Renee Butcher

Words & Pictures - Freshly Inked

Salt

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Early April, 2020

I had a moment of quarantine panic the other day.

I was making a loaf of bread, and when I took the top off the little wooden salt cellar that I keep by the stove, I saw that it was almost empty. So I got out the step-stool and reached up on the top shelf of the pantry where the refill box lives, but it wasn’t there. I started shifting all the plastic cereal containers around, thinking maybe it got pushed back behind them. I then moved all the boxes of staples on the next shelf down – flour, sugar, oats, quinoa – looking behind each one. With every box, my hands searched a little faster.

Who moved my salt‽

I go out into the garage to check our “extended pantry” shelves. Nothing. Back inside, I repeated entire process again. Twice.

OhmygoshOhmygoshOhmygosh. I have everything else. I thought we were Prepared. I made Lists.

Breathe.

People have fought wars over salt.

Breathe.

But you can’t just buy salt right now. Or flour. Or toilet paper. Or quarter-inch elastic at the fabric store.

Breathe.

A few weeks ago, my youngest daughter asked me if I’d ever experienced anything like this in my lifetime. This Pandemic. I told her the closest I’d ever come to it was a story my granddad told me once about the Spanish flu epidemic.

Like many young men of his time, Pop graduated early from high school in the winter of 1917-18, joined the Navy, and left directly for basic training. From there, he was sent on to Georgia for deployment, expecting to ship out and join his chums in Europe to fight in the War to End All Wars.

Most of the time, if Pop mentioned his hitch in the Navy at all, it was just to say, “I sure did enjoy being down South with all them sweet Georgia peaches,” and then he’d smile, and wink at whoever was listening. One time though, when I was in my late teens, Pop and I were sitting at the kitchen table, and I asked him what the worst thing was he’d ever seen in his life.

Pop didn’t hesitate. “You know,” he said, “when I was in the Navy in down in Georgia, we never even made it onto the gangway. I was always so disappointed I never got to go to Europe. See, the Spanish flu was sweeping through the South at that time and hitting the military boys hard, and we couldn’t take it on a ship, so we were stuck there in camp.

Once, after we’d been holed-up a couple of weeks, an officer gave me a packet to deliver across camp to the Infirmary. It was the dead of winter. Bone cold. Gawd, it was cold. Anyway, I’d never been inside the building he sent me to before. It was a huge quonset hut – you know, one of those half-moon metal military jobs – big enough to park ten tanks in.

“I walked up to the door on the end and knocked, and when the fellow inside opened it, I looked over his shoulder and all I could see from one end to the other were waves of heavy brown oil cloth, some as high as my chest, one wave rolling right into the next. I knew right away what they were. It was all those boys who’d been dying of Spanish flu, stacked up like cordwood, shrouded under all that canvas. The ground was froze solid and there was no way to bury them.”

He looked up at me. Then Pop and I sat there staring at the yellow Formica for a long time.

Wait. I know we have some salt.

I open the cupboard doors and start checking the seasoning shelves. (Yes. Shel-ves. I have a lot of seasonings.)

Garlic salt. Celery salt. Pink Himalayan Salt. Celtic Sea salt. Red Hawaiian salt. Greek seasoning. Old Bay. Lawry’s. Fine sea salt. I start pulling salts off the shelf and stacking them on the counter.

Fine sea salt.

Pop was an electrician. A lineman. He climbed impossibly tall electrical poles all day long in his thick denim jacket and heavy work boots. When I was little, he was still working lines in Portland; a loyal member of IBEW Local 48. He used to give me his little round union pins after every meeting.

Each workday, Pop would pack his lunch and fill his thermos with the thickest, blackest coffee you’ve ever seen. Inside his heavy metal lunch pail, he always kept a paper napkin, a clean handkerchief, and a small, navy and yellow saltshaker about the size of a twenty-nickel stack, with a picture of the Morton salt girl on the front.

Fine sea salt.

I hold the container of fine sea salt to my chest and look out at my little collection of salts on the counter. My heart rate begins to slow. The image of the little salt girl calms me.

According to Morton, she (the little salt girl) is about eight years old, and though she has never had an official name, I’ve always called her Sally, because until I was four or five, she sported two bright yellow braids and looked like Dick and Jane’s little sister in my older brother’s readers.

Sally the Salt Girl made her debut in 1911, four years before the beginning of the Spanish Flu epidemic. Since then, she has survived at least two major flu pandemics, polio, two World Wars, the Great Depression, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Cold War, disco, and multiple wars in the Middle East. This is not her first rodeo.

Don’t we have a box of leftover pickling salt? I’m sure we do.

I go out to check the garage shelves. Again.

Yep. There it is, stuck behind the boxed pasta: an almost full box of pickling salt, leftover from the last time we made dill pickles. The box is heavy in my hand: a salt brick, solid as a rock.

Hold up: can I use pickling salt in place of regular salt? What makes it pickling salt?

