The Adventurers (Part 1)

How I came to Dingley Dell - a short story made long with lots of detours. Part 1

A friend asked recently how the Fearless Leader of Kreskestan wound up spending weeks in a not-quite-dilapidated summer camp in remote Vermont. 

The short version is: it's my husband's family place.

The long version is far more interesting. It starts in 1914, when 28 year old Marion Weller, originally from Liverpool, England, and recently graduated from the New York Hospital Nursing School, was invited to spend a week canoeing with her classmates around the Thousand Islands region of Ontario, Canada. There she met a tall, dark, and handsome fellow named Francis. (to be continued...)

The Fragility of Family

It was growing dark when the phone finally rang. I had done my chores by then, and my homework, and taken advantage of unexpected alone time to sneak episodes of both The Electric Company and 3-2-1 Contact. But as the clock ticked past six thirty, my sense of freedom dissolved into unease.

“Yanna? It’s Charlie.”

I expected my mother. Maybe my aunt Candy. Not the shop pressman. 

“Your mom has been in an accident. I’m on my way.”

Charlie hung up. The shop was 40 minutes away. Charlie lived in town, 20 minutes in the other direction. I didn’t know which he was coming from. I watched as shadows moved down the walls. The wicker lampshade over the dining table threw monstrous shadows into the corners, like grasping trees in a dark fairy tale. Our usually cozy condo was silent. My legs dangled uncomfortably from the wooden chair, so I tucked them under me. 

Charlie’s arrival prompted a flurry of activity. He blurted out what little he knew -- the accident had happened early that morning, mom was at the Philpott’s, Candy was with her -- while his wife collected my toothbrush and a clean pair of undies and helped me into my parka. He shut the door behind us as I clambered up into their giant red pickup. New. Mom and Candy had speculated about how he could afford a new pickup on his salary. I didn’t trust Charlie, with his thick mustache. His wife was nice, though, and from my spot in the middle of the bench seat I leaned my head against her arm as we drove the dark two-lane highway toward Aspen. Charlie chattered. I imagined our little red Volkswagen Beetle, Brutus, crushed. I didn’t dare imagine what had happened to my mother. 

Suzanne Philpott, family friend and my bonus grandmother, opened the door to us. The hall light behind her was warm and yellow and her familiar smoky rasp was a comfort. 

“Yanna, your mom is okay. She’s pretty drugged up right now, but they took good care of her at the hospital. She and Candy are in the living room.” Suzanne reached down for my hand, and walked me down the hall.

There were adults scattered through the wide open space. All the lights were on, and the living room glowed with the same warm yellow, which reflected from windows now black with night. My aunt Candy and her friend Suzie were on one couch. Jim Philpott was perched on another. Someone exclaimed too loudly that I was there. My mother wobbled to her feet and looked vaguely around. Jim unfolded himself and took her elbow to steady her.

No Halloween mask has ever matched her face that night. A T-shaped plaster cast gleamed across her eyebrows and down her nose. Both eyes were black, and bloody gauze dangled from both nostrils. She glanced at me and asked, “Yanna?”

It was only a moment. She had been pumped full of narcotics after surgery, and her disorientation was understandable to any adult. But I was only eight and my mama, my one and only, didn’t recognize me. My world slipped sideways as I shuffled toward the monster before me.

“Hi, Beanie!” she exclaimed when I got nearer. Her words slurred, and she wavered, but she reached for me and my world righted. She was too damaged to embrace, but I sat on a blue cross stitched footstool next to her knees and ate supper at the coffee table while Suzie told the story of seeing my mother, face split open and bleeding, in the hallway at the hospital waiting for a surgeon. My mom groggily described taking off the shoulder strap to adjust the car radio, and rear-ending a pickup truck. Of her face bursting apart “like a tomato” from impact with the steering wheel. She didn’t remember much else.

