Primal Fear

There I was, perched at a perilous height, with the deafening roar of a tractor coming straight at me, and the barn collapsing before my eyes. It was so loud, I couldn’t even hear myself screaming. The sheer terror of the moment is the only thing I remember with certainty. The rest of the story has been fleshed out with time and retelling. My family insists that I am wrong, that I misunderstood, that it couldn’t have happened this way. “Don’t you see?” they would say. “The barn is still standing.” That may be. Still, however factually implausible my narrative is, it is emotionally true and counts as my first recorded memory. I might have been three, still small enough that when I walked with a grownup and held their hand, my arm was up in the air. My parents, my older brother and I were spending a few days with my Aunt Josephine and her husband Clyde on their ranch in Cottonwood, Idaho. The term “ranch” is used advisedly, for their spread was little more than a few hard scrabble acres of arable land devoted to alfalfa, in an arid mountainous region dominated by Cottonwood and White Pine. Still Clyde, lanky and slightly bow-legged, was a cowboy and not a farmer, so it follows that his place was a ranch and not a farm. Adults may not realize that an unintended consequence of children “being seen and not heard” is that children do a lot of listening, accompanied by their own unfettered and unfiltered interpretation. This practice was, in truth, the source of my undoing. Among the many snippets of conversation overheard during the few days of our visit, which surely included such benign topics as remaking a winter coat or the recipe for tomato soup cake, was the mention of pushing over the barn. It is at this juncture that my family takes issue with my memory. They claim there never was any such discussion. Be that as it may. By anyone’s standard, barns are large structures, and barns remembered from childhood are immense. Uncle Clyde’s barn was two stories high, grayed with exposure, with a door on the second story into the hay loft and a ground level sliding door, wide enough to accommodate a truck or tractor. A circular corral made of peeled poles was attached to the barn, which was entered through a wide gate. That day I had accompanied the men out to the corral, very possibly without an invitation. I don’t know what project they had in mind that morning, but it is safe to assume it was unsuitable for a three year old. As a consequence, someone set me up on the fence, to keep me out of harm’s way. The picture I call to mind is taken from a long way off, peering across the corral. I am perched high up in the air, on the gate post. No doubt, the height of my perch is greatly exaggerated, but relative to my own height, it is stratospheric! I imagine that I liked it at first - heights have never been a problem for me. Soon, however, I realize that I am alone. The men along with my brother had all wandered off. Somewhere out of sight I hear the explosive sound of a tractor starting. The noise increases as the machine rounds the corner of the barn, heading in my direction. In that moment, the raucous presence of the tractor coalesces with my belief that the barn is about to be pushed over. There I am, unable to get down or be heard over the noise of the tractor. Panic ensues. But that is where it ends. The barn didn’t collapse. Someone rescued me from the post. For most of my life I assumed that the source of my terror was the imminent collapse of the barn accompanied by the deafening noise of the tractor. Upon reflection, I suspect that there may have been a more primal fear at work – the fear of being forgotten. I had been placed on the fence post for my protection, but had subsequently been forgotten, like a ring placed on a window sill over the sink for safe keeping and never returned for. Surely this is a universal fear? Years later when I was late to pick up my own daughter, I explained that I got involved in a project and forgot all about her. “You forgot me?” Her lip quivering, her eyes wide in disbelief. “But, how could you?” How indeed.

My Mother's Daughter

I recently returned from closing up the cabin for the season. It will be at least seven months before I get back there, and the leave taking is always bittersweet. On the one hand I like thinking that I have tidied things up and tucked the place in for the winter; on the other hand, closing up the cabin also means saying good-bye to my parents. In truth, mom and dad passed away nearly twenty years ago, yet at the cabin, they live on.

My parents acquired this cabin, located in a small mill town in the Idaho panhandle, after my brother and I were launched; at least we had both finished college and married and were no longer looking to mom and dad for financial support. The building itself was an old logging camp cook shack, and at the start it only had three rooms. It served as both a vacation spot and a repository for all things from our family’s past. My parents had been storing anything that might be given a second life in their barn for years, so it was no surprise when the kitchen cupboards, the wood stove and the round oak kitchen table that had been resting in the barn since an early remodel, made their way to the cabin.

Let your eyes wander around the few rooms of the cabin and it will become apparent that long before the practice became popular or the word became a household term, my parents were recyclers. Everything from the light fixtures to the rocking chairs, started out as something else. Like many of their generation, the notion to “waste not/want not” was part of their DNA. Living by that edict satisfied their practical interests and simultaneously sparked their creativity.

