WOTD 37 - TOILET PAPER (The Truth in an Organic Process)

Warning. This post contains terms not approved by my mother.

(My friend, a fabulous writer named Kristen Randle, offered a challenge to write about something pivotal in our lives. I decided to write about toilet paper.)

My mom came from that old school; the one where things were not balanced; the kind of school where you might wear a nice Sunday dress with stretched out athletic tube socks and fishing boots. Some things are very earthy and raw; others are more refined.

OK, so I am going to just jump in on this one….

We were never allowed to say the word “pee” when I was growing up. I feel weird writing it. I can name people who will feel icky reading it. We didn’t say pee, and we didn’t say poop, and we didn’t say bum. It was “urine” and “bowel movement” and “butt” (as slang as we were allowed to get, for “buttocks”).

I cannot believe I am actually writing this.

There was no shame in any of this, my mom said. It’s all part of being human, a natural process of the body. But it was private and not all that pleasant and so we were required to use the medical terms, though we have used the term “tinkle” for…well, you know what I mean. And “potty, potty” is used for the other.

Oye Ve! Words can be delicate modes of communication.

We weren’t allowed to say Shut Up either. We got a nice lather of soap on the tongue for that one.

I don’t know how it happened; they didn’t learn it from me; but my kids say pee and poop. Not that it’s the topic of Sunday dinner conversations. They are in the process of raising little children and it’s a fact of life that we use some term to express what’s happening. It must be that the generation after mine just refused to use those medical terms. Little Ruby has decided she is done with diapers. So you can imagine we are talking a lot about this stuff. It is as simple a fact of her little life as eating Cheerios and watching Yo Gaba Gaba. She has taken to putting three or four or five pair of princess panties on at once. The layered look.

So I’ve been with my grandkids a lot lately, which is great. I am tired, though. My head is tired. And my bones. I was standing in the bathroom at John and Ashley’s yesterday, waiting for Ruby to go potty. Tinkle, to be exact. Pee, as she put it. “I go pee!”

She insisted that she had to do more than pee though, and she sat there on the toilet swirling her feet in little circles, humming a little tune, pointing to Mommy’s shampoo and Daddy’s shaving stuff and telling me what it was and to whom it all belonged. I stood there 15 minutes waiting. Tried to lift her off at least half a dozen times but she clamped her legs around the porcelain bowl and screamed bloody murder that she wasn’t done, so I relented. Over and over. It was nap time, and she had been zipped into the tent covering her crib once already. “Potty! Potty!”, she screamed from her room; and since I was on the team designated to help her learn, I went in her room and unzipped the net over her crib that keeps her from climbing out. She stood there in her crib, buck naked, her nose dripping from crying, with a victorious grin on her face. I gathered her clothes, including the dry pull-up she had been wearing when I put her down, and placed them on her changing table. I carried her into the bathroom and set her on the toilet, her little legs straddling that big bowl. Her knees just barely reached the rim. Ruby is only two years old. She is yet young to be doing this.

When Ruby decides something, watch out! So I stood there in front of her in the bathroom. Waiting. Waiting. She had already gone tinkle. As I repeatedly tried to remove her and put her back to bed she dug in her figurative heels deeper and deeper. That little beast that lives behind my right kidney started climbing up my esophagus, ready to burst out with some not so nice verbiage. I thought that monster had been conquered in my “maturity”. I realize now it just has not been beckoned forth by little childish demands. He is alive and well and living in ME! Sad. I have an image to uphold! I am GUMMY! I am thinking it is not good for our grandmother-grandchild relationship to have this much intimate time together, at least not when Gummy has an eternally throbbing headache. I finally pulled her kicking and screaming from the potty, forced her twisting hips to let me put the pull-up back on, and put the closest dirty shirt on her so she wouldn’t freeze. I wrapped her in her blankie, tucked her pale pink elephant “Ellie” in her arm, handed her her Bah-Bah and rocked her to sleep. Rocked us both to sleep.

I woke a few minutes later in the darkness of the room, the afternoon light barely diffusing from the edges of her soft pink curtains. I awoke with this image in my head.

The roll of toilet paper.

I woke thinking about the roll of toilet paper Ruby kept pointing to there in the Battle of the Bathroom. And this is what I was thinking as I shifted back and forth in that rocker in Ruby’s room.

I remembered years ago, on a hot summer afternoon, sitting in my own bathroom, tears streaming down my raw salt-worn cheeks. We had answered the call, the one we all have nightmares about receiving, on that sunny summer afternoon, having just returned from our family vacation in Michigan. We had sobbed and groaned and clutched our own empty chests; turned to each other and embraced, our pulsing shoulders throbbing against each other as we walked into the valley of the shadow of death and began the long painful process of grieving.

Mom Connors was dead. Grandma Connors. Helen. She had died in a car accident after dropping us off at the Saginaw airport. It was a truth that kept trying to chisel its way into our heads, but we could not allow it in. Logic told us to process it. Our hearts refused.

I found privacy and thinking space in the bathroom. I remember sitting there looking at the roll of toilet paper beside me. I remember distinctly thinking that the last time we used this she was alive and vibrant, her soft warm arms thrown out to her grandchildren, her loving eyes catching the gaze of her second son. I remember resisting using that roll of paper, thinking that if we left it the way it was time might have stood still where we left it before leaving for Michigan. I sat there a long time. Weeping. How dare the sun dip into the lake to the west of us, the world keep spinning, neighbor children keep playing out in the yard? The world should stop, out of respect if nothing else! Shouldn’t everything stop? For just a minute at least.

And yet I felt my body doing what it has done from birth. I got thirsty. And hungry. And tired. Just like it did when she was alive and well. And life-giving water processed through my body like it always had. The water I had ingested in Michigan processed through in Utah, just like nothing had happened. It just did not seem right.

Finally, I felt an overwhelming peace come to me. Right there on the toilet. God, I guess, is no respecter of people or places. I felt the warm embracing arms of faith come round me, like some angel had picked me up and wrapped me in my heavenly blankie and was willing to rock me to sleep.

