Posts in Category: personal history
Listening to Joni Mitchell, part two
Not in Order
I’m starting with the first record I heard by Joni, which was Ladies of the Canyon. When I was thirteen, Brother Steve brought it home from Minneapolis, where he attended art school. Home for me was a log cabin at a ranger station near the mouth of Gallatin Canyon, in Montana. Steve was my musical mentor, bringing me song after song because he hoped I’d love them. And I did, though Joni sang a little high for me.
These songs are so personal, a sung diary from a young woman in a magical world I longed for: music, artists, sunshine, longhaired men who were really still boys. A world to walk around in as opposed to getting into a car and driving somewhere, which is what we had to do to reach Bozeman. I was fascinated with boys but fearful of them. No “Morning Morgantown” for me, no rising from a man’s bed and venturing out in the city with my love. She might as well have been singing about the surface of the moon.
Besides, I was notoriously awful in the morning (still am).
The Sad Songs
I loved most the songs I could sing. “For Free” was keyed perfectly for me and it also told that haunting story. I’m sure my family got tired of listening to me crooooon alooooong to this song, as well as “Willie,” which I loved because I could break out the vibrato. Just imagine a thirteen year old girl warbling, “Willie is my chiiiiild, he is my faaaaather,” and then trying to hit the notes for “our love cannot be real.” Really. My parents could be very patient.
As a girl, I didn’t really understand “Conversation,” but an adult, I will tell you that “Conversation” has me shaking my head. It’s like “Poetry Man.” They capture a specific kind of heartbreak, the naive belief that you’d be better for a man than the woman he prefers. He banks the fires of his ego with your adoration, then returns to the woman he loves. Oh, my young heart bought right in, but my adult heart quietly ushers those men right on back to their homes.
I didn’t understand “The Arrangement” either, a song indicting capitalism, which is fine, and she does some interesting things with her voice, some truly haunting pyrotechnic runs that gave her nodes. But it meant nothing to me as a kid and I probably lifted the needle right over this one (remember how skilled we were at that?).
I loved “Rainy Night House” because it told me another non-relatable story, again with lovely vocal agility. It was also keyed low, so I could sing it without straining or offending the ears of my family. “Blue Boy” was another mystery I enjoyed, despite how troubling “roll her in his arms and give his seed to her” was to my virginal ears. As a girl, I thought it was about a statue that came to life, an idea I liked. As an adult I know it was one more song about Joni throwing her love away on a manchild.
The Happy Songs
Everyone knows and loves “Big Yellow Taxi,” and they should because it’s fun and playful and a pleasing antidote the heaviness that precedes it. But that goes right into “Woodstock.” And I’ll tell you, at age thirteen, as I sat there with headphones on and album cover in hand, listening to the lyrics of this song, I understood poetry for the first time. This song’s complex, layered lyrics sent my young mind spinning, enlarging, opening to the linguistic possibilities of metaphor.
“The Circle Game” is a singalong, and so sweet, and ends the record on a hopeful note after all the wooooo, and choral doom, and sad love stories on this record. But I saved the most important song for last.
The Ladies, the Canyon
“Ladies of the Canyon” enchanted and perplexed me at age thirteen. I listened to it over and over, because exactly which archetypal lady of the canyon would I be? Trina, Anna, Estrella, so deftly sketched and yet, so mysterious (as was this canyon of which she sang, I lived in a canyon myself but had never heard of Laurel Canyon or I’d probably have steeled my heart and taken off hitchhiking to reach it).
But back to the ladies. I thought these were the three choices available to me and I wasn’t sure where I fit. Trina was clearly a clothing artist (she wears her wampum beads? Seriously?). But hey, I had a really cool secondhand coat from my Grandma Lucille, so maybe, even though I was thirteen and too tall and curvy and pale and awkward. I started thrifting that year and wore outrageously strange clothing for an eighth grader, but it wasn’t exactly lace and filigree. I understood the look, I just couldn’t quite imagine myself pulling it off.
And then, in the next verse, bless her, Anna sat you down to eat while a horde of extremely fat cats and children twisted around her ankles. I could see this kitchen in my mind, and I liked it, but I didn’t enjoy making or eating most baked goods. I loved cats, but babies? Nope. Not a fan. Also, Anna was clearly the earth mother of the outfit. I was still planning to evade motherhood and I absolutely did not want to be Anna, nourishing, giving, fecund Anna, with her open door and all those goddamned baked goods. Anyone but Anna.
Estrella (Circus Girl) was definitely the most mysterious and arresting, so artistically described with “songs like tiny hammers hurled / at beveled mirrors in empty halls.” But then she was out there sailing seas and climbing banyans. Obviously I didn’t write songs or go on overseas adventures. Somehow I knew, at age thirteen, that I didn’t have the soul of an adventurer and feared I never would. Case in point, I never once ran away from home. But oh, how I wanted to be that woman, fearless and traveled, with her shattering songs and gypsy shawls.
You see how it all came out.
I really hate to break it to my thirteen year-old self, but of the three, I am most definitely the woman with the open door and the plump babies and the flowers on her table. It’s been small dogs over here, not cats. And I am no baker. But I’ll sit you down and feed you whenever you need it.
Listening to Joni Mitchell in the car – Part One
I’m aware that there are women in this world who don’t care for Joni Mitchell. They’re wrong, to be clear, but today–or perhaps eventually–I’ll address those of us who love Joni. The key word here is “eventually.” First, let’s go on a few road trips.
Port Townsend, Washington
I just wrapped up six weeks of various travels. First, I went to Port Townsend with two friends, Shannon and Katrina, for a writing retreat. In case you’re wondering, they are both writers, and in need of retreat. I drove up the Kitsap Peninsula with Katrina in my old car that still has a CD player. I’d grabbed a stack of options for listening, and asked Katrina to choose what we’d listen to. In there was one of my favorite car-trip CDs, Joni Mitchell’s Hejira. I assumed that at some point, my friend would choose Hejira, but she passed it by in favor of Bluegrass, and then of course the best car trip CD of them all, which is Paul Simon’s Graceland.
