by Annie Katz
Other times as many as six adults would all go in together, like a team. The babies stayed on shore, and it seemed the adults ignored them.
Seal babies probably never worried about their fathers. Mothers meant survival, and when you are that small and helpless, survival is all that matters.
"David showed up one day at the barbershop with a motorcycle," Lila said. "In high school he had pestered us for a motorcycle, but we'd refused. He was used to us giving him everything, so he was furious about us saying no for once. A lot of the farm kids he went to school with had snowmobiles and dirt bikes, so he thought we were being unreasonable.”
"So there he was,” she said, “twenty-six years old, with a big grin on his face and a new toy."
"'Don't tell Terry,'" he told us. "'Gerald needed money for more darkroom equipment, so he practically gave it to me. Isn't she a beauty?' Gerald was David's best friend since kindergarten. They'd played baseball together in high school, and they worked together at the lumberyard.”
"David was as light and giddy as a child,” Lila said. “His sadness had completely evaporated, but I had a horrible feeling in my stomach. Ray went outside and admired the motorcycle with David for a few minutes, while I stayed in the shop and watched them through the window. After David put on the shiny blue helmet that matched the bike, he waved goodbye to me."
Listening to Lila, I had a horrible feeling in my stomach. I didn't want her to go on. I felt I was back there watching it, the way you watch a movie and you know something terrible is coming and you have to close your eyes and cover your ears.
Suddenly I was so cold my teeth were chattering. "Can we go back to the car, Grandma? I'm cold."
"Yes, sweetheart," she said, touching my arm. "Oh, you're freezing!" She took off her sweater and draped it over my shoulders like a shawl. It felt like a live thing, heavy, warm, and fragrant.
We sat in the car in the crowded parking lot, and the sunlight coming in through the windows warmed me quickly. When Lila was sure I was warm enough, she told me the rest.
"That was the last time we saw him alive," she said. "I try to console myself with the picture of how happy he was at that moment, the moment he waved goodbye to us.”
"The next morning we got a call from the police," she said. "They found his body at the bottom of Lewiston grade, a steep winding highway south of town. They estimated he left the road at a hundred miles an hour. They couldn’t find his helmet. They called it an accident."
I stared out the windshield of the car where happy families were walking toward the line outside Barney's. I said, "My father killed himself."
Lila didn't respond. I turned and saw her staring ahead the way I had been. Her hands were in her lap clutching one another. Tears were running down her cheeks and dropping onto her hands.
Where I had been trembling with cold five minutes earlier, now I was on fire. I rolled down the window to let the wind blow away some of my fury. How dare he kill himself! How could he run away like that? Hadn't he caused enough misery in the world?
My mind was running around in circles, trying to find some understanding or pity or something, but all I felt was rage at David. If he had loved me at all, if he had loved anyone at all, even a tiny bit, he would have stayed and tried to make things better. There had to be something he could do to make Terry happy or leave her and try to do right by Janice and me. And Jamie, poor little Jamie wasn't even born yet. Didn't he want to meet his own child?
I could find no excuse for what he did, no compassion, no forgiveness, nothing but blame and rage and hatred. I was suddenly sick with hatred, and I jumped out of the car and ran as fast as I could over to the edge of the parking lot where I threw up onto the sand behind some trash cans. I left all my lunch there along with part of my guts it felt like. I kicked sand over the mess and turned away.
At least I didn't get any on the red jumper. Soiling two of Lila's jumpers in one day would be beyond tacky. I took a few breaths of salty air, and the wind felt good on my face.
Lila was watching me from the driver's seat of the car. I made a yucky face and waved to let her know I was okay. Then I trotted down to the closest part of the sea and cupped my hand in a wave to rinse my mouth out with the ocean. Of course my shoes got wet, but I managed to keep the jumper dry. The ocean water in my mouth was cold and salty. I scooped another handful and smeared it on my face and neck, coating myself in salt and sand.
