After Bill and I stumble teary-eyed through our vows, having forgotten our reading glasses and holding our papers in the dim light at arm’s length as close to the candlelight as we dare without starting a fire, we slip braided rings onto one another’s fingers while blessing and confirming our own holy vows. Nancy reads another prayer before the final ting of Tibetan bells. The bartender is crying by now, and the patrons break into applause. Bill envelops me in my lush, furry coat for an all-out embrace as we merrily kiss one another. We give hugs all around, and naturally buy everyone drinks.
We return to the warmth of Graceland’s trailer, toasting with a 2003 Rioja—in honor of the year we reunited in France—to the tastes of Lisa’s delectably prepared dinner. Now our wedding witnesses shower us with loving appreciations, remembrances, and wishes to rounds of tears, cheers, and always abundant laughter. We even manage a bear-hug dance, a passionate two-step back and forth in our trailer’s teeny space.
When Saturday morning breaks upon us, we move from flying hogs to a dancing dog piñata, a frivolous, frilly blue dachshund in a tutu that Kelly and Michael created and managed to lug through airport security intact without being busted to examine its long belly. We swing at the air while blindfolded, occasionally hitting the target until the ground is sparkling with end-of-the-party favors: dragonfly, grasshopper, and monarch butterfly finger puppets, tiny tambourines, silver bells and whistles, and dark lusty chocolate.
Bill and I return for our honeymoon night at Graceland. Petra and Andy cleaned the trailer top to bottom, and Lisa and Nancy made sure the fridge was full. We had begun our ceremony with vows that our relationship be deeply rooted in community, and this is what we distinctly feel as we look around the trailer now and remember the amazing energy of everyone present during these past few days.
We crash onto our bed with relief, pulling a fluffy down comforter over us as we tenderly fold into each other with welcome sighs and kisses. Re-creating we have certainly done. Indeed it feels like we’ve been newly stitched together through our careful intentions and purposeful vows. Freezing valley winds rock the trailer as we slip into a late afternoon snooze, our arms wrapped contentedly around each other. Words from a May Sarton poem that we used as a prayer in our wedding echo in my heart:
Help us to be the always hopeful
gardeners of the spirit
who know that without darkness
nothing comes to birth
as without light
nothing flowers.15
PART IV:
Go Home
A FRIGHTENING NOTION
March, 2010 (age 58)—Denver, Colorado
My entire body feels the impact of my friend’s question in a way that immediately tells me something important has just happened, like a Biblical character suddenly slammed by a directive from God while casually walking down a dusty road.
“Why would you go provide care for a friend’s stepparent instead of your own parents?” Rebecca had asked, tossing the question over her shoulder while hiking spritely ahead. Her training for a trip to Nepal has her in much better shape than I. A nagging depression, the altitude, and attempts to keep up with her have kicked my butt all morning.
Her question brings me to an abrupt halt. I feel my grip slack on my hiking stick. My body shrivels to the ground.
“No! No, I can’t do that!” I croak through my scrunched-up face.
Rebecca turns and retraces her steps back up the trail. “Hey, it’s just a question that popped in my mind,” she says consolingly, “though it does make more sense.” Maybe so, but this idea hasn’t even shown up on the possible options list.
“We’re talking about my dad and mom, for God’s sake,” I whine.
“Exactly,” Rebecca persists.
She knows a little about my past; we’ve been in writing groups together off and on for the last eight years where I have shared stories of my past.
Rebecca gently extends a hand to help me to my feet. I stand there, looking back toward Herman’s Gulch, thinking about the lovely picnic she had prepared for us to share beside a crystal blue lake at eleven thousand feet, a belated birthday gift from this dear friend. I love living in Colorado, in Denver, my friends and community here, our land in the southern part of the state, and the quiet retreats I take there monthly. I let out a long, sad sigh. “I don’t know if I could ever live with my parents again.”
