Sound of Water

My Dad's little brother, who was simply known as "Kid," was born last, a gap of several years between him and my Dad. Grandma made a point of giving all four children names, to which she stated a nickname would not be derived. Yet, every single one of them had a nickname that they would wear until death: "Sis," "Drake," "Bud," and "Kid," all redheads.

There were many stories about those children, the most notable of which was when the three of them put Kid in a washtub of some sort to play "boat" and ended up accidentally floating him down the Flathead River. The results of that could have been dire, and how he escaped drowning was a mystery, the river just pushing him to where they could retrieve him. What could have happened was burned in all their memory.

Dad and his baby brother were especially close, and as they had children of about the same age, summer was usually a long trek to California to visit. There, my Uncle had a small ranch on which he raised various citrus fruits over the years and, later, almonds further north, in the hot, dry central valley, when he wasn't working as a telephone company lineman.

I think my earliest memory of those trips was one when I was about 5, and I got to ride on the back of my Uncle's little motorcycle (more of a scooter, as far as size and power) that he'd use just to travel on his property. I remember the ride, reinforced by a photo of me on the back, arms around his waist, laughing into the breeze. I couldn't have been happier to be with Uncle Kid, the handsome, shiny guardian and guide on our summer adventures. We wore no helmets.  Now, kids wear helmets to run through a sprinkler, it seems; then, we were bareheaded and free-spirited as we covered every inch of his property. The world was our playground, the garden hose was our bottled water, and blood would be drawn, and yet we all survived to adulthood, though sometimes we wonder how.

Other than the occasional Looney Tune or Yogi the Bear and Friends cartoon, we were always outside, coming into the coolness of the house only to eat or use the bathroom. Under the shade of those trees, we ran, biked, and explored, buzzing like bees that swarmed the blossoms, a sound like the wind getting up. The sun was a constant, there in that dry valley where water was holy, as we ran between trees shattered by light as eager as we were. If there was a brief cloud burst, we'd simply raise our heads to lick water from the sky and resume playing, water in that hot, dry place being a blessing.

When we were a little older, we were allowed to swim down the irrigation ditch as the water was released. I remember that initial jump in, leaping into the air, our thin little bodies hanging there like an exclamation point written on the air. Then, that sudden chill of water, riding that unbroken spinning swirl of liquid, unleashed, unleashing something within us. I may only have been a kid, but I was intensely aware in that moment of being alive as the strong, steady pull of water drew us downstream until we just floated gently, like breath trailing across a mirror.

The town was about a couple of miles away, and we'd walk some days when we'd gathered up enough coins to buy a Cherry 7-Up, made fresh at a little soda fountain, watching to make sure they filled it up to the very top, for you can not have too much, you think, in those full round days of childhood that have only room left for curiosity. The first big sip made the walk that built up the thirst in the first place all worth it. We then walked back, with the ice in the cup, jingling like coins in our pockets, passing fields of trees, small weathered houses, the spire of church, the finger of God pointing up to the sun.

I really don't know what the adults did all day, but when we got in, they'd be having a cold beer as they traded stories, laughter in the kitchen as the meal was prepared, and Grace was more than my Mom's first name.

Then, after supper, we'd sometimes venture out again, within earshot of the house, where our Moms could call us in before bedtime.  Whatever we did was going to be more exciting than the folks watching Lawrence Welk on TV, the "A one and a two . . . "as the bubbles were released, our signal to escape.

When it was dark, we'd throw a football in the air and watch the bats chase it to the ground; we even tried to catch one of them, with a sock with a rock in it, thrown up in the air.  They swooped at them, but we came home empty-handed, no one being able to hold up a live bat to our Moms with an "It followed me home. Can we keep it?"  Probably for the best.

But those evenings were magic. We'd sit on the ground, the moon and a flashlight our only guide, telling scary stories of haunted orchards and brooding woods, where the improbable became possible, the unlikely became fact, and the impossible was made incontrovertible (sort of like an election year) " It's right behind you, going to touch your hair; look at those teeth!" Arghhhh. 

The trips continued, even with Mom's declining health, my cousin L. getting a horse or two, the sound of clattering hooves on an old wooden bridge soon joining the whine of that little motorbike while we chased each other around the place until it was too hot to continue. Then, I'd simply climb into the fork of one of the fruit trees, a bright yellow shirt suspended like the sun caught in its branches, a brief escape from the heat to flickering shade, as from a distance, the sound of hooves faded to memory.

