So Few Words

Everyone called him “Red,” even though he had been bald since his early twenties. The nickname was from when he was a young man with flaming red hair, and it would be with him until the day he died in the nursing home, alone, in a bed with a stiff mattress and the thinnest sheets.

I had not visited my grandfather in the nursing home for months before he died. The last time I saw him was when I went with my mother on a Sunday afternoon and stood quietly in the shadows, trying to choke down the tears I know he saw. He was 90. I was 26.

What a horrible feeling that must have been for him--to see a grandchild grieving him while he was still alive. Worse yet, my mother always said that I was his favorite, as much as a grandfather of fourteen can have favorites.

When I was a child, and he was more vital, he rarely spoke to me. Oh, there were the silly teasings and jokes. Maybe even a few tickles and smiles. But, I never had a conversation with my grandfather. I don’t ever recall being in the same room with him alone. How could I have been his favorite?

I have Scottish blood on both my mother’s and father’s side. Through my grandfather came the Scottish blood. My mother’s mother provided the Irish, only a couple of generations away from the boat.

Oral “Red” Moor had been a bit of a dandy when he was young. He liked nice clothes, always wore the finest hats. And, yet, he had been a sharecropper most of his life—probably spending most of his days in the dust of fields and cool of his own sweat.

He was a man of few words. But, he loved card games, and I grew up hearing about his prowess as though legend. The moments when he would make risky bids without looking at his cards. The way he could seemingly always win any game he played. Euchre and chess were his fortes.

I only played chess with him once. I forget how old I was, well into my teens, but I know that he had already begun to stiffen with age and the early stages of Parkinson’s. I wanted to beat him. My entire life I had heard how he was unbeatable, formidable.

It was not a fair match. I watched him feebly move the pieces. I knew that my victory would be hollow. It is even more heart-breaking in retrospect. I bragged at the time. What a shallow thing to do, really. He only sat there with a small smile on his face, staring at the board, not saying a word. He spoke so few. But, those eyes of his said so much. I wish I could’ve played him when we were both at our strongest. I will never be able to.

When I was little, I was fascinated by sticks. I always tried to find the coolest switches from our bushes. I used crooked twigs from the tall maples as swords and lightsabers. He must have quietly taken note.

I could not have been more than five when he gave me my cherished stick, something he spent nights working on in the shop in his basement. He glued two different pieces of wood together and sanded them down until they were smooth enough for a young girl’s hands. It was thick at one end and tapered down into a blunted tip.

At the time, I had found it a disappointment. A stick? My present was a stick? Of course, with time, the stick and I became as inseparable as my baseball cap and thick black leather belt. I loved that stick until years and years later when it finally broke off at the tip and splintered.

I don’t think I ever really thanked him for it. A self-centered child. A wasted opportunity that this adult wishes she had not squandered.

What would I give now for one small chance to sit down across from this quiet man and ask him questions about his life. How much of him is a part of me? What would he tell me now that I am in my mid-30s?

Red was a man of so few words. I wish I would’ve listened more to the ones I had the privilege to have heard.

Never Saying Never

When the U-haul pulled out of my driveway in Nevada, Iowa eight years ago, I swore that I would never go to graduate school again or live in Iowa again. I had completed my first Master of Arts degree at Iowa State University, and as the gravel popped and crackled under our tires, I could not even muster a tear.

It wasn’t that I disliked Iowa. I definitely loved the people. But, my two year stay in Nevada had felt a little isolated and lonely. I had lived alone with my little guinea pig Herbie, and living in Iowa had felt a bit like wearing a tight, itchy wool sweater that was a size too small.

Never again.

I have always been pretty free with the use of “never.” I like to tempt Fate. I am not superstitious. I like to cross under ladders, open umbrellas in the house, and bend down to pet those menacing black cats that wander across my path—even if they do scratch sometimes.

Now, I find myself writing this with another Master’s degree and living in Iowa again. I moved here with a friend because I was in love—as good of a reason as any, but you know in your gut when things aren’t “right.” After a year of living here on my own again, though, I cannot still say that moving here was a “mistake.” I have met some of the most amazing people of my life here in Iowa. I would not trade one second of the time I’ve spent with each person I’ve met while living here, even if it would mean forgoing the hardships and restless, sleepless nights.

Dare I say, now faced with the reality of leaving, I almost never want to leave? Looking around my apartment, things are already beginning to look empty, barren. Bookshelves have been cleared. Boxes are beginning to stack. I never thought I would find myself so sad to leave.

