I, Too, Have a Hemingway Story

See September 25, 2012 revised version

Getting Stuck

Getting Stuck

Once, when I was fifteen, I got a tractor monumentally stuck. The summer of ’57 we moved from Elko to Deeth, which was the headquarters for the Marble Ranches. My dad let me work in the hayfields. I got to drive a buckrake. It was called a crazy buck, something rigged by the Grock Brothers, who had a garage down the highway.

The mower left long lines of hay and the buckrake would comb them up, put them in large piles, or take the hay to the haystack. It was really a great job. The meadow along the Humboldt River was fairly flat. You could lift the rake, put the tractor in third or fourth gear, and race your city slicker cousin Richard, who was also given a summer job by Dad, to the far end of the field and the next row of hay.

I got stuck by trying to take a shortcut across a slough. I should have stopped the tractor, gotten off, and inspected the swampy swale. Instead I charged ahead in third gear and sank halfway up the tires, wedging the rake in the embankment.

In the process of trying to get me out, two of the hay hands got their tractors stuck. Clay, the foreman, had to stop what he was doing, go back to the ranch and get the stock truck and tow chains, It took all afternoon to undo what it took me ten minutes to do.

You may think I caught hell for that. I didn’t. My dad wasn’t that kind of person. He knew I didn’t really know what I was doing. He probably felt responsible for sending me out there in the first place. The ranch hands didn’t care. They got paid the same whether they were haying or hauling the boss’s daughter out of a ditch. I stopped the operation for an afternoon. I’m sure the men had a good chuckle at supper that night.

So—what do I know about getting stuck? I didn’t understand what I was doing. I wasn’t paying attention to the lay of the land or to the piece of equipment I was operating. I was a girl playing at a man’s job. That’s the truth of it. But there’s another truth that has to do with being a writer.

I got stuck in a rut and cause a fair amount of trouble one July afternoon because I didn’t take the job or myself seriously. I was the boss’ daughter turned loose on a buckrake. “It’ll give her something to do this summer. It’ll be good for her,” they probably said. It wouldn’t have been feminine if I learned too much, if I really thought about the consequences of driving a tractor across that ditch. I also understand that my action could also be interpreted as youthful carelessness—regardless of gender.

But in finding some connection, I’d say it’s this: I didn’t believe that I should—and could-- learn the trade.

Anne Lamott and the Road to Paradise--or Not

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Anne Lamott and the Road to Paradise—or Not

Dear Virginia,

I said I would tell you the story of my tribulation, trying to get to Tuscarora at the same time I was listening to Anne Lamott reading Plan B—Further Thoughts on Faith. Because we both love Anne Lamott and are curious about her wonderful combination of craziness and faith, I took the time to record my misadventure.

Lamott herself was the reader, so it was like taking a road trip with a non-stop talker, someone so needy and neurotic and funny that I could not bring myself to eject her from the cd player. The consequence was that I made some stupid, unthinking decisions, practically ruined my new Suburu, and caused my husband go a little berserk.

Here’s what happened.

This was last Memorial Day weekend. The Tuscarora Artists were holding an Open Studio. It was a big deal, lots of advertising, even a Nevada Arts Council promotional grant. Joan and I had worked on a second series of the poetry cards, “Six Poems from Tuscarora.” She and Stan were already there, staying at the little summer place we’ve owned for years. I planned to meet them for the open studio and then stay on for a week or so.

I was filled with anticipation and loaded the car accordingly. Aside from clothes, books, writing materials and art supplies, there was a box containing six bottles of Roederer champagne in silver and gold gift wrap, a wedding present to be delivered to a family friend in Elko.

Friday I stayed at my son’s house in Carson City. I got an early start and was positive I would be in Tuscarora by noon. I bought the audio version of Plan B a month before and saved it for my road trip. Once I turned off Highway 395 and on to Interstate 80, I inserted the first disk.

Why are her words so captivating? For women roughly her age, like you and me, it’s because we share many of her issues. Also, we identify with her neediness—her need to think and write about herself, not because she is self-centered in an ordinary sense. It’s her burst of self-consciousness and uncertainty that we find both familiar and endearing. Remember when she isn’t even sure if her stuff is good enough for the dump?

Only when I passed Winnemucca and noticed that Golconda was ten miles away did I realize that I had to think about something besides Anne Lamott, her son, George Bush, and/or Jesus. I had a choice to make: should I turn off at Golconda and take the unimproved Midas road? Should I stay on 80 all the way to Elko, and then drive the fifty-two miles to Tuscarora, paved except the last seven miles of well-maintained county road?

I pulled into a rest stop a few miles before the Golconda exit. The high desert air was invigorating; the blue sky pure; and the mountains seemed familiar in a severe, primordial way. Actually, this particular range has always scared me a little. I didn’t even know its name.

