stories and phrases i've forgotten
"I'll tell you I'm something, aren't I?"
"Good night shirt."
The moment in a radio story about a 103-year-old woman when she tries to offer her Meals on Wheels lunch to the person who's interviewing her. I wrote about my grandmother once, right after she died, for a college essays class. There's still so much I want to say about that - so much. It was the first time anyone important to me had died, and it was near the end of college, when I was struggling with the less-than-amiable end of some significant friendships, and questions about what I would do with my life, and where I would go and if I would make it in this great big world, doing what I wanted to do and continuing to grow in the way I wanted to grow. I remember picking up Donna and eating at Taco Bell on the day of the wake, and driving up to Fargo and the hospital on the day she died. It was icy and I listened to "Talk of the Nation" on the radio, and I didn't really take it seriously that this could be the end. I've led a kind of charmed existence - nothing truly bad ever seems to happen, people heal and life goes on. That day, I walked into the hospital room, and she said "Hi, Kath" through an oxygen mask. It was such a shock to see her there like that, voice muffled from the plastic triangle covering her mouth that I didn't say anything. I think that's one of the worst things I've done in my life. It's one of the things I regret most anyway. It was the last thing I ever heard her say. At the funeral, I remember, people, everyone, came up to say what a generous, kind woman she was. She never missed church, she was so good with the children, she was always smiling and didn't let anything slow her down. Over and over I thought about how these things the defined her were not who I was. Outgoing, friendly: these were not me, and for the first time it occured to me that my life was different than my grandmothers' and grandfather's not because I was neccessarily smarter or more ambitious or more talented. I went to college, I got to go to Europe, not because of some innate ability of mine, but sheerly by virtue of me being born at the time I was - and I got to do to these things not in spite of them, but because of them. Some people who seem to have so much less in life, but still seem to be so much more gracious and giving and thankful and conscious of life and other people. Jay crying the last time I saw him - in front the post office. Looking up at me from his "Kidd" minivan with those orange earplugs on the dash and reciting some poetry that he wrote that, even as he was saying it I couldn't pay attention to and was feeling guilty about not paying attention to it.
There is something that is so missing from my life. Some sense of peace and balance and trust and knowledge of who I am and what's important to me and a sense that those things are worthwhile because they are important to be and how an individual relates to the rest of the world - things that seem so natural to you - second nature. I doubt if you ever wrote a sentence like this in your life, wondering about how you related to the world. "That's silly," you'd say, a waste of time for people who don't have real work to do. But I also know I'm being naive... of course you've thought about that, everyone thinks about their place in the world and if they're spending their life in the best way. Especially since you were relatively old when you got married. I wonder how much of that story is true. About grandpa going for a walk past your house, and you sitting on the porch. You said once that it was your last chance to get married, but you were teasingly cruel like that to grandpa sometimes. And you wore the pink engagement ring at the wake, and cut your wedding photo in half so it would just be him, and not you, on the photo on display on the heater in the front entrance.
I got a package in the mail from my grandmother today - such a happy surprise, sticking out of the mail slot in my door when I came home. (The mail usually comes between 11 a.m. and noon, so I get it before I go to work, and today to walk up the stairs and have something sticking out of the slot - something which is not a massly-distributed flier - was so good.) Inside a red and white checked dish towel and two books: a paperback of "The Day Before Tomorrow" (on which the poorly executed film of the same name is based) and "Memories of Childhood," which I was initially really excited about when I saw the title because I thought it was something she had wrote in with her memories of childhood (when I was home this summer, we talked a lot about the past. I wrote down some, and, unfortunately, I know I forgot a lot), but it's a book of nursery rhymes and the like. A hardcover book with a pink cover and an illustration of a group of Victorian-age folk holding hands in a circle and dancing. The illustration is covered by a pale yellow post-it (also scotch-taped on in the upper left corner) which reads: "thought these nursery rhymes might come in hand in teaching memory work or just reading to the children." I'm barely keeping my head above water with these children - and the curriculum is so tightly planned that there's not a lot of wiggle room for extra stories - plus their vocabulary is not such that it would include (and my capabilities as a teacher are not such that I would be able to explain) Little Bo-Peep or Little Jack Horner. But how would she know that unless I told her? Life is so strange. How can I possibly be the same person who two months ago was at home spending the day weeding the garden and at Perham Crazy Daze with you, who two months before was consumed with worry about a dog bite, who four years before that was in still another place with another group of people who were equally as disconnected from my life before and after?
I want so much to understand you... I know there's something important that I'm missing from our relationship, that I haven't learned that I should. At grandpa's funeral, and afterwards, the comments were about what a "gentle," "kind" man he was. And he was. He was humble and worked so hard.
Here, many people have shrines in their homes. The shrines are focused on Buddha, but most also have with large black and white photographs of deceased relatives suspended from near the ceiling near the shrine to honor that person. They present flowers and their relatives' favorite foods on this shrine. On the first day of autumn, many families come together and go to the cemetery to give an offering to their relatives. I was walking by the gas station on a busy street here on September 23, and there was a small shrine on the curb with a bottle of green tea and a coffee mug. Strange, I didn't think of you, even though I should have.
O'Doules in the downstairs refrigerator and the time I was 9 or 10 or 11 or 12 and I told Donna to "Wait just a god-damned minute" (copying my dad and thinking that grandpa would be pleased) and instead got yelled at and him always claiming the purple Easter egg and me getting so mad that he thought Alissa and I were childish enough that "the girls" would be jumping on the bed when we broke the upstairs bed when we were 13 or 14 and the gumdrops he bought for me right before I flew back to Oregon for the first time.
