Summer Reflections Part I - Ripples

Sunlight glinted on choppy wavelets tinted neon blue through my sunglasses.  My fingers were curled tightly around a strap across my seat.  Soul light, I leaned close to Joanne as we zipped, jolting and smacking, across the water.  Over the buzz of the Jetski’s engine, I yelled, “Look at us!  You and me and our four fake boobs!”

With her long white hair twisted into a loose knot on her head, joy emanating from her face, she grinned back over her shoulder and called back, “Survivors!”

 

It had been years since Dave and I spent time with Charlie and Joanne.  We’d met in 1988 when our sons Tucker and Jake became friends.  Back then, Joanne wrote a column for the Greenwich Time and was re-decorating her house.  I was into quilting, crafts, and animal rights.  Our husbands loved playing guitars together, two aging hippies strumming Rolling Stones and Beatles songs.  Hm.  I say “aging,” yet we were still in our thirties.  Ah well. 

A lot has happened in the intervening years.

Dave and I moved to Easton.  Terrorism took out the Twin Towers.  Joanne got breast cancer.  Charlie had a heart attack.  Our kids grew up and moved on to their own lives.  I got breast cancer.  Joanne and Charlie moved to New Hampshire.  And finally, over the 4^th of July, we were able to accept their invitation to visit them in their now not-so-new home.

One afternoon during our stay, I sat on the dock with Jake.  His cousin Lauren was eager to rent a stand-up paddleboard.  “You better try it early on,” he said, “before the boats and Jetskis make it too rough.”

I scanned the crests and troughs of  water circled by pine-fringed shores and the mountains beyond.  A few boats dotted the lake, but surely not enough to stir the surface to this degree.  “But those boats are so far away…” I said.

“Yes.  But you know how it is when you drop a pebble in still water,” Jake said.  “The ripples just keep on going.”

Ripples.  I have always loved the possibilities, literal or not: a line in a book that resonates and leads to a new direction.  A random observation that sparks an idea and generates invention.  Small acts of kindness or valor that change lives or a world.  My friend Joanne, struck with cancer, coming through it, and helping me make it through my own…and now the two of us, jubilant together, sending ripples cascading in our Jetski’s wake.

On the morning of the 4^th of July parade, along with Charlie and Joanne, their kids, their kids’ spouses, their adorable granddaughter Abbey, and assorted siblings and cousins, we staked out spots with blankets and chairs under a spreading maple on the lawn of an antique colonial.  Nearby, an old retriever, the coppery fur of her muzzle gone to white, panted in the scant shade cast by her human companion’s beach chair.  

Vintage cars, fire engines, farmers on John Deere tractors, a troop of little girls in gauzy skirts and fairy wings, and, on roller skates, an aging majorette in spangled attire, glided past, some tossing candy to the small children who scampered to the road with hands outstretched.  

A skinny scrap of a guy in a straw boater and patriotic vest stood among his fellow WW II vets on a float draped in red, white and blue bunting, and lip-synced Jimmy Durante songs.  With the cock and shake of his head and a distinctive fake nose, he had Jimmy nailed. 

A convoy of vintage WW II vehicles rolled by followed by a float bearing the old men who’d once driven them.  I thought of Uncle Jack who, during his service in North Africa, drove an ambulance much like the one cruising past.  Dave’s father, Colombo, served in Italy in that war, and the third brother, Uncle Phil, was posted in the Pacific.  Miraculously, they all came home, but Cam, their sister, said of Jack, “He was too sensitive for war.  He never spoke about it when he returned, and he was never the same.”

“Always remember the soldiers,” Colombo once said to my daughter Casey.

With pride and a tug in my heart, I ran to the roadside to take pictures knowing the three brothers would have gotten a kick out of this day, and out of the role they played in giving us this opportunity to celebrate; extraordinary ripples from the sacrifices of brave old men - once brave young servicemen – waving as their floats drove by.

Strangers Over a Rainbow

 

On the flight to Shannon and Dan’s wedding in Florida, we flew over a rainbow.  “Look!”  said Caitlin, the little girl sitting beside me.  “A rainbow!” 

I’d spotted Caitlin almost immediately when Dave and I arrived at La Guardia Airport in New York.  As we waited in line at Jet Blue to get our boarding passes, she caught my eye because of her outfit.  “Precocious,” I thought, and I feel sheepish admitting to being so judgmental, even of a young girl, but her black fingerless gloves and matching nail polish, camouflage pants, off-the-shoulder shirt, and bandana seemed a bit much for a freckle-faced strawberry blond of ten or so.  “Eleven,” she would later correct me.  She was accompanied by an attractive older blond woman, her grandmother, I later learned, who appeared to be flummoxed by the self-possessed girl in her care.