I will carry my experiences in my heart when I move, pack away the memories, and come back for frequent visits. Something about Iowa seems to get into a person’s bloodstream. Maybe it’s the easy smiles that strangers offer. Maybe it’s the inherent goodness and integrity so many Iowans exude in their handshakes and warm words. It’s a little hard not to feel “at home” here.

My moving is motivated by many reasons—one of the biggest is location. As the only surviving child, I feel the burden of the distance from my family. I will be much closer in Indiana. Close enough to drive there in a weekend; far enough to know they will never visit on their own. Ideal.

I never thought leaving Iowa would be this hard. More than just a few tears have already been shed, but then, I’ve always been a crier. Just ask those who know me best.

It is the time to go, though, or else the job opportunity would not have come so easily.

In the end, I guess I’ve learned my lesson. I always do learn best from my mistakes. I have learned to never say never again and to look forward to the next time I find myself living in Iowa.

In No Apparent Distress

You hustle through the grocery store. People around you are inspecting apples, eyeing which tomato will be the best buy. You hear the conversations of two older farmers who have clearly known each other for years. They stand side by side, arms folded, toothpicks wet and splintery.

A young man and a young woman flirt with each other behind the meat counter—each wearing a white uniform, apron, and paper hat. They do their best to care which steak an elderly woman is pointing to. When the girl bends over to get into the case, the boy walks past and his smile widens. You cannot see what happened, but the twinkle in the girl’s eye and small blush speak volumes.

You scurry down the soup aisle, unsure what you are hungry for, trying to sort through your craving to know what will fulfill you best. A young woman pushes a cart full of two sticky-faced children while another little girl straggles behind. They are all snacking on graham crackers that the woman has not paid for yet, and given the weary look in her eyes, she will likely forget. You offer her a small smile, but returning the smile proves to be too much effort.

You wander down the cereal aisle—Cheerios, Corn Pops, oatmeal—nothing entices you. Your quick walk slows to a stroll.

An elderly couple stop and study the labels on the various bran cereals.

“Five dollars for cereal?” the man says, scratches his forehead.

“I’ll just make some Johnny Cake. We can eat that,” the woman replies.

She puts the cereal box back on the shelf and takes the man’s hand. They continue puttering down the aisle in silence.

You begin to think you can live with being hungry. After a while, you get used to the feeling. You have eaten food you weren’t craving before, and while it fills you up, it doesn’t quite have that mouth-watering taste that satisfies.

You pass a teenage boy on your way to the cookie aisle. He grabs a bag of chocolate chip.

You stand in front of the Double Stuff Oreos. Have you found what you were looking for? You don’t normally eat Double Stuff Oreos. In fact, you had told yourself you would probably never eat them again—preferring the taste of Ginger Snaps.

You don’t want to pick up that blue and pink bag too fast. You picture yourself back in your apartment, slowly peeling open the wrapper, hearing the cookies shuffle against the plastic container. You don’t want to rush the experience. Each cookie has to be fully tasted and savored.

Should you buy them? Once you buy them, you will want to eat them all in one setting, but you know you shouldn’t, that you can’t.

Your fingers hover above the bag. They itch. Desire pulses through each tip.

Will you walk on? In your mind, you have already eaten each cookie, the gooey, gritty filling.

A young woman with long blonde hair, a stunning caramel tan, the body every woman would love to have rushes by you. You are still standing in the cloud of her sweet lilac perfume before you realize she grabbed a bag of Double Stuff Oreos. They must not be for her. She wears tight jeans and a halter top—no room for the luxury of cookies. She makes you feel frumpy, too pale, not fashionable enough—who are you to be buying these Oreos?

You recoil your hand. Sigh. You decide to go home, still hungry.

And, when you get home, you do a hundred sit-ups, ride your exercise bike. After a good sweat and long bath, you sit on the couch and smile.

You will buy those Oreos tomorrow.

June 30, 1968

Today is my parents' fortieth wedding anniversary. I sent my parents a card thanking them for "taking the plunge," or else I would not have come into existence (I will tackle that notion in a later blog :) But, in honor of their milestone, I am posting a couple of excerpts from a nonfiction story I wrote a couple of years ago:

They say a woman is born with all of her eggs in her ovaries unlike a man whose sperm lasts only 72 hours before a new batch is made. Does this mean that we are as old as our mothers? I wonder about genetic memories, memories in the very nuclei of cells and tissue. My mother was born with me already inside of her: can we trace a lineage of mothers leading back to the very fingertips of God? We shared a body until I was born when she was 27. Are memories only stored in the brain, or are they more transient, moving through the bloodstream, passing through the skin like osmosis—