Taking the Midas Road was the more adventurous choice, and I ignored the voice that sounded like a tiny husband sitting on my shoulder saying, “You’ll get a flat tire if you take the Midas road. Don’t do it.”

It’s not that I stood there thinking, “What would Anne Lamott do?” or, for that matter, “What would Jesus do?” although I was becoming a tiny bit peevish that I didn’t have a personal savior to help me through my worrisome days. I inhaled the Nevada air and found my inner ranch woman who said, “What the hell. Take the Midas road.”

I buckled myself back in the driver’s seat, inserted disk three and headed for the hills. You are probably guessing that I took the wrong road. Yep. All the time I thought I was on the Midas road to Tuscarora, I was on the Eden Valley road to Paradise. Here’s how it happened.

I had a cd going. I can’t exactly remember what Anne’s issue was, but I know I felt it would be rude of me not to give her my full attention. Also, I was talking on my cell phone with Joan. She was impatient, waiting for me to get to Tuscarora. There was a bus load of people from Reno who were on a Nevada arts tour. “A bus load” she said. “in Tuscarora!” Tuscarora has a year-round population of thirteen and ordinarily the only things you can buy are stamps at the post office.

“I’m coming,” I said. “I’m taking the Midas road. It’s quicker.” At the very moment I was talking with Joan and listening to Anne Lamott, I was turning onto a gravel road running parallel to the no-name mountains. Straight road, stark mountains. I know where I’ m going and I know who’s going with me, don’t I, Anne?

I must have clipped along for at least thirty miles, glancing at the mountains every now and then because there was something wrong about them, and looking for a sign. Yes, God and Jesus play such a huge part in Anne Lamott’s life that after the second disk, “sign” was starting to have a double meaning for me, too.

I could easily have gone the forty-four miles to Paradise Valley, Nevada without passing a soul on the road. Fortunately, I saw the dusty rooster tail of an oncoming pickup. I stopped, rolled down the window, and waved my arm. “Hi!” I said. “I think I’m on the Midas road. I’m tryin’ to get to Tuscarora. Am I on the right road?”

The driver, a ranch hand or a miner, gave me a kind look. “Nope. This is the road to Paradise. The Midas road is on the other side of the mountain.” His passenger looked straight ahead, probably suppressing a smirk.

The driver told me what I had to do, but I knew anyway. Turn around and eat his dust all the way back to Golconda, which I did. By this time I was well into the third cd. I may have turned her down, but I never turned her off. She needed me. She was on a cruise, obsessing about her body in a bathing suit.

When I got to Golconda, it was Groundhog Day, the movie. I had a choice to make: get back on interstate 80. Two hours to Elko and an hour to Tuscarora. Or take the Midas turnoff. I could clearly see the sign I had missed before: Midas 34 miles. My car was dusty; the windshield bug-specked. Tuscarora seemed closer, now that the mountains were on the appropriate side of my car. Yep. I took the road less traveled and regretted it.

Although I was pretty sure I was on the right road and there were signs pointing the way, my inner ranch woman had developed Lamottian insecurities. The signs became less frequent and weren’t confidence builders—little US Forest Service markers pointing to obscure destinations with stupid names like “Toe Jam Creek.” I was getting tense, but still listening to Anne Lamott.

However, I was getting weary of her fixation on George-the-devil-incarnate- Bush. I started talking back to my cd player. Then the next thing I knew I was laughing out loud as she described shades of feeling, from unconditional love to murderous rage, toward her teenage son. It’s the same honest study of the variety of parental responses that she so brilliantly describes in Operating Instructions, the first book of hers I read years ago. Okay, I tell myself. Stick it out with Anne. Trust you’re on the right road. You’ll get there.

Suddenly I see Willow Creek reservoir. Like an Old Testament wanderer in the desert, I see water. The oasis appears. It’s a miracle! Actually, it’s like that. You drive for about forty miles on a gravel road through a valley that’s not called “Paradise” adjacent to intimidating, no-name mountains, which are now on your left, as they should be, and then you move through an eternity of undulating sage-covered hills. The road becomes narrow, rutted, and curved. You can’t get too distracted because an idiot in a 4x4 truck or a hapless idiot like yourself in a station wagon could be barreling around the next curve and you will die in a head-on crash in the middle of nowhere. In the meantime, Anne Lamott is having a terrible time trying to teach Sunday school.

The end is near. I know where I am. I know where I’m going. I’m glad the road is rutted. It’s always rutted on the other side of the Willow Creek reservoir. Everybody knows that. I’m even excited about the swathes of Mormon crickets that now make the road crawl at various intervals. I imagine myself being able to tell Milt, our neighbor in Tuscarora, “Saw the crickets just the other side of Willow Creek.”