It’s ok. It’s more than ok, it’s comforting to know this old earth will continue spinning, spinning, spinning. It will spin when I am gone, too. Indeed, we pause in the misty dusk of grief when we lose those we love. We pause sometimes for a long, long time. Still, the ebb and flow of life goes on around us. We think it disrespectful, when in fact it is wholly and completely respectful. We are only here for a little while. This is temporary. It is not an unimportant thing that we are here, true. But it was designed to be temporary. The earth will turn with or without us. People will drive past us when we go out to get the mail and they will have things on their mind that are important to them, but they will have no idea our world has just turned upside down. The same shows will play on TV; same clocks will rotate their arms at the same steady pace. All this says, in repeated choruses of daily existence, that we are meant to move on. We jump in, then we jump out, like Sophie in her jump rope games. The rope keeps turning, up then down, slapping against the days of all life. We enter, then we exit, and the rhythm continues without us.

I will one day jump out myself, and Ruby will take my place with her own grand-daughter. She will perhaps stand there as frustrated as I, waiting for her to go “pee”. And I, in the meantime, will hover over…up high….way high above her, and chuckle from my heaven place.

WOTD 36 - CHIEF

Thanksgiving, 1990-something, not sure of the exact date. My brother’s new wife, the second wife..the one unfortunate enough to have to follow the first wife whom we all adored... was joining us for the first time. We were all a bit nervous, no more than she, I suppose. They drove down from Boise the day before. Next morning she, (let’s just call her L.) jumped in to help with the Thanksgiving feast preparations. A risky thing for anyone, if you catch my drift. We have our "ways", established no doubt before the creation of time. I imagine our spirits hovering over a cluster of clouds, peering over the edges on a late November day, watching Pilgrim women stoke their fires and dress their birds and simmer their cranberries over open flames, long wooden ladles poking out from black iron pots. We watched again, much later in the history of the world, year after year, as the commemorative feast evolved from the late 1800’s until the day the Gatekeeper of Heaven called our names and told us to line up. We five women slid on down to this spot, under our mother’s wing, and started the earth-life journey.

I feel it each November, after the Trick or Treater’s have finished their quests, and the leaves have succumbed to the blast of snow that inevitably hits after an Indian Summer. I feel that familiar yearning to gather wood and check my store of spuds in the cellar, likely something I had imagined once upon a heaven-time.

So that Thanksgiving morning L. shimmies through the crowd of us in the kitchen, moves to the sink and lifts the turkey out of the basin of water it has been thawing in all night. She proceeds to rub it down and opens the seasoning cupboard at Gram’s condo. We glance at each other and hold our breath, wondering what in the world she thinks she is doing. Next thing we know she is sprinkling Lawrey’s Seasoned Salt over the sacred bird! I drew a slow deep breath and held it while I thought about what to do next. It just would not do to have seasoned salt on the turkey. I can’t even remember what we ended up doing, whether we opted to let it ride, or if one of us spoke up. I guess, thinking back, we must have spoken up, because I don’t remember ever tasting our Thanksgiving bird with paprika and turmeric flavoring. Chicken at Sunday dinner, crispy skinned with spicy flavoring; maybe. But never turkey!

So I suspect L. found out that’s not how the tradition went for us. I suspect she found out a lot about us that first day she met us. No one…seriously NO ONE…should meet their new in-laws while preparing a holiday feast. There is a secret sacred dance one must know on such occasions. Even we ourselves are not aware of the dance and wouldn’t know how to describe the steps. But it is a dance nonetheless and one is wiser to watch it a few times before jumping in. Sad, I know. But true.

So anyway, my brother asks L. when they are finally alone, when the meal is completely devoured and the dishes are done and our tummies are stretched beyond their natural capacity and everyone is settled into reading the ads for the upcoming sales; he asks her what she thought of his family.

“Well,” she said, “its sort of like being around six of you! All chiefs; no Injuns.”

And so it was.

And so it is.

(They’re not married any more.)

WOTD 35 - TRIGGER

Doug met us at the dock. We sat on our luggage washed in the light of a waning moon, one week after Equinox, wet from the spray of the water spewing from the speed boat that had brought us to the island. The light of a thousand stars danced their fairy dance over the waters of the Straits of Mackinac, the gentle drift of waves lapping against the sides of boats bound to the wooden posts jutting from the rim of the dock. The clip clop of hooves against asphalt pierced through the quiet of the night, moving closer and closer as Doug brought his wagon down the hill. He pulled the reigns in to his belly, calling a gentle Whoa as he leaned his back toward the wagon bed. The horse rocked his head back, his mane caught the breeze coming off the straits, his neck stretched tight, then released as he bowed his head, stopped, and tapped his foreleg against the dock.

“You two the newlyweds?” He asked, with a sort of tease in his voice. Dave introduced himself, then me, and thanked him for coming out so late. We had missed the last ferry, having driven eight hours from Pittsburgh after opening our wedding gifts with family that morning.

Mackinac Island sat in the distance, six or seven miles from the shore where we stood. I watched as Dave found a phone and made a few calls. Before long we heard a motor in the distance, coming over the water, and soon we were aboard a small private boat pouncing through the misty night toward the lights in the distance. As we approached the island Dave wrapped one arm around my shoulder and with his other hand pointed toward a string of sparkles along the shore up ahead, sitting higher than the rest of the lights on the island. A long steady stream of silver-gold specks: “That’s the Grand Hotel. Now count seven lights up from there…that’s the cottage.” I squinted my eyes, as much to protect from the lake spray as to focus on the scene. As we approached it became apparent that this cottage was nothing like the cottage of my childhood imaginings. I thought of a cottage as something from Goldilocks, or Red Riding Hood, or Snow White. Small and quaint and dripping with charm. I realized there in the water still a mile from the shore that this was no small residence.

Grand Hotel & West Bluff Cottages

 Doug lifted our luggage onto the wagon bed and jumped up to the buckboard, offering his hand to me as I lifted my foot onto the small step at the side of the wagon. Dave placed his strong hand in the small of my back as I rose into the wagon. I scooted over behind Doug and Dave scooched in next to me, wrapping his arm across my back and cupping his warm hand over the knob of my shoulder. Doug clicked his tongue against his cheek and flipped the reigns. The wagon started with a slight jerk, and we were off, the creature in front of us prancing at a pretty good clip to get a good enough steam behind him to make it up the hill to the West Bluff.

