by Lee Smith
Well, I don’t mean to blither on, but all this has been enormously exciting for me. Also it is so easy to “blither on” now that Sandy has gotten me this new computer and printer (which will make me as many copies as I ask it to!), an early Christmas present. (Sandy has been very supportive of my going back to school, once he got used to the idea. At first he couldn’t believe I was serious.) The kids seem real proud, too. In fact, if all goes well, son James might be starting out at N.C. State about the same time I finish (too bad he can’t major in girls!). The other kids are fine, and so are we all.
Love,
Mary Copeland
MAMA’S GREEN TOMATO PICKLE RELISH
½ peck green tomatoes (20)
2 stalks celery
10 green peppers
24 large white onions
2 large cabbages
8 pounds brown sugar
3 tablespoons whole cloves
16 tablespoons mustard
2 teaspoons cinnamon
½ teaspoon red pepper
1 cup salt
3½ quarts white vinegar
8 tablespoons ginger
Pare tomatoes and chop fine; cut stem from green peppers, remove seeds, and chop fine; shred the cabbage; chop onions and celery fine.
Mix ingredients. Add salt and let stand 1 hour. Drain. Make a syrup of vinegar, brown sugar, and spices. Scald the syrup, add the chopped mixture, and simmer, after it has been brought to boiling, for forty minutes. Yield 8 pints.
Feb. 6, 1991
To our dear family and friends,
First let me apologize for the lack of a Christmas letter from the Copelands this year! I know this has never happened before, but listen:
I’ve got some good news, and I’ve got some bad news.
The bad news is that Sandy had to have a triple bypass on December 15th.
The good news is that the surgery was completely successful and he is just fine, so he is very lucky—we are all very lucky!
The most alarming thing about this is that Sandy felt perfectly okay, exhibiting no symptoms at all. And you know he has always kept his weight down, as opposed to Yours Truly. Anyway, what happened was that Sandy had to go to Duke University for a complete physical as required for insurance purposes. (Johnny Cook, Sandy’s partner in the new developments down at the coast, insisted that the company take out this huge policy on him.)
Well, things were going great until the stress test. They took him off the bike and sent him straight to a hospital room —wouldn’t even let him come back home for one minute! I had to pack his things and take them to the hospital for him. (Of course I took all the wrong things, I was so rattled. . . .) They did an angioplasty the next morning, and operated two days later. Sandy was fit to be tied, of course! Not that it mattered. You know how those doctors at Duke are. (This is why we didn’t come to any Christmas parties, in case anybody was wondering. Mystery solved! Sandy wouldn’t let me tell anybody except the kids until it was all over.)
But he has been a model patient ever since, and now we are both involved in this very arduous program they recommend. (Actually they do more than recommend— they tell you flat out that you have to change your lifestyle if you want to stay alive!) So we are both doing all of it— the diet, the walking, etc. I’m sure it is good for me, too. Every other day we go over to the Life Center so they can monitor Sandy and we can be in a support group. Honestly, it’s just like AA! Naturally, Sandy hates this part, he’s so private, and feels that people ought to keep their own worries and concerns to themselves. He says he doesn’t want to hear about anybody else’s life! not to mention sharing his own. You know how men are—no wonder they have the most heart attacks. But I’m learning a lot, let me tell you. Also Sandy bemoans so much time spent “just walking,” as he puts it. (At first he was carrying his cellular phone, but the doctor took it away from him.)
Naturally Christmas was somewhat disorganized this year, as you can imagine, but I had done some cooking ahead, of course, and the twins pitched in with the rest. I am not even ashamed to say that we had a delicious smoked turkey from the Catering Company! And we certainly had a lot to be thankful for on this holiday.
