Susiej

I spent the morning relishing in my new-found freedom. My little guy and I walked his brothers to school, and like two cats that got out of the bag, wandered around wondering what we’d do next. For so long, we’ve lived in 3-hour time blocks; scheduling our day by the morning a.m. bell at the school, and the half-day mark when we’d take his brother to kindergarten, and then the end of day bell that told us it was time to pick him up.

After a quick trip to the post office, we watered our dried-out dying plants, ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and drank tea. He built a dinosaur cage under my feet that I tripped over while I tried to clean the kitchen.

I finally decided to spend my long stretch of time finishing, rather than just doing, the laundry. My laundry pile has, for the last two days, stretched from the laundry room steps to the floor in front of the machines, and then like a river, backed up on the counter, where the baskets sit empty; waiting to hold the neatly folded clothes, except that the dirty clothes were merging into the freshly washed ones.

I can’t tell you what a joy it was to work continuously on just one task. The little guy played at my feet, changing costumes as quickly as I folded them, as we both got used to having one less heartbeat around the house. Soon, the laundry done; the laundry counter finally cleared, the wrinkles gone, and we lost track of time.

All was going well until the “noon on Wednesday” public service alarm went off. Like a ton of bricks, I realized he was gone, and today we weren’t late for kindergarten, for once. The empty hollow feeling came out of now where, and I quickly started wiping the counter, trying to push the feeling away. Soon, the feeling, not the sticky counter, became too heavy to ignore. I called my husband, and said, “The noon whistle just blew, and he’s not here.” He laughed. I hung up the phone, because by then, the tears were flowing in exactly the same way as the laundry.

I sat down on the sofa, and my little guy laughed and said, “Oh brother.” The hardest part was hanging on to my sadness, while answering his perfectly logical questions about why I was sad when after all, he was still here.

This hollow empty feeling was mysteriously absent when the other boys left for school. Yes, I was sad, but not like this. That sadness was easy to push aside with the babies I had to nurse, the cereal that needed to be poured, and trains that were constantly being built underfoot.

I reached for the phone, and couldn’t think of a soul on the planet that would care to listen to me blubbering on the other end about how empty the house is; how empty my heart feels. Will somebody please explain to me why my arms feel as if I just swam across the English Channel?

Of course, no one, except my Mom. My Mom, who stood in the kitchen with me when the other two boys went off to school for the first time, and stayed with me as we looked after the babies. She who remembered what a feisty little baby he was; what a feisty toddler he was. Someone to help me sort out, like the laundry, why it is that I feel so lost today without him, when I have three others that fill my heart just as much. Now, even she is gone too.

Or maybe she’s not… maybe she’s hovering around me today, and that’s why I miss her more than ever today.

So I called no one; I was afraid someone would offer to cheer me up, and take me out of the hollow river I was spiraling down into. I wanted to follow it to its end; to see where it would lead me; because I knew this is more about me, and less about him — my first grader who is doing just grand.

I gave in and plugged my little guy into Noggin so that I could sob into my pillow in peace.

So my Mom, or some muse, tapped someone on the shoulder. The phone rang, and it was one of my dear friends at the lake. She knew what today meant; and she called just to see how I was doing. My feelings were familiar to the ones she once carried. Relieved, I was, to hear from her; she understood the need to just feel what I feel — a feeling she remembers.

We hung up, and I continued my little sob scene.

What is so nice about times like these is when you know that someone above really is looking out for you. This became apparent when the muse must have tapped someone again, as the phone rang. It was my husband, asking “How was the first day!?”

“Why are you calling so soon… he’s still at school?”

“You mean you haven’t picked him up yet?”

“No… What time is it?”

I looked at my phone to check the time. It was exactly 2:47. School gets out at 2:50. And I was two and half blocks, and lots of parked cars away, from the boy I missed so much.

I thank God that my little guy is so resilient; the caped crusader jumped off the sofa, and ran with me. We found his brother, walking around the playground, the teacher holding his hand. His day was stellar. My eyes were puffy, hidden behind my sunglasses.