Front of cottage

We took the road back behind the Grand Hotel, back on that little one lane trail of a road situated between the mansions on the bluff and the carriage houses behind the massive shingled summer homes. Dave’s cousin, Pam (who would later marry Doug) was waiting for us, welcoming us to the cottage. Grandma and Grandpa Roy had left for the Tawas Cottage so we could have the place for our honeymoon; left us the whole stunning place, with an open tab at the grocery store in town and some money for a nice dinner at the Island House. This is the stock from which my husband came.

Grandma & Grandpa Roy in front of cottage at Mackinac

We entered through the kitchen door. Dave’s cousin Pam, who was working on the island for the summer, was staying in the servant’s quarters, up the small set of back stairs. Dave set the luggage on the floor of the kitchen and took my hand, leading me through the place like Prince Charming showing Cinderella his castle. The dining room, just off the kitchen, laid itself out like royalty, the eternally long table flanked by a matching set of 36 antique press back chairs. A fine walnut antique high chair sat in the corner. Through the other door of the dining room we came into the official entry hall of the house, beautiful massive doors set against a wrap around porch, arched entry ways and doorways going off the lobby to studies and drawing rooms and sitting rooms where Grandma and Grandpa Roy played cards or where Grandma knitted while Grandpa read the paper and smoked his cigar, the sweet scent swirling above his head and finally resting in the ornate tin work on the ceiling. A genuine Tiffany lamp sat next to an ornate antique table. The whole place was furnished with valuable, beautiful, dignified antique furniture, originally placed there when the house was built in the late 1800’s. Grandpa, who had made his fortune with Roycraft mobile homes, the first mobile homes ever commercially sold to the public, had bought the Mackinac Island home after a fire had damaged part of it. He was a carpenter, and a little hammering and sawing and building was no big deal to him. The home came intact, with all its furnishings. Grandpa was meticulous in his woodcraft. Grandma was tidy and diligent, keeping the place clean and friendly, hand washing every sheet used by the hundreds of guests flowing through the place, ironing the wide swaths of white cotton before she put them back on the beds, the aroma of starch and fragrant soap rising from the hot Iron Rite as she wiped her forearm across her sweaty brow, her breasts tucked snugly into the bib of her cotton apron, the thick beige stockings on her legs sagging around here ankles. She could have hired the work out. She preferred to do it herself.

Helene & Antoine Roy in drawing room

Swirling up from the entry was a large gracious stairway. The staircase on the movie Titanic very much reminds me of it. Up the stairs, lined with loomed wool runners, red and gold and taupe and blue woven into elegant patterns, we chose the Washington Room for our Honeymoon Suite. Its walls were covered with windows, tucked into the turret above the wrap around porch. The windows were graced with flowing draperies, elegant and timeless, with gauze-like under-curtains diffusing the light of the morning and dancing in the breezes as the weather shifted in the cool of the night. A striking antique bed waited, two little night stands and a pitcher and basin set on a wash stand. There was a secret passageway to the next bedroom through the closet. Indoor plumbing was added to the house years before, a real luxury at the time. I washed up a bit and then explored the house with my handsome prince of a husband, exclaiming and sighing at each turn. Thirteen bedrooms. All with matching bedroom suites. It was something from a dream.

Grand Hotel (photos by Dave's cousin Roy Chamberlin)

We spent nearly a week in the cottage, waking to the sound of horse hooves and wagon wheels. No cars are allowed on the island. We golfed, and biked, and swam and ate. In the evenings we sat on the porch and watched the light disappear around us; walked down the road overlooking the water from the bluff, stepped onto the long historic boardwalk of the Grand Hotel; stopping to watch Man of LaMancha in the small theatre at the Grand; making our way down the steep bluff to the sandy shore below, strolling arm in arm, counting the stars and doubling the number by the reflection in the rocking waves of the straits of water connecting Lake Huron and Lake Michigan.

David had spent his summers at this cottage, and at the smaller one…a true cottage…on Lake Huron in Tawas Michigan. He knew the ins and outs. His name was pressed into wet concrete when Grandpa had finished the walkway up to the front porch steps. His name and those of his brother and sisters and cousins, remain there today, though Grandma and Grandpa sold the Mackinac Place not too many years later. Grandma and Grandpa were aging, and were tired, and I believe they wanted to alleviate any possibility of sibling tension if they died and the place was left to the kids. Besides the upkeep was very costly and they did not want to burden anyone with that. So, before we were established enough to even know they were doing it, they sold the place where so many of the grandkids had honeymooned and were so many babies had toddled across the wide porch; where night games and board games and card games facilitated laughter and warm conversation for so many summers.

For the rest of their years we gathered in the summers at the Tawas cottage, a warm and charming and loving place we all adore; not so much for the structure itself but for the people who lived there. There were never two more gracious and welcoming people that Antoine and Helene Roy.

When we knew the Mackinac Cottage was going to someone else’s future memory books, we cherished our last summer vacation there. I asked Grandma if she would mind if I looked in the carriage house out behind the main house to see if there was anything we could keep for a memento. She smiled and said, in her French flavored English, “Of course, though I cannot imagine what you might want out there.”

I walked out the kitchen door and across the road to the white carriage house. The horse stalls were cleaned and unused for many years now. I found a couple old tin toy cars, and a few jars and utensils. A piece of the wool runner that matched the one on the grand staircase in the main house. And a sign hanging above the first horse stall, with jagged edges cut out and the name TRIGGER written in paint across the front.

Dave came out and joined me. I showed him the Trigger sign and he smiled when he saw it.

“Trigger was Grandpa’s old white horse, the one we all rode from the time we were small. He was a gentle old thing, slow as molasses, and stubborn when he was worn out. You couldn’t come close to the Grand Hotel when you were riding him in the evening, because he always turned his head toward the carriage house, knowing he would get a treat. He was done when he was done, and no amount of prodding or kicking or hollerin’ would turn his head away from the road to the carriage house.” Trigger was as much a part of that home as the Tiffany lamp in the entry. He had died years before I came to the family.

Watercolor painting of the Carriage House by my daughter Sarah

I gathered up the toy cars and the glass jars and the roll of carpet and the Trigger sign and put them in a cardboard box. Asked Grandma if it was ok if I took them. She shook her head and giggled. “What in the world do you want them for?”

“I just do.” I said. What I wanted to say was that anything that carried the scent of a musty Michigan summer, that held the sandy grit of years of wear on a historic old resort island, that may have been held in the hands of a small boy grown to an old man by now…anything that spoke of these two beautiful people who gave life to my husband’s mother…I wanted that in my home. Not for any kind of show, but to remind us of what we love and loved.

