Life without grandmothers

Moving house

2009-04-15T13:57:00.000-07:00

I have moved here. Posts from this blog will migrate over time.

One year

2009-03-06T09:27:00.000-08:00

How has it been a year (yesterday) already?

Mimi, you are still with me every day.

Christmas

2008-12-24T08:17:00.001-08:00

This is the story I told at Mimi's memorial service:

In 1987 in Vermont, for midnight mass we went to the Unitarian church in the upper village. Mimi frequently attended there because it was so much closer than the nearest Episcopal church. The church is up on a hill next to a farmhouse and barn, and the farmer had a live Nativity scene for after the service.

The closing hymn was "O Come All Ye Faithful"---we started singing and filed out into the night. In the barn there were some local kids in their parents' bathrobes with towels on their heads, grinning. There were some sheep and a surly-looking goat. A cow chewed quietly, and the pony was adorable in its shaggy winter coat.

I was walking with Mimi when we left the barn. It had started to snow in big clumps, and the streetlight shone pink. We were on the final verse of the carol. She took my arm and we sang at the top of our lungs as we marched down the hill in the snow:

Yea, Lord, we greet thee!
Born this happy morning,
Jesus, to Thee be glory given;
Word of the Father,
Now in flesh appearing:
O come let us adore Him
O come let us adore Him
O come let us adore Him
Christ the Lord

One way in which my life diverges from that of a famous dancer

2008-12-17T11:39:00.001-08:00

When I was a teenager, I went through a brief phase of loving Dr. Who. And I wanted that scarf---or, rather, a long long scarf that would trail on the ground when I walked.

(Beth had given me her old 60s-vintage dress coat, black trimmed in black velvet. Wouldn't that have been grand with a giant scarf?)

I showed Grandmom the program. "Long, like that," I said, "but with black and grey stripes."

"YOU CAN'T HAVE THAT LONG SCARF," Mom said.
"Why not?" says I.
"BECAUSE ISADORA DUNCAN DIED FROM A BROKEN NECK WHEN SHE WORE A LONG SCARF IN A CONVERTIBLE."

I did wonder about this, not being a person who ever rode in convertibles.

"Oh, I'll knit her a safe scarf," Grandmom said.

And she did: she used grey and brown variegated yarn, so it had wodges of color instead of stripes.

And she made it very, very safe.

If I stretched real hard, it went twice around my neck, with tails that hung all the way down to my collarbones.

So I'm glad to say that I did not break my neck from wearing that scarf.

So many Christmas memories!

2008-12-16T11:39:00.000-08:00

Grandmom and Granpop went to a tiny country Methodist church up on the hill that had a Christmas party every year with Santa. Each child got a small wrapped present and one of those old-fashioned stockings containing an orange, a candy cane, and a handful of chocolates. It was way better than Santa's helpers at the mall: because there were not many children (it was a Baptist kind of town), we got pretty much all the time we wanted to babble about how very very very very good we'd been and how very very very much we wanted a pony or a chemistry set.*

The year I was 7-ish, my dad excused himself to go to the bathroom right as we were ending the singing part. "Hurry back!" I said, because Santa would be there any minute.

We stopped singing. Santa came out and no Dad! Several kids went up. My sister (3-ish) went up to sit on his lap, and she howled and screamed in fright, which for some strange reason made Santa laugh a lot. This only made Lissa scream some more, until she finally wriggled out of his lap and ran away. My grandmother was giggling as she took Lissa's present. I was worried about my daddy having tummy troubles in the bathroom, and then it was my turn.

I sat on Santa's lap and thought what a very good Santa's helper he was. He had nice eyes, like my dad's eyes. He was very jolly: I could hear him trying not to laugh when he asked me what I wanted for Christmas. I rattled off whatever I wanted that year, while my wee brain began to form a suspicion that perhaps my daddy was not in fact in the bathroom. I stopped in my list.

"Is that all you want?" the Santa asked. And that was it. This was definitely my father. I squinched up my eyes and nodded.

Back in the pew, I stared longingly at the chocolates in my stocking and worked myself into a high dudgeon. The nerve! Santa's helpers were supposed to be anonymous and from the North Pole, not your own dad.

I was, however, smart enough to keep my yap shut until Lissa had gone to bed. I was familiar with the process of hand meeting fanny and how to avoid such.

"That was you!" I yelled.
"What are you talking about?"
"You were Santa!"
"I was not. I was in the bathroom."
"You were! Grandmom was laughing and that was you."
"That kind of doubt is the kind of thing that makes Santa take presents away."

Argument ended, thank you very much. Many years later, we laughed a lot about how my sister screamed.

*Several years later, I did get a chemistry set, and I spent many happy hours turning liquid from white to purple and back again.

Making the ephemeral last

2008-12-12T15:09:00.000-08:00

(When I went home for Thanksgiving, Mom had a bag of Mimi's clothes for us to go through, sent down by my aunts. Because I had written about Mimi's Keds, they sent 2 pair for me: one khaki, one light blue. We have the same shoe size. I shall wear them all next summer, if I can possibly do so without filling them with tears.)

Christmas 1987, when we all met up in Vermont, there was so much snow ... maybe not to a Vermonter's eye, but definitely a winter wonderland for a North Carolina girl.

We made a lumpy snow maiden outside the dining-room window, dressed in things from the dress-up box in the sleeping porch.

I don't know whose idea it was---one of the dads?---to pour a pan of water over the snow maiden, but they did one afternoon, late, just before the sun went down. We inspected her the next day and she was an absolute block of ice.

When we got to Vermont that summer, Mimi had a picture in her album of the snow maiden in April, still standing and just then starting to get mushy, surrounded by green grass.

Strangely, this was never in style

2008-12-05T17:55:00.000-08:00

One weekend we drove up to Norwood without checking the weather forecast. We drove up Friday night, went to bed, and woke up in the morning to see our breath misting in front of our faces, and there were several inches of snow on the ground.

My brother was about 2, which would've made me 14 and my sister 10. And we were desperate to get out into the snow, with nary a glove, a hat, or a snow boot among us.

I could wear Grandmom's boots, coat, and gloves, and I had a scarf wrapped around my head. I remember grousing about not being able to wear my own jacket, but in the end, snow won out over teenage fashion trauma. Lissa grumbled too, because everything she had on was too big: she had on like 3 pairs of socks inside Grandmom's rain boots, and she could hardly walk.

My brother had a coat but no shoes to wear. We stood around for a minute, pondering, while he bounced up and down at the window making one of those toddler sounds that's most audible to dogs. Finally, Grandmom decided that we would rubberband plastic bread bags around his legs.

He did not love this idea.

But when the violent operation was over, I carried him howling outside into the snow and plopped him down in it. In 3.9 seconds he had forgotten that he was wearing food packaging. We built a lopsided snowman. It even had a carrot nose.

Another birthday

2008-11-05T09:34:00.000-08:00

Mimi would have been 93 today. We all still miss her so much.

One year (we were living in Raleigh), Mimi and Gogo came to visit in the fall, for Dad's and Mimi's birthdays.

Angel food cake was always one of Dad's favorites, so that's what he got for his birthday cake.

The next night, for Mimi's special dinner, Mom brought out a big chocolate cake for Mimi.

"It's devil's food---I hope you like it!" she said.
"Oh, lovely," Mimi said.

Mom cut into the cake, and then Gogo erupted in howls of laughter. We stared at him.

"Making a comment about your mother-in-law, Beck?" he asked.
"Baroo?" we all said.
"DEVIL'S FOOD!" he yelled.

Poor Mom was so flustered. And we tease her about the devil's food cake to this very day.

Every time we would tell the story in front of Mimi, she leapt to Mom's defense. "It was a delicious cake! I loved it!" she would say.

Hooray for dads!

2008-11-04T07:27:00.000-08:00

Today is my father's birthday.

When I was about 6 years old, I used my EZ-Bake Oven to bake his birthday cake: yellow cake with peanut-butter icing. (WHY has there not been more peanut-butter icing in my life?)

It did not occur to me until after I proudly placed the tiny plate in front of him that Dad would eat the whole thing. That was a minor tragedy. Still! He pronounced it Good.

When we went on the EYC (Episcopal Youth Community) camping trip and a stick bug got on my sleeping bag, Dad went with me to sleep in the car.

On my ninth birthday, Lissa gave me a skateboard (thanks for the scars), Mom gave me a beautiful dress, and Dad said his gift required going out. I insisted on wearing my beautiful new dress (slightly too big, and so very long, which I loved). He said that if I was going to dress up, so would he, so he put on a suit and we went to see Star Wars. Twenty years later, when the special editions came out, I cried a little in the movie theater when the music started to play, because I wished that I was sitting again with Dad.

He has more than one gold gallon pin from the Red Cross for donating blood.

He is spending his retirement building Habitat for Humanity houses.

I am so proud of my dad.

Happy birthday! I love you.

WHEN GRANDMOTHERS ATTACK

2008-10-20T18:00:00.000-07:00

Okay, I have a ridiculous hatred of raincoats. I don't know what it stems from: it's not like I have a memory of Childhood Raincoat Trauma.

I read a book once about a girl whose mother hated yellow slickers, so she always had to have fancy rain outfits: I remember a description of one that was pink with black trim, including a pink riding helmet with a plastic-covered black velvet button on top. But the girl in the book wanted a yellow slicker patched with duct tape and a pair of rubber boots.

I wanted both---geez oh man, I wanted the elegant fancy pink raincoat with a hat AND the goofy Paddington slicker that would make me Part of the Crowd. Of course, this was a book about a girl in high school, and I was in elementary school, so it wasn't really applicable. As a child, I was always aching for whatever I read in a book. I mean, for real---if I had read a book about fois gras on toasted challah, I probably would've laid on the floor and longed for duck liver. (As I am now.)

In sixth grade, in Slidell, I had a red raincoat with metal latches that had a tan canvas lining printed with red and green ducks. I hated those ducks. It wasn't so much the rest of the jacket (I liked the latches), but those ducks! That tan canvas! I hated it so much. And, you know, I was At An Age. It was raining, and time to go to school, and I wanted an umbrella, but Mom wanted me to wear my raincoat, and I launched into one of those emotion storms that children have. I threw myself to the floor, wailing, and Mom's response has become a standard family joke: "Get! Up! Off! The! Floor! You! Are! Not! A! Slave!"

At the time, I thought something along the lines of "But I am! I am a slave to the raincoat!" but how funny is that?

When Mimi would come to stay with us, she'd let us use umbrellas. Well, and eat grilled cheese sandwiches on TV trays for dinner, so it was like Child Vacation in Heaven.

But Grandmom: now she had a fetish for rain bonnets. Heaven forbid it should look like 82% humidity, because she would bring a handful of little plastic containers from her purse and we'd have to put those wicked things on. I liked the containers---the lids would make a nice popping sound when you opened them, and the best ones had ball-chain loops so you could put them on your keychain. I liked unfolding the bonnets, which were always cleverly mashed up like little plastic maps, and they never ever ever folded up the same way or fit very well inside the containers.

I did not get the point of the plastic rain bonnets: they kept the top part of my hair dry but not the bottom, didn't keep the rain out of my eyes, didn't keep my clothes dry. The main result was a dry scalp and sweaty ears. But Grandmom always made us wear one at the first sight of rain.

As much as I hated them, I'd give a lot to have another one now, for Grandmom to make me wear one of those dumb, useless hats.

Amazing culinary prowess: age 8!

2008-10-09T20:09:00.001-07:00

The summer I was 8, I decided that I wanted to learn to cook.

Mom and I trooped off to Coburns (just over 2 miles straight downhill), where I picked out a box of Duncan Hines spice cake mix and matching frosting. (1) I liked the color and (2) "spice" sounded super fancy, like something out of Narnia.

Back at Innisfree, Mimi set out a footstool for me. I cracked an egg! Then Mom fished the pieces of shell out. I stirred that cake mix with all the strength in my little twig arm. Later, when the cake was cool, Mom inverted the two layers and I used every molecule of frosting. Geez oh man did it smell good: clove and cinnamon and just like I had hoped. It was all I could do not to quiver into another dimension, waiting for dinner to be over.

After dinner, we repaired to the terrace. "Does anyone want cake?" I asked. *I* wanted cake, let me tell you.

"I get the first piece." Gogo said. "A big one!"

I brought him a piece of cake as big as his head. He ate the whole thing. "Delicious!" he said.

I thought, "Great! I am a really good cook!" And of all the things I have felt insecure about in my life, I never once doubted my ability to cook yummy food.

All the things that save my life

2008-09-30T18:54:00.000-07:00

Here is something very few people know:

Since the moment of my birth, I have regularly required Lifesaving Measures. I'm sure this is annoying and alarming for everyone. Certainly I've gotten pretty tired of it.

When I was 16ish, Mom and Dad sat me down at the kitchen table one night after dinner: white table with yellow trim. Lissa and I sat on a bench on one side; Mom and Dad had yellow chairs. J3's high chair was at the end. I'm pretty sure Dad built the bench. Under the chair rail, the kitchen and breakfast nook were painted yellow; above it there was white wallpaper with little springs in blue, red, and yellow, each of which had 2 green leaves.

