Bares its teeth and growls at any enemy
Those who threaten our happiness
An unfortunate event
Our own stupidity
We lash ourselves to the ship of family ties
That we have built with trials and tears
With determination and relentless commitment
Stormy seas may batter and whip us
But we are strong enough to weather any calamity
Because our ship is made of mass timber
We are defiance rooted in love
The coldness of winter. Bleak. Barren. Lifeless.
I am dormant.
Like the trees. Like the grass. Like the frogs.
Alive but not living.
Waiting.
Biding my time.
Breathing shallowly.
Hoping.
That the troubled waters will pass.
Praying that I can survive.
Until the sun shines on my face again.
And I will smile once more.
This poem is more than just about the season, it’s about how we endure during times of great anguish.
In the kitchen of my childhood home, Grandpa and Dad stand having a shot of brandy and a beer after working on their old Model T Ford. Dreaded stinky liver dumpling soup simmers on the stove. My Mother summons me away from playing with my dolls.
“Show them your loose tooth,” she says. And I oblige by wiggling my front tooth back and forth.
Dad and Grandpa chuckle. “Get some string,” Dad tells mom.
I’m cajoled into one of our vinyl kitchen chairs. Dad crams his big motor oily fingers into my mouth to tie the string around my loose tooth. Grandpa measures out enough string to tie the other end to the open kitchen door. I’m frightened.
They count “One, two, three,” and Grandpa slams the door and I bolt out of the chair.
I’m made to sit back down and they tie me to the chair with Dad’s bathrobe sash.
They count again, “One, two, three,” and Grandpa slams the door and the string breaks.
Dad rummages around in a drawer and pulls out some butchers twine, crams his oily hands in my mouth again and ties it around my tooth.
They count for a third time, “One, two, three,” and Grandpa slams the door and my tooth flies out in a huge arc. Dad retrieves it and holds the tooth out for me to examine. I’m crying, there’s blood in my mouth, and the awful smell of liver dumpling soup is making me gag. The quarter I receive from the tooth fairy the next morning helps to lessen my PTSD but in the future, I learn to keep my loose teeth a secret until I can pop them out myself.
Seven years or so later, I’m babysitting for my younger sister and brother and use the opportunity to snoop in Mom and Dad’s bedroom while they’re watching TV. I have a vague notion that I might find some mysterious adult “sex” things in their dressers. But instead, I come upon a cache of teeth in an old watch box—tiny white baby teeth, molars and incisors, that Dad must have collected while on tooth fairy duty. I use my findings to terrorize my sibs but because I don’t want them to know that dad and the tooth fairy are in cahoots I say, “Maybe dad is a witch doctor!” Their mouths drop open in astonishment.
Forty plus years later, I’m at my parents condo alone waiting for a repairman while they are in Texas, taking a break from Wisconsin winter. Bored, I use the opportunity to do some snooping thinking I might find something amusing to poke fun at them with. I find my Mothers’ collection of about 40 belts in a night stand drawer arranged by color. A rainbow of belts. In the closet are shelves lined with shoe boxes meticulously labeled with dates of purchase and the color and styles of the shoes within. An assemblage that would make Imelda Marcos proud. Both finds are interesting but not notable. And then I open Dad’s dresser drawer and spot an old watch box. There they are! That cache of teeth! Dozens of them! I had completely forgotten but Dad hadn’t. He kept these artifacts of our childhood all this time. And the memory smell of liver dumpling soup thickens my throat.
“Let’s review,” I’d say. And grandma would say, “My husband is still alive and we have three children. You gave me the picture on the wall. It belongs to me and not anyone else.” Every visit with Grandma at her assisted living community concluded with my correcting her revised life story and calming her fear that someone was angry that she’d stolen that cheap print of a sunset. She’d lower her gaze in shame. I would cry on my way out the door. She had been my pal as a child. We shared a love of books and she encouraged me to write. Later, through the trials and tribulations of my teens and young adulthood, I could always depend on her sympathetic ear. And now I felt like I lost her.