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It’s not leaving the lake that is so hard… the difficulty comes in facing the milestone the departure represents; another summer in the life of a child is closing. One step closer to the hard realities of adulthood. One step closer to losing my little guy to all day school.
Our last night at the lake, their laughter carried across the water, as they made snow angels in the sand. My hands were busy collecting laundry, picking up toys, and facing the one-million tasks that must be done before closing up and heading for home. I was too busy to catch these photos; but their laughter kept echoing, telling me, really, “to grab the kids and run for the hills before it’s too late!”

When I chose Firefly Summer as my summer read, I chose it for its title. Fireflies, summer, and childhood go hand in hand. Yet, the book was full of tragedies; so much that I found myself laughing at the irony of it all at the end. But, there was one poem that Binchy pulled in from Yeats, that captures my feeling tonight so eloquently:

Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

The Stolen Child, by William Butler Yeats:

I’m terrible with all of this first day of school stuff.

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Filed under: Tears, boy, the lake house by SusieJ - 3 Comments →

Today is my birthday, and I’m reviving this post about a gift my Grandmother gave me, without realizing it, so many years ago. A lesson she taught me:

Our lives rarely end with our physical presence. Aunt Edith died about 15 years ago, and she was fairly young — in her sixties. My Grandma, Aunt Edith’s Mother-in-Law, was in a nursing home, not doing her best — but OK for a 94-year-old. Grandma’s children decided it would be best not to tell her that her daughter-in-law passed on. “It would kill her,” they said.

Grandma’s heart had already been broken severely decades ago when she lost an 18-year-old Granddaughter to a car accident. Then, there was the daughter-in-law, just two years earlier. Her response to these deaths was always greeted with the same bitter, empty bewilderment.

There was a pronounced silence within her, and I can remember those times, that I spent at her house as a little girl while she grieved. Her kitchen was suddenly so quiet that the hum of the icebox seemed to echo, while she stared out the kitchen window at the woods, and her fields. Her small house suddenly felt like a giant, desolate Cathedral, that still managed to have a steady supply of Ritz Crackers for me to munch.

She would say, never tearfully, but almost like a condemnation, “Why didn’t God just take me instead? I’ve already lived my life… Why doesn’t he spare the young ones.” I think, for a time, she felt betrayed by a God that no longer seemed “just.” I had expected someone at this advanced age to not get caught off-guard. Still, God seemed to get her every time. Thinking back now, I think I shoulder ponder this as I begin to reach her age.

So, in the interest of Grandma’s heart, they didn’t tell her about Edith.

Soon, Grandma began to ask questions… “Why hasn’t Edith been in to see me?” Well, she’s not feeling well…. she’s been in the hospital, you know…” Grandma already knew the answer to her questions. Finally, she looked at one of her daughters square in the eye and said,

“Edith came to see me last night in my dream. She said, ‘I’m dead. I’m fine, and you need to stop worrying about me so I can move on.’”

So much for trying to fool Grandma.

I don’t know if Grandma was angry at her children for keeping her from grieving over Edith’s passing… if she resented not being able to cry at at her funeral, or to deny her that right to say to her son, “God should have just taken me instead.” Was she angry at her children for lying?

Grandma’s realization of the truth was something they all laughed about, as it was so typical of her to be “on the ball.” I think in her heart Grandma knew their intentions were good, and if she did hold a grudge in the beginning… it melted over time.

But I do know one thing… Edith couldn’t move on to wherever it was she needed to go, until Grandma let her go.

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Jack came home from school when he was 15 to find his mother, already gone. She committed suicide. His older sister was five years older and lived too far away to, nor cared to, help. His divorced father was an alcoholic, who lived several hours away. Jack’s new mission in life was to avoid foster care. He lied when the school called to talk to his Dad. Jack said he was at the Moose Lodge, or traveling on business. Jack succeeded in fooling the school system for several years, until he was no longer underage, and by then, nothing could be done.