Not long afterward Suzanne escorted us both to the guest room. My mother succumbed quickly to the exhaustion of trauma and drugs. I lay awake. Light from the hallway shone on the print of Picasso’s Bouquet of Peace above my bed. I listened desperately to each of my mother’s ragged breaths, for the first time completely aware of the fragility of our little family.

Parole

I spent yesterday morning in a dingy beige government facility, waiting with a friend, E, for his parole hearing. He has been in a halfway house for a year; we won’t know for a day or two if he will be released. If not, he expects it will be many months before he gets another hearing.

E’s isn’t my story to tell, but some parts of our friendship are. We met through one of DH’s laborers, himself a halfway house resident. By the time we met E, the crew had solidified, becoming as much family as employees. They joined us for supper many nights, grateful to avoid eating institutional slop. We traded stories. Our “white picket fence” existence was a source of amused bafflement to them – mom, dad, two kids, dog, sit-down supper every night. Even our food was different. Friend M was shocked when I told him the vegetable he had just enjoyed was broccoli. “I didn’t know broccoli could taste good!” We were as foreign to their experience as someone from an exotic country. Their histories were peppered with abuse and drug use and family cobbled together from whoever stuck around. 

E joined us for supper a few times. He was quiet in the midst of our laughter, and gentle. My children adored him. He was struggling a bit, we were told. No safe place to stay. Any place affordable enough for a con was full of drugs and hookers. Temptation. We helped a little, buying his tools when he needed cash, letting him crash on our floor for a few days, but he slipped, and was sent back to prison. 

We corresponded. E wrote every couple of weeks, signing off each time with gratitude for our continuing friendship. My letters were intermittent, full of cards and drawings by the children. Some were rejected by censors. No stamps, I learned. No colored paper. Rectangular letters only. Books or magazines had to be new and sent directly from approved booksellers. The prison system is a joyless place and privatization has monetized any attempts at kindness.

After six years E earned release to the halfway house. He credits me, our family, with some of his success. I am embarrassed. I have offered nothing exceptional. We are friends. He joins us for supper. His gratitude for the simplest of gestures – food, help understanding health insurance documents, a ten-minute ride so he doesn’t have to spend an hour and a half on the bus – humbles me with awareness of my riches. I have grown up in an abundance of comfort and love.  I have money, and education, and opportunity. My life is full of blessings – one of which is his friendship. We talk, sometimes, about his childhood, or prison, or the other men in the halfway house. He is wise, and shares insights about poverty and class. He takes the shine off my privileged perspective, laughing and laughing when I am sympathetic. I’m told it boils down to stupidity and bad choices. That there are no excuses – not abuse or bad upbringing or rotten circumstances. I excuse his bad decisions anyway. He’s in a different place now, I remind him. A better one.

Which is why we spent more than three hours waiting in that nondescript building, subject to a bureaucracy careless with our time. I was there to support his plea to the state that they grant him parole. Not freedom. My glancing acquaintance with the criminal justice system has shown me that people who have run through that grinder are never free. Even after the ankle bracelets are removed and the weekly parole meetings are ended and regularly peeing in a cup is no longer a condition of their release, “criminals” carry the weight of public perception. Housing, employment, even relationships are tainted with distrust and disgust. 

That was clear in E’s interview with a parole board member. He spoke to E the way I speak to my children. “What were you thinking?” Subtext: be ashamed, be sorrowful, repent. “How can I trust that you will never do it again?” Subtext: you cannot make good choices, you are not trustworthy, the public is not safe. We sat, hands on our laps, as E was subtly chastised. In time I was allowed to speak my support, promising that E has good (read: stable middle class white) friends on his side. We are hoping my good fortune can be leveraged on his behalf. E is grateful. I am, too. It’s nice to have done something actually worth his gratitude.

Absentee

In my first memory of my father, we are assembling a two-wheel bicycle together. I must have been six or seven, and he'd come to visit for the first time. I was blessedly oblivious of the grown-up politics of divorce, and took to heart the promise he made to come back and remove the training wheels when I was ready. He never did.