"We are worried that you are thinking of hurting yourself," they said.
"OMG NO!" I said.

That was totally a lie, because I was. I had been collecting razor blades out of Dad's toolbox, and I would lay them out on my white nightstand under the lamp so they shone. I would drag them across my arms to feel them catch and skip.

The problem was, I couldn't figure any way to demise myself when my sister wouldn't be the one to find me. I got up first in the morning to get ready, and she was second. So if I filled the tub with the contents of my veins, she would see it, sleepy and in her nightgown at 12 years old. And I just couldn't do that.

When I told her this, several years ago, she punched me in the arm. Really hard. And she called me a bad word.

So for Easter we went to Jekyll Island to visit Mimi and Gogo---for many years they escaped Mud Season in Vermont by taking the auto train down to the Georgia coastal islands. (And seriously, how cool is the phrase "auto train"?)

A couple of nights I took a walk by myself on the beach after dinner. I have always loved, still love, the silver road that the moon makes on dark water. Where does that road go? I have always wanted to know. I wandered up and down the beach, chanting (bad) poetry to myself.

The second night, I walked out up to my neck in the water before I realized I had done it.

I trooped back out of the water and wandered up and down the beach, waiting for my clothes to dry. "At last," I thought. I could just wander out, and maybe it would be a stranger to find me, someone who would not be traumatized, and my family was all together, so they would be okay.

I went out the next night, and Gogo was at the bottom the steps, smoking.

"Going for a walk!" I chirped.

He clamped his arm around my neck.

"I'm going with you," he said. "This walking around all hours of the night: it's weird."

At the time I was so annoyed. But now I'm grateful. I'm also pretty sure he knew dang well what he was doing.

It's not a novel, but at least it changed the family slang

2008-09-27T08:30:00.000-07:00

When I was in Vermont in the summer of 2005(? sometimes it's very inconvenient to be away from the Innisfree guest book), I was driving around in the car with, I think, Mom, Lissa, Mimi, and Ellen.

We went around a curve and there was a vast field of junk: cars, washing machines, satellite dishes, garden chairs, and and and.

"WHAAAAT is THAT?" says I.
"Those are the Coutermarshes," Mimi said.

And my brain made a sound like a pachinko machine. Of course, in my head it's spelled "Cootermarsh," because "cooter" is funnier. I howled with laughter the whole way home and spent the rest of the trip talking about the Cootermarshes. I gave them tremendously dirty names (I think one was Peen Tallywhacker "Tally" Cootermarsh) and declared them "Cononisseurs of the Disused and Dishabille." I gave them a mangy girl dog just so I could use the phrase "that bitch Franklin Delano Roosevelt." I gave them French cousins named Coutremarché. And the longer my mother and sister kept laughing, the more I talked about their adventures in which they saved the world without even knowing it.

Mom thinks my path to literary fame lies with the Cootermarshes, but I've never been able to catch a decent plot: that's a problem with jokes. It's very hard to spin them out for very long.

So instead, somehow we've all gotten into the habit of using "cootermarsh" to refer to all the assorted stuff and junk of life. That pile of stuff I fling into my bag in the morning? Those are me cootermarshes. When I'm moving detritus from one spot to another, I'm cootermarshing. That sounds so much more glamorous than "straightening up."

Even if there's no "glo" left in the Indiglo

2008-09-24T14:26:00.000-07:00

I wear Mimi's watch every day, and it sits tight around my wrist. I imagine that it is her hand.

(Last week, in Austin, I was waiting in Walgreen's to pick up a prescription for a friend, and I saw a lady wearing this same watch. She had beautiful white hair. It was much like Mimi's. I still miss her every day.)

Some adventures are not that great

2008-09-22T17:56:00.000-07:00

One year there was a big raspberry bramble by the big old pine tree in between Innisfree and Mimi & Gogo's house, and, astoundingly, there were actually berries on it that the birds hadn't eaten.

Until recently (I have gone through a weird transformation), I was not an eater of fruit. Raspberries with cream and sugar for breakfast on the deck was an exception to this. And what would be better than ultra-fresh raspberries picked from right there? Mimi gave me a small metal bowl, and I went down to pick berries. It was a hot day, with insects buzzing all around me. And then buzzing ALL around me, and rather a lot of them.

Mom said that she and Mimi stood on the deck, leaning on the railing, watching as I ran through the field, "jumping and hollering for joy."

Except that I was jumping and hollering for bees in my pants.

Yes, my darlings, the raspberry bramble was home to a nest of yellow jackets, and they were unhappy to be disturbed.

I didn't really get stung that much, all told, but it is 100% un-fun to have angry insects in your pants. I suggest trying to avoid it.

I was 12 or 13 when this happened, so it was actually worst of all when I was standing in the turkey roaster in the kitchen with no pants on while Mom and Mimi rubbed ice and baking-soda paste on my legs and Dad and Gogo walked in. I could have died of embarrassment.

Now, of course, the fact that I was standing in the turkey roaster is just too, too funny.

A mother's wisdom

2008-09-19T17:20:00.001-07:00

I had to go to mandatory anti-discrimination training today at work. The speaker kept saying "mature" (="mah-toor").

This reminded me of Mom and how she'd say, "Mature! It rhymes with manure, because without it you're in deep shit!"

(Clearly this gem only appeared once I hit a certain age.)

Another hurricane

2008-09-14T18:37:00.000-07:00

My freshman year in college, I hung out mostly with the people on the same floor in my dorm, one of whom was from St. Thomas in the US Virgin Islands. Just after school started, hurricane Hugo hit the Virgin Islands and caused a huge amount of damage. He was beside himself with fear: out of touch for days, his first time away from home. He sat in the student lounge, glued to the television, and several of us from the dorm would go sit with him.

I was sitting with him when the news reported that Hugo was grinding over Charlotte.

Charlotte is 400 miles inland---it never would have occurred to me to worry about my family getting hit by a hurricane. I remember clearly the lurch of nausea, the contracting feeling of fear.

I abandoned my friend and ran to the phone but couldn't get through, of course (this was so long before cell phones). For 12 hours I fretted, positive that my family was dead. I was walking across the Student Union building, on my way from not eating lunch, when my roommate bellowed across the atrium that my dad had gotten through and they were okay. I just barely avoided sitting down on the floor right there.

They had a hole in their roof, but they got power back within 24 hours. Neighbors across the street had to wait 3 weeks, so they banded together to spell one another for dinners and showers. They had a lot of neighborhood cookouts. A family friend was using a cancer treatment that required eating huge amounts of citrus: Dad took him a cooler full every few days until their power was restored.

----------

Hobie and I are in Austin with the cat, staying with friends. We had a scary night through Ike. Damage is relatively minimal but needs to be fixed soon: we have loose siding in the back that leaked into the bedroom wall and a bunch of siding off the chimney that leaked into the living room, so the longer the carpet sits soaked, the more of it we'll need replaced. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for the rapidity and deep pockets of State Farm. Plenty of fence is down too, but that's not critical. Power is still out. We have people on the lookout for its return. Both our offices are closed until Wednesday, and Hobie has been approved to work from home as long as needed. It all seems like a worrisome mess at the moment, but I'm sure it'll be fine. We are very grateful to have come through so lightly.

More on hurricanes

2008-09-12T10:32:00.000-07:00

I remember only two hurricanes from when we lived in Slidell (just across Lake Ponchartrain from New Orleans): Bob and Frederic.

Hurricane Bob was just a big, wet blow. Dad, Lissa, and I went outside and threw a football around: I remember laughing because the football would go in an arc from the wind. The strength of the wind was enough to make me feel breathless outside, so I remember a feeling of giddiness and hilarity.

Hurricane Frederic (which if you'd asked me 5 minutes ago I would have sworn was Philip) was one of the Doom and Gloom storms: everything was canceled, Mom made a special shopping trip, and we had a family plan of what to do if things got scary. We may even have slept in the hallway.

But it turned at the last minute, and we woke up the next morning to sticks and pine needles in the road, blue skies, and cool, gorgeous weather. It was a free day off of school, and I spent the day on my bike.

Ever since I moved to Houston, every time a hurricane has threatened, Mom has said, "Maybe it'll be like [Philip]." Eduardo was---we spent a very pleasant day off.

Ike looks to be rather less than fun.

A post for hurricanes

2008-09-11T07:26:00.000-07:00

When we lived in Slidell, LA, we watched hurricane preparation movies akin to the blood-and-gore movies of driver's ed. This was in the late 1970s, so the movies focused on hurricane Camille. There was a bit about a house full of people at a beach somewhere who were having a hurricane party: a bunch of the party-goers were interviewed, already drunk, about how much fun they were going to have. Then the movie cut to afterward, when all that was left of the house was a concrete slab on pillars with bits of twisted metal sticking out the top.*

What I remember most strongly is an image from the part about all the flooding: a pair of small white feet sticking out of a red rolled-up blanket. The feet looked about my size at the time, and for days I shivered to think of it.

Camille was very much a legend of my childhood. My maternal grandparents lived on the banks of the James River in Virginia, on a hobby farm carved into a hillside. The hill went up and up, away from the river, with the road cut into it, the house carved lower than that (3 steps up to the front of the house, 18 to the back), 5 brick steps down to the dirt road leading to the barn, a jumpable descent to the first level of fields, and two more lower than that. Grandpop grew Silver Queen corn in the lowest field, just on the banks of the river (the best corn ever in the world). When the river was low, Pat Price's cows would wander across and eat up the crops.

During Camille, the James River rose all the way to the back steps of the house. It flooded out the barn almost completely. There was a house just on the riverbank: a big, gorgeous thing, that was destroyed by that flood and was a ghost house for over 20 years, until some guy moved his family in there to "hide from the gubmint."

*Funny that the Wikipedia article says that never happened. I guess the movie was perpetuating a myth.

(cross-post)

Luck and tiny pieces of paper

2008-09-06T10:31:00.000-07:00

Two things I dearly love: 3x5 cards and writing things by hand. I have always loved writing things by hand, all the way back to the days of fat pencils and newsprint with blue and pink lines. You draw letters and they make words! What is better than words? Words are excellent. Words are better than pate, better than shiraz. Words are even better than cats.

But I digress.

I trace my love of 3x5 cards to Grandmom. She subscribed to this thing called Contest Newsletter: it had lists of hundreds of contests: prizes, due dates, and how to enter. Almost invariably, the entry was either a 3x5 card or a 3x5 piece of paper with one's name and address.

So when we went to visit, she would put us to work, writing her name and address on cards and slips of paper: piles of Bic ballpoint pens, the scent of paste ink (I hate to write with ballpoints, but I love the scent of paste ink), faint scratching, the crinkle of paper or the the shuffle of card stock. We would use the little sponges in glass dishes from the post office to wet envelopes and stamps, swiping them carefully. My fingers would get sticky. Remember having to lick envelopes and stamps? The minty, library-paste flavor of the glue?

(Of course I tasted library paste. They told us that many kids eat library paste and that we should not, no matter how good it tastes. I had to try it to make sure that I would not be tempted in the future. I just had a very small lick.)

She won so much stuff that it was even worth it to spend that small fortune on stamps: a diamond ring, a fair pile of money, mountains of cookware (I eventually inherited an electric wok that I wore out), a fake rose made out of---wood chips?---that fascinated me, and $200 worth of Dukes of Hazzard stuff that ended up with my sister, including the puffiest sleeping bag imaginable, with Bo and Luke's faces on it.

I still happily spending my afternoon scribbling on small cards. Even addresses would be enough.

And I would give teeth to have one with Grandmom's address on it, in her handwriting.

A tale of unions for Labor Day

2008-09-01T08:02:00.000-07:00

When Gogo left the Army, he went to work for Pittsburgh Plate & Glass. Some years later, when my dad was in college, there was a lot of trouble with the labor negotiations. Gogo was management and was resented by the Teamsters: his safety was threatened.

Mimi would go out in the evening with her flour sifter and make a ring of flour around the car. Really, I've always been impressed with this. And in my mind I can see her bent over, muttering prayers, spinning the sifter handle and walking backwards around the car.

My dad and his cousin arrived late at night for a visit. They had not been sitting in the living room for long when there was a knock at the door: the police had put my grandparents' house on their patrol, and he was there to check out the strange car in the driveway. My dad showed his license. "Okay," said the policeman, pointing at my cousin. "But who's that guy?"

Gogo's comment about this whole period was usually "bah!" I think he had some sympathy for the Teamsters, if none for the belligerence.

The summer of Gogo's memorial service, I had just started a library job, but it was a unionized library---so I, with my stick arms and my days spent with dusty books, was a Teamster. I was sitting at the dining-room table one night after dinner and mentioned this.

Dad said, "A Teamster! Your grandfather is rolling in his grave!"

I crumbled.

"Don't you dare say that!" Mimi said, "He would be very proud of his beloved granddaughter!"

Poor Dad felt so awful.

(Yes, my Foot-in-Mouth Syndrome is congenital.)