After filling myself with cold sea air, I trotted back to the car and got in.
"Okay?" Lila asked.
I laughed, shook my head, and said, "Let's get out of here."
"Good idea." Lila patted my leg and started the car.
We were mostly silent on the drive back, speaking only to point out to each other funny sights along the way, like a green neon sign in a bar announcing Irish Spoken Here and another sign, this one hand painted above a silly gift shop, Don't tell my mother.
We got home to Lila's stone house on the beach, and everything felt more solid than it had, as if the world had gained weight. Every time I tried to think of something to say, nothing felt right.
I wanted to call Shelly, but it wouldn't be right to ruin her holiday telling her about my father driving off a cliff because he didn't want to grow up. Her father was a grownup. She complained about him spending more time playing golf with people all over the world than he'd ever spent with her, but she didn't really mind. She liked it that her parents were gone a lot. There was always a housekeeper or nanny around if she needed anything, but she could be her own boss most of the time.
Shelly couldn't relate to me complaining about how immature and overprotective Janice was. How could she relate to me crying about having a father who turned an adolescent escape fantasy into a tragedy for everyone who loved him?
I thought of calling my mother, but I could predict how that would go. I'd want sympathy and understanding and end up being the one to comfort her. I didn't know what to do with myself. On top of that, my lower abdomen was cramping and I didn't know if it was from throwing up so violently or from my periods or from running so hard and long the day before.
I came out of the bathroom holding my belly, and Lila asked what was wrong.
"I hurt, Grandma," I said.
"Of course you do. What do you need?"
"I don't know. I just hurt."
"Be still, breathe, ask your belly what will make it feel better," she said, as if that were a perfectly reasonable thing to ask a body part.
"I don't know," I said, and I was annoyed at myself because I heard a scratchy little girl whine on the edges of my words. I was mad at Lila too, for not helping me.
"Yes you do, Cassandra. Use the pain to sink into yourself and listen. Only you can give you what you need. Listen to your body. Listen to your heart. What do you feel? What do you need?"
"I feel dirty. I feel beat up. I feel whipped."
"Good! You feel. You're alive." She held my shoulders and looked intently into my eyes. "Okay, now what do you need to feel better?"
"I need a bath. I need peppermint tea with honey. I need water, lots of water inside and out."
"See?" Lila said. "You pushed past your fear and your mind telling you something was impossible and silly, and you found the truth. The truth is always inside you, always. You can count on it."
After I gave myself all the water I needed, I felt better. Then I wanted to sleep, which I did all the rest of the day.
The next morning I woke up happy. The truth about my father didn't kill me. Even though my father was dead, I was alive, so I decided to live a happy life.
After dusk on the Fourth of July, Lila and I hauled a big canvas tarp down to the beach in front of her house. We arranged it on the damp sand, and then we took down flashlights, old woolen blankets, pillows, and a big thermos of hot chocolate and got ourselves all cozy to watch the show. The fancy resort south of town had a huge fireworks display every year, so we would have a great view without having to drive anywhere. Lots
of other folks were on the beach too, and we saw them walk by with their flashlights and supplies.
High clouds had covered the sky earlier in the day, but as soon as we got on the beach the clouds broke apart and disappeared. The air was still and cool, and the surf whispered peacefully. We wrapped ourselves in the blankets like a couple of tacos and lay on our backs staring at the heavens. An enormous full moon that had just risen over Lila's house, and the stars over the ocean shone bright in the cold clean air.
"Grandma," I said. "Do you think there are people out there? I mean intelligent beings, people we could communicate with?"
"What do you think, Cassandra?"
"I think there must be. There are so many stars. The sun is a star. We evolved on this little planet. Even if life was a freak accident, it would have had millions of other chances to happen."
She didn't say anything. I heard her hum, the hum that meant she was thinking things over.
"Maybe I'm wrong," I said, suddenly thinking my idea was dumb.