Once at the gate, Dave and I joyfully greeted Chris and John, long-time friends who were going to the Florida wedding as well.  We settled in to wait having heard the forecast of thunderstorms and been informed of a half-hour delay.  With surprise, I noticed that the little girl and her grandmother were seated nearby.  An attractive woman with coppery curls also drew my admiring glance.  In the eighties, I spent significant dollars hoping to coax my lifeless hair into just such body and volume.

When our flight was announced, Dave, Chris, John, and I gathered our bags and proceeded to the tube connecting the plane to the gate.  As we edged closer to the door to the plane, Dave slowed to offer a hand to a young mother – a beautiful babe of a young mother – who was grappling with several hefty bags and two small boys.  Dave is wonderful about going beyond registering a need and doing something to help where I tend to take note in a vague way and wander on.

As I wandered on, Dave grasped the biggest of the mom’s bulky bags and we inched down the aisle of the plane, Chris and John taking seats in row 10, as we continued past rows 20, 21, 22…searching for 25 and finding it to be the back row.  The very back row.  The row by the restrooms.  The row with seats that recline an inch or so only. 

I stowed my suitcase in the overhead compartment and slipped into the seat by the window.  The babe of a young mother stood in the aisle and smiled at me.  I smiled back.  “Would you mind changing seats?” she asked.  “”My son would be across the aisle and he’s only five.”

“No problem.  Of course,” I said, grabbing my carry-on and sliding back into the aisle and into my new seat. 

In the flurry of that quick exchange, I did not review the implications for Dave, that my move would leave him in the three-seat row with two little boys.  He is great with kids, the best man for the job, but the three-hour ride would not be serene for him.  Luckily, as I’ve said, the mom was a babe.

As it happened, my center seat across the aisle was next to the woman with coppery curls; Frani was her name. The last person to board the plane grinned at me as she nudged past into the window seat to my left: Caitlin, the girl with the black fingerless gloves.  She flashed a card on a string that hung from her neck and said, “Junior Crew Member.  I’m traveling alone.  Last one on; last one off.”

Turned out, for this flight at least, the last row was the place to be.  Caitlin was chatty and endearing, and I silently thanked God for another reminder, for I’ve had many, to avoid hasty judgments.  Together, Caitlin and I watched a trailer for “Despicable Me 2” and raved about the first version.  She told me she loved pirates and we were as one in our love for Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow.  We also discovered a mutual enthusiasm for Halloween, and when I said I am always a witch, she totally outdid me in listing a variety of costumes from years past – the Corpse Bride, a gypsy, a ghost, and of course, a pirate.  “I had chains and skulls and stuff, a bunch of old-looking keys hanging from my belt, a cool ring.  Everything.”

While Caitlin watched a cartoon on the screen on the seat back before her, I turned to Frani, she of the coppery curls.  She was a year younger than I am and in short order, we covered menopause, sleep issues, anxiety, our interests, work, and relationships.  Ah, strangers.  Invariably we have so much in common. 

While turning fifty steered me toward volunteering at Mercy Learning Center and writing, Frani left a career in advertising and now works in integrative health advocating the uses of essential oils.  “My mother uses them all the time,” Caitlin chirped up.  “If I get a headache or stomach ache, she rubs them on the bottom of my feet.”

Frani slid a zippered pouch from her carry-on and opened it to reveal small vials of oils.  “Lea says she’s anxious and has a hard time sleeping,” Frani said to Caitlin.  “Which samples do you think would be best for her?”  Perhaps she was just being kind to include the child in choosing, but Caitlin thought a moment and said, “’Serenity’, definitely, and maybe ‘Past Tense’?” 

Frani gave me a wide-eyed look that acknowledged the girl’s accuracy then nodded at Caitlin.  “You know your stuff.”

“Like I said, my mom uses them all the time.”

“An old soul,” Frani whispered.

Meanwhile, an elephant was making a lot of noise across the aisle.  Dave was entertaining the two boys, forcing air between his pressed lips, pretending to be a pachyderm.  Jesse, the five year old, joined in gleefully, adding a swinging arm movement to simulate the animal’s trunk.  The babe-of-a-mom looked at me and mouthed of my husband, as many have before her, “He’s amazing.”  Then, she noticed Frani’s satchel of samples.  “Ohhhh.  Essential oils!  I use them all the time.  Lavender?  Omigod.  Love it.”

