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Renee Butcher

Words & Pictures - Freshly Inked

Graduation Season

May 30, 2019 2 Comments

Graduations Season {Poem} | The Harmony Cat - reneebutcher.com

A few late night reflections on parenting

When I was a young mother, pony-tailed and skipping over stairs strewn with toppled towers and dress-up silks, I was sure that by the time my baby was in high school, my floors would be clean, my laundry folded, my walls painted, my garden abundant, and the first of my novels published.

It was a fantasy.

Because as my children got older, I realized that the hitches and glitches of the Duplo generation are nothing compared to those of adolescence. Hunger, fatigue, sogginess – I can fix those. Junior high drama and broken hearts are not so easy.

And then. Mile-markers. Preschool. Kindergarten. Paper caps and gowns. Sand castles and lemonade stands. Precious pictures etched into the corners of my mind.

First concerts. First dates. First loves.

More caps and gowns.

Breathe. Just keep breathing, Mama. Pray or send it out to the universe or align your chakras or whatever you do. It’s all the same.

Just Love them. Even when they think you don’t. Even when you are the only one who does.

“Wear your coat.”
“Call soon.”
“Be safe.”

“I love you.”
“I love you.”
“I love you.”

And then. Suitcases. Packed cars. Clean rooms.
Empty echoes that are not nearly as satisfying as you thought they would be.

And then. Across ten miles or a thousand, you hope that they can feel your prayers. Even when they don’t believe in them. Even when you are the only one who does.

“I love you.”
“I love you.”
“I love you.”

And then. Sweethearts. Broken hearts. Celebrations. Maybe marriage. Maybe babies.

Maybe grandbabies, who come into the world with Hope clasp in tight fists and hand it to their mothers for safekeeping.

Safe Keeping.

“I love you.”
“I love you.”
“I love you.”

You swim in Abundance.

And then. Broken towers you cannot fix. Deep pains and raw, ragged wounds you cannot mend, even with Neosporin and Band-Aids.

So you pray that someone will hold out some small candle in the darkness for them. Even when they cannot see it. Even when you are the only one who does.

And then.

“I love you.”

It flies, dear young ones. It just flies. Go kiss your babies right now, even if they are sleeping.

Go.

A million times. I would kiss them all a million times again if I could.

And I would not trade a moment. Not one of those million midnight kisses.

Not one.

 


 

I wrote this piece in 2015 on the eve of our daughter Laura’s high school graduation, as a gift to her. It was inspired by a season of both rejoice and heartache for our little family: in that moment, we also celebrated our youngest daughter’s junior high completion, worried and prayed for a another daughter in the midst of a serious health complication, and mourned a loved one lost unexpectedly to a heart attack.

 

Filed Under: Poetry, Words Tagged With: daughters, featured, mothers, parenting

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

September 28, 2018 1 Comment

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.

Filed Under: Essays, Words Tagged With: politics

This Little Light: A Tribute to Dr Maya Angelou

May 28, 2018 Leave a Comment

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

Filed Under: Essays Tagged With: Writers, Writing

Lilacs

May 4, 2018 2 Comments

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

Filed Under: Essays, Words Tagged With: childhood, memories, school days

I Already Miss Your Smile

March 30, 2018 1 Comment

For Leslie

I already miss your smile. I know you had to go, but we are left heartbroken. I don’t even know where to begin.

Maybe I should start at the beginning, back when we both had far fewer children and you and Larry were still living in the little shaded trailer in the woods. Just after Michael was born, I think, or maybe Hannah. Definitely before Rebecca. Back when Caroline had to stand on a kitchen stool to stir blue box mac and cheese on the stove.

Or maybe I should begin in the mother’s lounge at church, because that is where we truly became friends. The kind of friends who laugh together and share secrets and let the other one see our tears. I remember vividly how we would sit and talk the hours away as we nursed our babies, enjoying the luxury of doing just one task instead of twenty, as toddlers played around us.