But it wasn’t true. Keys, hats, and umbrellas get lost. You might get lost in the woods, in an unfamiliar city, or lost in thought. You might lose your hearing, your patience, or your sense of humor. People with memory loss aren’t lost. They are who they always were.
If only I knew then what I know now. I’ve learned that it’s on the play field of imagination where we find our loved ones. All of the parts re-emerge—the mischievous child, the caring grandparent, the fun-loving friend. We only need to put aside our own inhibitions and join them.
As a TimeSlips facilitator, I look forward to jumping into that play field of imagination with reckless abandon At an adult day center, we talked about the tooth fairy and how she comes to collect baby teeth from under a child’s pillow. “That’s not what happens,” said Alice. “When you lose a tooth, the tooth fairy comes to get it and brings it to someone who really needs it.”
I feel like the fairy. I get to bring something that many thought was lost to people who really need it. My heart is full of joy.
But it’s harder with people we know. There’s a shared past and an established pattern of communication. Before Grandma’s dementia, our conversations were about family history, the progression of my career and the antics of my children.
My husband’s friend, Carmen, has early onset Alzheimers. Tom has lunch with her most Tuesdays. They’ve known each other since they were teens, so their conversation typically migrates to the exploits of their youth. Carmen increasingly fakes it. She stares off into space and says, “Oh sure, I remember that.” And Tom feels embarrassed for her. But the day Tom brought her home and they discovered a dead raccoon in her backyard, everything changed. They called him Clarence and talked about how he might have ended up there. He had a wife and a dozen children. Clarence was out getting some time for himself when he came upon his arch nemesis, a wild coyote named Silver. Silver bit him in the neck and Clarence climbed the fence into Carmen’s yard to try to escape. “His wife is really going to miss him. How on earth will she support all of those children without him?” They laughed and laughed and the light in Carmen’s eyes shone bright.
I wish I could do my time with Grandma over again. I wish that I had been able to make the shift either grilling her about her health or reminiscing to imagination. I wish that when she told me that she was a widow and had seven children, I would have asked her to tell me about her deceased husband and their lives together. I should have conspired with her to remove that print on the wall that worried her so and restore it to it’s sacred place at the Guggenheim museum. We could have created a story that would have delighted us both and strengthened our bond. We would have been pals again.
(You can learn more about TimeSlips and making meaningful connections through imagination at timeslips.org)
(I found this gem in a journal from January of 1998.)
The door fell off last week. Well, one hinge gave way twisting the other as gravity pullled it to the floor. I couldn’t fix it. Like I had before. With a part, $1.50 from the service story.
It is 23 years old. I got it when I was only 18 along with a matching frig. To help us get a start in life.
I chose the trendy copper color. Flat flower petals arranged in a 70s style next to the clock on the range.
“Continuous cleaning” was an enhancement not true to its name. Black drips and petrified grit coat the oven cave. The top was cracked, soiled, and dark. Many years of frying and boiling left their indelible marks.
The pilot light no longer stayed lit. The seal on the oven door cracked and blistered. But the clock still worked and the timer too.
Alas, it’s time to go. I bid my Kenmore adieu!
How many frozen pizzas? How many roast hens? How many bowls of popcorn? The numbers boggle the mind.
To gently warm a baby bottle. To make a pot of tea. To quick fry a burger for Sam and Ben and me.
Our stove was always loyal. It gave us everything it had. Six kitchens it did live in beginning on Sheridan Ave.
The urgent care doctor said that my boys were having an allergic reaction to something and scribbled out a prescription for an antihistamine. “Take them to your pediatrician on Monday if they don’t improve,” he said. I grilled the kids about what they’d eaten and what they’d touched but couldn’t figure out what had made their faces so pink and puffy. They’d never been allergic to anything before and it wasn’t chicken pox.
I was really worried about them but I was also really worried about something else. Tomorrow was to be my first day at the decent full time job I’d finally landed. “It’ll be better tomorrow,” I kept telling myself. “It has to be.”