We loaded that box onto the wagon bed when we left the Mackinac Cottage for the last time. I turned back as we hit the steep edge of the road down below the hotel, leading into town. Looked at the grand old lady of a West Bluff Cottage shrinking in the distance.

I’ve lost just about all that was in that box but the TRIGGER sign. When Sarah was four or five years old she and her friend Ashley decided to have an over-the-top lemonade stand where they sold who knows what from our pantry and basement. They set a play cupboard out on the lawn in front of Kensington Street. Placed their wares on a small table they had also dragged out across the grass. And on the front of the cupboard they hung the Trigger sign, to which Sarah had added the word “Restrot”. I’m not sure if anyone stopped at Trigger’s Restaurant that afternoon, but I sure cherish the sign from that venture. I have hung it in my kitchen for two decades now. It reminds me of that little girl who grew into a beautiful mother and sister and doctor and friend. And it reminds me also of the charmed past I have to pinch myself to believe was my reality: a cottage like a castle where I spent my honeymoon; a king and queen of warmth and grace and poise whom we called Grandma and Grandpa; a history of charmed summers where cousins chased cousins over grassy hillsides and raced them across sandy beaches, and the gateway to the larger part of my life with a man beyond my wildest dreams.

Trigger's Restrot sign hanging in my kitchen



WOTD 34 - POET

We stopped by our friends’ house the other night, dropping off a few things and gathering a few others. Their triplets were at the kitchen island, pencils in hand, school papers strewn out across the granite like they were designing some sort of academic collage. I leaned over the counter as we talked, one part of my brain glancing at the writings of seven year old boys and another part talking about the quality of vanilla in Mexico. You know how it is when you multi task and the different parts of your brain assigned to the varying categories shift their weight and one thing drops into consciousness almost all of a sudden? My first-position thoughts shifted from vanilla to Luke’s little essay on his trip to Mexico. It soon took my full attention as I read it, charmed right off by his neat handwriting, methodically chiseled across the lined elementary school homework paper. He sat right in front of me, and out of consideration for his privacy, I asked for permission to read it. He nodded his head. I picked up the paper and scanned it, then almost instinctively asked if I could read it aloud to him. Again, he nodded.

“My mom used to read my writings aloud to me when I was little.” I told him.

I lifted the paper in my hands in a rather official sort of way, not too showy, but respectful-like. I watched out of the corner of my eye as he listened to me read, his little head shifted to an angle of pondering, like it was totally new information he was hearing and not something he had created himself not ten minutes before.

Watching the corners of his lips curl up; watching him fight the desire to smile; this was just precious, because I knew what he was feeling. I have felt it before myself.

Fourth grade. Sitting in seat three of row four in Mrs. Euler’s class. Invisible little blonde haired girl. Quiet, dutiful, not at all stellar in any way. I was simply the girl in seat three. Until that day we had to write our first essay. The assignment was to write something about the wind. I decided to write about a Gale wind, having just learned about different kinds of air movement. Using my best handwriting, I copied what I wrote on the grade A paper reserved for special assignments. I signed my name…Corinne Hansen…and set it on Mrs. Euler’s desk.

A few days later Mrs. Euler called me up to her desk while everyone was working on their arithmetic.

“Mr. Parker would like to see you.”

“Right now?” I asked, my voice instantly shaking, my little heart pounding in my chest.

“Yes.”

That’s all she said. She looked down at the papers she was grading and I turned, glanced over at the kids quietly scribbling numbers on their papers, and shuffled out the door into the wide green linoleum covered hallway. Down the stairs, through the glass topped doors and into the first level, I looked up at the wall and turned where the sign poked out, the one that said: Mr. Parker, Principal. I walked into the secretary’s room and told her Mrs. Euler said I needed to see Mr. Parker. Her hands were hovered over the large keyboard of a typewriter, her fingers pouncing rhythmically on the keys, the slap-slap-slapping of her work shocking my senses until it repeated enough to feel familiar and less threatening. She motioned for me to take a seat. I sat there, my knees pressed together, my tennis shoes barely touching the floor, my back not quite hitting the back of the chair. I fiddled with my fingers, wondering what I might have done wrong, and why Mr. Parker needed to see me. Maybe he found out my dad had come home drunk last week and I was in trouble for that. Maybe I wasn’t ready for fourth grade cuz that math stuff still confused me and they decided I needed to be in third grade again. That would not have bothered me, because Mrs. Hobgood, my third grade teacher, loved me. I knew she did. And Mrs. Euler definitely did not.

The door to Mr. Parker’s office creaked open and a kid I didn’t know walked out, his face looking straight down to the ground. I watched him scurry out, then turned my head forward, looking down at the line in the wax where the rooms divided, peeking up very carefully at the open door to the principals office. The secretary stopped typing and leaned over to me.

“Your turn.” She smiled, then went back to her work. I stood, tugged at my skirt, and tiptoed into the doorway, waiting for permission to enter. Mr. Parker sat, bespectacled, at his desk, his receding hairline reflecting the light streaming in through the window. He looked up at me, asked me my name, and told me to take a seat. I sat on the edge of the chair in front of his desk, my hands tucked under my thighs, elbows facing out, eyebrows raised as I shifted my eyes from the floor to his desk and back to the floor. He reached over his desk to a pile of papers, lifted one up, and looked it over. Next thing I knew he laid the paper on his desk top, grabbed the wooden knob of a stamp, then flipped open the inkpad on the corner of his desk. He tapped the stamp against the ink and then hammered it onto the top of the paper. He blew on it briefly, then handed it to me.

“Very nice, Corinne.” He looked me in the eye as he handed me the paper, a sparkle of warmth shot through his glasses, and then he told me to hurry back to class.

I left, smiling at the secretary as I passed by, and scurried up the stairs to the long green hall. There I paused and looked at the paper. In my own handwriting, with my own name at the top, was my essay; A Gale Wind. And stamped in blue ink next to the title was Mr. Parker’s approval : VERY GOOD.