Early on, mother’s recycling forte was clothing and her knack for renovation grew out of necessity. Her large extended family was populated primarily by aunts and female cousins. According to mother, though none of them were wealthy, most had more “wherewithal” than mother’s immediate family. A visit to or from any of them was accompanied by a variety of hand me downs – coats, sweaters, and the occasional party dress. I don’t know how my aunts felt about it, but mother reveled in the prospect of rummaging through this treasure trove and finding something to make over.

A full length coat with a ragged hem and worn cuffs was shortened to three-quarter length. With the collar and cuffs removed the coat might be trimmed in velvet or plush corduroy and dressed up with new buttons. Once Peter and I arrived, these coats would be made into snow suits. Sometimes mom took the coat apart and turned it inside out before she re-cut it, so the fabric looked like new. If the front of the original coat wasn’t too shabby, she would try to re-cut it in such a way to utilize the existing buttonholes. Failing this, the alternative was to bind new buttonholes by hand with embroidery thread or painstakingly make bound buttonholes. Every photo of me and my brother taken in the winter until we were about ten years old shows us in jackets, pants and little hats our mother made out of material that started life out as something else.

Today, the cabin is home to the original sofa and accompanying chairs bought for their first home in Spokane. They are covered with quilts made out of squares of corduroy each with their own story. The red corduroy comes from my first grade Christmas jumper and the royal blue squares were once part of my junior high cheer leading skirt. The salt and pepper cords that Peter wore throughout grade school are alongside forest green squares from dad’s favorite LLBean shirt.

In large part the cabin is a testament to my parents’ great collaborative relationship. If mom had an idea, dad could give it a form. He made swing rockers from wooden wheel chairs salvaged from the Edgecliff T B sanitarium. Mother was un-phased by raised eye brows and unbridled laughter when she fashioned lamp shades out of yellow foam egg cartons, which, by the way are still in service to this day.

Last summer, when I cleaned out the storage room in the attic of the cabin, I threw out the remainder of the stuff that they had saved for future projects. One bag held remnants of wool and corduroy, some of it cut up and ready to sew into yet another quilt. When I looked into a second bag, I was initially baffled for it appeared to be a collection of plastic bread bags. You may remember the time when only bread came in plastic bags and groceries came home in a paper sack or a cardboard box. In the bottom of the bag, I found the beginning of a crocheted rug, fashioned from strips of the bread bags. I had to laugh as I put them in the trash. “Really mom, this is a stretch even for you!”

Fast forward one year later, and who’s laughing now? Here I am industriously knitting new rugs for the cabin kitchen out of loops I have cut from old T-shirts and connected with a slip knot. I just know they will be the perfect complement to the egg carton lampshades. An added bonus to this project is the fact that the next time Fred looks in his T-shirt drawer and asks me if I have thrown out any of his favorites, for once, I will be able to say no without blinking.

If the T-shirt recycle project goes as well as I think it will, when I open up the cabin next June, I may just cut up the plastic grocery bags that have taken over the broom closet and knit them into – well, who knows what? Placemats? A hammock? You name it. Anything is possible when you are my mother’s daughter! (And perhaps to my own daughter’s dismay, it appears more and more likely that this recycling behavior may in fact be part of our genes!)

Just Deserts

You don’t deserve a friend like Malbec.” I said to Barley as I put him into a “Down/Stay” in the corner of the family room. Malbec had just returned after a month’s hiatus and Barley had welcomed him home with a curled lip and growl, modulated somewhat by the tennis ball and hedgehog in his mouth. We have attempted to temper his predisposition for inhospitable behavior toward other dogs by insisting that Barley sits and waits for Malbec to enter the house or get into the car. At meal time, Barley sits and waits in front of his own food dish until Malbec has been fed. Actually, Barley generally performs these tasks with alacrity, often without prompting, which, to the uninitiated might suggest that he is willing to share the throne or even to take turns. Alas, that would be a false assumption, a fantasy known universally to the mothers’ of naughty boys. If breed were any real indicator of dominance, Malbec, the Rhodesian ridgeback/boxer mix, who is taller and heavier, should be calling the shots for Barley, the runt of his golden retriever litter. No amount of Pavlovian parlor tricks or “down time” is going to alter Barley’s perception of himself as “top dog,” and the rest of us might as well get used to it, as Malbec obviously has.

On this day, while Barley put in his time in “the penalty box” – first looking around and then nodding off in a nap – Malbec inspected the house to insure that I had things arranged to his liking. Malbec likes to have things orderly, or at least he likes a particular order to things. For example, given that he never walks but always dashes, he likes to have a rug between the door and his bed so that he doesn’t slip and slide on the wood floor when making his entrance. “His” water dish must be on the floor in the computer room- he never drinks out of any other dish, though Barley freely helps himself to water wherever he finds it. His secondary bed should be placed between the wing back chair and the TV where he can not only enjoy the warmth of the wood stove but also keep his eye on the squirrels cavorting in the front yard.