On Monday morning Ben’s eyes were tiny slits and his lips had blown up into raw bratwursts. I could see every single pore in the skin on his face and each oozed with sticky yellow puss. Even his ear lobes were seriously pink and inflamed. Big brother Sam’s face looked like a slightly inflated pink balloon but was not anywhere near as distorted as Ben’s.
“Don’t worry,” I said, doing my best to stop the terror in my chest from exploding on my own face. “We’re going to see the doctor right away.”
I left a shaky message for my new boss and waited until Dr. Patel’s office opened at eight. I dialed the phone and in my most powerful voice declared that we were on the way.
Clearly not wanting Ben’s face to frighten the other patients, the receptionist showed us right into an examination room. “What happened?!” asked Doctor Patel. I explained the progression of the boys’ condition.
“You take this one to the hospital right now,” she said, pointing at Ben. The three of us were ushered out the back door.
I had to figure out what to do with Sam. I couldn’t bring him along to the hospital and he needed to be looked after too. My Grandma Miller! We found her in her back yard hanging mint green sheets on the line.
She parted the laundry and gasped. “Who is that?” she said pointing at Ben. “Was there a car accident? Don’t worry, honey, plastic surgeons can do wonderful things.” I pried Sam from my leg and dragged Benny by the hand back to the car.
At the hospital, brisk nurses wearing masks quickly ushered us into a quarantined room. “Bring my school picture here so they know what I’m supposed to look like,” pleaded Ben. I promised that I would and sat by his bed until he was comfortable and fed and almost asleep. I got in the elevator to leave along with a two young nurses. One said to the other, “Did you see that kid in 515?” My heart was breaking in big fat sobs.
Later that night, over a bed time peanut butter and jelly sandwich, Sam was full of questions. “Can the doctor make Ben better?” “Will he have to have plastic surgery?” “Will we ever see him again?”
Sam worked his mouth a little like he was chewing invisible gum and then it all spilled out. “It’s my fault,” he blurted through a storm of tears. “We were playing army by the railroad tracks and I told Ben to eat the berries! Poison berries!” Of course! In spite of the ceaseless sibling fighting, Benny will do whatever Sam asks him to do– like jump off the top bunk or ride his bike into a wall or eat suspicious berries by the railroad tracks where they are forbidden to play.
On Tuesday, at the first light of day, I climbed the hill to the tracks and found the source of the misery–raspberry bushes growing in the midst of a dense patch of poison ivy. I could just see them, crawling on their bellies through the vines like GI Joes.
I took Sam to the sitter and went to my new job and explained the situation to my sympathetic boss. At lunch time, I went to the hospital to be with Ben leaving his school picture on the table beside his bed. His eyes were open again and he was starting to improve but the doctor warned that a case of poison ivy this bad could take many more days of treatments. I had to be careful with Sam too–smearing a battery of ointments on his face and changing his sheets every time he lay down so he wouldn’t get re-infected.
Later that night, I was washing another load of sheets in the basement, a good place to cry in private, and wondering what I was going to do when Ben was released from the hospital, when my other grandmother, Grandma Maly, called. She ordered me to bring the boys to her house in a nearby town and said that she would look after them until the weekend. She didn’t want me to jeopardize my new job.
I finished my first week at the job as kind of an embarrassed celebrity (the poor new girl with the really sick kids—“probably cancer,” they whispered) and headed out to get the boys on Saturday morning. Sam flew out the door to greet me. Almost normal looking Ben was right behind him. Grandma Maly watched as we all three embraced and tears of relief flowed from our eyes.
Note: Ben was 7 when this story happened. He’s 40 now and happens to have a horrible case of poison ivy on his legs right now. Thank you Wendy W. for coming to the rescue and caring for him.
Feeling generally cranky. Not about anything big. It’s the miniature annoyances that get me. The greasy butter knife he left on the counter. His underwear on the bedroom door knob. His hair in the bathroom sink. His beer taking up too much room in the frig. The nonstop pinging sound of cowboys shooting at each other on his favorite old TV shows.
