half year. Before that, my ex-sister held it ransom for quite a while in her storage unit before she attempted to sell it at a garage sale. My mother brought it to me when no one would buy it for $5.00. Five dollars! My dad paid $39.99 for that machine, full-price when one day he got a hankering for homemade ice cream that did not involve rock salt and a crank. I haven’t used it since he died almost sixteen years ago. As a matter of fact, I’m not sure it was ever used more than once, after he satisfied his craving.

For all these years, I’ve kept the metal cylinder in my freezer, ready at a moment’s notice to turn cream into ice cream. That moment came yesterday, catching me off-guard, and involved only cantaloupe and sugar, no cream at all.

While TwinBoyA eagerly watched and advised me, I scooped cantaloupe to the scale where we could measure a precise “one pound, five ounces.” Then, we processed the melon until it was smooth and added a cup and a half of sugar and processed it another thirty seconds. He carefully set the timer for an hour and we chilled it the exact amount of time. When the buzzer rang, into the ice cream maker it went and he and TwinBoy B turned the handle three times every three minutes until it was done fifteen minutes later.

Then into the freezer it went.

My husband stayed home with Babygirl while I took the boys to the pool. I didn’t want to take her because although school is out, no one notified Mother Nature and chilly winds blew dour clouds around the afternoon sky. Despite the warmth of the heated wading pool, I knew Babygirl would be cold.

I wore blue jeans, a cotton shirt, a jean jacket, heavy white socks, red Ked slip-on sneakers and carried Jayber Crow with me to read. A pack of mostly pre-teen boys jostled in the pool, playing basketball, mostly. YoungestBoy had the diving board to himself and perfected a little chubby swan dive, while I held my book open in my lap, but mostly chatted with DaycareKid who ambled over to me and sat on the adjacent lounge chair. He was shivering, so I covered him in a towel and we chatted as if we had not already spent ten hours together. His mother came over, apologizing for him, but I said, “No problem. It’s no problem at all.”

The kids swam and played for two hours while I read in fits and starts, depending on the interruptions.

The sorbet’s exile to the freezer came to an end just as we walked in the door. The boys each had a scoop and I gave my husband two for good measure.

My husband advised me he prefers his cantaloupe unprocessed. The boys ate their small scoops, but no one clamored for more. Next time we use that ice cream maker we’ll be using fudge, marshmallows and broken up Oreos. And we won’t be waiting sixteen years, either. I predict a summer full of ice cream and many more days of wild play at the pool, clouds or not.

Why My Sister and I Don’t Speak


Sisters Posted by Hello

I’m in pink. She’s in blue. She was born sixteen months after me. You might imagine that we grew up braiding each other’s hair and playing Barbies together. You might picture us whispering secrets from our matching twin beds covered with pink chenille bedspreads. You might think I am lucky to have a sister so close in age.

You’d be wrong.

My sister and I were never friends. Sure, we lived under the same roof for seventeen years, but we were never, ever friends. We were so different as little girls. I had no patience with her. I didn’t want to play with her–she did not follow rules, she was messy and she couldn’t fold a blanket into a neat square. (That really bugged five-year old me.) She whispered at night, keeping me awake. She left sandwiches under the bed. She bit me more than once.

By the time we were teens, our parents had divorced. I will never forget seeing tears stream down her face in the kitchen while my mother packed boxes. She ugly cried at my mother’s wedding a year later. Her grief swallowed her whole.

I didn’t comfort her.  I didn’t know how. I could barely keep my own head above water. I was broken and distraught but coped by striving for perfection. My emotions were tightly wrapped, under control, hidden.

Of course, from an adult vantage point, I feel sorry for her.  I wish I’d been softer and kinder and less self-concerned. But early on, I switched into self-preservation mode. I kept everyone a safe distance and worked hard at being good and right and smart.

My family might have been in smithereens, but I appeared to be thriving. I continued earning good grades, babysat, attended youth group, participated in student government, played the piano, read a lot, volunteered even more, and kept myself so busy I didn’t have time to worry that I was a failure.  I did fear I was on the brink of catastrophe at all times if I were less than perfect. I coped with our disrupted lives by controlling my own life with grim determination.

My sister struggled. Everything I was, she was not. I overshadowed her, but not with malice. In fact, I didn’t give it a second thought. I sound so ruthless, but in my family, it was every man for himself. We were very separate, isolated in our own bedrooms, never hanging out together. She was a grade behind me in school but I never saw her on campus.