I'm sure there was more contact somewhere in there, but my next memory is of crossing a frozen parking lot from my mother's car to his -- like a prisoner in an exchange between countries -- when I went to stay with him for the first time. I played video games (Donkey Kong) for the first time in my life.

On the third -- and final -- visit that I remember, his wife and I baked an apple pie for his birthday. I met a half-sister whose existence was previously unknown to me, got my period, and wound up in a fight with him.

Needless to say, Father's Day held little meaning for me for many years. I didn't mourn the absence of a father because I never had one.

Two marriages changed that: my mother's, and my own. 

The man my mother married has become a father to me. He is constant and kind. He is loving, and forgiving. He sends me cards when I am blue and offers gentle guidance when I feel lost. Sometimes, now, I get flashes of jealousy for people who grew up with a father. The feeling passes quickly, but is a reminder of just how fortunate I am now.

For my husband, fatherhood is a challenge. I believe he was abused, although the family mythos is that the boys "deserved" the treatment they got. He told me once, "I don't want to be like my dad." He isn't, although it's a struggle. We work hard to find a path together, and don't always succeed. Still, he loves our children with depth and desperation, and they know it. He is great for wrestling and board games. He is instilling in them a tremendous work ethic. The kids are unaware of how much knowledge they have absorbed from his lectures, but I hear and see it in their school lessons. He tries, over and over and over again to give them what he never had -- support and unconditional love and an awareness of just how very proud he is of their efforts and accomplishments.

I know now what I never had, and am grateful for what I do have: a man who has become my dad, and the man who fights every day to be a good father to our children. 

Bacon and Eggs

Spring is here. The year is winding down. Teachers (and students) are counting how many days we have left before summer break. There's a hopeful listlessness spreading through the school, a strange slow energy of distraction and indifference. Parents feel it, too. Tardiness and absence rates are rising. The sense of purpose that characterized the fall is slipping away as we look forward to next year.

I have felt it this month as well. Instead of getting up to run and make lunches and feed the family I sit on the side of my bed and brush my hair slowly, wilfully ignoring the news broadcast on the radio. The children eat bowls of cereal before I come downstairs and pack vaguely balanced lunches that they don't let me inspect. Our morning routine has evaporated.

All week students have been coming to the office complaining of stomachaches, of being tired, of headaches. An outbreak of strep? Perhaps springtime allergies. I give them water, have them rest for ten minutes, tell them to come back after lunch. They don't. Finally I made the connection and started asking the most important question: did you have breakfast?

No, they said. Didn't have time. I'm learning that lack of time is code for mom's working two jobs or we don't have money for gas or I sleep in the living room and the TV keeps me awake. Spring seems to be a time of transition. Of leaving one crowded home for another. Seeking new. Seeking better. Upsetting the routines and patterns which offered a semblance of stability.

The school offers breakfast free to all students, but when it's a necessity it becomes a point of pride not to go. The hunger doesn't subside, though. So they come to the office. We add ten minutes to the tardy slip and order them to the cafeteria, for which they are secretly grateful. We whisper in the teacher's ear that he didn't have breakfast, and she will slip him a snack mid-morning. In the office we hand out granola bars to tide them over until lunch. We do our best to close the gaps.

I dispense snacks and think about my own lapse. Most every day this year I cooked bacon and scrambled eggs and buttered toast. My family ate together before bustling out to school with no worries other than remembering to bring our lunch boxes. My children and husband are unaware of how blessed we are. As for me, I think I'll get up and prepare breakfast tomorrow. 

Appelation

From a prompt on G+: Your name. Where did it come from? What was it like to live with your name? Would you change it if you could? If so, what would change it to and why?

I always interrupted the teacher during the first roll call of the year. It was easier than having her first stumble over my given name and then, desperately, switch to the last name as if it might be an escape. “Ilyanna” I would say. “Just call me Yanna”.