I remember when my last baby outgrew the ritual, but I was not ready to give it up. From that day on, I kept an eye out for Rebecca (or whichever child trailed behind you) on your way out of the chapel, hoping to be of help to you; taking the trailing child’s hand and following you quietly out of the chapel. I was so grateful to you for letting me help, though it was always you who was thanking me, as if I was doing the favor. I wish I could say that my offer of help was entirely altruistic, but that would not be true: helping you with your little ones gave me a higher purpose than sitting in the pew watching the clock painstakingly tick-tick-tick away, not to mention the free pass it gave me back into that all too exclusive young mother’s club once again.

Those long ago days, sitting and talking with you in the mother’s lounge, surrounded by our little ones, are some of my favorite memories from those days. As we often remarked, we all worship in our own way.

Or maybe those early years when Rebecca and Emily were new babies who grew to be the best of friends, and we made more trips back and forth between our two houses than I can count. Over the years, even after they drifted into separate lives, there remains a heartfelt affection and trust between them that will endure beyond either one of us, and that brings me a sort of peace in this moment.

Maybe that year when my one of my girls was struggling to fight her demons, and you opened your home and your heart to her, and asked her come over and help you out with the babies. As if you needed another child in the house. But despite my best efforts, she was feeling alone and alienated in her own home, and you made her feel needed and wanted and important when she needed that most of all. So many others turned away from her…us…silently, tacitly registering their judgement and fear, but not you. You reached out and pulled us both closer. I will never be able to thank you enough for loving my sweet daughter when she needed it most.

Maybe the rabbit, or the dogs, or the chickens, or the kittens, or a million kids bouncing and giggling on the trampoline out back. All those memories we made together over the years – the rocks and pebbles and sand and water all together, filling up life’s jar.

Maybe that day when I shared my most terrible secret with you: that my world was falling apart and I feared I had lost my faith. Once again, you opened your home and your heart – this time to me. You made me feel loved and needed and accepted at a time when so many others couldn’t turn away fast enough. I will never be able to thank you enough for loving me when I needed it most. So many, many people claim to follow Christ. You radiated Christlike love simply by the way you lived your life.

Maybe that night when you invited us – the new Us – over for a family barbecue, and treated Rick like, well, like a person. Instead of a curiosity. Or a pariah. You and your family never once made us feel out of place. Our visits to your home were always a high point in our week. I don’t know if I ever mentioned how much that meant to us both. I hope you knew.

Maybe all those times when we talked about life and love and faith and the nature of God. I think I will miss those talks most of all. You were fearless in your faith, unthreatened by my existential ramblings, and always open and ready to share your thoughts as you listened to mine. It meant so much to me that we could have such honest conversations and be so open about something so sacred. You never made me feel “less than” for taking a different path, and your friendship and love never wavered: you were a profound and enduring example of unconditional love.

Maybe that day when you shared your most terrible secret with me, when for the first time I saw a flash of fear race across your face before you could catch it and reel it back. Thank you for letting me cry with you that day. Those tears cemented our friendship into the eternities.

Maybe that last visit, when we talked and laughed and considered the great unknown while I did the dishes and we ate warm chocolate chip cookies together. Even as your strength waned, you were fearless in your faith. Dishes, as you know, are my least favorite household task ever, but I did them with a truly grateful heart that day. I would wash dishes for a thousand days for just one more of our talks.

Maybe all the laughter. About our little kids, and how they survived despite their best efforts to break themselves. About our teenagers, and their gangly, angsty, long-legged, hormone-fueled attempts to make us crazy. About the church ladies who thought you were “practically perfect in every way.” (If they only knew, as you used to like to say.) About the never-ending loads of laundry, even as we spent the afternoon folding and talking for hours, slowly moving an Everest of freshly washed clothes from one side of your long couch to the other, transforming it into a folded fabric skyscraper by the time it reached the other side.

Maybe all of those. But most of all, your smile, because that is where it all begins and ends. I will miss your smile most of all, my dear friend. In it, I found comfort, and friendship, and acceptance, and love. I know that this was a gift that you gave freely, to all who would receive it. It was one of the precious gifts you were given in this life – the gentle, abiding faith that at their core, people are genuinely good, and that love transcends everything.