While the stormy winds do blow

2008-08-31T18:36:00.000-07:00

Mom and Dad say that I have a lot of the details wrong about this one, but this is how I remember it:

We were living in Lynchburg, VA, and we went to Virginia Beach for a week. I was 5 or 6, I think. We stayed in a cottage that had no curtains. I remember it being so bright and sand-colored on the inside. We went to a beach shop and Mom and Dad bought me a bunch of really cool sand toys. The cottage was in a little "neighborhood" that had a pool. There were ant traps in the house. When we first got there, I shook one, and ants came out---a couple bit me, and Mom fussed at me for playing with them.

We were only there a couple of days, and there was a hurricane.

I remember a shockingly pale man, very skinny, in dark swimming trunks, standing on the diving board of the swimming pool, saying that we needed to leave. I remember that the sky behind him was dark and that there was lightning, and that I hadn't been allowed to go in the ocean or the pool because of the lightning.

We packed up the car. I cried because I had to leave my brand-new sand toys behind, but Dad said we would be back (my sister was so small: I bet she doesn't remember this). We drove to Norfolk, to Aunt Betty and Uncle Bev's house.

The lived in an apartment high up in what I remember as a black, shiny building. Aunt Betty was in a wheelchair even then---she had a pair of giant wooden scissors with magnets on the "blades" that she used to reach things. I remember Uncle Bev as very tall and very taciturn, but he let me play with a Bingo set that had a cardboard shaker box filled with tiny orange pieces that had the bingo numbers on them.

It rained and rained: dark skies, dark building, shiny streets. Reaching things with those big wooden scissors and shaking small plastic bits from a box. I remember being there---the balcony (standing there with Dad), dimly lit rooms, Uncle Bev silhouetted against the sliding door---but nothing about where we slept, what we ate, how long we were there.

I don't even remember whether we went back to the beach or whether I retrieved my sand toys.

Swimmin' holes

2008-08-29T12:42:00.000-07:00

There was a brief scare in town: several children who had swimming lessons in the town pond got a weird bacterial infection that doctors at first thought might be leptospirosis---caused by moose pee. Or perhaps bear pee.

Gross.

But tests came back negative. Have they asked whether the children sucked each other's thumbs? Because that's how my sister and I both got trench mouth when we were little ...

... don't pass that around.

We never went swimming in the James River in Virginia: the river was solely for throwing rocks into, except for the one time I went fishing with Kathy. The river is very broad, deep and swift in the middle.

For many years we'd go swim in Pat Price's pool. The Prices were the rich folks in the neighborhood, classic Virginia horse-country sorts of people, though I don't think they were horsey. They were wealthy and friendly, with a perpetually untidy house, giant dogs, and muddy boots, but they were very selective about the company they kept. Pat really liked Grandmom (what's not to like?), which is why we got to use their pool. It was loaded with chlorine and COLD.

Then my aunt and uncle, Patsy and Bill, moved into Bill's family home up the road, and they put in a pool. Good lord, we would pack that thing with cousins. And it was always freezing. They put in a slide: bliss!

The thing I liked about these pools was that I was related to all the people in them at any given time, so I did not have to pretend to have dignity. This meant that I could participate in my favorite childhood sport: silly diving.

It's really very funny until someone loses a bathing suit top. Then it's only funny to everyone else.

Before Mimi and Gogo moved to Vermont, we could use their neighbor's pool in Syracuse. There are a lot of pictures of me in a red Winnie the Pooh bikini and a pink bathing cap (I had tubes in my ears). I remember loving that pool: I remember innertubes, laughing a lot, and that the man who owned it was always laughing.

Our cousins up the hill have a pool in Vermont, which I haven't yet been in (what is WRONG with me?). I think I'm over mud and salamanders now, as well (getting wimpy in my middle years?), which dampens the allure of the ponds:

Thorpe's pond: just up the hill. Has the best dock for diving, made of creaky old wood. Gently sloping on the "beach" side, grassy on the far side. Always well stocked with giant inner tubes (the real kind, from tractor tires). Cold but with little warm spots. Now it's full of fish, so NO THANK YOU.

Camp pond: the pond at Camp Ken-jock-etee, which is the whole reason why my family ended up in that town in the first place (except for the Tyson cousins, who opened the mine). Way up a steep hill, with a broad, gravelly beach, charcoal-grey water, and a bunch of big rocks on one side. Freezing. Even when I was a little kid willing to scream and wail about wanting to stay although my lips were blue, I had a limit at the camp pond.

Dickinson's pond: on a hill behind the main street: black water and bright green grass. Unbelievably, even colder than the camp pond. An excellent pond for ascetics and masochists. Much better for painting than swimming in.

Cousin Rosa's pond: just up the hill, Cousin Rosa had this rattletrap cottage that some of us would stay in now and again. The last time I was in it, you had to walk like a pirate with an inadequate peg leg, because the floors were so uneven. It fell over one day, and there's nothing left. The pond is filling in.

This was the warmest of the ponds: shallow and very muddy. The field around it was not much mowed, so this pond was not a favorite of the moms. Because the water was so warm, this pond was full of salamanders, and they were so blissed out that they were easy to catch. Often they'd be full of eggs. One summer I tortured my sister by throwing salamanders at her every time we went to the pond. That girl has a good shriek on her.

Kingdom pond: One of Mimi's best friends (and the most elegant woman I have ever met) owns the top of a mountain. Her husband bought it for her not long before he died, so that she could have a retreat. She is a shy person but full of resolve, so for many years she was a selectman in town, and she loved to have this far-away place, up a steep, switchbacked, dirt road, as her sacred place. The cabin had one wall made of glass, and the tub was half of a giant redwood barrel.

I always felt so privileged that she invited us up there, knowing that it was her private haven. We would have cookouts by the pond. I had cucumber-dill soup for the first time at the Kingdom, and it was so strange and shocking to me that it was years before I realized that I liked it.

The pond is small and chilly, but you can float in it and see across to New Hampshire, so it's perfect. It's kind of muddy, but that's no matter, in a place surrounded by mountain and green, with a huge sky arching overhead, just above the dark tops of the pines.

One year my brother had a toy---Max something---an Army guy in a neon green suit, which he dropped in the water. My dad and I dove and dove for what seemed like 7 months until Dad found it. The water was so dark that I felt like I would never see the doll, and after a while I was really frightened to keep diving down into that dark water, reaching toward a bottom that I couldn't see, didn't know how far away it was, and so didn't know what I might touch. I kept going, but that fear stayed with me for a long time, and I haven't liked dark water since then.

Town pond: when they first opened this, it was the "community pond," which of course we always called the connudity pond. How could you not? It had a nice sandy beach, quite large, and a rope with floaters across the middle to keep little kids in the shallow area. Mimi (and sometimes Mom) would go to the other side of the rope, wearing her skirted bathing suit, to swim sedately back and forth. Mom and Mimi are/were both side-stroke swimmers, with the tops of their heads dry and the conversation never stopping.

It's a pretty nice pond, I guess, but it's always full of people. Better to go to the invitation-only ponds, where it's just family.

You know, for the silly diving.

Flower girl

2008-08-27T10:56:00.001-07:00

One of the best things about Vermont has always been gathering flowers. Gigi and then Mimi would get fresh bouquets every day, and each one would be ceremoniously placed in a vase or a glass and set out for general enjoyment.

My favorites were Deptford pinks, which are not the most common of the wildflowers in the field (Queen Anne's Lace is probably the most common), but I loved how tiny and vivid the flowers are. I didn't know their name back then. As a small child, "daisy" was generic flower in my mind, and the fanciest thing I could think of was France, so I called them French daisies.

Here is a picture of me from long ago, wondering over one of my French daisies:

In which my mother is right

2008-08-26T09:54:00.000-07:00

Sunday dinners with Gigi were often a little intimidating for a tiny child: several forks were involved, and sometimes shellfish that stared from one's plate (after having menaced one in the kitchen earlier).

Oh, but roast lamb. It wasn't so much the lamb itself as the novelty of putting jelly on meat. Jelly! Which goes on toast, silly! And mint jelly! Who would've thought?

(Between the mint jelly and creme de menthe on ice cream, my memories of Vermont have a minty tang. And oh, MY: if you're in Vermont and you get a chance to have Strafford Creamery's fresh mint ice cream? Do not pass it up. Blissful.)

And so lamb tasted normal to me, even as a child, because I had placed it on my mental list of Acceptable Foods---not many of my friends would have agreed.

My freshman year in college, I fell in with a group of hippies, who eventually convinced me to go vegetarian. Ah, to be 17 and ignorant. I was basically living off of cereal and cheese.

We went to Vermont for Christmas. My family arrived first, on my 18th birthday, and when dinner was ready, Mimi said that she had made my "favorite, lamb!"

"GAH!" I said on the inside.

Mom hung back to catch me as I dawdled in the living room, trying to compose what I would say.

She pinched my arm. Hard.

"If you make your grandmother cry, you will not survive your birthday," she said.

I ate the lamb.

It was gorgeous.

(This was the first of my 3 unsuccessful attempts at vegetarianism. The third time, I went to the doctor and was diagnosed with a raging case of anemia and gastritis. "Hamburger or hospital," the doctor said, "your choice." Hie-diddle-dee-dee, a carnivore's life for me!)

Snatching up the good ones

2008-08-19T07:20:00.001-07:00

My cousin B. is getting married next summer to her long-time beau, who was of course in Vermont for the service, because he knew and loved Mimi too. And what a nice man: whip-smart and funny.

One night at dinner, I was sitting next to him, and when my wine glass was empty, I put it on top of my head. I hadn't even had time to balance it properly before he passed me the bottle.

We'll take him!

Reason 67 why I feel lucky that anyone gets my jokes

2008-08-13T08:14:00.000-07:00

Two of Gogo's greeting rituals from when we were all little:

1. He'd shake your hand really hard, so that your elbow flopped around and your teeth rattled in your jaw. "What's the matter with your arm?" he'd say, "Why's it flopping around like this?" And you'd try to say it was his fault, but with all the teeth rattling and giggling, that was never successful, so he'd just keep shaking and questioning until he cracked himself up.

Little kids love this. I've added my own questions: "What happened to your arm? Did you lose your bones? How do you lose your own BONES?"

2. When I was quite small, I wondered seriously about Gogo's eyes. I'd tumble out of the car in, for example, my blue terrycloth outfit with the elephant on the shirt (it sounds ridiculous, but I think dressing little kids essentially in bath towels is pretty smart) and he'd say, "That's a good-looking suit! I like that green and pink polka-dotted suit."

"No, Gogo, it's blue!"
"What's the matter with your eyes? That's not blue, it's purple with yellow stripes!"
"No, Gogo!"
"Sure it is! It's green with orange flowers!"
"GOGO!"

This from a man who'd wear plaid pants and a plaid shirt with a complementary cardigan. It was worst (=GREAT) when the plaids didn't match.

The Olympics in Vermont

2008-08-10T10:04:00.000-07:00

I remember only two summers when the Olympics were on during our Vermont visit, but the whole family is pretty Olympics-mad.

Ah, remember back in the day, when the summer and winter games happened in the same year? We'd work ourselves into a glut of patriotic sports glee and then wait wait wait.

The first time I remember, I was too small to care a great deal. The little television was on all day, but I only watched it when I wasn't following my busy Vermont schedule of creeking, flower-picking, tromping up and down the countryside road, swimming in ponds, chasing tennis balls around at the town court, and standing at the bottom of the hill singing.

Satellite TV was added only about 12 years ago: before that the TV only got 2 or 3 channels. Added to that, the other Olympics that I remember (which must have been the 1984 LA games, so I was 14) occurred in the early days of cable, before there were 2000 hours of constant Olympic coverage. (TiVo is the best thing that ever happened to the Olympics.)

There was no use poring over TV schedules trying to figure out what was on when: you had to just watch and hope for something good. Uncle Mike was pretty much always in front of the TV. Lissa stayed up until all hours of the morning several times, but I don't remember what sport she was watching. I was an early-morning watcher: Vermont schedules take precedence even over the Olympics, and my mid-teens were prime years for visits to the Dartmouth Bookstore and the Powerhouse Mall. But instead of eating my breakfast on Mimi & Gogo's deck, that year I was in front of the television. The US won a bajillion point 3 medals in those games: no wonder we were riveted.

The long haul

2008-08-08T13:32:00.000-07:00

It was always such a to-do to drive to Vermont. Wherever we were coming from, we always stopped in Norwood VA for at least a day to stay with Grandmom and Grandpop. Dad liked to leave as the butt-crack of dawn.

In very early years, lunches were frequently at Howard Johnson's. Oh, do I miss clam rolls. I had fried clams last weekend, for the first time in probably 15 years. And they were excellent, even if they weren't on a butter, toasted roll. Later on, we were always trying to hold out until we got far enough north to eat at Friendly's. We always stopped at the same ones, year after year.

My brother would often lecture and moan if we didn't stop at McDonald's: any other road food was anathema unto him. Friendly's was the exception. I always, always wanted the ice cream dessert that looked like a slice of watermelon, but in my whole life, I've only had room for it twice.