"Maybe you're right, Cassandra. Maybe we can communicate with them. Maybe they communicate with us, but we just don't know it."
"You mean like crop circles and UFOs and alien abductions?" There was one boy in sixth grade who did all his reports on crop circles in England. Everyone else thought he was a nut, but I loved the idea that someone was trying to talk to us in beautiful giant pictographs.
"Maybe all those ways," she said. "And maybe dreams and visions and tricks of the eye. I like to think the whole universe is alive, and we can't help but communicate with one another all the time, because we are intimately connected. The same way that my ear knows what my finger is doing all the time. It might not be paying attention, because it's minding its own ear business, but if I ask it, 'Hey, what's the little finger on the right hand doing?' it can instantly tune in and tell me."
"Whoa! Grandma. That's incredible," I said, and my mind jumped all over the place. "So I'm connected to everyone in the world and to whales and redwood trees and butterflies in South America and aliens in another galaxy."
"It is credible, actually," Lila said. "Lots of great thinkers, besides us, have posed that idea throughout history."
"How do you know so much?" I asked her, still staring at the stars.
"We all know everything. We just have to remember it. Plus I read. Reading helps us remember what we know.”
"Some philosophers," she continued, "say that when we come into the world, our bodies and our minds are undeveloped, but our spirits, our souls are closely connected to infinity. The way society helps our bodies and minds mature has the nasty side effect of forcing us to forget our connection to God, because our parents and teachers have all been forced to forget their wisdom in order to be accepted in human culture."
"I have no idea what you are talking about," I said, laughing. "I'm lost in space. La ti da ti da." I let my spirit float out into the sparkling black heavens all the way to the round vanilla moon.
"Okay, here are some examples," said Lila. "Empathy, compassion, imaginary friends, conditional love, operant conditioning, quantum physics, miracles, celestial music, communicating with animals. Let's start with empathy. When babies are born, they instantly feel what others around them are feeling. They've done lots of research on this, much of it criminally abusive if you ask me, but what they found is something any maternity ward nurse can tell you. When one baby in the nursery cries, other babies cry, even though they are not hurting or uncomfortable themselves. When someone around them hurts, they hurt. That's empathy, and it fosters compassion and nonviolence. We're all born with it.”
"Empathy is a built in survival tool,” she said, “because if the baby is not intimately tuned to her caregiver, she may not get fed and protected. When Mommy feels pleased, Baby feels pleased. They call it bonding. And it happens the other way, too, when Baby is happy, Mommy is happy. Baby needs Mommy to survive, so when Baby does something and Mommy is happy, Baby does more of that, because it ensures her survival. Her tiny ego begins to bud, and she thinks she may have some control over the outer world, and what a mess that turns into. But that's another lecture."
"Have you written all this down, Grandma?" I asked.
"I've written a lot of it, in different essays for the paper and to friends and such, but others have written it so much better than I could. If you're interested, we'll make a reading list for you. Everyone needs heroes, and practically all of mine wrote books. I'm so lucky!"
"Can I read your essays someday?" I asked, because I'd much rather read something by my own grandma than by some stranger.
"Of course you can, Cassandra. Now where was I?"
"Empathy. Budding baby ego," I said.
"Thank you. So right away our parents and teachers train empathy out of us. They do it because they're busy and they don't like crying and they tell us to toughen up, stop acting like a crybaby, and the message is keep all your feelings inside, or better yet, don't feel. Feelings are so messy and time consuming. Parents and teachers don't like mess. They have their jobs to do, and they don't tolerate little kids who cry just because something in the area is hurting. To survive, babies have to stop feeling or at least stop expressing their strongest feelings, and not just their anger and hurt and jealousy either. They have to suppress their good feelings, too. You'd be surprised how many people tell you to not feel too excited or too happy and too hopeful.”