Now, prepare to either slap your forehead in disbelief that someone could live as long as I have and not gotten the Morton tag line, or prepare to have your mind blown. It will be one or the other. There is no in-between.

Ready?

When it rains, it pours.

OK. So unlike “table salt,” pickling salt (as I recently learned) is simply salt that does not contain anti-caking ingredients or additives like iodine. And because it lacks these anti-caking properties, pickling salt can turn into a solid brick, especially in humid or rainy conditions: my box of pickling salt being a case in point. Table salt, on the other hand, has additives that keep it from caking, so it will stay granular and pour smoothly,

– – – – – – even when it rains.

Apparently, prior to the early 1900s, housewives regularly had literally chisel their salt apart to use it, so having a salt that was guaranteed to pour in adverse weather conditions was a big deal. (Salt that pours when you want it to: just one more thing I have taken for granted all these years.)

When it rains, it pours. 

By the mid-fifties, however, Sally’s catchy little slogan had taken on new meaning. Instead of simply describing the unique properties of a mundane kitchen staple, it came to suggest an existential axiom; that when bad things happen, more of the same are apt to follow. Personally, I’ve never bought into that concept: the implied fatalism goes against everything I believe.

I guess it all boils down to how you see the rain.

When I was eight, half my life was spent splashing through puddles in big rubber galoshes that covered my school shoes and came up almost to my knees. The Little Morton Salt Girl of my era, in her swing coat and dark bob, was me. We danced in the mud puddles. We dropped rocks to watch the rings ripple out to the edges and bounce back, one after the other. We inhaled the scent of early morning petrichor like a fresh marionberry pie.

It is that puddle-stomping little girl who comes to me now, comforting me; reminding me that this story isn’t about the rain. It’s about slogging through and doing what needs to be done, even as the rain pours down.

Family Mugs

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Family Mugs [Illustration by Renee Butcher]

My husband, Rick, keeps telling me we have too many mugs – that they are taking up too much space on our shelves, and I need to get rid of some of them. But which ones?

How about this one – my Mama Bear mug? It’s the companion to his Papa Bear mug. Every time I see them sitting on the shelf, I think about the year we really started to feel like a family. I can’t give that one up. It took so many years to get it.

Or how about my big green Tinkerbell mug? We got that the year we took the kids to Disneyland – our first real “family” trip together. It’s a big, two-handed mug that holds nearly twice as much as Mama Bear. I reserve Tink for my Sunday Cocoa and fill her to the brim.

How about this one? My camp sister, Dottie, has one just like it: I gave it to her for her birthday a few years back. I love the image; yellow stars peek from a black night sky, haloing a galaxy of raucous, Rubenesque women whooping around a campfire, sparks rising to meet the stars. Whenever I wrap my hands around their warm, gently sloping curves, I am lost in a thousand memories of smoky, crackling fires, campfire singing and soft guitars.

See this one with the unicorn? I think it’s the oldest in the cupboard. It sat on my desk all through college, where it held my pencils, pens, roach clip, scissors. When I hold it, I remember moving into Mehling Hall freshman year, carefully placing it on my desk beside Rick’s picture. I remember when I put his picture away.

And this one with the cowboy boots, sitting on the windowsill? If you look closely, you’ll see its broken: split right down the middle. My second daughter, Gracie, sent that one to us from Wyoming, the year she spent teaching and volunteering and waiting to go to Brazil. It was broken when it arrived, so I superglued it and set it up there to hold my basting and baking brushes. It’s been there ever since.

Maybe I could part with the volunteer mug Rick got for helping out with Emily’s Girl Scout troop. Or the one we bought on our first Valentines weekend at Hood River. No. No, I need to keep that one. You never know when a moment will change the course of your life, or the ambitions of your heart will be inspired.

Which ones should I keep? Which do I let go?

The funny thing is, most of the mugs I love aren’t that comfortable to hold. They’re not shaped exactly right. Some have rough surfaces that make my fingertips feel anxious, or lips that curl in ways that make it almost impossible to the gracefully take a drink. Some have handles that were clearly designed by someone who had never before held a mug in their lives, while others are too heavy, or uneven, slumped from the heat of the kiln.

Still, I love each one. They hold my memories.

I have learned to form to their curves and find comfort in their rough spots. Even the broken one, I have found a place for.

Feeding the Fish

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Basically, we are all here to learn to share and pass the crayons and not eat the paste.

I can remember the name of every kid in my First Grade class, and tell at least one reasonably colorful story about each one of them, too.

For instance, the girl in the center of the front row wearing the red striped dress is Kay Whittington. Kay and I were pretty artsy, and when we were in second grade, we got to make a life-sized Abraham Lincoln by tracing around our very tall principal, Mr. McCray, while he lay on a long piece of butcher paper in the hallway.