I allowed a small doubt to percolate in my psyche. Was it possible that Katrina didn’t like Joni Mitchell? I knew such women existed, but had never thought I’d harbor such an individual in my cadre of friends. To be on the safe side, I cautiously sidestepped the entire topic of Joni. I didn’t want to stir the smooth waters of the writing retreat, which was a peaceful, restorative experience that produced progress on the short story to which I have devoted my entire retired life so far.
And there were deer.
Florence, Oregon
My next trip was to Florence, Oregon, where April and I revisited a VRBO in historic Florence on the Siuslaw River, where we’d stayed at a few years ago. I took a really stressful route to Florence because my phone told me to get off I5 at Halsey. As I hair-pinned and white-knuckled my way through the hinterlands of Oregon, music was not an option. I focused all my attention on the road and my white-hot anger at my iPhone for leading me into this mountainous, rural, stunningly beautiful hellscape. I was going to the COAST, I didn’t need all this NATURAL BEAUTY, I just needed to get to the COAST to enjoy the natural beauty THERE.
At some point, my bladder near to bursting, I stopped at a Chevron and said, “I’ll gladly buy something but can I have your restroom key first?” The young clerk handed me a literal Hula Hoop with a key attached. I bought a Poppi. It was far too sweet but I drank it anyway. Poodle Creek Road finally delivered me to the highway I should have been taking in the first place, which I followed just long enough to be stopped for hours by a terrible (fatality) accident. I was four miles from the VRBO and hopelessly stalled. I turned off the car and listened to The Fine Young Cannibals, an old CD I bought right before the trip. It was still the banger I remembered from the years I’d put it on and my then-husband would groan because “Not again, Karen.” I don’t think The Raw and the Cooked, is responsible for him leaving, but “She Drives Me Crazy” might have been a factor.
The time in Florence was fantastic once I finally got there. April and I had fun of the type we’ve honed over fifty years of friendship. Great meals, some shopping and gallery-going, a ridiculously short hike to the Cape Perpetua Lookout, the Yachats rock shop (if you’ve been you know what a wild place that is). April prods me into moving, which is a good thing, and also a little humbling. At the Port Townsend writing retreat, my more fit companions took daily walks and came home flushed and happy. I just sat there, admiring the deer and writing. In Florence, April made me walk. It’s like she wants to keep me around for a few more years or something. I ate my weight in delicious seafood to circumvent her ambitions for my longevity.
Federal Way, Washington
My next trip was up to Federal Way to see Sue at her charming lakeside cottage for some relaxing days of conversation, aggressive thrifting, and crafts. Sue is an accomplished art quilter who crackles with creative energy and bursts with talent. When I visit her, her artistry feels contagious. So even though I have zero crafting talent, I brought a tiny case with some small craft-type materials in it that I’ve been carrying around for twelve years. I swear one of these days I will finish something.
The weather granted us only one sunny day down by the lake, where I read Sue the one short story to which I have apparently devoted my entire retirement so far, and I found all the places where it needed work.
The other days were cold, almost blustery. We kept ourselves busy with days of thrifting, good food, cocktails, and a Ricky Gervais series to binge watch in the evenings while we crafted (if you’re wondering, I embroidered a small part of a praying mantis on a piece of muslin. Go me!).
One day, Sue laid out material groups for a dozen quilts with my input, which (from me) sounded mostly like, “Do you have a stripe you could put with it?” or “Do you have a check you could put with it?” because I love adding stripes and checks to florals. My suggestions were sometimes greeted with “All wrong!” or “Yuck” or “Hmmmm” or “That might work!” or even “Perfect!” I’d send her into her quilting room to look for a specific color, and at one point she said, “I don’t have a fabric store in here.” Then she came out with a bunch of choices and said, “Okay, I do have a fabric store in here.”
Quilters, get set to drool.
It was glorious fun.
This trip was I5 all the way north and south, so I brought a stack of CDs, and many were Joni. For the Roses, Blue, Hejira, Ladies of the Canyon, Clouds, and Court and Spark. I decided to listen in chronological order, which brings me to the actual point of all this meandering introduction. I’m going to talk about Joni. A lot. Prepare yourselves, because I get personal. But because this got so long, and I intend to talk about these CDs in depth, I’m going to stop here and return to Joni another day.
That’s all.
“Karen, you Have a hint about your mother!” No kidding, Ancestry.
Why does Ancestry send me hints about my mother?
No, seriously. Ancestry is clueless as far as I’m concerned. It shows me as married to my dead high school sweetheart, and I have zero idea how to change any of that. My super-intelligent cousins on my birth father’s side are whizzes at genealogy websites and could straighten me out in five minutes, but how stupid would I feel, asking them? They are all STEM geniuses and I only have a shaky grasp on multiplication at this point (and I still say “times tables” and “take away” and “carry”, which causes my daughter to shake her head in consternation when I try to help my grandson with his math homework, and do they even still call it math?).
Anyway.
Clearly I helped myself liberally to the other side of the gene pool, where calculators were a fact of life, and not those expensive programmable calculators used by my more intelligent classmates in my rare college physics classes. The free calculators you used to get at the bank.
But back to my mother.
I thought of Mom this morning for the funniest reason: a taste in my mouth. My memory is often jogged by tastes and smells, and today when I gulped down the handful of prescriptions (three) and supplements (seven) that I take to keep my heart beating and the like, the flavor of one brought back a spill of sense memory. I accidentally bought the chewable B12. When I add water to swallow down this mass of pills, most of which probably just give me expensive urine, I taste that chewable vitamin taste.
