A PERFECTLY IMPERFECT LOVE

December 7, 2012December 7, 2012 / roughwighting / 12 Comments

I’m in 12th grade English and the teacher comes up with another ho-hum assignment.

“Write about your grandparents,” she demands.

Not so easy. My grandmother died when I was six, and my grandfather went from VA Hospital to nursing home in short order, dying five quick years later. What do I write about? Funny thing is, the one thing I know for sure is that my grandparents loved each other.

How do I know that so certainly, considering how little I knew them?

Physically, they were a mismatch. Boo-Pa was six foot two, as straight and solid as a tree, with a large, angular face and thick straight dark blonde hair that was snow white by the time I was 5.

Nanny was petite, as delicate as a tiny bird, with small wise light blue eyes that crinkled when she smiled, a small, heart-shaped mouth that was always curved upward, and tiny feet and hands.

He was gruff and quiet, with a large presence.

She was dainty and sweet with a kindness that enveloped all who came near.

My other grandmother, Marmu, proclaimed to me years later that Nanny had been a true saint.

“Not saintly, not just a nice person or any of that,” Marmu explained earnestly. “But an honest-to-God saint.”

How does a saint live with a sinner. How does a sinner live with a saint?

I saw their marriage in stark relief when I was five years old, early Christmas morning.

They were staying with us and sleeping in my brother’s bedroom. Despite my mother’s protestations, I tiptoed in their room to wake them up. I wanted to play. BooPa was snoring. They were curled up in each other’s arms. I giggled, then jumped on their bed.

They woke with a start, Nanny with a smile on her tiny face, BooPa with a snarl as he jumped out of bed.

He was naked! I’d never seen a naked man, and I was absolutely fascinated.

“Phil,” my grandmother admonished. Just that one word, spoken softly but with an edge to it, got him moving faster than I thought a big man should. He jumped into his boxer shorts and turned to look at her abashedly.

“I didn’t know she’d wake us up!” he said, ignoring me, wanting only approval from his wife.

She gave him a kiss and told him to get dressed, then allowed me to snuggle in the bed with her.

Lucky BooPa, I thought briefly. But how does Nanny live with such a creature?

Now, looking back, I see it as an age-old question between men and women.

The beauty.

The beast.

The sweet.

The sour.

The soft.

The hard.

And it all churns, somehow, into love.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have anything to write for my English class. After all, I never really got to know my grandparents.

“We don’t love qualities, we love persons; sometimes by reason of their defects as well as of their qualities.” – Jacques Maritain

Touchy Feely

November 9, 2012 / roughwighting / 47 Comments

I spent the weekend in Napa with my man and friends visiting from the right coast, and they either insulted me or paid me a great compliment by the end of our time together.

“We didn’t realize you’re one of those ‘touchy feely’ kinds,” the couple said to me on Sunday.

At first I couldn’t figure out what I’d done wrong (assuming it was not a good thing to be touchy feely).

“Ah,” I finally answered. “Yes, I complimented the chef at the B&B we stayed in, but you don’t know the whole story.”

“You told him that the food he created for his guests came from his heart, not just from the ingredients, saucepans, and oven!” they exclaimed, a bit of recrimination in their voices.

I gulped. It did sound hokey when my friends repeated it, even though the chef made improbable but fabulous brunches for his weekend guests.

Imagine inn-made, melt-in-your-mouth cranberry scones with fresh fruit, yogurt, homemade jam and fresh-squeezed orange juice, then thick cheese sandwiches grilled with delightful homemade bread and a small cup of tomato bread soup cradled in the center of the plate.

Think tiny soft-on-the inside-crunchy-on-the-outside cinnamon twists that melted in eager mouths, then a five-inch square chef-made ravioli filled with ricotta, basil, and other savory spices, topped with a pouched egg. A weird combination that tasted like Tuscany and sun-ripened mornings.

“I read a newspaper article about the chef,” I explained defensively. “He’s the 10^th of 17 children. In his family, cooking and serving meant survival and love. Plus, he became a Catholic priest until he realized he didn’t belong there. He had an epiphany on Epiphany and bought this B&B with his partner.”

“Sooooo?” my friends asked. “He serves good food to keep his guests coming back. It’s called economic survival.”

I shook my head. “This chef’s main ingredient is love. I could taste it in every bite. This is his service, not as a priest, but as a giver, a nurturer, maybe even a ‘touchy feely’ cook.”

My friends rolled their eyes.

My heart sank.

Can’t food preparation equate love?

Call me touchy feely (and I have a feeling many do), but I think so.

touchy feely, pineapple, food, love, granddaughter

First pineapple – a touchy feely food photo of granddaughter Sophie.

A Ghost Story

October 26, 2012 / roughwighting / 13 Comments

I know it’s going to happen tonight. All the signs are right. Children off on their own, husband away on business, my two best friends gone on vacations with their families.

I am alone. Finally.

For the past two months I’ve been preparing for this time, not knowing that it would come, but preparing nonetheless.

The sun finally loses its power over gravity and sinks down into the dark rose horizon. The moon floats ahead, but herds of black clouds cover its cheerful shine, darkening the sky and the earth below.

I turn off the lights to the living room, the hallway, then the stairway, and finally my bedroom.

I am swathed in glorious blackness.

I close my eyes, then open them so the room is revealed to me like a developing photo in a dark room. Familiar shapes and shadows relax me.

Then an unfamiliar form floats from the window to the door and stops a few feet away.

“Virginia?” I ask. She nods her head. I see no face, no female body, but still, I know it’s my dear friend of many years, my mentor, dead over 15 years now. I have talked to her so often in my prayers, but never a response.

Now she speaks, though no words fill the room.