Really?  Here I am in a row of oils enthusiasts and they’ve never crossed my radar. 

Thunderstorms, however, were on the radar, and the plane began to buck in turbulence.  As we shuddered and swayed, Caitlin asked calmly, “What’s all this about?” 

“Storms.  Wind,” I said.  “Not a problem.”

She looked out the window at soaring mounds of water vapor, towering turrets, lumbering beasts, great sails of clouds, and that’s when she saw it.  “Look!  A rainbow!” 

At first, I missed it because it was below us, an arched gateway of yellow, red, and green.  A wonder, it was.  “You know the song?”  I said.  “Somewhere Over the Rainbow?  We are there!  Over the rainbow!”  It was an omen, surely, of a joyous marriage ahead for Shannon and Dan, and also, “Florida’s welcoming me home,” Caitlin said. 

I have to marvel at the workings of the Universe.  Among those at La Guardia scanning Kindles, tapping iPads, and the odd fellow reading a book, I’d spotted coppery curls and a girl in fingerless gloves.  And then, they came to me, and together, we flew over a rainbow. 

When the plane touched down in Sarasota, those in the back row, the furthest row back, the row tight to the restrooms, slapped each other five and crowed, “Best row ever!”      

                

Too Fast?

Do I drive too fast?  I’d debate it, but Dave says yes, and the Universe seems to agree.  Yesterday, on my way to school, a cop pulled me over for speeding.

Even before purchasing my new Ford hybrid and embarking on my quest for maximum mileage, the infirmities of my beloved old Caravan necessitated sensitive and conservative driving.  No sudden stops.  No revving.  No speeding.  Together, we chugged along at a moderate pace so I could react swiftly if her eccentricities threatened a breakdown.  

Now, moderate speeds are the means to hit my target mpg of 45.  When the cop pulled me over, I was gliding down the hill on Bronson Road, no gas, foot poised over the brake.  I’d checked the speedometer moments before and it read maybe 30 mph. 

This officer was the kind of cop I wouldn’t want to antagonize:  visor pulled low, head shaved, jaw tight, bottom lip out-thrust.  Stern. 

“Lady,” he said, “When I pulled in behind you, just after you saw me and jammed on your brakes, you were going 40.  So I hate to think what you were doing before.  It’s 25 on this road, and the Dogwood Festival’s this weekend.”

By his expression, it was clear he envisioned me plowing down whole families as they crossed the road with their arms laden with craft show goodies and bake sale cupcakes.  Still, I had not slammed on the brakes – just eased them on a trifle - and could not believe I’d reached the speed he claimed.  Still, I was not about to argue with the man.  

“I apologize, Officer.  To be honest, I just got this car and I’m trying to boost the mileage, so I really have been driving carefully, and….”

“Lady.”  He cut me off, voice hard.  He gestured with one hand, thumb and forefingers opening and closing like a pair of chattering false teeth.  “You’re going on and on, blah, blah, blah.  I’m just telling you it’s 25 on this road.  You’re lucky I don’t give you a ticket.” 

He turned to face forward, said, “Have a nice day,” and drove off.

“Blah, blah, blah?”  Ouch.  I do blather sometimes, it’s true, but if he treated me that way, dressed as I was for work in a blouse and black slacks, the epitome of a friendly Fairfield County matron, I can only imagine how that exchange might have plummeted if I’d been wearing my black hoodie. 

I crept onward to school, amazed at how ridiculously slow 25 was, and finding it very difficult to maintain that speed.

The next day, I was driving Park Avenue on my way to Mercy Learning Center, running a hint behind schedule.  I stopped at a traffic light and you can imagine my joy when a student driver took a left turn, placing himself in front of me once the light changed.  Great.

The young one did precisely what he should have, crawling along at 25.  I crept along behind him, and arrived at MLC only a few minutes late. 

Not to read too much into this, but I wondered if these two incidents were cosmically related.  Were they reminders to prevent an accident that was otherwise awaiting me?  Or was the lesson broader? 

My route to work follows tree-shaded streets lined with historic homes and centuries old walls, not that I notice them.  And when he gets in my car, Dave is always surprised that the same CD plays for months before I change it.  To his raised eyebrow, I’ll say, “Don’t even hear it, Hon. I’m inside my head.”