This brought me right back to being five or six years old and finding a brown bottle of chewable vitamins in my mother’s bathroom. I was into everything as a child. In her notes, Mom called me snoopy and I guess that’s fair, though I prefer to think of myself as curious. Anyway, I opened this bottle and started eating these vitamins, which had a flavor close enough to candy to keep me going.
I don’t know what type of vitamins these were, or how many I ate. I also told on myself. I took the bottle to Mom. She didn’t take me to get my stomach pumped or anything of the sort. She had me drink a few glasses of Kool-Aid made her way: one packet of Kool-Aid and half the recommended sugar. We drank this to mask the sulfur flavor of artesian well water. I drank some Kool-Aid and nothing happened and life went on.
That was how it was in South Dakota. We were Midwestern children in the sixties, a hardier breed with great teeth from all the naturally occurring fluoride. We survived.
I wouldn’t have it any other way.
I also wouldn’t want any other mother. Ancestry might have hints, but I doubt Ancestry quite appreciates the balance of my mother as I do. She could be impossible, but she was my favorite person in the universe until I had children of my own. She was mercurial, curious, fascinating, frustrating. I am baffled by how she let me down in my adolescence, but she always loved me, a big old furnace of love.
So here’s a hint about my mother, Ancestry. Mom had her first child at age seventeen. An emotional, intelligent young woman left college, which she started early because she graduated high school at age fifteen, to become a mother. I understand why she felt ripped off. Her adolescence ended with motherhood. I don’t think she was well-equipped to help me navigate mine. She put me on the pill and put me out at age fifteen to make it on my own, a weird remedy or echo or repetition of what happened to her.
I also understand why she grieved when I had my first child at 22. She saw my young motherhood as a curtain going down on my life. As she watched me, I know she felt sorrow, anger, helplessness. But she was resigned to it. She brushed her hands together, considered me done for, and moved any ambitions she had for me over to my childless siblings. There, hope for a meaningful life remained.
A slight sea change.
Over time, Mom realized that I hadn’t exactly shriveled up and died. I’d just reproduced. She also felt a little defensive. Why was I making motherhood look so easy? Why did I do it without complaint or anguish over what I’d given up? I didn’t explain to her that much of this was a facade. Motherhood is a monumental struggle, and my marriage was a lonely, lonely place. I survived with the help of fierce friends like Jennifer and Karen and Sue and Bob and Debi. These people provided the companionship and emotional support missing from my marriage.
But here’s another hint about my mother, Ancestry. There’s a part of this of which I am not proud. I wanted Mom to think it was easy for me. As children, Mom let us know that motherhood had ruined her life. This was a steady drumbeat throughout my earliest years. “Never have children. They ruin your life.” “Parenthood is pouring from an empty pitcher. It uses you up.” “I could have had a life, if not for you kids. You took everything from me.” I heard this stuff all the time, and felt tremendous guilt until about age eleven.
That’s when it hit me that I hadn’t had any say in the matter. I began to smirk, roll my eyes, and yes, talk back. I actually said, “I didn’t ask to be born.” Which was terrifically snotty, and my brother and sister would look at me like, oh god shuttup Karen, you’re enraging her. But I figured out early that Mom’s truth should not have been spoken to us kids.
My petty revenge.
So when I was a mom, I wanted to shame my mother for how much she railed against motherhood when she was angry. I wanted to show her up. I wanted to glide and adjust and care for and laugh at the hard parts and make it look like a breeze. And I did, until my marriage fell apart. And I fell apart. And I needed help, and let me stress this, as a young woman with a high school diploma and three kids to raise, one of whom needed massive orthopedic surgery during the year a nasty divorce was unspooling, I needed so much help.
My then-husband had taken control of all our bank accounts. When I asked my parents for the funds to retain a divorce lawyer, I apologized. Mom said, “Honey, you have no idea how long I’ve been waiting to write this check.” She happily dashed it off and sent it. This is one of the many times my mother helped me. Mom showed UP. Two decades of financial help and encouragement and emails and phone calls and laughter. All my visits up to Bainbridge with my girls, and her delight at seeing them. Each daughter has specific memories of a grandmother they loved, and who loved them with no reservation.
Was she perfect? Is anyone perfect? Of course not.
Perfection is not part of the human condition.
I’ve done a great deal of thinking and writing about my teen years. When we moved to Montana, I was twelve years old. My life went off track when I was sent out into the wide world at age thirteen to navigate a dangerous environment. My sister and I ran with a rough crowd. I’ve examined all that, not to understand Mom, but to understand myself. I asked hard questions to ascertain the damage done, and heal it enough to live a better life. It would have been so easy to find myself trapped in sadness and anger. My mother was supposed to guide me, help me. She didn’t.
But I had this amazing experience while taking a memoir class with my dear friend Katrina. I wrote a piece that still hasn’t found a home called “The Corner of Skidmore and Haight.” It is an unsparing look at beginning of my second marriage and birth of my first child. Because I took this class from the esteemed and brilliant Martha Gies, it’s full of journalist-level reporting on Portland of 1981-82. Martha made me research the details of North Portland, the arrival of gangs, police misbehavior. But that’s a backdrop for the real struggle, which was two young people, aged 22 and 24, trying to figure out how to be married parents.
In this piece of writing, I played much of it for laughs, because that’s how I handle pain. But the pain is there. Whenever things at the corner of Skidmore and Haight felt hopeless, we survived. How? It wasn’t clear to me until Katrina critiqued the piece. Ever-so-gently, she said, “What impresses me is how over and over again, your mom and dad showed up and helped.”
The proof is right there on the page. My parents might have foundered in my teens, but from my twenties on, they were right there, helping. Over and over again. And they continued to do that until they both finally died.
I don’t think I thanked them nearly enough.
I was in my early sixties when I took this class. I’d been doing quite a bit of examination of my history, trying to understand exactly who I am before I leave this world. Katrina’s words showed me that I had a choice to make. I could focus my attention on the chaotic decade of my young life when Mom had no idea what to do with me, and whatever I needed was lost in the turmoil of her own unhappy life. Or I could shift my focus and appreciate what she did for me after I left adolescence.