And finally, I left home when I was eighteen.

When we were in college, we became pen-pals. She had pen-pals all over the world.  I was just another name on her list.  We exchanged pleasant correspondence, but we didn’t share our hearts. I always answered her letters, though, and tried to share my life.

I remember the last time we argued. I was newly married and she was newly employed as a language instructor in Japan. She’d come to visit. My youngest sister, my mom, my sister and I drove to the house in Whispering Firs where we spent our elementary school years. (My youngest sister was born in the master bedroom, as a matter of fact, attended only by my completely unprepared father, but that’s another story.) The house was for sale and my sister had arranged a tour. (I think she lied to get us in, actually.)

After our nostalgic tour of the shrunken house (it seemed so much bigger back then) we discovered my youngest sister had locked her keys in the car.  We stood in the driveway, helpless, hapless. My mother suggested asking a state patrol officer friend a few streets over for help. That plan failed. Then my sister mentioned she had a AAA membership. Hooray! We were saved!

Except she informed us, “It’s my membership. I’m not letting HER use it.” I said, “No, no, no, it doesn’t cover your car, it covers you. So, you can use it, even for her car!” I thought she just didn’t understand.

She understood. She was just inexplicably selfish.

We argued loudly and I admit I veered off topic, pointing out her failures, as if she hadn’t noticed them before. I was unkind and mean. She was worse.

Eventually, we called AAA.

After that, I vowed never to fight with her again. No more yelling. Ever. I hate conflict and didn’t want to be vulnerable again. I’d be polite as if we were mere acquaintances.

And so it went. We continued being pen-pals. As years passed and I had children, I thought maybe we could begin again. I wrote, “Let’s start over. Tell me what you like. What color? What music? What dreams do you have?” She said she didn’t have time to answer my questions.

Every time we interacted, I grew frustrated until one day, I realized my expectations were too high. I had grown up, gotten married and had kids while she was still living a weird adolescence. She acted like she was fourteen–completely self-centered, self-conscious, inconsiderate. For instance, she’d fly in from another country, appear on your doorstep and expect you to be excited to drop everything and entertain her.  I expected adult behavior and grew annoyed, but when I adjusted and expected teenage behavior, I could excuse it.  After all, a teen doesn’t know better and they will eventually mature.

So you can overlook their attitudes, make excuses for them, stop expecting things. You can laugh instead of grind your teeth.

Despite my misgivings and vows, I did keep trying. I really did.  After all, my dad was dead (when I was 24 and she was 23) and she had no one but family. No husband, no boyfriend, no children. We were family. I extended myself to her over and over, probably out of guilt, maybe to atone for my careless teen actions, perhaps to redeem my junior high self.

When I became unexpectedly pregnant for the second time (what do doctors know anyway?), I invited her to photograph the birth. I wanted photographs, but I didn’t want a stranger during those intimate moments. She dabbles in photography, had taken classes and owned a fancy camera. I thought I could share the miracle of birth and she could be my photographer. I thought my idea was a generous offer.

I went into labor on Labor Day.  My contractions were two minutes apart when my midwife arrived. By then, I was flinging myself to the ground and howling. Between pains, I telephoned my sister. When she arrived, I was in the birthing tub, clutching the edges of the pool, screaming through the contractions.

I looked up when she and my mom arrived and said, “I’m having contractions. I will scream in a moment. Do not be alarmed.”

And then I slid into another avalanche of pain. She clicked the camera, snapping picture after picture. I was vaguely aware of her camera, but contractions consumed my attention. Less than an hour later, my baby was born.

In the following days, my sister brought the packets of pictures to me. (Obviously, this happened in pre-digital days.)  She told me, “Look them over and I’ll get reprints.” I said, “Why?” She told me she wanted to keep the pictures with her. I said, “Why?” She hemmed and hawed and finally admitted, “I want to show them to people.”

Ding-Ding-Ding-Ding! Alarm bells went off in my postpartum head. “Who?” I said, dumbfounded.

“Oh, our brother and uncle . . .” she shrugged.

I went into full cardiac arrest and when the paddles brought me back to life (CLEAR!”) I sprang into action. When she left, I sorted through the stacks of pictures and removed all which were unflattering and unsuitable for public viewing. She’d taken some graphic shots of things even I didn’t want to see.

The next time I saw her, I handed over a heavily edited stacks of photographs. I explained I had removed the pictures I wasn’t comfortable with people seeing.

She nodded as if she understood my feelings.

After she left, she told my mother that I had stolen her pictures.