Till we meet again, dear friend.

Note: I learned that Leslie had lost her battle with pancreatic cancer while sitting on a plane waiting to take off on a five-hour cross-country flight. She was 47, mother of twelve, and one of the kindest people I have ever known. With no other outlet for my grief, I wrote this while in flight, and published it here the same day, in its rawest form. My apologies to my in-flight seat mates for all the tears.

Filed Under: Essays, Words Tagged With: faith, family, friendship, grief

I Am of Ireland

March 17, 2018 1 Comment

St. Patrick’s Day is my favorite holiday. I love it more than Thanksgiving or Christmas or Easter, or even Arbor Day, but the reason might surprise you: it hinges solely on my status as an adoptee. If you were brought up with your biological family, you might not understand some of what follows: if you are an adoptee, you will probably understand before I tell you.

Ireland was my country of origin – the place where my ancestors worked and reveled and lived out their lives. Ireland – green, lush, and magical; it anchored my roots into the earth and lit the fire of my imagination.

Ireland – a place that grows story-tellers like Iowa grows corn.

Ireland – the epicenter of my birth-myth.

Watercolor Celtic shamrock knot painted in shades of green, encircled with words to Irish Blessing. .

My Celtic Birth-Myth

It is well-documented that adopted children (particularly those from closed adoptions), when faced with questions they cannot answer about who they are and where they came from, tend to make up a “birth-family myth” for themselves. In their (our) minds, the story they tell their peers about themselves isn’t a fib: it is a selected truth – and the way they cope in the absence of a family back-story of their own.

I remember telling my story for the first time in kindergarten. We were all sitting in a circle, and our teacher Mrs. McClendon asked us if we knew anything about where our parents or grandparents came from.

“My great grandpa and grandma came to Oregon on a wagon train.”

“Jesse James is my uncle.” [Based on the teller, this is highly suspect.]

“My mother came over on a big ship from Poland.”

These are some of the stories I remember hearing my friends tell as we made our way around the circle. Listening to them, I remember feeling small, anxious, and alone. Then miraculously, when it came my turn, a story just popped into my head as if it had always been there, just waiting for me to tell it. So I did.

“My real parents [a term I used then – not now] were from Ireland. They were too poor to keep me, so they had to give me to the orphanage, and the orphanage people gave me to my mom and dad.”

With every eye in my class on me, I enjoyed my fifteen seconds of fame – and learned for the first time the power of a good story.

Over the years, my saga became more fleshed out as my story-telling skills improved, and at one time involved much melodramatic sobbing from my dear birth-parents – thin and frail, yet sustained by their passionate inner courage – as they stood on the docks of Portland’s harbor promising to one day find me, before they disappeared into a Brigadoon-like mist.

And as the story took on more life, I began to believe it myself, until after a few years, it was no longer just a story, but instead my reality. It defined me. That is what the stories we tell about ourselves do.

I could go on for pages, but suffice it to say that when I was young, and up until an embarrassingly late date in my life, when people asked me what I knew of my ethnic heritage, this was my story.

To this day, I love all things Irish. My favorite color is, of course, green, and I can take on a passable brogue without even thinking about it. (Seriously. I’m doing it right now.) I love the melodies and rhythms of Celtic music – everything from “Star of the County Down” to the Corrs – and can play quite a few traditional songs myself. I even have emeralds and Celtic eternity knots on my wedding ring. And the poetry. Yeats, Wilde, Joyce. Eavan Boland. The poetry astounds and enfolds me. It is beautiful in a way that makes it difficult to breathe sometimes. I cried the day Seamus Heaney died.

Needless to say, when I met my first-mom (so many years ago now), one of the first things I asked of her was, “Please, please tell me that I’m at least a little Irish!” When she assured me that I have more than enough Celtic blood to make the claim, I cannot tell you how relieved I was!

Whether Ireland runs through your veins, or you adopt it once a year and make merry, may you have a wonderful Saint Patrick’s Day – today and always.