By now, I have had it with Anne Lamott. Had it! Why is she dumping one me? I have cellulite, too, and problems of my own. She has gone from being my best friend to another one of those people in my life who never listens.

Then I hear something—a pop and a hiss. “Fuck!” Anne Lamott also says fuck when she is anxious or frustrated. Jesus doesn’t seem to mind. I stop the car. Fortunately, I am not in a Mormon cricket zone at that moment. My first thought was that the rough road had caused one of the bottles of champagne to explode. I check the box in the back seat. Nope. I get out and walk around the car. I even get on my hands and knees and look under the car. Nothing was hanging loose. No oil pan in the dirt. I want to ask Anne Lamott if 2006 Suburus have oil pans, but, no, the car door is open and she’s still going on about herself.

Then it’s over. The end of the fifth cd. The car is quiet. My steering seems unusually difficult, but the ruts are deep. I see a familiar ranch and it is on the correct side of the road. I know I’m only five miles from Tuscarora, and I’m driving like the hounds of hell are chasing me.

It’s four in the afternoon. The first open studio day is done. The bus has taken the art-loving tourists back to the Red Lion Casino in Elko. As I pull up, I see Joan and Stan sitting on lawn chairs drinking gin and tonics. I can tell they’re glad to see me. They don’t even complain about the wave of dust I create when I pull into the yard. Stan raises his glass, “Ya want one?” and then points with his drink to my left front tire, “Flat tire.”

I realize that I have been riding the rim for the last ten or fifteen miles. Okay. This shouldn’t be a big deal. I got a flat on the Midas road. So, I didn’t listen to the tiny husband on my shoulder who now seems like a not-so-jolly green giant standing with his arms crossed back in California really pissed because everybody knows about these new AWD cars and you don’t get one flat tire you have to replace all four and you never, ever drive on a flat because that throws the finely calibrated steering mechanism out of whack and you might as well drive the son-of-a-bitch into the Willow Creek reservoir and go buy a new car.

Here’s how the story ends. I didn’t ruin the car. I did have to buy a new set of tires. The rest of the weekend was really fun. I did not have the religious conversion I was hoping for, in spite of all the signs. You know, headed for Paradise with Anne Lamott and then finding out you’re on the wrong road.

Love,

Nancy

If Grace Paley Wrote the Story of My Life

This is the story of one of the most important parts of my life, giving up a baby for adoption and then being reunited with her in adulthood. When I sat down to write, I found that I was channeling Grace Paley, which was okay with me. I love Grace Paley.

If Grace Paley Wrote the Story of My Life

It is the story of a young woman involved in the business of being on her own, even though her parents regularly send her money, and she mostly lives in her mind, thinking about what could be, what should be, what it is “to be or even not to be.” It is 1964, Sartre and Heidegger are around, and she is that kind of young woman.

She spends much of her time with a young man who also lives in his mind, plays the piano almost as well as Horowitz, and excels at math. Aside from reading the existential philosophers as well as Nabokov and Kant, the young man concentrates on his bad dreams, of which he has many. This goes on for about a year, during which time they get married because the concept of “living together” had not been perfected yet. Nor had access to birth control pills, for that matter, and one day the young woman discovers she is pregnant.

To some extent, this brings her to her senses. The young woman realizes that the young man’s bad dreams, while compelling, are his. She also realizes more clearly than she has ever realized anything in her entire life that this is not a suitable atmosphere in which to bring a baby.

When she considers the alternatives, none seem satisfactory. If she takes this baby home to her mother and father, she also becomes dependent, just at a point when she is in the business of becoming independent. Furthermore, she realizes that it is 1964, and that the baby would come with a heavy wrapping of unhappiness, obligation, and shame. She thinks her parents would be up to it, because they are not the turn-the-picture-to-the-wall types, but, frankly, on her own life’s journey, it seems like going backwards.

The young man feels that his house, while nicely furnished, is a terrible place for babies, and if she needs proof, look at him and his bad dreams. She thinks that it is best for the self within herself to have a chance to create itself anew, without, as they say these days, all that heavy baggage.

“The right thing to do is to give this baby up for adoption,” said this voice within her that grew stronger every day. It was a lonely voice, but it was hers. She felt like someone whose mind and body were in the real world making tough decisions.

Alas, after sending the baby out into the world on a wing and a prayer, being quite relieved that the young man decided to take his bad dreams elsewhere, she went back to being dependent upon her parents. Somewhat afraid of facing any more ordeals, she fell back into a family system and a cultural system that said, “You’re basically a good girl. Now settle down with a bone fide husband, have a couple of kids, and be grateful that you come from a nice family.”

She did all that. This time she chose a young man who not only had his own bad dreams-- which she was beginning to think that everyone had at least a few—but also wore plaid wool shirts, gave her a pair of sturdy hiking boots, which she took to mean that he wanted her to stand on her own two feet, and he was her soul mate.