You know, it’s like I finally grew the hell up.
So here’s another hint about my mother, Ancestry. There’s no good, no bad, no right, no wrong. There’s just Mom. Happy Mother’s Day, Mom. I miss you every single day. And thank you for all the days and ways you were there. There are no words for how much I love you.
The Knock
Knocking on Heaven’s Door
In 1979, I was living in a patched-together triplex with my first husband in Missoula, Montana. This crumbling, heat-leaking structure was so badly constructed that it didn’t have a functioning doorbell for any of the units. I was waiting for my state residency to kick in so I could get in-state tuition at the University of Montana. There was only one friend who dropped by regularly. Dan was my sister’s boyfriend, then her ex-boyfriend, and he rarely knocked. He just came on in. That was how close we were. But other people came by, Colleen and her skeevy carny boyfriend Kelly, or friends of my sister’s, hunting her down. So when a knock came, I always opened the door.
One spring, I opened the door to a pair of young men in black slacks and white shirts with ties, fresh-faced Mormon missionaries. They were all over Missoula that year, and I was so lonely that I usually let them come in, sit down, and talk for a while. They were a break from my boredom, and I was a break from having doors shut in their faces. We would spar. Unfortunately, they thought I was a candidate for conversion and stepped up their visits. I began to dread their knocks. I’d ignore them, even though I was sure they could hear my television going from the hallway where they stood.
They got the message and stopped knocking.
Knock Knock. Who’s There.
In 1982, I lived in a patched-together duplex with my second husband and our new baby girl in Portland, Oregon. This duplex, created from an abandoned house, also didn’t have a functioning doorbell. That was fine because no one ever came over to our rough neighborhood without calling first. When an errant knock came, it was Almitra, our drug-dealing neighbor. She didn’t have a phone. I usually let her in because I was home with a new baby, and once again starved for company. After a few long-distance charges showed up on our phone bill, we decided not to let her in anymore.
She got the message and stopped knocking.
The No-Knock Rule
Since 1988, I’ve lived in the same house. It has a functioning doorbell, but most of the six dogs I’ve owned since living here have gone absolutely insane at its chime. Luckily, it’s set off to the side of the door in an odd place. Most people don’t see it. I have a sign up in my window telling everyone to beware of dogs, and that all types of soliciting are unwelcome. The addition of red, white, and blue trim seems to have done the trick. It’s a rare solicitor who taps on my door.
I’ve left up the sign, even though there are no dogs here. Very few people drop by, because apparently people just don’t do that in Oregon. But my grandson’s father is seeing his son over here at this time, so a couple of times a week I hear his tentative knuckle taps on my door. Was that a knock, I wonder, is someone here? I open the door and greet him, the only person who knocks at my door.
A Year Without My Sister
I can’t believe it.
So yes, today it has been a year since Tony and I were leaving a restaurant after lunch, and I looked at my phone, and saw texts from my sister’s best friend telling me to call her. Right then, immediately. And I did, and she said, “I’m so sorry to tell you this. Cat is gone.”
“Gone?” I was so confused. Where could she have gone? And then it hit me. “You mean…she’s dead?”
“Yes. She’s dead.”
I was unable to make words. I handed off the phone to my husband, and we sat in that parking lot, and he finished the call with Steph, and then while I wailed I found the numbers, and he called my nephew, and my brother, and my oldest daughter, who would call her younger sisters.
And then he held me.
When the wailing stopped, we drove downtown to my sister’s apartment building. In the lobby, we sat down and waited. My sister had died alone, so the medical examiner was with her and we couldn’t go in. Steph came down with two volunteer traumatic death counselors or something like that. One was older, the leader. Steph asked if they could talk to us in the lobby, rather than in her studio apartment, which seemed like a good idea. So we sat there while this extremely earnest woman took us through a checklist of one kind or another, pointing to paragraphs in a large printed brochure. It was all I could do to be polite to this person, who meant so well, and who was talking to me in a plodding way about something so unthinkable, so unimaginable, which was the death of my sister. I wanted to push her out the glass doors of the building.
I am always so damn polite.
While we waited, people who lived in the building would walk in on high alert. This is a rent-subsidized building, people there have addictions and health troubles, and the tenants know what it means when the medical examiner’s van is parked outside. And they would come in, and ask, and be told it was Cat, and a hand would sweep over to where I sat with my husband and Steph and these counselors, and eyebrows would go up because everyone in that building knew my sister, my talkative, outspoken, engaging sister, and besides, as we aged the two of us looked enough alike to be mistaken for twins. And I would endure the “I’m sorrys” and so on.
I was waiting for my nephew, who was driving home from the beach with his girlfriend. I was waiting for my brother, who was on his way in from the eastside suburb where he lives. I was waiting to go upstairs and see my sister, who had somehow died without any warning, without telling me she was going to do so, without even saying goodbye. Impossible. And through it all this trauma volunteer counselor talked, as if a word of what she was saying could penetrate the bright, aching shield of my pain.
Finally, the police came down and told me I could go up.
I was met in the hallway by the medical examiner, a young woman holding an enormous baggie full of my sister’s medications. She wanted to talk about all the evidence of self-harm she found on my sister’s body. My sister’s arms, wrists, legs, ankles were extraordinarily marked with scars from years and years of cutting. It took a second for me to understand that the medical examiner was concerned that since she died alone, there was a possibility that my sister had killed herself.
I assured her that she had not. How to explain that despite all these scars, my sister was terrified of dying? That her recent cancer had shocked her with the possibility of actual death? That by my sister’s own admission, her suicide attempts were not meant to end her life, but to illustrate her anguish? How do you stand in the hallway outside a studio apartment that holds the body of your only sister and explain her fragile, volatile nature to a stranger holding a bag full of enough psych meds to kill an elephant?