Driven in large part by their perceived place in the pack, these two have developed a rather elaborate set of rules that informs their behavior as predictably as any prescribed liturgical practice. When we head down to the beach in the evenings, they engage in a dance with little or no variation. Barley gets the lunker or the float first and runs with it to the gate where he drops it. Malbec picks it up. Barley waits at the gate until one of us arrives to open it. Then Malbec drops it and Barley retrieves it, and then pushes down the stairs in the lead. Once the dogs get to the beach or the bulkhead, if the tide is in, Barley drops the lunker and waits until someone gets down there to throw it in water (as far out as possible, thank you very much!) Except for a narrow window of tunnel vision, Barley is virtually blind, so the lunker we use is a large acid green sausage shape with a rope attached. It floats high up in the water and makes a big splash when it lands. Don’t ask what it costs; the company has quit making them, but with the aid of the folks at The Granary (the local pet store), I have six more in reserve.

Of late, if the dogs perceive that we are dawdling and don’t get to the beach fast enough, Malbec has taken to picking up the lunker, wading out in the water and dropping it for Barley. This new variation of the game was going on by the time Fred and I arrived at the beach on Malbec’s inaugural return visit. Barley staggered around for a few minutes, unable to find it, so Malbec picked it up and dropped it again, this time right in front of Barley, who lunged for it and then ran up onto the beach with it in his mouth, triumphant as any gladiator!

Malbec is anxious by nature and when he first came to stay with us, he was afraid of getting too close to the water. Of course, growing up, as it were, in Albuquerque, his only exposure to water was what was put in his dish. At first he approached the edge of the water tentatively, coming close to the edge and then darting away if it lapped against his feet. Even now, if a boat goes by and leaves a sizeable wake, he will chase the waves down the beach, as if they were prey that he needed to grab by the neck and shake. On his first actual plunge into the water, he resembled a prancing pony, his feet lifted high into the air – as if he thought he might be able to swim without getting his feet wet. Despite this inauspicious beginning, within a few days he hit his stride and is now a very powerful swimmer. He is able to launch his body about ten feet into the water, and then with his head down, pulls strong and steadily on target, frequently reaching the lunker before Barley has figured out exactly where it is. Barley frequently cheats, heading out into the water before it is even thrown, giving him an edge, assuming he gets lucky and swims in the right direction. No matter which dog gets there first and brings it back to shore, Barley brings it across the finish line, as this is part of the sacrosanct ritual they observe. Malbec swims in until he can stand up and then drops it, whereupon Barley swoops in like a feral beast and trots triumphantly up the beach with it in his mouth, head and tail held high.

One day last week when we were down there, the tide was all the way up to the bulkhead, so in order to bring it home, Barley either needed to swim to the end of the bulk head where the steps are located, or climb up over the rocks at the other end. He is an experienced “up climber” so this was not a problem; however, when I launched the lunker from that end of the bulkhead, he was less sure about how to get into the water over the rocks. I encouraged Malbec to “go for it” as he had a sure opportunity of beating Barley to the kill. Meanwhile, Barley frantically tried to find a way to confidently get in the water. No matter how often I encouraged Malbec to “go get it” he held fast – pacing back and forth in front of Barley, as if encouraging him to take the plunge. Finally, that is exactly what Barley did – threw himself off the bulkhead, into the water, and the race was on, with both dogs heading for the target.

“You don’t deserve a friend like Malbec!” I repeated for the umpteenth time as Barley pushed past me on his way up the stairs with the lunker in his mouth. Fortunately for Barley, in Malbec he got the friend he needed instead of the one he deserved. Upon reflection, maybe that is true for all of us—at least I think it is true for me. Like Malbec, my friends are loyal and steadfast, despite my sometimes cavalier behavior. I rarely initiate phone calls and never “drop by.” I am vague about birthdays and anniversaries, congratulating myself if I happen to recall the month or even the “quarter” of the year the event falls in. I’m endowed with broad shoulders that have been called into service more often to move a piano than for comfort or solace. Still, my friends hang in with me. I guess it is about time I quit admonishing Barley and admitted that we are both fortunate to get what we need rather than something else entirely.