What else? Here’s a quick rundown on the kids. Our budding poet Melanie loves the academic world and is planning for graduate school, while Claire is already an intern at Carolina Telecom, a company I have yet to understand the true nature of! Andrew continues to pursue his art career on the West Coast—he couldn’t make it for Christmas this year as he was “hanging a new show” in San Francisco and also moving from San Francisco to L.A., which sounds like a terrifying place to me, but which Andrew apparently loves. He has rented a little studio house up in the hills near that HOLLYWOOD sign, you know the one I mean. Anyway, all the kids are fine, and I guess I am, too, though I had to take Incompletes in all my courses and now am killing myself trying to finish them up, plus take the two I had enrolled in for this semester. I may have to drop one of those, actually.
If I can just make it through the semester, we have a wonderful summer vacation planned (Sandy is being forced to take vacations now, hurrah!) to Scotland, where he will golf and go to fly-fishing school (a new hobby which is supposed to slow him down) while I curl up in some ancient place reading long English novels to my heart’s content.
Happy Valentine’s Day,
Mary Copeland
Appropriately enough, I send along our recipe for
ORANGE-MINT SHERBET
4 cups orange juice
¼ c. chopped mint
Blend and freeze in ice cream freezer.
Dec. 18, 1991
Merry Xmas! to Ruthie and good friends —
1992 will find all the Copelands busier than ever, heading off in a million different directions. Those hard years with Sandy and me working all day long, and then poring over the books together at night, seem almost like a dream to me now. And speaking of dreams, Sandy and I had a real “dream vacation” in Scotland, though I feel like I have scarcely seen him since, he has been so busy putting in “Plantation,” Copeland Construction’s new multi-million-dollar coastal “village” and golf complex. They are paying special attention to the environment, trying not to disturb the fragile ecology of the marsh or diminish the wild charm of the island itself. So Sandy has been down at the coast a lot, while I have been struggling with chemistry and loving Twentieth Century Lit., especially a seminar on “Images of Women” that I took this past semester. I plan to do my Senior Thesis on Virginia Woolf.
I also took an extremely interesting and challenging American Studies course this past semester. One day I was in the library doing research on “The Sixties” when another person from the same class, a young woman, turned to me and said, “Why, Mary, I’m surprised to find you here. You
were right there during the Sixties, weren’t you? I shouldn’t think you’d need to do research.”
“Listen,” I told her, the truth coming to me even as I spoke, “I was alive, if that’s what you mean. But I missed the Sixties entirely, as a matter of fact. I was just too busy having babies and Tupperware parties.”
She stared at me blankly for a moment before she shrugged and went back to her microfilm. She didn’t get it.
But you get it, right? You know what I meant.
I must admit that virtually all my assumptions have been seriously challenged in these past two years—I highly recommend going back to school for anyone who wants to have a more open mind! I have come to actually like Melanie’s tattoo now, for instance (a vine around her ankle)! And I’ve decided it’s definitely a good thing for young couples to live together before taking the (drastic) step of marriage—although I can just imagine what Mama would have had to say about that! We are very fond of Melanie’s friend Bruce, a musician, and (once we got used the age difference) of Claire’s young lawyer, who is raising his two children by himself, apparently. (Can you imagine? He seems to be doing a pretty good job, too.)
Everybody will be coming ho
me for Christmas, including Andrew who is bringing a friend from California. And I’ve got to finish one late lab report before I can even begin to cook! Though we may be “ships that pass in the night,” you have to admit we’re heading off in some interesting directions!
Love and Peace,
Mary
Tuesday, Dec. 10, 1993
To Ruthie and My Very Special Friends,
A REAL CHRISTMAS LETTER, THE FIRST EVER
First, my apologies for not writing a Christmas letter last year (for not returning calls, for not returning letters, etc.). The fact is, for a long time I couldn’t do anything. Not a damn thing. Nothing. I was shell-shocked, immobilized. This was followed by a period when I did too many things. Marybeth, who has been through it, wrote to me about this time, saying, “Don’t make any big decisions”—very good advice, and I wish I’d followed it. Instead, I agreed to a separation agreement, then to a quick no-fault divorce, then to Sandy’s plan of selling the house P.D.Q. I just wanted everything over with—the way you feel that sudden irresistible urge to clean out your closet sometimes.