As a matter of fact, he came right home from the office the day she called him and said, “You’re not going to believe this, but you know that baby I had thirty years ago? Well she just tapped me on the shoulder—so to speak—and said, “Hello there. Remember me? In case you were wondering, I arrived safely in Carson City, Nevada back in 1964, was welcomed by open arms. The genes worked well, by the way. These people, my mom and dad, have loved me dearly up to and including this very day.” Furthermore, the baby married her high school sweetheart and gave birth to the most adorable children in town, if not the seven western states.

The baby said that she had always been curious about the womb from which she entered forth and the young woman who owned it, even a little curious about the sperm who dated the egg, or the prick with the dick. (She had already been doing some asking around town and not come up with a favorable report on the paternal side.)

When the young woman heard all this, she was no longer a young woman. She was fifty-four and probably about as grown-up as she was going to be. The joy at this good news was so overwhelming that she almost had a religious conversion. She kept saying, “ Grace abounds,” and “Let God be the judge,” because those sayings, even though they were not on her refrigerator, seemed to express how she felt about this marvelous news. After all, the baby was having a good life, whether the not-so-young woman knew it or not; and, in spite of the small adult solitary voice that had told her those many years ago, “This is the right thing to do and you know it,” she had worried that she had done the wrong thing. In fact, she had spent a portion of every adult day of her life feeling bad about herself in general and judging herself harshly about this incident in particular. It came to about 10,950 hours.

Only two years previously had she been able to tell her children, then thirteen and seventeen, that she had given up a baby for adoption. This had been the result of working with a therapist who seemed to know her business and said, “It’s always good to be honest; what’s life without a few messes; and statistics show that when adopted babies get to be about thirty, they often start looking for their womb and its owner.” She was right on all counts.

The fifty-four-year-old-not-so-young woman felt great relief; her husband was happy for her. Her kids, who loved her but were rather shocked to find that their mother was a grandmother and they weren’t even dating, said, “So what other surprises do you have for us?”

“No more surprises,” she said.

Now the past was in the past, grace abounded, God was in his heavens being the judge, and the not-so-young-woman realized that what was ahead of her and the baby was the future, which included three very cute combinations from the gene vat who didn’t know what to call her and she didn’t know what to call them. “This is going to be interesting,” she thought and was glad that the world had lightened up a bit since 1964.

She and the baby started writing letters and talking on the telephone and everything was going along pretty well except I forgot to mention that the not-so-young woman had a mother who certainly deserves a story of her own, if not an entire prime time mini-series. When the not-so-young woman told her mother about the baby’s appearance out of the clear blue sky and the happy story she had to tell, she knew her mother would be filled with gratitude and joy She was.

The not-so-young woman had not talked too much about the amazing moment of meeting the baby, taking the picture albums to the restaurant and saying, “This is me as a baby. This is me on a horse. This is my mother. This is my father.”

And the baby going, “Wow.”

Basically, the not-so-young woman told her mother that the baby turned out nicely, was of the happy, curious type, whether due to genetics or upbringing. She also told her mother that she had reported to the baby, “There’s some bad news and some good news. The bad news is that there’s not much left in the relative department. The good news is that you have a biological grandmother up in Elko who is hot stuff in the mother slash/grandmother category and who would welcome you with open arms, I’m sure of it, and, by the way, she will want to know what size clothes the kids wear and if anybody needs her to knit a hat.”

Sure enough, just as the not-so-young woman had predicted, the biological grandmother met them at the door with open arms, took them on a picnic and out to dinner, got the kids’ sizes, fell in love with the whole adorable package, and quickly observed that the little girl really could use a hat.

What happened for the next year made the not-so-young woman so mad she couldn’t see straight. At the same time she said to herself, “I could have told myself so,” and “So, what’s wrong that the baby should have one of those biological grandmothers with open arms who knits, gets out picture albums, tells stories first and from her point of view when the baby asks, “So what was the young woman with the womb from which I emerged like when she was a teenager? Did she smoke cigarettes and drive up and down the main drag as I’ve heard they did in those days?”

The not-so-young woman was only guessing at these conversations because she was, in fact, an English teacher grading papers in northern California. But she knew a few things about the biological grandmother, having emerged from the above-mention’s womb and been quite familiar with the owner for over fifty years. For example, she knew that the biological grandmother would take this new title very seriously. If there were to be a contest for newly discovered biological grandmothers, she would be in the running.

Well, the not-so-young woman out in California grading papers began resenting the biological grandmother’s one hundred percent absorption in her new role, which included being the Sole Remaining Biological Grandmother, Keeper of the Historical Record, Visiting Dignitary to Represent Our Side of the Family, and the One Who Ought to Take Charge because the not-so-young woman was busy grading papers and, in her opinion, not so great in the take-charge department.