It was an odd duck name. But that was okay – I was an odd duck. Still am, really. Back then, though, my name really stood out. I grew up in a small rural town in the mountains, mostly white folks. Some were well-educated, but it was a working-class town with an industrial heart. I studied alongside the kids of ranchers and miners, and for all my family’s pedigree my mother owned a small blue-collar business, too. Which is why my name seemed so very exotic, even when shortened.

I’ve travelled a fair bit since then: all over Western and Eastern Europe, down into Mexico, Russia (well, back then it was the Soviet Union) and even northern Africa. When I’m travelling I use my full name. I roll it out, playing with the consonants, exaggerating the vowels, making it fit the accent of my current locale. My name is a geographic chameleon, similar to a local name everywhere I go. If I say it right folks think that even if I’m not native I’m still somehow related.

I didn’t always love my name. My mother balanced the odd and the pedestrian, and for a short time I tried on my mundane middle name. It didn’t fit. By then I’d begun to believe that people grow into their names. Small names, like Bob, are reassuring, but don’t have long horizons. Syllables are challenges for children to overcome, stories to build. I’ve found that an unusual name is a delightful key with which I can unlock a personal conversation with a stranger or identify a fellow traveler.

More than once I’ve broken the ice with a joke about having a difficult name. With that laugh I can set people at ease. And I always have a story ready to hand. “My name?” I respond. “My folks had a deal. Dad got to name a girl, Mom got to name a boy. Dad won – thank goodness! I don’t think I’d be a good Jason.” That’s never the end, though. “Dad told us that he grew up next door to an Ilyanna. He’s gone now, and his family says they’d never heard the name before me. It’s a mystery.”

It was a delicious mystery to a weird child in a small town. I learned that there was a Princess Ileana of Romania, and late at night I would stare at the moon and imagine I was a princess. Even today I carry that association of nobility with me. My friends and family call me Yanna, but when first meeting someone I stand tall and give them my full name. It’s who I am.

The Lines

On the day I was born

My mother defied the doctors

refusing sleep

instead cherishing the pain

that brought me.

On the day I was born

my father took photos

beautiful silver prints

Then left to

celebrate alone.

That day the lines were drawn.

I was hers.

The bottle was his.

(written in response to a poetry prompt on G+)

Telephone

I left home eager for

the taste of new skies.

My mother waved me off

with a kite

and a calling card

and a reminder to call on Monday.

I have called my mother

most every Monday night

for many years.

Long black wires stretch

umbilically across the land,

calling her voice

to me.

Some days I wake, eager to place

handset to ear

to hear the familiar pattern

of her words.

I have used the calling card so many times

my fingers dial it without thought.

Sometimes, when I try to remember the sequence

I have to hang up – I'm lost

but when I am desperate, 
panicky for reassurance

my hand flies

and it rings

and I shudder into the line

shivering thousands of miles

soaring into the night sky

plunging under the snow drifts,

my fears turned copper and steel

until she resurrects me

with a simple hello.

There have been days

when I have left notes for myself

reminding

“call mom”

“don't forget”

“you know she worries”

but still time slides by
When I do call she is regretful

for the week we have lost.

There are days when I can't wait

I must share

my newest crush

or devastation.

and I pour myself

into the cradle

mouthpiece to earpiece.

Some Mondays

our conversation is empty

with weather and work.

She writes lists of things

I must know

and I stack reminders

by the phone.

Some weeks the pile is higher when I hang up.

Our good-byes are long with miles

of regret

and last minute memories

of things we need to share

Every Monday

for twenty years

plus some.

how many days in between 

have I lost?

So It Begins

Miss Awesome and I had a fight this morning. It was stupid, supposedly about her refusal to help empty the dishwasher but really about the tantrums she throws in an effort to get out of doing things she doesn't want to do. I sent both of us to our rooms to calm down, but not until after I'd gotten big and loud and maybe a little mean.

