Laughing and Crying

What a weird week this one was, of losses and gains. At the top of the "losses" list, I learned of a friend's death Thursday, moments before one of my 23-year-old daughters was walking out the door to leave for a six-month internship. (She will be too far for any visits during that time.) That made for a strange parting for my daughter and me, a collision of emotions, happy and sad. I hated it that she was worried about me  --  that was all backwards.

The next morning, I was surprised to find that I couldn't stop crying for the loss of this old friend, whom I hadn't seen in years and years. (In fact, I didn't even know he had brain cancer, so what kind of a friend could I really even call myself?) The first morning after a death is always the hardest, though, I think: you wake up to a different world and your foggy mind has to wrap itself around the new reality for the first time. So at work, even when I successfully turned my attention elsewhere, the tears kept flowing, like I had allergies, like someone had blown a big puff of pollen in my face. To try to pull myself together, I wrote a letter to my deceased friend, with no intention whatsoever of sharing it with anyone. Then I thought, well, I will share it with my journalism friends who knew him; they will have their own similar stories to add. And from there, with their encouragement, I made it publicly available on this blog. It didn't feel perfectly right, like it was now about self-promotion rather than the ode to a friend originally intended.

One of the gains for the week was the realization that it's been so long since I've been to a funeral, I no longer have "the funeral dress." (How lucky is that?) Lots of you will know what I'm talking about  --  the outfit you pull from the closet solemnly and use for no other purpose. The one that hardly ever sees the light of day, but that's there to save you from having to think about something so dumb as what you will wear when your heart is so heavy. The one that goes on like a cloak of love and respect, no different in its way from the uniforms standing behind a 21-gun salute. It is classically devoid of style or decoration, so that it is ready for duty, no matter the vagaries of fashion at that time. Though my weight hasn't changed since high school, my figure sure has, and I distinctly remember the day some years ago that I decided the Funeral Dress had to go. The split in the seam at the rib cage was officially beginning to show. It felt as though the dress deserved some rites of its own, after all we'd been through together, some of the hardest times in a person's life.

I am old-fashioned in my belief about what to wear to a funeral, but struck out at Abingdon's one dress shop that was open late enough Friday night. So on Saturday morning, this girl who practically wears pajamas to work was rifling her closet in a panic. In the end, I'd gathered just about every black thing I owned, put it on (I was an "onion," I had layers)  --  and looked like I was heading out to fetch myself a new widower. (See? Dumb.) The more I primped to correct the Tart Look, the worse it got. I visited my mother for a little while before the funeral and told her this. She laughed in absolute agreement and said, "Just keep your coat on."

Dang if it wasn't 80 degrees in the funeral home.

There, dumb concerns aside, I became glad that I'd shared the letter to Keith. In it I had described a bubble-world that only some of us knew, so I am glad those memories have been added to "the memory pot," so to speak. As an Atheist-With-Caveats, I don't really believe we "commend souls" at a funeral. I believe we commend memories into the hearts of the people who attend. It's a cliche, but death really does put the meaning in life. Everything we do passes through that filter in some way. We live on in memory, and the influence we had on others.

Dear Keith

Dear Keith,

You wouldn’t believe the trouble with “water works” I’ve had this morning, a little over 20 hours after learning of your passing. I literally mean “you wouldn’t believe it.” You were so unassuming. You went about your life just being decent, not thinking about it, not knowing how rare and striking and dearly beloved that is—decency. Maybe especially notable to the women who worked alongside you; I don’t know.

How many years did I have the honor of working with you and Jerry on the nightside News Desk? Is that it, the explanation for how hard this has hit me? No words can describe that particular kind of stress. The deadline pressure every single night. The lying awake after an ungodly shift, trying to force the stress to drain so you can have a few hours of peace. The questions:  Did I miss something? Did I let some horrible potentially libelous mistake pass by me? Were we fair to the people who will be hurt by the news in the morning? No higher-ups in the chain of command to call at midnight, or four in the morning. Not to mention the very hardest moments when they came. Like, a suicide after we* had broken a story. Or, Mark calling in a fire fatality as it happened, me holding the phone to my ear taking his dictation, his voice cracking as he pushed through the report like the super-professional that he was. A 2-year-old child was dead in the burning house; the mother was screaming in the background. Could I even begin to thank you and Jerry, for the friends you were to me that night after the paper was put to bed?

You knew that tiny, near-detonating bubble of a world. Jerry knew. We leaned hard on each other’s examples. Quiet respect for each other’s pain, without wailing or teeth gnashing. No ridiculous coming unglued allowed—and that was good. We became comrades in arms, you and Jerry the clear war-wizened leaders. Examples of how to live in that world, and of the courage to continue when others (like me) drifted away.

I wonder how it was that I didn’t know this horrible “thing” was taking your life, but then I think, of course I didn’t. You wouldn’t have made it known outside the very closest circle. You are forever brave and decent and true in my mind and in my heart. You have my love, an inexplicable kind of love that has endured time and distance, always there even when hidden from my own daily thoughts. More than that, you have my deepest respect. How the world needs your decency.

*Mark is “here” with me today, too. Say hello for me, dear old friend.