There were two hotels in Pennsylvania that we only ever stayed at: a Holiday Inn in Scranton or one in Wilkes-Barre. (These were the years when we didn't spend the night with Aunt Lee in Carlisle.) I remember Scranton as a very shabby place, and that there was always always traffic near Binghamton, NY.

Crossing into Whitehall NY, we'd pass Skene Manor, and that was the beginning of all the big landmarks. I would try to sleep most of the trip (or at least pretend to sleep) and read much of the rest of the way, but after Whitehall, I was always watching: looking at the old familiar rock formations on the side of the road, all the signs like touchstones, for Stowe, for Woodstock, and finally for Sharon. "There's the dam!" "There's Idlewild!" And then over the Sharon hill, and all of it was as beloved as home.

But what a long long drive. Butt blisters, we called it. Fanny fatigue. Behind be-dragglement.

Update on the Queechee wool outlet

2008-08-07T08:21:00.000-07:00

Mom reminded me that we would go to the wool outlet every year. I remember being so excited about it. She reminded me that they would make up little skirt kits, with everything needed to make the skirt: directions, fabric, thread, elastic, zippers. I had a patchwork skirt made from one of these kits that I just loved: I liked to examine the way the different colors looked next to one another and to run my fingers over the seams as if I were following a road.

She still has one of the kits.

She said that Mimi would always take us to lunch afterward at a little sandwich shop next door: this is driving me CRAZY. It's a memory just beyond my fingertips. I have a half-formed picture in my head, an echo of a feeling of excitement, but it's not really a memory. Not yet.

The public journal experiment

2008-08-01T13:47:00.001-07:00

As I mentioned earlier, I started a public journal in May (the first entry is 28 May). I found these little Greenroom Eco notebooks at Target: they're small enough to be portable, paperbound but with sturdy, woodgrain-patterned covers and recycled paper inside. They have lines, but I'm not going to complain too much about that. When they're on sale they're $2.50, so I have a pile of them already, even though I haven't yet filled the first one.

I'm much less assiduous than Dad about chronicling every day. For one thing, many of my days are exceedingly boring from the outside: I wake up, have a little stretch, get ready for work, maybe eat an egg, ride to work with Hobie, work, go home, eat, drool mindlessly while staring into space, then go to bed. My head is busy busy on the inside, but again, most of my thoughts fall into one of three categories: 1, working on stories/poems in progress; 2, trying to decide on my next craft project; or 3, wondering whether it's possible to make a delicious and healthy dinner without actually expending effort.

My job is mentally taxing. See above re: mindless drooling.

So there are days left out. This means that I'm not often good about writing down small things that actually are interesting, like the giant hawk perched on a highway lamppost. And heaven knows I'm not going to write about the weather. Between May and September I could just write "High, mid-90s; low, upper 70s; brief afternoon rain" on every dang page.

It's rather liberating, though. My private journal has devolved into notes, because there is so little that I think about these days that I feel must be kept fiercely private. I think this is the reward of a happier life.

That said, when Mom sat down to read my public journal in Vermont, I wanted to climb behind the sofa cushions. I think it will take a while for me to become comfortable with the idea.

Card games of Vermont

2008-07-31T18:15:00.000-07:00

Canasta

Gigi used to play this with her cocktail buddies: a coterie of old ladies who would dress up (hats and sparkly purses and all) and march back and forth to one another's houses 3 or 4 times a week. I have no idea how to play.

Bridge

The Game Most Likely To Kick Grandkids Out of the Living Room. Heaven forbid we should come downstairs and interrupt a bridge game: that always resulted in heavy sighs. If enough relatives were there, they'd set up 2 or more foursomes around various card tables. My sister and I recently decided to have Mom & Dad teach us to play. It is a dang hard game. I barely understand bidding, and scoring not at all. What the heck is a rubber?

Solitaire

Gigi played endless games of solitaire. Gogo cut a piece of plywood for her, and Mimi covered it in batting and then in silvery blue cloth. Gigi would lay this board across the arms of her chair and play solitaire for long afternoons. She taught me clock solitaire when I was very young, and I remember lying on the floor playing that over and over while Gigi played on her board. Very rarely, Gigi would have other things to do, and I would be allowed to sit in her chair, with her board tucked under my chin, to play like she did.

Dad tells stories of Uncle Bev playing solitaire, and he would only turn over one card at a time. If he couldn't use a card, Uncle Bev would reshuffle and start over. Dad actually saw him win a game once.

(I cheat at solitaire. It's freaking solitaire: who cares?)

Cribbage

Constant games of cribbage: this was the game of the pre-dinner cocktail hour, and I was shocked to recently discover that my sister never learned. I remember Gogo teaching me and Liz together. He had a very effective method of teaching the rules: if we missed a point, he would take it. He had a whole series of Cribbage Sayings: "cut 'em deep, sleep in the street," "15-2, 15-4, and there ain't no more."

I taught my friend Lara how to play cribbage, and we would play constantly when we were on debate trips---it was on one trip that I lost Dad's cribbage board and had to buy him a new one. There was a man who would go with us as chaperone and judge (he was not a parent, so I don't remember why he was interested) who had an old travel-size cribbage board that had been given to him by his grandfather, and he gave it to me because she and I were the only people he had known since his grandfather to play the game. I still have it.

I would love to teach my Wicked Stepchildren how to play: I think 2 of them might even be interested.

Spoons

Mimi taught us to play spoons. And really, there's no better place than Innisfree to play, because then you can do so with battered antique spoons. My cousin Jane told me that the two female Whelihan cousins of my generation remember me mostly from a raucous game of spoons on the sleeping porch. What did I do??? I'm a little afraid to ask.

Bonanza

The Ultimate Vermont Game: a card game with elements of poker, canasta, casino, and rummy, involving chips made of old milk-bottle tops, hand-embroidered blankets (serving the function of game boards), and rampant cheating. Gogo taught me the best cheat technique: sit on the side of the table opposite the windows and look at everyone's hands in the reflection. And every time I got up for another cup of tea? I took a nice long look.

There are people who refuse to play cards with me.

I have the last of Mimi's bonanza blankets. She didn't finish it: it says "po" instead of poker and has no "S" in the sequence section. We used to go to this wool outlet (please, someone comment and tell me what it was), maybe in Queechee? I wore a cloak as my winter coat in high school made out of a blanket Mom bought there, and I remember when Mimi bought the pile of old army blankets to make into bonanza blankets.

I'm not a skilled embroidress by anyone's reckoning, but I was not about to let this tradition end. The first two bonanza blankets I made were also out of old army blankets (and egregious embroidery). Way to make a girl itch. Since then, I've made two out of fleece blankets (I buy them in army green whenever I see them), which are not only less itchy but also machine washable. It's a time-consuming project, but so satisfying. The friends for whom I've made blankets actually play the game (which I taught them). They teach other people and pass it on. It's a huge thing to me, a gift.

My sister said she'd murderize me if I made any more blankets before hers. I've been about halfway through it for ... er, 6 months now. I should probably finish that.

In spring of 2007, I was stuck in Chicago for work, and my sister came to visit. My friends Anthony and Dana received the first of the fleece blankets, and they are true bonanza evangelists. The friends with whom I was staying kindly had a little bbq and party for me and my sister, and we played bonanza. W. is a serious poker player, and about 10 minutes into the game he said, "What is the POINT of this game?" Our haphazard dipping into the bank for loans and ridiculous poker rules drove him crazy. After a late, fun night, Lissa and I tottered upstairs in the morning to find W. sitting at the dining room table. "I've figured out how to fix bonanza," he said, and launched into a 45-minute speech about all the ways to make bonanza more competetive and more codified, so that there would be an actual winner and not just a bunch of people BSing around the dinner table until all hours of the night.

We are polite ladies, my sister and I. We waited until we were well out of hearing before we howled with laughter. Fix bonanza! That cute man. We will always love him for it, even though he is WRONG. Bonanza is perfect just how it is.

Someone else's grandmother

2008-07-30T07:20:00.001-07:00

Because we moved so much, my tactic for making friends became thus: seek out the person lowest on the totem pole and cling to them like a limpet. It was a method with quick results but not one that was conducive to long-term friendships.

My friend in seventh grade was Gina Lewis, a girl whose parents had a pool and a Cadillac. Her father was an Amway salesman, and he was the first bamboozling schmoozemeister I had ever paid attention to. He made my head spin a little.

And Gina was a nice girl. She was low on the totem pole because she was awkward and was going through an extremely unfortunate phase physically, but we were 11: it happens. Also, it was 1981, which was practically still the 70s, so everyone looked like jerks.

She came to school one day wearing the most egregious crime against fashion: a one-piece jumpsuit made of thick, peach-colored polyester embossed with flowers. It was trimmed in white (polyester) around the short sleeves and had a dress-shirt collar with an attached necktie. It had flared legs.

Good lord.

And of course everyone snickered at her. It was so awful even the teachers blinked a lot and held their faces very still. At recess I couldn't hold it in any longer and asked what possessed her to wear such a thing.

Her face grew very very red and she clenched her fists.

"MY GRANDMOTHER MADE THIS FOR ME BECAUSE SHE LOVES ME AND I AM WEARING IT BECAUSE I LOVE HER, SO SHUT UP!" she shrieked, loud enough for everyone to hear.

I wasn't savvy or mature enough at that age to tell her that she was right, but I have never forgotten it. So go you, Gina Lewis, you brave, good girl. You were right.

Staring down into the cracks

2008-07-28T13:05:00.000-07:00

I had a couple of conversations with Mimi in the summer of 2000, when I was in Vermont immediately after my divorce, that made me so uncomfortable. I remember sitting at the dining room table with her and my mother, and we talked about how easy it can be to act like a doormat, how many people (mostly women, in my experience) will let others steamroll over us because we feel that we don't deserve any better and that we had be damn grateful for whatever crumbs of love we get, being entirely unlovable.

I don't remember Mimi's words exactly: just a frustrated gesture and her referring to herself as a "doormat" in a cracked voice that spoke of hurt and frustration. And this was a heaviness on my heart after that, because I love Gogo so, and because it was shocking to see Mimi so upset.

I thought about this while we sat around reading her journals. The last few were often sad: she didn't enjoy going blind, of course, or feeling weak and ill a lot of the time. As I said to my sister, it was the same process we all go through when we stop thinking of our parents as the tall guardians of our childhood and learn to see them as people in their own right, with cracks and messy bits. I hadn't seen much of Mimi's messy bits. She nearly always bore even the worst things with a brave (and usually cheerful) public face.

But we learned now very much it meant to her to sing to all of her grandchildren. She called it "the greatest blessing of my life."

We learned that when she was alone, she sang all day long, not caring how she sounded, and I will always be glad to know that.

And she wrote about how much she missed Gogo after he died, how hard it was to do without him. In that minute I learned that the long-ago conversation was more complicated (of course) than I had bothered to think, that I did not need to carry that heaviness around anymore.

Rain

2008-07-24T13:28:00.000-07:00

We're having a wet day, as the remnants of Hurricane Dolly march past. The day is very dark and grey: I always think such days should be chilly (and they make me wish for PJs, a book, and tea), then I'm unpleasantly surprised to walk out and find that it's hot.

It rained a lot while we were in Vermont, starting the day of Mimi's services. A few drops got us as my sister, brother, and I cut flowers to take up to Barrett Hall for the reception. By the time we got home, it was pouring and continued to do so all night, a rushing sound on the metal roof that is so like wind in the treetops. It's a good sound for sleeping: a safe, secure sort of sound, telling you that outside it's wild and wooly but you are safe inside, dry and snug.

Vermont trips are divided in our storytelling into "dry years" and "rainy years." There were "hot years" and "cold years." There was the Septic Tank Year (not so much fun) and Earwig Year (REALLY not fun---earwig infestation in the pipes: they would crawl up through the shower drains and pinch our feet).

Cold years were great, except that we never had proper clothes. The only thing I've ever liked about summer weather is getting to swim.

Once we were all a little older, rainy years were fine too. All the dads are hardcore and will play golf in nearly any weather, and there were endless puzzles, card games, and books for everyone who stayed in. But the only time I ever heard Mimi yell was during a rainy summer, when I was about 11 years old.

It rained and rained. Liz and I were 11ish, Gret and Lissa 7ish, Brooke and Lee 5ish. Were we a mob of tiny barbarians? I don't know, but all the grownups went up and away, and we got to stay with Mimi. (Gogo was there too, but as I recall he spent the day in his work room.) The weather was too gross for anything outside, and somehow we all ended up with paper dolls.

Liz and I had big-girl paper dolls that required cutting the clothes out with scissors. I still love to cut out paper dolls, so really I need to be surrounded by a crowd of impatient little girls at all times. Or to take up Scherenschnitte. I think we both had The Ginghams dolls, which are still crazily appealing to my eye, though I've never understood why, given that I generally hate the prairie look.

Lissa and Gret had punch-out dolls, and Lee and Brooke had little-girl paper dolls---quite large, on cardboard, to punch out. And poor Brooke. She was the youngest of all the cousins at that point, and she always wanted so much to do everything the bigger kids were doing. She didn't want baby paper dolls. She wanted the big girl kind. And in the middle of the tussle, Lissa's paper doll got ripped.