Originally published on The Good Hearted Woman, March 17, 2015

Filed Under: Essays, Words Tagged With: adoption, heritage, Ireland

What Book Changed You?

March 11, 2018 1 Comment

Some books are like first dates – you flip through the pages and decide whether to toss them or give them a quick read, but either way, when all is said and done, they are easily forgotten. Others you read over and over again until the feeling of their pages on your fingertips becomes as familiar as an old lover. And if you are very lucky, you will find one or two that change you forever.

Tree & Sunshine

I am a writer today because Francie Nolan made me believe it was possible.

I read A Tree Grow in Brooklyn for the first time when I was eleven, the same age as Francie when her story begins. From that first telling scene as she sits on her fire escape watching the girl across the street prepare for her evening out, I found myself looking at the world through Francie’s eyes. I shared her thoughts. I knew her as well… perhaps even better… than I knew myself, so that in that ethereal space where adolescent memories and imagination collide, we came of age together – Francie and I.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn | The Good Hearted WomanFrom outward appearances, it would seem that Francie and I had little in common. She was the impoverished daughter of a drunken Irish singer and a steely washerwoman in Williamsburg, Brooklyn more than a century past, while I was raised three generations and a continent’s width away; the daughter of a teetotaling elementary school teacher and a registered nurse.

But below the surface, Francie and I shared enough: Our love of words and books. Our tenacity and perseverance. Our loneliness, our sleepless nights, our restless thoughts. Our indulgent fathers whom we adored more than anyone. Our equally difficult, strained relationships with our mothers, both of whom had a son they loved if not more, at least better, than us.

In the decades since that first reading, I’ve read Betty Smith’s poignant, semi-autobiographical tale at least twenty times, each at a different turn in my road, and always it is a message of indomitable hope that rings out above all others for me, from introduction to final line. It is with that hope – encapsulated in my favorite quote – that I close today:

Let me be something every minute of every hour of my life. Let me be gay; let me be sad. Let me be cold; let me be warm. Let me be hungry…have too much to eat. Let me be ragged or well dressed. Let me be sincere – be deceitful. Let me be truthful; let me be a liar. Let me be honorable and let me sin. Only let me be something every blessed minute. And when I sleep, let me dream all the time so that not one little piece of living is ever lost.

~ Francie Nolan, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

What book changed you?

 

Filed Under: Shower Thoughts, Words Tagged With: Writers, Writing

Invisible Man

May 29, 2017 3 Comments

Image Credit: Florian Schwalsberger [CC BY 2.0]

{Portland, Oregon ~ 2004}

We choose a table in the sun this evening at Greek Cusina, my husband and I, and talk about old friends while we wait for our dolmathes to arrive. You drift toward us like coal smoke, charred and unruly, and begin pacing back and forth in front of the restaurant.

Step, step, step, step.

A car with a bad muffler goes by and sets off the alarm of a dark green Blazer parked just up the street. The Blazer toots, screams, ding-dings, honks, whistles and finally, thankfully, falls silent. My husband and I laugh that no one moved a fraction despite its noisy persistence. No one even seemed to notice. But everyone did.

Step, step, step, step.

Your hollow, tobacco-lined face twitches and shudders, animating some private inner dialog. I wonder when you last smiled into a face that smiled back. I watch, hoping you will meet my gaze and for an instant sacrifice one tiny glance of your soul in exchange for mine. But your stare is fixed on the window of the restaurant, keeping vigil with the pacing figure mirrored in the plate-glass. You never meet my eyes.

Step, step, BANG – your torn Nike comes down hard on the round metal grate – step, turn and back again.

That car alarm; so obvious, so desperate to mark its place, so futile in its insistence.  Everyone hears and no one looks up.  What it is like to be there and yet be unseen?  To scream and go unheard?  Like the Invisible Man lost in a school for the deaf.  Alarm again.