But the water still drew us, the irrigation ditch abandoned for a lake when the boys got old enough to drive and take my Uncle's boat out. We'd water ski until our knees were wobbly, and there wasn't enough Coppertone to keep us from burning, there as the summer of our youth refused to end. We didn't realize that these moments wouldn't last, no more able to retain them than the thorn of Spring, which comes and goes with the season but can never be held.

Soon, it was our last trip there before my brother went off to the Navy, my older cousin went off to get a degree in forestry and a job as "Ranger Smith." Somehow, we always figured we'd all make it back there for one more summer, that things would remain unchanged, the rush of water down a sluiceway, a child's laughter in the dark, the spray of gravel from a little motorbike, the thunder of hooves. Such it is with youth, that brief time when we live in advance of most of our remaining days, in that beautiful cohesion of hope that knows no interruptions or introspection. 

On the last night there, I walked down to the irrigation ditch. I looked down where I could see, almost to the bottom, the last rays of sunlight playing like orange fire on the surface. There, on the surface, a leaf. After a long time in the water, the tissues of the leaf decay, leaving only the fiber swirling on the surface like soft bones, light from the last of the day's sunlight playing on them like a flame.

The land remained constant, trees that trembled and dropped their fruit, the wind that buzzed, then slept again when it got cold, the glitter of sunlight on water, but life was soon to change us.

The call came in on my brother's wedding day, just before the ceremony. As a teen, I didn't think it could get any worse than the cruel fate of five yards of shiny aqua fabric fashioned into a long bridesmaid dress with a turtleneck that made me look like Disco Princess Leia. I wished happiness for my brother, but I wanted nothing more than to be outside in blue jeans, tossing a football up for the bats, which there seemed to be a dearth of on this California submarine base.

It got worse with the ring of the phone.  My Uncle, who had gone fishing not far away early that morning and was late to the wedding, had been found dead, his body in the water, his boat nearby, under the broken spinning swirl of the sky. The waters that had released him as a small child had finally called him home.

The minister was standing by, and the room grew quiet. Silence increased between us like water rising.  I remember nothing after that but my brother holding me as if I were no bigger than a child. The wedding ceremony itself went ahead as planned. My brother's Navy schedule left him only a few days before returning to sea for 3 months.  But, as the sun set on what should have been a happy occasion, it descended to the earth, seemingly smaller in size than when it rose, with a rayless glow as if the day itself had sapped some of its warmth. 

My Aunt refused an autopsy, wanting only for it to be over. No one ever knew exactly what happened, one minute, so alive, his red hair flaming in the sun, a candle blazing up for a moment, then snuffed between damp fingers, the cool eternal darkness of the water.

I never did get back to the ranch.

My cousin L., the lone female of her family, like myself, would visit Dad regularly, and when the two of us would meet there with my brother, we'd make sure Dad had a good time during our stay and then make sure he was asleep and safe each night. He would usually drift off around 8 pm, even with company, worn beyond words by the days he carries on him.  Then, after Dad was asleep, we'd gather, like the adults did back then, trading stories out there on the deck, laughter popping like champagne bubbles in the air. Off in the distance, the trickle of water, faint and clear and invisible.
 - Brigid

Roads Less Traveled

I don’t have a long drive to work anymore. I work in DC and live in Chicago, and if it can’t be done via the Internet, I’m on a plane to the Capital.  I still go into the city to the federal building, but that’s about it.  On such days, I make sure the truck is running smoothly, water and supplies are on board, one travel mug with coffee, and one with Scooby Snacks. No GPS. I drive the truck simply with road sign navigation, finding the GPS voice a nagging I don’t want and the directions sometimes less than accurate. (Recalculate this!) Certainly, I get off course once in a great while, but sometimes those are the adventures we remember.

I was in South Florida on a layover with a copilot some years back. We’d heard about a boat show, so we headed out in the FBO courtesy car to find it. We found miles and miles of small neighborhoods where no one spoke English, and boats were somewhat scarce. My Spanish is limited, just enough to get myself more thoroughly lost. I finally told my partner that the next business I saw, I would stop for directions, no matter what.  That’s assuming the tiny car didn’t wash away in the vivid, brief downpours of a Florida summer day.

There, on the next corner, was a small used car lot. But not just any used cars: they had all, for lack of a more politically correct term, been “pimped out.” Lowriders, enough pink and glitter and chrome to take out an eye quicker than a laser. I couldn’t imagine anyone over twenty-five driving one of these in daylight with a straight face. What is the name of the place? Get Down Motors.

I said I was stopping, and I did, garnering a little attention as I did so, there not being a plethora of natural redheads around. The sales manager couldn’t have been nicer, drawing me a map to where I was going and chatting for a bit about a couple of classic cars that, in their prior lives, might have inhabited our parents' garage (minus the fur-covered dashboard). 