Listen: if this ever happens to you, resist that urge. Go slowly. I didn’t even get a lawyer. Sandy and I used the same lawyer, at his suggestion. Now I know how dumb I was! Well, I don’t intend to go into that part of it. But the point is, I actually trusted Sandy—and why not? I had trusted him all these years.
I kept smiling and smiling, and signing things. Everyone remarked upon how well I was “taking it.” I just kept on smiling. After smiling for three or four weeks I stepped on the scale one day and was amazed to see that I’d lost 20 pounds without even realizing it—that 20 pounds I’ve always been meaning to lose.
I was really in bad shape. Every month after Sandy left, in fact, I’d look back and think, Oh, I didn’t even know what I was doing then. I was in such bad shape! Look how much better I am now. But then another month would go by, and I’d look back at myself again and think, Well, I really didn’t know how crazy I was a month ago! Lord, I was crazy then. But I’m so much better now. And then another month would go by, and . . . well, you get the picture. It has taken me a long, long time. And I’m still not there. I’m still not “adjusted.” I don’t think I will ever be “adjusted”! I don’t even know what this means anymore. I remember thinking (as I cleaned out the house and stuck everything into Village Self Storage, fueled by that crazy manic energy that comes with divorce) that I wished I could just put myself in there as well, to emerge after 5 or 6 years like Rip Van Winkle, miraculously “adjusted,” having avoided all the pain which I am still going through.
I didn’t actually realize that the marriage was over, oddly enough (not when we signed the papers, not when we went to court —none of that really registered) until I walked through our empty house for the very last time right after the closing. As I left the lawyer’s office that afternoon and got in my car (Sandy got in his car, of course) I noticed that my house key was still on my key ring. Without stopping to think, I drove straight over there. I hadn’t been back for months, not since renting this nice little place in Oakwood.
Real estate agents don’t waste any time—they had already hung a SOLD banner across the FOR SALE sign. It was April, and my bulbs were in bloom—all the daffodils in back, the crocuses by the mailbox, the tulips in their raised beds along the terrace. I had grouped them by color, and they looked like a proud little army on parade. The windows shone like diamonds —I guess they’d just been cleaned, for the new owners. I didn’t know anything about the arrangements for selling the house. Sandy had taken care of all that, as he had always taken care of everything. Why, he could have cheated me blind, I realized, though of course I knew he wouldn’t—Sandy was always very scrupulous about money (as opposed to his private life, more later on that!)
For the first time, I wondered why I hadn’t insisted on being more involved, why I had been so happy to have things done for me, decided for me—so happy to relinquish control. Anyway, the house looked great. The trim had been touched up, the terraces had been pressure-washed, the lawn service had obviously just been there.
I unlocked the front door and opened it. It swung inward silently, giving onto the gleaming wood floor of the entrance hall, like the shining path in the Wizard of Oz, I thought briefly, crazily, and then I was walking the house, going into each room. It’s a huge house, of course, I’d forgotten how big it is. An afternoon hush had fallen everywhere, so that my heels clicked and echoed as I walked from room to room. The rooms are large and airy, beautifully proportioned. Sunlight streamed in the big windows and French doors, blinding me.
There was not even a trace of us left. None of the family snapshots stuck up on the refrigerator with magnets; none of the terra-cotta pots that had held my spice garden on the kitchen windowsill; none of James’s tennis rackets which used to hang on the wall of his room; none of Andrew’s endless collections of stamps, of bird books, flower books, constellations; none of the twins’ endless array of old coats and jackets in the hall closet where they’d been accumulating for years . . . all I could see was what had been. I walked through the whole house slowly, then returned to the gleaming foyer to stand for a moment just before I left for the last time, and that’s when it really hit me.