See that first boy in the top row? The one in the yellow shirt? That’s Joe Albers. He wanted to be a fireman when he grew up. What’s amazing is, that is exactly what he ended up doing. I danced with Joe at our 8th grade graduation, to Stairway to Heaven. It’s a very long song, and I think it may have been a pity-dance for him, but for me, it was lovely.

Marilee is in the top row looking at our teacher instead of the camera. People used to get Marilee and me mixed up all the time, and I never understood why. She’s a teacher now, and still one of my dearest friends.

To name a few more, there’s Carl who I once took dance lessons with, and Tony who missed a lot of school due to health problems, and Jennifer who was always an entire head taller than me, and adorable William Lake, and David Rosenthal who was my first “boyfriend.” He’s the one in the front row with his eyes closed. We used to hold hands on the playground.

Me? I’m in the front row too: pink dress, black go-go boots (Oh, how I loved those go-go boots!), sitting between Lurissa Sponsler and Charles Tigard. Lurissa used to have long fingernails and was known to scratch boys on the playground with them. She’s a Special Ed teacher now. (Seems a lot of us are, come to think of it.) A few years back, she married another classmate of ours, Eric, and Rick and I get together with them every now and then for dinner.

Our teacher was sweet, red-headed Mrs. Sturgis, who seems much younger in this picture than I remember her. Back in the fall of ’69, we ran into her classroom every day excited about what life had to offer, all knee highs and go-go boots, pony tails and plaid shirts, just hoping our name would be on the chore chart next to “Feed the Fish.” Best job ever.

So here’s the thing… the reason they are all still so important to me: No one in Mrs. Sturgis’ class was a criminal, or out of work, or caught up in a moral scandal (at least not back then), but whenever a weather-beaten mug-shot or the image of a lost citizen flashes across my screen or darkens my news feed, I think of them.

Because while remembering all those kids is a good party trick, here’s my real Super Power: I can imagine anyone – Anyone – at six, sitting right there next to me with Joe and Lurissa and Marilee and all the rest. So for a split second, even the most heinous outlaw is – in my imagination – is all cotton socks, smooth skin and bright eyes. I mean, everyone was six once upon a time, right?

And then I wonder, what happened? How did that fresh faced kid in my mind’s eye become the slack-jawed delinquent on my screen?

Early in my career, I taught at a residential treatment facility for severely emotionally disturbed children, most of them victims of horrendous abuse. So I understand what exalts the ego or disfigures the soul from an educational, clinical, and psychiatric standpoint. Likewise, I recognize the sociological and environmental factors that influence behavior. But my question is more fundamental – why do some kids rise above whatever life throws at them, while others are crushed by it? How does a someone go from wanting to be a pilot or a baseball player or a train conductor to holding up 7-11’s? Conversely, what drives a young woman to leave a life of comfort to go and work at a Haitian orphanage?

Those faces in that old class picture are touchstones for me. Full of life and potential, they are constants that remind me we are all citizens of the planet and students in the world’s classroom, and basically, we are all here to learn to share and pass the crayons and not eat the paste. And when crime seems ubiquitous or tragedy strikes, it’s comforting – even humanizing – to remember that there was a time when everyone was a just kid in the first grade, waiting for his turn to feed the fish.

Planting Bulbs

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Daddy died in the quiet of the early morning on the last day of September. I was the last person to see him before he passed away. Before I left his hospital room that last night, while my mom waited out in the hall for me, I took a few minutes to sit and hold his hand and talk to him. He was only semi-conscious, and I don’t know how much he heard, but it made me feel better to say what I needed to say.

I didn’t know he was going to die that night (or, maybe I did) but I took the time to tell him that I loved him, and recalled for him some of our favorite shared memories.

I told Daddy that it had been a blessing and an honor to be his daughter, and that I was grateful for everything he had taught me. He taught so much. I told him that if he needed to go it was OK. No one else would tell him. My mom said she couldn’t, and I knew he needed to hear it. Then I squeezed his hand and I walked out the door.

It wasn’t until I was halfway out of the hospital that I remembered my first wedding day so many years before. Daddy and I got in such a hurry to get down the aisle that I forgot to give him a kiss, and when I remembered a few minutes into the ceremony, it nagged at me throughout the rest of the service. It was a silly oversight – no one else knew or cared, but the memory of that tiny lapse has turned me around so many times since – to give a last hug, or say a proper goodbye.

So this time, when I realized that I had forgotten to give my Daddy a kiss goodbye, I asked Mom to wait a second, and I hurried back, past the empty wheelchairs lining the hallway, past the late-night custodian, past the nurses’ station. When I opened the door to his room, he was sleeping soundly, so I tiptoed in, kissed him on the cheek, and left. Most likely, he never even knew that I was there again. But I knew. And when the hospital called at 5:20 a.m. to tell me that he was gone, one of my first thoughts was, I’m so glad I went back.

You never know how much one little moment will mean.