Mimi yelled out her full name. We all froze in total shock that Mimi could even BE that loud. She fussed and fussed at Brooke, made her apologize, and sent her upstairs to the sleeping porch to take a nap.

Oh, we were so good after that. You never saw such a bunch of sweet and silent little girls after that. In trouble with Mimi! We had seen The Worst That Could Happen, and we were not about to let it happen again.

(Sorry, Brooke!)

Ritual

2008-07-23T07:20:00.000-07:00

Innisfree is a place of ritual for me. When I was little, there were things that Must Be Done: a trip to the Powerhouse mall, a visit to the Dartmouth Bookstore, running down to the creek the very first day, walks on the countryside road, gathering flowers to fill as many bud vases as possible. Cribbage games, bonanza games. Racing to read as many books as possible.

Later, a nice long sit in the birch grove was necessary. Joining Mimi in a glass of sherry with lunch. Drinking my tea out of Uncle Bev's consommé cup (very large, white china with blue flowers).

We all share the ritual of waving at every departure. When Mimi and Gogo lived in their house, we'd wave from the deck, but before that and now, we wave from the Innisfree terrace: a big crowd slowly thinning over the course of a few days, all of us waving frantically, the driver honking the horn. When we would leave, I used to stick my whole arm out the window and wave until we were well past out of sight. (Then I would have a little cry. The Post-Vermont Blues are strong and of long duration. I have a bad case at the moment.)

Lissa and I got up at 3:00 am on Sunday and left at 3:15. We didn't think for a minute that Mom and Dad would get up to wave, but they did. We crunched down the steep gravel driveway and onto Mine Road. Lissa slowed down for one last look at the house, and there they were in their pyjamas, two silhouettes packed by the golden light of one lamp, waving to beat the band.

Dangit. I just made my Blues worse.

Another dream

2008-07-20T16:26:00.000-07:00

I dreamed of Mimi again while I was in Vermont, on Thursday (the burial service was Sunday). In my dream I saw Gogo first: he patted me on the head roughly as he used to do to all of us, grinning. I heard Mimi say, "Look at this!" I turned around: she had this funny sort of elbows-out, splayed-feet march that she'd do when she was being silly. She was marching toward me, arms akimbo, in white pants, Keds, a mint-green short-sleeve sweater, and a pair of enormous rhinestone earrings. She swung her head back and forth to make them swing.

My paternal grandparents, together and strong. They were laughing, laughing, laughing.

In which I am reminded to pack hankies

2008-07-10T07:00:00.000-07:00

Someone had the very good idea that we should all bring our favorite pictures of Mimi, so I went to The Box.

Mimi sent me The Box years ago: 2000, maybe? The address is in Liz's handwriting, and it was a box full of genealogical treasures. For years I thought of it with terror, especially the letter written from my great-great-great-grandfather William Fitzhugh Lee to his wife Lillie Parran Lee (whose admirer was JEB Stuart) advising her how to get safely past the Union lines. I put everything in archival sleeves, but I never really knew what to do with it all. Every time there was a storm, The Box went into the closet under the stairs. When we evacuated for Hurricane Rita, The Box was in the car with us, next to the box with the house deed and the tax files.

Then I had the brilliant idea to pack everything up and send it to my sister. Let her worry! She has a fire safe and just finished graduate school, *plus* she's not trying to work herself into writing a novel, so she has time to deal with it. Hooray!

But I kept the pictures: Hobie was still working at the photo shop, so we thought we'd digitize everything. Of course, within weeks he had his shiny new job. Perhaps someone else has a high-end scanner.

So I'll be taking Mimi's grandfather's family album (her grandfather Simpson, so there's a clue to the silver). The oldest picture has a note in Mimi's handwriting that says "1861 or 1862?"

Clearly I was premature in ceasing to worry about The Box.

The first picture I brought out was a picture of Mimi as a teenage counselor at Camp Ken-jocketee. The second was a picture of Mimi and Gogo from 1994 in which they're both laughing.

So I had a nice long cry. I had also put in there the book put together for Grum's funeral, and the folder full of stories and genealogies for Grandpop's parents. There is a long newspaper article from Memorial Day in the early 1990s about Grandpop's WWII service, with a 3x5 card from Grandmom about having to have a shot in her back and about missing me.

It's going to be a hard weekend, but good. I want to put as many puzzle pieces together as possible, to tell you lots of stories.

From the last service

2008-07-08T14:15:00.000-07:00

For Gogo's service, my first husband and I flew in the day of. We flew into Boston and rented a car, and between the late flight, the slow car-rental people, and his getting lost twice, we actually missed the service itself. I still feel bad about that.

Gogo was a Catholic, and one of the Thorpes up the hill had arranged for Sunday's Mass to be said in his honor. I went with Mimi (I don't remember why we were the only two) to the tiny Catholic church down by the river. The priest mis-pronounced our name. We sang hymns to guitar accompaniment. And then the priest commenced to give this insane sermon about how it is wrong of the Church not to allow people to mortify their flesh for God. That people should be allowed to flagellate themselves and wear hair shirts if they wanted.

Mimi and I walked out to the car.

"That was weird," she said.
"Gogo would have laughed his head off," I answered.
"Oh my, yes."

One of the good ones

2008-07-05T11:04:00.000-07:00

Mimi's service is next Saturday. On Thursday night, Hobie and I went shopping so that I could try to find a dress. One that I tried on was a pretty white eyelet dress. I asked whether that would be completely inappropriate.

"That's between you and Mimi," he said.

I think she'd approve of that answer.

Nae soap shall touch thee

2008-07-02T09:59:00.000-07:00

Grum (Grandmom's mother, and Our Scottish Connection) had no soap in her house: only Palmolive dishwashing liquid.

Why? It's a great mystery to me. Did she just like the smell? But oh, when I was a wee tiny and we visited her in her little house in Snow Hill, MD, I thought it was a crazy/awesome thing. Green soap! For the dishes! There was a bottle by every sink and in both tubs: instant bubble bath, every time.

I liked how it made my hair feel thick and straw-like. (Obviously, this was before I knew anything about hair care.) I liked to draw designs with it on my skin. I must have wasted it terribly.

She always had something with which to wash the dishes AND herself. I thought it was admirably efficient.

Now, of course, I think EUW! But I think of it every time I pass the dish soap at the grocery store.

Wandering about in the middle of the night

2008-07-01T14:34:00.000-07:00

Here's a story no one has talked about for years:

I was probably 12 or 13: so of the cousins, there were two of us that age, two four years younger, and two a little younger than that. Six girls. The boys were two young to join us.

Mimi took us on a snipe hunt.

"Will we kill them?" someone asked (maybe Lee), wide-eyed.
"Oh no! We'll catch them and then set them free," Mimi said.

But what is a snipe? What are they like?
"Wait and see! They only come out at night."

I imagined they were something like a very fat squirrel, without a big tail.

We each got a pillowcase, and Mimi had us put a few lettuce leaves in each one, "for bait."

We had been fishing down in the Pompey. We knew about bait. And lettuce was way better than worms.

We trooped out into the dark, excited to be up so late past bedtime, a little scared to be out in the dark. We trooped down the driveway, up the hill. Mimi would shine her flashlight around and periodically say, "There! Did you see it?"

And we'd run over, holding out our pillowcases, hoping that the snipe would run into ours. When we turned back toward Innisfree, we took the countryside road. It was pitch dark and spooky. The uneven dirt road made me nervous, but we were still all on the lookout for snipe. Mimi kept seeing them. "There goes its tail!"

But we didn't catch any. Poor little girls with empty pillowcases, so sad. And all the parents, aunts, and uncles were laughing.

I don't remember my reaction to finding out that it was a joke, though if I had to guess, I was probably pretty angry. I was a child very much concerned with her dignity. (Thank goodness I finally realized that I haven't got any.) But I remember my heart pounding in the darkness by the side of the road, clutching my pillowcase hard, the smell of pine trees and lettuce, straining in the dark to see.

The difficulty of scent

2008-06-30T08:59:00.000-07:00

Today on the bus I sat next to a lady who smelled like Gogo: tobacco, camphor, powder, and one other thing that I know is a food smell but I can't quite grasp it. The only mental image I get is dark green pickle relish, but I know that's not right. It's not a vinegary smell, though it is rather sharp.

I leaned toward her and sniffed and sniffed (as unobtrusively as possible, of course) the whole ride. I closed my eyes and remembered the time that I slipped on the stairs and Gogo caught me at the bottom. I was much more scared than hurt, and I burrowed my face into his yellow cardigan, his arms tight around me, and breathed in that smell.

He died in 1995. I still miss him. The first time I took off from my job at the library was bereavement leave for his memorial service in Vermont. And now here I am: the first time I'll take off from this job will be for Mimi's, in less than 2 weeks.

Mixmasters

2008-06-28T07:20:00.001-07:00

Gogo was a martini drinker. And when we were all together, he would put one olive in his drink for each grandchild. There are so many pictures of small children grubbing about in Gogo's drink glass. My mother says, "He drank a lot of cloudy martinis."

I still love olives, but they are not the same as those gin-soaked ones, cold and sharp, not really delicious but something I craved.

One of our Vermont treats was vanilla ice cream with green creme de menthe on top. The sharpness of it was not yummy to me, but I loved the bright green and white together, how very cold the mint tasted, and the fact that we only ever had it in Vermont. I would never even have asked to have it at home.

When I was eight or so, Gogo started to teach me how to bartend. He said one should "kiss the glass" with the neck of the bottle of vermouth when making a martini. Mimi and Dad had bourbon with water: two jiggers of bourbon and one of water. Mom had one jigger of bourbon and the glass filled with gingerale. I used to know how to make Aunt Lee's old fashioneds, but I've since forgotten. But I loved to mix the drinks as if I were playing with my chemistry set. I would still do, if I could drink a whole cocktail anymore.

Aunt Betsy is a white wine drinker. Gogo would buy these great green jugs of white wine from the state liquor store, and they lived down in the bottom the liquor cabinet. He would serve it over ice. Once Aunt Betsy was down for cocktails and the jug of wine was empty. Gogo sent me across to their house to get another jug, telling me that the jugs were in his work room. I went in, and in fact the jugs were everywhere, lining the walls. I brought in a jug and poured Aunt Betsy a glass.

She took a large sip, spluttered, and yelled "This is water! You're trying to poison me!"

And that was how I learned that Gogo kept old wine jugs filled with water in case there was trouble with the well and that the wine lived in a little cupboard in the work room.

And that apparently my Aunt Betsy runs on alcohol.

One reason why I cling to them

2008-06-27T11:48:00.000-07:00

Gigi (Mimi's mother) was stern, reserved, and elegant. I loved her with every bone in my small body. When I was quite little she had a group of lady friends (Miss Kinley and her "companion" [=girlfriend], Cousin Bitta, who else?) who would come over for cocktails, and they would arrive in hats and gloves, with little rhinestone clutch purses, stepping gingerly over the ruts in the Countryside Road behind Innisfree.

Here is a Classic V Story, one that makes my sister growl every time she hears it:

When she was a little girl, my sister was incredibly beautiful. She still is, of course, but as a small child, to look at her would make a catch in your throat. Her shyness came across as a kind of gorgeous serenity. Even I, with the usual sibling jealousy and intimate knowledge of how mean she is ... I mean was, would sometimes look at her and hardly be able to breathe.

So one summer, Gigi's friends were cooing over her. I never thought of myself as pretty. I was always the entertainer. And as the old ladies fussed and cosseted, I backed farther and farther into the corner, wishing that the wall would open up behind me.

Gigi called me over. "I saw you standing in the sunlight," she said, "and your hair looked so lovely, shining all golden."

I would not have believed her if she had told me I was pretty, just then. But I believed that my hair was, and I was grateful for it. It was just the right thing to say.

PS to my sister: neener neener! You can't stop me telling this story!

Sign of the changing times

2008-06-18T11:19:00.000-07:00

About 10 years ago, a lady in town took a lease on a tiny space next to the general store and opened a consignment shop. I honestly don't know its true name: we've always called it "the emporium." The locals (including Mimi) were pretty sniffy about it. Later, the shop was mentioned in a guide of "hidden treasures of Vermont," and there was a great deal of grumbling about how the village would be ruined by all the tourists.

(It hasn't been.)

But I can't tell you how many things I've bought there over the years. I'll be on a clothing moratorium from here on out, because I always hit the emporium hard. My pony hair heels came from there, and the first of my vintage dress watches (grand total: 2). Several little black handbags. Upstairs is modern clothing and downstairs is vintage. One of my cousins bought a pair of vintage military jodhpurs one summer that I would have beat her up for if my hips had been 5 inches narrower.

(Who am I kidding? Gret could totally take me.)

When I first bought the watch, the first year that the emporium was open, I paid $32 for it. It wasn't working at the time, and it hasn't worked in years because it requires pretty regular maintenance. Mimi said, "Doesn't that look wonderful on your pretty slim wrist?" I don't know why that comment has stuck with me. My first husband fussed at me for spending 30 whole dollars on a watch that was clearly fancier than anything *I* would ever need. I sent it to a watch repair shop, and it came back valued at $500. That stopped his fussing.

