Walking Home Together

My email inbox is a daily delete extravaganza. I’ve signed countless petitions since the 2016 election thus granting email access to every hopeful Democrat running for office in every state; and every climate, immigration, animal rights, and environmental organization striving to keep me apprised, active, and donating.  So, I click, click, click… delete.  Click, click, click… delete, stopping occasionally to sign another petition or make a small donation.  Yes!  I know! I’m only encouraging them, but our times are dire, and I can’t totally check out. 

As a result, I’m impatient with emails; I just want to get through them.  Sheepishly I confess that when I get animated cards, I often “click to the end.” What a sad metaphor for life.  I can’t even take a few minutes to watch sweet lovebirds string ribbons into a heart on a Valentine’s Day card?  To watch buds sprout and daffodils bloom on Mother’s Day?  To watch deer and squirrels gather beneath reddening oaks at Thanksgiving?  How many smiles have I sacrificed to more quickly empty my inbox?     

True to form, when in early December, my Farmington friend, Whip, sent me and Jen, my junior year roommate, the Jacquie Lawson Cotswolds Advent calendar, I thought I’ll take a quick peek and move on. Wisely, Whip sent a heads-up text first, with an added, “BTW, in your ‘Cotswold home,’ click on the various objects for games – and every day you can click on the bookcase to read a little about the theme for that day.”

Bookcase?  Games?  My Cotswold home?   Hm. Still. I wanted to zip through emails and get back to my To-Do list. I clicked on the link, followed instructions, and the calendar opened… with music, a horse-drawn cart clopping down the street, and a gentle snow fall.

Ohhhhhh.  Something pinched and rushed eased inside me as, using the slide bars on the side and top of the computer screen, I “strolled” through the village past cottages with leaded windows and peaked dormers mounded with snow.  I followed a nice couple over a stone bridge and gazed at the Christmas tree on the other side of the river. Chudleigh’s Tavern beckoned from a side street. It looked like my kind of place: I’d like to grab Dave for a beer and glass of wine there sometime soon.  

When given the option to “decorate” a woodland tree, I chose from an array of ornaments to drag and drop in the boughs of a bushy pine.  I clicked on my garland of choice and tried to drag it to the tree, but it wouldn’t move. I tried again, nothing. Suddenly, the tree lit up… and shimmered.  It was beautiful,and the surge of elation filling my chest took me by surprise.  If that weren’t enough, when I clicked the blue star to go into “my house,” my tree was there in the corner, exactly as I’d decorated it. 

With clicks, I lit the candles on the mantle and set the fire ablaze. Two kittens curled in a snug nest by the fire, and a friendly dog lying near the sofa lifted his head and looked at me. I was flooded with giddy wonder.  I felt like… like I did when I was 8, opening the tiny door of an advent calendar, yearning for Christmas to hurry up and get here, a feeling I hadn’t had in decades.  I had to share this with others, so I went to Jacquie Lawson’s website and sent off calendars to a few friends, my daughter, and daughter-in-law. 

Soon, Casey texted, “So fun! I JUST WRAPPED PRESENTS!”  How delighted she’ll be when she sees her wrapped gifts under the tree in “her house.” 

When Carey opened her calendar, she wrote, at 2:00 AM, that she was getting a kick out of coordinating fireworks with classical Christmas music. No doubt, given my post-menopause affliction, I was also awake at 2:00 AM, but not looking at my calendar.  So the next morning, I was fascinated when I saw her message.  Fireworks? I pulled up the calendar and clicked like crazy, but again, nothing. Clearly I don’t have instinctive computer skills. 

“How did you activate the fireworks?” I texted. 

“I’m not sure,” she responded. “Maybe they only happen at night?  Am I right that the calendar has day and night?” 

Whoa. Day and night? I want to write Jacquie Lawson a thank you note and applaud her brilliant creativity.  

Once darkness fell, I whipped out my computer, and opened the Cotswold scene.  The sky had darkened since I checked in earlier that day, and a silvery light bathed the village.  The calendar moon was in the same phase as the moon rising beyond the barn across our street. Amazing. I clicked on the sky and boom!  A bloom of red lights! Click.  Boom! Green!  Click. Boom!  White!

I emailed Whip.  “Did you know about the fireworks?  Only at night.  Click the sky!”

Forty-five years ago, Jen, Whip and I lived in the same dorm and were close as sisters. After we graduated, we went to different colleges.  We wrote letters for a while, then our correspondence petered away to Christmas cards. Eventually, I dropped that too. About seven years ago, Meredith, the third in a junior year three-room with Jen and me, coordinated with Jen to plan a mini-reunion. Meredith has lived in France for decades, returning to the US in the summer. She is tenacious about traditions and friendships: she does not let them slide. That summer gathering has become an annual event, renewing friendships long dormant, bringing Whip, Jen, and Meredith back, actively, into my life.  