A number of years ago, a dear friend of mine wrote a touching essay about planting bulbs. In it, she drew a beautiful analogy between planting bulbs and raising our families: in both cases, we don’t get to see the results of our work right away, but if we are patient and have faith, we will create something beautiful, and it will continue to grow and bring us joy year after year after year.

I used to return to my father’s grave every year on the anniversary of his death. But one of the most important things Daddy taught me was to trust my inner voice – the one that makes me turn around, or say a word, or do what needs doing, or take the time. I haven’t always been very good at listening, but year by year, I get a little better.

A few years ago, I decided that this day needed to be set aside to look not to the past, but to the future. So today, instead of visiting the cemetery, I am kneeling at the edge of the grass in our front yard, planting bulbs with my daughters and my husband in the warm autumn dusk.

[September 2014]

Tulips Fields

Ten Minutes in the Mirror

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There was a time in my life when I considered it a luxury to stand in front of a mirror for more than five minutes to get ready for my day. I had a handful of young children running around the house back then, and there was so much to do. And I didn’t feel pretty.

Back then, I felt that it would be a luxury – an unnecessary one at that – to take more than five minutes in front of a mirror because neither I nor my body nor my face were worth it.

No one would have known I felt that way from looking at me. (At least I don’t think so.) In many ways I didn’t really even realize it myself. That is to say, I never voiced it to myself. Never put it into words. But I knew. And you and I both know that there is almost as much a taboo against admitting that it matters – being pretty, that is – as there is the social and cultural pressure to be so. Nevertheless, when you get right down to it – to the bones of it – it was never about the outside anyway.

Ten-thousand words go here.

For the first time in my life, I can look in a mirror and love the person who's looking back at me. For the first time. I don't know about you, but I think that right there is a miracle. A certifiable miracle.

So anyway, today I spent nearly ten minutes in front of the mirror getting ready for the day. Twice as long as I ever did back then. I mean, on a regular day – not on a date night or holiday or the day your daughter gets married kind of day. Of course I spent more time then: it was expected. What I mean here is, just a day. Like today. A getting up in the morning sort of day. You know the ones, right? Where you do just enough to get yourself together so that you can pass at work, or if you run into somebody you know in the grocery store you don’t feel the urge to huddle behind a seasonal produce display. Just a day.

I don’t know about you, but when I was a young mother, it seems like most days were “just a day” days. My kids are older now and things are a lot different, but I remember, and I totally get not taking that time when you have little kids. Everything and everyone is more important than you, right? When you have little ones, you don’t own your time. Sometimes you can’t even pee. I mean, people who’ve never had little kids at home don’t understand the luxury of peeing alone. I think I can remember every single time I ever peed alone when I was a young mother.

I wish someone had told me back then – Take care of yourself. Be kind to yourself. Make Happiness a priority. In short, Treat yourself like someone you love. It took me so long to learn it on my own. And the learning hurt so much.

Let’s get back to that mirror, and me in it. Because it’s a Big Deal. You see, now – for the first time in my life – I can look in a mirror and love the person who’s looking back at me. For the first time. I don’t know about you, but I think that right there is a miracle. A certifiable miracle. For the first time in my life I know the soul behind the face in the mirror is kind, and generous, and talented, and loving – and worthy of ten minutes in the mirror. And infinitely more.

So are you.

Four Keys to a Long, Happy, Purposeful Life

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An International Women’s Day Tribute

After my father died too soon from Parkinson’s complications, my mother’s older sister Dorothy Ellen assumed, in no uncertain terms, the mantle of family matriarch. Known to everyone as Auntie, Dorothy Ellen went on to lead our family for another ten years before she passed away at the age of ninety-four.

I know that Auntie would be pleased that I chose this particular day – International Women’s Day; a day set aside each year around the globe to celebrate the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women – to pay her tribute. She was a strong, life-long supporter of equity and education for women and girls (long before it became fashionable to do so), and exemplified throughout her life that a woman can be strong, independent, happy, and capable; married or not.

Like my father, our Auntie was a teacher, and I can’t remember a time when she wasn’t teaching me something. She inspired me and cheered me on in my first artistic endeavors. She impressed upon me that attention to detail matters, and if you are going to create something, make it the best you are capable of.

Auntie taught me countless lessons passed on from her Girl Scouting days, which later motivated me to become a Girl Scout leader for all five of my own daughters. She introduced me to Native American art and cultivated my appreciation of our local indigenous peoples and cultures. She taught me what it meant to be a big sister, long before I discovered I had a little sister out there in the world. She helped me with my homework, and encouraged me in my pursuit of a teaching degree. She taught me that little things matter.

International Women's Day Tribute

However, while I appreciate the lessons of my youth, it is the lessons I learned from my aunt as she got older that I am finding the most valuable now. Auntie did Old Age right, and I took notes, because I can already hear that train in the distance, and it’s coming faster than I ever imagined.