She came to say goodbye before returning to her home in Japan, dropping a final packet of pictures on my dresser. After she’d gone, I finished nursing my baby, picked up the envelope and pulled out the pictures. I found the negatives in sleeves, with twelve of them marked for reprints. I held them up to the light and discovered that she’d made copies of twelve of the pictures that I specifically deemed too private. The pictures she’d taken were of me at my most vulnerable, at the moment my daughter was being born.

I was livid.

I emailed her a furious demand that she return the pictures. She ignored it.

I told my youngest sister what had happened and she reported that our sister had showed her a picture. Our sister told her, “Mel doesn’t want me to show you this.”

I emailed her repeatedly. No response.

Almost a year later, our paths crossed at a barbecue held by my brother to celebrate his marriage. The small gathering was held in their backyard. No room to hide. How awkward! I decided I would be polite. I would respond to her, but I would not instigate a conversation. I would not extend myself. I wouldn’t speak first. Would she?

And so, we did not speak. It dawned on me that I had always been the one to reach out first. It was always me to say, “How are you?” “How’s your job going?” “What are you doing for fun these days?” “Did you enjoy your trip?” “Are you classes going well?”

She had never really cared about me before. That realization changed everything.

We had no connection, not because of me but because of her.

As I described this broken relationship to friends over the past two years, I sound like the villain holding a grudge. Why don’t I just forgive her for . . . what? Stealing photos I asked her to take? Ignoring my emails? Ignoring me? Cutting off my children entirely? Being rude and selfish?

I mean, it’s just so weird.

But still.

A few months back, I decided that someone needed to be the adult here. I hate for my mother to have her children estranged. I don’t want the rest of our family uncomfortable because I was mortified strangers would see my birth photos.

So I emailed her. I simply asked, “Are you willing to discuss the reason we are not speaking?”

After several days, she emailed back, “I’ll call you when I’m in town.”

I immediately replied, “When will that be?”

She did not answer.

My youngest sister let slip our sister would be in town in May. I emailed her and said, “I’d really like to discuss this issue before you arrive in May. Please email me back.”

She never did.

Ten days ago, she arrived for a one-week visit. She stayed with my mom a few miles from my house. She made a point of taking my niece and nephew on outings. She ignored my kids entirely. She had dinner with my youngest sister. She saw my brother and his wife. She did not call me. I didn’t see her.

I guess that’s the end of my tale. Maybe it’s just the middle, but I think it’s likely the end.

And the pictures? They weren’t even that good.

UPDATE: January 2016

We are still not on speaking terms. She has never reached out to me and in fact, when I reached out her to her in 2009 to send her a gift, she responded with this.  I’m still not sure if I’m the whale or the sloth.

Did you send me an email recently or is it spam?

Mom says I should write to you and talk to you, but I have nothing to say.  I am not angry at you.  There is just absolutely nothing that I want to share with you and I am not interested in hearing about what’s happening in your life.  If you want to write to me, that’s fine, but don’t expect to hear from me.

The way I see it, one of us is a blue whale swimming around in the ocean and the other one is a sloth happily hanging from the branch of a tree surrounded by leaves and noise.  What is there for the whale and the sloth to talk to each other about?  They can’t comprehend or care about the other person’s life…  That doesn’t mean either of them has a better life than the other.  They cannot be compared.  The whale does what feels comfortable and natural for the whale while the sloth does what feels comfortable and natural for the sloth.

You and I are just too different to have anything to talk about.  That’s the way I understand it, anyway…

UPDATE: August 2022: And her final email to me in 2009 after we went back and forth and I explained my viewpoint:

Ok.  You lied by telling me months before the birth that you would pay me for the pictures I took and then never giving me any money or any kind of compensation for them.  You stole the negatives and prints that legally still belong to me and you refuse to return them to me.  You lied to me shortly after the birth when you said you would write down the numbers of the pictures on the negatives so I could make copies of them for you (generous on my part, not even expecting you to pay me for them) at Costco before I took the negatives with me when I returned to Japan.  You agreed to that at the time we arranged it, but then when it came time for me to take the negatives with me, you had hidden them and you refused to give them back to me.  When I was there for the birth, you NEVER offered to give me any money.  I lost close to $5000 for missed work (I had no paid holidays), plane tickets, car rental, gas, film, a special lens that I bought specifically for the birth, a cell phone that I had to rent and leave on so you could contact me any time of the day or night, no matter where I was…  I would not have had to spend any of that money if it wasn’t for you.  I would not have even gone back to America then if it wasn’t for you asking me to be there because you so desperately wanted me there.  You seemed to want me to be there but then after the birth, you never said you liked the pictures I took.  You never said “Thank you.  You did a good job.”  or “Thanks for being here.”  You never said anything…

Yes, I went to Costco and made reprints of the negatives that legally belong to me.  They are my pictures. 