What would have happened if my mother had not been set up on a blind date with my father for an A & P Christmas party? I've heard the story countless times. My father was a newly returned Vietnam veteran with thick black hair and thick black glasses and a smug Steve McQueen smile. He worked nights, stocking the shelves, spending the rest of his time smoking, drinking, and cruising. A "bad boy" with too much integrity, honesty, and self-discipline not to hold a steady job and earn his paycheck and make himself an invaluable employee. My mother was a checkout clerk and the bookkeeper. When she was young, her hair was a deep auburn. She wore it short, Julie Andrews-style, and her skin was the color of cream. The irony of the whole thing is that my father loves women with long hair, who like motorcycles rides, who have that element of "danger" to them. My mother, meanwhile, did not want someone who smoked or drank. She wanted a God-fearing, chorale-singing man, who knew how to work hard but also enjoy fine things. And, yet, at that Christmas party, things sparked.

"I knew I was going to marry her that first night," my father says.

"I knew, too," my mother says shyly. She often feigns a blushy-faced modesty when discussing things like the two of them dating.

I guess it's what people call "chemistry." Maybe it was my father's hands. They are pale, slight at the wrist, marked by scars from slipped hammers and metal splinters. His hands were one of the things that attracted my mother to him. She wanted to feel each of his calluses brushing against her skin; she said she didn’t want a man with smooth hands. Her father’s hands were rough from years of farming, and in an Oedipal way, she loved the thought of a “man’s” hands being rugged, dirt lined, scratchy. Perhaps my mother knew this man with hands like these would work hard for her, for a family.

My father didn't call her after the party, and my mother feared the worst. She talked to her mother, to her friends. It was my grandmother who told her that if she wanted him, she had to do something about it.

"Write him a note, talk to him."

The story goes: my mother wore her evergreen-colored leather jacket with the wind sweeping through her red hair, her black cat-eye glasses framing those deep-set hazel eyes, slipped her hands in her pockets and leaned against the side of my father's car.

"When you gonna come out and see me some time?" she supposedly asked.

My father recites this with a little Lauren Bacall staccato. He says it was sexy. My mother says she was merely asking—"he heard it the way he wanted to." She blushes.

By mid-January, they were engaged and a June wedding date was set. They said from the minute they met they started talking and didn't stop. Forty years later, they will still sit in the kitchen after supper, sipping tea, talking about a variety of things. They are a model-marriage, looking from both the inside and outside. They are still physically wild about each other, and my father leaves her little presents to commemorate the anniversaries of small milestones only they know about—they are probably the only couple in America that "celebrate" the day they do taxes. Most couples bicker about money, but my parents bake a cherry pie, order in food, mark the day on the calendar like a holiday, and laugh as the adding machine whirls and thumps how little they'll get back.

Maybe if my mother had gone to college things would've been different. Maybe they can be so close to each other because of the trials they've endured as parents: a suicidal son and an abominable daughter.


On my parents' wedding day, June 30, 1968, the temperatures were sweltering. They both talk about how their glasses kept slipping off their noses. The little white church in Hoytville, Ohio was full, stuffy, congested with proud family members, the occasional crying newborn—one of my older cousins, I'm sure. My mother sewed her own wedding dress from a picture she'd seen in some magazine. My father wore a white suit jacket and black tuxedo pants. Their wedding colors were aqua blue and red.

I can picture my mother walking down the isle beside her father, overly warm from his body heat. Everyone smiling in their pews. When it comes time to speak the vows, my father's voice cracks, and he begins to cry, tears mingling with the sweat sliding down his cheeks. My mother cries, too. They are both so young: 21 and 23. The minister is a pudgy bald man with thick glasses and a raspy voice. This is what is expected; they are fulfilling the promise of their parents and their parents before them.

"I now pronounce you, man and wife," the minister speaks, oblivious to how ludicrous it is that a wedding has made my father a "man" and my mother only a "wife."

When my father, with tears in his grey-blue eyes, carefully lifts her veil and leans down to kiss her, their lips nearly slip off each other. Everyone stands up in a scramble of feet and applauds; my parents' exciting new life as a couple has begun.

And, I'm there, in that moment, already inside of my mother, at least part of who I will become, and so is my brother, both of us waiting to be breathed into existence.

Years later, I will try on my mother's wedding dress, my mother and I sorting through the attic, but it is too small for me, my shoulders much too wide—it would never be the right fit. It simply wasn't made for my body.

The Soft Ticking Sound of Life...