How to Get Dumped Outside

In my extended, Hispanic-Catholic family in El Paso Texas, babies came at a steady rate, though not so often that each one was not greeted with wonder. A collective familial breath was drawn each time eyes were laid upon the newcomer: Look, in this tiny space is a human life where none was before.

Women in the family just beyond childbearing age were at various stages of matriarchy, and the unspoken duties of each included a formal visit to the new mother a week or two after she came home from the hospital. Children who tagged along were dressed up nearly as well as for church. This always involved notching the kids tight for some reason. Braids. Unforgiving patent leather shoes. Buttoned collars. I endured the severe grooming, working on the wrinkles between my eyebrows at a tender age. I still remember a thick, bright red wool sweater that my mother must have bought too big and required me to wear until she couldn't get away with calling them 3/4 sleeves any longer. For years I steam-cooked in that sweater in the vinyl back seat of the family Buick, in West Texas weather hot enough for lowered windows. In those days, the Boogie Man was still considered a draft with a living flocculent of disease inside, whisking away the souls of children in the night.

My older cousins and younger aunts who had become new mothers loved me very much, but it didn't take long for them to want to scoop me up, deposit me outside, and lock the door. I was that annoying little girl for whom newborn babies are a perfume drug. Five-year-old girls like the one I was get a bead-like focus that can't be slapped away. We don't say a word because suddenly, we can't. Our brains are too befuddled by the human life where none was before, the miraculous miniature creature wrapped in nebulous blankets and hand-delivered to our foolish care by no less than the angels above. Our nostrils flare with excitement; we look and we touch and, when gently encouraged to direct our freakish ardor elsewhere, we circle back around like witless boomerangs. We will sneak back into the nursery. Then, in a trance of good intentions, we will proceed to topple the baby basket or induce startled wailing or just generally leave a mess of disheveled blankets and toys in the crib, evidence we broke our deaf-and-dumb promises to "look but don't touch." Under any other circumstances we are good as gold, but put a new baby within pheromone-detecting distance and we just can't stop.

Click here, for a master with childhood memory (thanks be to Jami Pederson, for the "share").

Wallis

March of feasts overblown.

Fine silver, origin unknown.

The runcible spoon

in a cradle

of glittering capers.

Salt sheathed in black.

Promise of pearls

parsed over time.

A fiery pop,

an uncrossable line.

A king awakens.

How exquisite  --

the peppercorns in brine.

The Scoundrel Could Have Needed a Step Stool

Salsa the Wonder Filly has nudged up in height a bit recently. The naked eye  --  when carefully focused  --  can detect a hair’s breadth of growth. I think.

My husband and I are overly keen in our observations in this regard, like parents following an adolescent daughter around every second waiting for the first sign a training bra is in order. Salsa’s daddy was an “anonymous donor” who hightailed it out of Dodge before he could be seen in the daylight, so we don’t have any idea about half of her genetics. I am 5'11, and I’m thinking it would be just my luck  --  the one horse I’ve got that is obedient and sweet will grow to a size suitable for being ridden by circus monkeys.

So Doug and I scuttle up and down the fence line, stopping often and rocking back and forth from the knees to adjust our vision.

“I think I see something! Do you see something?”

“I think I do. Unless she’s standing on a hill, her hindquarters are higher than they were a month ago. I’m sure of it.”

“No worries then. She’s going to get taller.”

“You bet your sweet banana treats she is.”

We brace ourselves for the day our little girl stops munching grass, turns to us, blinking, and says, Excuse me Mom and Dad. A little privacy please?

Sniper Fire

I am tapping a finger to my chin. The sickle-shaped claws of my mind are extending and retracting, slowly  --  an unknowing flap of feathers has drawn their attention and made them ready to sever something as if of their own accord. I am weighing words like gun powder, harmless enough in the wind or on the scale, but in skillful hands, capable of delivering mortal wounds.

To write, or not to write, about the most despicable woman I ever knew?

She is perfection for my purposes, for the mission of this blog, which  --  you may not know up to now  --  is purely my attempt to exercise old writing muscles. Peaceful farmscapes and the unexpected hijinks of the animals are safe fodder for meeting some sort of regular schedule, sure as sunrises and puppies to deliver words and chuckles. Trust me, they will be back, but this space has the equivalent of a movie's NC-17 rating  --  for its uncertainty of topics not even imagined yet and so impossible to classify for the reader in advance.

How delicious then, to have this character from more than a decade in my past come back into view. My grown daughters were in a stream-of-consciousness banter when they landed on the memory of this woman, an "authority figure" from their childhoods, and burst into laughter.

See her:  a bouncing spill of blond curls, the hairstyle sometimes long and sometimes short but otherwise never changing in her nearly 50 years. (She discovered a long time ago the value of the blond flounce  --  the effervescent flag whipping in the wind of the male periphery.) The only other innate physical attribute worth mentioning is the one that magnetizes some women to her side, so in awe are they of an impossibly diminutive figure. This she has covered in a dark, fake tan and flashy jewelry; horse teeth she learned from a young age to handle by hiding them in plain sight. Smile big, smile often, and perhaps people will think they're just another set of cubic zirconia adornments.

