Tag: family

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Bach and My Best Friend

It was not uncommon for me to find my dad weeping as he listened to his music. From the time I was a very little girl, and I’m sure long before my arrival, he amassed an extensive record (later CD) collection across multiple genres. If I had to identify his favorite type of music to listen to, without hesitation I would say, “classical.” My dad’s dad, my Pop-Pop, was a professional organist and music teacher. He was an organist-for-hire and would play for any congregation in need of his services. I was only three when he died, so don’t have any personal memories of hearing him play. I feel like I do though, vicariously through my own dad’s love of record playing.

At the end of the day, and sometimes well into the night after the rest of the family had gone to bed, my dad would put an album on his stereo, turn the volume waaay up, turn out the lights, and sit on the sofa with his back to speakers and push play. Entire concerts were held for an audience of one and no one could appreciate those recordings more than my dad. He always listened with his eyes closed, but was never asleep.

I knew whenever I heard the unmistakable notes of Bach’s The Toccata and Fugue in D Minor resounding through the house, that my dad was thinking about and missing his dad. That composition was written for the organ and it’s one of the most powerfully moving pieces I’ve ever heard performed.

My dad used to tell me how much his dad loved that piece and would often perform it in the churches with the best acoustics while my dad would sit in a pew nearest the door, farthest from the organ, watching and listening to his father in reverential awe.

A favorite memory was once accompanying my dad and his mom to a local church when I was around seven because there was an organist performing The Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. We got dressed in our Sunday best, Daddy and I, and drove to pick up Mom-Mom. It felt like such a special occasion because it was dark outside and we were going to a concert.

Daddy and I parked the car and walked up the stairs to my grandmother’s apartment and flanking her one on each side, escorted her down to the car. I inhaled my grandmother as a little girl, adored her more than anyone else in my world. She was my best friend. And that night we got to take my best friend to remember her husband. I felt the sacredness of that assignment, like I had a job to do that mattered to my Mom-Mom in ways that my seven-year-old self couldn’t understand. But I did understand loving someone so much you’d walk beside her in the cold night air to be sure she didn’t slip on the ice.

That was probably the first time I recalled my daddy crying, to music. The organist was a master at his craft and I felt the notes move inside my own chest, watched goosebumps rise on my arms when he pounded the reprise. I saw my Mom-Mom holding her own two hands with a white handkerchief clenched between them, which she sometimes dabbed her eyes with.

Music, I learned through direct observation and through personal felt experience, moves you. We were a family who felt notes all the way through ourselves. Record listening parties were a daily occurrence, which listening always and inevitably and desirably turned into dance parties.

Growing up on a daily diet of dance parties fueled by the greatest composers of all time, with intermittent bursts of emotion (sometimes tears, sometimes laughter), birthed in me a creator all my own and she is creating all her own way.

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Smells of Summer

My young feral instincts

understood 

raindrops’ residue on hot pavement

(without being told or taught)

meant summertime,

In the same way 

cut grass goodness

dictated and begged

our nightly revelries — 

barefoot

(Ghost in the Graveyard

firefly chasing

front porch sleeping).

Working in the garden,

turned up dirt

lingering and clinging to

Daddy’s wrist and arm hairs

muddied the kitchen sink

spraying earth fumes, 

inhalation inevitable,

unavoidable,

welcomed.

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The Waiting Game

“Waiting for . . . the phone to ring, or the snow to snow or waiting around for a Yes or No. . . just waiting.” From Dr. Suess’ Oh, The Places You’ll Go

Terrifyingly, 
she lost consciousness 
in my arms and I
thank any and all 
gods attending us — 
for our Nurse Practitioner friend,
(now family) 
reviving her, and 
for Gigi
(also now family)
who had the presence of mind and 
free hands to 
call 911, and 
for the paramedics 
who arrived in minutes,
Amen.

They took her away 
for her second ambulance ride 
in as many weeks, and 
thus began the waiting, 
the longest day of my life.

Tears were cried,
hugs were given, and
received,
more prayers were prayed,
calls were made, 
and we waited. 
Six am until ten pm on that 
longest day’s ever night 
for a conversation
with the doctor — 
any doctor — 
for news on my girl.

She was 
so 
very 
very 
sick, 
the doctor said, and 
thank goodness 
they had her 
right where she needed to be, 
back in a hospital bed with 
tubes going in, and 
PICC lines coming out,
for the myriad medicines going in.