Yes, I showed some of those pictures to Becca.  She was invited to the birth.  She was there to be the first person (other than the midwives and you) to hold your baby.  How can you say that it’s ok for her to see the birth but not to see the pictures of the birth?!! 

Yes, I told you when you asked that I wanted to show some of the pictures to a few of our close family members.  I think I take good pictures and I am proud of some of my work.  Why should I not be able to share MY pictures with a few special people?!  Of course I wasn’t going to invade your privacy by showing all of your pictures to everybody.  You asked me to not show pictures of the birth to people who weren’t there or weren’t invited, so I didn’t.  What kind of a horrible person do you think I am?  I DO have the wisdom and the conscience to not do what is wrong and what I have been asked not to do!!!  Give me a little credit!!!

Her final email to me

To which I say:

I did offer to pay for the film and photos after the birth. She said no.

She “legally” owns the negatives and prints of MY BIRTH, the one I invited her to attend? Come on. That’s crazy. If I took photos at your kid’s birthday party at your request, would you expect me to keep them? I did not hire her. I allowed her to attend my birth as a personal favor to her. I cannot even begin to understand her viewpoint.

(And I’ve been in her situation. Before I had kids, a midwife friend invited me to a birth. When I arrived, I was handed a camera and asked to take photographs. I did so, and then GAVE BACK THE CAMERA ((and negatives, obviously)) to my friend. In a million years, I wouldn’t have thought I owned them.)

I invited my sister to my birth. I never, ever mentioned paying for her flight, car rental or anything. In fact, in those days she visited the U.S. every year and often went on holiday to other places as well. She could have declined, citing the lack of vacation or the expense. I just figured she’d work around my due date since she’d be in the States anyway on one of her frequent trips. But mainly, she NEVER EVER EVER mentioned this before this email. She simply agreed to come to the birth and seemed excited to do so.

I did not desperately want her there. I invited her as a favor to her. At my previous birth, I simply had a church friend photograph it for me (and guess what? that lady did not keep any of my photos!). I invited my sister in the spirit of generosity knowing that in all likelihood she’d never get to be present when a baby was born.

I was very disappointed by the actual photographs. They were poorly lit, not focused well and extraordinarily unflattering.

The bottom line was that she believed she owned the photographs that I had asked her to take. (This is still baffling to me to this day.) This was not a contract between strangers but an agreement between sisters and I guess that’s where I went wrong.

Can you imagine showing photographs of someone’s private birth to random friends across the globe? Imagine.

Finally, I started to really think about her outrageous beliefs and behavior and came to believe she has narcissistic personality disorder. So maybe I should feel sorry for her. It must be difficult to be her. This also explains why she thought that my daughter’s birth was somehow about her. It’s baffling.

And yeah, we still don’t speak, twenty years later.

This? Or That? Maybe the Other Thing

I have a logjam of things to talk about. This? That? The other thing?

I’ve been brewing up a mental storm about my sister, the one I invited to be the photographer to my second homebirth. What a fiasco! We haven’t spoken in two and a half years when she left town for Japan and took with her twelve pictures of my birth which I expressly forbade her to keep. (She had copies made and didn’t think I’d notice, I guess.) She’s in town and I need to talk all about it here because my husband is sick of hearing about it and I don’t want to put my mother in the middle of it and because she is so irritating I grind my teeth together just thinking about the photographic image of my unclothed self with a baby half-born circulating throughout Asia. If I ever go to Japan, people will recognize me from behind. (If I am devoid of clothing, that is.)

But that storm will have to continue to strengthen to hurricane force, because tonight I want to talk about my dad.

Tonight I went to a production of “Joseph and the Coat of Many Colors.” I sat near the back and smiled with anticipation when the lights dimmed. A woman sang, then an actor burst onto the stage. Tears sprang to my eyes and I bit the inside of my cheek to stop myself from crying.

Why? I’m getting to be an old sap, but crying? At a romping musical? Where a stageful of men sing and prance and wave hats in the air?