I took the paper home that afternoon and told Mom about my meeting with the principal and how I was really surprised Mrs. Euler gave my writing to Mr. Parker because she hated me and I wondered aloud if every kid had to meet with Mr. Parker about their essays. Mom sat for a minute and looked at the paper, then began to read aloud:

“A gale wind wizzing trough the almost broken branches of the trees makes a whistling sound that nearly stings your ears….” (I can hardly believe I remembered that!) I can hear my mother’s voice reading it to me. When she read, it sounded like poetry. When she read it sounded beautiful, like she loved my words and knew exactly what I meant to say.

Through the coming years my mother read many of my own words aloud to me. Way back…way, way back in the caverns of my memory I can hear the words, lilting and melodic and well paced. So much better than they sounded in my own head when I read them on paper. Thinking back on it, I believe she could have read me a recipe and it would have sounded poetic. She had a powerful voice. Not thunderous, just powerful.

Mom believed I was a poet. And because she believed; I believed.

There is something markedly different in the sound of a word versus the look of a word. Hearing it gives it a second life; a validity. Mom had vinyl recordings of poets reading their own work, and we especially loved Robert Frost’s rumbly throaty readings of Stopping By Woods, The Mending Wall and Swinging Birches. It was her voice that gave life to Where the Red Fern Grows and The Bird’s Christmas Carol on dark winter nights. Mom taught us to love words, well selected, sparingly and carefully used. Poetry, to her, was a form of prayer and we approached it as if it were a piece of divinity.

Maybe my choice to write words destined to be set to music began with this basic belief; words are to be heard not seen. Sadly, it’s probably why I read so slowly as well. I must speak the words in my brain when I read a book. Auditory learner…I think that’s what they call it.

When my kids were growing up Mom bribed them to learn poetry: $5 for the first recital; memorized, appropriately recited, the number of stanzas determined by the age of the child. After that, each recital of the poem earned them a Quarter. She gifted them with their own personal copies of 101 Favorite Poems, her graceful handwriting in the front being cherished today as her arthritic hands no longer flow like they used to.

I learned, when our kids were learning to write, to read their work back to them. I had learned from the master how to make the words sound as they fell off the tongue. A child owns his writing best when he hears it respectfully and lovingly read aloud.

And so I stood in the Harris’ kitchen and read Luke his little essay about his trip to Mexico.

“Very nice, Luke! You are a writer indeed!”

He smiled his little crooked smile, his eyes twinkling as they looked into mine. Perhaps, little boy… perhaps there is a poet in there.

WOTD 33 - DARK

Will someone leave a light on, even just a little one? A crack in the bathroom door, or a nightlight over by the desk? Maybe push the curtain aside just a teeny bit so the diffused light of a streetlamp can filter in? It worried me; troubled me to the point of fixation as I anticipated sending my quiet, tenderhearted daughter off to the Mission Training Center. She would spend nearly three months learning Cantonese. With Strangers. In a strange place. Without being able to talk to us. Without much of anything familiar and comforting. Except God. (Silly me to think God might not be enough ) Still, I worried about the dark, and I prayed that there would be a little light for her. Ironic, really.

Our beautiful timid girl endured…no triumphed…in the MTC, then in Hong Kong, and in every subsequent situation and locale she encountered: conversing in a strange musical tongue with people from a more blunt and spare culture. It was good preparation for the service she gives now, teaching underprivileged sixth graders how to read in Houston Texas. She pushed through the dark.

Dark is a relative term. It is, in the visual sense, dependant on the situation. At night, when Dave has gone to bed hours before me, coming into the study first and kissing me sweetly by the light of the computer screen, he slides the dimmer up on the table lamp on my side of the bed so I will be able to see when I come to bed. There’s a transom over our bedroom door, leading out to the hallway. The light from the hall generally spills into our bedroom and sometimes he forgets to turn on my lamp. When I tiptoe back to our bedroom after my nightly writing, and flip the light switch in the hall, it is pitch black in our room and my inferior feet cannot comfortably find their way through our space. I reach out my arms, my hands patting the lightless air, my feet shuffling painfully against the carpet. Lately I am comforted by knowing I can use the dim light of my iPhone when I go to bed. I don’t need a lot of light, just enough to indicate where not to step. I slide the dimmer higher on my lamp, just enough to reveal the words to the Guideposts or Readers Digest that ease me out of what I’ve been creating and into sleep. I don’t mind the dark when I’m sleeping, if I know my space.

Like just about everything, when dark approaches slowly and gradually, we adjust without realizing it. Leave it to a gentle God to make our earth spin evenly enough to allow for sunrises and sunsets, giving our eyes time to adjust, our feet energy enough to run home before dark. Imagine if He had decided to jerk the earth around, dropping us into darkness with no warning. Or just as bad, thrusting us into light so quickly our eyes feel like they’ll burst, unable to focus, unable to see anything really. I know the feeling well. Thick window blinds closed on a grey Pittsburgh day, a filmstrip mundanely clicks through a projector, a cassette recording reciting the geography of the Antarctic, or the scene of a Civil War battle, or the anatomy of a grasshopper; the recording methodically piercing my respite with a shrill ding indicating it’s time to advance the filmstrip. When the celluloid was rolled underneath the projector and the recording had ended, on went the fluorescent lights blanketing the ceiling of the classroom. Our eyebrows pushed the skin up to our hairlines, our heads instantly throbbing with the painful rush of light. Light, for all its divine attributes, sure can hurt.

Light can sting. Blind us even. But darkness is a long, dull ache. A frightening look into an abyss. Sometimes I close my eyes and pretend I am blind. I pretend so I can evaluate whether or not I think I have the internal strength to endure such a thing. I am always so, so grateful to open my eyes.

When I lost my sense of balance the Neurologist ran some tests, asking me to do some interesting things, or at lest attempt to do them. He asked me to stand on one foot, holding the other foot in the air beside it. I was able to do that with much effort. Then he asked me to close my eyes. As soon as I did, I fell over. He explained that when we lose one of our senses the others will compensate. But if we lose two, then our brains are confused and will not let us accomplish such a task as standing on one foot. “You cannot balance, having lost the sense of touch in your lower extremities, if you do not have visual contact with your feet or the space around you.” In this way he evaluated further evidence that I had indeed sustained damage to the sensory aspects of my legs. Blind people who cannot hear, like Helen Keller, are at a marked disadvantage to people whose only sensory loss is sight. We learn to compensate. So now I have to keep one eye slightly open when I’m standing and we bow our heads to pray, because I lose my balance in the darkness.