A postscript. “Just Deserts” may well seem an odd title for this piece. For starters, the correct spelling is a matter of debate. Google it and you will learn that even though it is pronounced as if it were referring to Black Forrest dark chocolate raspberry torte, it is spelled as if referring to a vast, arid place - think Mojave. The word is an archaic form of “deserve” and the expression, loosely translated, means that the punishment fits the crime. So where, you may reasonably ask, is the “punishment” piece in Malbec’s unfailingly genial treatment of Barley? To get there, you must embrace the notion that the best way to deal with difficult people is to “kill ‘em with kindness.” The efficacy of this philosophy, at least as applied to me and Barley, is open to debate. As far as Barley is concerned, if he is experiencing any twinges of conscience, they don’t appear to be keeping him awake nights—or days either—for that matter.

I'd know you anywhere!

A couple of weekends ago, I attended Central Valley High School’s 50 year reunion, not as someone’s guest but as a member of the class of 1961! It is hard enough for me to believe I might know someone old enough to attend one of these celebrations let alone be one of the celebrants myself. But I did and it was fun and one of the highlights of the evening was a visit with one of our teachers who had graduated from CV about 15 years ahead of us. Del Muse taught physics and chemistry to those of us with the courage to enroll. He continues to educate today by coaching folks studying to take the GED. At our reunion, he could easily have been mistaken for a classmate.

Reunions are a funny business. Our expectations are decidedly mixed. We want to reconnect with friends we may have lost contact with, laugh at some of the antics that occupied our youth, and celebrate the fact that we can still “come to play.” And, if we are entirely honest, the possibility that there will be someone there more out of shape motivates many of us. It’s called the “gloat factor” – its appeal should not be underestimated. While I was in the process of becoming reacquainted with friends I hadn’t seen in many years, it became clear that the person I really needed to get reacquainted with was myself, for as you will see in what follows, I was not the person that others remembered.

There were over 300 in our class and about 125 of us made it to the reunion. A handful were having surgeries and sent their regrets, others simply chose to make themselves scarce, and for another 50 or so, attending regrettably wasn’t an option. Though I have never been a part of the cadre of dedicated folks who track down addresses and organize the reunion, I believe that the internet made locating people considerably easier. Many of us got “re-friended” on Facebook in the course of the past two years. Several classmates who at previous reunions had been listed as "unable to locate" were present, seemingly happy to be found. The award for the person who came the greatest distance went to Jim Dahl who flew in from New Zealand. Another classmate, Gary Kahler, who for the past 25years had been listed as deceased was discovered was found alive and kicking on Facebook and made it to the reunion. Coming back from the dead gets the prize in my book.

In general, I would say that the women fared better than the men, at least as far as appearances go. Of course, in large part that observation can be attributed to the hair migration many men experience, as it leaves the top of their head and relocates in various places on their face. Additionally, women have the benefit of clothing that helps hide some of the ravages visited upon us all by gravity. Women can float around in caftans while such garments for men are generally limited to those who have entered religious orders. Still at fifty years, simply “showing up” trumps appearances every time.

More than one person remarked that I looked “exactly the same” as I did when we graduated. The remark was meant as a compliment and I took it as such, but trust me, I know what I looked like when I graduated and a little alteration wouldn’t have gone amiss. As the reunion wore on, this rather benign bit of flattery took on a decidedly ironic twist.

The reunion kicked off with a cruise on Coeur D’Alene Lake on Friday night. It was a beautiful evening following a day with temperatures in the nineties. The cruise boat had a bar and buffet table on the main floor with rows of tables and chairs, set up cafeteria style. On the top of the boat there was an open deck. I started the evening out upstairs moving from table to table visiting with folks. After about an hour up there, I made my way down to the bar. While I was waiting for my glass of wine, a guy behind me tapped me on the shoulder and said. "Mary Gladhart - you haven’t changed a bit! I’d know you anywhere.” I turned to look at him and obviously he had changed as I was clueless to put a name with face smiling back at me. While I tried to discreetly peek at his name tag, he continued.

“You probably don't realize this, but I have been in love with you since the 6th grade."

“No you haven't." I replied with absolute confidence.

"No it’s true! I used to walk by your place up on 8th and Evergreen, just hoping you would step outside and see me." Bingo. Wrong person.

"Oh, you must mean Melissa Jones. She lived on 8th and Evergreen not me."

"Oh, you're right - it was Melissa.” At this point, the poor fellow had the grace to look embarrassed.

“Is she here?"

I point Melissa out to him; he squints and asks me if I am sure. I am sure and pick up my glass of wine and move along to visit with someone else who, believe or not, launches into a similar routine about his seventh grade crush on me, how he'd know me anywhere, and how I lived just three blocks away from him on – you guessed it - 8th and Evergreen.

"That was Melissa." I told him with a sigh. So much for looking the same. The same as whom? After that, I primarily struck up conversations with women.