Then I remembered sitting in the small audience at the Community College playhouse watching my dad on stage performing his heart out. For one play, he shaved his head to play a German spy in a spoof of some sort. I remember a bird prop going horribly wrong and the audience howling with laughter while my dad and his leading lady improvised hilarious lines.

My dad was more alive when he stood on a stage than at any other moment of his life. He emoted, he sang, he even danced a little. His eyes shone and he projected confidence and joy. He performed only in community theater, but he adored the stage. My youngest sister (not the picture-thief) has file folders stuffed with photographs of him and press clippings.

The theater itself was dingy and small, but the magic outshone the reality of that small building. The make-up, the glaring lights, the bare-bones props somehow led to a magical pot of gold and ushered us to another time and place.

I saw my dad in new light when I saw him perform, but I always wondered if maybe I were glimpsing his true self, his secret self, the self that was almost extinguished–but not quite–by his harsh father and his broken home and his desperate marriage and dismal job. At home, sometimes the actor-dad would burst through the regular scheduled monotony of our lives–job, school, job, school, job, school–and he would leap onto his tip-toes like a two-hundred pound ballerina with a goatee and sing, “I feel pretty, oh so pretty!” And I would roll my eyes at him and laugh.

So when I sit in the audience and watch actors perform, I cry, even when it’s funny. Every baldish man with a goatee and a too-long nose reminds me of him. When it’s over and we clap, I blink back tears. The lights come on and I look down and dig in my purse and pretend I wasn’t about to cry for no reason at all.

No reason–except that for a second, I felt my dad in the room. Then the stage went dark all over again.

When Petals Fall

The petals fell from my tulips this week which triggered the memory of that awful April so many years ago when Paul borrowed a car and rigged it up so he could breathe carbon monoxide and die. Then Diane, quoting T.S. Eliot, speaks in my head:
APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
But before the slugs finish feasting on the fallen petals, May pushes aside April and it seems too late to linger on the still surreal events of that long ago April night when Paul left us all without saying good-bye. Oh sure, he left some clues–an article he wrote called “Ten Acceptable Things to Do After Junior-Senior Banquet” (for instance, bowling: acceptable) and the video tape of “The Big Chill” playing on the hall television–but no one connected the dots until after the police found the car and poor Gerard had to identify the body because he owned the car. And then we shook our heads and sobs shook our bodies and we trembled in collective grief. A silent chill fell over that college campus as we tried to come to grips with his suicide.

Paul never imagined a life beyond that April night and so each April, I imagine for him, wonder at what might have been, ponder the seismic shock that continues to ripple the waves even twenty years after his desperate night. Twenty years came and went. And the petals still fall every spring, bringing a quiet end to their vibrant moments in the sun.

The tulips will be back, though, next year. They always return after the dark winter passes. Paul is gone forever.

Losses

My dad knew he was dying, so he called the local pastor of the Assembly of God church to make a floating reservation for his own funeral. He met with the funeral director and arranged for his own cremation. He prepaid $400 for the small plot where the urn containing his ashes would be placed.

And then one afternoon, a few weeks later, he died in the back bedroom, the lavender room where I’d spent my teenage years.

I called the hospice nurse and she came immediately. She cleaned his body and called the funeral people. While we waited for them to retrieve his body, I called the Assembly of God pastor. He’d been my own pastor for about ten years and had often told me that I was one of his favorite people.

Me: “Hello? Pastor M____? This is Mel. My dad just died and I wanted to make sure we can have the funeral on Saturday.”

Pastor M.: “Oh. Saturday? Well. Hmmmm. I don’t know. We just had a revival and the janitor is on vacation and I’m not sure we’d be able to get the tables set up again for Sunday.”

Me: Shocked silence. “Oh. All right. I’ll figure out something else. Thanks.”

I ended up calling a pastor in another town. When I asked if we could have the funeral at his church, his immediate reaction was, “We can work something out. We have a wedding scheduled for that afternoon, but we can do it.” Then he said, “What did you say your name was?”

He hadn’t recognized my voice and as far as he knew, I was just a random stranger calling a number I’d found in the yellow pages.

Today, my husband was supposed to fly to Las Vegas to meet his college buddies for a long weekend. He’d been looking forward to seeing his friends and getting away from the constant demands and pressures of his life and I was thrilled for him. No one deserves a few days away more than me him.

But instead of going to the airport today, he spent his day preparing a funeral homily and spent his evening with the family of a child who died last Friday. He returned home at 9:45 p.m. Tomorrow, he’ll conduct the funeral of a five-year-old boy who happens to share the name of our youngest son. He’s not sure he’ll be able to get through his remarks. I know he’ll do a remarkable job–even if he has to pause while he cries–because he is a remarkable man and pastor.