When I was little I remember thinking, down there in the basement art room in Pleasant Hills Elementary School, that when I scribbled all the colors in my crayon box over a piece of soft pale yellow art paper, the page turned dark. Black, I thought, was the accumulation of all colors. It took me growing up, covering my body with the purity of white robes and veils, to learn that it is white which contains all the colors of the rainbow. White, the purest reflector of light, represents the presence of all color. Light, indeed, is the palette of the heavens, from which are painted powder blue summer skies and verdant spring meadows splashed with golden daffodils; deep tangerine sunsets across the lake to the west; the bright red crown on a bold chested rooster. We are reminded of those colors in light when it rains and the air is filled with speckles of water reflecting the colors in the shape of a rainbow. We are surrounded by color and we don’t really know it, though I am sure somehow our spirits do.

I respect the dark. I don’t love it, but I respect it enough to not toy with it any more than I have to. There is no dark that the flickering of a small flame can’t seize, warming my fears and setting them in a peaceful place of calm.

Dark. Thick, massive, frightening dark. It would do me in, but for my trust that just one small flame is enough.

WOTD 32- SINK

I was thinking about this yesterday, somewhere in the middle of nowhere Arizona, out in the endless desert on what felt like an endless drive home from Mexico…(Long drives are really good for random thinking. Everyone should take the wheel for a long drive on a regular basis, just to get the mind flushed out.)… I was thinking that when I got home I was going to have a day of regulars. That’s what I might call it. Maybe. Or I might call it “Ordinarily This....” and the object would be to make note of all the regular things in my ordinary days. I guess my head went in that direction because of the pictures on our digital cameras, the ones we were looking at on our drive home from our Mexico vacation. Sarah was wishing aloud that we had taken a picture of everyone together. So I got to thinking that we have these photo journals of our lives that we leave behind, and in them are all the exciting glamorous things- like trips and parties and birthdays and anniversaries; and the showy things like recitals and programs and games. We have all those things recorded well in our photo albums and in our journals. What is lacking is a reminder of the repeated, seemingly mundane motions of our daily lives. What the family car looks like. David sitting at the table studying legal briefs. Libby lifting Gram into her wheel chair. Jordon buttering a piece of bunny bread or sitting in the driver’s seat of an EJ Bartells truck. Johnny digging in the dirt with Parker. Kate, Annie, Ashley interacting with their students. Sarah using a stethoscope. Timo pounding his drumsticks on the headrest in the car. Sherry opening the back door for Pi. Jill sitting before her computer, her face bathed in the glow of a book in embryo.

I remember my mom standing at the kitchen sink. Regardless of where we were living; what job she had at the time; whether it was before or after Dad left. No matter what season, or how many people sat at her table for dinner…there was always the kitchen sink. It was a constant amid lots of changes. I can hear in my memory the clanking of dishes, the ringing of silverware being stacked into utensil drawers, the rushing sound of the water flowing through the tap. Sometimes she hummed, or whistled, but more often than not she was silent, unless there was something to be said. Mom almost always preferred quiet. I guess that happens when people have seven children and lots of noise all the time. Noise on the outside, mixed with the noise of a mind troubled with marriage woes. Things can get awfully loud in the quiet of a lonely bed. Something about the motion of working with the hands makes the sounds in the head line up a bit more quietly. She often folded laundry and washed dishes in silence.

I wish I had a real picture of my mom at the kitchen sink, not just the one conjured in my brain. I wish I had a picture of her at the wheel of the car; or of her pounding a real estate sign into the ground. I wish I had a photo of her hand patting my back, paced against the rhythm of her rocking in the old white rocker that used to be the old brown rocker before she re-covered it herself in that evening community continuing ed class she took on upholstering and refinishing furniture. I wish I had a picture of my sister Sherry holding me. I think we might have an old home movie of that. But not a still. She was a normal teenage girl, darling in her poodle skirt fashion and horn rimmed glasses. So beyond typical in the way she loved and cared for her little little sisters. I imagine her holding me, and when I think of it I can sense her love infusing into me. Wish I had a snapshot.

And so I am thinking we should all take our cameras, or cell phones with cameras, and snap a picture of ourselves or someone we love at the kitchen sink.

Go ahead. I dare ya.

Blogs have been a blessing in this regard. They allow for photos to be added to the journals of our daily living. Hooray for blogs! Go write in yours, people! (And I want to see your kitchen sink pictures.)

WOTD 31 - COOKBOOK

On a rusting metal shelf, perforated and warped with paper-weight, I imagine my blue and white checkered cookbook waiting. Sealed edges of vinyl covered cardboard cracking with age, like the wrinkled halo around the lips of the woman in the chair next to me at the beauty parlor last week. I imagine it there, waiting on some ignored shelf in some thrift store, waiting to be selected. Who but me would want such a thing? Hand written recipes in no particular order, evidence of hardcore usage splattered on its pages, chocolate and tomato and Crisco casting their votes for most congenial if not most beautiful.

I cannot say how it got there, my very best most personal cookbook. Someone must have wanted a recipe and one of the kids probably just lent out the book. No one would know that those stories were compiled from our lives; recipes born in distant places, brought home and refined in the trenches; proven through hot summer evenings over the cooktop, and chilly December afternoons when the kids were home from school and the house smelled of gingerbread; when little fingers were sticky with sugar squeezed from raisins planted in thick layers of buttercream frosting on flat little men lined up like soldiers on my cookie sheets. The most proven recipes sealed their rank with pocks on their dog-eared index cards. These were coiffed to our taste, refined and redefined for our lips and the outer edges of our tongues, custom tailored to my little family. I can see that old cookbook spread open on the cold tile of my kitchen countertop, adjusted by wide inked X’s with hand written scribblings added to the side: a quarter cup less milk, or a teaspoon more vanilla; two tablespoons of flour when we moved from Pennsylvania to Utah. I searched every DI store in the Wasatch Front for nearly a year, hoping to retrieve it. Aching in the same way I yearn for the lost photographs of my children when the photo lab closed with my film still inside.

If you find yourself in some second hand store that sells cookbooks, and you happen to see one about 7 inches wide and maybe 10 inches tall with thin blue lines; grab it for me.  You can tell if its mine by looking for Gramma Roys Michigan Baked Beans somewhere inside. I'll love you forever...and I'll indeed make you one of those pots of beans (and maybe even a garbage cake, too!)