Jack’s social security checks were $400 a month, but they were in his Dad’s name. When the water was shut off, Jack made a desperate attempt to forge his dad’s signature – but he got caught and never saw a cent of that money. The money Jack did have came from his paper route - $100 a week. Still, he often went to the quarry to catch a fish to cook for dinner. Then he’d stop at the grocery store to steal a couple of potatoes and a can of green beans. “I just remember feeling so grateful that the food was there… I was so hungry, and I was just so happy to be able to sit down and eat that meal.”

He dropped out of high school, and the local politicians, lawyers and the high-classed people of his town hooked him into selling drugs to them. They knew he was struggling and wanted to help him out. “They took me under their wing, and I felt like they were watching out for me.” He did well as a dealer, until “all that money” went to his head, and then he started using the drugs he was selling. Suddenly, he had no money left to pay his suppliers. He landed in jail; which probably saved his life from the suppliers who were out for his blood. In jail, he realized this wasn’t the kind of life he wanted to lead, and once out of jail, he still struggled to find a way to feed himself.

Several days had passed since his last meal, and he was so hungry. Jack found it almost impossible to overcome his pride and ask for help. Finally, he mustered up the courage to call his sister. This was his only chance; his own flesh and blood, and probably his only hope left in the world. “Will you please just send me $20 so that I can get some groceries?” She said no, saying, “he would probably just use the money to get more drugs and not groceries.”

He had been sitting at his mother’s vanity when he called his sister. Whenever he missed her, he would often go there and open her billfold, look at the pictures inside, remember a happier life when he was younger and his parents were still married, and inhale the smell of juicy fruit that permeated the inside. As he hung up the phone, he realized then that every door was closed. He reached for the familiar billfold, and out dropped a $10 bill. A $10 bill that had never been there in each of the other times he opened that billfold for comfort. “People say they find Jesus in jail,” he says. “I found Jesus the night that $10 bill fell. I took that as a sign that there was a God, and someone was looking out for me all this time.” He was amazed at how long he was able to eat off that $10 bill.

Before she died, his mom always took him to gymnastics classes. This explains why he’s able to climb trees so well, and why he’s the only person for miles who can reach those dangerous limbs that surround so many of these lake house cottages. That is why I know this story. While climbing trees and cutting limbs for us, he started to talk. At the end, tears glistened in his eyes.

I was almost relieved when I heard Jack say that he now has two sons; one who is finishing college, and another just ready to start. Jack is still thin — skinny is a better word. He has muscles, but the skin is stretched tight over his jaw and his neck, revealing muscles and veins. “To this day, I only eat unless I’m really hungry.” After he left, I cried when I imagined what Christmas Morning was like for this 15-year-old boy, who woke up to an empty house full of echoes.

On this July 4th weekend, this post is to all the unsung heroes that live among us. To those who have survived while carrying stories that are buried deep within their hearts. Stories that are sometimes too harrowing to tell. My gratitude is for God’s remarkable ability to make all things new.

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Sometimes, it’s easy to forget, while wiping peanut butter off their chins, reading Mike Mulligan one more time, watching them transform into yet another superhero, that what I am really doing is raising men.

Of course, I know this on a practical level; still, how rare it is that I see them carrying the great responsibilities of feeding a family on their shoulders, managing the pain of their own aging bodies, or caring for a wife in the throes of PMS. Discovering the dreams that lie dormant in their hearts will inevitable lead them to obstacles, unforeseeable setbacks, and grief.

It has been said that the true character of a person is defined not by his problems; but by how he handles a crisis after the tears are cried.

Sometimes, caught in the throes of cooking, cleaning and caring, I forget that their life ahead will be a circle of joy followed by sorrow; of struggle followed by achievement. Never again will their lives be as simple as carefree as they are today.

In this last picture here, I see this tiny realization entering his heart, just by the way his arms and shoulders are slightly dropped, and his feet have slowed down. He’s no longer flying through the air, like Peter Pan, the way he was before. The bunny he wants to have and hold so dearly is running away; out of his life. He’s puzzled, because he can’t understand why the bunny doesn’t realize how much he will be loved in his arms.

