Snow Days - A Story for Kat

This one is for my friend Kat, who, with double mastectomy scheduled in a less than a week, and a zillion things to do and plan, $$ for the doctors, kids, husband, writing obligations, pets and rural animals, set aside to time to attend her son's Pre-K Easter party yesterday.  Reading her account of that brought back some memories of when I was that age.

From Saving Grace - A Story of Adoption by LB Johnson

It seemed like those childhood years were a blink. Our dog Pepper had crossed the Rainbow Bridge; Dad was getting ready to retire. Before I knew it my brother was off to the Navy, going to submarine school, myself already in college, working toward my commercial pilot’s license. I ultimately wanted to major in science or criminal justice, perhaps both—but as a teen I got a second job at the local airport pumping gas. I could get flying lessons at a reduced cost, so I was working toward my license while cramming in way more classes than I had hours in the day. For that kind of overextending, there is a “complete breakfast”—which for me was Hostess Sno Balls and coffee, grabbed when a parent wasn’t looking. Unhealthy yes, but just the taste of them took me back. It was that and the big bowl of Captain Crunch before every flight check. I was glad years later when I got my nickname as a pilot that it was “Shake and Bake” and not “Captain Crunch.”

Still—all good memories. Memories of childhood are so different for many people. I am lucky that mine were good. Laughter and exploration wrapped in a warm blanket of sight and sound and tastes that are still on my tongue. Memories of the past are like that; often having an impossible quality of perfection we frequently give to material things, a favorite book, a favorite tool or firearm; sometimes to a whole relationship we can never get back to.

If we could only get there again, have that again, hold that again, our lives would somehow be better; as if some cold case crime was finally solved, the reminders of things that hurt us left behind, held in our mind never to be freed again.

We’ve all talked about it, some small trivial thing from the past that appears to contain the sublime, and there’s no explaining it to anyone, try though you might. Still, in your mind’s eye it’s there and always will be as clear and as sure as if it were yesterday. For me one such memory is opening up the lunch box as a kid and finding my Hostess treat next to my peanut butter and honey sandwich, apple, and carrot sticks.

Mom’s cancer was one of those things that will stay with me for a lifetime. She was first diagnosed in the early ’60s. The long term survival rate for her type of cancer then was only one in seven. When she was first diagnosed, she was only in her forties. I was not even in school yet, my brother only a couple of years older. She came home after Christmas that first time, chemo shunt in place, and did everything in her power to make our life normal. I don’t recall her initially leaving for the hospital, only the worried look in my dad’s eyes. But the photos bring it back, like the one of my brother at her hospital bed with a little aluminum tree on the nightstand—as she holds up a flannel nightgown Dad picked out and bought “from us” that she opened from her hospital bed.

The doctor’s treatment did not cure her, but it gave her quite a few more Christmas mornings, including the one where my brother and I pooled our allowances and bought her a nightgown we picked out all by ourselves. It was red, see-through, and very short, trimmed with fake fur that was shedding like a polecat with mange even as we wrapped the gift ourselves. I’m not sure what discount place on Main Street we got it from, but young as we were we thought it was quite spiffy, and oh, won’t our quiet, cookie-baking mom love this! I still remember the fits of laughter she tried to suppress when she opened the package and held up the nightgown. (Dad seemed to like it, though.)

I remember her making our school lunches with homemade cookies if she was up to it, and our Hostess treats when she wasn’t. It was Ding Dongs for my brother, Sno Balls for me. I’d eat one at lunch and take the remaining one to the playground after school, eating it perched on top of the biggest, tallest pieces of playground equipment I could find; defying gravity, feet dangling in the air, Mom watching carefully from a distance. Then we’d go home to start supper, eager to tell both Dad and Mom about our day, and we’d listen to her laugh—that sound, the stored honey of her spirit, carried on wings whose load was heavy, delivered to us, her children, to make us whole.

Before cancer, our list of should-dos was really quite long. And like other families that cope with disappointment or disease we quit using the work “should” quite so much. The house may have been be a bit messier; but given the choice of cleaning or building a snowman with her kids, doing that ironing now or joining us in a snowball fight, her choice went toward those small joys.

Still, Mom maintained her discipline as a mother; and for every sweet snack we got there were still those family dinners where you had better eat your vegetables. She and I had a doctrine of mutually assured destruction involving acorn squash. She refused to not make it, and I refused to eat it—sitting at the table long after everyone else was excused, the squash growing as chilly as that Veggie Cold War; until finally she gave up and sent me to my room without dessert, something that was not easy on either of us.

I was too young to appreciate the depth of what she did for us, instilling in us love for each other and appreciation for the blessings of our table. But I was old enough to see that courage is simply the power to see past misfortune or expectation, to hold on to the things that affirm inwardly that life with all its trials is still good. Be it a warm hug or sweet treats handed to us with a smile and a touch on our head, a benediction of love that could only come from the wellspring of faith that stayed within her.

I cannot, no matter how hard I try, remember her voice; but if I close my eyes I can remember that touch. It was not a touch as heavy and uncaring as a slap, but one that simply said: I love you, but you must have courage and craft your life for yourself, just let me share it as long as I can.

Watching us spread our wings, knowing she would likely be gone before we were grown with families of our own, had to have been so hard. Like any mother she was concerned with our safety, but never to the point where we were wrapped in bubble wrap, spoiled, and coddled, or given everything we wanted without effort. We worked hard for our allowance, doing chores; but when the chores were done, we were encouraged to go explore the world around us.

Myself, I’d get on my bike and go ride the dusty gash of a roadway near the railroad tracks, where I could see and hear the trains go by—the engine passing in hissing thunder, sparks flying up like fireflies let loose from the rails, dust coiling behind it like a tornado in trail. Such began my adventures, my love of motion and machinery.

We crammed a lot of life into those short childhood years, as did our mom. More than we expected her to have, but not nearly enough. It’s been a lifetime since she left us, and all that remains are the memories—memories that come on the wings of a snowfall; that raise a smile every time I see an acorn squash at the grocery store; that rumble into life with the roar of a locomotive or the soft crackle of a little cellophane package being gleefully opened by eager hands.

It was five in the morning. In a few hours I would have to get up and go to the airport to fuel the aircraft for the morning students, cram in some studying, and then ride my bike to the community college for class. The alarm went off much too early, my hand slapping it even as it gently touched a photo of my brother and me as children, Pepper the wiener dog lying between us as we watched Johnny Quest.

Outside, the moonlight filters through darkened trees, their branches raised up as if in prayer. From a distance comes the whistle of a train, the mournful sound carried on the windless cold that is memory’s heat. Inside, the rest of the house sound asleep, there is only quiet and another photo on my desk, of a tall young woman with dark auburn hair and ice-blue eyes in a simple wooden frame. I know there is oatmeal and fruit in the kitchen; but at the store I found one last package of Sno Balls. I think this one time Mom would not mind if I had one for breakfast. I’ll put on my coat and head out on the porch; perhaps eating the Sno Ball as I perch on the wooden railing, feet dangling into the air just for one more moment—ignoring the inherited perpetual recognition of gravity, while Mom watches over me even as heaven sleeps. - Brigid