Letters From The Dead: 4/24/74 (Dedman, AR)

Dear Teresa,

How are you doing honey? It's been so long since I've gotten a letter from you. Why haven't you written? I hope you're not hurt or mad at me, because I couldn't come down there like I'd planned. I really couldn't help it honey, and no one was more disappointed than I was. It seems like the harder I try to get there, the harder it gets to make it. Seems like everything that could went wrong this time, so I'm not even going to promise anymore. I'll just wait until the very last minute, to tell you I'm comming [sic].

How is David doing these days? Is he still with Granny? He hasn't written me since before Christmas.

Sonny and I will probably move away from here before to [sic] long. It's fixing to start their tornado weather any day, and as many as we've already had, I don't think we want to stay. Last year in May one came and blew away half of Jonesboro. They're really bad here. But we haven't decided yet just where we do want to go. I imagine we'll go up to Indiana for a couple of weeks, but if they don't have alot [sic] of work up there, we may move back to Texas. I don't think we'd want to live in a big town tho [sic]. I'd rather live in a small town, and yet be close enough to Fort Worth, where we could see you all. Maybe you could even stay with us some, this summer. I really don't want to move to Indiana. It's just to [sic] far from you all, and I don't even get to see you now. I never would get to there. But we'll know what to do, I guess, before long.

Teresa, I love you so very much. Please don't be hurt at me for not getting to come down. I tried my best, believe me. Surely things will change before long so I can be where I can see you. I pray all the time that it will. I don't know why it's had to work out like this, but it's hurt me more than you'll ever know, because I haven't been able to see you. And please, try to get some pictures made for me. I don't have any of you or David. O.K.?

Well honey, I guess this is all. Please try to write me once in a while, so I'll know you're alright. I love you, and don't ever forget it.

Love,
Mother & Sonny

*My mother had just married Sonny Whitlatch, a man she met in Alcoholics Anonymous. They promptly moved to Dedman, Arkansas from Fort Worth, Texas. A year prior she'd left my father after 17 years of marriage (years of depression, drug and alcohol addiction, and suicide attempts). My father divorced her. At the writing of this letter she was 34 years old; I was 10.

Letters From The Dead

There's a brown legal envelope stored in a white cabinet in my office. Inside the envelope are letters postmarked from the '70s, almost a decade's worth. The letters are from my mother. She wrote them while on her "walk-about". She wrote me from various places she lived -- friend's houses, halfway houses, hospitals. Sometimes her handwriting was shaky. Sometimes she wrote as a mother. Sometimes she wrote as a child. She'd ask for my opinion, and I'd feel silly. I was ten. What can a ten year old tell a thirty-four year old? She'd tell me about new men in her life which was always a doomed thing for her -- relationships. She'd meet these guys at Alcoholics Anonymous and their demons plus her demons just made a hotter hell. It never worked out. She'd tell me about brawls she got into or that she'd seen God while she was in the hospital. She often complained about money, how she didn't have enough to see me or even call. Letters were all we had for nearly a decade.

We saw each other once in a while but not often, and there were times she'd say she was coming then something would come up and she wouldn't show. She once disappeared for three months -- no letters or phone calls. Then when she did come around, it happened fast, like a phone call from out of nowhere and, "Can I come pick you up in an hour?" My heart skipped around like I was meeting a lover or something. Complete longing.

I read her letters every few years. I draw a map of her life as I read, rebuild her memory, start the tape of us. It takes a while to hear the soft lilt of her words, to see her frosted mouth speaking. I study the paper she used, pretty stationary or cheap thin white pages. I put the pages to my nose to look for her scent. I follow the path of her ink, place my pale hand on hers as it writes. She crossed her "T's" with a diagonal line through the base. I've never known anyone else before or since my mother who does that. Her other letters were loopy and straight up vertical. They look like lost children to me. Like her.

I think I'll post a few of these letters here. No harm. Her voice is a ghost now. She's been gone twenty-six years. It's strange to hear her voice again, which makes me feel like a child again. It's emotionally dangerous because that longing returns and a heat behind my eyes. My heart races and I'm ten again, she's called to say she's on her way so I pack a bag and wait on the front porch. But she never shows up.

Dumb Thoughts

I have absolutely nothing to say but decided to show up at the page and see what comes out. Often ideas spring up from nothing but not always. And the best way to open the ground is to write about something that happened today. Okay, today I lost my vision for a moment.

I was sitting at my computer and suddenly the words weren't as clear and I mean suddenly. I immediately tried to think of causes and decided the problem could be my imagination or something in my eye so I blinked a few times and peered harder at my computer screen. I squinted then opened wide, several times like an idiot. Same smudgy vision. I didn't have time to clean my glasses right away because my 3 year-old was climbing up my leg, down my back. I considered momentarily that I'd had a small stroke or something vascular in my eye had popped and was leaking rivers in my eyeball -- I can be neurotic. But my son was all over me and I had to get on with the business of life so I dismissed these thoughts and turned off my monitor.

An hour or so later I returned to my computer and noticed my vision was still blurry. I took off my glasses to clean them, first the left lens and then the ri---. Oh....the right lens was missing.

Remedial Parenthood

Richard Bach wrote in Illusions, "You teach best what you most need to learn." Frankly, that scares me.

I've noticed that with my second set of kids, born almost a quarter century after the first set, it's getting easier to teach them things. They still grate on my nerves just like the first set, but I have a sliver of additional patience now, and when I offer some snippet of wisdom or a how-to, it flies out of my mouth like it's been waiting backstage for a long time. Perhaps the information comes from long ago archives when I did all this parenting stuff before, or maybe I've forgotten most of it and am making things up as I go along. I have no clue.