"Anyway,” she said, “most children have to shut up, grow up, adopt the behaviors and belief systems of their culture, or else. The 'or else' used to include death. Lots of babies were murdered throughout history if they didn't conform to what was expected of them. Now the 'or else' most often involves prescription drugs and various forms of parental and educational abuse. So most of us conform enough to survive."
Lila's monolog was as bad as the story about my father killing himself. I hoped it had a happy ending.
"The good news is," Lila said, "we can instantly reconnect to the source."
"I'm so glad we got to the good news part," I said. "You were depressing me."
She laughed. "The good news is we can wake up and remember it's all a dream. We can never stop being divine, because all that is and ever was and ever will be is God. Goddess. The Great Mother. Infinite Wisdom. Creative Intelligence. Spirit. Love. Life."
"Well that is good news," I said, and I couldn't help being a tad bit sarcastic. Lila reminded me of my mother when she was gaga over some new gorgeous man. On cloud nine.
"Excellent news, in fact,” she said. “And it takes less than a second to wake up. No matter how deep we are in our dream, no matter what kind of nightmare we have created for ourselves. Boom! Wake up! It was only a dream."
Before either of us could say another word, BOOM! Fireworks! Five blasts one after another. Red, white, and blue fire stars appeared in the sky over the ocean and, trailing smoke, drifted down to oblivion.
We laughed and struggled out of our blanket wraps to sit and watch the display.
"See," she said. "God is always listening. Her timing is perfect."
"You big dreamer," I said, scooting close to her and bumping her with my shoulder. She bumped me back, and we joined all the others camped on the beach exclaiming with wonder at the heavenly extravaganza of light, color, and sound.
Bits and pieces of the rest of the David story came out over the next week. They cremated his mangled body. His memorial service was held in the city park, because David loved being outdoors, and practically the whole town came. Everyone knew the families, and most people knew David, or at least they'd heard about his tragic adventures.
David's best friend Gerald, the one he'd bought the bike from, took hundreds of pictures in the park and put together a Memory Book of the best ones for Terry and for Lila and Ray. He'd taken lots of pictures of David at work too, and those were included at the end of the book.
Of the memorial service photos, I studied those of Lila and Ray and Mark and Terry and her parents. Terry was a big woman,
taller than Lila and quite a bit broader. She was six months pregnant, but that couldn't have accounted for all the extra weight she was carrying. She looked older than her mother in one photo. In it they held paper plates full of picnic food, but they weren't eating. Mark, who had just turned seven when David died, was standing beside Terry, watching the food from his paper plate fall onto the ground at their feet.
I studied the photos of Ray, Lila's husband for thirty-five years, David's father, my grandfather. He may have been good at being invisible in a crowd, or maybe Gerald was respecting his privacy, but there were only two photos where you could really see Ray. One showed Lila and Ray standing very close to each other, shoulders touching. They were exactly the same size. A short older lady whose back was to the camera was talking with them, and they stood still, listening. They both had the same tilt of head, the same concerned, tired look, the same sadness around the mouth and eyes. They looked more like brother and sister than a married couple, except Lila wore her crown of thick snowy hair and Ray was bald.
"Grandpa Ray was bald?" I asked Lila. "Is that normal for a barber?"
She shook her head and sighed. "Everyone teased him about it. I know it hurt his feelings, he was a very sensitive person, but he didn't let on. He'd smile and let people have their fun."
She said they met at a barber college in Portland. She was just out of high school, and her family was poor and needed her help, so being a barber seemed a good way to start making decent money without too much schooling. She loved working with hair. She'd been the family hair cutter since she was ten, so she was already better than some graduates before she started trade school.
Ray was ten years older than Lila. "He was the innocent one, though," she said, grinning at me. "I'd sown a few wild oats during high school."
"Grandma!" I said. Somehow I wasn't surprised.
"Well what did they expect?" she said. "I was curious about everything, and the entire subject of sex was completely forbidden. Don't they know that forbidding something makes it irresistible?"