When Mothers talk about the sorrow of watching their children grow, it is this we are referring to; the pain of realizing that as their child’s heart opens, the chances of it breaking increase exponentially.

Best Shot Monday

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It was a quiet, intimate, although rushed lunch. What do you serve a child for his last lunch as a kindergartner? Over the last 9.5 months, I have quietly savored these lunches with him, knowing these were my last. Rather than buck tradition, I served him his favorite; chicken noodle soup — hold the noodles and chicken, I’ll-just-have-the-broth soup.

I warned him that I would cry at his graduation today. “Why?” he asked.

“Because I’m so happy for you,” I said.

“Well, you are going to miss me when I am gone in first grade. So you might cry because you’re sad.”

Now that the cat was out of the bag, I just let the tears flow right there and then. I have never been at ease the entire year of kindergarten, simply because I knew it would all come down to this. The year would fly by, and before I knew it, he would graduate and our magical mornings at home would soon be over. Forever. God, I’m dramatic. Still, it’s true, you can’t deny that.

I put some peanut butter on a bagel. His little brother wanted one too. His bagel broke when I tried to pry the two slices apart. Traditionally, this incident is always a ridiculous source of complaints at the lunch table, for both of them. Soon, the little brother was throwing his hissy fit over the broken bagel.

The older, soon-to-be-first-grader gently said to him, “It’s OK if your bagel is broken… because when you bite it, it will still taste the same.” More Best shot Mondays here.

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Remember last fall, all that messy business when this, and “Your Worst Nightmare” happened, on my clock? A bond was formed when I called my son’s teacher, a woman I did not yet know well, to come over and stand in my living room, at 11 p.m. to say, “I think your bunny is dead.” The bunny that had been her pet, friend and surrogate child, for the last seven years. “So, could you please hurry up and get him out of here before my kids wake up and wonder why this bunny is so stiff?”

The teacher has a soft spot in my heart, not only for the drama we share, but for the gentle way she handled my son’s ridicule when he went to school, and heard the words, “Bunny Killer” on the playground.

I helped my son write a year-end thank you note to this teacher, at the last minute. I had waited too long, and he was too tired to write it, so I ended up coaxing most of the words out of him. My version went like this:

Thank you for being so kind to me this year when I was so sad.

He clarified things a bit, changing it to

Thank you for being so calm when I was so sad.

A powerful shift in words. He truly captured this teacher’s essence with that one word, calm. He’s lucky to have her again, for one more year.

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My Junior year of high school was my best. An outsider would probably attribute my joy to the fact that I had one of the leading roles in our high school musical, but there were other factors. Things like getting my driver’s license. Geometry was over and done with, leaving me to pursue funner stuff, Algebra and Trigonometry. At that point, I knew which high school teachers I could count on to let us get away with goofing off, and which ones to avoid. I was settled now in my role as first chair, as the director gave me the role of last-minute tunings, on stage, before he appeared at our band concerts. Now, the hallways at school were filled with younger faces who were much more naive about things; the way I was two years earlier. In a word, I developed a sense of power and confidence — in high school — of all places.

Perhaps this was what gave me the confidence needed to not only read for the script for the lead in the Spring of my Junior Year, but also to sing. Alone. Sing. All by myself in front of peers and classmates — and soon — their parents and families. Leads were to go to the seniors, as a courtesy. But, by gosh, they couldn’t let me slip away, so they gave it to me as a Junior. I had talent.

As the Junior year left, my senior year brought the opportunity for the senior class play. Auditions took place in the fall. Of course, with the confidence I had built up by this point, my role, was in the bag. Except, that I didn’t make it. I didn’t even make the choir. As I scanned the list, posted in the hallway bulletin board, I looked for clues… did everyone who starred in the musical last year get rejected? No, not everyone. I tried to make some kind of logical connection to understand why they didn’t choose me. I must have preformed horribly last year. I did something terribly wrong. Shame and embarrassment descended my shoulders, and every inch of breathing space around me. Luckily, the final school bell had already rang for the day, and I was alone in the hallway. I took off, before anyone had a chance to see me. I needed to get to my own room, with the door locked, fast.

