Ummmm.
(Just sayin’.)
I love you, Badger State. Despite all yer fuckin’ snow.
****
P.S. Obama is speaking to Texas on CNN. My Republican husband is noticeably riveted, and my three-year-old just said, “Mama, I wike yo boyfwend.”
My cup runneth over.
.
I am wearing a girdle. We are in the truck and I can barely move, each bump of the struts forcing my internal organs to spoon. It’s ridiculous, really, that I would wedge myself into this modern version of that old sadistic contraption, my hip and belly fat now resting uncomfortably near my neck. It’s ridiculous because I see so many of these people, these gentle people, pretty regularly on a day-to-day basis. It’s not like I traveled far beyond my bittersweet sticky hometown in the first place. It’s not like they don’t know what I look like now, how much older, thicker, quieter I’ve gotten. It’s not like Facebook hasn’t made our lives a high school Groundhog’s Day as it is. Still, it’s my 15th reunion and so, this girdle. This awful girdle. Me, and it, at my high school reunion. Thick as thieves.
I walk in cold with sweat. I introduce my husband over and over, even though he’s met them all a hundred times. He was there, after all, in the beginning, whether they remember this or not. He was that faithful payphone ring in the commons, that daily lunch call, that lifeline thrown to this drowning girl whose waters were always choppier than anyone else’s, or so it always seemed to her, me. Some days I close my eyes and I can still smell the sharks.
These people, however, were not the sharks. These people, my former classmates, still make me smile, this small town menagerie of Midwestern kindness. There are a few I wish I’d spent more time with. There are a few I wonder if I really knew at all. There are several I want to snatch and drag out back right now, ask them everything I never realized I wanted, needed, to know. Finally take that smoke.
For a tiny moment between laughs and shifting feet I remember how much I cared. I remember how often I wept, how tightly I clenched, how much I thought I lost. I don’t remember the details, the hard facts, as much as I remember the grief, the angst, the flashes of self-hatred and hurt, the bewilderment. The regret.
The truth is I barely survived high school. I don’t know how many of my classmates realize that, I honestly don’t. I don’t know if their memories are better than mine, if they look at me and see only that hot mess of a kid, that girl who sort of lost it halfway through… or if time has softened their perceptions. They are certainly friendly now, more than fair in their faith, more than I think I deserve. I am grateful.
My freshman year was an awful shock, my sophomore year a blur of rebellion, my junior year a singularly focused mission of escape. My senior year never happened, I’d already gone off to college. (Mission accomplished.) One boy defined that second year for me, in the most awful, awful way. A different boy bolstered that third year. Thank God for that boy in my third year, that boy who stands beside me now, at my reunion. Every five minutes or so I steal a glance and he’s always looking my way. All these years later.
I can’t figure out if I’m a fool or not. I look at each of these faces and there’s not a single one I dislike, not a one I thought ill of then or now—but did they feel the same? Or did they whisper themselves hoarse behind my back? It’s a thought that used to disturb me far more often than it does these days, these days where I just don’t care the way I once did. In fact, the only thing that truly shakes me now is this quiet sense of loss, this active noticing of the places people should be standing, people who no longer are, much the way my watercolor artist mom paints the negative spaces into a glorious whole. The rest is easy, light, all pastel cream tubes of color and liquid and sun. The beer is smooth and cheap, the meats miniature and saucy, the laughs thick and abundant. I rock my best friend’s baby. I inhale his newness. I grin at my lot, my blessed, blessed lot.
Later, much later, our truck in my parents’ driveway, the flex of Dave’s jeans as he climbs the stairs, a sudden smack of dizzy, of disorientation. He disappears inside the house and I stare at that front porch, framed by his windshield, an old movie flickering, and I see him there, I see us, there, the first time his hand dared creep inside my shirt, right there on that swing, I watch it play out. I don’t want to look away. He steps out now, interrupts the film, a sweet solid dad behind his old feverish ghost, our daughters draped across his shoulders. Our girls. When did this happen?
Our oldest is now a fourth grader. She blinks, all heavy sleep and confusion in the backseat. I remember my classmates as fourth graders, me and Joel colliding into concussion at recess, Eliza dumping her retainer in the hot lunch bin, Dusty and his box cars, Miss Suzy and her Steamboat and her glorious curses on the bus. Most of all I remember that I was me, that we were us, and I look at my daughter and I wonder what’s to come. I wonder what will plague her, what she’ll be thankful for, whose salty forearm she’ll study in the midnight glow as it steers her family home, everything she ever cared about, everything that ever really meant something, safe, as long as he’s at the wheel.