I angrily folded laundry for a while, and when my tears stopped and I could think straight again, I knocked on her door. I found her crouched over her Halloween stash, tearfully stuffing candy in her face. I took the sweets away, told her to apologize to her brother, and drifted back to my room. I was appalled that at age seven my daughter already is eating to deal with her emotions.

After another little while I returned to her room, lay down on the bed and held her. I told her I always love her. I apologized for being mean, but explained that she is part of the family and as such she is required to help out, whether or not she likes the task at hand. She apologized, too. We eventually worked our way back to equilibrium. 

When we were safe again, I asked about the candy. "It makes me feel good and helps me stop crying." she explained. I cringed inside, hearing such a simple truth from such a young girl. I know the physiology of it, how the sugar activates feel-good brain centers. How humans are pleasure-seeking animals. How this is natural and instinctive. I also know how devastating such a habit can be over the course of a lifetime. 

Until now I've tried to make food a neutral topic, neither good nor bad but a tool. Like all tools, food can be used well -- providing good nutrients that keep us strong and healthy -- or badly -- not giving us the energy we need and leading to weakness and unhealthiness. I've encouraged the kids to eat balanced meals and allowed sweets in moderation. Knowing that balance occurs over a lifetime, I've had some suppers that were awful nutritionally (but oh, so tasty!) and others that were nothing but vegetables (and just as tasty). Food is never good or bad, and certainly never "fattening". It's just healthy or less healthy. Through it all I've tried not to talk about anyone's appearance in terms of size or shape. I've been quiet about my own self-image and body issues. I make sure to show the kids a variety of body types as beautiful and healthy. I've taken great care to speak positively about my strength and abilities. My recent weight loss has been a private triumph of which the kids have been blessedly oblivious. 

But this morning I broke my self-imposed rule and talked about my weight. I told Miss Awesome that I got fat because I ate when I was sad, instead of addressing the underlying issues. I didn't eat healthy foods, and had too much candy. Over the years my body carried the bad decisions I made. I explained that it's better to cry all her tears out, take a breath, and deal with whatever made her sad. That food is not the answer. I admitted that sometimes I go into the bathroom and cry until I'm done, and then I can talk about whatever is upsetting me. I told her it took me a lifetime to learn, but candy is a treat, not a treatment.

Our conversation slowly meandered away from candy and eating, and after more cuddles we moved on to other activities. Violet reclaimed her candy with a promise not to eat too much, and I took that at face value. In the end I can only advise, not control. Still, I worry that she will follow me down the sedentary path, swallowing her sorrows, afraid to face her feelings. Like all parents I wish only the best for my child. Strange that a good cry and an empty belly are on that list.

Jam Don't Shake Like That

The alchemy of jelly is deceptively simple: combine nearly equal parts fruit and sugar, add pectin, heat, and put the hot syrup in jars. Days, sometimes weeks, later it will set into a sweet treat. If it fails to gel, which it sometimes does, the cook can boil again; if not, the liquid still can be used as a topping on pancakes.

At holiday get-togethers and after Christmas dinner this year I will casually hand out jars of spiced grape jelly, cherry jam, apple butter, mountain currant jelly, and fig confiture with honey, lemon, and thyme. Most will be eaten just as casually. Some jars will sit on pantry shelves for years. In rare cases a friend will return an empty jar, holding it like a chalice and asking for more of the same. No matter which scenario plays out, making and giving these goods is a ritual that brings me great pleasure.

My first jelly was Mamoo's spiced grape. The recipe came from my great-grandmother, and I copied it by hand from my grandmother's hand-written copy. My grandmother must have learned from her mother-in-law. I like to imagine the two of them forging a friendship over a sticky sweet boiling pot in a hot summer kitchen. My grandmother taught my mother, who then passed the knowledge to me. I don't remember learning, although I do remember my mother's warnings as she melted paraffin on the gas stove - the wax could ignite and engulf the kitchen in flames. She would pour a thin layer on top to seal each jar, and months later I would pry them open, then chew the grape-flavored wax. Today I use a boiling water bath to preserve, but the rest is mostly the same. I've now made spiced grape so many times I can do it mostly from memory, although I occasionally review the original recipe in case I'm missing anything. I usually am, but my variations have made it my own, so I don't go back. Like language, recipes evolve through the generations.