I tried.
I just wanted to see her. And the examiner didn’t think I should. She’d died sitting on the floor beside her bed, her head hanging forward. This meant that blood had pooled in her face, and the effects of that can be upsetting. I insisted. How could it be real if I didn’t see her? So she went back into the apartment and did some arrangement. And I was finally able to go in and see my sister. It was upsetting. But her hair was arranged, her long, abundant, graying hair of which she was so justifiably vain. I could stroke that. And her hand was out, her right hand, where arthritis and years of coloring with pencils in her treasured coloring books had left a bend at the top joint of her middle finger. I could hold that.
My brother and his wife had arrived, and I went out to the hallway to talk to him. I told him he might not want to see her, but of course he wanted to. I went in with him and watched his reaction, and we agreed that it would be very hard for her son to see her like this. We didn’t know what to do. But the decision was made by the medical examiner, who wanted to take my sister way in the van, to wherever they take a person who is now a body while they decide whether or not an autopsy is needed.
And that’s what they did.
So I sat in my sister’s apartment with my husband, my brother, my sister-in-law, and Steph. My nephew and his girlfriend finally got there, thank god, because he’d had to drive the entire way knowing his mother was gone. I put the remains of her last snack (coffee and jelly toast) in her kitchen sink. My nephew made up her bed. And we all just sat there in my sister’s house, surrounded by the dizzying array of her possessions.
As long as we were all there, in the home she loved so dearly, it felt like she was still with us.
It’s a year later, today.
Yesterday in the garage, while I was getting into the car so we could go to the symphony, I saw two boxes on the floor that had been sitting on a different shelf for twenty years. These were full of Mom’s things that Dad brought to me after Mom’s death. They’ve just sat in the garage collecting dust because I haven’t been able to bear going through them.
I thought, Cat and I should go through those boxes together. And then I shook my head. Because it’s only been a year, and in so many ways, she is still right here with me.
Do you remember my post about the rat mug?
This one (about more than a rat mug):
I was out of control on eBay during the first part of the pandemic. If you read it you might remember the grotesque rat-shaped coffee mug that cured me. AKA THE RAT MUG.
Well, look what I found on eBay today.
No, it’s not exactly the same, but it’s clearly by the same “gifted artisan.” And I’m pretty sure mine went to the Goodwill. I hope someone who needed the money found it and sold it for a ridiculous amount.
Perhaps you want your own… https://www.ebay.com/itm/356476444882
But hurry, I’m sure it’ll sell really soon.
Making Excuses
The Excuse
When I was in ninth grade in Bozeman, Montana, I had my first experience with needing a written pass from the office to get back into classes. It was quite a system. When you missed a day of school, or even a class period, you had to go to the attendance office with a written excuse from your mother (or maybe your father, but everyone brought notes from their mothers). These notes were filed for comparison. Your note would be checked against the previous, to make sure you weren’t bringing in a fake excuse.
Then, the secretary of attendance or whoever she was would sign a little printed slip of paper, rip it off the pad, and give it to you. You had to present this official document at the beginning of each class period for review and initialing by each teacher. The last teacher of the day would keep it and send it back to the office. This was for an excused absence, as opposed to an unexcused absence, which could lead to trouble.
What a Pain!
This junior high was the largest school I’d ever attended, and I’d never before had to go through this much rigamarole after an absence. It seemed like a lot, especially for a girl with an older boyfriend who had a car. I had a bright idea. I wrote the first note from my mother myself. When the attendance person compared the current note to the original note on file, the handwriting matched. I didn’t have a single unexcused absence that year, even though my attendance record was abysmal.
Mr. Orr, who taught social studies, told me I was missing too many classes. He was angry at me, and it made an impression. All these years later, I can see his curly hair, his red face, his slightly buggy eyes as he leaned his face near mine, the sound of his angry voice telling me I wasn’t living up to my academic potential. I replied that I had straight As, so of course I was living up to my potential. He insisted. “No, Karen, grades aren’t everything. No matter what your grade is, if you’re missing this much class, you could be doing better.” I had to admit he was right. I started going to his class, even though it was right after lunch and that was prime time for skipping.
Additional Crime Skills
I was fairly skilled at forging signatures. It wasn’t difficult to palm one of those little pads of paper, and I’d sign them ten at a time and hand them out like candy. There was an attempt by the administration to halt the circulation of forged passes by drawing secret symbols on the backs of the official excuses, but I had friends who were not delinquents who’d happily cue me in as to what the symbol was, a star or a dollar sign, and in which corner I should place it. I carried on.
My disruption of the ninth grade attendance system only lasted one year (to be fair I also gave passes to some of my favorite eighth graders – Dee Strong, I’m looking at you). In tenth grade, I moved to Yakima to live with my boyfriend. As my pretend husband, he wrote my notes. This was laughably weird for everyone involved. It bothered the attendance ladies to the point where they just let me go back to class without an excuse.
Yanking the chain – Byron and Blake
A Non-trad student, that was me.
When I went back to school as a non-trad student (meaning old), I had a professor who was losing control of his classes. By that, I mean, he couldn’t keep the thread of his lectures. He wandered from topic to topic, reacting defensively when another student asked him what his ramblings had to do with Blake and Byron, who were the subjects of the only class I ever took from him.
The Byron and Blake class was one of the many classes in the English department taught to both high-level English majors (like me), and grad students (not like me). The grad students had to turn in an additional paper and an annotated bibliography. My friend Denise and I exchanged scribbled notes that mocked one grad student who kept drawing parallels between the Romantics and the Beats. Everything inspired him to draw long verbal comparisons, especially Beats-with-Blake, which is silly because Blake was his own visionary self, not really part of the Romantics (was he supposed to be their Kerouac? I can’t remember. Maybe he was their Ginsberg). Nothing could stop the discourses of this young man.