Except, my pesky younger brother had already seen me, and he was high-tailing it behind me. Couldn’t wait, I figured, to tease me on this one. Because I had a head start, I made it home before he had the chance to pelt me with taunts about not making it in the play. When I got home, he worked his way around to look me in the eye. Here it comes, I thought.

“Susie,” he said. “I’ve been looking all over for you. I saw you didn’t make it and I was trying to find you in the halls at school to see if you were OK.”

The ache in my heart to reach the privacy and safety of my own room soon opened and gave way as I considered that maybe I could wallow in self-pity out in the open, in every room of the house. I forgot about the play. Our parents were recently divorced, and while I zoned in denial, my brother realized, before me, that we needed a new set of operating rules. One that didn’t include our favorite pastime, fighting like cats and dogs. We may only have each other, as uncertainty about the future loomed. This was the olive branch. Like mine, his eyes had tears; hurt that I didn’t get a part. More than ever did I want that part in the play; just give me that part because I can’t bear to see him suffer. I don’t remember feeling so much hopeless sadness since Mom gave our new kitty away one day while we were at school.

My senior year wasn’t much fun. The sense of confidence I built in my Junior year got knocked down in a series of doubts centralized by one single question that was never answered, “Why not me.” Maybe I should have asked, and learned. Looking back, I know, as a parent, I would have found out. Harmless miscommunication can do great damage, and someone should step in and help clear the air.

But, I did have a renewed sense of family. From that point on, I walked through the hallways at school knowing I had an ally I never new existed before. My brother. We’re still close like that.

I think its only appropriate that I write about this today, as Brook on American Idol, I learned has been voted off the show. I have never watched American Idol, but friends, neighbors, and complete strangers have been stopping me on the street to say, “You remind me of Brook.” I hear she has long hair, I say. “Still, you look like her,” they say. Sunday Scribbling Prompt: Family

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I found myself making up fictional stories, horrifying ones, to accompany the photos Dooce referred to. Knots hit my stomach as I started filling in the words for these victims… and then I realized my stories weren’t… even…. true.

My imagination tends to do that, quite often. I have the instant vision of the worst possible outcome, and rarely are things ever that bad. Sometimes, though, life presents a reality, so clear, so convincing that you have no choice but to overlay your worst nightmares and fears with something much more hopeful, serene and beautiful.

I started remembering the non-fiction stories I do know about life before death. Now, that is a picture of bliss. So, Susiej, instead of creating all this horrible images, why not comfort yourself with bliss? The bliss you know to be real? Here’s my version of an image of life before death:

No, there was no camera within reach that night, but I can describe the most important images for you.

It was after-visiting hours, I wasn’t supposed to be there, but I just got back in town. Maybe this would be the night that she would hear my voice, and finally wake up.

Her door was locked. I started to knock, to be pushy and get myself into the room to see my own Mother… but then I stopped. I looked into the narrow rectangle of glass and watched the two nurses work in that caring way that good nurses do. They were washing my Mom’s hair, changing the dressings on her IVs, and sponging her clean. Then, and now, when I remember this scene, it brings back the feeling I had when I was sick as a child, and my Mom would bathe me. Do you remember how amazingly good that felt, as a child, to be so sick, and then to have someone wipe your face with a warm washcloth? That’s what I felt then. A wave of comfort just washed over me… and again now, just remembering that. There were hard times between my Mom and me… but I remember this sweet moment. This is what I want to leave standing in my memory. So, I choose to do so.

Her pink manicured toes were starting to show the signs of wear and tear from hospital days… 20 days with no manicure maintenance. (My fingernails looked pretty ragged themselves… as the trauma of the last 20 days had left me with only the resources to do the bare minimum of maintenance on myself, while still managing the children at home.) Still, as the nurses laid my Mom back down on the bed, and her head hit the pillow, she looked so radiant… so refreshed… so peaceful… and so completely ready to go.