Roads traveled.

I thought of this on the long drive to visit a friend out in rural Illinois, a smile that did not last long as up ahead in the opposite direction I saw a sudden flash of emergency vehicles. Fire trucks. All lanes in that direction were stopped, and as I slowed and got over to the right lane, I could see the burned-out shell of an SUV. Nothing was left but a charred husk, the fire so intense it had started a grass fire on the side of the road thirty feet away.

There was no other vehicle; it had not been hit, and it was in the right lane and not pulled off to the side. Something had happened fast, and the vehicle was abandoned where it could be stopped. There was no ambulance or wrecker; I’d have seen it continuing south as I headed north. I could only imagine—engine fire? Fuel leak? Giant spare can of gas in the back (why people do that is beyond comprehension), windows up tight against the heat, fumes building, and then poof? Spontaneous human combustion during a car video player episode of X-Files? There are many scenarios, but none end as planned.

After Mom died, I spent time at Dad's going through drawers and cupboards. In part, it was to help my Dad give to charity those things he did not need and to gather photos and mementos in one place for a time when he could look at them again with joy, not anguish.

As any child does, we always picture our parents as being “old,” as an image of staid authority and wisdom. Looking at the photos of my parents growing up together and falling in love, I remember that although they invested incredible energy in raising a family, they also invested incredible energy in the things that made them happy, outside of what was expected of them. What were they like, those two, before we came along? What living, unspoken dreams did they have that were denied?  What dreams did they have that became real? Dad shared some of them with me, but he took the private ones to his grave.

Their lives certainly didn’t go as planned, a war interrupting their wedding plans for five years, the loss of a child followed by 11 childless years, then adoption. Mom’s cancer returning and Dad losing her so soon. Then those children all traveling the world, family gatherings at best two or three times a year.  It was likely not the life he’d planned on. Yet he kept on going, believing what he needed to believe or, rather, what was intolerable for him not to believe. He believed he would be happy again, and he was marrying my stepmom, building a new life, and achieving new dreams.

The traffic was moving along again but at the pace of a three-toed sloth, not a sprint car. Up ahead, another slowdown: it looked like someone rear-ended someone. It was a minor accident, given the speeds, but it was worth getting off the freeway to get around on side roads.

I have known people through the years who have had every aspect of their lives planned and mapped out, the journey from birth to death laid out like a perfect roadway. Life, being something that refuses to cooperate with plans and possessing no map, usually throws them off on a different road, often without warning. How they respond to such detours makes the difference between someone who simply survives and someone who sheds tears for the change but embraces the journey, finding happiness along the way.

I think back to more than one hunting trip, lying there on the cold ground, aching and sleepless under goose down as heavy as a lead apron, while my companions slept around me. I think back to those dreams that didn’t go as planned. In the wilderness where such senses are heightened, I pictured life, fate, or whatever you call it, looming above like the dark canvas of a tent, musing downward on this small cluster of fragile human dreams. I lay there thinking of all the times I hunted and came home empty-handed because I just didn’t have it in me that day to take a life, even if needed for food on the table, nothing to show for my exertions but unmarked solitude. Those days I remembered, where the deer pranced ahead of soundless guns and how the fierce sunlight of fall renewed me, even if I came home with nothing to show for my weariness but blisters and virgin ammo.

I’d then sleep and wake up renewed, walking out into the fields, the land flattened and calm, dissolving away under a cold rain like the rivers themselves dissolve away; and though I knew that, however, the day had ended, I was here, alive. Over the years, the ground got harder and the blankets a little rougher and thinner, but I was free to walk the land even though my shotgun had been replaced with a camera. I was loved without expectation, and I was loved deeply. Those were the gifts for which I was grateful.

As the wheels of my truck hummed along with the music and the traffic thinned out, I took the time to look around me here on this side road I never expected to take. The landscape was warped and wrung in the heat into geometrical squares of wilted hope. The grass was dead, the trees bent down, limbs pulled against trunks as if hoping the sun would not notice them; the skeleton stalks of corn seemed to serve as a warning to next year’s plantings. The creeks were dry, the rivers thick and slow, almost without current. Yet in only a few months, they would run wild again, spreading out over this land, drowning the fertile soil before subsiding again, leaving it richer even if it did not remain.