I can make spiced grape any time because the primary ingredient is store-bought juice. Fresh fruit, however, dictates its own schedule. This year I discovered that my uncle had a cherry tree with a good crop, and I was given permission to pick both his tree and the neighbor's.  Montmorency cherries are a rare treat since my mother's tree split along a fault line and was turned into sweet firewood. For many years the last week of July was harvest time, and I would clamber on the low moss-covered fence underneath, or ascend awkwardly placed ladders reaching for the ripest fruit, too tart to eat off the tree but unequalled for pies and jam. My uncle's tree ripened early, in mid-June, so while my children were at camp I spent a week's worth of mornings circling the tree. Looking up through the trees the sun was so bright that the fruit was translucent, glowing red against the deep blue sky. Sticky juice ran down my arms to my elbows and squirrels chittered at me from a nearby tree while robins scolded from another. There were so many that even after taking more than two gallons the tree looked as if I hadn't touched it. At home I commenced preparing the fruit. I washed and pitted and chopped, boiled and canned. After three days I had twelve jars of jam, and two pies in the freezer. My house smelled of sugar and cherries for days.

Apples ripen later, in September and October. I get mine through a school fundraiser, so the spicy scent of apple butter has become synonymous with the start of school. Apple butter is an exercise in patience. Forty pounds of apples take a while to prepare - washing, peeling, coring, chopping. The peels and cores go into the mix, too, for their pectin, but they are contained in a muslin bag to be removed later. When ready the apples are set to simmer over low heat for days, until they break down just enough. The scent of the harvest drifts through the house, growing stronger as the hours pass. Falling steam coats the counter with evaporated sugar, and the essence of cinnamon and cloves imbue every meal until the chocolate-colored mixture is pressed through a fine sieve, scooped into jars, and the aroma is sealed in.

The rarest, most precious, jelly comes from the currants that grow at Wellington Lake. The bushes are waist high; the berries smaller than the nail on my pinkie finger. An hour of picking might yield eight ounces of berries, and it takes 16 cups to make one batch of six jars. The arithmetic is daunting. Yet there's a certain satisfaction to the first dry plink of fruit hitting the bottom of a paper cup, then the deepening sound as the cup fills to silence. 

Last weekend I stood on a low hill, dry grasses scratching and tickling my calves as I picked, ducking to discover orange-red berries under tiny green fan-shaped leaves. The breeze came from the south, curving around the shoulders of Castle Mountain and gusting pieces of conversation from the campers across the lake to me. "Don't worry about . . ." "Did you . . .?" Dogs barked and radios sang intermittent love songs to me. It was comforting. This sun lowered itself as I hunted for fruit, and my fingers became increasingly sticky with the piney cologne of currant resin. I remembered walking the dusty road with my mother and grandmother, each with our own collecting cup, remarking on good bushes and chatting amiably as we worked them over, or relaxing into companionable silence, moving individually to the next spot. Other days we slipped down the rough gravel of the dam, looking for disturbed earth where raspberries grow best. When we found a patch we would wind our arms between thorns to find tiny magenta thimbles that fell into our hands. Ostensibly for mixed wild berry jelly, my raspberries usually were a snack instead. Entire afternoons slid by as we attained a meditative state of grace, the reward a full measuring cup in the refrigerator and the knowledge that this year we would have jelly.

This is a good year for currants, and my children helped with the harvest. S, as usual, chattered away. Miss Awesome -- like three generations of women before her -- focused on picking. During the week I left them at the cabin with their grandmother while I returned to the city for two days to work. When I returned there were quarts of currants in bags in the refrigerator. My mother should be able to make two batches this year.