There are times I have so much to say I’m close to bursting, and other times I’m wholly vacant. The curious thing is, how much or how little I have to say doesn’t always match up with my desire for community. Sometimes I have no words, nothing profound worth sharing, but I just want you guys around. I want to poke you and say, ‘Hey! Hi. Nice outfit. Whatcha doin’? Got any cookies? I love you.”
Forced posts are the worst, yet here I sit, staring at this blank screen, peppy cursor mocking me, and I can’t help myself from reaching out anyway. To say, thank you for yesterday. To say, I’m sorry I’m sending you this blank card with the puppy on the front instead of the perfect Hallmark. To say, your kindness has rendered me speechless, yet here I am.
I needed you, and you came. They can belittle this medium all they want, reduce it to a petty tangle of wires and chips, but they’re wrong. Real affinity, real friendships — real healing — happens in this place, and it happens because of you.
Thank you feels so small, but it’s all I’ve got to give.
It’s yours.
August 29, 2005
It is evening in Wisconsin, the air sticky and still, not a single breeze whispering through the open windows of my living room. I am glued to my television.
2,000 miles away, Hurricane Katrina is wreaking cataclysmic havoc. Over the next few days I sit frozen before the sickly blue light, images of terror dancing across the screen. I watch helplessly as She decimates 60 miles of coastline, as She drowns grandmothers and children in their attics. As the levies break, as newly homeless people lie wedged like sardines in the stadium, as families stare incredulously at piles of rubble.
More than once, I curl up on my safe, undamaged sofa, and I weep.
December, 2007
Lance Myers speaks so quietly I can hardly hear him. I keep leaning in, keep pushing my recorder closer to him so it will catch his softly spoken story.
He is leaving his job as the sports photographer for the newspaper that employs me. It’s been over a year since the storm, and Mississippi, a state he’s come to think of as a second home, remains severely crippled. There are still 39,000 families living in FEMA trailers. 39,000 families in Mississippi alone.
Lance clears his throat; the newsworthy tale pours out; my pen scribbles furiously. Four weeks after Katrina hit, he and two friends collected 14,000 pounds of supplies from their fellow Wisconsinites, trucked them down to Pass Christian, to Gulfport, to Long Beach, MS, and set up shelter in the gymnasium of the South Mississippi Regional Mental Health Center. Seventy percent of the residents of The Pass lost everything, and Lance was determined to help them get it back. Over the next year he made monthly week-long trips to volunteer where he could — to comb the ditches for family photos, to pull bicycles from treetops, to feed and water and clothe and comfort whomever crossed his path.
It’s December now, and he has decided all the work he’s done is not enough. He has quit his jobs, and in a few weeks he will say goodbye to his wife, move to the gulf coast, and begin a two-year personal mission. Someone from our tiny Wisconsin community has donated a small trailer for him to stay in, and he will take a job at the SMRC, the same place he set up those donated supplies. Every day, he will work at the center, then spend his nights and weekends continuing to help Katrina victims recover. Every month, he will send mortgage money home to his wife of 38 years in Wisconsin. Every minute, he will ache for his family.
“That’s amazing,” I say, breathlessly, once he has finished. Then, “I’d like to do that.”
“What’s stopping you?” he smiles, a twinkle in his eye.
I think about all the sacrifices he’s making, and I know the answer before I speak it aloud.
“Nothing.”
Summer, 2007
Dave drives our van down Highway 90, a stretch of ocean-front road along the gulf coast once lined with magnificent old homes. It’s been two years since Katrina, but very little has been rebuilt — the clean-up alone took well over a year.
Along this beachfront drive now we see only the occasional shell of a formerly grand house; mostly it is cement slab after cement slab after cement slab. The air is thick with the ghosts of people we never knew, people we are somehow mourning anyway. I shudder when I realize the road we’re driving on was 30 feet beneath the water on that fateful day.
This is the second relief trip I’ve made since meeting Lance; the first was several months earlier, with three high school kids and one other chaperone, for nine days. This time, I brought my family — my husband whose skilled labor is far more valuable than any help I can provide, and my children, whom I wish to teach that life is so much more than Barbies and trampolines. I’ve shown them the pictures, told them the stories of the work I did here, the work my friend Lance is doing every day, but the ideas are too abstract, and I’m flailing. I want so badly for them to understand why we are here, at least on some level.
So we’re driving that stretch of road and it’s getting dark and I’m getting sad and suddenly Gretta speaks.