Okay, but at least he talked a bit about Blake, which was more than the professor did. He just kept going on about Byron. Our teacher loved Byron, but aside from the professor’s insistence on saying “Don Joo-ahn” (apparently that is the correct way to pronounce the title of Byron’s masterwork) I wasn’t learning much. In fact, that was nearly the sum total of what I absorbed about this poem.
I was not the only person feeling baffled by how little I was actually learning. I was 39 when I took this course as an undergraduate, but not the oldest person in attendance. There were several 65+ auditors in the class. One of them actually said out loud what most of us were thinking, words to the effect that she’d taken this class because she’d heard that our professor was an expert on Blake and Byron, but she was still waiting for evidence of that. “I took this class for your brilliant insights, and I’m getting nothing.” It was brutal. It was also true. I want to audit classes next year, and I wonder if I will ever be so pointed.
She was frustrated, and she was only auditing. Those of us who had paid money to take the course as part of our degree requirements were probably more frustrated, because we were expected to produce papers on these Romantic legends. How? I’d turned in exactly one paper in this class, a close reading paper on Byron’s poem, “Darkness.” There is so much meat in this poem that I certainly didn’t need an instructor to explain it to me. It’s long, but I’m putting it here because it reminds me of our present day situation of toppling institutions, billionaire oligarchs, and climate disaster.
Read if you’d like, or not–if not, you’ll need to scroll.
Darkness, Lord Byron
I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguish’d, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;
Morn came and went—and came, and brought no day,
And men forgot their passions in the dread
Of this their desolation; and all hearts
Were chill’d into a selfish prayer for light:
And they did live by watchfires—and the thrones,
The palaces of crowned kings—the huts,
The habitations of all things which dwell,
Were burnt for beacons; cities were consum’d,
And men were gather’d round their blazing homes
To look once more into each other’s face;
Happy were those who dwelt within the eye
Of the volcanos, and their mountain-torch:
A fearful hope was all the world contain’d;
Forests were set on fire—but hour by hour
They fell and faded—and the crackling trunks
Extinguish’d with a crash—and all was black.
The brows of men by the despairing light
Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits
The flashes fell upon them; some lay down
And hid their eyes and wept; and some did rest
Their chins upon their clenched hands, and smil’d;
And others hurried to and fro, and fed
Their funeral piles with fuel, and look’d up
With mad disquietude on the dull sky,
The pall of a past world; and then again
With curses cast them down upon the dust,
And gnash’d their teeth and howl’d: the wild birds shriek’d
And, terrified, did flutter on the ground,
And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes
Came tame and tremulous; and vipers crawl’d
And twin’d themselves among the multitude,
Hissing, but stingless—they were slain for food.
And War, which for a moment was no more,
Did glut himself again: a meal was bought
With blood, and each sate sullenly apart
Gorging himself in gloom: no love was left;
All earth was but one thought—and that was death
Immediate and inglorious; and the pang
Of famine fed upon all entrails—men
Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh;
The meagre by the meagre were devour’d,
Even dogs assail’d their masters, all save one,
And he was faithful to a corse, and kept
The birds and beasts and famish’d men at bay,
Till hunger clung them, or the dropping dead
Lur’d their lank jaws; himself sought out no food,
But with a piteous and perpetual moan,
And a quick desolate cry, licking the hand
Which answer’d not with a caress—he died.
The crowd was famish’d by degrees; but two
Of an enormous city did survive,
And they were enemies: they met beside
The dying embers of an altar-place
Where had been heap’d a mass of holy things
For an unholy usage; they rak’d up,
And shivering scrap’d with their cold skeleton hands
The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath
Blew for a little life, and made a flame
Which was a mockery; then they lifted up
Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld
Each other’s aspects—saw, and shriek’d, and died—
Even of their mutual hideousness they died,
Unknowing who he was upon whose brow
Famine had written Fiend. The world was void,
The populous and the powerful was a lump,
Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless—
A lump of death—a chaos of hard clay.
The rivers, lakes and ocean all stood still,
And nothing stirr’d within their silent depths;
Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea,
And their masts fell down piecemeal: as they dropp’d
They slept on the abyss without a surge—
The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,
The moon, their mistress, had expir’d before;
The winds were wither’d in the stagnant air,
And the clouds perish’d; Darkness had no need
Of aid from them—She was the Universe.
And this is one of Byron’s shorter poems. Doesn’t it seem prescient? Or am I just recovering from watching “Eddington” last night? Maybe one day I’ll dig out the cardboard box that holds my college papers and read what I had to say about this dark litany, but there is another paper in that box more germane to this story, so back to the story we go.
Well, then. Anyway…
As the deadline for our final project approached, I became angry. Aside from his short works, Byron was doing nothing for me. The instructor would rhapsodize about how people would line up on the docks to get the latest installment of Don Juan, but that didn’t inspire me to read any more than the assigned passages. I found nothing in those to inspire a thesis. A topic was needed, so I decided to educate myself on Blake, because the professor had spent so much time on Byron, Blake had barely been mentioned.
Off I went to the PSU library. I researched, made notes, turned over motifs I’d noticed, wondered what to make of them that could be supported by criticism without recapitulating someone else’s ideas wholesale. I produced a final paper on Blake’s chain imagery. I was especially proud of this paper because I had gotten nothing out of the class. Whatever I’d written, I’d found on my own.
But wait. There’s more.
As relieved as I was to be done with this embarrassment of a class, it wasn’t over yet. We would receive our final grades in person, at a one-on-one meeting with the professor. My mood was slightly truculent as I went to his office and sat down.
I intended to tell him how hard it had been to learn anything in his class, but I didn’t have a chance. He began to talk about what a difficult quarter it had been for him. He’d been in denial about how deeply his lack of hearing had affected his teaching. He’d misheard or missed much of what his students had to say, and knew it had affected his teaching. He planned to get hearing aids, but after he read the class evaluations, he was so discouraged that he’d considered retirement.