WOTD 30 - WARP

In order to weave any kind of textile, the weaver needs to start with the warp threads. Warp threads tend to be stronger and more coarse, because they must be able to withstand tight stretching. They also provide a core of support for the finished piece, giving the textile body and form. The warp is stretched onto a loom before weaving begins, and it may be coiled onto a spool for very long or large projects. This spool is unwound as needed, while the finished weaving on the other side is rolled up to get it out of the way.

You know how you know some things, but you’re not sure how you know them, and you’re pretty sure that what you know is probably a little off base but still it makes you sound like you know what you’re talking about (unless you’re talking to somebody who really knows what you’re talking about)? MmmHmmmm.

I don’t know much about weaving. I do own a rather dandy antique spinning wheel. Two in fact. One of them won the blue ribbon for antique furniture in the Idaho State Fair one year. It was displayed in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building one summer, right in the middle of that big round table in the center of the massive marble lobby. It has a nice skein of flax on it, with a little leader twisted onto the spindle and bobbin. I’ve used the wheel once or twice, just to remind myself that I know how it works. I probably couldn’t work it right now without really thinking about it, and probably Googling it. But if we had to we could spin wool and flax at our house, I guess.

My cousin was a weaver, if I recall correctly. She had a large loom right in the middle of her living room. She showed us one day how she did it; stretching strands of tightly spun wool across the loom, left to right, creating the warp. Once the warp was set she used a variety of colored threads to weave in and out of the warp, pressing a pedal with her foot, raking a comb with her hands in a rhythmic pattern that involved multiple pulls toward her chest. The loom clicked and groaned as she worked the fibers in and out of the warp. Her work was meticulous and beautiful. Mom bought some place mats from her, and I purchased a nice neutral colored shawl made of linen and silk.

Anyone who really knows about weaving will think me silly to write about weaving; but I have this image of my family that involves a loom and even though I’m probably off base in what it represents in symbolic terms, I’ve had this picture in my mind for a long time; and since the word for today was “warp” I decided to go with it.

The thing about a warp that means something to me is that someone sets it, with their own hands. Someone selects a particularly strong fiber, tightly spun to give it additional strength. Someone uses their muscle to stretch the threads across the loom tightly. A loose warp makes for weak fabric. The character of the warp fibers are usually pretty universal. It’s the waft, the more delicate fibers woven through the warp, that provide variety and color and pattern. Waft is interesting, and gets a lot of credit in the Ooo and Ahhh department. But it’s the warp that does the labor, that takes the beating - flipping up and down as the waft is woven in and out of it. It’s the warp that bears the tension, and it’s the tension that facilitates strong fabric.

Tonight we shared dinner at a restaurant here in Puerto Penasco, Mexico; a fine Italian restaurant overlooking the ocean, situated on a bend in the beach where the sunset can be seen through the west wall of windows. Our friend Neal introduced us to the owner, a man named Julio, who is the District President in the Mormon Church here in this area. He was gracious and friendly, shaking our hands and looking into our eyes with that familiar warmth of one who loves God and his fellow man. David paused as they met, then asked if they had met before. “Were you at Jared Parker’s house in Salt lake City, grilling shrimp last year…during General Conference?”

“Yes. Yes, yes! Were you there?” The pitch in his voice raised slightly with the excitement of recognition.

“Our son John is married to Jared’s daughter, Ashley! We met you at the Parker’s.”

Julio took David’s hand with both of his, shaking it in that warm and meaningful way, like when you have a deeper respect for someone.

“Ah, you are the parents of John? Oh, that John is a hard worker. A fine hard worker. Very good man, John Connors. I knew when Neal said Connors there was something strong in that.”

Julio nodded his head, as if to add an exclamation point to his words.

John and Ashley come with the Parkers and dozens of other people, sometimes a couple times a year, to help build houses for underprivileged Mexican families. Their non-profit organization, Families Helping Families, facilitates those who want to work for a better life, not by handing them what they want, but by working alongside them. They give up their vacations, even pay their way to come, pay for materials, and sweat their hearts out for two weeks, leaving grateful families with solid walls and doors and windows around them.

When John was 16 he helped our neighbor Ron lay sod. A volunteer service project. Ron came over to tell us how much he respected our son for the hard work he did, without complaint, and longer than most other teenagers were willing to work. This only represents one aspect of who he is, but it represents the same dependable selfless intensity evident in the whole of his life.

John is warp in my weave.

Libby spent yesterday driving our mom and sister to Provo to be with our brother and his family. Our sister in law Cyndy was diagnosed with lung cancer, though she has never in her life inhaled anything but the residual smoke of a campfire. Libby understands there are times we just need to be by each other, not to fix things, just to “be.” Our mom is wheelchair bound. Libby lifts her, dresses her, takes care of her personal needs, showers her. She makes her food, and cleans up afterwards; manages her medicines and makes sure her feet are covered when she finally settles in her easy chair. All this while she takes care of the rest of us; making sure we are all ok, making us feel important and loved. Today she spent the time between caring for Mom reading to a neighbor rendered speechless from brain cancer. She listened and talked to our friend’s husband, who is struggling to accept the inevitable. I have six siblings and she talks to every one of us at least once a day. No one understands me like Libby does; and she loves me in a way no one else can love me.

Libby is warp in my weave.

My ever faithful mother, pilot of the Pontiac Rocket and keeper of the tenderest places in the yearning heart of my youth; she is warp.

And David; and Sherry and all my sisters. My tender, strong and brilliant brothers. Each one of my capable, loving, inventive and intelligent daughters, their spouses, their children. These are the strands that are stretched over the loom, steady and strong and dependable. All of them strong enough to handle the tension necessary for a good weave. I lay myself beside them, allowing myself to be stretched as well, hoping I am strong enough to bear the tension, too.

The daily grind, the talents and trials and trips and treasures all color the delicate fabric that weaves through the warp; the waft. This trip to Mexico. Our time in Michigan. Our Sunday dinners around Gram’s table. Our Saturday afternoons in ball fields. Our moments on stage and in front of the stage. Dull and repetitive hours spent at the kitchen sink.  Irritating tense moments trying to figure out how to make our kids , ourselves, do things we don't want to do. These make the story of our lives colorful and interesting. But they are all held together by the warp. And as warp, we understand the need for tension. Not that we love it. But we understand the need for it. Without tension our guitars would not sing; our vocal cords would not give us pitch, and the fabric of our lives would give way with the slightest tug.