As a matter of fact, the not-so-young-woman felt like chopped liver. Even though she was having a nice correspondence and pleasant phone calls with the baby, and had put over ten thousand hours of guilt and remorse into this project, the biological grandmother was having all the fun. She was happy for the baby who had, indeed, discovered that the biological grandmother was hot stuff, but she was not happy that the biological grandmother was getting such a kick out of the whole thing. She felt small and mean-spirited, but she couldn’t help it.

The not-so-young woman was also annoyed and hurt that the biological grandmother didn’t get the Big Picture—that this was her story and it was a great story, somewhat like Days of Our Lives, where a young woman who Does the Right Thing is at last re-united with her baby. In the Days of Our Lives version, the biological grandmother stays in her rocker and says, “This is not my story and Fred wouldn’t like it.” (Fred, being her deceased husband who would have been filled with gratitude and joy that the baby had arrived safely in Carson City and was having a good life, but not wanted too much to do with the whole thing. He didn’t like big dramatic stories about wombs, especially his daughters’.) But Fred was deceased, and, in this instance, it was a good thing. No sense in making him uncomfortable or needing to remind he that, in some cases, he could have used an attitude adjustment.

So, as you can see, the daughter was torn. On one hand, here was this robust biological granny going to town with the situation, and this go-getter baby grinning from ear-to-ear. On the other hand, the not-so-young woman felt like someone had revised the script, given her a walk-on part, and then sent her back to California to grade papers.

The situation worsened. The biological grandmother, who had a hearing problem and had bought a hearing aid but inadvertently sat on it, could see that the not-so-young woman was upset but she couldn’t hear her. She simply responded with what she knew was true even if it wasn’t written on a refrigerator magnet. “I’m too old to change” and “Your father and I always loved you” and “We did the best we could.” The biological grandmother went about her business, but with a heavy heart and the not-so-young woman did likewise.

Finally, one day the not-so-young woman said some mean-but-having-a-grain-of-truth things to her mother in a voice so loud it got her attention. She went into the bedroom and put on her other hearing aid (she always had two of everything) and, although she wasn’t thrilled about the prospect, sat down and said, “What do you want me to do, unknit the knitting?”

“No,” said her daughter, “just listen to my story.”

Mothers Worry

I wrote this shortly after my son left to go to college, a time that is hard on mothers.

Mothers Worry

The floor of his room seemed abnormally flat without the crumpled levis, wadded socks, smelly running shoes. The surfboard on his bed, a fiberglass Pinnochhio with stickers, was no substitute for a real boy.

I felt like I sent him off to college unprepared. I should have known to send sheets, blankets, and a pillow. I should have bought him socks, underwear, t-shirts. They should have been in neat piles on the bed. As it was, I helplessly watched him make his own stack of t-shirts, shorts, and levis. He couldn’t find his shaving kit, the nifty black one from Sonoma Outfitters I bought him when he was a sophomore and starting to shave. I should have been able to find it for him.

He was taking the essentials, including his sleeping bag, would return in two weeks for Labor Day weekend. My hovering annoyed him.

His first call from California Maritime Academy was the Monday night he arrived. That’s when he said we owed five hundred dollars for the uniform deposit, and I said no we didn’t. I was sure I had paid that bill in June. While my husband was on the phone with him, I found the cancelled check. I had forgotten that the deposit was a thousand dollars, not five hundred.

He told us, yes, he had had a roommate, a twenty-six year old Russian from St. Petersburg, but, no, now he didn’t have a roommate. The Russian had decided he would room with his fellow Russian That night he was by himself. The uniform only partially fit. He said, “It’s confusing.”

He didn’t call again until Saturday. We were glad to hear his voice, but it was small, almost sullen. From that conversation we learned that the freshmen were up at 6:00, mopping the hallways and cleaning the bathrooms in the dorm. As he spoke I could hear his voice echoing in the empty corridor. I thought of his vacant bedroom upstairs. Why didn’t I insist he take sheets, blankets, a pillow?

I said to him, “Why don’t you go see your aunt tomorrow? Do you have her phone number? Here, I’ll give it to you. Do you have a pencil? Really. You should go.” He didn’t have a pencil, and he didn’t want to go to my sister’s. I think that the idea of negotiating more city traffic and getting lost somewhere between Vallejo and Orinda in order to get a free meal and the prospect of more unwanted advice was more than he could handle. When I hung up, my husband said, “You were on him. Relax. He’ll be fine. Cal Maritime was his choice, remember?”

I felt terrible. Why couldn’t I just listen? When was I going to get parenting right? It was too late.