The next night was a dinner at the Coeur d’Alene Casino. As I was standing in line to pick up my ticket, I struck up a conversation with Joe Simmons who claimed he remembered beating me in a spelling bee our sophomore year. This was obviously still a source of pride for him so I didn’t have the heart to tell him what a hollow victory that was. I was generally the last person chosen to be on a spelling bee team – never the last man standing. Besides, I was pretty sure he had me mixed up with someone else. For all I knew Melissa might have been a champion speller along with a world class heart throb. I was getting a little nervous about then; afraid the Joe might ask me to spell the word I missed, just to prove a point, when he said something even more startling.

“You were first in our class, weren’t you?” Hastily I looked around, hoping that none of the really smart kids were standing close enough to hear this and then assured him that I wasn’t even in the running.

“Well, if you weren’t – who was?”

“Beats me.” I replied. There were a lot of very bright kids in our class and I could think of a number of contenders. When it comes to remembering class rankings, I am of the opinion, than unless you were number one or, one of the nine people next in line, you are not going to know, or care, for that matter.

Really, have you ever heard anyone announce that they were 17th in their class? Well, maybe someone who was 17 in a class of 17 and then became the CEO of a Fortune Five Hundred company might like point out of how little academic standing had mattered in “the real world.” Otherwise, it is pretty much a dead topic. Not so for Joe, it seems, as he brought it up again at the end of the evening as I was leaving.

“Are you sure you weren’t number one?”

So once again I find myself mired in an identity crisis. To think that at my age, I could be someone entirely different - a Nordic beauty or a Brainiac; a heartthrob or a candidate for the Nobel Prize. Wonder if I could be both?

In truth, Melissa and I actually had a lot in common – Girl Scouts, church choir, Rainbow girls and later on we were both teachers. Still, with all of that, we never looked alike. For starters, she was and still is tall, slim, and blonde and whereas the blonde part is easy, “tall and slim” require a mixture of genetics and will power that have managed to elude me. As for the brainy business, thankfully my older brother Peter had a corner on that, which relieved me of the responsibility. The perception of my academic prowess may well have benefitted from a little brainy blow back from my brother, but surely not enough to catapult me to the head of the class.

Tempting as reinventing myself might seem, I think for now I’ll just stick to the me I have been getting to know for the past 68 years and hope for the best. After all, if I started to act like someone else, it might just appear that dementia had set in, and my family would seize upon the opportunity to have me committed and there I would be drooling out the rest of my days in some care center and be among the “unable to locate” at my next reunion.

Plus ca change, plus c’est le meme chose! I’ve always thought that there was a lot of truth to that remark, but now I am not so sure. Evidently, it depends on whose memory you are relying on. And memory, as I have recently learned, is a fickle friend, unreliable and obdurate at best.

What once was lost . . .

There are few aggravations in life that I hate more than losing or misplacing stuff. Of course in the grand scheme of things, I recognize there are calamities of greater import – floods and famine, to name but two. But in my little world of personal disasters, losing something gets the prize. For one thing, it pushes all of my OCD buttons, so that I am flailing around, tracing and retracing my steps, opening cupboards and drawers, emptying out purses and backpacks, all the while muttering to myself.”How could you be so stupid, careless, lame-brained, etc?” My daughter will testify to the occasions when I came into her bed room after she had gone to bed and riffled through her drawers in search of a missing sports bra or a shin guard. “Mom, I am trying to go to sleep.” “Forget it mom! It doesn’t matter.” All of this falling on deaf ears as I admonished her to just ignore me, assuring her that I’d only be a minute and would be quiet as a mouse.

My most recent case of loss followed by self-flagellation occurred when I got home from a 12 hour flight from Rarotonga in the Cook Islands in February only to discover that I had lost my little jewelry case, at least I thought I had. It was a small flowered Clinique bag, designed I suppose to hold a lip stick, a car key and a tissue, but I had found it the perfect size for the two necklaces and three pair of earrings that I felt I needed to take along. This was a scuba diving trip, so the clothing requirements consist of swimsuits in the water, fleece on the boat, and sun dresses for evening wear. When packing for the return flight, I made a conscious decision to put my jewelry in my back pack rather than my checked bag.
I flew home on a red eye and in the course of the next twelve hours, was in and out of the back pack numerous times, pulling out pillows and Advil, books and granola bars, creating the perfect opportunity to dislodge my little flowered jewelry case. The jewelry was not expensive but that isn’t the same as saying it wasn’t valuable, because to me it was. Every piece had a story and most were acquired while traveling: two pair of earrings were from Shanghai; a necklace that was made entirely of seed pods found on Little Corn Island, off the coast of Nicaragua; another necklace made of silver beads and jasper Fred acquired from a local guide in Death Valley. Also in the bag were my opal earrings which I have worn for nearly thirty years, a gift one Christmas from Fred and dad.