Those last trips out to see Dad come to mind. The airfare back and forth ate a chunk out of my wallet and almost all my vacation, but it was money and time spent gladly, my husband joining me when he could. Each time I went to Dad’s, though, I was increasingly aware that this could always be the last visit, and I know Dad knew that also. Yet it didn’t change how he looked at it. There were outings planned and board games dusted off, a beer chilled for Dad and an Orange Crush for me, the windows opened to the wind as if these summer days would go on forever.

Dad was just happy to have me home. He didn’t bemoan the fact that I spent twenty years single again before finding a man who adored me as I did him; the years too far gone to give him any grandchildren. He didn’t mind that I carried a bag with a bodily fluid clean-up kit instead of diapers. He didn’t judge that I often sat up late in the night, alone, reflecting on roads taken and how waiting patiently to live this life—as opposed to settling for one with someone for whom there was no affinity for me as an individual, only as a possession—was so much less lonely.

On such nights, he didn’t expect conversation or explanations; he simply brought me a mug of tea, kissed me on the forehead, hugged my husband, and headed off to bed to dream those dreams still so alive to him. I would sit up until I knew he was resting comfortably, happy to hear the sound of his gentle snores while he strode, as if young, through the fields of his youth, chasing immortal game that bounded ahead of his own silent guns. 

It was inevitable that there was that trip that was indeed the last.  I missed his funeral, fighting for my life in ICU with a sepsis infection that went into septic shock. I remember making breakfast and then my husband racing me to the hospital; my temperature was almost 106 and not slowing down. I remember stepping into the ER, then stepping into a darkness that felt like that darkness before creation. Going into organ failure, they gave me less than a 50% chance of surviving. As I lay hooked up to various machines, death lay outside the window, its punctual and worrisome form looming like a storm cloud that may or may not hold rain.  My first memory was the comforting words of a man of God, a hand on my forehead, a touch of liquid.  At that moment, I stepped back into the light, the sound of the machines now merely fading bell notes as my unassisted breathing filled the room. A side trip not expected. 

Three years have passed, and the journey continues. 

Before I sleep tonight, I will make the rounds of my house, outside and in.  As I pass by the mirror, I note the glints of silver in my dark red hair, 66 years somehow passing without a rustle of warning or even the ghost of impact.  Years gone.  Years ahead.  Out in the drive, I place my hand on the truck's hood, feeling the residual warmth there under a whisper of snow. I turn to enter the house to get greeted by the one who loved me through it all and a little dog that a year ago was merely existing, dreaming dreams from a crate in a darkened barn.

I am happy for the journey, whatever road it took.

Timespans

I tried to visit my dad as often as I could in that time between the death of my brother and my dad's own passing six years later.  Dad wished to remain in his own home, so a home health nurse was hired to provide daytime in-home care and drive him where he needed to go. I had mentioned his getting another dog—but getting up out of his chair was sometimes painful, so a dog that had to be let out regularly or in the night would probably not be a good idea.

Our family had several rescues over the years, the last being a Dalmatian named Ashlee. When Dad got her, he was ninety, and the dog was almost twelve. There was no telling who would outlive whom, but he was so happy to have that four-legged friend to share his big old house.

However, with good quality food and regular veterinary care, Ashley, the Dalmatian, lived several very comfortable years with him. Dad was doing much better than average, going to the YMCA to work out well into his 90s and getting 3 miles on a treadmill or stationary bike every morning.  He lived to be almost 102, still coherent and able-bodied but needing a little help getting in and out of the bath.

Think about it. As a society, we now live decades longer than our ancestors. I remember reading the book Alaska by James Michener; in the opening chapter, at the dawn of time, they speak of “the Ancient One,” a woman who was a great healer and spiritual leader. She was in her thirties. Oh great, I thought as I read it, first the big three-oh, now I’m ancient.

These days most of us can expect to live well into our seventies and eighties, some even into their hundreds. Yet some creatures live only months or even days.

I remember the fall when a cricket moved into the garage of my crash pad on the other side of my bedroom wall. Leaving the garage door open didn’t encourage him to leave, only to have a party with some of his bigger friends. I was able to shoo them out, but he hopped into a little crack to hide so he could continue to serenade me. After a few nights of that, I wondered how to dispatch him. (Would using a silencer on a cricket be illegal or apropos?)

I did a little checking online—apparently the life span of the average field cricket is just a couple of months. Already an adult, he likely had only a few weeks to live, if that. The poor little guy wouldn’t even make it to Halloween, but each night, he sang as if he would live forever. I didn’t have the heart to capture him and move him outside. He could stay safe in my garage as my pet cricket. I named him “Mort.”