Great Weaver of all things good, use us well. Spin us into good sturdy thread, strong enough for the most meaningful looms. Stretch us tightly beside each other; then weave.

WOTD 29 - DON

Don, Dave’s dad, was a warm and brilliant man. Dave is much like him. What was good in Don is also good in Dave. He taught his son how to use every tool in his tool box. He dissected every moving part on an automobile out there in the garage on Rolling Green drive, the sound of his voice bouncing off the inside of the hood while their heads hung over the engine. Don even shared the table in the dining room at night, where the kids did their homework. While Dave was learning the basics of Algebra and Geometry, Don was taking night classes to earn his Juris Doctorate degree from Duquesne University. He had already earned a doctoral degree in Nuclear Physics at Notre Dame, but thought it might be interesting to see what it was like to be a lawyer, too.

I first met Don on a snowy night in mid December. Dave had left for BYU Law School the previous August; an unattached single student. By Thanksgiving we had fallen in love and become engaged. I flew home that Christmas to meet the parents.

Dave drove over to my mom’s place to pick me up that evening. I dressed in my grey pant suit, spent extra time on my hair and make-up. The whole way over to their house in Bethel from my apartment in Pleasant Hills I sat with my knees tense, my hands nervously twisting in my lap. Dave reassured me they would love me. I had my doubts. I already knew I was in the painful position of being a faithful Mormon girl marrying a beloved son in a devoted Catholic family. Bad start, I thought.

I have a photograph in my head of me standing in the doorway of the kitchen, all eyes on me, comforted beyond words by the presence of ten year old Chelle who was…well, ten years old. She wasn’t weighed down with adult worries. Dave’s mom, Helen, was cautiously friendly. Rightfully so. I remember seeing Don from the corner of my eye, looking over at me as Dave slipped his arm around my waist. He smiled his irresistible smile, his eyes reflecting the light from the kitchen window. Looking back I realize I should not have worried so, but that friendly compassionate look from Dad Connors was so meaningful to me. I don’t think I ever told him that.

Helen and Don could be pretty funny together. Subtly humorous is probably more accurate. For instance, when the cottage in Michigan was finally completed and Mom and Dad Connors were arranging and furnishing, Mom brought home a kit for a wooden end table from the shop in Iosco. It was packed in a tight rectangular brick, wrapped and stapled with cardboard. ASSEMBLY REQUIRED, it said. So Helen handed it off to Don. She sat in the red gingham rocker in the family room while Dad unpacked the thing, laying the pieces out like it was the living room on Christmas Eve. He methodically stacked each screw and nut and bolt, washer and Made-in-China Allen wrench in specific order. Helen worked on various projects through the afternoon, occasionally returning to the rocker. Each time she listened as Don cursed under his breath.

“Who wrote these instructions? These things do not fit where they are supposed to!”

She returned to her tasks; unloading glasses into the kitchen cupboards; washing new sheets and pillowcases and stretching them onto new mattresses.

And again she returned to the family room, checking on the progress of the end table.

“Can’t they count in China?” Don pulled his tool box over toward his knees, searching for a screw in his own collection, none of which matched the size he needed.

After a few hours Helen walked through the family room.

“Aren’t you done yet? She asked, her arms full of folded towels.

Don was exasperated!

“Who in the world could understand these instructions! They’re beyond me!”

Helen put the towels in the linen closet, shut the door, and returned to the rocker.

“Gee, Don,” she said as she sank into the soft cushioned rocker, “I wonder what people who do NOT have their doctorates in nuclear physics do.”

Not two years later Helen was killed in a car accident down the road from the cottage. She had dropped us at the airport in Saginaw and was headed home to that place she loved. We feel her when we sit in those rockers. For the next decade our time at the cottage in Michigan and Pittsburgh was spent with Don. His warmth and kindness, his gentle nature and generosity underlined all he did. Parkinson’s Disease eventually robbed him of some of his independence, but his good nature remained.

Dave’s sister Jill called finally, beckoning Dave home to Pennsylvania. He was able to be with his dad as he walked to the valley of death, reassuring him that we knew he would be ok, that he would still have us, that we would still have him in the end. Dave stood at the head of his father’s hospital bed and laid his worthy hands on the silken head of the man who taught him just about everything, bowing his own head and whispering a prayer of gratitude and comfort. He eased the journey with a blessing, his brother and sisters encircling their father in that small space.

That following year we returned to Pittsburgh to help prepare the house on Rolling Green Drive for sale. We stripped the old blue carpet from the living room, exposing beautiful hardwood floors that were so “not cool” in the 1960’s. Took the mural wallpaper off the wall in the study. Painted the walls with fresh neutral paint. I remember taping off the trim in the dining room one afternoon, looking out the window into South Park, down over the grassy space where the pool used to be. The awning over the porch by the pool was attached to the house.  You looked over the top of it when you looked out the dining room window. In the winter Helen used to toss birdseed out the windows onto that awning, feeding the winter worn cardinals that harbored in the woods.  She loved seeing the flash of their scarlet feathers against the white snow and green pine trees out in the yard.

When we moved to Utah from Pittsburgh, I was conscious of the fact that we were taking the only grandchildren away from Helen and Don. I was saddened that the winter scenes of my kid’s childhoods would look markedly different from the scenes of my childhood, and David’s, too. So I wrote a little song to remind them… to remind me. It’s called Is it Snowing Tonight Where You Are. There’s a line in that song that tickles my funny bone every time I sing it:

Do the red birds still come for the food

You toss from the window at dawn…

The song takes me to the scenes of their home at Christmas time. I think of Dave’s dad. And I think of Helen. And though I didn't originally write a double entendre' into the song, I discovered one in a light moment once. I imagined that the word “dawn” was replaced with the word “Don.” I imagined Helen being a little irritated at Don about something. And I imagined that humorous delivery of sustenance. You won’t see it necessarily on my face when I sing it on stage, but I am thinking it you can be sure: Helen tossing food from the window at Don. It's dry Connors wit, probably not funny to anyone else and way too irreverent. But I find it helps take away some of the sting of loss. And I also find the lightness of that image takes me back to that beautiful, warm smile of the man who gratefully let me also call him Dad.