Smoke Signals

Frankie sat on the steps of the landing near the front door, head raised as if to howl at the moon, and he barked some short barks, several at a time, waited, the dog next door responded, then he did it again.

We could not see what the issue was, or perhaps, more precisely, we couldn't hear what the issue was, communicated between dogs, each inside their homes, talking about something of interest to both. I would like to think that the dogs down the row of houses each had an opinion in this conversation, but my ears are not that sharp.

This morning, enjoying my coffee in the yard, breathing in the not yet hot air that will descend later, I listened and watched as a bird, perched on a naked branch in a yard a few down from mine, raised its head, much like Frankie does, and chirped out a message that was reciprocated.  A moment later several birds followed the herald and flew east, I assume to meet at the other end of the conversation.

We all want to communicate. We all want to be connected.

Yesterday morning our Tuesday Prayer group resumed for the season. We've been meeting, with membership drifting according to life and work and transfers, for more than twenty years. Our founder, Theresa, who was our glue for ages, recently moved far away. A page in our chapter turned.

We met at Marilyn's, she of the delicious scones and clotted cream, each of us grateful to be together again. Brenda brought a list of questions from her goddaughter who is to be confirmed. We discussed what is important about believing in God, what is important about belonging to the Catholic Church (sacraments, community, Mary, two thousand years, and each other seemed to win, from my hearing) and, being us, we covered so much ground not asked in the original questions.

Smoke signals, drum beats, pony express, e-mail, twitter, Facebook, and, oh, yeah, actually getting together in person. Good stuff.

And All Will Be Right With the World

Its been two months since my father died. Nearly seven years ago he had a stroke. I went to New York, packed for a funeral.  It was a bad bleed in his head. We were told he could go anytime. At first he refused to believe he had a stroke. His mother died of a stroke in 1966.  Maybe what he was experiencing didn't seem to fit his idea of what a stroke would feel like.

I was in his ICU room when he told the nurses that he wanted to go to the john. That’s how he phrased it. He was told, no, you cannot. You cannot walk. He got angry. I am going to get out of this bed and go to the john myself, he protested.

You cannot walk.

That was a moment to witness. The beginning of indignities for this proud man who had overcome so much in his 87 years.

My heart broke a little. Okay, a lot.

When he was 26 years old he was shot in his back, his shoulder, his head somewhere on the Siegfried Line between France and Germany. The surgeons had to remove a kidney.

He was sent home on a hospital ship. He told us that coming into New York Harbor he understood how the immigrants must have felt seeing the Statue of Liberty. I picture him, young and strong, despite his injuries, filling up his lungs with the promise of homecoming, a moment of hope and determination. It was 1945 and we had won the war.

Several months later, while still classified as a patient, he met my mother at a dance for Catholic singles. There hadn’t been any single men around for the years of the war, of course, they were all in the armed forces. My mother was 22 with a good job, a job that before the war was filled by a man. Wars change things, don’t they?

Years later, my mother, struck with the same affliction that took her grandmother, her mother and her younger brother, had forgotten so much.  She didn't remember her children’s names much of the time, but sitting next to her on the piano bench, she looked me straight in the eye and told of the moment she and my father met.

And there he was. That’s how she phrased it. And there he was.

A moment clear amid all the confusion that Alzheimer’s brings. One moment, one life changing moment seared into her above all the other moments of her life.

And there he was.

They arrived at the dance at the same time. She was removing her coat on this February evening, turned around. And there he was.

I was a romantic child and I had her tell me the story several times when I was a little girl.

She recognized him, she told me. And of course, being the insistent child I was, I asked my father about that evening. They looked at each other in those many times I badgered them, again, again, and he said in his own way, I was overcome by romance. And then he would trill a little song and be his silly self, his funny self. And Mom would smile at him.

And all would be right with the world.

Wildness

Did you ever get caught by a phrase? A few words that wrap around you, pull you in and let you know you have companions in your sensibilities, in the things that call and bid you over? Scrolling through Facebook, an excerpt from Wild Irish Poet (www.wildirishpoet.com) caught me enough that I downloaded his book on my iPad. (Naked in New York, Alan Cooke)

... I walked to the edge and the water was a mirror to my heart.. I could almost see the old ghosts beneath the surface talking to me.. echoing my longing for it is a longing that is beyond time.. beyond the barriers of life and death.... to awaken the deep buried wildness within..

To awaken the deep buried wildness within...

I used the word 'wildness' in The Narrow Gate when Rose is at her brother's burial:

Did I do this? Did I kill my brother? The questions echo in Rosés head. Did I ask too much of him?