The alchemy of jelly is deceptively simple: combine the fruits of my labor with generations of tradition, flavor with love, and share.

Thoughts of Mortality and Farewell

Having just returned from a follow-up (and blessedly clean) mammogram, I am pensive this morning with thoughts of mortality and farewell. Three women in my family died last year. The turning of the calendar allows me to distance myself from that fact, as if the new year is distinct and free of the losses of the summer and fall. My sadness, however, stretches across the months and I find it difficult to approach my memories for fear they will overwhelm me.

Perhaps now, finally, I can write out the shards of goodbyes that have been sticking in my heart.

Jan died first. It wasn't unexpected -- she had been anticipating it for a long time, and from a distance her absence wasn't so noticeable.

Will and I visited Jan twice in her grotto in Connecticut. She was invariably cheerful and did her best to host us, although our little family unit is tremendously independent. The noise and suddenness of our young children alarmed her; at the same time it recalled for her the times she was called upon to help her oldest sister with childcare. She took such great pride in helping raise her nieces and nephews, and in all the descendants! Our cards and photos were arranged with care along the shelves of her tiny house, layered in front of one another so they became three-dimensional records of our aging. During our visits I didn't listen enough. I was distracted by the green of the trees and Jan's nervousness regarding my flighty children, so I have scant knowledge of the facts of her life. Instead I have impressions of determination and endless curiosity, of a liberated woman long before that was fashionable, of a life filled with celebrations in New York City, and peaceful times in Connecticut. And I have memories of her with each of my children: tentatively holding Violet, the first in the extended family to do so, and barely having time to embrace Sam, who was vibrating with excitement to go run around and explore that fantastical place. I am grateful for those memories, and saddened by the photos I never bothered to send because I was "too busy", although I know she would have been delighted.

Barb went next. I could say it was complications from a stroke, but really she was tired and the kind of lonely that comes from witnessing too many loved ones pass away.

I knew Barb only as a Grand Dame, rising from the death of two of her sisters to steer our large family in the stewardship of the Bane cabin. Family lore speaks of her mother holding court each Sunday with supper for four daughters, their assorted spouses, and eventually their children. I love the photos of Manna with her family arrayed around her in their Sunday best, cousins becoming nearly as close as siblings. That role fell to Barb late in life, long after the cousins and then second cousins had built separate traditions. Her presence still bound us, if only out of respect. Barb and I both had left Colorado - she to California, I for the East coast - so our relationship was truncated by geography. Yet she remembered my birthday each year with a card, and -- after we each returned to Denver -- with a brief phone call. Only now that I have a perpetually full calendar and often miss dates important to others do I appreciate the thoughtfulness of such gestures.

Finally bright Robin flew away too soon. What started as a surprising shortness of breath revealed itself as lung cancer that gave her a terribly short time to say goodbye.

Robin was on the other side of the family, far away, and I saw her only a few times. My strongest memory of her was a visit when I was tiny -- six, perhaps? My mother was forced by circumstance into a man's world, owning her own printing business and struggling alone to raise a child, which left little room for fashion and frills. Robin visited us, bringing her delightful California style, tall and lean and blond and girly in ways I'd never seen before, and she shared that with me, taking my little hands and painting my nails. I don't think I'd ever felt so glamorous. I doubt I even breathed for her whole visit, I was so awed.

Each of these remarkable women gave me, us, a final gift with their deaths -- they died the way they wanted to. Jan stayed in her home, conceding the need for assistance at the end, but never allowing the help to make her truly dependent. Barb chose her own way, seeing the consequences of failing health and instead setting a date, saying goodbye, and letting go when and how she wanted. And Robin celebrated to the end, adventuring and throwing parties and smiling that marvelous California smile.

I feel unworthy of my grief. To be honest I didn't know any of them particularly well, so my tears are more for myself than for them or the people most affected by their loss. Nonetheless, I want them back. Even knowing that I probably wouldn't pay any more attention to them resurrected than I did before, I feel that I am no longer whole without each one. My family, my life, is diminished without them.