(If you are 20- or 30-something, and are skimming over this because you think you have all the time in the world, be careful not to blink.)

Sure, physical, emotional, and mental health are somewhat reliant on genetics, but Auntie showed us all that living into your nineties with a sharp mind takes more than good genes, and it doesn’t happen by accident: among other things, it takes drive, dedication, tenacity, and a solid group of friends and family.

Four Keys to a Long, Happy, Purposeful Life

Cultivate and nurture a strong, supportive circle of friends

Auntie taught us all that aging with grace takes work. (A bit of a stubborn streak probably doesn’t hurt either.) She exercised, she read, and she challenged herself mentally and physically. She stayed actively engaged with her book club and other organizations far longer than anyone ever thought she could. But most important, at least from my perspective, was the circle of friends she fostered and kept close around her to the end.

As she got older, Auntie wisely made friends with younger people, and by the time she hit 90, nearly all of her close friends were younger than her by at least a few decades. (I mean, when you’re 90, you don’t have much of a choice.) But really, she loved her friends – especially those longtime neighbors who supported her, kept her company, watched all those hours of basketball with her, shared their families with her, took her on outings even when it became cumbersome – and even pushed her when she needed it. Particularly in these last few years, She would not have had the quality of life that she did without them.

Right out of Better Homes circa 1957. Auntie is standing in the center.

Express Gratitude

I don’t think there was ever a time when Auntie didn’t say thank you when something was done for her. She meant it too, and that made a difference.  Even hard things are easier to do for others when you know that your efforts are appreciated. Moreover, there is significant research to suggest that having a grateful heart can improve overall health and happiness, and extend life as well.

International Women's Day Tribute

Be Present

There wasn’t much else I could do for our Auntie in the last days of her life, but I could read to her, so that’s what I did whenever I went to visit.

On that last day, I read to her from “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.” It was a favorite book of both of ours. As a child, I was a precocious reader, and I can still remember the day my aunt pulled her copy off the shelf from its place next to For Whom the Bell Tolls and put it into my hands. I was ten or eleven, and it was my first “grown-up” book.

Anyway, on that last day, I sat there reading chapter after chapter to Auntie as I had on previous days. Unlike previous days, however, her eyes were filmy; and only once – for a flickering moment – did I catch even a glimmer of life. Her fire was gone, and I had the overwhelming impression that this would be the last time I would read for her.

That day, we were planning to take our youngest daughter downtown to celebrate her birthday, and I knew we needed to get going.  But I kept on reading, because I wanted to end on a happy chapter. I knew in my heart that this would last time Auntie would hear anything from any of her beloved books, and I wanted to give her something beautiful to take with her as she passed from here to what lies beyond.

In that moment, I felt to my bones this lesson: Be where you need to be. Be present. So I kept reading.

Leave a Legacy of Love

I had the privilege of being in the room on one of the last visits from her neighbor and dear friend Elizabeth, and as I watched Elizabeth lean over my aunt’s bed and look into her eyes, I saw so much love.

In fact, every person I witnessed come through my aunt’s bedroom in her last days – including off-duty caregivers who came on their own time – who came because they loved her – every one of them seemed to offer her this singular message: Thank you for being in my life. You are so loved.

In that moment, watching Elizabeth say goodbye, I thought to myself; that’s what I want. That’s what I want.

When I leave this earth in my last days – if I can be surrounded by people whose only message is, “You are so loved,” I will know that I have lived well. If I can do that, then I will leave the legacy that I want to leave.

The legacy that Auntie left to me.

International Women's Day Tribute

Originally published March 19, 2017 on The Good Hearted Woman

Two Cards for Father’s Day

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Father’s Day, 2013

A man walked by me in Safeway wearing Old Spice the other day. The smallest things are reminding me… Father’s Day is here again.

Last Thursday, I stood in the Hallmark store at the mall, searching out two Father’s Day cards – one being for my husband. My girls aren’t ready to give him a card yet – I don’t know when or if they ever will. I think a couple may, someday. One never will. He isn’t their father of course, so they don’t even think of it yet – a card. How could they? Why should they?

That card will come, if it ever comes, from a life lesson that can only be learned looking back; the one that teaches us that, while our “father” in biological terms may have singular distinction, the men who ultimately raise us – our Dads – are the men who are there for us, every day.

They are the men who work long hours to provide for us, and still find time and energy to play a game or take a walk with us at the end of the day. They sacrifice for us, and when they must choose, they choose us. They worry about us when we stay out too late. They hear our cries behind closed doors and silently wish they could do more. In a ways small and large, Dads inspire our dreams, build our confidence, and stand by us when no one else can or will.

Because they love us.

Whether we embrace or reject them, tolerate or torment them, love or hate them – they stand fast. These men – biological, adopted, grand-, step-,  or something else entirely – keep us in their hearts every moment of every day. We are lucky if we have even such one man in our lives growing up. If we have more… (I had more…) oh, we are so blessed. Because these men are the ones who help guide us toward who we will become.