“I just think about if it were the opposite situation,” she says. “If people in Wisconsin needed help, and the Mississippi people came to help us.”
And yes, she really does say ‘opposite situation.’ And yes, she is only seven years old. And yes, my heart swells. And I know she finally gets it, what we’re all doing here.
And then a 2-year-old Emma screams and points, and I follow her sight line to a towering McDonald’s sign, its yellow lights blown clean, an empty slab where the restaurant once stood.
“Mickadonowds is bwoken!” she wails, and I think it’s the closest she’ll come to getting it, too.
And I think it is close enough.
August 29, 2008
Lance’s two year mission is almost up, and he’s accomplished so much, impacted so many lives. He started a blog several months back to document his project, and I’ve been following my friend’s efforts closely — but today’s message is ominous.
Lance is battening down the hatches. Tropical Storm Gustov is slowly gathering momentum off the coast of Cuba, and plans to strike the gulf coast Sunday, maybe Monday. Lance is tying down his trailer, and he is headed back to the shelter he built for others almost two years ago, to take shelter himself.
I’m on my couch again, staring at the blackened television. Though its power is off, I can see the ghosts of the technicolor images from three years ago.
I think about how ironic it is that today marks the three year anniversary of Katrina, that Lance’s two years are almost up, that this Labor Day weekend may bring the storm that starts his labor all over again. At best, it will bring horrific memories for Katrina’s survivors. At worst, new memories will be forged.
And I can’t help but think about what it means, that I’m praying for the hurricane to miss my friend, to go elsewhere — because that means it will hit someone else’s friend.
And I know I’ll be thinking all weekend about walls of water that flatten buildings and dreams, about ocean breaks and broken hearts, about how easily the lives we build can be erased in a single, salty instant.
And I’m thinking if there’s anything I’ve learned since I met Lance, it’s that no matter what happens this weekend, they will rebuild.
At least, as best they can.
And I hope they know that no matter what happens this weekend, strangers will come from thousands of miles away to help.
At least, as best they can.
*******
Ironically, one of my favorite bloggers — one I’ve only known a short time — lives in Pass Christian. Please read her story today and pass it along.
Every year I sit down and bang out a holiday card letter. This kind of writing has always come easily to me, the unfettered, unedited free-form riffs I use to keep family and friends updated. I’ve been writing these missives for years and years, and I’ve always looked forward to it. But here we are, three days before Christmas and a day into Hanukkah, and up until an hour ago I hadn’t written a word. I couldn’t.
I have always tried to be honest in my holiday letters. The tradition was born in part from a desire to combat the stereotypical update letter, the happy-go-lucky aren’t-we-fantastic-world-travelers-and-could-our-children-possibly-excel-more-can-you-believe-they’re-not-President-or-American-Idols-yet? letters that make me feel two feet tall. It started when I was a kid, in response to one particular family’s over-the-top letter. I used to write satirical updates on my and my siblings’ failing grades, arrest records, or forays into drugs, just to make my parents smile. As an adult, I kept the tradition and the sentiment but added in truth. I felt like my loved ones would appreciate knowing how un-perfect my life was, that they’d perhaps feel better about how un-perfect theirs were, how un-perfect all of ours are. Because oh, how they are.
The last week or two my laptop has served more often as drink coaster than holiday-card writer, or blog entry portal, or social media connector, or anything responsibility-meeting in general. I can’t seem to do it. I can’t seem to sit down here and tell you about the awesome Christmas party in Chicago, or game nights with my kids, or my visiting house guests, or the extreme snowfalls and frigid below-zero days…. and for the life of me, I can’t seem to sit down and type out an honest summary of the last year because I don’t want to Grinch-out 127 people’s holidays with my card. Because I’m just not feeling it.
I am blessed. I know I am blessed. I have experienced more joy than I could ever document this year, I have. But.
I’m worried about Dave’s job loss, even though he’s not. I’m worried sick about our cousin’s paralysis. I’m not interested in cataloging marriages and divorces, middle-of-the-night agonies and loved ones buried, and wrapping it all into a cute little holiday card bow.
My visiting brother and sister-in-law took Emma to lunch this afternoon and told me to sit down and write the cheery letter already, dammit! So I did. I finished it five minutes ago. I hope it doesn’t let anyone down.
I closed out the letter with the most truthful line I could muster, and I’ll use it to close out this post, too.
I pray all is equal parts sweet and survivable with you and yours.
Happy Holidays.