He lay a hand on my paper. “But when I read a paper like yours, I know I’m still doing a fine job. I have to be, if my students are producing work of this caliber.”
I didn’t have the heart to tell him. I nodded, and left with my A.
Image by Briam Cute from Pixabay
Christmas Eve, Norwegian style.
How it was when I was a little girl
Somehow, I have abandoned my Norwegian childhood Christmas traditions; cast them aside like used wrapping paper. Because he was the child of immigrants, my grandfather Virgil (Papa) had a very specific (and Norwegian) way of observing Christmas Eve, and my grandmother Lucille (Nana) had devoted her life to doing things his way.
The day started in Claremont, South Dakota, with waking up too early and lying in bed with a stomachache, knowing that you had, oh, maybe sixteen hours to go before you could get your hands on a present. Food was out of the question, as was anything fun, because all you could do was exist in the gloomy half-life of painful anticipation. They didn’t have DVDs back then, or even VCRs, and the networks (there were three) didn’t feel the need to assuage children’s suffering by ordering up anything for us to watch. So we just suffered.
Eventually, after what felt like hours and hours of waiting, walking around aimlessly, pining and stressing and checking the clock every minute or so, my mother (Mom) would announce that it was time to go to our grandparents’ home. So we’d drive the forty-five minutes from Aberdeen to Claremont (population 53), and the additional few miles to the farm. Then it was time to start waiting it out over there.
Out on the farm
In general, I found my grandparents’ farm to be a magical place. Part of it was my grandmother’s devotion to the domestic arts. She’d long ago raised her own children, and though she watched us often, her home reflected her personal values. It was arranged and spotless. We amused ourselves with the limited toy options she allowed in the home, but nothing could distract us from the agony of anticipation we felt on Christmas Eve.
First, Nana would set the big oak dining table with the good dishes and the sterling silver flatware. We were not allowed to help, as we might drop a piece of the good china (Adams & Son, Sharon) or smudge the carefully polished silver (Wallace, Grand Baroque). There would be cooking going on in the kitchen. When those mysterious preparations were complete, we would all be called to table.
The adults sat down to oyster stew. As a child, I couldn’t account for the oyster stew. I can give you the recipe, which was, no lie, cans of evaporated milk mixed with cans of oysters topped with pats of butter. That was it. They’d float some oyster crackers on there and call it Christmas dinner. This was a delicacy. My distaste for it was so strong that I thought the reason it was served was probably that it was so revolting that no one could stand to eat it more than once a year.
Luckily, my sister and I were served Campbell’s cream of potato soup in lieu of the stew. This was possibly a matter of economics (canned oysters were expensive) or possibly done in consideration of the fact that oyster stew made us gag. We were also allowed some oyster crackers to float above the chunks of potato, impervious to the sogginess I loved in Saltines. Everyone also had dinner rolls.
After we ate the soup, we would have bowls of vanilla ice cream. My sister and I would beg a little Hershey’s syrup to liven it up a bit. Our grandmother was abstemious with it for reasons known only to her.
Do you sense a theme, here?
Is it a Norwegian tradition to serve an all-white dinner? I’m not sure. I only know I could hardly stand to choke this down, because it was so featureless. As an adult, I understand at least one reason for this menu. It required little to no labor in comparison to a turkey with all the sides. My grandmother had just done all that for Thanksgiving. We could have had a roast beef, but my grandfather ran a feedlot, so roasts and steaks were on the table at almost every single dinner. The rare appearance of something from the sea must have been a low-labor treat for both grandparents.
So after this bland extravaganza was consumed, the table needed to be cleared, but not by us kids. Those were the good dishes and flatware. We might have damaged something on the way to the sink. We didn’t even have that small task to use up any time. We waited in the living room for Mom and Nana to do the dishes. By hand, of course, because even if there had been such a thing as an automatic dishwasher back then (I don’t know if there was or not), Nana would never have put her fine china and sterling silver in a dishwasher. It all had to be hand-dried and carefully put away.
My brother and sister and I lingered by the tree, throats closing, stomachs churning with anticipation. My grandparents had an artificial pine trimmed with ropes of gold glass beads, gold satin balls, red velvet bows, and spun cotton birds with real feathers. I found it unspeakably elegant, but at that point, I was long past being enchanted. I was dying inside. We were all three dying. We’d been dying all day, and dying all through dinner, what was a little more dying? Why not keep the agony up for as long as humanly possible?
But eventually the dishes were washed and dried and put away in the big hutch. The silver was washed and dried and returned to fuzzy pouches with slippery ties and stashed in a special drawer, not to be touched until the next big holiday. Mom and Nana would settle on the couch, and Papa would settle into his recliner. Oh, wait, he was already in that recliner. In fact, he inhabited that recliner for all parts of the evening that didn’t involve the table. We’d find our places and someone would put on some Christmas music and fuss a bit and then call for Santa’s Helper.
The job no one wanted
Santa’s Helper was usually my older sister. My brother, while older than her, was deemed too clumsy for such a job, and I couldn’t read the gift tags. But I could help pass out the presents. Each gift had to be taken from under the tree, the tag read aloud, and then delivered to the recipient. This took a bit of time, even though my sister and I worked in harmony to get those presents stacked at the feet of our family members as swiftly as possible. And then, finally, when all gifts were distributed, the Ceremonial Opening of the Gifts could commence.
We practiced a ritualized taking-turns system. Youngest to oldest, one at a time, everyone staring at you, watching you, measuring your response to the present. My sister and I generally got good stuff, but our brother was just old enough to be trapped in that post-toy span of years, with board games and clothing in many of his boxes. He’d open socks or a sweater and have to pretend to be excited because everyone was staring at him.