“Girlfriend, you can do whatever your heart and soul guide you to do, but no one is forcing an answer out of you right now. Let’s get down this mountain.”
Rebecca lurches ahead while I meander on down the trail. Although I’m lost in thought, as we drop in altitude what lies around the corner only becomes clearer. She’s right; going to live with and care for my parents does make sense, in a crazy sort of way. This idea didn’t occur to me when my sister Pamela recently proposed moving my parents from one home to another in Whitesboro, Texas, one with more living space so that a caregiver and my parents could live together.
In the last six months, my husband Bill and I have been creatively considering a multitude of major life changes that might help us get back on our feet. Only months after I was laid off from my work as a teacher evaluator with an educational consulting company, a financial quagmire forced Bill to close down his business. Shortly after that, he had a heart attack. We have been considering a move to Durango to live with and care for Carolyn’s stepfather, who, after her mother’s death, now lives alone in the beautiful home built by her deceased parents, Cal and Kaki.
But live with my parents? In Whitesboro, Texas? The thought had never once crossed my mind.
I call Pamela once I’m home. She listens with care, asking questions and showing interest in the idea. Pamela has her eyes on a house right next door to our oldest sister Paula. Paula’s five cats and staunch independence eliminate her as a candidate for living with our parents. Pamela is ready to go look at the house again tomorrow and consider if this could be a realistic possibility, then talk with our parents about the idea.
When Bill arrives home, I clue him in on the afternoon’s revelation. He nods attentively. We settle into an evening of discussing this new option. “We just finished remodeling,” he points out, “and we love Denver.” I hear the angst in his voice. Maybe we should stick it out in Denver regardless of our current financial challenges.
Whitesboro, Texas is a small, staunchly conservative Christian town just south of the Oklahoma border, two hours north of Dallas. Pamela and her husband run a Christian Bed and Breakfast about fifteen minutes out of town. Population reads 3,500 on the sign at the edge of this town with over a dozen churches, one of whose bells toll church hymns daily, on the hour, from 8:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m., only two short blocks from the house where we would be living. It is not the kind of open-minded community Bill and I are used to, nor is living with my parents and close to my family something we have ever remotely considered.
Although my dad was always exceptionally functional at his job whenever he was able to work in a room by himself, at home we came to know him as an angry, illogical tyrant—behavior we later came to suspect arose from the unknown diagnosis, at the time, of post-traumatic stress disorder. Years later, he was diagnosed with schizophrenia, which, it’s been suggested to me, may have more accurately been bipolar disorder. Mom made excuses for Dad’s behavior, coddled and coaxed him, and encouraged us to stay out of his way. In the aftermath of one of his fits, Mom would clam up, punishing him and consequently anyone else around for days, or weeks, with her silence.
Coming into my bedroom late at night, perhaps my dad was simply trying to redirect his frustration, remorse, and confusion with me, his youngest daughter. I did not know how to escape these confusing occasions with Dad, and I often liked how my body would feel. Other times I learned to lie still and detach from what felt potentially dangerous. I didn’t like the smells, the sloshing sound, and how sticky and wet I felt later, like I had peed in bed, which I often came close to doing. This is ho
w I first learned about love, sexual stimulation, and keeping secrets—my grip on life as shaky as a child riding an adult-size bike.
I lost myself in a fearlessness coupled with an extreme sensitivity to the outdoors, the one place where my numbed senses kicked in and hinted at why it might be worth staying alive. No matter what risks I took, it was as though nothing could hurt me. Nature comforted me. I smelled rain coming, tasted dirt, and loved how the muddy creek bed squished up between each toe leaving a sure, deep imprint of my every step.
Forty years later, besides providing timely and necessary care for my parents, it occurs to me how moving smack into the middle of my family of origin could offer a fecund, fertile place to slip down into my body’s container, forage memories, and perhaps better understand my life experiences. It’s as though I’m being bopped in the head by a divine heavy hitter with an unlikely but distinct and booming message announcing: “Go home.”