The man who raised me – the man who kept me in his heart every moment of every day – was not my biological father, but he was the only dad I ever knew.

I have a bio-father, still living. He is an architect and lives a few hours south of me, but I have never met him. I’ll admit it, when I first learned about him, I was curious. I even looked him up on Facebook, where I learned that he and I share, if anything, a great love of horses and the outdoors. (But really, what girl growing up in the Pacific Northwest doesn’t? It’s hardly ascribable to genetics.) Nevertheless, I can probably also thank him for at least a portion of my artistic nature, my attention to detail, and the delay in the graying of my hair – at fifty I have only a few random grays around the edges, while my bio-mom and sister have been “bottle red-heads” for decades now.

I can see myself in the faces of his children. His son looks something like me, I think: same face shape and dark hair. His daughter’s name is Camille (I have always liked that name), and is a professor at one of our state colleges. I do not believe that either one of them know I exist.

My bio-mom made a special trip to see him just after she and I reunited some years ago, so he knows about me and has seen pictures of me grown and with my daughters. He told my bio-mom he thought I was pretty. He also questioned my paternity. (If you saw our pictures side by side, you would not question.)

In the early years after my adoption reunion, I wrote him once or twice, but he has never replied. I don’t know how I feel about that, or him, but I do know that I don’t need to send him a Father’s Day card.

I’m losing my way… so, I there I am, standing in the aisle at Hallmark, looking for cards and trying to avoid the pushy woman in the bright apricot pants who seems to have laid claim to the entire aisle; she is shielding great expanses of the card rack like an NBA point guard. I suck in my stomach and maneuver around her, and start picking up one sappy card after another, reading every sticky-sweet line, trying to find just the right one for my kind, sentimental husband and trying not to think about my own Dad.

I’m fine. No tears – I’m fine. Really.

Then, down the way, past the apricot pant lady and her very large suspendered companion, I see a young woman dressed in blue cotton, leaning into her husband (I assume, based on their conversation) to show him a card she has found.

“Oh, it’s perfect! That’s Dad! That’s absolutely Dad!” She runs her finger down the words on the front, encouraging him to read it, then opens it up with a flourish. “Don’t you think that says Dad all over?” She is excited – giddy.

Her husband reaches around her and pulls her close. He smiles and nods and they laugh quietly together. “Perfect,” she says again, “just perfect.” Her tapered fingers reach for a tan envelope and then she links his arm and they both turn toward the counter. As they whisk away, I can’t help myself: I have to see – what is so perfect? What is her Dad all over?

I move down the aisle and pick up a card from the same slot and before I can even get it open, I feel my cheeks warm and my eyes begin to well. Snoopy. It’s Snoopy.

Snoopy dancing – with his head thrown back and feet flying. It could have been any one of a billion other cards that Hallmark makes this time of year for Father’s Day, but it is Snoopy.

My Dad loved Snoopy – just loved him. Honestly, I think he had more of an affinity for Charlie Brown – he related. But he loved Snoopy. And now I’m standing there holding this card with Snoopy dancing and I can’t read the words because they all look they’re at the bottom of a swimming pool. I will never know what the blue cotton woman’s dad is all over.

So there I am, crying all by myself in Hallmark, trying to pretend that I’m not. I make my way down the aisle, away from the popular cards.

Sniff, sniff.

A little woman who barely comes up to my chest (I’m 5’3”) passes by and looks up with concern. “Sorry – allergies,” I say, and wipe my nose as I put on my best allergy face and try to look very interested in the Happy Bar Mitzvah card that my hand has fallen on.

Stupid dancing dog. Stupid card.

Father’s Day isn’t simple for me. It should be, but it isn’t. This is my seventh Father’s Day since my Dad died, and it is the first one for which I didn’t buy him a card. I know how crazy that sounds, by the way: I have six cards tucked away, signed and sealed up for my Dad who will never see them.

But this year, I didn’t buy my Dad a card. I didn’t even look for one – I no longer need the ritual. My grief, while still tender, has softened with time, and with the great peace and boundless happiness my life now brings me. Instead, this year I am buying a second card for another man, to give together with my husband – for a man who has captured my heart in a way I never expected: my father-in-law. Pop.

Pop has been married to my husband’s mom for twenty-two years now, and her kids, as far as he is concerned, are his too. He loves every one like a great treasure, and tells us all often what it means to him to be surrounded by a family that loves him.

I don’t know all that Pop has been through in his life, but my guess is that his soft, gentle soul is the result of long years of wear on some formerly rough edges. I think perhaps Pop has learned the hard way how precious family is, and how “family” is something we make, not something destined because of biology or designed by law or social mandate; but rather formed and forged through health and sickness, struggle and success, acceptance and understanding, time and unconditional love.