We revel in memories of the life we shared, and she laughs heartily. My soul fills with the sound. I have missed it, but now realize that it has always been part of me, and shall remain so.

She answers my personal questions of what lay beyond. I won’t tell you what she says.

Felicity, my cat, creeps into the room, staring at me with her yellow eyes. I’m afraid she may think her mistress has lost her mind, but instead she meows to me. “Why stay here? Take a cat nap and see the world.”

Oh, I suddenly realize; I’ve always been able to go back and forth between worlds. I just don’t nap enough.

I close my eyes, feeling Virginia’s presence close at hand. We soar off through the window panes into the black night. I am so happy my heart balloons twice its size. I see George, then, and grandmama, and, of course, Pauli. They are just as free as me.

We head toward the prism that has suddenly appeared, and just as suddenly we’re in a garden of roses and delphiniums and hydrangeas. The soil is moist and smells like cut grass, starfish, and summer moonlight. Felicity joins us and converses with a butterfly.

“Change is imperative,” the colorful flying insect says wisely.

I wink and find myself back in my dark bedroom, seated Buddha style, petting Felicity in soft gentle strokes. She gazes up at me and says only one word in a long, low purr.

“Llllllooooooovvvvvvvveeeeeeeeee. ghost story, butterfly, cat, soul

“Sometimes the soul takes pictures of things it has wished for

but never seen.” (Anne Sexton)

Under the Princess Canopy

October 19, 2012 / roughwighting / 24 Comments

To my 4-year-old granddaughter, the most exciting part of my visit is that I get to sleep with her in her queen-sized bed.

At 9:30 p.m., Sophie’s constant energy is barely contained, even with the lights out and flannel sheets up to our chins. The bed is crowded with just the two of us, since half a dozen “my little ponies” have joined us on the counterpane, jumping in high spirits at my presence.

The chatter between Sophie and her tiny plastic friends finally turns to whispers, and then soft little snores. I start to fade out myself until I’m poked on one hip by a pony fairy wing, and I feel a plastic tail wiggle in my ear. Quietly, I place all the fantastical toys in the bin on the floor, and sink back into comfortable oblivion.

Until my eyes pop open. Two little-girl feet are propped on my face. I raise my neck a few inches and notice the sleeping child’s head down at the foot of the bed.

Not wanting to wake her (I really do believe in letting sleeping ponies, and little girls, lie) I slowly twist away and gently move the child’s knees off my chest.

An hour later (or is it only minutes?) an arm whaps me on the neck, and then a precious child, now right side up, cuddles into my stomach, finding my body a useful pillow.

I stare at the wispy white princess canopy over my head and demand my brain to stop laughing and GO BACK TO SLEEP.

Which I do, until an errant dolly finds my lower back, and brilliant little Sophie begins talking in her sleep.

Geometric solutions?

Poetry?

An arcane language?

Oh. She’s mumbling about “glimmer winged” pony Rainbow Dash chasing Fluttershy in the magical night air.

5 a.m. and I just lay on the soft bed with my sweet grandchild, pretending that winged ponies are flying in and out of the canopy, dusting us with glitters of grandmotherly love.

Pressing Matters

September 28, 2012September 28, 2012 / roughwighting / 20 Comments

I call my son Sean on his cell phone, at work, 11 a.m.

I don’t usually call my boy during the day. After all, he works, in the big city, in a big high-financing job that I understand absolutely nothing about. I hear his explanations of investing, solar, banks, corporations, tax credit, energy, but to be perfectly honest, at banks and tax credits my brain gets fuzzy and my eyes roll back so I just nod my head and say “Ohhhh!” as if I’ve understood every fast-speaking, super-intelligent thing he’s said.

But today, I just want to hear his voice. I miss that, now that he’s not the little boy who absolutely and completely loves his mother, buying her flowers when he’s driven her close to distraction, and offering a huge smile and hug every night until he leaves for college.

My son is MINE until he meets his match, his sunshine, the chink to his armor, the woman he’s dreamed of before he ever met her — his wife.

Now he’s hers, and that’s the way it’s supposed to be, the way I want it to be.

Until I call him at 11 in the morning and he doesn’t answer his phone, and I think, “Sean doesn’t have time for me right now.”

Before pressing matters.

The truth is, he doesn’t, not now that he’s married and the father of three little boys and commuting to the big city and worrying about bills and pre-schools and property taxes and how to celebrate each anniversary (at their third, he discovered the traditional gift is leather – and by god, he bought his love … a leather bracelet). By the type of man he is, the husband he is, the father he is, I know I did good. But I just want to hear Sean’s voice and let him be my little boy just for a minute.Please!

But five minutes after I call, I receive a text. Let me explain that I am at work myself, so I’m happy to see a text, since I really can’t take the time from work to talk then anyway – ah, the vagaries of motherhood.

But the text takes my breath away.

Here it is.

Ready?

“In meetings all day. Can we talk tomorrow? Anything pressing?”

PRESSING?

“Like an iron,” I text back angrily without thinking.

When, oh when, did I get to the point of being a person in my son’s life whom he has to find a schedule for, whom he can only talk to if it’s “pressing,” whom he…

“You’ve been married too long to dad,” he texts back.

I smile. My man is known in our family circle as a frequent (though not necessarily accomplished) person-who-puns.

I pause. Sean did text back soon after my missed call. He did make sure I was okay, then asked if we could talk later.

Sean with one of his pressing matters.

I text him a funny face :+) and let go of my loss.He’s still my son, but he’s not my little boy. He still loves me, but he’s expanded his heart to love a wife, three children. He’s made a life, a family, and where do I fit in?

I’m his mom.

Forever.

Illustration thanks to Pam Rubert, http://pamrubert.com/about/press1/