For some reason, I thought of my Grandpa White tonight. I’m really not sure why. He died 25 years ago of a heart attack. Family lore says the clock on the fireplace mantel stopped at the exact minute he died. Maybe it did. He slumped in the chair, his dead weight dropped to the floor, and the clock hands clasped in grief…

He was obsessed with clocks of all kinds—wristwatches, pocket watches, grandfather clocks, grandmother clocks. He would take them apart. He would put them back together. One of the outstanding memories of my childhood was going to my grandparents’ house and hearing all of the tickings and chimes. They would all gong on the hour. Some were slow. Some were fast. Clocks all have their particular way of keeping time.

I am one of those people who can tell time without looking. Maybe you are, too. I can tell you how much time has past, how much time something will take—usually down to within a few minutes. Maybe I inherited this from him. I always like to have a watch with me. I feel naked without a wristwatch. I wish, at times, that I could "lose track of time." I have never been able to.

Grandpa White was a charismatic man, especially at Christmas. For most of my childhood, he was synonymous with Christmas—almost as if he was Christmas. He made such a big production out of it. He would sing songs, play the records, and tell us tales of Father Christmas and his adventures.

Grandpa White had a radio announcer’s voice. It was deep, articulate. I learned once that he had been a stutterer as a child. Maybe this is why he annunciated things so well and talked with a methodical sing-song. It was the kind of voice that immediately drew you to whatever it was he would say.

He loved to tell stories in that soft New England accent of his—somewhere between Bawston and New Yawk. There was a music to the way he spoke, like he understood the subtleties of inflection.

Whenever he and Grandma would go on vacation, he would leave us elaborate notes about “visiting the tribes of the North to powpow,” etc. Half of the thrill of taking in the mail when they were gone was reading what he notes he had left for us to find.

My grandmother does not wind all of the clocks like he did. Going for a visit is much quieter now that he is gone. He was a complicated man. I will not explain all of my reasons for saying this. Suffice to say, he still looms large over the family. He was a larger-than-life persona.

Time is a strange thing—the way it traps us and catches—as if being caught in a web. We are prisoners to it. What would life be like if our existence was not measured by minutes and hours? How would we be different? There must be something liberating in only being bound by the sunlight and nothing else. Dawn, day, dusk, twilight…there aren’t even words to describe it; everything is quantified. Good? Bad? I don’t know. I should be sleeping now. It is the “middle of the night.” Yet, my body’s rhythms prefer to be awake.

When I die, will there be a clock on the mantel to seize up and stop to mark my passing? Doubtful. But, what a romantic notion! Like one of Samuel Coleridge’s feverish opium dreams...

Tick, tock, tick, tock…like bars, and so it goes, a construction, a necessity, an impossible prison to escape…and taking apart a watch and putting it back together does not make me any less bound by each slice of the pendulum…

Shadows

Tonight, I looked up at the moon. I saw the glowing face—yes, I think the man looks sad—tidal-locked, pocked, so many miles away.

Often, I have wondered why God would create a universe so vast and unfathomable and leave it empty (no, I don’t believe in aliens).

I had a discussion once with a friend. He asked me why God would create a universe and not have life on another planet. And, I said, “why not?” We cannot always answer the “whys” and the “why nots.”

Tonight, I felt like I finally understood “empty space.” How else would we understand how small we truly are? As human beings, it is so easy to feel large, powerful, all-knowing—oh, we have it figured out—we feel like we rule the world, or at least our small part of it. Hubris, pride, arrogance, whatever a person chooses to call it—it all ends when we turn our eyes to sky.

We like to think that “primitive man” (you know who that is. The people who created the pyramids, Easter Island, Stonehenge, all of those things we cannot replicate or explain) turned his eyes to the heavens and decided to make up some sort of God to worship because he needed to feel “comforted” by that thought. The logic there has never made much sense to me. I do not think that primitive man was primitive at all. If anything, we are on a downward slide. We sit and drool in front of televisions. We relax by not having to think.

Tonight, I looked up at the moon and considered its distance. I thought about the stories in the news of distant galaxies—too far to ever be reached in my lifetime and probably beyond. What a lesson that teaches. We are but a shadow. Our concerns are finite, tiny, like a speck of dust. This does not comfort me. But, it does provide prospective.

In the past, when I lived in Iowa before, I used to stroll cemeteries in order to gain perspective on the thoughts plaguing my mind. It reminded me that we are all just “passing through” (as my father likes to say). Suddenly, the paper that was due, or the loneliness I felt, seemed manageable and almost laughable. We live. We die. The only certainty in life is death, and yet, we often push it to the very back of our thoughts. Why?