FLICKER ENCOUNTERS
September, 2010 (age 58)—Denver, Colorado
Denver has more land dedicated to parks than most cities. I’m strolling through one of my favorites this morning, Crown Hill, on the edge of the foothills where mountains feel only a breath away. Walking trails wind around a small lake where pelicans bob beside a glittering creek and a big old cemetery, then through several fields of tall grass where huge cottonwood trees loom against vast blue skies.
I glance up from the middle of one of those fields just in the nick of time to see a feather dropping from the sky. The feather wafts down, a flash of orange, suddenly free from the northern flicker winging by. Twirling silently in circles, the feather finally comes to rest on two tall blades of grass beside the very trail I am walking on, balanced there like a gift from the heavens. I approach in awe, and gently lift the flicker feather from its perch. An orange shaft extends down the length of this piece of weightless art.
A good friend and teacher colleague, Talli, is with me. We are giddy with the sight and discovery. In all my years of watching birds, I don’t remember ever seeing a feather float down from the sky then land like this, and I can’t help but wonder at any possible significance. My spirit feels uplifted just from the sight of its downward spiral, and also from finding it so delicately placed almost directly in front of us.
Back home I take down Animal Speak from the bookshelf. Maybe the author, Ted Andrews—a long-time worker at a nature center, a wildlife rehabilitator, and a metaphysical explorer—can shed some light on this flicker encounter. The back cover of his book promises “techniques for recognizing and interpreting the signs and omens of the natural world.”16
Andrews suggests that if a flicker has come into one’s life, great change is about to occur, along with shifts toward more powerful intuition and greater sensitivity. Flickers symbolize “a time of rapid growth and trust.” With my curiosity piqued, I do a little Google research to discover that for many Native peoples, this member of the woodpecker family is special indeed, its feathers regarded as formidable spiritual agents that symbolize affiliation with a healing group, otherwise known as a medicine society.
I place my flicker feather carefully between two pages in Animal Speak, thinking about the weighty decision Bill and I are presently facing. Shall we sell our beloved Denver home and move to Texas to live with my parents, now in their mid-eighties? It’s already been a tumultuous year. While in the hospital after his heart attack, Bill suggested we take a long train trip to gain new perspectives on our topsy-turvy lives. After rocking and rolling from Denver to San Francisco on Amtrak’s California Zephyr, down the coast on the Coast Starlight, then back home via the Southwest Chief route, we have been feeling open to making necessary changes, if we could just figure out which ones.
The day after finding the flicker feather, I take another walk with Talli in a different location, and we unpredictably take a turn that leads beside a busy road for a short stretch. Whop-flap-flutter! I turn my head and see a flicker in the street struggling, having just been hit by a truck, now speeding off. I rush out and scoop up the injured bird from the busy road, carefully carrying it over to the trail, a safe distance away from traffic whizzing by. Kneeling down, I gently cover the winged creature, who appears to be dying, with my hands. Blood is oozing from its long beak and the wings feel catawampus. Its little heart beats wildly, then gradually calms. As the two of us rest there together, one of its lids opens, and we lock eyes.
We are both stunned. I feel a desire to empty myself of thoughts and be as present as possible. I think of all the people who, during my times of trauma and stress, have watched me flap and flail after major life impacts—Sister Antoinette, my therapist Gene, close friends and, most consistently, Bill—remaining beside me and encouraging me to get back on my feet.
Ecologist and author Susan Tweit writes in Walking Nature Home that empathy for other species is inseparable from our care for each other. “How we treat our fellow humans is directly related to, and perhaps determined by, how we treat other animals.”17 As I hold that flicker now, I’m modeling what so many have done for me. Could I do this with my parents if Bill and I were to go live with them?