For five months I have been grinding my teeth over this debacle. I missed all of these pieces but refused to seek out replacements, determined to punish myself appropriately for my carelessness. Last weekend I started on a purge of the “travel closet” where I keep our suitcases, back packs, and all the little bottles of shampoo and lotion, mosquito repellent and sun block that I tuck into our bags when we take a trip. Some things made their way to the bag destined for the Goodwill and others “did not pass go” but went right into the trash. I opened every suit case and back pack, clearing out stray socks and a hairbrush, Purell and toothpaste, as well as boarding passes and ball point pens. And, miracle of miracles, floating around inside my back pack was the little flowered case with all the missing jewelry!

I was elated to say the least. I put the opal earrings on and haven’t taken them off since. This great finder’s event put me in mind of a number of other times when I have been sure that I lost something only to discover it, sometimes years later. When I was in law school, the large jade stone from the ring I wore constantly disappeared. I bought that ring in Peurto Villarta at a time when I still thought I should ask Fred for permission to spend $40 on a piece of jewelry. I was sure I must have lost it in the parking lot and enlisted my friends to help with the search which turned out to be futile. At home that night when I was unloading my book bag, I found it. No doubt I slammed my hand just right against some heavy legal tome and dislodged it and it fell into the book bag.

On another occasion, I thought that I had lost a necklace of Venetian trading beads that I fell in love with in the little resort gift shop in Antigua. Naïve as I was in those days, I still was aware there were no bargains to be had at the resort gift bar. Still these were the beads that I wanted and so I bought them. Once the exchange rate was sorted out, I think that once again I ventured into the $40.00 range. Though by this time, I by-passed the permission step.

I wore those beads a lot – both for work and casually. They were predominantly red and blue and graduated, so that the center bead was larger than all of the others. The summer that my parents moved over here from Spokane, I made monthly trips back and forth to help with the packing and of course, I wore the beads. Once my parents arrived in Olympia, I never saw them again. I couldn’t figure out what had happened to them – had they fallen off at a rest stop? Surely not. I would have heard them hit the floor if they had come apart. My mother felt badly about it and found a similar looking set of beads from a museum gift store catalogue, for I am sure twice what I had paid for the original. They were nice but they simply weren’t the same.
After my mother died, I found them in what seemed to me a very unlikely place. When we visited my parents in Spokane, one of Kate's favorite playthings was my old doll buggy with a large doll that Katie called "grandma baby" - a name that defies logic unless you understood that this doll, that once was mine, now lived with grandma. The doll buggy and grandma baby were one of the last things to be loaded for the move, as they had provided a welcome distraction for a seven year old while the rest of us were boxing and packing. So now, several years later as I was going through things in my parent’s home, sending some directly to the dumpster and others to the Good Will, I came upon grandma baby and the buggy and a miscellany of odds and ends including a plastic bag that appeared to be full of dust rags. I was on the verge of consigning them to the dumpster when I paused to look inside, and there, quite incredulously, I found the little jewelry box with my favorite beads.

I could go on about my amazing luck in finding things; or maybe, it is my amazing knack for thinking that something is lost that really isn’t. I feel as if I should be taking some lesson out of this. That perhaps, if I were able to channel Saint Anthony he would tell me that from now on, I am on my own! That he has saved me and my stuff for the last time. Maybe if I really tried harder, I would become a “place for everything and everything in its place” kind of person. But I know better than to hold my breath on that idea. Maybe what you do with good luck is just be grateful and let go of it. Just relax and move on. It is a tempting notion. Still, on this next trip, I have a plan for my jewelry case – I have pasted an address label to the inside and plan to pin the case to the inside of one of the many zip pockets in my back pack that I rarely get into! That should do it and I can leave the old hair shirt hanging in the closet when I get home. Provided, of course, that once I get where I am going, I can remember where I have hidden it!

Finding myself and then some

Introspection is one of those things, like red wine, that we are told is good for us – in moderation, of course. I’d like to think that I have always been somewhat introspective, recognizing that the unexamined life is, if not empty, at best less than it might otherwise be. At the same time, I have avoided over analyzing myself because, well for starters, it is boring and there has always been something more pressing if not interesting to do – like cleaning the toilets!” Even so, no amount of talk or drug therapy would have led to the most recent “discoveries” about myself. I am both amazed and amused. Hope you are too.