I know I am not the only parent to go through this. Last fall, my friend talked about how sad she was that her eldest son was gone; how teary she felt. At the time, I thought she sounded indulgent. After all, he was attending UC Santa Cruz, no more than a three-hour drive, and was, in fact, coming home the next weekend for his birthday. Don’t be such a ninny, I thought, listening to her lamentations as she stood in the doorway of my office. We are all fortunate. We have jobs. They are middle-class kids. This transition is hopeful: for education, a career, and even some adventures. I owe my friend an apology. The first weeks of my son’s leave-taking felt more like a funeral than a celebration.

Although I immediately felt my shortcomings as a packer and an organizer, that was nothing compared with my regrets about his psychological preparation. What else had I forgotten, been careless about? The winds of remorse blew through my dreams for several nights after he left.

The weather was a big factor in the stories of the births of both our children. Each was born in a storm. The March night before our son was born, it rained so hard three embankments on our country lane caved in, and, when we arrived, the Mendocino Coast Hospital was on auxiliary power. The January morning of our daughter’s birth a freak tornado blew down the barn.

The emotional weather of those years was stormy, too. Once I had been fighting with my husband, fled the house half crying and our son, not even four, stumbled down the hill after me. I remember turning him away like a pup. “Go back! Go back to the house. Go away!” I can hear myself saying those words and see his confusion.

Another time we were in front of the bank in Mendocino My father had sent a two hundred dollar check to his grandson, but I needed the money. It was all part of the turbulence of those days. My husband and I were combative, selfish, immature; there was often secrecy about money. No excuse can soften the memory of my seven-year old son wailing helplessly, “That’s my money.”

Loneliness. Betrayal. I was his first teacher. Now he is gone. No wonder it has felt like the death of someone dearly loved but not reconciled with. No wonder setting three plates at the dinner table has seemed so sad and wrong.

Yet I have chastened myself for these doleful thoughts, just as I silently reprimanded my friend. After all, he is alive and well, apprehensive but ready for this next phase of his life, and so much about our lives, his life, has been healthy and good. Furthermore, I realize the “should have’s” could go on forever. As an elderly friend says, “You can’t saw sawdust.”

One morning a few days before my son left, I was getting out the ingredients for his favorite cake, while he sat nearby at the kitchen counter eating cereal. “What’s the matter with you?” he asked. I must have been frowning.

“I’m just thinking of all that I haven’t told you,” I said.

“Don’t worry, Mom,” he said, smiling as he shut the refrigerator door. “I already know everything.”

Greetings from Lovelock

I wrote this piece seventeen years ago. My mother is still alive. I still struggle with love and resentment; that is, what it means to be a good adult daughter.

Greetings from Lovelock

In my heart lies the belief that the good adult daughter should be as taciturn and obedient as the perfect Chinese child. “Be filial to your own parents and respectful of all elders. When your mother or father is calling, do not be slow to respond,” says the ancient Buddhist text. Two of my Asian college students have written that you should honor your mother because of the pain she experienced bringing you into the world.

I tell my grown-up self, “Be kind. Forget your precious ego.” Usually it is easy, but sometimes she is hard to love. Sometimes she reminds me of that Thurber cartoon of the woman, arms spread, looming over an unsuspecting house. Furthermore, my grown-up self does not always have the upper hand. Today, for example. Picture her standing at the kitchen sink. My kitchen sink. She wears a pink and white plaid housedress, one size fits all, golf socks, and those Swedish exercise shoes, white with wedged heels. On one side of her face, the wrinkles have been swept and tucked by Bell’s palsy. From the kitchen window she watches her pre-teen granddaughters playing at the edge of the swimming pool, pretending to teeter and lose their balance. She says, “What would happen if I pushed them into the pool?”

Sullenly drying the morning dishes, I say to myself, “What would happen if I pushed you into the ocean?” It’s a mean thought. I know it. I know she doesn’t deserve it. But today, for some reason, even her many good qualities seem hard to take. Her generosity, for example. I can walk into any room in this house and find something she has given me, each thing stamped with her personality. Today, none of it seems mine. Like the Chinese baseball cap, with charming appliquéd figures, hanging in the small niche in the living room by the front door, a bright red tribute to her trip to China three months after the violent Tiananmen Square uprising in Beijing. When I glance at it, I can hear her saying, “I said to myself, ‘If the President says it’s safe to go, and the travel agency says it’s safe to go, well, at my age what have I got to lose?’” Is this courage or ingenuousness? I’m not sure.

The black reading lamp on the table next to the fireplace. She picked that up in Berkeley last year when she was staying with my sister. Mom bought it for herself, but when I barely whispered that I needed a lamp like that, she gave it to me. Well, she said I could use it, but I know she meant I could keep it. As a matter of fact, I’m surprised that she didn’t say, “I found this lamp that could go on the pine table in your living room—if you want it.” I would demur, saying that she shouldn’t have, but that it’s perfect. Often it is.