I will never forget the moment I realized how much I love him. On the day that I married my husband, Pop came up to me and put his arms around me, hugged me tight and said, “Now you’re my daughter. I don’t call you my daughter-in-law because that’s not how I think of you. You’re my daughter.”

He meant it. I could tell he had been waiting some time to say it, and I could feel to my bones how deeply he meant it. And just like that, right there in the middle of the reception hall floor at my own wedding, I fell in love with him.

Pop is patient, hard-working, and kind to a fault. He loves a cold beer and a good joke and he can be a little stubborn sometimes (some might say “more than a little”), but he is completely and passionately devoted to the people he loves. He loves a good country band too, and at 83, he can still out-dance most of the young people on the dance floor. Sometimes he even finds it in his heart to lead me in a two-step; when the dance is over he always smiles his widest grin and patiently tells me that I’m coming along… that I’ll get it sooner or later.

So the second card is for him – for Pop. Not my bio-father, not my Dad, not even one of the men who had any part in who I grew to become – but nevertheless a man who keeps me in his heart every day now, as I keep him in mine.

The card I chose for him isn’t fancy or sophisticated; simply stated, it reads:

We want to say
how much you’re appreciated
for your love and caring,
for everything you do
for a family who loves you
very much.

It is Pop, all over.

In the Shadow of the Kavanaugh Hearings: A Survivor’s Plea

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Survivor 2

Image Credit: Roberto Fantana [CC BY-NC 2.0]

I can no longer sit quietly by: I have too much skin in this game. This is for all six of my daughters, and my Girl Scouts, and my counselors-in-training, and my Namanu sisters, and my nieces, and my granddaughters, and every other woman in my life, and the men who love and support them.

If you are a woman and have managed to get through life so far without being sexually assaulted, Yay for you. You were lucky.

I was not lucky. I am no longer a Victim, but my 18-year old self was. She was left terrified and traumatized and broken, and completely emotionally unprepared to deal with what happened to her. It took her over a decade to find the courage to tell Anyone. Because her world told her that it was her fault. Wrong place, wrong time. Too bad, so sad. Shut up and know your roll, Cupcake.

That was 37 years ago. I am a Survivor now. I have spoken out. I have used my trauma to teach and inform. I am no longer that frightened, battered girl, but I still have her nightmares. I still bear her emotional scars. Those scars are my only “evidence.”

I had hoped that things would be better by now, in the world in which my granddaughters are growing up. But clearly, they are not. The way we treat sexual assault victims, and in particular women, in this country is abhorrent. And while this should not be a partisan issue, many are attempting to make it into one.

Today I read a post – written in the shadow of the Kavanaugh hearing – that stated all men should be very afraid right now, and the women who love them should be too. Why? Because, this post claimed, women all over the country are poised to jump out of the woodwork at any moment to make malicious, unsubstantiated claims against your father, your husband, your brother… or you.

As long as women who accuse men of sexual attacks are believed without evidence or due process, no man is safe… #HimToo [ ~ Facebook]

I call BS.

B.
S.

No one is asking anyone to surrender Due Process. The very thing Survivors and supporters are demanding is Due Process.

Once again for the kids in the back of the room – sexual assault is not a partisan issue. I don’t care what party you belong to. Among my family and close friends, there are people on both sides of the political fence (and some in the far and away corners of the field) and I love them all dearly. But if you have never been the victim of a sexual assault, you have no right to tell those of us who are what we should have done at the time, or imply that it was partially our fault, or indicate that our testimony doesn’t count because we didn’t speak up when it happened. I can guarantee that if your daughter or niece or wife is assaulted, you are not going to give a tinker’s dam how long ago it happened, or if the assailant is a Republican or a Democrat, or if she can produce any hard evidence.

So as one who has Survived, this is my plea: Stop using your actions and words to tell our daughters, and nieces, and grand-daughters, and every other woman out there that her experience didn’t happen and her voice won’t count unless she has the presence of mind to collect sworn affidavits and a box full of Proof the next time she is raped.

This Little Light: A Tribute to Dr Maya Angelou

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In June 2010, I had the privilege of hearing Dr. Maya Angelou speak in Portland, and immediately went home and wrote about my experience.  Dr. Angelou passed away today, and so I offer my thoughts here in tribute to this great woman whose words touch so many minds and changed so many lives.

For as long as I can remember, I have been fascinated with the Butterfly Effect – how even the smallest of actions have the potential to have infinite impact around the world, and in ways we cannot fully imagine.

Monarch butterfly sitting on a fern frond. (Source: Wiki Commons)

I had the opportunity to consider this idea more fully when I was privileged to hear Dr. Maya Angelou speak in Portland. The truth is, I could listen to that woman read a cereal box and be enthralled, with her rich, full voice and commanding presence. But I when I attend any event, I go in hopes of taking something away that will make me think, or make me want to be a better person, or feed my soul.

With Dr Angelou, I received all three. She spoke for about an hour and a half, sharing poetry, wisdom, and laughter – even health advice – and central to all her thoughts was the theme of sharing one’s light.