                     L to R: Andy, Meredith, Lea, Maurita, Vickie, Whip, Jen, 1971

Turned out Whip, the Giver-of-Cotswold-Joy, did not know about the fireworks. She passed the discovery on to Jen who looked forward to trying it later, noting that she was addicted to the calendar’s Solitaire game. Whip confessed to a similar compulsion, but added, “I shouldn’t be playing. I don’t have time to get addicted – work and Xmas stuff, plus my mom just got home from rehab, etc.”

Jen texted, “Hope your mom is okay.  Rehab?”

“Mom was in the hospital, and then was so weak she was in rehab for 3 weeks getting her strength back. Now she’s home, but too scared to get out of bed for fear she’ll fall.”  And she added, “Lea, I’m sure you’re remembering your wonderful mom with love this Christmas, and missing her a lot.” 

Jen texted, “I was just saying to someone the other day that getting old is REALLY hard… [My mother] absolutely refuses to use a cane or walker, though she is afraid of falling too. So she ‘furniture walks’ and is not nearly as active as she could be.”

By the time I checked my phone, the threads were long, a mix of calendar high points with a comforting purge of common worries and frustrations. Whip’s mother had become grouchy with age, adding to the difficulty of caring for her. Jen commiserated, “Sorry Whip!  I know how tough this is. I pray I’ll always be nice to my daughters.“

Late to the exchange, I chimed in,  “Hi! First, the happy thing… the calendar! Even on this rainy day, I woke up thinking Ooooo!  What will today hold? Last night I was able to click on the darting elf – a moment of triumph! – and he did a little wiggle dance! And the fireworks were such a discovery… how lovely to “walk” thru the village in the moonlight!  Thank you Whip!  Such fun!

“As to aging, Dave’s Aunt Cam, who was feisty and vibrant ‘til she died at 94 (her friend came to pick her up for Bingo and found her dressed and ready, but dead… THAT’s the way to go) Anyway, she always said to me, ‘Lea, do yourself a favor and don’t get old.’” 

Whip answered, “Aging is truly terrifying… I’m so grateful for my daughters, and hope I’m decent to them when I’m elderly. I didn’t know the elf did a dance when you click on him! I’ll try that!” 

“Age truly, is not for sissies,” I replied.  “Now I recognize how much courage it takes to age gracefully.  And re. the elf, not sure if it’s related, but when I clicked on the stockings, 2 little guys popped out and the elf ran thru soon after.  Hopefully we know more than our parents did about diet, exercise, and involvement in people and causes beyond ourselves.” 

As if on cue, Jen picked up the thread having returned from Pilates.  “I am SO grateful for my friends, more than ever in past years. I guess it’s partly age and partly circumstances that have really made me think about priorities. Now I’m going to get my calendar back up and try to find that elf!” 

Believe me, the elf is not easy to catch. But I loved the weird, wonderful weaving of calendar magic and… friendship magic; the comfort of facing life’s phases with women who have known me, and each other, for decades and decades. As teenagers, boys and schoolwork consumed our conversations, now, health, parents, kids, grandkids, and politics absorb us. Crazy. 

My favorite quote – a plea in today’s fractious times! – is that we are all here to walk each other home. The holiday season is expansive in its means to help us do that, through the spirit of giving, the smiles of strangers, the pull of home, the poignancy of memories, years-long bonds, and even shared glee over a Cotswold calendar. 

                                L to R: Whip, Meredith, Lea, Jen, Fall 1970

                                   L to R: Meredith, Jen, Whip, summer 2019

                                               (You all know what I look like!)

Who' s There?

Baby Eleanor gazes over Casey’s shoulder into the empty room beyond. Her sweet face brightens as something attracts her attention, and she waves.  Who is she waving to? No one is there.  “But I want to think they are there,” Casey says,  “Greemie and Grandy, Byeo and Poppy, Colombo and Cam, all grinning and blowing kisses.” 

I want to believe it too. 

When Casey’s daughter was born, I gave her a framed photograph taken in 1954. It portrays a circle of guardian Eleanors: baby Lea, my mother, my grandmother, and her mother, Jessamine - not an Eleanor, but hopefully a willing, watchful guardian all the same.  The photo sits on a shelf above the baby’s changing table, and now, at age one, this fourth Eleanor correctly points her chubby finger when asked to identify Mom and Byeo. 

At nap and bed-time, Casey sings “Byeo, Bye” to Eleanor, the lullaby my grandmother sang to me, that I clamored for, begging “More Byeo, more!” such that the title became her name. When first I stood in the dark of Eleanor’s nursery, my arms around my daughter and her new baby, swaying with them as we softly sang this special lullaby together, tears closed my throat after the first verse; I could not get the words out. How I hope these beloved women were nearby, maybe singing with us, knowing how much they are missed, how often they are evoked.  

In Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, the ghost of Jacob Marley tells his former partner, “How it is that I appear before you in a shape that you can see, I may not tell. I have sat invisible beside you on many and many a day.” For Scrooge, “this was not an agreeable idea,” but on my own sad days, I have gazed wistfully about me, wishing the wraiths of my grandmother, Mom and Dad encircled me. 