She likes to see things used, passed around. The oak dining room table and chairs that I have used for twenty-four married years came with the sound of her voice: “I got those things out of the house after Grandpa Harris died. Nobody else wanted them. Nobody would have taken them. Marion and Alice didn’t want any of those things.”

A few years ago she was bringing or mailing or loading into my car useful items that she no longer wanted; things that have stories attached to them. Sometimes I love that: the stories and things, like the linen tablecloth and eight napkins, simply embroidered with clusters of yellow and green daisies in the corners. “Aunt Irene embroidered this set and gave it to us not too long after your dad and I were married. I want you to have it.”

When she says that, I can see her little Welsh aunt, warm-hearted, industrious, only a few years older than she. I can remember how much those sisters, my great aunts Irene and Thelma, loved to play cards, especially gin rummy and double solitaire. I remember the many stories about my mother’s early married life in Reno at the end of the Depression: the simplicity of their household because they were so broke; the fact that there was only a two-lane gravel road around Lake Tahoe; the wonderful time they had at the World’s Fair in San Francisco, even though their suitcase was stolen and they only had a dollar to get back home.

Some days, like today, the stories and the stuff seem overwhelming, the detritus of her life, not mine. Even though she is disbanding her household with a vengeance, finding possessions a nuisance now that she is a widow, she came with two large suitcases filled with letters, old photos, and newspaper clippings—a travelling family archive.

I know what she wants. She wants me to come into the guest bedroom, to sit on the bed, and, as I carefully touch the photos and the clippings, to ask her again about when she and her sister Adele worked so hard at the drugstore in Milford after their father deserted the family and took off for Bakersfield. She wants to talk about Dad and his accomplishments, to look at photographs of places where we lived in Kansas, Colorado, and Nevada, to tear up when I see that precious 2x3 black and white print with white rick-rack borders, framing me and my kid sister sitting on porch steps smiling into the sun.

Should we come to that adorable photo of her and Adele standing in front of the drugstore, hair in ringlets, Sunday dresses, patent leather shoes, obviously proud that they have learned second position open, I know her face would cloud with sorrow and anger. We would talk about the automobile accident on the dark road in Iowa and the unbearable fact that Adele is still in a coma two years later, and how, at the convalescent hospital, they sometimes dress her in a jogging suit, as if that seventy-four year old broken body is going to rise up and run laps.

We have talked about this tragedy many times in the past two years, mostly on the phone. I remember the indignation and disbelief in Mother’s voice when she told me that they had put Adele’s comatose legs in braces: “When I asked them why in the world they were doing that, the nurse told me that they had to. It was some kind of law.” She pauses, and then says, “ She wants to curl up, you know, back to the fetal position. Why can’t they let her die?” she shouts through the phone. Then her voice fell, tired as she told me about Uncle Dale saying, “I guess I’m just selfish. I can’t seem to let her go.”

If we are both sitting on the bed, she will suddenly tidy something, straighten the rumpled bedspread, and put the carefully labeled photos back in a manila envelope. “You girls will never go through that with me. You both have copies of the living will.”

Then she will give me a look that reduces me to a teenager with a messy room, “Do you remember where you put it?” We will get into a tiff about the way I keep track of things, but I know what she really wants. Mother wants me to hold her and to cry together.

Back to the stuff. In my kitchen there is a colander that she—you know what? At seventy-seven, she is not particularly interested in my versions of family stories or the range of my experiences. She may have risked China after an uprising, but she wants no civil unrest now. She wants simplicity. “Your dad and I did the best we could and we never stopped loving you.”

Anyway, about the copper colander hanging above the kitchen sink. I bought it at an antique shop twenty years ago and gave it to them. They would use it for picking vegetables when they lived at the Thorpe Creek ranch. I remember watching Dad turn the water from the creek into the garden, and then pick big muddy onions and beets to steam for dinner, bringing them to the house in that colander. During those years she had a dehydrator and she bought one of the first of those Seal-A-Meal things. She would send us boxes filled with tidy sealed packages of her own dehydrated vegetable soup mix, dried apple slices, and fabulous beef jerky. If she weren’t so Republican, she would have made a great hippie.

She likes gadgets and machines. In my kitchen here are some of the things she has given me: an ice cream machine, a milk shake maker, a Belgian waffle iron, a Kitchen Aide, and the Champion juicer that she bought when Dad was diagnosed with cancer. They were wintering in Arizona then. My sister had been reading about laetrile and mega-doses of Vitamin A, so Mom bought a juicer and a fifty-pound bag of organic carrots.

The three cherry pitters in that drawer came from her; all the canning equipment she passed on to me, and she gave us the silverware we have been using for the past twenty-five years.

I don’t know how to end this. I’m not finished listing things from two rooms. This is a big house. And there is all that she has given to others in this family. I can’t speak for them about what is treasured or a burden or forgotten.