They said she would be 
staying 
for a long 
long while — 
for this infection 
consuming her lungs,
was waiting, too.

We can play 
(and win)
the waiting game,
we cried,
hunkered down
for a long 
winter’s month — 
warming up 
phone lines,
facetimes,
and bowls of soup
between us —
the distance always too far
for our waiting hearts.

Days and nights
became weeks
waiting
for the medicines 
to work,
for the chest tube 
to drain,
for the doctor’s calls
to be non-emergent,
for the hospital
to let me in,
for my tears
to stop,
for my fear 
to dissolve,
for our nightmare
to be a bad dream,
for permission
to go home.

The waiting
ended
(finally) and 
we drove away,
leaving the waiting,
(impossible to see)
behind us,
packed to the roof,
as we were,
with living.


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The Leaving

I remember the leaving more than the being gone.

How my best friend drove us to the airport,

hours after he woke next to my sleepless night. I remember

how I watched him walk around the bed we shared, emotionless,

to kiss me goodbye like he was punching his timecard at the end of his final shift, and

then tossing it over his shoulder into the backseat of his car

as he drove away, never once looking in the rearview mirror. 

I remember feeling so much lighter when I heard his key turn the lock

from the outside, and how our windows faced south and the parking lot was

to the east, so I didn’t have to watch him walk away. All that was left was the leaving,

the packing was finished, and the instantly-grown-up baby, my girl, got to wake up

to Mommy’s kisses, filled with emotion at the start of our big adventure, together

just the two of us. Her brand-new toddler-sized suitcase was packed with her most important

possessions the night before I slept not at all, minus her bed friends — 

Jasmine, the bunny, and her yellow blanket — who got zipped up once she was up. I remember

the suitcase was red, yellow, and green with wheels and a handle she could push, or pull,  

next to me carrying everything else, on our way back east. The two women seated in front of 

our two seats, I remember spoke loudly about how their three-year-olds (40 years ago) 

would never have pushed the seat in front of them, or ever cry for any reason. 

And I remember feeling so much lighter when I drowned out their voices 

to comfort my terrified toddler, whose ears were exploding from too much pressure 

on the inside, and then I remembered how happy I was that my daughter was

using her voice.

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Taking Up Space

I went for a run two hours after the call came from Curtis that his dad was gone. I covered familiar ground, sticking to the sidewalks through the neighborhood nearest the village library. I just learned (I read every single installment of the library e-newsletter, of course) a water pipe to the fire suppression system burst and released a large volume of water into the library. I have never heard of a fire suppression system, but mostly I am sad when I think about that wonderful building holding my heart on every single page on every single shelf. I don’t know what new and temporary location will hold space for us when we gather as lovers of words while we wait for repairs and replacements to be made. Recovery takes a long time and I’m still mentally preparing for and reminding myself of that truth. A couple of months ago, I gave my spare library card to Curtis for safekeeping because you never know when I might need him to run down the hill or swing by the village on my behalf: my library proxy.

Have you ever noticed how much space we humans take up? That space occupying was all I could feel, see and hear while running my library-adjacent route: the man walking three tethered-to-each-other dogs, the two women pushing double-wide strollers (coffee mugs in-hand, too consumed with their conversation with each other to notice me using the same sidewalk), the jumbo-sized SUVs in the morning school line (stretching endlessly-adjacent to the sidewalk I was running), the distracted drivers with no crosswalk awareness cruising straight through their right and left turns (completely oblivious to my permission-granted blinking light trajectory, swiftly dodging their swift deli meat slicer moves), the overly-cologned man leaving a trail for my nose to unwillingly follow (with the window of his truck cab down all the way), the wailing siren somewhere in the distance (unseen but felt in an instant in my heart — my sharp breath intake, breathe out a silent prayer for peace, for grace, for love), the laughter of a cluster of middle-schoolers making their way through the same crosswalk as me (but in opposite directions). Trapper Keepers took up more space in my backpack than their clever commercials promised, but I had to have one.

