Skipping

 Skipping 

     I was visiting her in her room at the assisted living facility, and she was reminiscing about her college days at Utah State, repeating some anecdote I had heard many times.  Now that she is in her nineties, I don’t correct her, confuse her, make her wrong by saying, “I’ve heard that one, “ although I’m tempted.  Any daughter who takes care of an old mother knows the forbearance needed to listen to a story one more time, audience to a monologue of memories. 

     She surprised me when she said, “We were walking downtown to the movie theater and he asked me—we hadn’t been dating that long—he asked me if I knew how they skipped down the yellow brick road in the movie, The Wizard of Oz.  I told him, ‘Of course I do!’  He took my hand and we skipped all the way to the movie theater.”

   I was delighted by the vision of young Helen and Fred skipping down the streets of Logan, Utah in 1935, the year they met.   She continued, “There was something about his taking my hand....” She paused and repeated herself, which she often does, “There was something about his taking my hand.”   As she said the words, it was as if she could feel her hand in his.

     “Mom, I have never heard that story before,” I said.

     “I just remembered it,” she said.

      The next day I discovered that the Wizard of Oz was released in 1939 and realized that my mother’s story could not have been true.  By that time, my parents were married and living in Reno, Nevada.

      So What?  I thought.  So what if the story can’t be true, at least the way she told it.  It reminded me of literary definitions that imply the lies of fiction lead to greater truths.   That little story, true or not, was a gift, restoring memories of my parents’ marriage, reminding me that theirs was a happy one.

     I remembered long car rides from the sheep ranch near Hayden, Colorado to Colby, Kansas where the livestock  wintered.  As my dad thumped the rhythm on the dashboard, they sang, “I was born in Kansas, I was bred in Kansas, and when I get married, I’ll be wed in Kansas…”

      Later, living on a cattle ranch in northeastern Nevada, I remembered their duets on an old upright piano, my mother playing the bass, Dad, the melody, and both singing, “I like mountain music, good old mountain music…”

      I remembered my father ‘s last days of a terminal illness in a morphine-induced state, his expressive hands fluttering above the bed covers, her steady hand feeding him teaspoons of water.

     It is a blessing to remember that,  after all the anger, blame, regret, curiosity, doubt I have been through, trying to figure out who I am, what shaped my life, I know with certainty  my parents had a good marriage, a happy marriage.  “Be my life’s companion and we’ll never grow old…,” another song I remember them singing.

What Valentine's Day Means To Me Now That It's Over

What Valentine’s Day Means To Me Now That It’s Over

At 5:00 p.m. on February 14th, I was fourth in line at the CVS Pharmacy in Elko, Nevada waiting to buy a large box of Imodium A-D for my ninety-six year old mother sitting in the car.  I was behind three working guys, each holding a last-minute token of affection.  The man directly in front of me in a hooded sweatshirt with grease spots held in his work-thickened hand a heart-shaped box of Stover’s chocolates and a greeting card.  I could see part of the card, which was from the Humorous Valentine section.

 I have lost my sense of humor regarding Valentine’s Day.  That morning, my friend Sally had sent an e-mail saying, “Happy Valentine’s Day.  I hope this isn’t the only valentine you get.”  It was.  Thanks for rubbing it in, Sal.   I’m done with Valentine’s Day. Finis.  Kaput. I’m too old and, like Greta Garbo, “I vant to be alone.”  I need to be alone to write.

 The next day, I was reading Facebook postings from widowed or divorced Facebook friends saying,  “I fixed myself a terrible dinner, ate the whole thing, and polished it off with three fourths of a bottle of Malbec.” or “I didn’t have anyone to share it with, so I ate a chocolate cake for dinner.”  That was posted by a man.  We know food is the first response for self-pity and often a substitute for sex.   That’s what Valentine’s Day is about, eros, pure and simple. I know my Greek mythology.   If my husband had sent me flowers, which he didn’t, it would have been in memoriam for our young bodies and lustful youth.

Menopause didn’t trigger this change.  Turning seventy did. More than anything at this time in my life, I want to find myself as a writer.  “We strive to be good, to be nice, to be helpful, to be unselfish.  We want to be generous, of serving the world.  But what we really want is to be left alone,” says Julia Cameron in The Artist’s Way.

Writing requires solitude.  Solitude takes practice, self-discipline.  I am a good place to practice, when I am in my small house in Tuscarora, fifty-two miles from Elko, where my mother resides in an assisted living facility and I can care for her; and six hundred miles from my home in northern California where my husband of forty-five years goes about his daily business  without me.

“Who do I think I am?”  That’s the question I ask myself when I’m alone and writing, both when I’m feeling strong and when I’m feeling weak.  When I’m feeling strong, it seems an appropriate question for my age and my nature, reflective and analytical.  Learning to be alone is different from being lonely or alienated.  The poet David Whyte says the following:

All of our great traditions, religious, contemplative and artistic, say that you must a learn how to be alone—and have a relationship with silence. It is difficult, but it can start with just the tiniest quiet moment.


Being quiet in the midst of a frenetic life is like picking up a new instrument. If you've never played the violin and you try to play it for the first time, every muscle in your body hurts. Your neck hurts, you don't know how to hold that awkward wavy thing called a bow, you can't get your knuckles round to touch the strings, you can't even find where the notes are, you are just trying to get your stance right. Then you come back to it again, and again, and suddenly you can make a single buzzy note. The time after that, you can make a clearer note. No one, not even you, wants to listen to you at first. But one day, there is a beautiful succession of notes and, yes, you have played a brief, gifted, much appreciated passage of music.


This is also true for the silence inside you; you may not want to confront it at first. But a long way down the road, when you inhabit a space fully, you no longer feel awkward and lonely. Silence turns, in effect, into its opposite, so it becomes not only a place to be alone but also a place that's an invitation to others to join you, to want to know who's there, in the quiet.
from Lesson 4: The Truth Will Set You Free
  David Whyte
                                                           OWN TV/June 15, 2011


When I’m feeling weak, my inner critic rephrases the question, “Who in the hell do I think I am?”  I feel self-indulgent, to have to set myself apart like this, like Narcissus, in love with her own reflection, and for what?

Once, in a fit of anger, my husband said, “Go ahead.  Stay up there and write War and Peace!”

I squeaked, “It’s been written.”

I never falter in my belief in my need for creative expression or my love of the craft of writing or my knowledge that serious writers must take themselves seriously and they must devote time to their work.  Maybe, as I gain confidence in my abilities and the habit of a writer’s routine, I can reintegrate into domestic life.  Of course, there is the risk that my husband won’t be there when I come out of a room of my own.