Consider the hummingbird: such a small creature with such a high metabolism, yet it has a life span much greater than you’d think, with some living more than a decade. I watch them from the feeders in summer, warring for the liquid nectar found within, fending off others that wish to take it; watching, guarding, always wanting more of life’s sweetness. No different than most of us.

I think of those lives cut short that achieved so much for their brief time here, like my favorite poet John Keats, who threw over medicine to write some of the most sublime odes in the English language and died at twenty-five from tuberculosis; Percy Shelly; M.F. Xavier Bichat, French army surgeon turned pathologist; Évariste Galois, mathematician and inventor of group theory who died at twenty; Robert Fergusson, Scottish Poet; Saint Albertus Magnus. Their words and their teachings still follow me where I go, whispering to me in unexplored depths or darkest of nights—such great thoughts tinged with wonder and mystery, those whispers of slain genius.

Fortunately, our human life span is much longer than most creatures’—if we are blessed and take care of ourselves. But even the greatest expanses of time seem so short in recollection. Walking through the little village where I live, the sidewalk glints with little bits of mica. Not the prophet Micah, but the geological kind. As a kid, the sidewalk would glitter like broken glass upon the tide flats from the small glints of mica within it. My brother said it was made of broken starships, and I believed him. For although there are limits to what we may accept as children, there is no limit to what we can believe, nourished as we are by the embrace of the incredible that is found right beneath our feet.

Into the warm days of fall that is childhood’s longest hour, in those weeks of summer vacation we believed we’d live forever. We weren’t content just to ride our bikes on these glittering trails of star-stuff; we’d get big pieces of chalk and draw on them, hopscotch, tic-tac-toe, our names. We’d play well into the dark, coming in only when we were hungry, the front doors unlocked to our comings and goings—time for us was something we could pick up and put in our pocket.

My childhood home is long since sold, and my brother’s laughter is silent, but there is no weather of distance between that time and now. It seems like yesterday. But I have realized that the saying is true: man does carry his life in his hand. My dad’s siblings, though blessed with a hardy disposition, also possessed an intrepidity of spirit and courage that might have been called reckless in others.  But in them it was a natural trait when tempered with a soundness of choice. They honored their bodies as vessels of God and didn’t abuse them with drugs or excesses of alcohol or even food. In my pictures of them together, I saw only lean, honed strength and purpose of duty.

I look at a collection of bones on a table, beautiful in their pristine immobility. I look at a glass box Aunt Marion left me that sits on my desk. In it is Chrysiridia rhipheus, more commonly known as the sunset moth, hovering on lifeless wings that glow in the light as if lit aflame. The sunset moth is found on the shaded areas of river banks in Madagascar. The essence of life floats elusive, half submerged in the waters of science, buoyed by God. I’ve spent the last twenty-five years studying the many tragic ways life ends, and still, I draw great comfort from the way it fights to remain.

I think back to those final days when Dad was still with us.  As I sat in my home, I knew that somewhere a thousand miles away, mealtime drawing to a close, Dad would be reading that old family Bible, the book for all the remaining days. Dad never knew his destiny would be to live to a great age, to love deeply, outliving two children and two wives. A love that entranced him and made him its own to the most secret of thoughts, to the disquiet of blood, to his last exhalation. He did not know his destiny, but he followed it in unfaltering footsteps. The Bible would be gently laid in his lap as he nodded his head for a nap. The winter window faded, then glowed—a living spark there among the shadowed embers, as an empty dog bed lay at his feet.

Have a Geeky New Year

Each year, Partner in Grime and I exchange an assortment of gifts only a geek could love.  None expensive, all silly.  This year was no exception.  Whatever your New Year brings you, may it be filled with wonder (and a grin or two)

A mini catapult for the desk and a Corner Gas key fob.

Monday morning telework pants.

And an appropriate T-shirt to match.

If all else fails, load up on sugar and play a came of Smart Ass. 

For sharing at the next in-person meeting.

Please address me as MISTER Pooper Scooper.

Hand-made foragers bag.  

You can't fit the body in here, but it will hold a lot of mushrooms, herbs, or tool parts.  

Another hand-carved addition to the Secret Squirrel collection.

New bow ties - the Constitution and a circuit board. 

From the U.K. - this IS going to be hanging up in the bedroom. 

There always has to be a reference to The Dr. at Christmas. 

New hats - because Godzilla playing chess with a monk is more interesting than a Taylor Swift hat.

Burlington Railroad coffee mug.

Let's see someone take my sandwich from the work refrigerator NOW.

OK, we have to have some books.

Putting to bed that myth that men can't wrap gifts.  

Framed record album - Yellow Dog Blues.  Appropriate in our house.

This one is for the dog. . honest.