Having lived at the end of the road in the same house for 44 years with the same person, I have more or less taken it for granted that at least some part of my identity was common knowledge. We consider ourselves “old timers” in Boston Harbor, part of the landscape much like the big leaf maples that populate Burfoot Park. When I learned recently that some of my neighbors “knew” quite a different me, it caught me off guard. Here’s how the story unfolds.

A couple of weeks ago on a Saturday evening Fred and I dropped in on the 50th birthday party of a friend and neighbor. We had an earlier commitment so the party was well underway by the time we arrived. As is often the case at these large neighborhood gatherings, I knew most but not all of the attendees. While I was standing in the kitchen, taking in the view of the marina back lit by the fading sunlight, a guy I had never seen before limped over to me and said that he wished he could walk every day like I did but he had bad knees. I told him that I used to have bad knees myself – at least one bad knee – but I had surgery a few years ago, and now I am better than new! He smirked and allowed as how he didn’t like surgeons – they had knives. To which I replied that the prospect of the scalpel was less frightening to me than the prospect of the “Lazy Boy” and my only regret was that I hadn’t gone under the knife sooner!

Well, we tossed injuries and surgeries back and forth a bit longer and then I asked them where they lived. By this time the guy’s wife had joined the conversation.

“We live right next to you, on 76th!” The wife offered.

“You live in the judges’ house.” Said the husband, simultaneously.

“Well, actually I don’t. I live at the end of the road.”

“You’re married to the judges’ son.” They went on.

“Chris? Chris Hamilton? No. Chris and I are good friends but we’re not married. I am married to Fred.” And I pointed to my husband who was standing out on the deck, drinking a beer and visiting with friends.

“Maybe you’re not married and just live with the guy who lives in the judges’ house.” The wife interposed while I continued to point to my husband. “We don’t mind. We live in the ‘gossip’ house.’ ” She offered, giggling. I knew that ‘gossip house’ referred to the place where Kim and Wes lived until Kim and the neighbor became an item, Wes moved out and then Kim and “whatshisname” lived in the house.

“Oh, now I know who you are.” The man interjected. “You’re the one with the kids who are always trying to sell me something. Your son told me that his mom was the one who walked the dogs.”

Now I was baffled. My daughter and son in law now live in Seattle. Both have gone to some pain to convince me that they were extremely busy with work and studies. If I find out now that they have been hanging out in the neighborhood selling candy bars and magazines without so much as stopping by, I will be miffed!

“No, actually, I think that must be someone else.” I concluded as I excused myself in order to find a bathroom. Clearly this conversation was going nowhere and I decided that there really wasn’t much point in trying to convince this couple otherwise. They were pretty satisfied with their version of ‘my’ story, and I could tell I was just boring them with my facts.

Amusing as this encounter was, it wasn’t the first time that a neighbor had created a new identity for me, one that was once again linked with Chris Hamilton. A couple of years ago I was in town walking Barley around Capitol Lake and saw a woman from our neighborhood that I knew only as someone I wave to when I am driving by. As Barley and I approached her, she called out. “You’re Chris Hamilton’s mother, aren’t you?”
“Actually no. I’m not his mother.”

“Well, I have seen you driving his car.”

“Really? I have never driven his car. We both have red cars.”I conceded.

“Well, it was when I saw you driving his car, that I decided you must be his mother.”

“Nope. Must have been someone else.”

We exchanged a few remarks about our respective dogs and then moved on in opposite directions. As we parted, I wasn’t entirely sure that she believed me. If I were to have a son, Chris wouldn’t be a bad choice. He is kind and helpful and reliably cheerful. He is the “go to” guy in the neighborhood when anyone has computer problems. As a practical consideration in this progenitorial conundrum, I am older than Chris, to be sure. Still at five I wasn’t that precocious!

It is startling the way in which folks will stick to the story they have concocted despite irrefutable testimony to the contrary. I wish I could inform you that I had never engaged in such specious speculation myself, that my unwavering commitment to the truth had unfailingly guided me to the high road. Alas, the following example from my childhood is illustrative of my own penchant for filling up the void.

Along a route that our family routinely took when we visited our grandmother, there was a partially completed house. The basement had been dug and finished so that there was a row of windows at ground level, with the ceiling of the basement room forming the floor of what would ultimately be the main floor of the house. When we first noticed it, we all assumed that shortly the rest of the house would be framed out and finished. But time went on and nothing more was done. Fall and winter came and passed – too wet and cold to be building. Then spring and summer with no activity and then another year went by.