Heh. I think I shall take my watch in.

Much better than a lingerie shower

2008-06-17T12:03:00.000-07:00

One of the items I look forward to seeing again when I visit Innisfree this summer is Mimi's scrapbook for her wedding. She and Gogo only met 4 times in person before they married: he was in the Army during WWII, and theirs was a romance of letters.

(Do those letters still exist? Wouldn't that be the jackpot?)

Some of her friends threw her a handkerchief shower. Imagine! She carefully listed all the hankies she received: a box of a dozen plain ones from someone's mother, several many hand-embroidered by her friends.

"They're all so lovely! Now I just need to catch a cold!" she wrote.

Fun for four-year-olds

2008-06-09T09:22:00.000-07:00

When Mimi and Gogo lived in Syracuse, I had two excellent rituals: the milk door and the elephant slide.

I remember their house being yellow, but who knows? It was on Cherry Hill Lane. It had a milk door. A tiny V-sized door! With its own lock on the inside on the second door! I liked to go in and out of the house through the milk door. Nothing better. I had my own special entrance.

In my memory, the elephant slide was about half a mile tall. There was a ladder that went up into the elephant's backside, then a short, dark tunnel, then a metal slide coming out underneath the elephant's raised trunk.

The ritual went like this:

Arrive at park. Run to slide. Climb, crawl, slide down. Run as fast as possible to the back. Climb, crawl, slide down. Repeat until called home.

It was very important to slide as much as possible.

In what I remember as my last time on the slide, Mimi, Mom, and I were coming back from church (? I had on a dress, at least). It was raining, and we drove by the slide. I plastered myself to the car window and began to howl. Despite the rain, Mimi won the discussion, and we stopped. I ran out, climbed the ladder (slippery in my Mary Jane dress shoes), climbed through the darkness. The slide was wet---I went down so fast, too fast, and came flying off the end, out into the air for what felt like a week, my stomach knotted up. I plunked right down into a muddy puddle. I was startled, cold, and afraid that I'd get in trouble for getting my dress so dirty. I started to cry. Mama picked me up and we drove back to Mimi's house to dry off.

The family tree is more like a hedgerow

2008-06-04T07:15:00.000-07:00

I'm reading Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America, which also counts as weightlifting, and I just love efficiency.

Two of the "folkways" (simplistically, groups of British settlers who influenced American culture in a particular region) are the Puritans in New England and the aristos of Virginia, so I'm reading with personal interest, because those are some of my ancestors. My maternal grandparents were fourth cousins, and that side of the family has been well traced: pilgrims from the Mayflower, a bunch of Angevin Hugenots who came to this continent quite early, and some Scottish Methodists (so many religious nonconformists!). Mimi's family is like A Brief History of American Army Service going back to the Revolutionary War, and it's through her that I could join such sketchy outfits as the Society of the Lees of Virginia and the Daughters of the Confederacy. (Why yes, I'm very conflicted about that, thanks for asking!)

Gogo's family is more of a mystery. His mother was the daughter of Irish immigrants from County Cork, and that's all we know. Grumpi (from whom I get my surname) did not talk about his past. We know his mother's first name and that he was born in Bellefort, Alsace (near Strasbourg), when it was Germany but that his family asserted their Frenchness VERY strongly. So there will have to be trips to Ireland and France at some point. Woe!

It's that corn time of year

2008-05-31T07:08:00.001-07:00

Grandpop grew Silver Queen corn in the river-bottom field, the lowest on the property, the one right on the banks of the James River. He would pick a bushel and bring it up to the house, and two or three people would go out to the front steps with a grocery bag, a metal bowl, and the bushel basket to shuck the corn. I like to pull every possible bit of silk out, so I'm a slow shucker. I don't like how corn silk gets stuck in my teeth.

Silver Queen is pale-colored, almost white, and stays white after you cook it. The kernels are very small and tender (one of the things I dislike about standard yellow supermarket corn is the mealy chewiness of the giant kernels). It was sweet without tasting sugary and had a strong corn taste. When I was a very small 4 years old, I once ate a dozen ears by myself. Silver Queen doesn't ship well, so there are very few people who grow it anymore. I could live off the stuff when I was a kid. Food that has been still growing just a few hours earlier tastes better than anything.

In Vermont, we always got Butter & Sugar corn from the farm stand. This corn has bi-color kernels, yellow and white, that are much bigger than Silver Queen kernels. It's a bigger variety in every way: bigger ears, bigger kernels, a more assertive flavor, sweeter. We'd shuck these on the patio, sitting in the lawn chairs, with a drink to hand. Often Dad or Gogo would grill up steaks to go with the corn.

Here in Texas, corn should be coming in soon. I don't know what varieties they grow here.

Legs

2008-05-29T19:13:00.000-07:00

Gogo often called me "Legs" (it's true that mine are long). But I think of Mimi's legs: thin like mine, as long as mine. But she was long-waisted and thus quite a bit taller than I, until the last few years. Osteoporosis runs on both sides of my family. I take a calcium supplement faithfully.

(At that last visit, she talked about her back hurting. She had fallen several weeks before. The stress fractures must have been agonizing: there were terrible lumps, aside from her poor thin spine.)

Mimi's legs were always tan and smooth and a little dry. When I was a kid, she played all kinds of tennis. One of her best friends in Vermont was a tennis instructor---the town courts are small and old but often busy.

This will seem like a tangent. I have a very hard time with leg hair. I have an epilator that gives me ingrown hairs (but works great on armpits). I'm too cheap to pay for waxing, and home waxing just doesn't work. Cream hair removers make me itch at best, rash up at worst. And shaving is just asking to lose half my blood, no matter how careful I am.

My family is crazy for all things Vermont, so we all get the Vermont Country Store catalog. They carried something called the SilkyMit Hair Removing Glove---basically fine-grit sandpaper that one would use to sand your hair down.

Alas, I used it while I was watching a good movie. I sanded a hole in my leg. Most egregiously, somehow I sanded a hole that was yet still hairy.

Not awesome.

I complained about this one day in Vermont, how the Vermont Country Store did me wrong.

"I have been using those since the 1940s," Mimi said. "You just did it wrong."

Geez, apparently. She used to say that one of the best things about growing older was that she grew less hair. Her skin was often taut and shiny. I wish that I had seen her sitting with her knee up, rubbing those crazy little sandpaper things in circles on her shins.

If you go back far enough, it's this side of the family---the Vermonters, the New Englanders---who fought on the wrong side of the Civil War. My mother's family, who are now spread through Maryland and Virginia, were the Unionists. I have read so many novels about Southern women in which they are so physical: mother and daughters fixing one another's hair, makeup lessons. Mimi wasn't like that. She was the picture of reserved affection.

Mimi was a low-maintenance kind of lady. She rarely wore any makeup at all---mostly just a pink lipstick. She had the same hairstyle for decades. Most of her outfits involved canvas skirts, polo shirts, and Keds (this, but I have a pile of jewelry that she gave me when I was 14). But I never saw her with her hair in a towel. I only ever saw her in her bathrobe on Christmas morning. She put herself together quickly, but she was always put together. One of the hardest things about seeing her in the nursing home was that they put her in weird-looking clothes, un-Mimi--like clothes. She always looked capable, sensible, and comfortable.

It's not a bad way to be.

Keeping records for the future

2008-05-25T07:18:00.000-07:00

Mimi kept a daily journal, not of private things, but just to say what her days were like. She wrote in the morning or in the evening, alone in her room. To walk in and find her writing always felt to me like an invasion, though she never scolded anyone for it. She always looked so composed and peaceful at her little sailor's desk, writing with a blue ballpoint pen in her brown leather journals.

My father just started keeping one with the same purpose. "You can read it any time, anywhere," he said.

I have my journals going back to my junior year in college. They are rough-and-ready things, full of questions and rages, quotes and titles of books I want to read. I want them burned when I die: no one wants to read them. They are a dumping ground for all the ugly bits in my head.

But perhaps I should start a second set, to keep a record of my goings and doings, that my family might like in years to come.

Now accepting applications

2008-05-22T17:59:00.000-07:00

I went to a conference for work this past weekend, and there was a "hooky desk." At this desk one could get maps, lists of restaurants, shopping, and stuff to do. The woman at the desk was older and British. The first day, she and I had a nice conversation about the Anglican church. The next day, we talked about her knitting project. She is feisty and funny.

"I'm going to adopt her as my granny!" I said to a coworker.

Oh, I want a grandmother. I haven't got any left.

All the songs

2008-05-14T09:40:00.000-07:00

My dad hopes that I will be able to sing "The Golden Sun Is Sinking" at Mimi's service in July. I have little faith that I'm that composed a person, but I'll try.

Mimi's lullabyes were one of the best parts of childhood: two, then four, then six girls on the sleeping porch (the boys were born later), which hangs out over the patio, where we could hear our parents and grandparents talking softly, late into the night. The beds on the sleeping porch were wretched: I would not be surprised if they had the same mattresses as those slept on by my dad and his cousins when he was little.

Mimi's voice was neither strong nor trained, but it was so sweet.

Summertime
Golden Slumbers (with a second verse that I can neither remember and nor find)
the "14 angels" song from Hansel und Gretel
and

The golden sun is sinking
beyond the purple hill.
The golden sun is sinking
beyond the purple hill.
The lark that sang at morning
in dusky wood is still.
The lark that sang at morning
in dusky wood is still.

And soon above the meadow
a silver moon will swing.
And soon above the meadow
a silver moon will swing.
And where the wood is darkest
a nightingale will sing.
And where the wood is darkest
a nightingale will sing.

The cast-iron stove

2008-05-07T18:40:00.000-07:00

This is just like Grandmom's miniature cast-iron stove. Another web site lists a similar one as a salesman's model. Grandmom had all the little doodads that went with it, except for the coal scuttle. The round, flat panels on top would come off.

I didn't ever play cooking with the stove. I mostly would simply open the door, remove the panels, put the pans on and off, pretend to scoop things from one pan into another. I liked to wiggle the handle back and forth on the Dutch oven. It was meditative play: without thought or goal, lying on my stomach on the nubbly, tightly-woven carpet, people talking in the background, Hee-Haw on the television more often than not.

Where, where are you tonight?
Why did you leave me here all alone?
I searched the world over
and thought I found true love:
you met another
and *spit* you were gone.

(Sometimes I'm embarrassed that I remember that song. But MAN did they watch a lot of Hee-Haw. I always thought Grandmom looked a little like Minnie Pearl. They liked Benny Hill, too.)

Clarity and muddle

2008-05-06T18:41:00.000-07:00

As I think about what to write here for the long haul, I'm surprised by the difference in memories between Virginia and Vermont. A lot of my memories of Vermont are crystalline: the chill of slate floors under my feet, the sound of cold water rushing over stone, the colors of wildflowers and of paper birches in moonlight, the sound of Mimi's voice singing lullabyes, Gogo saying "Bah!", the taste of raspberries and cream for breakfast on the terrace very early, the smell of the field.

Despite the huge amount of time we spent in Virginia, a lot of my memories of it are vertiginous. The house was on a steep hill---the road cut upward steeply, the front yard was practically vertical. Then the house: three steps in front, eighteen in back, the back yard sloping, then five concrete steps. The dirt tractor road that led to the barn (grape vines and strawberries along one side, the trailer that the creepy neighbor lived in). The barn was huge and smelled of motor oil. There was a spooky scarecrow but I wasn't really allowed in there. There was a shed about which I remember almost nothing. The dirt road led somewhere, but where? Somewhere there was a patch of trees, where my older cousins made a "haunted walk" one fall. Below the barn the land sloped downward again, to potato and corn fields, then down to the James River.

Orchard above the house on one side (peach, pecan, almond) and below the house on the other (apple). There was a concrete room cut into the hillside on the apple side, paved with concrete on the top. There was a big tree with soft, furry leaves that were why I named our cat Leaf when I was three (Leaf was bad). Once I went into the hillside door: it had a dirt floor. When I was feeling VERY brave I would jump from the concrete block down to the trees.

The last time I went there was almost 20 years ago. I haven't seen pictures in years.

In July, when I go to Vermont for Mimi's service (when we bury her ashes under the maple tree), I plan to take notes all weekend, to gather more stories. This weekend I'll be home. I can gather stories from Mom about Norwood.

Mimi gets grumpy!

2008-05-02T12:53:00.000-07:00

The day that my divorce from my first husband was final, I dyed my hair---bright pink. (It was pretty great.) By the time I went to Vermont that summer, it was dark eggplant purple. Mimi grumbled, but just a little, because everyone was treating me like glass in those days.

A couple of years later, my cousin Gretchen got married, and I flew up for the wedding in Shelter Island, NY (fancier even than the Hamptons!). I had recently had an Extremely Unfortunate Hair Incident (= tangerine orange) and spent ungodly amounts of money to have the dye stripped out of my hair and dyed back blonde, albeit to a lighter and more golden blonde than my normal ash color.

"Thank goodness!" Mimi said.

Within two weeks after the wedding (which was ALL kinds of fun), I had dyed it back to auburn. I didn't go to Vermont that year, and Mimi's vision degenerated quickly. By the next summer in Vermont, she was pretty well blind.