Long minutes go by and just when my knees begin seriously aching, the flicker suddenly pops up on its feet, adjusting its wings and fluffing a few feathers. We are still staring at each other, both startled, and I whisper to the bird, “Take care as you find out what you are still able to do.” After a few more minutes, Talli and I walk on.
Our walk loops us back on the same path where I had held the flicker. The bird is nowhere in sight. Talli and I check the street, across the field, in every direction. It is gone.
Toying with how God sometimes speaks to us, I’m reminded of an old joke. It’s the one about a guy in a flood who repeated how he knew God would take care of him as he moved from the ground floor to the second floor to the roof while rescue workers came in a car, next a boat, then a helicopter, each time warning of rising waters and offering help. The guy finally drowns. On meeting God at the gates of heaven, the guy accuses God of not keeping his word and taking care of him like God always promised. God, a bit surprised, retorts, “I sent a patrol car, a boat, and a helicopter! What else did you want?”
Yesterday one of those Google searches encouraged listening carefully to the guidance and symbolism of flickers. Okay, I’m willing to look closely and explore any deeper meanings from unusual experiences with the same kind of bird two days in a row. If flickers represent change and new cycles of growth and trust, let me do my best to be open to that.
NIGHT MUSIC
2009-2011 (ages 57-58)—Whitesboro, Texas
I vacuum while waiting for my sister Pamela and her husband to arrive. I called them earlier, desperate for help in convincing Mom to keep her appointment at the neurologist, who will be running tests to help determine the cause of the odd things Mom maintains she has been hearing.
This morning she has been following me around the house wagging her finger in my face and insisting I get on the phone and cancel that “damn appointment.”
“I don’t need to go to another damn doctor. I can’t believe you even scheduled a damn appointment!”
Since Bill and I have lived here, we haven’t heard one note of nighttime serenades, despite Mom’s persistent claims. She accuses Dad of singing all night every night. Finally, after she asked me to get up during lunch to check if someone were standing in the front yard screaming, and then on another day accused me of crouching outside the back door and growling like a bear, it hit me that something more was going on here other than the unrealistic possibility of Dad breaking into song nightly. This doctor’s appointment is long overdue.
“Sorry, Mom, I’m vacuuming right now,” I holler over the clattering Kenmore that desperately needs a new belt. I’m stalling until the backup support arrives from my sister and my brother-in-law. Their home is only fifteen minutes away from where Bill and I have been living with my parents for the past month. If we triple our numbers, maybe we’ll be able t
o persuade Mom to go see Dr. Martinez about these random noises. But Mom can be mighty stubborn and mean without mercy.
“Last time I’ll ever tell you about your dad singing,” Mom mutters angrily as she limps down the hall toward her bedroom. Well, last time until the next time anyway. Tomorrow morning she’ll be dragging herself out of bed, complaining how Dad crooned the entire damn night and kept her up.
“Last night he held a note so long I figured he’d be passed out cold when I went into his room!” she’d told me this morning. She had looked so bedraggled I almost blamed Dad myself.
“I shook him until he woke up and told him to shut his damn mouth, so I could get some sleep!”
When I appeared on the scene last night, Dad was totally flummoxed. Perhaps he wondered if he had been singing instead of snoring, but he shouted back at Mom to leave him alone. Both of them have their hearing aids out during these dramas so all communications are much louder than normal. We all wonder how Mom believes she can hear anything at all, especially in the next room, with both bedroom doors closed, and without her hearing aids.
This has gone on for well over a year, but now that Bill and I are living here, we are getting a firsthand experience. Last year, when Mom would dutifully go along with Dad to his doctor appointments, after he told them about hearing messages from telephone wires in the backyard and from his radio in the garage—even when it was turned off—Mom would add how Dad was also singing all night. The docs added to Dad’s medications, thinking he was indeed blaring out songs in his slumber. When Mom alleged the singing was getting worse despite the additional meds, my sisters and I became suspicious. We would later learn that her hallucinations were symptoms of Lewy-body dementia.
Being Mean Page 22
