Winter Berries

A small flash of color catches my eye as I close the front door and start down the steps - a cluster or bright red winter berries on the other side of the railing - just barely visible in the early morning sun.  A good sign, I think to myself, a promise of spring and warmth and better days.  It's time I got back to my life.

First there was shingles - with me since the first week in December and with me still - then the on-again, off-again intestinal bug.  Then the cold that settled under and in and all through this old house and the new ductwork that didn't warm things up.  It's been, as Nana might say, a long case of the miseries.  And for the first time, I couldn't find the strength to fight through it.  Didn't see the point.  I shut down my writing and let my camera gather dust.  Everything I had went into trying to sleep and keep warm while I let myself worry about the taxes, the bank loan, the need for the kitten to see a vet, my less than set in cement job, the bills, the much needed repairs to the fence, the overdue oil change.  I gathered these things to me like a squirrel collects nuts - greedily, tightly, selfishly - as if without them, total despair might triumph. I spent the better part of two and a half months shut down and shut up, feeling the inequity of age and life bearing down on me and not noticing that the berries were there the whole time.  Survivors, these little berries, not giving an inch to the nights of freezing cold, the sleet, the rain that washed away so much topsoil, the icy winds that bent and battered the shrubs.  They gave up their own only to feed the mockingbirds and the cedar waxwings.  

Nature is full of sacrifice and hardship, each season bringing its own special rewards but also its own demands.

I remember many a New England blizzard where the snow was endless and we listened for the heavy tree limbs to suddenly snap like gunfire and crash down upon the roof or the power lines or an innocently parked car.

I remember southern summers so hot and humid that every breath had to be fought for.

And I remember the autumns and springs in between, full of gentle warmth and sweet breezes, coming and going so quickly there was barely time to appreciate them.  They were made of dreams.

And the winter berries bloom through it all, undeterred by time or temperature or season.  A reminder not to give up or nature's stubborn streak, you never can tell.

The Weight of Family

The old pump organ was sitting primly in the thrift store window, surrounded by second hand clothes and silverware and shelves of colored glass bottles and vases.  It gave me a start and then unleashed a flood of memories.

My grandmother Ruby slept in a small, narrow cot in the front room of the farm.  The cot and the pump organ that sat by the window overlooking the apple trees and the vegetable garden were the only two things I could remember about the room.  My daddy played it often, letting me sit on his lap and showing me the basics of the old Baptist hymns while he adjusted the knobs and pumped the pedals steadily.  I remember the breathless wheezing of the old thing, the smooth, dark wood, the yellowed old keys.  It took concentration and effort to play and I never got the hang of it but my daddy had never seemed to mind.  I learned my chords and that was enough.  A soft breeze would sometimes stir the sheer curtains on the windows as Ruby puttered around in her nightclothes with her hair unbraided and though she never said so, I thought she might've liked the music.

Mostly I remember her in a house dress and apron with her hair braided and wound around her head.  She was a small woman, a sensible, ungenerous and disapproving woman - truth to tell - always spare in her speech and slow to smile.  She disliked idleness or decoration and her work was never done.  Everything I remember about her is hazy, dreamlike almost, but she was always in motion.  She believed in consequences and precious little sympathy.  Her life was not easy or certain and I suppose she expected her reward to come in heaven.  I can't remember hearing her laugh - there was too much sin in the word to rejoice - and for the life of me, I can't think of a single time she hugged or kissed one of her children or grandchildren.  She worked and when she was finished, she worked some more.  All I can remember her ever teaching me was how to shell peas.

The cold weight of family can crush you.

News of her death came with a telephone call and over my mother's protests - loud, mocking and unkind - he packed a bag and jumped on a plane.  He never talked about it.

We are what we come from, I suppose, what we are shown and taught.  We carry on as if there's no other way.

I wish I'd known Ruby and that side of my family better.  

And I still think about that old pump organ.