Yet I know, that if he leaves the scene before I do, it will be the absence of these annoyances that will bring me to my knees with grief. 
It was Labor Day weekend, the last weekend in a summer full of outdoor adventures with my grandsons. Twelve-year-old Noah and I headed up north to go white water rafting. It was my idea. I’d gone rafting dozens of times. Who cares that the last time was almost 30 years ago? What could go wrong?
We arrive at the meet-up spot near Pembine. Our guide, Derek, fits us with life jackets and helmets. Along with the other 6 rafters, two women and four men, we board the bus with our driver Bill who takes us to the launch spot on the Menomonie River. We rafters chat a bit on the bus and I learn that only two of them had ever been rafting before and it was a long time ago.
The first section of the trip is just flat water and Derek uses the time to review the safety instructions and practice paddling in unison. We all listen carefully.
The next section is class 2 rapids which I now know means “some rough water and rocks, some maneuvering.” Only a basic skill level required. Yahoo! We got wet. Everyone was laughing. We give a high five salute with our paddles.
The next section is class 4 rapids which I now know are waves, rocks, sharp maneuvers, a considerable drop; “exceptional” skill level required.
Off we go. Derek is calling out paddling instructions. But the people paddling on the left are paddling way harder than the people on the right and we smash straight into a giant face of rock. The force bounces us into a ricochet which catapults me into a backward summersault out of the raft.
My helmet pops off and I’m trapped underneath the raft. “Gurgle, gurgle, gurgle.” Oh dear, this is bad. I was really, really scared. After a death defying amount of time, the raft and I drift apart. But now I’m going down the “considerable drop” all by myself. Whitewater crashes over my face. It feels like what I imagine waterboarding would feel like. I thought I was going to drown.
Noah is screaming, “Grandma! Grandma! Grandma!” When you are over 60, you think about death now and then and you think, yeah, I’ve had a good life. I’m okay with death. But not today! Not fucking today! Not like this. This would really suck for Noah. I can’t have Noah’s last memory of me be this!
Derek is shouting “nose up, toes up” at me. He’s yelling at the rafters to paddle hard and they finally get close to me. Derek reaches over and grabs me by the shoulders of my life jacket. “One, two, three,” and he hauls me into the back of the raft. The bottom of my suit falls down to my knees. I’m face down, bare ass up. As I wriggle around to pull my suit up and find a more comfortable postion, Derek says, “Sorry ma’am.”
We get through the rest of the rapids and glide to the river bank. No one is laughing. “Grandma, are you okay?” says a wide-eyed Noah. I say, “I’m fine,” even though my heart is pounding out of my chest and my hands are shaking. Derek is wild-eyed and wants to know if I hit my head anywhere.
We hike a little way to rendezvous with the bus driver. Bill greets us with. “Wait until you see the video! Some of you are really going to want a copy.”
Video? What video? I forgot about the video. Bill had been perched above the falls recording.
I rationalize it away. How close could he possibly have been? Plus, the mishap was in the back of the boat. Only Derek saw it. I tell Noah about it just in case and he thinks it’s funny but he’s not concerned. “They would probably fuzz it out anyway,” he says.
Back at the meet-up spot, everyone gathers around a small flat screen to view our exciting journey. Sure enough, there it is. My big white ass for the whole world to see. Noah nods his head and says, “Oh Grandma.”
The two other women in the group realize how awkward this is and yank the men away. I threaten to stalk anyone who buys the video. Noah consoles me, “It’s okay Grandma. It’s not that bad. Everyone has a butt.”
I give Noah a big hug. I’m so very grateful that our memory of this trip will be this really funny embarrassing thing that happened and not something horrible. He tells me that rafting was the most fun he had all summer.