This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine…

Dr. Angelou told us about how she came to be raised in the only “black-owned” store in the small Arkansas town of Stamps – by her grandmother, who she described with a smile as being “an old woman of at least fifty” and her crippled Uncle Willie, a man who taught her to “love learning.”

Uncle Willie taught me my multiplication tables. He stood me right up close in front of a pot-bellied stove – with a fire inside it! – and said, “Do your sixes, Sistuh. Do your nine’s, Sistuh.” Fearful that he might open it up and throw me in if I didn’t say them fast enough, I learned my multiplication tables exquisitely.

It was with the image of her Uncle Willie that Dr. Angelou framed our evening. Willie, she explained, was a man “so embarrassed by being crippled” that he would not leave his small town home to venture even five miles to the county seat. And yet, as she learned later in life, his dedication to education and helping others created a chain-reaction that still has far-reaching impact.

It was this dedication that led him to take in another poor child – Charlie Bussey – and give him a job in his store, and teach him to “love learning” and “his multiplication tables.” Many years later, Dr. Angelou met Charles Bussey – then the first African-American mayor of Little Rock, Arkansas. He told her, “I am the man I am today because of your Uncle Willie.”

She went on to explain how Mayor Bussey then paid it forward, shining his light for a young white boy who would someday become a member of the Arkansas state legislature. That boy, in turn, lit the way for a future Arkansas congressional representative.

It is an astonishing footnote to this story that fate allowed Dr. Angelou’s to meet in person each of the primary links in the chain of impact that her Uncle Willie forged, so that she might be able to fully appreciate his broad reach.

This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine…

I am sure that at the end of the evening, everyone in the audience that night left with the same thought: How am I affecting my world? Am I shining my light?

Ultimately we can never know the real depth and breadth of our impact, because it is woven inextricably into the future – to generations and places we cannot even imagine. “Uncle Willie was poor, black, crippled, and living back in the lynching times,” Dr. Angelou reminded us, and still his light had awe-inspiring impact. Concluding, she admonished us that we all have a light, and we all have not only an opportunity – but a responsibility – to let it shine.

My Uncle Willie stuttered, had one leg that was shorter than the other and he was a rainbow in my cloud. I am a rainbow in somebody’s cloud. Each of you has that possibility.

Nothing can dim the light which shines from within.

Maya Angelou

Originally published on The Good Hearted Woman, May 28, 2014

Lilacs

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I remember my first spring in the Annex, stepping through the heavy double doors and onto the slick linoleum tile, and the scent of fresh lilacs rising up the sloped hall to meet and carry me on heady velvet waves to Mrs Sturgis’ classroom.

If I close my eyes and breathe deep, I can still smell the memory’s lingering fragrance.

The elementary school I attended was composed of two major buildings. There were other outbuildings of course, but as a six-year old, the only ones that mattered to me were the Big Building, where the older kids had their classes; and the little building, or Annex, that held most of the primary grades. The kindergarteners had a classroom in the Big Building, but they had their own chain-linked play-yard and weren’t allowed out onto the blacktop where the jungle gym and the swings and the dodge-ball court were, so they didn’t count.

The Annex had six classrooms – three on each side of the hall, plus a girls’ lavatory, a boys’ lavatory, a custodian’s closet, and a classroom supply closet where they kept construction paper and paste and extra pencils. Five of the classrooms housed the first, second, and one of the third grade classes; and in the sixth was the music room, where wonderful Mrs Schnoor played guitar and taught us songs like “Drill, Ye Terriors, Drill” and “What Shall We Do with a Drunken Sailor.”

By some unspoken custom, nearly every six- and seven- year old in my neighborhood brought at least one stem of lilacs to their teacher each spring. My guess is, at least half of those lilacs came from William Lake’s backyard.

William Lake lived two blocks away from me. (The short kind, not the long kind.) William’s backyard butted up to the park adjacent to our school, and when the long, thin limbs of the giant lilac bush in the Lake’s backyard grew heavy and bowed down over their fence and into the park… well, they were fair game. If you didn’t have lilacs of your own, you knew where to get some.

By the end of the first week of lilac season, every Annex teacher’s desk had a jar or a bottle or a vase bursting with thick clusters of the small lavender flowers, their fragrance infusing every book and breath.

Then, from late April until the middle of May, the lilacs would waft up to greet you every day when you arrived at school, and follow you out the door when you walked home.  Over the years, the scent of lilacs became cool linoleum, and Mrs Sturgis, and Mrs Schnoor. It was sunshine, and field trips, and cherry-drops from the jungle gym. It was spring.

The scent of lilacs is a quiet memory. It offers no higher purpose. No lesson. No deep thought, save perhaps that it reminds that some memories endure, and bring pleasure and joy simply for being, long after their fragrance fades.

Lilacs 3 sm RB

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