In October, Dave and I planned a trip to the Old ’76 House in Tappan, NY, drawn not by ghosts, but by the tavern’s notorious history.  According to Adrian Covert’s Taverns of the American Revolution, the food was good, the décor authentic, and the backstory, intriguing. In September 1780, British Major John Andre was captured with the plans for West Point, provided by Benedict Arnold, secreted in his boot. The major was imprisoned in the tavern and hanged as a spy in a nearby field. Exactly the sort of tale to entice us to dinner. 

We were late for our reservation as it turned out, and the two tables of guests already seated finished up and departed as we ordered. “We’ll eat quickly!” we promised Laura, our server, as she led us to a table in front of the fireplace.

The tavern was exactly what we’d hoped for with its massive hand-hewn wooden beams and wide-plank floors, two blazing fires, and tables set with pewter chargers and blue and white Delft china. The cocoon of antiquity enfolded us, a haven from the havoc of current events. 

Laura was gracious and friendly as she jotted down Dave’s charred salmon platter and my pasta with wild mushrooms and asparagus. We were the only guests, so Dave said, “Can we buy you a glass of wine?  Will you join us?”

“Let me submit your order and take care of a few things… and I will!” Shortly after, she poured herself a beer and pulled up a chair at our table.  Judy, the hostess, wandered over as well. Other than the four of us, only the chefs remained, wearily preparing our salmon and pasta in the kitchen. 

Conversation skipped over Major Andre, and drifted toward odd occurrences at table #2, mysterious thumpings on the second floor, and an ethereal little boy who often sat on the stairs with his dog. 

“In fact… wait ‘til you see this,” Laura said, as she pulled out her phone, swiped to a picture, and leaned over to show me.

An attractive young couple smiled at the camera, cheek to cheek, the young man’s arm around his girl. They were seated at the table right next to ours: the setting was exactly as it appeared before me. Except immediately behind the couple was a hooded figure, slightly blurred as if in motion, but as distinct as the young couple. Eyes wide, I passed the phone to Dave and turned my incredulous gaze to Laura. 

“I know.  Crazy, right?” she said.  “As guests often do, they’d asked me to take their picture. The next day, they called the restaurant to contact me and said, ‘If you’ll give us your number, we’ll text the picture you took of us last night. You won’t believe it.’ But, I did believe it. That old woman behind them?  She often appears over there.”  And Laura pointed to the snug table for two, just feet from us, tucked to the left of the fireplace. 

The door of the tavern opened and a short, burly man entered. Judy’s husband, come to pick her up. In jeans, a sweatshirt, and a cap, he appeared to me a no-nonsense kind of guy, rough and weathered, a man who worked with his hands.       

Well! We’d detained these indulgent people far too long, so Dave and I finished the final morsels of our tasty dinners, paid the bill, and put on our coats. As our hosts rose to wrap up business for the day, Judy said, “Feel free to check out the other rooms. We have plenty of stuff to do before closing.”

So, Dave and I played ghost hunters, snapping shots of the stairs, table #2, and the old lady’s cozy corner table, hoping for spectral images, or at least floating orbs, but no luck. Then Dave chatted with Judy’s husband by the bar while I peeked into the adjacent dining room. After reconnoitering, I joined them. Dave turned to me and said, “Listen to this.”

Judy’s husband said, “You’ve been hearing some ghost stories I hear.  Well, this one’s about my mother, and believe me, I wouldn’t make something up about my mother. 

"She'd had a stroke and was paralyzed before she died. Several years later, my brother came to visit the family home with his kids. The children were young, and after dinner, were tucked in early.  Hours later, after we adults had gone to bed, we heard a ruckus upstairs and rushed up to see what was happening.

“The lights were on, and the kids were whirling around the room, all excited.”

“My brother said, ‘What’s this about?  Get back to bed!’”

"But the kids were wound up. 'Grandma was here! She was twirling in her blue dress!  She kept saying, ‘I can dance again!’

“My mother loved to dance,” Judy’s husband said solemnly, his gaze steady. “And she was buried in a blue dress.”

“We tried to trip the kids up,” he continued. “We didn’t believe them. They’d never met my mother, so my brother pulled out an old photo album and pointed to pictures of my aunts thinking the kids were messing with us and would go for that. But they said, ‘No, no, no’ until… ‘That’s her!  That’s Grandma!’ and sure enough. They got it right.”

Maybe little ones retain a toe-hold in the Other Side, enough to more easily spot doting guardian Eleanors or a grandma in a blue dress.  At times, I’ve imagined settling in on the heavenly couch when my time comes, and my loved ones there regaling me with tales of efforts to alert me to their presence. Not that I've been totally obtuse, mind you, nor have friends and family who have wondered about the butterfly flapping persistently at a window or staying, content, on a cheek; feathers in unlikely places; a Mr. Steak matchbook; “Build Me Up Buttercup” broadcast at moments most-needed; a bald eagle’s treetop landing; or “NOSE” painted in white on a rooftop. 

Is it so surprising that despite so many signs, we’re inclined toward doubt when every day we are surrounded by the miraculous and barely notice?

“Faith is what someone knows to be true, whether they believe it or not.”  Flannery O’Conner