Step, step, BANG, step…

You pace all through dinner, just beyond the rope that divides the restaurant’s outdoor seating from the sidewalk like some international boundary.  A group of four at the next table (one bearded and round like a television chef) laughs uncomfortably and leaves a bit early. We stay, my husband and I, munching on pita and hummus, unwilling to give up our date.  I want to ask, “Have you eaten today?  Are you hungry?  Will you join us?”  But I am afraid. Beneath that beard and long gray coat, you don’t look much older than we are. You could be my brother.

Homelessness is an issue that I tend to deal with at arms length. Like many people, I donate clothes and money, and do the odd service project for our local shelter; for many years I even served Christmas breakfast downtown in Pioneer Square. But when it gets too close – when the problem ceases to be The Homeless and becomes my brother – I become uncomfortable and feel ill-equipped. Yet it is in this eye-to-eye that I find humanity; in this reflection of myself, I become duty-bound to act.

So I want you to know – I saw you.  Dark, grizzled beard, long gray coat… Brown Eyes…

Step step, BANG, step.

And no matter how hard you try, you will never be invisible again, because I saw you tonight – step, step, BANG, step – searching for reflection in front of a Greek restaurant.

{First publish in The Oregonian, Sunday, April 3, 2005}

Filed Under: Essays, Words Tagged With: featured, homelessness, Portland

Claudine

May 22, 2017 4 Comments

My mother is one of those fine-boned, teeny-tiny, osteoporosis-prone women. You know the ones: women who shrink so with age that you find yourself fearing they might one day simply disappear into thin air. Mom’s little companion dog, a toy poodle named Teddy, is equally diminutive and fined-boned. Both have well-manicured nails and shoulder-length white hair.

They are inseparable.

So there we all were – Mom, Teddy, and I – sitting in the lobby of the DMV on possibly the most uncomfortable chairs ever made, filling out our paperwork to get her a new government-issue ID card. What a ninety-year old woman with Stage 5 Alzheimer’s needs with a new ID card, I’ll never understand. Stage 5 Alzheimer’s, in case you don’t know (oh, how I hope you don’t know) means Mom is starting to forget even the simplest of details, like how to spell her own name. If I’m not right there with her, she usually thinks I’m dead.

Anyway, as Mom was signing her name, one careful letter at a time, inside the yellow box on the little card that they use these days to put your signature onto the back of your newly issued ID, a guy with a well-behaved young pit bull mix walked by. Of course, Teddy went ballistic like he always does when he see other dogs (read: Little Man complex).

Thankfully, the incident was over almost before it even started: the other dog passed by and Teddy barked. They went out the door and Teddy stopped. But that didn’t stop a very cranky DMV employee (let’s call her “Claudine”) from letting us know what’s what.

So, Mom and I are both sitting there on our impossibly hard plastic DMV chairs, minding our own business. Teddy is on my lap, done barking, not making a peep. All of a sudden, here comes Claudine, running our way like a wet, angry hen, planting hands on hips, sticking her bony chin out like she’s trying to poke a ‘possum out of his den.

“Service dogs,” she scolds, “are not supposed to bark.”

I look at Mom and then up at Claudine. “OK,” I say. Like, what am I supposed to do? Teddy barks. (And for the record, he isn’t a ‘service dog’: he’s a companion dog.) Then I sit there, hoping she will go away.

“They are not supposed to bark,” she says again, as if my response wasn’t satisfactory. Teddy hasn’t made a peep since the pit-bull left.

“Ok,” I say again. “He’s a companion dog – for my mom.” As if that should explain it.

“Service dogs cannot bark at other dogs.”

Hmmm. Pretty sure they can. It’s probably not a good time to correct her grammar though.

Long silence. Apparently, she wants me to apologize for bringing a poorly trained “service animal” into the holy shrine that is the DMV. Maybe she wants my assurance that Teddy will never bark on government property again.

Nope.

There are so many things I want to say to Claudine, the first being, it’s sad that your life sucks so much that you get some joyous power rush over verbally attacking little ninety-year old ladies and their tiny dogs. I don’t say anything.

In my mind, I’m already writing about Claudine. She already has a name.