Chubby fingers and long legs

Tonight you chuckled as you plopped -- wet from the tub -- into my lap, pretending to shiver so I would wrap you tightly in your bright pink towel and hug you until your damp hair soaked my shoulder. I spoke quietly in your ear, using an intimate voice because we were so close, and you told me fantastic ideas I only half-heard through the breathless squeezing of love that sometimes overtakes me. You took the nail clippers from me, arguing that you should trim your own nails; I allowed it reluctantly, suddenly protective of your not-so-tiny-anymore hands, grimacing as you nearly cut yourself (not unlike what I did several years ago, though the scar is on my heart instead of your hand). As you concentrated, I marveled at the perfection of your chubby fingers, so smooth and ever more proportionate, the nails traced with crimson from a lacquer swiped off as quickly as you apply it. You still haven't learned the particular leverage of a nail clipper, so I finally took control again, wishing we had more time but aware of the clock marking bedtime. When I finished you swirled away, the towel a royal cloack soon replaced by mis-matched pajamas, and I called your brother, assembly-line style, to the bathroom to bathe.

And you, you came upstairs talking ceaselessly about your game, so intent that my listening was inconsequential. You kept turning to the wrong room out of distraction, and I tugged you back with verbal nudges and gentle pushes until you had stripped, baring long muscles and a smooth belly; you mesmerize me with your unconscious Greek perfection. I had, again, to remind you to remove your dirty socks -- you kept talking all the while until you settled into the hot water and slowed, waiting for me to wash your hair, to a pace I could match. After rinsing I stepped out, trying to respect your privacy but relishing the openness of your innocence. Later, when I returned with a towel you rushed to me and I sat, wrapping you in a hug and expecting a cuddle like so many times before, but you threw your head back and laughed with your jack-o-lantern smile and exclaimed "I tooted!" before wriggling away to put on jammies and begin another story about your game. I perched on the edge of the tub wondering where my sweet boy had gone, knowing full well that you never did sit for long. Finally you slowed again, long enough for a quick kiss and an awkward hug before climbing into your loft where I could faintly hear you telling your stuffed friends the same things that had washed over me minutes before.

Putting on a different hat

I went out for coffee tonight with my friend Leslie. She's a musician, and is taking a break from her day job to immerse herself in her passion. She was gracious enough to approach me as a creative person rather than the pragmatic mother-of-two personality I usually wear, and it was delightful to stretch my imagination. The walls of the coffeehouse were hung with bright, intriguing paintings, and L suggested we write responses to two of them. It was such a different activity for me. Recently I have silently mourned the loss of creativity in my life, fearing that it was dead, but I am reassured tonight that I suffer only atrophy and not true death. I get caught up in the cut-and-paste crafting of early childhood; I must reach beyond that and allow myself to play. Hopefully that will revive a part of me I thought lost. In the meantime, perhaps I can find a more interesting use for popsicle sticks and yarn fragments. We'll see.

A sacred time

This time of year is sacred to me, and not just because of my birthday. Like many others I appreciate the inward turning of the autumn, bringing our lives inside from the yard, and spending more quiet time together. I know many people are looking forward now to the holidays, especially Christmas, and I, too, enjoy the gaiety of family get-togethers and sharing presents. But Thanksgiving in particular is sacred to me specifically (or, as Sam more appropriately says, pacifically) because it is a secular holiday about only one thing -- gratitude. No giving or getting, no agendas. Simple, sweet gratitude. Counting my blessings, which are so abundant I can't contemplate them without tears of humility.

This year our family lost three wonderful women. I haven't written here in months because I can't put my feelings of loss and diminishment into words. But this week, I have felt them, and others, near, and today I am grateful for the chance I had to meet them. Today I celebrate the wonderful women who made my family with its long branches and strong roots and astonishing intertwining friendships, and I am grateful.