I said that it is hard being her adult daughter: being loyal, subservient, and respectful at the same time I am running my own life, claiming my own life. We are at different stages but on the same stage. Why gets the starring role? Who is best supporting actress—not her. Never. And she, dammit, is the one with naturally curly hair.

I guess we will work this out—me being fifty and her turning seventy-seven and not knowing what to do with the rest of her life. Just the other day she said, “You know, near the end, you dad…I was sitting by his bed and I starting crying, ‘what about me? What is going to happen to me?’” He said, ‘I don’t know.” She continues, “Another time he said—well, I guess he must have been thinking of all those mopey widows around town, anyway, he told me, ’Don’t be a sentimental slob. You don’t have that much time left yourself.’”

We are sitting on the screened porch. There is a slight breeze. Now, in the softer evening light, she is beautiful. I tell her, “You are a sentimental slob, and, furthermore, Ronal Reagan was still running the country when he was your age. Don’t think you can get old and feeble on me. You’re my mother. I can’t remember if we laughed or if that prompted another fight about where she should go and what she should do. We talk about her moving here. The conversations are touchy.

Sometimes I have this image of her furiously packing her bag, well, all her bags, heaving them into the trunk, and driving off in her white Mercury. I am not the responsible, happy, fifty-year old me, but a panicked little girl running after the car, calling, “Don’t be angry. Come back. Come back.” The street is empty.

Sometimes when this dream scene occurs, I imagine her sending me a postcard from Lovelock, Nevada that says in her perfectly legible script: “You had your chance.”

Learning to Dance

Learning to Dance

I began taking dance classes the year I turned forty. I had a seven-year old son, a three-year old daughter, was stressed, depressed, and twenty pounds overweight.

Unprepared to face the terror a dance class can evoke,I still remember the day my movement teacher instructed the ten of us to pretend we were tossing a ball to one another. The playful volleying stopped when the non-existent ball was lobbed in my direction. The imaginary ball arcing toward me seemed so heavy that I received it crouched with arms extended. The other women watched as I struggled with this unexpected burden, raised to a standing position, and hefted the weight of the world towards someone else.

My response took me and everyone else by surprise. Really, it was no surprise at all. I was literally heavy as well as weighted by the demands of young children, a difficult marriage, and struggles for money. My simple movement revealed everything, and I was humiliated by that revelation. Dance was teaching me things about myself I might not learn any other way.

Once I recognized the power of dance as a teacher, I realized I was more self-conscious than I imagined myself to be. Coming of age in the 1960’s, I thought of myself as fairly uninhibited. However, on many occasions in the dance studio I felt like a medieval Eve cast from the Garden in a t-shirt and tights, protecting breasts and crotch. If I wanted to dance, I had to come to terms with this constricting image.

If I had thought about it at all, I thought dancing meant maintaining a vertical orientation. As well as reckoning with my prudery, I had to learn to think of bodies as forms and spatial relationships. This realization came through another unsettling experience. Our teacher instructed us to divide into pairs, close our eyes, and let our bodies take a shape. I remember feeling uneasy about the intimacy as we would bend and move, one dancer making a space with an arm or leg or rounded torso, the other answering with her limbs and arched spine, not touching but getting close enough to see, if we peeked, the holes in one another’s leotards and to smell armpits and crotches. “Now,” she said, “open your eyes and become aware of the other shapes.” When I looked around, I had a new sense of when it meant to dance.

Every time I took one of these classes, a little voice repeated, you shouldn’t be here. You don’t belong. Because I was so timid, I tried to take up as little room as possible. My elbows resisted leaving the comfort of my torso. As I learned to dance with my arms, the space I claimed was defined by how high and wide I could reach. Once I discovered the joy in extending my range of motion, I couldn’t go back to that attenuated sense of myself. My arms wouldn’t let me.

Certainly, extending my arms was a bold gesture in claiming space, but an exercise called “going across the floor” taught me to quit worrying about what I thought others thought of me. Gradually, I began to treat myself with some respect. If asked to do a grande sissonne, I would breathe deeply, elevate my rib cage, and take flying leaps across the floor.

In learning to dance, I made peace with the paradox of accepting limitations while finding unlimited joy in movement. Although I grew stronger and more flexible, taking classes now and then was not making me a “real” dancer. I was too old. I had a limited vocabulary of movement.

Why did I put myself through the embarrassment and self-consciousness? Because dancing is joyful. Rolling my pelvis, reaching and bending, regaining the feelings of a younger me carried away by music, experiencing the natural pleasures of rhythm and patterned movement—it was an ordeal, but it felt good.

Now, on the other side of fifty, I see how risk and joy can be contained in a single gesture. I am not afraid to be a beginner. I have learned to dance.

Published in Sojourn magazine, January 1997