At this point, I finally got it. The idea of asking her that question, again, no longer felt right. Had I been making her feel obligated all this time? Asking her to hang on in this world that she was already, clearly, ready to leave? For the first time in the 20 days that she lay attached to the ventilator, I wouldn’t ask her to get better. Not tonight. I would let her have her peace.

So no, the look of death is not so horrifying.

I turned to leave, quietly, so as not to make a scene in the hospital after-all, for arriving so late. The security guard stopped me, “You’ll need this token to leave the parking lot. The parking attendants have all left for the night.”

Three Word Wednesday. Prompt: glass, question and token.

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My Mother began telling me about you the summer before I enrolled in first grade at WLS. She was preparing me for what she knew would be “the best time of my life” at the place where I would meet the “best friends I would ever know.” She treasured her years with you, and these reunions were a sacred event she wouldn’t dream of missing. I doubt she expected not to make it here with you tonight; the night of your 50th.

When she met many of you in 1946, back when you were known as either a red or a gray squirrel at the stone elementary building, you were some of the first friends she knew. Growing up on Couchman road, out in the country, as the youngest of seven children who were many years her senior, there were few chances for play dates. No car was available, yet she did have her horse, Spring Design, and a brand new saddle that came for her 16th birthday from Aunt Edith. She fell and broke both arms during a race, and undaunted, got back in the saddle again.

When you were the top of the heap at WLHS, the high school had recently opened its new wing, Elvis Presley served in Germany for the Army, Great Balls of Fire and Tequila were number one on the charts. Color TV sets were the rage, and girls still wore dresses, below the knee, to school everyday. High school trips were fashionable. How many of you remember that Janet developed her aversion to cottage cheese during your trip to New York City? And by the way, which one of you wrote in her class autograph book, “I like it when you wear low-cut dresses… just kidding,”?

Your high school science teacher, Mr. L., was still the head of the Bunsen burners when I arrived in the classroom some 20 years later. So both of our generations knew the best way to get out of science any day was to get Mr. L. to talk about his good ol’ days in the military.

The Latin teacher, Mr. W., became a life-long family friend, dropping by every so often around 3 o’clock in the afternoon to visit, with candy and black zebra chewing gum for my brother and me. He sent her anniversary cards, birthday cards, and as he got older and a little senile, sent her an anniversary card on the day her divorce was final.

She kept track of each one of you over the years. In the back cover of one of her senior year albums, she recorded the dates of your weddings, and when your first children arrived. A newspaper clipping I found shows Mrs. K holding the first citizens of 1960 in the county: twin boys.

She married Roy, from Westfall, soon after graduation. She never wanted to move far from this village that sits in the valley. Her two children, came in 1962 and 1964. When she found the house at 225 White street in 1967, she never had a desire to live any other place, and never did. She returned to WLS in 1969, when she was the home room mom to the second grade class for Mrs. D. She arrived again for her son’s broken arm on the playground in 1970, along with Mrs. S. and Mrs. Y. She also popped in on numerous occasions to deliver holiday cookies for class parties.

Although she took piano lessons throughout her school years, and played the clarinet in the band, she later learned to play the organ, and was one of the regular organists at the the church for many years. Together with Roy, they planned many
of the church’s youth group outings, and she also directed some of the church’s Christmas plays.

Janet was always an avid gardener. Some years she planted food, and spent countless hours in the August heat canning beans and corn. Some years she simply grew flowers. I hope you had a chance to see her roses; they were spectacular. She filled her yard with the trees she planted to memorialize significant events in her children’s lives.

If you stopped by to visit her at 225 White Street, you would have found needlecraft magazines on her book shelves beside her Kinsey Millhone mysteries and her other favorite reads, historical novels. Baskets with balls of yarn and needles sat on the floor containing her latest “in-process” creations. This was before she had discovered her life-long passion, quilting. In her kitchen, you would have found her collection of roosters, hand-written recipe cards, and the computer loaded with the on-line scrabble games she played with her son. Her screen saver was the ever evolving collection of pictures of the most treasured souls in her lif