I watched the Bucket List this evening. Two men affected each other’s lives. I’ve said it many times, but to me, that is the essential purpose of this life. Who can I touch and how can I touch them?

I’ve failed in too many ways to count. I’ve lost friends, gained friends, and lost friends again. All due to foolishness and not realizing how small I truly am. In the end, we should be open. We should be compassionate. We should not care about the pettiness of the world around us. What are we here for, if not to affect each other?

Tonight, I looked up at the moon and I thought about the vastness of space. The universe is beyond my comprehension, and I believe in a God who purposely created it that way--who is so omnipotent that such a universe is possible if only to help us understand that life is but a shadow. As Solomon says, “vanity, vanity, all is vanity.” In the end, all we have is now.

All that matters is the lives we affect, the people we meet, the impressions we leave, and the memories that will linger behind us long after we are gone...

Now That the Sun Has Gone Down

Night slides into the shadows and birds once boisterous and bickering—hush. The cars that rushed down side streets park and sit in the glow of streetlights. Night belongs to insects and things that creep—it is the time for stealth.

When I was little, I was afraid of the dark. Powerfully afraid. The fear seemed visceral and paralyzing. I watched a movie once where a ventriloquist’s dummy came to life and stole the man’s voice box. I had a Charlie McArthur doll. After I watched that movie, he slept with me. I figured he was safer in bed beside me than sneaking up the toy box lid and crawling over to steal my voice. I guess even then I understood that you should keep your friends close, but your enemies (or in this case fears) closer.

I remember how empowering it was the first time I moved through the darkness without a light. It was daring. My senses felt super-charged, heightened. I did not take a flashlight, nightlight, or turn on a light. I slipped through the darkness like it was an oily pool of black. Darkness can feel tangible in way that light cannot. The world is a reverse of shadows; streetlights cut swaths of gray. I remember how I weighed each of my footsteps on our creaky old stairs, so careful not to wake my parents whose bedroom was at the bottom. Our house was small, old, and each time you put too much weight on a foot, the squawk of the boards could halt snores or cause the soft shifting sound of sheets.

I felt grown-up, like I could face anything. This was all in pursuit of a glass of water that I was not even thirsty for. I have never been a particularly good sleeper. I am restless at night. Even as a child, night became emblematic of adventure and doing things you would not do during the day. If you were awake in the middle of the night, it felt like you were ruling the world. I was not scared to be awake when others were sleeping. On the contrary, I enjoyed the solitude, the feeling that you could go anywhere or do anything without having to deal with other people. I was a little anti-social as a child.

All of this changed that same summer, in fact. A family trauma suddenly made the darkness suffocating and frightening again. I slept in the room next to my brother (in fact, he had to walk through my room to go anywhere else in the house. I slept at the room at the top of the stairs), and he had spent a few months in the mental hospital. I felt like I had to stay awake—in case. I don’t know of what. But, he was “chemically imbalanced.”

So, night became an exercise in how long I could stay awake before my body forced my mind to surrender to sleep. Sometimes, the hardest part of night is the way all of your energy goes to your brain. With the body quiet, the mind has free reign. My brother was not a harm to us, but at twelve and at night, it did not matter.

I remember in 9th grade my Health teacher shared an anecdote with us. When she was a teenager, she had driven the family car to an outing with friends. I don’t remember all of the particulars, but in the end, the car had gotten scratched. A careless car door flung open. Something uncontrollable and harmless.

But, she drove the car home, parked it in the garage, and spent the night fretful and agonizing over her parents’ reaction. Her mind became alive with scenarios. Her father would yell and never let her drive again. Her mother would cry. She spent all night imagining the worst—until the birds started chirping again and light slowly returned. She told us that things will always look their worst at night. But, it’s only about perspective. In the morning, things will be okay. In the morning, her parents did not punish her (it wasn’t her fault after all). She said that they had pretty much shrugged it off, and she spent the day wishing she had gotten more sleep.

But, the lesson she taught us—that really did not have much to with nutrition or whatever it was we were learning that week—left a deep impression on me.

Now that the sun has gone down, life and its stresses seem overwhelming. The world is quiet, and you are left alone with your thoughts—only the very best friends and closest family still able to be called. But, at night, you have to face yourself. You also have to let go and allow yourself to fall. I still struggle against sleep, but these days it is because I like the intensity of thought that night can bring. It can be scary. It can be therapeutic. It is illuminating.