Too Much Trouble

The grayed out skies and cold rain seemed to fit me like a glove.  I could feel a black mood settle over and around me, gnawing at  my edges.  It was cold and not just cold but cold like sweat.  The pile of blankets did no good - the back of my neck was unpleasantly damp and chilly - and even the room seemed to be cave-like. Time passed in uncomfortable segments of just-below-the-surface sleep with nasty dreams.  I felt pointless. I pulled on more clothes, rammed the thermostat to 75 then 80, moved to the living room with the portable heater and dug out more blankets.  All it got me was damp hair and a headache.  The little dachshund lay by my side, restless and concerned and watching me closely.

The rain stopped sometime during the night.  I smoked, took a long, hot shower, smoked some more, let the dogs out and in, watched for the sky to lighten, slept and woke, slept and woke.  By seven, it was almost light and finally warm enough to move around but everything was too much trouble.

My cigarettes are within easy reach but it's too much trouble.

The kitten asleep on my chest is movable but it's too much trouble.

The thought of showering and dressing is far too much trouble.

It's all, I realize dully, too much trouble.  I feel weighted down, gray, lost.  Gradually I begin to understand that I've somehow slipped into a dark place.  I haven't heard a human voice in three days and am feeling faintly sick.  The aloneness is crushing but I haven't the energy or inclination to move.  The whole house has a sick room feel to it and it's worked its way into my soul.
  
I think of depression as a small place, airless, dark and suffocatingly quiet.  It sucks the life out of you, steals the need for people and conversation away, and it's always disagreeably cold.  Nothing seems worth the effort.
You're dimly aware of being hungry, dimly aware that a shampoo and shower and change of clothes might make a difference, dimly aware that aspirin might ease the headache.  But everything you reach for is too far away - easier and quicker to close your eyes and burrow into darkness - you suspect that all the good is gone. Troubled thoughts swirl behind your eyes, a lifetime of shelved and put off worry, fear and despair join forces and when you open your eyes you're surrounded.  Even if you wanted to, there's no place to break through.

There might be a moment when you think about asking for help.  But in the time it takes to think about it, it's gone.  No one wants to admit to these feelings.


And then the sun breaks through and as it does, my spirits rise and I find my voice again.

The Old Caldwell Place

My first thought was that an alien had dropped by for breakfast.

My grandmother was in a fuzzy pink housecoat and matching slippers with her silver hair in tight pink spoolies under a glittery hair net and no make up.  She was drinking coffee and scanning the tiny island paper that arrived monthly, grumbling to herself as she dug into her pocket for her cigarettes and saccharine.  The kitchen was sunny and warm and smelled slightly of Airwick.  Nana smelled of cold cream and smoke. I took my seat across from her and she pushed a new package of pull-apart cinnamon rolls toward me along with a plate of softened butter.  My mother would not be happy to see me spread butter over the already sweetly iced rolls but for Nana it was an old habit and she loved the combination of melting icing and butter - like potato skins with butter and sugar only better - and she'd passed it on to me years ago.

Hmmph, she muttered and gave the little newspaper a stern, two handed rattle as if it had spoken out of turn,
The old Caldwell Place burned again.

She peered over the top of the paper and gave me a narrow-eyed glance as if she thought I might argue.

When?  I asked neutrally and after a quick pause, she shrugged but didn't answer.

Nana had never thought much of the old Caldwell Place - or any of the Caldwells, for that matter - Ethan and Emily's uncared for old homestead had not been on the island but rather just a few miles past the ferry slip on the way to the mainland.  It was a sorry looking old place, a little on the spooky side, some said, neglected and in need of every kind of repair with a perpetual brood of unruly and ragtag children running loose day and night.  A pair of rusted out old cars bordered what once might have been a driveway but what was now barely a path.  A pile of discarded tires sat under a tree.  There were random piles of hubcabs, rain rotted stacks of ruined lumber, coffee cans, abandonded machine parts.  The whole thing looked like a badly drawn and crookedly hung picture.  We'd passed it with every trip to and from the mainland.

I declare I don't know why the province just doesn't just condemn it and carry it all away, my grandmother said nastily, I shudder to think what the inside must be like.

Ruthie flashed me a wicked grin at that - we both could've told Nana exactly what it was like on the inside - and I jabbed her smartly in the ribs.