This is the end, I thought. This really is the end of us as a family, the end of my world as I have known it, the end of me as the person I have been since I first met Sandy. That’s when I started to cry. I cried and cried—loud, choking sobs, like a person who has lost everything, which I had. (But in another way I hadn’t, of course, though it would take even more time for me to know this.) I suppose it was only fitting that I should face the end of our marriage there, in the last of our houses, and I thought of them all—the trailer at Greenacres Park; that wonderful old place on Rosemary Street, with the tin roof; Hummingbird Heights, with the great yard and the fantastic jungle gym, always full of tumbling kids, all of them grown and gone now; and then finally this “castle,” as Melanie used to call it, Stonebridge Club Estates, the last one, the last shell ever to hold that family which we once were.
Well, I cried and cried.
But after about thirty minutes of this, a funny thing started happening. Imperceptibly, even in the midst of all the crying, I felt my spirits start to lift. This continued. I could actually feel energy coming into me, some essential energy that seemed oddly familiar, like an old friend you don’t quite recognize at first. Now, I believe—without dramatizing too much, I hope!—that this was the moment when my self came back, or when I came back to my own real self again.
I found some Kleenex in my purse, blew my nose, dropped my key on the floor in the middle of the hall, and opened the door. The lock clicked shut behind me, and that was that. Sunlight was everywhere, so harsh against my eyes, but I didn’t care. I got back into my car and drove around the circle and down the long driveway, and did not look back. I have not looked back since.
Until today, I suppose, when I decided to write a Christmas letter again. Why not? I’ve got a lot to say. And the Christmas letter was always my thing, not Sandy’s, though for so many years of course I signed both names, and thought of us as one.
Thursday, Dec. 12, 1993
Two days have passed since I began this letter. Two extraordinary days in which I drove over to Village Self Storage and got out the copies I kept of all my Christmas letters from former years. It was so dark in the storage unit that I could scarcely see, and despaired of ever finding anything, but luckily they were right there at the entrance in Mama’s old hope chest from West Virginia, next to a box of Andrew’s drawings and another box labeled “Trophy Collection”— God knows what all is in that storage unit! Now I begin to wonder if this is healthy or unhealthy, under the circumstances, to save so much. Oh who knows?! I have had it with shrinks and marriage counselors, of which more later.
At any rate, I found the letters easily. I brought the chest back here (along with two boxes marked CHRISTMAS ORN., I figure I might as well ma
ke a little effort this year, though I certainly don’t have “the Christmas spirit”), made a big pot of tea for myself, and started back at the beginning, reading. 1967 through 1991. Twenty-four Christmas letters, 24 years of family life stuffed into these envelopes and stuck away just as easily as Sandy has stuck me back into “the past” already, that dark box into which he has consigned so much: his childhood, his family. . . . Well, I just can’t do it! I’ll have to haul everything out eventually, I’ll have to go through it all again, “healthy” or not—
Several things have struck me, reading back through all the years.
We really were “in love,” Sandy and me. We really were a family. It was all true. No matter what Sandy says now or what he said in the midst of his mid-life crisis following the heart surgery, or what he said later during our so-called “marriage counseling” (ha!) sessions, we really were together in every way, for many years. Those years count too. The story told in my Christmas letters is a true story. It is the story of our marriage.
Of course there are other stories too, stories not told in those letters, and they are equally true. Back in Greenacres Park, for instance, there was the story of how scared I was, alone with a new baby all day long, how he had colic and would not quit crying and would not quit crying until I thought I would go crazy, until one day I started shaking his crib I got so mad, and then I sank down on the floor and started crying, scared to death, afraid I had hurt my baby. Which I had not. But that story is true too, as true as the story of how much I loved him, and loved taking care of him and Sandy in those early days. See what I just wrote? Taking care. Taking care of Andrew, taking care of Sandy. Isn’t that interesting? A person reading back through these letters might decide that my life has been largely a function of other people’s lives, and that would be true too, or at least it would not be untrue. There is one letter in which I almost came to this conclusion myself, back in 1975, but I could not stand to know it then, and pulled back from the realization. Well, why not? Though true, it wasn’t the whole story either.