(The live recorded version of this piece aired on WUWM on 1/6/17. http://wuwm.com/post/ex-fabula-adventures-children)
Tom and I were married in 1989. On the eve of our wedding a friend asked him how he felt about getting an instant family. My boys were 11 and 15 years old. He replied that it was going to be great. “The hard part of raising kids is already over.” He figured they were practically grown. And the boys loved him. They even invited him for a sleep over. “Mom has a really big bed.” They told me that they liked the idea of having a man around the house full time. At least that’s what they said. A few short weeks after our brief honeymoon, we discovered just how difficult becoming a family was going to be.
They turned on him. They complained about everything and the “You’re not my dad” line was practically on an hourly rotation. Ben, the 11 year old, took me aside and said that he didn’t think it was working out. “Why?” I wondered. “I don’t like the way he makes eggs,” was the only thing he could come up with. Sam, the 15 year old, just stayed out of the house as much as possible mostly at the local skate park.
And Tom, who was the only child in his family, was not used to having competition. He was cranky. About noise, especially boy noise early in the morning. The sound of them slurping cereal made him insane. And he didn’t like sharing special snacks. Or having to compromise on the TV schedule. I was constantly negotiating the tsunami of two pubescent boys with the thunder clouds of a spoiled child . It was ugly.
And it got worse. Sam would disappear for whole weekends at a time on vague skateboarding missions without adult supervision. When Ben got to high school he became a chronic truant and found a new hobby spray painting everything in the neighborhood. Tom suffered through a bought of depression. I spent countless months on projects I invented in the basement and went to counseling. We even took separate vacations. And in the mean time, we managed growing responsibilities at work. Our marriage was being tested everyday.
Little by little things started to sort themselves out. Sam turned 18 and cashed in all of the savings bonds his grandparents had given him and went off to travel the world as a professional skateboarder. Four years later, Ben started his carpentry apprenticeship and moved out of the house. Excited empty nesters, we booked a romantic budget trip to Europe!
And then in year 10 of our marriage a letter arrived by certified mail. It was from the Catholic Archdiocese of Milwaukee. It said, “We regret to inform you that while you are married in the eyes of god, your paperwork was never properly filed with the State of Wisconsin.” It went on to explain that we had a year to file a special form called a “delayed certification of marriage.”
Stunned, Tom made us a drink and we reread the letter together a dozen times. What did it mean? Was it a “get out of jail free” card? How strong was our commitment to one another? How would we feel if the letter had arrived a few years earlier, in the midst of the firestorm that was our family life? Since there was no urgency and we were busy with work, we decided to just think on it for a few weeks.
And then the Journal Sentinel came out with an article. It said that during a period from roughly 1988 to 1990, the church where we were married failed to complete the necessary legal paperwork. The reporter discovered that the issue was uncovered when a woman who had also been married during that period, applied for a passport in her married name. When the government informed her there was no person with that name matching that social security number, the shit hit the fan.
I didn’t change my name so it never came up when I got my passport for our trip to Europe. But we’d been filing joint tax returns the whole time. This was difficult to understand.
The article also cautioned people affected by this mishandling of really fucking important paperwork, that it was not a “get out of jail free card.” Looks like a marriage, smells like a marriage. The untangling of any union would require time in court.
Tom made us a drink and we discussed our course of action. Together we decided that the letter was really a gift. That we could take our time, the whole year allotted to us, to think about the years that we had survived, our lives as they were now, and the kind of relationship we wanted going forward. We established a weekly date night. We found new interests in common like visiting art museums. We rekindled our friendship and passion. We went on vacation with my adult sons, mended fences, laughed about the years that we had survived together, and truly reconnected.
Weeks and months went by and soon we were coming close to the deadline. With five days to spare and the signatures of two witnesses who attended our wedding, we filed that delayed certification of marriage form. We finally became the family we wanted. The rest will be easy.
This month Tom and I celebrate our 28th anniversary. Or maybe it’s technically only 18.
This is my story about talking to kids about race over the generations. It’s the story about a lot of small conversations. It’s about the journey to unlearn racism that never ends. I’m white and I grew up on the northwest side of Milwaukee. I moved to Bay View as a young adult. I have two sons and three grandsons, two of whom live nearby.