Mom looks at me. She doesn’t know why Claudine is there, or why she isn’t leaving. It’s gone on long enough. I don’t need to defend us. I just say, “Thank you.” Dismissively, with a smile on my face: the same way a teenager will say thank you when they really mean “F* You.”

Claudine has no idea what to do. Her body language suggests she is bracing for an argument, but the small crowd on our side of the DMV is watching her as she hovers over my tiny mother and her equally tiny dog, and from all outward appearances, Mom and I are both being courteous and compliant. There really isn’t anything else she can do without coming off like a full-tilt witch. She narrows her eyes at me, turns on her heels, and goes back behind the counter.

Mom leans in and asks me what that was all about. I tell her that the lady was just reminding us that Teddy isn’t supposed to bark inside the building. Mom says, “He’s such a good boy.” She looks down at Teddy, “You wouldn’t bark in here, would you, Teddy?” Then she gives him a hug. She’s already forgotten about the pit bull.

Every once and a while, Alzheimer’s works in our favor.

Filed Under: Essays, Words Tagged With: aging, Alzheimer's, featured, mothers

Salvation

May 15, 2017 Leave a Comment

{Portland, Oregon ~ 2007}


I’ve lived in Portland all my life and I know my way around this town. I grew up on the eastside in the Roseway neighborhood, went to college on the Bluff above the St. John’s slough, and then moved westside to the suburbs in my early twenty’s; in the last four decades, I’ve managed to etch a map into my brain that covers nearly every neighborhood in Portland – from Mount Tabor to Montgomery Park. I know at least seven ways to get to 10th and Burnside, and where the best chance is for parking on NW 23rd.  I  know where you can still get a real old-school  fountain soda (at Fairley’s Pharmacy on Sandy), and what the city looks like at night from the top of Rocky Butte.  I even know where Ramona Quimby grew up.  But today, I find myself crossing unfamiliar ground, to a place I haven’t been for more than 43 years – since the day after I was born.

I set out on NW Thurman, climbing the heights above the Pearl, and veer onto an unremarkable side street that gently curves back and forth beside a row of Nob Hill’s scariest stilt-supported homes. At the end of the road, I come to a narrow bridge spanning a ravine, and as I drive across, a mass of trees opens to a large brick structure.  Am I in the right place?  Is this where I started? As I roll off the far end of the bridge, I’m reassured: a large sign identifies my destination – The Salvation Army White Shield Center.

I roll into the only available parking spot at the far end of a muddy lot, then take a deep breath and open the car door.  A sticky, acrid smell rushes me – hot tar – and I remember that Robin, the Executive Director with whom I am meeting, warned that they were doing a “massive” renovation.

As I approach the front door, marked “Reception,” I make a decision – I cannot cry.  I must not cry.  I’m here to gather information, find a picture, fill in an empty page in my history.  But something inside me catches just as I walk through the door, and my eyes fill, weighted with a connection I did not know I had.  I blink, distributing the water just in time.  A young woman, strawberry blonde and smiling, greets me at the door.

“I’m here to see Robin,” I say, my pitch rising at the end like a question.

The strawberry girl’s face brightens, her smile spreads.  “Oh,” she nods, “Yes, I’ll go get her.”  She knows who I am.  I am expected.

Robin approaches a moment later from the facing hall, hand outstretched.  She is perhaps ten or so years older than I am; a gentle-looking woman with light features and rosy cheeks:  My mind flashes on the notion of a Dutch farm-wife. As we ascend a flight of stairs badly in need of new carpet, my hand touches the railing for an instant, and the cool on my fingertips makes me wonder about the hands that have passed up and down these stairs.  How many have been supported here, in this place?   Layers of paint cover the railings, thick, painted over time and time again, to freshen, to clean.  Some places have chipped, and the paint shows through in layers, revealing subtle changes in tone over the years…this place is a testimony to changes in tone over the years.  As we top the landing, my fingers brush the square finial – smooth from so many hands.

“I’m so sorry about all of this,” says Robin, indicating the smell of tar, the disorder of demolition and reconstruction.  We sweep into the second floor hallway.

“No worries.” I say, distracted.  A strange, feathery feeling is beginning to gather all around me, just beyond the edges of my senses.