Truth.  Too often, I’m on auto-pilot and my faithful cars get me where I’m going.  Oh, I’m watching the road and obeying signs, but it’s amazing what one can see and hear without actually perceiving.  I can say the same of walks in the woods or even a busy day; my focus is inward and my senses serve only to keep me on track. 

In her book, My Grandfather’s Blessings, Rachel Naomi Remen recalls an old prayer: “Days pass and the years vanish and we walk sightless among miracles. Lord, fill our eyes with seeing and our minds with knowing. Let there be moments when your Presence, like lightening, illuminates the darkness in which we walk. Help us to see, wherever we gaze, that the bush burns, unconsumed. And we, clay touched by God, will reach out for holiness and exclaim in wonder, “How filled with awe is this place and we did not know it.”

Spring has been generous over the past few days.  The air is rose-scented, soft, and warm on the skin.  Warblers astonish with their range of showy trills and melodies.  God’s roadside gardens bloom with wild daisies, purple phlox, and clover.  It is a season that caresses, and as I walk, or drive, I do so more slowly, smiling at the bounty of gifts.  Maybe I owe thanks to the cop and student driver for the reminder to pay attention.

Doin' It Seven Ways

Dave and I are in Florida, although we’ve brought New England’s weather with us.  It has ranged from sunny with wind and cool temperatures, to overcast and drizzly, to foggy.  Ah well.  

For beach reading, on the days we have braved the beach, I’ve selected Carl Hiassen’s Tourist Season.  The man cracks me up with his vicious wit, quirky characters, and circuitous plots.  As a Florida native and journalist for the Miami Herald, Hiassen writes about rapacious politicians and developers who bulldoze cypress swamps to create condos and golf courses, habitat alluring to cash-bearing tourists.  In his books, the bad guys invariably meet a gruesome, but satisfying end. 

While ensconced in a rented chair, faded baseball cap low on my brow, skin shiny with successive layers of sunscreen, legs swathed in the Holiday Inn’s threadbare yellow beach towel, I have chuckled in reading the efforts of Hiassen’s villain to scare off the tourists over-running his beloved state.   A conservation zealot, the desperado kidnaps Shriners, tosses cranky retirees to a crocodile named Pavlov, and plots against the Orange Bowl queen. My chuckles are sheepish, however, as I am well aware that I am potential croc fodder given my vacation Visa.

I’ve tried to think of reasons to exclude myself from the pool of unwanted visitors upon whom Hiassen’s band of revolutionaries open season, but alas, I fit their Most Wanted to perfection.  Pale of skin.  Seeking sunshine.  Temporary resident at the Holiday Inn.  Toenails red with Revlon Cherry Crush.  Coppertone scented.  Yes, I have purchased a pukka shell necklace.  Yes, I have snapped an excess of pictures of pelicans.  Yes, I have partaken of numerous rum drinks at palm-roofed Tiki bars.  Thankfully, Dave and I have not golfed at any of the countless courses that have scoured the coast of anything vaguely natural to that landscape.  Hiassen is, in my view, rightfully prickly about that. 

In 2001, when Dave and I chose Florida as our spring vacation destination, I was in full conservation mode in my town.  As a member of the Conservation Commission and Citizens for Easton, I was on the alert for white perc pipes or stakes with pink ribbons, and heartsick at hearing of plots to clear trees and level ledges for high density housing.  I was not impervious to those stakes and pipes in Florida, but permitted myself blinders, thinking, “I am on vacation.  This is not my fight.”  Hiassen would have been disgusted.

Anyway, this March, on the afternoon of our arrival, while savoring crepes at C’est La Vie, and sipping sauvignon blanc, the glasses perfectly chilled and translucent with condensation, we learned of Saturday’s farmers’ market and craft show.  Tourist heaven. 

I love craft shows, although Dave is not as enthusiastic.  Still, when Saturday dawned overcast, browsing booths along Sarasota’s Main Street seemed a happy diversion.  Dave discovered a music-loving soulmate in Kerry, a former drummer for the Hoo Doos and husband of a vendor selling silver beaded jewelry.  The men compared favorite bands and beloved guitars while I tried on countless bracelets, finally narrowing them down to purchase ten.  Yes, ten.

Dave is always drawn in by photography displays, and while I enjoy a quick look, my husband likes to settle in and chat with the artists, so often we separate.  “Check out the seven-ways dress,” he called as we passed each other at one point.  I was scrutinizing some shell-encrusted pottery and he’d glimpsed a booth of vibrant, splashy paintings.