Something to add, girls? my eagle-eyed grandmother inquired sweetly with a glance in the Lincoln's rearview mirror.

Oh, no, ma'am, Ruthie said quickly.

Nothing at all, I added, probably too loud and Ruthie pinched me.  We both had to work hard to stifle the giggles and then my mother half turned in her seat and gave us a warning glare.  We immediately straightened up and began flying right.

It had been on a dare, of course.  One of the Sullivan boys had called us chickens, said we were "good girls" and "scaredy cats" and would never have the nerve to break the rules.  Ruthie said we'd be skinned alive if we were caught but it was my own brothers who turned us.

Ain't takin' no sissy girls, they'd announced and Ruthie and I were all in.

We pedaled the length of the island, crossed the ferry on the pretense of buying Jersey Milk bars at East Ferry, then pedaled round the hairpin turn and straight up the mainland.  It was a glorious summer day, windy and warm and smelling of salt.  Gulls shrieked behind us and the hayfields were hazy bright.  Even in the early afternoon sun, the old Caldwell place looked abandoned and forgotten - slightly treacherous, I thought - but we walked our bikes in bravely, past the scrap heaps of second hand bricks and several wheelbarrows full of pop bottles.  An avalanche of children spilled out the front door, a pack of dogs descended on us from the shadows.  Ethan, harnessing up an old and decrepit looking mule, barely glanced at us but Emily, one baby on her hip and another strapped to her back, swung the precariously hung screen door open wide, smiling at us despite the missing and broken teeth.  Her hair, widely streaked with gray, hung in a long coiled braid well past the middle of her back.  She was pale and hunched over, barefoot and wearing a ragged shift dress.  I thought I'd never seen a more tired looking woman, exhaustion came off her in waves and still she managed something that was a little like a welcoming look.

It was dark inside and there wasn't much furniture.  You could see daylight through some of the floorboards and in patches on the roof.  There were no interior doors, only blankets hung over the openings and kept in place with nails.  Some swayed lightly in a breeze we didn't feel.  Two oil lamps burned a sickly yellowish from the rack and ruin mantle.  The windows were covered in plastic sheeting, ash buckets sat unemptied by the fireplace, one side wall was almost completely exposed down to the beams with baby clothes hung randomly on the protruding nails.  It was impossible to take in, impossible to understand that people lived here, ate and slept and found the strength to face another day here.  Emily laid out slices of bread with butter and sugar and I thought of Nana's bright red and white kitchen, the linoleum she was always planning to replace, the little wooden gadget Uncle Len had designed for the hot water faucet that always ran scalding, the steady hum of the refrigerator and the lights that needed only the touch of a finger on a wall switch, the pantry with its overflowing stock of canned goods and cookie jars.  Each spring, Aunt Vi and Aunt Pearl came to clean and air and make the house ready for our summer visit - the woodshed was filled, the grass cut, the linens changed - and when we arrived, the dining room table would be set with a bubbling pot of fish chowder waiting on the stove and fresh flowers on the counters.  One of the village boys would have washed the windows until they shone and there'd be a fresh coat of paint on the flagpole.  Water would've been run through the pipes and the well tested.  Every glass and plate in every cabinet would have sparkled.

Here in the dull and disturbing poverty of the Old Caldwell Place, I began to feel ashamed.  I thought Ruthie might have felt it too and we didn't wait on the boys, just eased out, mounted our bikes, and rode for East Ferry as fast as we could.  We didn't talk about what we'd seen - or how it had made us feel - and by the time we passed it again and Nana had mentioned about the province coming and condemning it ......well, a considerable amount of summer had passed.  We let ourselves think we'd exaggerated or made it all up. It was easier than remembering, we thought, the bad stuff always is.

Ethan and Emily had long since moved on for a warmer climate when the first fire broke out that November, Ruthie wrote me.  She sent me a tiny photo from the paper, a grainy black and white of the the remains of the foundation and the chimney, three quarters buried in snow and looking unbearably sad.

The second fire, some ten years later, claimed what little was left.

They let it burn, my grandmother mused, Guess sometimes that's all you can do.