The family doesn’t even realize what my husband gave up this weekend, but in light of their terrible loss, a weekend trip seems insignificant. Almost everything seems insignificant, as a matter of fact.

Breaking Up Is Hard To Do

We’ve been friends such a long time. I remember rifling through my mother’s hidden stash of marshmallows. You were there. When I sneaked cookies from the jar and restacked them so no one would notice, you were there. You even came along to my grandmother’s house that summer when I was just nine. How embarrassing to find that Grandma had taped closed the jar where she kept M&Ms after she noticed I’d pilfered some. You understood, though.

You were my friend, even when my parents became enemies. You stood by me when I found myself lost in middle school. Even though we parted ways for a year or so in junior high, you were waiting for me when I needed you again. You have been a steady friend, available at any moment of any day. Boring weekend? Nothing to do? You were there offering a bowl of ice cream slathered by peanut butter and chocolate syrup, and on a lucky day, miniature marshmallows.

My friends liked you, too. We’d all go out and eat french fries at that dumpy little drive-in which was demolished years ago. And a salty main course always called for something sweet, so we’d head over to the new Dairy Queen for a Peanut Buster Parfait. We were all pals. We stuck together.

Who needs boys when you have popcorn drizzled with butter?

My high school job made it convenient to spend time with you, which was great, wasn’t it? All those tacos and freshly deep-fried chips? I loved those “Crustos,” even though the name is disgusting–what’s not to like about deep-fried flour tortillas dusted with cinnamon sugar?

I know we weren’t on the best of terms in college, but I was so busy! I did appreciate how you’d lurk in the basement on the off chance I might come downstairs with fifty cents for a Twix bar, but I know we didn’t see each other too much. As it turns out, boys are more interesting than you, at least they were at the time. You have to admit, though, that occasionally, when we did get together, a whole pizza would disappear and sometimes a pound-size bag of M&Ms, too. And I never did practice moderation on those rare occasion we’d go a buffet. Hello!? Starving college student! I had to get my money’s worth.

Even though I didn’t see you all that much while I was preparing for my wedding (all that sewing, what was I thinking?), I did perfect my one-pan brownies, didn’t I? And let’s not forget those jumbo muffins at the bakery next to work! See? Always, forever friends, even though my wedding was coming. I still thought of you often.

I didn’t really expect to see you once I got married. And I probably wouldn’t have if my husband hadn’t started working the night-shift. I will never forget the first time we were together again. They’re not kidding, are they? Once you pop, you just can’t stop. I had to hide that Pringles can when it was all over so my husband wouldn’t realize how much I ate when we reunited. We picked up right where we left off, didn’t we?

Married life stressed me out, but not because of the marriage itself. The other stuff that happens to grown-ups challenged, teased and tested me–my dad’s death, the infertility, adoption, moving, job changes, financial woes, my husband’s cancer, parenting twins, pregnancy, moving again–oh, and let’s not forget the breast lump and biopsy. I am so glad you were there for all of that. I am, really. You were the one I could count on. Making friends is tough when you’re a grown-up!

But here’s the thing. I outgrew you, just as surely as I outgrew those size 10 blue jeans. Sure, you still feel comfortable to me, you calm me down, you welcome me with open arms. But I’m tired of sneaking around with you. I realize that you act like my Best Friend, but you are sabotaging me. You stab me in the back. You do not have my best interests at heart. It’s really all about you and never about what is really best for me.

So why is breaking up so hard to do? You have become my worst bad habit, the dark sin I repent of every Monday morning. I am embarrassed by my association with you and I pretend that we aren’t really that close. But it’s clear enough to anyone who looks at me and my extra chin. We are on intimate terms.

You have got to go. Food, you are the sorriest excuse for a friend ever. All that time when I thought you were helping me, bringing me peace, entertaining me, you were wrapping your chubby little fingers around my heart, ready to cut off the circulation.

You are demoted. Go back to your proper place, that of serving me, nourishing me, keeping me healthy. Our sick relationship is clearly out of hand.

I’ll be lonely for you and I’ll be tempted to call you. You are so familiar to me! The easiest possible solution to every problem I have! Bored? Sad? Happy? Tired? Cause for celebration? I want to call you. But I can’t. I’ve got to stop. You are no friend, despite your chumminess.

We’ve got to break-up.

And I mean it this time.