So diminutive and blond, she speed walks (honing in on victims like a bullet) and ticks her butt from side to side, enough to notice, but not so much that anyone could with perfect confidence call into question her motives. (She has found a church where good manners and good intentions allow grace for a broad expression of such "gifts.") Feigning innocence, she blurts in front of groups whatever is most likely to hurt or embarrass or make a timid person cry.

"How dare you tell everyone here your dream about walking on the ocean floor  --  Mary here had a child die of drowning 10 years ago!"

"You know, according to Leviticus a birthmark like the one your baby has is the sign of the devil."

"NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO!" (Interrupting a solemn ritual and marching herself through the crowd, to accost one individual. A woman, of course.) "You are supposed to be focused on Jesus Christ your Lord and Savior, and it doesn't matter that you got cold. Take off that coat!"

Group IQs can be gleaned by whether a table full of partygoers leans in toward her as she approaches, or away. Intelligent, confident, or talented people fall away from her like rich people from a smelly beggar  --  you will not see them in her close company. But imagine the women who join the bullet of her to become the "Church Torpedo," as I call them collectively, fanning out behind her as she moves to keep other women in line. Horse Teeth leads the charge, cornering a lone female not to her liking, and doing all the talking:

"You say you don't love your husband? You've filed for divorce from a good, God-fearing man? Well let me tell you what you need to do. You need to get your ass home and give that man a good country fucking. Right girls? Am I right?"

*  *  *

To write, or not to write, about the most despicable woman I ever knew? You see the dilemma. What a great character for someone who is exercising her writing muscles. But it is also true that words are capable of delivering mortal wounds, sometimes most worryingly, to the reputations of their writers. One could be seen as jealous, petty, the pathetic victim in a given scenario. Even if the writer could successfully protest, but not too much, that she is none of those things in a certain case, just an observer, don't negative sentiments reflect most of all on the person who has them?

What to do, what to do.

I'll be sure to let you know what I decide.

Leaning on a Shovel

Yesterday, after scratching around for a few Sunday morning hours trying to think of a project that would actually satisfy, Holly and I burst out the back door and ran for the garden tools. The temperature had risen to about 40 degrees, I’m guessing, in a short window between nighttime temps in the 20s. Eyeballing the ground from the kitchen window, we decided maybe, maybe it could be worked, and we were off to create a new bed for a perennial herb garden.

Oh this particular daughter of mine, how she understands the ancient call to get outside and make hay. She misses her work at Heifer International’s Overlook Farm in Massachusetts, having recently completed a five-month internship there. Her knowledge of farming and food pathways rivals mine, easy.

And to think I was the butt of a family joke for a long time, after picking the girls up from high school and remarking about a black mound of topsoil as we passed, “Look at that beautiful dirt.”

Dirt you say, Mom? Dirt? How about mildew, or garbage? Entrails, perhaps?

Within the last few weeks, 23-year-old Holly was the one driving us somewhere, absentmindedly, when her eyes lit upon another mound of compost-rich soil. Forgetting herself, she murmured, “Look at that beautiful dirt.”

Kids say the darndest things …

* * *

Whoa there, friend:  erase all those notions of blooming azaleas and spring birdsong I’ve conjured with the mere mention of working the dirt. Here in Brumley Gap, the azaleas are not dead but they look it, and Doug, with his heart of gold for the smallest creatures, clears snow and tenderly spreads black oil sunflower seed to keep the birds from starving. Last time I wrote, I conveyed a reluctance to trust a burgeoning sense of well-being based on better weather, this being only late January. Christmas is recent enough that I almost feel I can turn, look over my shoulder, and see it.

Count me among those who believe there’s very good reason so many of the world’s cultures have arranged winter festivals, including Christmas, to fall around the time of the winter solstice. Even forced merriment works as a cultural adaptation to keep humans, in fits of dark winter depression, from following the example of lemmings. Pass the spiked eggnog, please. Or just the spike. I am thinking of adding some pagan traditions to our family holiday next year, to increase the beneficial effect, or at least to keep us busier in our attempts to survive until the days get longer. Admittedly, our tradition in recent years has amounted to me saying, “Hey somebody. Get a branch from the yard and stick some stuff on it.” But I rather like the Incan idea of ceremoniously tying the sun to a stone. How hard could it be?

Any harder than Holly and I stretching ourselves, physically, between the height of winter and the height of spring?

The ground did turn over under our shovels yesterday. We shed our layers one by one as we warmed to our own movements, beginning with down parkas. Then darkness came; snow fell; our unfinished project iced up, as though miserly Old Man Winter could not concede even that one small patch of ground. The shovels are still leaned against the back fence, dusted with frozen water crystals and cause for the neighbors to wonder if we know what we are doing. We do. In actuality, we are loath to put the tools of spring back in the shed. Our herb garden waits, and we wait. In short sunlit intervals, we will continue turning dirt, smothering the sleeping, unwanted weeds with plastic, lifting the plastic and spreading compost  --  to await planting after the danger of frost.

Old Man Winter grows weaker by the day, and what choice do we have, but to make that good enough for now?

None whatsoever.