We’ve been walking Curt’s dad to his next adventure, Curtis and I, these past few months. Taking up space in his room, where he’s gradually occupied less and less of it: walker-assisted walking, to a fall that rendered him bedridden, to therapy to move that hip, to reassert dominance over a wheelchair, sitting upright with self-propelled mobility, to nursing station hangouts, filling that hallway with his jokes and quick retorts, inciting laughter and delight (both space taker-uppers), and then back to bed, curled up in the fetal position, refusing food and water because they take up too much internal space.

Love (and grief — because grief IS love) takes up space and moves between and among us, filling us all — all at the same time, with no limit to its capacity. It might be the great mediator among us, Love. While we wait for repairs and replacements to be made to our hearts, I remind myself that healing, if there is such a thing to be achieved, takes a long time. I’ve noticed that my dad, who’s been gone three years now, and that Curt’s dad, who’s been gone just eight days, are still tethered to us, taking up a lot of space inside of us, holding our hearts on every single page of this story we’re still living out loud and writing in real time.

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For Sale

Inspired by the photo above, I wrote the following piece of narrative fiction.

It’s 1948 and I can barely believe my eyes, let alone my heart, as my driver navigates through a neighborhood on the south side of Chicago I’ve never been through before. This isn’t our usual route to the newspaper but I trust he knows where he’s going and why. I assume there must be some sort of public protest happening and is the likely disruption to our normal routine. The housing situation is, I fear, a much bigger underlying issue, and one that we as a community are uncomfortable, at best, in addressing, let alone acknowledging.  While I’ve never spoken this out loud to my father, I have relished numerous, and rather clandestine, discussions with Albert on race and its probable impact on the lives of so many in the Black Belt. 

My stomach lurches into my throat and I think I might be ill as my eyes are drawn to four small children seated as neatly and cleanly as they can be on a wooden stoop not ten feet from my car’s side door. Planted in the patch of dirt directly in front of their sidewalk is a 3.5’ tall wooden post with a signboard stapled to it and the words “4 CHILDREN FOR SALE/INQUIRE WITHIN” painted in bold black letters. 

Dear God, what is the meaning of this? I simply cannot believe my eyes have given me correct information and I insist we circle the block once again so I can confirm — or better deny — what I believe I have seen. Those four sets of eyes looking back at me looking at them as my shiny black car and clean window easily moved past their planted position of inquiry. 

My heart pounds and my palms perspire in this misleading heat of a late September summer day, knowing the weather will turn on us in a moment and the harsh winds of winter will whip through these dirty narrow streets, knocking down signposts and exposing the poverty that seeps through the very brick and mortar making up the neighborhood. 

My eyes widen and I catch my breath before it escapes my gaping mouth. They didn’t lie to me, my eyes. Here they are again, or still, for I am the one who has come round again, to bear witness to that which is unbearable to imagine: four beautiful babes ranging in age from two to six, the oldest a beautiful shoulder-length brunette girl with her arm around her little sister, a deep golden blonde head of hair spilling across her shoulders, but bangs clearly cut by her own unpracticed hand. She can’t be more than five and she is looking down and over at her just-younger brother, perhaps three, in his dungarees and no shirt; I’m guessing he doesn’t have one or he would be wearing it, his brown hair tousled to the best of a mother’s ability to tame the wild sweetness I see in his left arm wrapped around and pulling close to him their youngest sibling: another boy, whose two-year old heart looks endearingly at his big brother’s face with a trust I have never personally experienced.

I insist on stopping the car and climb myself out of the back seat, my gloved fingers clutching my patent leather purse, hat pin securely in place. I approach the woman in the floral print dress standing above her children, I imagine holding their hearts for as long as she possibly can, and ask if we may speak privately for a moment regarding her sign. I see her scanning me top to bottom, the way her eyebrows lift at the sight of my ensemble, taking in all it might mean and also the dissociation from all of me and what I represent. I am foreign currency on this street. 

She nods her head slightly in agreement and we step inside the walk-up. I am not prepared for the dirt to accompany us in the way that it does, is just present on and over every item in her sparse and tidy apartment. I catch my breath for the third time this morning before it exits my mouth and transmute it into words that tumble out of me faster than my YES I said to the new shoes that are holding me up, supporting what feels insupportable.  

“I will pay you to keep your own children. Please. Name your price.”

And it is done. Her mama heart bursts open and cleanses the dusty air with love overflowing, mingling with my own happy tears, uncertain what this all means and will mean, but knowing my heart has led me here and shown me the most important purchase I didn’t know I needed.