"Good night shirt."
The moment in a radio story about a 103-year-old woman when she tries to offer her Meals on Wheels lunch to the person who's interviewing her. I wrote about my grandmother once, right after she died, for a college essays class. There's still so much I want to say about that - so much. It was the first time anyone important to me had died, and it was near the end of college, when I was struggling with the less-than-amiable end of some significant friendships, and questions about what I would do with my life, and where I would go and if I would make it in this great big world, doing what I wanted to do and continuing to grow in the way I wanted to grow. I remember picking up Donna and eating at Taco Bell on the day of the wake, and driving up to Fargo and the hospital on the day she died. It was icy and I listened to "Talk of the Nation" on the radio, and I didn't really take it seriously that this could be the end. I've led a kind of charmed existence - nothing truly bad ever seems to happen, people heal and life goes on. That day, I walked into the hospital room, and she said "Hi, Kath" through an oxygen mask. It was such a shock to see her there like that, voice muffled from the plastic triangle covering her mouth that I didn't say anything. I think that's one of the worst things I've done in my life. It's one of the things I regret most anyway. It was the last thing I ever heard her say. At the funeral, I remember, people, everyone, came up to say what a generous, kind woman she was. She never missed church, she was so good with the children, she was always smiling and didn't let anything slow her down. Over and over I thought about how these things the defined her were not who I was. Outgoing, friendly: these were not me, and for the first time it occured to me that my life was different than my grandmothers' and grandfather's not because I was neccessarily smarter or more ambitious or more talented. I went to college, I got to go to Europe, not because of some innate ability of mine, but sheerly by virtue of me being born at the time I was - and I got to do to these things not in spite of them, but because of them. Some people who seem to have so much less in life, but still seem to be so much more gracious and giving and thankful and conscious of life and other people. Jay crying the last time I saw him - in front the post office. Looking up at me from his "Kidd" minivan with those orange earplugs on the dash and reciting some poetry that he wrote that, even as he was saying it I couldn't pay attention to and was feeling guilty about not paying attention to it.
"I don't want to die, I want to stay here."
There is something that is so missing from my life. Some sense of peace and balance and trust and knowledge of who I am and what's important to me and a sense that those things are worthwhile because they are important to be and how an individual relates to the rest of the world - things that seem so natural to you - second nature. I doubt if you ever wrote a sentence like this in your life, wondering about how you related to the world. "That's silly," you'd say, a waste of time for people who don't have real work to do. But I also know I'm being naive... of course you've thought about that, everyone thinks about their place in the world and if they're spending their life in the best way. Especially since you were relatively old when you got married. I wonder how much of that story is true. About grandpa going for a walk past your house, and you sitting on the porch. You said once that it was your last chance to get married, but you were teasingly cruel like that to grandpa sometimes. And you wore the pink engagement ring at the wake, and cut your wedding photo in half so it would just be him, and not you, on the photo on display on the heater in the front entrance.
I got a package in the mail from my grandmother today - such a happy surprise, sticking out of the mail slot in my door when I came home. (The mail usually comes between 11 a.m. and noon, so I get it before I go to work, and today to walk up the stairs and have something sticking out of the slot - something which is not a massly-distributed flier - was so good.) Inside a red and white checked dish towel and two books: a paperback of "The Day Before Tomorrow" (on which the poorly executed film of the same name is based) and "Memories of Childhood," which I was initially really excited about when I saw the title because I thought it was something she had wrote in with her memories of childhood (when I was home this summer, we talked a lot about the past. I wrote down some, and, unfortunately, I know I forgot a lot), but it's a book of nursery rhymes and the like. A hardcover book with a pink cover and an illustration of a group of Victorian-age folk holding hands in a circle and dancing. The illustration is covered by a pale yellow post-it (also scotch-taped on in the upper left corner) which reads: "thought these nursery rhymes might come in hand in teaching memory work or just reading to the children." I'm barely keeping my head above water with these children - and the curriculum is so tightly planned that there's not a lot of wiggle room for extra stories - plus their vocabulary is not such that it would include (and my capabilities as a teacher are not such that I would be able to explain) Little Bo-Peep or Little Jack Horner. But how would she know that unless I told her? Life is so strange. How can I possibly be the same person who two months ago was at home spending the day weeding the garden and at Perham Crazy Daze with you, who two months before was consumed with worry about a dog bite, who four years before that was in still another place with another group of people who were equally as disconnected from my life before and after?
I want so much to understand you... I know there's something important that I'm missing from our relationship, that I haven't learned that I should. At grandpa's funeral, and afterwards, the comments were about what a "gentle," "kind" man he was. And he was. He was humble and worked so hard.
Here, many people have shrines in their homes. The shrines are focused on Buddha, but most also have with large black and white photographs of deceased relatives suspended from near the ceiling near the shrine to honor that person. They present flowers and their relatives' favorite foods on this shrine. On the first day of autumn, many families come together and go to the cemetery to give an offering to their relatives. I was walking by the gas station on a busy street here on September 23, and there was a small shrine on the curb with a bottle of green tea and a coffee mug. Strange, I didn't think of you, even though I should have.
O'Doules in the downstairs refrigerator and the time I was 9 or 10 or 11 or 12 and I told Donna to "Wait just a god-damned minute" (copying my dad and thinking that grandpa would be pleased) and instead got yelled at and him always claiming the purple Easter egg and me getting so mad that he thought Alissa and I were childish enough that "the girls" would be jumping on the bed when we broke the upstairs bed when we were 13 or 14 and the gumdrops he bought for me right before I flew back to Oregon for the first time.
posted by kathy at 10:40 PM
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