Robin takes me to an office, borrowed from a colleague who is away from the building for the day.  “My office is terrible, but the tar smell isn’t so strong in here,” she says.  Then, gesturing toward a small collection of boxes on the floor, “I got together as much as I could find – I didn’t know what you might need.”  The boxes are filled to overflowing with old carbons, yellowed news clippings, glossy eight-by-tens, and photo envelopes from Freddy’s and Costco.  Treasure.

She gives me the lead, unsure if I’m ready to dig into the boxes yet.  But wanting to talk a little, I ease onto an aging forest-green couch and begin asking questions of the journalistic sort.  “How long has the facility been in operation?  How has the population changed over the years?” Robin settles onto an office chair and begins to recite a well-rehearsed outline of the facility’s development; mostly, she says, gleaned from a 1978 Masters thesis by a woman named Wendy Jo that chronicles White Shield’s history.  She promises me a copy.

Slowly, the conversation turns more personal – Robin has been working at White Shield since 1983 (with time off for children, she clarifies).  She mentions that she was raised in Pennsylvania, and I nod, silently conceding to my instincts.  Many have come back, she tells me – birth mothers who lived here, children born here – and she seems honored that they…we… share our stories with her.  She tells me about the mother and daughter who drove here from Salem on the day that they met for the first time.  And the fifteen-year old Hawaiian girl whose parents sent her all the way to Portland to have her baby and would not allow her to come home afterward.  I tell her what I know about my own beginnings, about my birth-mother, about my new sister and brother.  About my daughters.  I have a fifteen-year old.  Nothing would ever, could ever make me send her away, I say.  And I cannot imagine telling her to stay away, even if she left on her own.  Times are different now, we agree.  Thank God.  Thank God.

“Is there anything left of the old home?” I ask.  I search for the words to ask if the place that my birth-mother spent six months of her life in still exists.  Is the room I was born in still there?  I can’t say the words out loud.  I know if I do, I will cry.

“Would you like to do a walk through?”  Robin asks.

“Sure,” I say.  Nonchalant.  Practically perky.

Robin checks for her keys and we head up another flight of stairs, stopping in a few single rooms that were once bedrooms, I’m told, on our way to the “Hallmark Room.”

“We used to get a lot of donations from Hallmark,” Robin explains. “We stored them in there.”  She calmly struggles with the door lock, and wonders aloud if it has been changed.  “We’re rekeying everything around here.”  Then, as if turned from within, the lock clicks, and we are inside.

The room is musty, heaped with donated clothes and toys.  An ancient light fixture, ready for replication by Rejuvenation Hardware, hangs in the far end of the room.  A stack of receiving blankets leans against a wall on the near side of the first dormer window.    “Before it was the Hallmark Room, this was a dormitory.” Robin tells me.  “Six girls slept here,”   A giant battalion of dead box-elder bugs litters the steps to what was once a fire escape.  “The rules about visitors were pretty strict,” she continues. “One woman told me that once, when this was a dormitory, someone snuck up the fire escape and left a pie there.”  I wonder to myself about rules so strict that a friend couldn’t bring a pie.

I feel tiny invisible feathers dancing all around me, like memories caught in flight.  I have to hold myself from reaching out to touch them.  I imagine six beds – three on each side, and my mind’s eye sees a girl with long red hair in the far left bed, lying with her head propped up on a pillow and looking out the dormer window opposite.  Her face is smooth, like fine china, and dust motes play in the light between girl and window.  Another girl, round faced, bobbed brown hair, is standing by another dormer, gently rocking heel-toe, heel-toe.  She smiles toward me for an instant, and then she is gone.  A stir of little feathers lights on my shoulders like a shawl, and I am warmed.

Back out in the hallway, I pause to touch the railing again, reverent.

Robin takes me downstairs; to the old nursery, and to what was once the delivery room – where I was born – and to the kitchen.  “The kitchen probably looks a lot like it did back then,” she says.  Then we walk down a long hallway past rooms filled with teenage girls, strewn clothes, damp towels, books.  Like my daughters’ rooms, I think to myself.  Then, looking closer, onesies, bottles, diapers.  Not like my daughters’ rooms at all.