We went for cocktails at Aunt Betsy's one evening, and as we left I stepped into a shaft of sunlight.

"What's on your head?" Mimi asked sharply.
"Uh, hair dye?" says I.

The next day, she about bowled me over with her rolling walker (she was extremely speedy with that thing, and we all had to watch out for ourselves). As she went by, I heard her muttering: "mumble mumble don't see mumble mumble hair."

I could only grin. "What's that?" I asked.
"I SAID I don't see WHY you felt it necessary to cover up your beautiful blonde hair!"
"You can't hardly see it!" says I.
"But I know it's there!"

Oh, I love that lady.

Grey at last!

2008-05-01T06:34:00.001-07:00

So about two months ago I noticed a grey hair.

This morning? Twenty! At least!

Mimi and my dad and his siblings had/have beautiful white hair. They all started going grey as early as 14 but no later than 30. I have been waiting for my beautiful white hair for years. I was starting think that I took after Grandmom, who was still a redhead when I was little.

But no! Hooray!

When I have beautiful white hair, I shall crop it short to cut out the dye and proudly be a snow-head.

(And complain all the time about how red my face looks.)

(cross-posted)

On the other side

2008-04-29T17:58:00.000-07:00

Now Grandmom? Cooked like a crazy person. Whenever we arrived, the side board would be groaning under the pile of cake, cookies, and ribbon candy. When a group of us was going to gather at her house, Grandmom would sometimes make each of our favorite types of cookie (mine were the sour cream cookies).

She was an old-school Southern cook, presumably meant for people whose teeth are loose in the head. I could press her green beans against the roof of my mouth into mush. They were really only vaguely green. Her pot roast was hard to get on a fork, because it just sort of disintegrated. She canned everything in sight. Her butter beans were simmered all afternoon with a piece of bacon and a teacup of sugar, and they were genius.

Grandmom had a chest freezer that was always full of mysterious, frost-covered packages. There was usually at least one half-gallon of neopolitan ice cream.

She bought these hot dogs that were longer than a standard hot dog bun, skinny, and lipstick fuchia. My cousin Kathy would eat them rolled up in a slice of Wonder bread with French's yellow mustard. Grandmom would cook up several packages at a time and pile them up on a plate.

Her chicken and dumplings were gorgeous. On very rare occasions, she'd make homemade egg noodles for chicken dishes or for soup. She made it look so easy---so easy I've always felt too scared to even attempt them.

Coconut cake with seven-minute frosting, pristine and snow white on a cake stand.

When she died, there were jars of home-canned green beans and peaches in her pantry that were older than I was.

I would lie on the floor and play with Grandpop's war medals or with the miniature cast-iron stove while Mom and Grandmom made jelly in the kitchen all afternoon, talking and giggling. Sometimes they would call me in to dry the dishes with her ragged old tea towels. Later that night, we'd hear the occasional clicks and pops of the jelly jars sealing tight.

She couldn't be talented at everything ...

2008-04-23T18:19:00.000-07:00

Oh, Mimi hated cooking. After Gogo died, when she finally went back to Vermont, you could practically hear her say, "Woohoo! Bring on the Schwan's truck!"

When I was eight or so, my parents went on a second honeymoon trip to Myrtle Beach, and Mimi came to stay with me and my sister. What a week! We had "finger foods" every night for dinner: cheese and crackers, grilled cheese sandwiches with tomato soup, fish sticks. Lissa and I were as happy as can be. (Plus we got to use umbrellas instead of wearing raincoats. Heaven!)

Gigi ate that way, too. Her lunch every day was sharp white cheddar on Triscuits with a glass of chocolate milk. If she was feeling really frisky, she'd have Mimi put a scoop of vanilla ice cream in the milk. It was always a banner day when I was allowed to have a Gigi Lunch.

I went to Russian School at Norwich University the summer after my sophomore year in college. Oh, the food was abysmal---really worthy of the gulag. I drove over one weekend with my roommate (a truly nice person) and our across-the-hall neighbor (not so much). We arrived at Mimi & Gogo's house and Mimi had laid out some ham, salad, and potato salad for us. The neighbor launched into a diatribe about how I had "promised" her a hot, home-cooked meal. Right there in front of them! I could've just died. Mimi and Gogo were as polite as could be, but she was the butt of a LOT of family jokes for the next few years.

When I was really little, Mimi would make watermelon pickles. They were delicious, but she gave them up not long after they moved to Vermont. I don't remember her actually making them, just the jars in the cupboard, the strange mixture of sweet and sour together, and the crazy notion that you could make something you want to eat out of watermelon rinds, which hurt when someone throws them at you. I know this for a fact.

When I started exploring the wonderful world of fancy cookery, I took up Thanksgving with a vengeance. To this day, one of my great pleasures in life is to concoct a really labor-intensive stuffing. Six or so years ago, I went home for Thanksgving and volunteered to make the stuffing. I made two of them---a cornbread/oyster stuffing that Grandpop couldn't get enough of and a multigrain stuffing with port and roasted chestnuts. Delicious!

"It's weird," said my dad. "I like your Mimi's stuffing better."

Mimi's stuffing: a bag of dried stuffing, a can of chicken broth, chopped celery, chopped onions, raisins, and sage. *SIGH*

I like to think that Mimi would bonk Dad on the head for having said that.

I only have one recipe from Mimi: a parsley and potato soup that is just awful. But I will keep the card forever, because it's in her dear handwriting.

Crafting skips a generation

2008-04-15T09:33:00.000-07:00

Both of my grandmothers knitted. Mimi knitted English style and Grandmom continental---I think. I may have that backwards. They both were right-handed and I am left-handed, so their efforts to teach me to knit were hopeless. I only learned enough knitting to fake it on stage, so I carried around the mismatched straight needles (one blue, one red; metal; size 8) and pink acrylic yarn that Mimi gave me for years and years, and I knitted on one lumpy swatch in 3 or 4 shows.

They both crocheted as well. The summer that Mimi tried to teach me to knit, she taught Lissa how to crochet. Lissa had mint green yarn, very fluffy, and a large bamboo crochet hook that I coveted. Grandmom crocheted lace, using cones of what was essentially thread and impossibly small hooks. I have those hooks, and I'd better damn well learn to crochet lace.

Sewing deserves its own post, and will have it. But today I was reading Mason-Dixon Knitting and saw the following: "golf may be the perfect sport for a knitter. You watch, you knit, you accidentally fall asleep or otherwise enter a fugue state, yet you never really miss much. All those whispering commentators. I'm zoning out right now, just thinking about them."

And it's true! Mimi would often knit in front of golf. Other times, all the grown-ups in the room would be doing or dozing over crossword puzzles while golf was on TV. The kids would lay on the floor (to use the Southern vernacular) coloring or putting together jigsaw puzzles (the jigsaw puzzles of Vermont also deserve their own post).

In Buffalo, that last trip, there was golf on the TV and I was the one knitting. I do think I dozed off at some point. Mimi was in and out, and at one point she took a long nap. She woke up; someone made a joke, and she cackled to herself for several minutes. Beth made a comment about how she shouldn't sleep the day away.

"Hey, you're the one who snuggled her down on the sofa under a blanket! It's your fault!" I said.
"You tell 'em, Gin," Mimi said.

I was knitting a lace shawl---annoyingly complicated. Every row took a lot of attention. The droning of the announcer in the background kept me from feeling too grumbly. The green of the course rested my eyes every time I looked up. Everybody had a little mug of tea or coffee. This was my family. Perfect comfort.

Laundry

2008-04-14T09:00:00.000-07:00

I used to love to help Grandmom hang the laundry out to dry. Even when I was too little to reach, I would hand her clothespins. I liked the old-fashioned ones best, the ones like little Fisher-Price people, without springs. She only had a few of those. The wooden ones with springs sometimes made a creak that echoed in my teeth, like when I scraped my spoon against the inside of the white glass bowls (decorated with green leaves), or when I'd bite a popsicle stick.

I still hate that. I like the mini corn dogs that don't have sticks, just for that reason.

Pulling in the laundry was an adventure of scent: fabric softener, sunlight, grass. I would throw out my arms and Grandmom would let loose the pins. Sheets, slips, nightgowns, Pop Pop's shirts would fall in a heap over my shoulders, until my arms could barely close around them. I would jog around to the front of the house, where there were 3 brick steps instead of 20, and flump the load down on the sofa. In retrospect, how did I carry them without dragging anything on the ground?

But when the sheets were first hung to dry, I loved to run through them: you hit the damp chill and for an instant it sticks, it molds to your face and blocks out the world, then it slides and you run through, hair slicked back. If you hit it fast enough, sometimes there's a wet smack. The trick is to pick your spot (like turning your pillow) to always find the cool spot. But as the sheets dried, they warmed. They lost the power to stick, and by the time the sheets were dry, it was like running through soft ribbons, flutter-hands of some robed fairy woman, smelling of the sun.

For hours and hours I would do this, running back and forth, while the laundry dried.

Family silver

2008-04-11T06:22:00.000-07:00

When I was changing my clothes around for summer (a task I despise), I found my christening cup. I was christened the day before my first birthday---late for an Episcopal baby, but my parents were waiting for my mother's confirmation---I pulled it out and polished it, and I keep trying to think of what to DO with it, because it's lovely, and because it's a Family Thing, and of course I'm interested in Family Things these days. My family. Heritage and connectedness.

We have so much family silver. I have a box of highly tarnished trays and bowls, many of which need replating, from my cousin Dare, a woman I never met. I have the Mysterious Simpson Flatware (some of it, anyway: 8 spoons, 5 forks, 6 knives; and my Whelihan cousins have the seafood forks).

One thing I love---have always loved---is that back in the day, silverware wasn't fancy. It was what people had, so it's what they used. My dad's christening cup is an actual tiny mug with a handle that he used as a child. It's crumpled on the bottom, from having been banged enthusiastically against the tray of a high chair for years.

My christening cup is a little footed bowl, about four inches across. I've used it to hold candy for a party, and a couple of times to hold a single peony blossom. But I want to integrate it into daily use. To make it a common object.

Wordless comfort

2008-04-05T17:28:00.000-07:00

When my first marriage broke down, it was like someone cut me off at the knees and took away all the air in the world. For the first couple of months after the night my ex made himself obvious and did not come home, he forbade me to tell anyone about it. I was not allowed to confide in anyone. He stayed out nights. I sat at home crying and lost 30 pounds in six weeks.

The first weekend was when Grandmom died. For a long time I felt really guilty about it, that I had nothing in me to give to my mother when her mother died. When we were in Buffalo in February, we talked about it (cried about it). Mom said really lovely things about it. Said there was nothing to forgive.

After a month or so, they sent me a ticket to fly home. Mimi was visiting. I said I didn't want to talk about it, and they didn't ask. They crowded around me, mostly, trying to get me to eat (failing). And it was agony to feel like I was a failure, unloved and unlovable, that I was every miserable thing my ex had been telling me for years, and that I couldn't talk about it meant that I didn't know what to say at all. I know I scared them all half to death.

At one point I was sitting outside by the pool, brooding. Mimi came and sat in the chair next to me. For a long time she didn't say anything at all. She just sat next to me, breathing out calm.

After a long, long while she said, "He was never like us, my darling. His family is so different from ours."

And she continued to sit next to me, holding my hand, while I cried, until I was ready to get up and try to face my life.

It's a Mimi Thang

2008-04-02T08:00:00.001-07:00

Here is one of the things about Mimi that I tell absolutely everyone:

In Vermont, cocktail hour started precisely at 5:30. I first started helping Gogo bartend when I was about 8 years old. When I was 10, I could mix a mean Manhattan (for Aunt Lee), but I don't remember how anymore.

Mimi's drink of choice was bourbon and water. She had beautiful snow-white hair, rather bouffant, but not teased and styled: her hair just sort of sprang up from and around her head. Now that I think about it, it was very cheerful hair. And when her drink was empty, if no one noticed, she would set her glass on top of her head, where it sat as if in a nest of her hair. She would sit very quietly and wait.

If *still* no one noticed, she would wiggle her chin back and forth ever so slightly, to make the ice clink.

I defy anyone's grandmother to have a trick more excellent than that.

I put my empty glass on my head. I have friends who do so as well.

Love you, Mimi.

Here: and now

2008-03-25T13:05:00.000-07:00

I'm not grasping. I'm not holding on to grief. Most of the time, my instinct is to say, "Buck up, little camper" to myself, to push it down and accept. But I made the decision to be fully present in this: to honor my grandmother by honestly grieving for her, as much as I need to. To honor this turning point in my life, which is sharper and more real than the grey hairs, the nascent wrinkles.

My grief is less, since Sunday. My gratitude is stronger.

A lesson for Eastertide

2008-03-24T14:02:00.000-07:00

Here is the dream I had Easter morning:

I was knitting---something in marled black and white, something that was confusing me. The door opened. Mom, Dad, and Melissa walked in, and I knew it was "from the cremation." I was surprised that I got to see them. Behind them, Mimi and Gogo walked in. I asked how it went; hugged them. They were all sniffly. "It was hard," Mimi said. She wore a light-blue skirt, white shirt, navy cardigan, and little white Keds (classic Mimi couture). But her voice was strong and deep.