Before I left for Florida, I’d been re-reading my daughter’s blog about her four months in South-East Asia. Her triumphant bickering at the night markets was fresh in my mind, so the sight of flowing silk-screened dresses  - seven-way dresses, as it turned out - lured me in.  

They were no bargain, but the vendor was friendly, cool, and comfortable, swathed in billowy turquoise.  Her skin was bronze, hair black, teeth white in a broad welcoming smile.  I slipped a black dress with coffee brown spirals over my head.  Despite the lovely material, I looked…lumpish.  “Ohhhhhhh,” she said.  “Allow me!”  So I wasn’t just being hard on myself; clearly she thought I looked lumpish too.  A lumpish tourist.  I could almost feel the steely eyes of Pavlov the crocodile, appraising me for succulence.

The vendor knotted folds here, asked me to slip my arms there. Curled a section over each of my arms.  Had me turn…more knots. I tried to angle the tiny hand-held mirror so I could see more than a square foot of myself at a time, but it was a brilliant marketing strategy, that tiny mirror, for I had no idea of the overall effect. Dave had shown up by then and grinned appreciatively.  “I like it!”  he said.  “Let me buy it for you.”

Maybe it was the vendor he liked, for my sense, as I looked past the perky knot tied above my boobs, was still… lumpish.  Dave and the vendor discussed the 5% donation she made to the Harry Chapin Foundation with the purchase of every dress.  “Money to the food bank of my choice.  A wonderful cause,” stated the saleswoman as she folded the dress and tucked it into a bag. 

Indeed, a wonderful cause, but my self-help books have been clear about buying only clothes I love.  Why harbor a closet full of rejects that don’t make me feel my very best?  Damn that tiny mirror!

Now, it is late afternoon.  The sun emerged around mid-day, and as it sets, we are basking on our balcony.  Dave has made me a tasty, lethal combination of mango and cranberry juices, Captain Morgan’s spiced rum, lime, and a sprig of mint.  Gorgeous.  The drink is.  I am not…for I look like a Russian refugee in my seven-ways dress, knotted and tied and lumpish.  Carl Hiassen would be laughing…or feeding me to a crocodile.  

Enjoy the Endeavor

Soft air, fresh, but not yet perfumed by blossoms still tight and pale on just-green stems, breathes through open windows. Forsythia and daffodils shine yellow against gradually greening grass.  Magnolias have burst into clouds of purple-tinged white, the petals already wilting and tumbling like a snowfall. 

Sure, I’ve taken moments to sit on the stoop, to steep in the glory of the season’s makeover, to mark even the jerky dance of myriad gnats, flecks of living dust dancing at the first hint of warmth.  But, for twenty years, I have coordinated Eagle Hill-Southport’s spring benefit, and the event is a week away.  If I do not direct myself consciously to look, listen, and feel spring’s scents and songs, it would pass, a backdrop, barely perceived, to my mental whirl of details, to-do’s and “don’t-forgets.” 

Order an extra tablecloth for the photo booth prop table.  Remind the caterer to tell the bartenders not to open too many bottles in advance.  Pick up flowers for the program chairs!  Should we order 20 more forks?  Re-print the winners’ letters with changes noted.  Get 5 X 7 frames for the prize lists.

At 3:13, or 3:27, or 3:56 AM, my eyes fly wide in the dark.  Talk to the caterer about adjusting the number of servers.  Confirm the psychic and DJ.  Who will man the wine raffle table?  

None of this is new; I know my frailties.  Worry, guilt, and anxiety can rock me, so, I have routines, prayers, readings and writings (and a very dear husband – goes without saying) to bolster me.  My current book-friend is The Art of Growing Up by Veronique Vienne.  Some might snort at my wish to read a book with that title, and I wouldn’t blame them.  At sixty years old, should I need guidance in this art?  Apparently so. 

A few days ago, butterflies had taken up their accustomed residence in my stomach, a feeling I’m used to, but dislike.   During my morning reading, Veronique offered, “Enjoy the endeavor and good fortune will follow.”  

I’m one of those people who read pen in hand.  I underline, dog-ear, star and comment-in-margins when a passage strikes me.  I’ve read many of my favorite books several times, and my life’s phases are reflected in the different words that have moved me.  I will come to a page clean of Lea-ink, seemingly without interest given the absence of notation, but then a sentence breezed over before will capture my heart and bring tears to my eyes.  It will comfort and inspire, warranting a flurry of stars, underlining, and comment. 