The wildness in her! Standing here while the deacon reads from the Gospels and they make the sign of the cross, even now, she makes the sign of the cross  in unison with everyone while beneath these gestures the real Rose is accused, tried and condemned because of her selfishness.  (p. 281)

I used the word wildness, though I have no adequate definition. An image comes to mind, a dark, mute fury wrangling within the confines of my character, Rose, but bigger, stronger, a force twisting its own logic into her. Something primal, untamed, of the earth and sky. Something of an impolite truth.

And this phrase, echoing my longing for it is a longing that is beyond time...beyond the barriers of life and death, is something I have written of over the years, often with a wry wonder of how such language is received.

These phrases of wildness and longing beyond barriers of life and death have long been attributed to the Irish and their tendency toward poetics. But I contend that they are universal, common to every tribe and gathering of people, a loneliness in their longing, a magnetic pull toward mystery beyond words.

For it is beyond words, the deep silence, that all poets and lovers of words pour their syllables.

Bromeliads

My dear good friend Bill Marvel used a word in a sentence at our Salon the other day. Neither of us remember clearly what he was referring to, but the word, bromeliad, struck a chord with me.

What's that? I asked.

One of those little plants that seem to exist unconnected to any roots, he replied, perhaps. (Both of us indulge in memoir from time to time, so I say 'perhaps' because we don't feel the great need to quote exactly, as long as we are true to the gist of things.  which, of course, comes with its own set of problems, memories being what they are, but I digress)

So, I had to look up bromeliads, natch.  I discovered that bromeliad is the larger group that contains the free floating untethered bits of greenery called Tillandsias.  Since bromeliad has a much stouter ring, evoking Jonathan Swift, that satirical Irishman, and his inventions of sounds such as Brobdignagian and Lilliputian, we shall throw all the bromeliads in the same bag and watch it float away.

I had, indépendant of Salon, been thinking about the concept of being untethered for a while. This nagged at me because of a conversation I had with someone dear to me who politely declined my suggestion of 'tethering" her family through a religious rite I hold dear.

Years ago, when part of my job was to teach Baptism classes, the fashion was to de-emphazize Original Sin (sorry St. Augustine) and to emphasize community and heritage and family lore and connectedness to the Big Story, our overarching Christian mythos that binds us one to the other and to God.

I asked the class to bring with them some token from their family history that they held dear. Some brought photographs, coin collections, medals, bits of jewelry, that sort of thing. I brought a potato peeler. Not because the Irish ate a lot of potatoes, but because this peeler was used in countless family meals, both great and small. And so, it held a bit of our family history.

A stretch? Maybe.

But, it stands in place as (shall I say it?) a sacramental. One of the greatest things for a Catholic writer, or a writer who is Catholic, is the abundance of ordinary, everyday objects and physical, rough, elegant, oily, watery, things that evoke the holy by the manner in which they are used and remembered. The ordinary holy burlap and silk of the way we are tethered, one to another, and personally, communally to God.

Untethered is a fiction, for even Tillandsia Bromeliads need water and air and a place to hover.

Wabi-Sabi

When I was a kid, one of the jobs I'd have to do the day before Thanksgiving or Christmas or Easter, was polish the silver. We'd fill a basin with warm soapy water, rub some pink goo over the knives and forks and spoons, rub extra hard on the little black spots where tarnish had settled and get in the thread-like grooves, or patina, that had been scratched into the silver. The patina is where the stories of the spoons and forks and knives lived. the patina was the interesting bits of the life of each piece of cutlery. So, twice, maybe three times a year, we'd rub the silver like Aladdin rubbing his lamp, and place the shiny bits on the freshly ironed linen, next to the plates and wine glasses. The company would come, and in those early years, in the years when we wore our nicest dress and the boys wore a tie and polished shoes, the silver haired relations would tell stories and hold their shiny forks and leave their imprint on the touchable pieces of family history.

I found a new word yesterday: Wabi-sabi. Two words, really. Japanese. An approximate meaning I gleaned from Wikipedia is this: imperfections that make something interesting, bring its history forward, if only indirectly; hinting, whispers.

That is, the cracks in the crockery, the stains on the linen and lace tablecloth, the patina on the silver.

Which brings me to this short excerpt from THE NARROW GATE, when Rose discovers her grandmother's attic:

From Chapter Thirty-Three

Here is a treasure trove of history in this dusty room. Sheets cover armchairs, a desk, an old bureau. There is a sled, the kind she's seen in movies, that must have been her father's and uncle's. Boxes of old clothes that weren't supposed to find their resting place here, but did because they were forgotten or outgrown when it was time to get next season's garments down. A desk with an old typewriter covered in a towel is the best find. Black enamel keys with gold lettering, the keys are stiff with disuse, bit the indentation where fingers were to be placed, round with a band of metal on each one, feels so much more important than the plastic electric typewriter her parents have.