Down the hall, girls of every shade and size are laughing together, rocking, pointing, playing with their babies.  Most of these girls have choices.  Most of these girls will keep their babies.  Most look younger than my fifteen-year old.

Robin tells me about each room as we pass – shares each history.  “There is a lot of energy here,” she says, meaning what has been, as well as what is.  “Positive energy,” she reassures.  “People here sometimes say they have experiences.”  She lingers on the word a moment.  “Especially at night when it’s quiet.  You can feel things.”  She chooses her words carefully, professionally.  We nod to one another, and an understanding passes between us.  There is a lightness to the air.

We walk by the last room in the hall.  I glance in to see one of the residents; a girl of perhaps sixteen, and an unexpected rush of sorrow passes through me.   No little feathers here.  No lightness. I feel, in an instant, profoundly sad.

She did this for me, my birth-mother. She lived here, for six months. No family, few friends. She did this for me.  I cannot wrap my mind around the sacrifice.  It is too big.  The reality of it all is too big.  Those hands, her little hands, on rails… gliding up and down the stairs on smooth painted rails.

I must not cry.  Not yet.

Robin and I step through a door at the end of the corridor to the outside.  “That last room…I hesitate to tell you about that one,” she says.  “It’s the only room that probably doesn’t have much positive energy.”

Once again, my intuition surprises me.

“That’s the room that they used when one of the girls had to say goodbye to her baby.  They’d let her hold the baby for a little while, and then they would come in and take the baby and literally hand it out the back door to someone from whichever agency was handling the adoption. “

“My birth-mother told me she got half an hour,” I say.  “Thirty minutes.”  Not yet.  Not yet.

Robin leads me back upstairs, and leaves me alone in the borrowed office to go through the boxes of pictures.  I ask her to close the door as she leaves, and I settle myself onto the floor with the boxes around me, and carefully begin to lift out each file.  Carbons dating back as far as 1925, perhaps earlier, have been carefully preserved.   I am hoping against hope to find some remnant of my birth mother, of me, some proof of life.  I find a letter, typed on rice-thin paper, dated the day I was born.  Something about insurance, I think.  While my birth-mother labored, someone in an office nearby was concerning himself with insurance matters.

More recent pictures show groups of girls, pregnant, mothering, laughing.  But in previous decades, it seems that great care was taken to protect the privacy of the young women who stayed at the home, and so only backs of young heads are captured in any of the pictures taken before about 1970; long after our memories – hers and mine – were floating in the wind with so many others.

I leaf through stacks of vintage black and white photographs, but find only babies, and fox-furred, feather-hatted patrons that look by turns sympathetic and superior, posing for Oregon Journal photographers and Oregonian journalists.  A picture of a basinet full of newborns catches my eye for a moment:  One looks just like my middle daughter on the day she was born.  A coincidence, I’m sure.  Still, I hold the photo and study it for a long time – I cannot help but wonder.

Two hours later, legs cramped, feet asleep, I stumble down the hall with a few carefully selected pictures and newspaper articles to make copies.  Everyone in the office is very helpful, eager to point out their new copy machine.

Robin is in a meeting when I finish, and so I leave much as I did 43 years ago; alone.  Descending the stairs, I pause one more time to rest my hand on the smooth square finial, and I wonder how many times my birth-mother’s hand passed there.  As I pull open the front door, a woman at the reception desk asks, “Did you find everything you were looking for?”  I smile and wave good-bye.  I cannot speak.

Outside, I breathe in, breathe again.  Not yet.  Not yet, not yet.

My car rolls back across the narrow bridge, and little feathers fall like snow all around.  Then, all at once they are gone, and I am back on familiar ground; and missing the feel of down on my face, my tears begin to fall like winter rain.

Filed Under: Essays, Words Tagged With: adoption, daughters, featured, mothers, Portland

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In my spare time, I write unfinished novels and songs about cowboys.

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