“Enjoy the endeavor and good fortune will follow.”  Unnoticed before, this time, the line prompted consideration.  I thought about all the meetings, all the emails and discussions.  I thought about the women who have given countless volunteer hours on behalf of the school and our students.  I thought about the friendships that have evolved through the process, for I’ve not been alone in my lists, worries and three AM musings. In meetings with the parent benefit chairs, each has reported her own list of mid-night mind-storms. And other staff too, the directors of development and maintenance, have chipped away at their lengthy checklists.

Responsibility for this event weighs on me heavily - as does everything in which I play a role, or feel I should play a role - but Veronique helped me remember how much of that is shared, how willing others are to help; how much I’ve enjoyed the brainstorms, laughter, and even shared frustrations.  She led me to recognize how much I’ve enjoyed this endeavor. 

After reading Veronique’s wise words, it seemed a switch had been thrown, the butterflies flew, and I felt almost giddy.  I went to school buoyant, with a full heart, because I realized good fortune is not just a hoped-for end product; good fortune can be the joy of the endeavor itself. 

   

Kindness - The Unremarkable Norm

Like leaves adrift in an autumn breeze, dust motes circled in a shaft of sunlight.  The yarn of the gray shag rug was soft beneath bare legs.  My sister and I were sitting on the floor in our parents’ bedroom, watching TV on the black and white set. As if life could not possibly be any better, our mother gave us each a stick of Wrigley’s gum.  Bliss.  Sunshine, spearmint, and TV.

And then – it must have been during a commercial break – the screen filled with a series of photographs:  the FBI’s Most Wanted.  Some of the faces were female.  Wait.  What?  Women could be murderers?  Women?   Women were mothers, babysitters, teachers, and nurses.  They took care of people; they did not hurt them.  My childish sense of the world as a safe place received its first fractures that day.

How old are most kids when they learn about the Holocaust?  Maybe seventh grade?  So, about twelve?  That was the next jolt, being twelve years old with hellish knowledge to process and store. Didn’t the guards at those camps have mothers who taught them to do unto others as you would have others do unto you?  Didn’t they have children?  Had they never been children themselves?  Thankfully, that brutality happened in the distant past – a decade prior – on far-away shores.  Everyone had learned the lessons of that evil and it would never happen again. 

I clung to that belief as long as I could.  I believe, ultimately, in an orderly universe, but I can find no place in my wishful credo for the Holocaust, so it floats out there, evil inexplicable.  And last week, two young men dropped lethal backpacks at the feet of children, and walked away.

So battered have we Americans been in recent years by armed men and Nature tempestuous, that the fragility of routine has been laid bare.  I perceive the humdrum with flickering antennae:  shoppers filling carts with Wheaties and milk, restaurant-goers sipping wine and perusing menus, teenagers tapping cell phones while strolling a sidewalk, families cheering loved ones at the finish line of a race.  So normal.  So easily blasted apart.

Deep breath.  Deep breath.  Quell the prickle in my nose, the mourning in my soul.  This is new to us in New England, but it is not new.  And it is in contrast to the goodness that unfolds minute-to-minute and hour-to-hour, so commonplace as to rarely rate media coverage.  Courtesies, small kindnesses, sweeping acts.  A driver risks the annoyance of those behind him to wave in a merging car.  Quilters meet to sew blankets for the sick, injured and orphaned.  Schools run drives for mittens and scarves.  Organizations – so many of them – raise money for human rights, cures for disease, conservation, housing, and food.  Strangers rip fabric from their shirts to tie tourniquets for those wounded nearby.  First responders, brave, brave souls, rush toward smoke, screams, and blood, to help.

The world does not feel safe right now, but remarkably, kindness is the unremarkable norm. 

         

Time Goes By

In 1878, to revive a flagging economy, the business leaders of St. Louis dreamed up a grand idea: the Veiled Prophet (VP) Ball.  Seventy-two years later, my mother was crowned Veiled Prophet Queen, and for me as a little girl, this nugget from my mother’s past was a fairy-tale come true. For my sisters, Rita and Francie, and me, there was no distinction between a full-blooded monarch and our mother. 

As kids, we three girls used to pore over scrapbooks bulging with newspaper clippings about Mom’s VP year.  We loved the pictures of young women in glamorous gowns and dazzling tiaras, their bouquets tumbling with flowers as they waved from their float in the parade.  And Mom, our mom, beaming and beautiful, in a white dress of satin and tulle, beaded and sequined, seated on her throne beside the mysterious Veiled Prophet.