Around and around we would go, one at a time. The adults ran out first, of course. As a child, I was surprised by how little attention they paid to their own gifts. Their bottles of drugstore scent, copious pairs of socks, and crocheted potholders seemed completely beside the point, though Nana really liked a recipe card holder I made for her one year from a wooden spool and a clothespin. The adults just watched with smiles on their faces, beaming with joy. And for the most part, it was a joyful event. The present opening was prolonged and yes, somewhat excruciating. But it was handled with decorum and patience.
How it was when I became a mother to my own little girls
As strange and torturous as this could be for a child, it was what I knew. It’s what I expected, and what I missed when I married and had kids of my own. My ex-husband was a Christmas morning person. In his house, you just woke up and tore in. No watching, no turn-taking, no full day of tortured anticipation. I found it barbaric, that early morning wrapping paper carnage, that free-for-all. The opened presents were placed back under the tree, and it was not crowded. No one thought about gifts after the initial opening of them. But that left the rest of Christmas day. What would they do for the rest of the day?
My mother-in-law had been up since the very early morning, cooking herself into exhaustion, filling the table with her favorite dishes. There would be a turkey, a ham, and a roast beef. Imagine my horror that we ate on paper plates. All day long, people came by and fixed plates for themselves, ate and visited, then filled another plate and topped it with foil to take home. There were stories to tell, laughter to share, and cocktails to drink. It was wildly different than the Christmases of my youth.
I quietly mourned my Christmas Eve torture, the genteel all-white dinner, the routinized, scrutinized way we opened presents. When we decided to stay home on Christmas so the kids could have it by their own tree, we had to make decisions about how we’d be observing the holiday. I lobbied for opening presents on Christmas Eve. Like Nana did with Papa, I deferred to my husband and set aside however I’d done things. His traditions won.
After we divorced, our traditions were scrambled. He had the kids over for dinner on Christmas Eve, and I had the kids on Christmas morning. I felt aimless and alone on Christmas Eve. What had been the most anticipated holiday of the year was spent wrapping last-minute presents and preparing for dinner the next day. No more Christmas Eve, Norwegian style.
How it is today
Change is the only constant. My kids have grown up, married, and had children of their own. They have in-laws to visit, and their own trees full of gifts on Christmas mornings. Every single year is an improvisation, a Tetris-style game of who-will-be-where. Celebrations can take place over the course of several days to fit us all in. We have had Christmas dinner days later to include my younger brother and his family as they return from his mother-in-law’s Christmas. Some years, it’s New year’s Day when the big holiday happens.
There is no such thing as a tradition in this new incarnation of the holiday. I understand that we are in the time of life that calls for constant flexibility. I go with it. Now, instead of the torture of waiting to open my own presents, I watch the window for my grandchildren’s arrival so I can watch them open theirs.
It’s agony to wait, but so worth it.
MERRY CHRISTMAS TO YOU ALL!
Lilith Fair, and a Visit from Brother Steve
Missing my Brother
It’s been a hard month around here for a couple of reasons, but a large part of it has been missing my Brother Steve. I always called him that when I wrote about him and the name has stuck. He died at the beginning of December eight years ago. The month brings an overhanging melancholy, a longing for my brother that sits right behind my sternum. I guess it’s in my heart. It sits there, an aching, along with this sense that wherever I am, whatever I’m doing, I could burst into tears in a heartbeat.
Not very joyful, for December.
So last night we had friends over to watch Lilith Fair: Building a Mystery.
This is a beautiful piece of documentary filmmaking. It is celebratory and elegiac and it fills you heart and then it breaks it. I’d gone twice, my husband once, but the couple we had over had never gone. I felt an overwhelming need to share this movie with them. It takes juggling to get four busy people to sit down together in front of a TV, but we managed it. 10/10, please find a way to watch it. If you were lucky enough to go, it will take you back, and if you were not, well, you’ll have a fuller understanding of just what an incredible experience it was.
My Lilith Fairs
The first time I went, Brother Steve and I took my daughters. So perhaps that’s why I woke up from a longer dream that started out with driving down Davis Street in Portland’s Old Town and realizing that a train had derailed and broken up and there was a train car headed down the street toward us (I was with a friend in my old minivan). Miraculously, I got us out of the way, but it was a huge emergency, “Here comes the caboose!” I called, as I steered us into a parking lot to safety. More cars kept sailing past and helicopters soared overhead, carrying away important pieces of the train, I guess.
We’d been on our way to see this friend’s son, so after various stupid dream-type setbacks we finally arrived at his apartment building. There was the usual dream nonsense, but eventually we were standing in a hallway waiting for this son to arrive, and an annoying man was explaining something to us. I think it was about music.
And who walked up but my Brother Steve, my own personal musical expert, smiling and happy and we hugged so hard. Then he continued on the conversation with this man in the way that only Steve could, with sharp wit and engagement and a mind that moved fluidly from topic to topic, making connections and demonstrating expertise without ever making you feel talked down to. And his wonderful seal bark of a laugh rang out, and his smile lit up his whole face, especially his blue eyes. It was a wonderful, wonderful dream. I woke up smiling.
And of course now I’m crying, but these are joyful tears.
It was like A Christmas Carol visit from Brother Steve to remind me of joy. Steve took so much joy in life, even as his health failed. I’m lucky enough to be healthy. I need to make sure I do the same. You have to understand that my brother always showed up when I needed him. He came down from Seattle all the time: when my marriage ended, he showed me how to get through the day-to-day, and he helped during the year one of my daughters was bed-bound with a surgical procedure and I had to go back to work. He helped financially when I went back to school. He was the world’s finest uncle to my daughters, here for every holiday and so overjoyed to celebrate. He was always sharing concerts with me in Portland and Seattle, more than I can count. And last night it felt like he could tell I’ve been struggling and he showed up again. Because that’s the kind of man he was.
It has been so hard to lose him but I was so fortunate to have him.
If you’d like to read about that trip to Lilith Fair with Brother Steve, here it is.
Always missing you, Brother Steve.