Once we recognized that the house was not going to be completed, at least not any time soon, the speculation began. The most obvious conclusion was that they owners had somehow run out of money to complete the project. Death or divorce were likely considerations, but they lacked sufficient novelty to really grab our imagination. Ultimately, we concocted the story that we could stick with and enthusiastically add to as time went on. I believe mother was the primary author of the narrative.

The wife, having grown tired of living under ground like a mole and convinced that her slacker husband was never going to finish the job, simply bailed. One morning after the kids had gone off to school, she packed a bag and walked to the bus stop and was never seen again. Chilling, when you think about. And though our father was the polar opposite of the putative father in the story, it did give me pause that our own mother might consider such an option under similar circumstances.

We never met the family who lived there, indeed we never saw anyone on the premises that I recall. Still we populated the story with the familiar – kids, pets, and parents – even a mother in law. For all I know, a man lived there alone, with no intention of ever building a story above ground. Maybe he was a “survivalist,” getting his bomb shelter kitted out for the inevitable. (See, here I go again!) You can bet that if I had ever met someone who lived there, I would have asked about the mother.

A few minutes with the news on any given day serves as a healthy reminder that whereas are all entitled to our own opinions we are not entitled to our own facts. Still, that doesn’t keep them at bay. “WMD’s” and “Birthers” are but a couple unsettling examples of our penchant for filling a void with “facts” to fit our presumptions. Obviously, nature is not the only force that hates a vacuum.

In my case, to date the factual misconceptions of my neighbors have served me well. After a couple of years of haranguing Chris about my expectations of him as my son, he did his duty this year, bringing me a fuchsia basket for my birthday. Now that I am not only his mother but his putative spouse, the guilt induced performance arena has expanded exponentially.

A moose by any other name . . .

I just returned from the annual trip to our cabin in Calder, Idaho to open it up for the season. The cabin itself is a repository of the “stuff” that invokes memories, some of which go back to my childhood. Likewise, the journey there and back elicits innumerable flashbacks to previous trips. So, it was not surprising as I was driving up the St. Joe river within a few miles of the cabin, that I recalled a time about twenty years ago when Kate and I were returning to the cabin from a shopping trip to town. All of a sudden, in the bend of the road, we saw a moose, standing in classic moose pose, up to its belly in water.

“Wow – that was a moose! I’ve never seen one before.” Me neither, I said. We both got pretty excited with the prospect of breaking the news to “the boys” that evening. The boys being my dad and Fred who were off whipping the water in Marble Creek that afternoon in pursuit of the wily cut throat. It wasn’t long before they rolled up the driveway in dad’s pickup.

“Guess what we saw today?” Katie burst out the door. “A moose!”

“No you didn’t. It must have been an elk, or maybe a horse. I bet it was a mule.”

“No. It was a moose! I saw it. So did mom.”

“Have you ever seen a moose before?”

“Well, no, but I have seen pictures. I know what they look like.”She placed her hands by the side of her head to indicate the shape and size of their antlers.

“Well, your mother hasn’t seen a moose either and it couldn’t have been a moose you saw because there aren’t any moose in this area.”

There was much back and forth and mutual eye rolling on this topic for the rest of the evening and the next couple of days. I just thought that the boys were being stubborn along with another adjective that starts with an “s.” Katie, however, was offended. For her, this was the first time that either her father or her grandfather had questioned her knowledge or her truthfulness. Plus, she knew that they were wrong and that was equally disquieting.

The following day, I had occasion to drive back to Saint Maries, passing the creek where the dubious moose sighting had occurred. No moose today but I got out of the car to look around and discovered that the creek actually had a name: Moose Creek.

That evening when I brought this bit of evidentiary information forward, it was met with blank looks and a stony silence. So much for Plaintiff’s Exhibit A.

A few days later, the boys came back from an outing with Bill Carter, our cabin neighbor and the local game warden. That night at dinner, one of them informed the family that there were moose along the river, as though this was brand new information.

“Did you see one?”

“No. But Bill did.”

Now it was our turn to respond with stony looks and silence.
Several years later our friends Janie and Tony came up to the cabin to spend a couple of days with us. When they arrived, they were both eager to share their river sightings. Janie, riding in the passenger seat, had looked up to see a beautiful great blue heron poised to take off in flight. At the same moment, Tony had spotted a moose in the creek, off to the left of the highway.

Both were congratulated and, furthermore, believed. I couldn’t help but observe that it was a good thing that the respective locations of the moose and the heron hadn’t been reversed or else the story would have had a very different reception.

The cabin is not only the repository of the family’s collective memories it is also the origin of stories, some of which ultimately become legends. Occasionally, these legends contain unambiguous, universal truths. Hence -

If a man sees it, it’s a moose!