In February, Mom, Rita, Francie and I went to St. Louis, the first time Mom would return to her native city in three decades.  In the weeks leading up to our trip, I reflected on my mother’s youth and asked her about the jolting changes of her 20^th year. 

Just days after her VP reign ended, Mom married my father and moved with him to Camp Atterbury in Indiana where my father was stationed with the army.  Mom recalled, “Our house, a square concrete place, was at the bottom of a hill, surrounded by mud.  Your dad would take the car to the base, so I was stranded and alone. I didn’t know how to cook; I didn’t know anybody...” Even that was better than her first night in Germany a few months later when my father was again at an army base and she lay in bed, covers clutched over her face, frantic, as rats chewed the crackers on the bureau.

I couldn’t shake the image of that young girl leaving her parents, my beloved Byeo and Poppy, following a year of VP excitement to live in the mud and cower from rodents.   “Did you miss home, Mom?  Did you …well, not regret marrying Dad, but….well, sort of regret it?” I asked her.

“Never.  He was the man I wanted…but that night with the rats?  That was a low point.”

                                    *                                    *                                    *

Upon our arrival in St. Louis, we were greeted by my mother’s first cousin, Teddy, and Jane, his Very-Significant-Other.  After lunch, Teddy and Jane took us for a drive around the city, a combination of fun sights – the soaring arch, Union Station, the brick buildings of the former Simmons Hardware Company founded by my great-great grandfather – and radical changes jarring to Mom.  Her head pivoted as we drove, searching for familiar landmarks among the skyscrapers, offices, and chain stores.

Our ultimate destination was a synagogue-turned library, also home to the Missouri Historical Society. When he organized this visit, Teddy, a long time announcer for the VP Ball and son of a queen himself, had alerted the curators that a former queen and descendants of the founder of Simmons Hardware Company would be paying a visit.

Beneath a vibrant, star-studded blue dome, we gathered around a wooden table to flip through a box of black and white photographs nestled between sheets of tissue: archival portraits of past VP queens. Along with the two curators, we gazed at girls of sixty to eighty years ago, nineteen-year-old-perfect, statuesque in swirling rivers of voluminous satin trains, frozen in flowing gowns and feathers.   Each picture was labeled with a name and a year, and we’d stop with whispered shrieks, if such a sound is possible, at 1921 – my grandmother, Byeo; 1929 – Teddy’s mother; and finally 1950 – Mom, in her beaded white dress of satin and tulle.

“Hmmm,” mused Shannon, the youthful blond curator, as she eyed Mom’s picture.  She turned on her heel and disappeared down a hallway, leaving us to admire our trio of VP mothers.

As our whispers became less whispered, the librarians from the front desk came to check on the commotion.  They did not hush us, but grinned and shared in our excitement as we held out the picture and pointed to Mom.  “It was many years ago, “Mom said, laughing (sort of quietly).

Two tables over, a woman with short brown hair and a doughy complexion sat reading.  She was extraordinarily gracious, as she did not look our way once, at least not obviously, and neither glared nor hissed at our ruckus.  Had I been in her place, I’m pretty sure I would have done one of the three.

My sister, Rita, took the photos to the desk to see about getting copies while the rest of us turned to the other curator. A pale man with thinning hair, his eyes were bright as he revealed the contents of a manila folder: individual pages from a catalogue of the 1904 World’s Fair with pictures of the Simmons Hardware exhibit.

On a bookshelf at home, we have one of the company’s massive leather-bound catalogues, four inches thick, with gold lettering on the spine. An illustration inside the book shows horse-drawn wagons going about their business in the streets around the Simmons factory, buildings still in existence – we’d seen them earlier - although the company is not. 

125 years ago, one could order, at modest prices, corn huskers, hatchets, augurs, and hoes, washboards, carpet beaters, laundry wringers, and sleigh bells.  For $48, one could purchase a dozen mounted family grindstones, although the 790 lb weight seems daunting.  Also pictured, in royal blue and red, the sporty “Run Easy” buggy, ranging from $65 to $85 depending on upholstery and canopy materials.  In the eighteen hundreds, even sewing machines, door knobs and ice boxes were handsome, in black enamel with gold filigree, brass and solid oak.   