We all sat down. Gogo was at the back of the room, at a kitchen table, wearing his yellow cardigan, smoking. Mimi was also knitting, a large thing out of thick blue yarn. She had a little plastic pouch with knitting needles in it and a small piece of needlepoint. We chatted, and then I remembered that I wanted to ask her about the silver. "I gave it to you during my lifetime?" she asked. She said it was probably her grandmother's but that I should use it and be happy to do so. I told her that I am known for putting my empty drink glass on my head like she always did, and she said, "Good!"

Gogo said something in Latin. Mimi turned her head and said "Go back to the picnic table, old man!"*

I asked whether she would be out at the picnic table tomorrow, and whether she would try to bring Gigi, Betty, and Lee with her. "I suppose so," she said, and her eyes got red. I went to her and knelt by her knee. Her hands were clasped together on her lap, and I put my hand over them (I can still hear her voice in my head, still feel her hand under mine).

"I don't know what this is," I said. "Neither do I," Mimi replied. We were both crying now. "But I'm so glad, Mimi," I said. "Me too, my darling," she said.

I woke up, and I realized it was Easter. I was crying. I got up and went to Hobie and cried on him some more, and I was so exhausted for the rest of the day. But it was a gorgeous thing, to talk to my grandmother again.

------

*In my dream world, there is a picnic table at the top of the hill behind Mimi and Gogo's house in Vermont. It's not there in waking life, but it has always been in my dreams. And in that dream, I knew that Gogo could often be found smoking at the picnic table. I have a lot of dream landmarks: a whole neighborhood in Chicago, for example, that if it existed would be under Lake Michigan.

Today I'm glad to be a chatterbox

2008-03-21T07:21:00.001-07:00

I keep getting notes from people---emails and letters---who say that I spoke so often and so vividly of Mimi that they feel they knew her. That they feel they have also lost a friend. That they will treasure the memory of her that I built for them.

I'm so glad.

SO glad.

Sneaky grief

2008-03-20T12:31:00.000-07:00

I had forgotten that grief can be like a trap-door spider. You think that your inner terrain has stabilized, that you are again walking on ground that will not fall out from under you, and then it leap up to snatch your leg.

I'm still sad, of course: it has only been two weeks. And I was already feeling dispirited and tired. I keep saying that I need to relight myself: I feel like grey ashes are covering the embers, lately. It happens. I'll climb up that hill when I can, but I know myself well enough to know that I cannot force myself up out of these bouts of slight depression. They have a growth cycle of their own.

But I thought that I had reached some equilibrium, that I could put away the tissues. I was only driving to work, in the pre-dawn darkness, singing along with Runrig. I sang the lyric, "Your memory is everything," and halfway through the last word, grief burst out of me all at once, in a sob and a rush of tears.

Memory IS everything, when it is all that remains.

Philosophy and religion

2008-03-17T18:57:00.001-07:00

I like to describe my religious beliefs as "devout, confused, and skeptical." I believe deeply in ... something. Or, more correctly, Something. I believe fervently in Something Larger than a Name. We grew up Episcopalian, but I got mad at Saint Paul many years ago and have been tying myself up in knots ever since. I've loved all the Greek gods since I was 9 years old. I truly admire the Unitarians' commitment to openness and social justice, but I can't stand the protest songs.

And yes: it has been pointed out to me (by, let's see---practically everyone I know) that I make it all more difficult than it needs to be.

For the past few years, I've found existentialism to be more and more comforting. I like the idea that this life is not a test. I don't know what happens to us after death, and most of the time I don't really care. But I find that although I'm okay with the idea that I might end at death, with nothing else left of me, I hate the thought with regard to Mimi.

This is not for my own sake: I will carry her in my heart every day for the rest of my life, as I do Gogo, and Grandmom, and all my other beloved dead. But Mimi took so much comfort in the thought of return, of rejoining her own beloved dead. I want that for her.

When Beth cleaned out Mimi's apartment, she found two prayers that Mimi had written out on her monogrammed notepaper (which she has had ever since she moved to Vermont). One of them she composed herself, a lovely prayer asking that she bear her old age with grace, that she not burden anyone by becoming too stuck in the past, too focused on discomfort, or too demanding. My darling Mimi. She was so uncomplaining that she probably bore more discomfort than she needed to, just because she didn't want to trouble anyone.

The other note was from the Book of Common Prayer:

This is another day, O Lord. I know not what it will bring forth, but make me ready, Lord, for whatever it may be. If I am to stand up, help me to stand bravely. If I am to sit still, help me to sit quietly. If I am to lie low, help me to do it patiently. And if I am to do nothing, let me do it gallantly. Make these words more than words, and give me the Spirit of Jesus. Amen.

Mimi and her sisters

2008-03-15T20:29:00.001-07:00

When we visited, Mimi kept asking about her sisters: when they died, how long it had been.

Aunt Betty, the oldest, died ... oh, in the mid-1980s, I think. I remember so little of her, and even less of her husband, Uncle Bev. I think I've had more conversations with them since they were buried under the maple tree at Innisfree than I ever did when they were alive.

I'll write at some point about the time we went to go stay with Aunt Betty and Uncle Bev in Norfolk. But for today: Aunt Betty kept losing parts of herself. I don't know whether she had diabetes or something else, but she kept having bits amputated: first her feet, then up her legs, and eventually part of one arm. Most of the time that I knew her, she was in a wheelchair. She had a huge pair of wooden scissor-type things with magnets in the end that she used to pick things up. When I was little I thought that was the neatest toy EVER: it looked like a pair of scissors, but giant, the wrong material, AND magnetic. Excellent.

Aunt Lee was the middle child and the beauty. Oh, she was beautiful. Even as an old lady she was so delicate and gorgeous, and she defined elegance for me. I found her incredibly intimidating, and my Whelihan cousins largely have that sense of elegance about them, plus Uncle Bill's ramrod-straight Army posture. I have a bunch of stories about my beloved Aunt Lee that I will be so happy to tell you. She suffered terribly for the last few years of her life. Widowhood was never easy for her, and then she got a case of shingles that never quite went away. It settled on her back, in one eye, and in her scalp, so that she was in a great deal of pain, could hardly see, and lost a lot of her hair. I think that was hard for her. But she lived until the end in her imposing house in Carlisle, PA.

Mimi was always close to her sisters, as I am to mine. She was not one to show a lot of emotion, but she always talked about Betty and Lee as if they were close by. I have a lot to say on the subject of Afterlife, but I hope they are together now.

Reminders from funny places

2008-03-13T09:03:00.000-07:00

I was watching TV last night (New Amsterdam, if you must know), and the lead character was in his WWII uniform with a red 1 on the sleeve.

Gogo's unit was the Big Red One. We were all so excited when the movie came out, though none of the characters are recognizably Gogo. We are, however, sure that he wasn't the guy who got his testicle shot off.

At one point, Mimi knitted him a hat (they lived in Vermont, so they needed a lot of hats): Army green with a giant red 1 on it.

I don't know whether the hat was too big, Gogo's bald head was slippery, or he was just a hambone (maybe all three), but he used to wear that thing so that it pooched up off the top of his head by about four inches. He looked liked such a goof in it. The top would twist or squish, so that the 1 was barely legible. I used to pat it and smoosh the empty part down on Gogo's head. He would let me do that about four times before he'd get annoyed and bat my hand away.

I don't know who has that hat now.

Scent

2008-03-12T17:43:00.000-07:00

Tonight I was running some droopy old veg through the garbage disposal. I stuffed down the dried, brown thyme and suddenly I was in Vermont.

Mimi planted creeping thyme in her garden. Tiny leaves and tiny flowers, and when you walk on it you're surrounded by its fragrance. She loved to garden. She had little blue Keds sneakers and a floppy hat, gardening gloves and wicked shears. My job was often to take a little mason jar around---when I was very small, it had gasoline in it; in more enlightened times, it was soapy water---and scrape Japanese beetles off the leaves of the rose bushes. They'd splash into the liquid, paddle weakly a few times, then sink to the bottom. Mimi was bloodthirsty about them. She would cackle over the filled jars. They DID leave awful holes in all the leaves.

Oh, I'll write about hosta some time, and coral bells---especially coral bells. Snapdragons and Johnny Jump-Ups. Deadheading pansies. That's where the scent of thyme takes me: the front garden of Innisfree.

There are so many things to write: my grandmothers, in Vermont and Virginia; my grandfather; my great-grandparents. My great-aunts. The scent of thyme is like a thread in my hand, leading me backward.

Time and questions

2008-03-11T17:45:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow is a week since Mimi died. This time last week, I was lying on my sofa with my head on an ice pack to treat a roaring migraine, while Hobie was at the caucus causing a ruckus and signing up to be an Obama delegate. I would wake up Wednesday morning after very little sleep, still in pretty bad pain, and Hobie would drive me in to work.

He would call me a couple of hours later to say that he and his brother were going on a motorcycle ride, because it was such a beautiful day. About half an hour after that, my father called to say that Mimi was gone. He sounded calm until I broke up. I sat in my office for a lot of the day, crying but at the same time praying thanks that she wasn't in pain anymore, was no longer tired and lonely.

And now, about a week later, I have so many questions. The silver I have is monogrammed with an S: Simpson was Mimi's mother's maiden name but her grandmother's married name. Is it from Gigi's trousseau? Or do I have Elizabeth Morgan Lee Simpson's silver, in which case I'm scared to death to use it because it has to be >100 years old?

I meant to ask Mimi about going to the dump to shoot rats. I meant to ask her more about her childhood. I meant to ask her to sing all the lullabyes one more time. But it's too late.

Goodbyes

2008-03-07T13:45:00.001-08:00

It's a good thing to get to say goodbye. I didn't with Grandmom or Gogo. Mimi fell, and moved from assisted living to nursing care; I met up with my parents and sister in Charlotte and we flew to Buffalo.

"It's not a vigil, it's a visit," my sister said. And she was right: it wasn't a vigil. But it was a goodbye.

When we first arrived at the nursing home, Beth put her forehead to Mimi's and said, "Hello, Mama." I keep thinking about that moment. It was beautiful. Mimi was so frail, so still. Later on, I will tell you other stories about her---happier stories, in which she is strong and vibrant. For most of her life she was practical, capable, and calm, the person you always wanted in an emergency. But not today.

We took her back to Beth's house---a big to-do of wheelchair and oxygen bottle, and oh her poor raw nose from the cannula---and she was more herself. Tired and quiet (she dozed a lot), but still HER. Beth gave her a little glass of sherry, which she hadn't had in months. Mimi took a sip and smacked her lips. "Oh, that's good," she said. She smacked her lips to herself a few more times. She didn't really eat anything, but she had two glasses of well-watered sherry.

The next day she was too exhausted for a visit, and my family was leaving early. They went up to say goodbye. Beth took me to Niagara Falls---gorgeous in winter.

We had lunch and a good talk. Then we went to see Mimi again before I had to fly back to Texas.

"Hard talking time," she said. "How long do I have to stay here?" Beth explained that she would always stay there; going back to her apartment was no longer an option. Mimi nodded to herself and sat quietly.

I asked whether her hands were dry. One of my strongest memories from childhood is when Grandmom would have too much lotion on her hands. She would ask one of us over and rub her hands over ours. It was so intimate and loving, and I've tried to write a poem about it innumerable times. Sometimes I think it needs a painting (though I can't paint). So I rubbed lotion on Mimi's hands. They were curled in on themselves from arthritis---she had not been able to knit or do crossword puzzles for almost two years, which has to have been agonizing to a woman who was always busy. The backs of her hands were bruised black, I guess from IVs during her recent hospital stay. The skin of the very old is so soft. It feels scarily fragile.

She wanted Beth to stay, to take her exploring in her wheelchair, but I had to go to the airport. I felt so awful about it. I kissed her and told her I loved her.

"Enjoy your life, dear heart," she said.

Day One

2008-03-06T14:06:00.000-08:00

Today is the first day on which I have no grandmothers. Mimi died yesterday.

Beth went to visit before work, and they had breakfast together. Mimi was having a slow, scattered day, but Beth said she was cheerful enough. She helped Mimi into her chair (slipcovered in white with red flowers) and kissed her goodbye.

A couple of hours later, one of the aides went in to say hello, and Mimi was gone.

I think that growing up begins on the day when your dad wakes you up to go inside to bed after you've fallen asleep in the car. It's the first day that you're too big to be carried: you'll never again wake up in your bed in the middle of the night and know that your parents carried you in, took off your shoes, and put on your PJs while you slept. You shed bits of childhood ever afterward, one at a time: the day you're left alone to be responsible for a younger child; the day you first cook an actual meal; the day you take yourself to the doctor. These things grow in magnitude, until the grown-up bits outnumber the child bits. The child bits are like your old woobie: filthy, ragged at the edges, precious.

One of the last child bits is the living presence of a grandparent. I'm down to one. For my grandmothers, from here on out it's all beloved memory.