When I was very young I was at a shoe store at Capitol Court with my mom. An African American man waited on us. I had never seen anyone like him before and couldn’t stop staring. I asked my mother out loud, “What is the matter with his face?” My embarrassed mother whispered, “He’s just like us. God just left some people in the oven a little longer.” Hmm, I thought. So he’s kind of like a burnt cookie. Like me but somehow imperfect.
I wanted my conversations with my sons to be different. I took them to Juneteenth day, Mitchell Street Sun Fair, Indian Summer and got them involved in the Boys & Girls Club where I worked.
When my oldest son Sam was in the 2nd grade, he had a homework assignment to do a presentation about his nationality. We’re a bunch of things—Croation, Bohemian, and German—I was annoyed by having to pick just one and I didn’t like the idea of having the kids separate themselves by nationality and race. So, I told Sam that we’re American. Simple, I thought. We discussed what we thought of as being American culture—hot dogs and hamburgers, baseball games and the 4th of July. When he got home from school that day, Sam was really annoyed with me and said his teacher wanted to know if we’re native American and what tribe we belong to. Not so simple.
When my younger son Ben was in the 2nd grade, his best buddies were two Mexican cousins. We spent a lot of time with their families—school, soccer, church festivals. One day, after spending time with their families, Ben asked me if he could “please, please, please be Mexican.” Of course I had to say “no.” It was hard to explain that we can’t choose what we are. “We can’t be Mexican. We can’t change our identity.”
When teenage Ben was riding in a car with an African American friend Jason, they got pulled over in Shorewood and were brought to the police station. Ben swore they had done nothing and the police offered no explanation. I talked to Ben about what happened. He could drive a car through Shorewood and no one would give him a second glance. But it was different for Jason. And I thought about what people mean in Milwaukee when they say “those neighborhoods,” the neighborhoods where “you’re not supposed to go.” It depends on who you are.
Now I have conversations with my grandkids.
When Ezra was in 2nd grade, he told me that he didn’t like brown people When I asked him why he said, “Kenny is mean.”
“Oh, so you don’t like Kenny,” I said. “Are there any brown people in your school that you do like?”
“Oh, yes,” he said. “I like to play with Trevor.” “So that means you like some brown people. What about Nathan? He’s not brown and you don’t like him.”
“Yeah, I guess I like some brown people and I don’t like some white people.” What I hoped he was learning was not to judge people by the color of their skin.
Just a few weeks ago I had a conversation with my grandson Noah who is a 6th grader. He asked me why anyone would discriminate against people of color. I explain that some people think that they’re different or not as good as white people. “That’s crazy,” he said.
I still talk to my grown up sons about race.
After an incident at a soccer game that accelerated nearly to physical violence between adult spectators, Ben shared that he was sure that it was motivated by racism. A Latina girl had accidentally knocked off a white girls glasses during the game. We talked about how Latinos get stereotyped as aggressive.
At another kids soccer game, while the kids battled it out on the field, the adults of a Latino family were being targeted by the adults of an all white team with taunts like —“speak English.” The Latina mom understandably blew a fuse and unleashed a firestorm of cuss words which made everything worse. Everyone stood around and gawked at the melt down spectacle, including me. Finally, it was Ben who came up with a solution to the stalemate. He simply invited the Latino family to move their lawn chairs and come and sit with us.
I was proud of him. He may not have changed anyone’s mind that day, but he did something to intervene. To demonstrate that not all white people feel the same.
People say that talk is cheap. But so many of the big barriers in our society are built on conversations—the things people tell kids, or fail to tell kids. People learn about race through conversations. We learn who we are and who we aren’t. We learn where to go and where not to go.
But conversation can help to tear down those barriers too. I’m going to keep on talking with my kids and grandkids and I want them to keep talking to me. We all need to keep talking.
Here’s a link to the live version told at an Ex Fabula Fellowship event in 2017. http://wuwm.com/post/ex-fabula-difficult-conversations
Stories from my breezeway 