The pleasant curator drew our attention to the design of the 1904 exhibit, at first glance, a relatively simple structure, an arch within rectangular supports, black with an abundance of decoration.  “Look closely,” said the curator, and then we saw – saws!  And axe blades and forks!  Knives and spoons!  Thousands of pieces of cutlery and hardware fanned out and lined up and placed end to end to form flowers and intricate designs.  Of all the magnificent structures and exhibits created for the fair in 1904, only two remain.  This was not one of them. 

With sparkling eyes, the curator, a man who clearly loved his work, said, “Want to see something else we have?”  He pulled out an age-stained document sheathed in a plastic envelope: a certificate to drive buggies and phaetons in the city of St. Louis.  “Check out the signature…” He was practically dancing.  I had to squint to read the spidery hand.  “Thomas Jefferson….Thomas Jefferson?!  No way!”

“Yes!”  The man was bouncing on the balls of his feet and I felt like bouncing myself.  “Basically, it’s Thomas Jefferson’s driver’s license!” he crowed in as much of a whisper as he could manage.

History.  All around us.

Shannon reappeared; we’d all but forgotten her.  She pushed a wheeled cart laden with two cream-colored boxes.  “I was thinking the names sounded familiar…and the pictures too,” she said.  She opened the top box.  It held a twenties-style pink flapper’s dress adorned with cotton flowers.  Shannon turned over the tag.  It had been my grandmother’s, the dress she wore on her last night as queen.

Byeo wore this when she was twenty years old.  Mom’s eyes were wide as she said,  “I didn’t know it existed.”  The tag indicated a donation made in 1960, the date my grandparents moved from Mom’s childhood home.  So, they must have cleared out the attic, gotten rid of some stuff, and the dress landed here.  I tried, I tried, to conjure my Byeo, not a black and white photo, but a girl, alive, filling the contours of this pink flowered dress. 

And the other box on the cart? 

Fingers clad in latex-blue lifted the lid to reveal layers and layers of tissue.  Shannon parted the papers and slid her hand under the bodice of a dress, a beaded white dress of satin and tulle: the dress Mom wore when she was nineteen years old, as VP queen of 1950.

                                    *                                    *                                    *

           

In front of the expansive bathroom mirror, Mom and I stand side-by-side, every spot and sag amplified by lights interrogation-bright.  Although she has always counseled my sisters and me to favor a touch of blush in defense against appearing defeated, she rarely wears make-up herself.  Tonight, however, she dabs on some foundation and brushes a hint of pink across her cheeks.  She comments that some of her friends pencil their eyebrows.  As I blend Clinique bronzer into my forehead, I respond that, in my experience, it’s hard to wield brow pencil effectively, although god knows I was glad for it when I lost my eyebrows to chemo.

Each morning of our stay, while wielding blush and eye-liner, the available tools for repair, Mom and I have stood before the mirror and our aging reflections, each bemoaning her own flaws, while shoring the other against self-attack.  She is eighty-one, I am almost sixty.  (Why bother with fifty-nine? It’s a springboard only.)  Her eyelids bother her, and she gives the loose skin a finger lift, while I use the same digital technique to smooth the bags creeping into my cheeks.  I embrace my crow’s feet, but this cheek-wrinkle thing is distressing.

With her silver-white hair and high cheekbones, my mother is beautiful, but I think, for her, the changes have seemed magnified in the constant presence of her nineteen year-old-self here in St. Louis.  “We’ve both been lucky to look young for so long,” I say, but for me, that is changing, and it will be hard to look in the mirror when the face gazing back is not the one I think of as my own.

When Shannon brought out Mom’s VP dress, it was magical.  Our eyes swiveled from the photo, to the dress, to Mom.  For some reason, I have a hard time believing in the past, even my own.  That once I crouched on a weathered gray dock, watching as Poppy struggled to remove the hook from the first fish I ever caught is a sun-warmed fantasy more than a memory.  That once I smeared Coppertone on little Tucker’s nose as Casey splashed nearby, feeding herself shovels of sand, is more about the scent of suntan lotion, glare, and heat, than the solid flesh we were. So much more mystical then, my mother’s youth, as conveyed through scrapbooks, queenly dresses, and stories of life-before-Lea.

I remember when Mom’s hands were young and smooth, when her hair was brown, when she looked like the girl in the picture, yet I see that person so completely in the woman she is now that the two co-exist.  The dress, however, was a tangible remnant, proof of a bygone fairy-tale of excitement, the perfume of flowers, and the scratch of tulle against bare shoulders.