It's a different world than it was in 1987 when my first child was born. I'll have to revise the curriculum. Back then, 6th grade was still part of elementary school. Now it's part of junior high (which was once called "middle school"). Ninth grade is part of high school now though it was once part of middle/junior high. A child's success in Kindergarten is now said to determine his or her success throughout the school years. I don't know why they have to keep raising bars and lowering thresholds. And the tests. Those keep changing, too, and the severity of their import. No wonder kids take Prozac these days.

My youngest daughter starts Pre-K this year and I bought her new backpack and uniforms the other day. It dawned on me that I have at least fourteen more years of waiting for kids to finish school, of intensive parenthood. When it's all said and done, I'll have watched at least 24 school years go by, 24 years of homework, 24 years of parent-teacher conferences, 24 years of shopping for new school clothes and supplies. This wake-up made me panic some. Will I survive all this again?

I vividly remember longing for a reprieve, for the day I wouldn't have to worry about kid's grades and school performance anymore and here I've signed up for it all again. No wonder people called me crazy. So what was I thinking when I signed up for parenthood again?

It could very well be that I didn't learn my lessons the first time. This might be remedial parenthood. My older kids grew up fine, but maybe that was beginner's luck. That was just a drill. This is the real and final test of my skills as a parent. I have no excuses now, can't shuck responsibility and say, "This is my first set and I'm clueless." No more rehearsals or the excuse of ignorance.

So life might just be saying to me as one who writes about life and is in the midst of remedial parenthood, You have a lot to learn. I've been told that more than once. It didn't hurt when I was young. As I've gotten older, it stings a little.

So are all parent/teachers forever learners? And do forever learners teach/learn parenting to the grave? When will I get a break?

The expression, "Learn by Heart" comes from a mistaken analysis of anatomical functions made by the ancient Greeks. They believed that the seat of thought was in the heart. As a species we've made lots of mistakes. We even hang on to illogical expressions because they're "cute" or because we're fond of what's familiar. Maybe I've become a fan of lifelong learning, of living as a child with children.

I'll be almost 60 when my last child graduates from high school. I've learned, at least, that parenthood doesn't end there. I may only be an adjunct teacher once my kids leave home but hey, I'll take any rest I can get.

Writer Bum

I've always had a thing for writer bums, the sort who drink in a crusty bar all day and seem to know the meaning of life but can't manage their own (think Henry Miller). He's the sort of guy who can't hold down a regular job, who's done it all, from taming lions to dressing as a Macy's Christmas elf. He works six to eight months then gets himself fired because he just doesn't belong there between walls and concrete. These guys seem to be onto something, to have a finger on the pulse of what's true and important. But they have no car, bad credit, and can't pay the light bill.

The success of Henry Miller makes me wonder about the fate of brilliant writers who have no money or support. It makes me wonder what's most important in life - the 9 to 5 grind and a nice house or divine-quality thoughts and words - and why we don't protect and support starving artists more. Miller had help along the way, people like Anais Nin who provided money, praise and "extra" things he needed. She and others recognized his gift and protected it, facilitated it.

We seem to live on two planes, the work-and-pay-bills plane, and the heart-of-truth plane. They don't intersect exactly. They bump into each other from time to time and the artist who must hold down a day job longs for those sacred chance bumps. The heart-of-truth plane is where the writer bums go and if they can't toggle between that world and the other, they die there or give it all up.

I tried to rent the movie Barfly today and Blockbuster didn't have it. It wasn't even available to order. Someone recently mentioned it and got me thinking about bums and the writers who were bums. The writer bums have a unique opportunity in the world as a "non-entity" before they're "discovered". He's almost invisible - a fly on the wall or an edge-bird making notes about the crazy flock he left behind. No one expects anything from him, no one tugs on his wallet, hem or brain - except his muse. He has no time constraints or particular hours to keep. Ideally he's open and wondering, like a child traveling on a pollen grain.

Maybe I romanticize too much. Maybe not.

I think like a writer bum sometimes or rather, live on that heart-of-truth plane when no one is watching or tugging on my hem. I initiate more conversations with strangers, take longer walks, drive new routes or visit places I've never been before. I ask more questions with less fear of the answers. A door in the universe seems to open - one that's usually closed or pretends to be, and I experience more connections and synchronicity than I do when I'm tied to my everyday - the kids and dishes and laundry.

The day job is suffering lately because I'm writing more. I look around at all the mess - towers of plates and pans in the kitchen sink, mountains of dirty laundry on the utility room floor, colorful toys scattered all over the den - and I feel a deep sense of satisfaction.

I am elsewhere.

I'm engaged in that writer bum world where it's all about the words and the truth and where the universe wants to take me. I don't want to be intimate with concrete, laundry and electric bills - not today. I want to wonder on my pollen grain, see where the wind takes us. There are so many strangers to meet, questions to ask, words to write before earth and concrete tug on my hem again. I don't want to do or be what anybody says I should do or be.

"Toggle," the pollen grain says, "Toggle between the dreams, truth and earthbound rules."

Okay, but the laundry can wait.

Immortal Frog

Her birthday is tomorrow, 4/21. She would be 45, six months younger than I am, a Taurus to my Scorpio; they're opposite signs on the astrological wheel which might partially explain our immediate attraction to one another.

Her dad called her Frog, her mom called her Dierdre, her friends called her Deedee. My mom called her Deedle-Dee and loved her like a daughter.

I met Deedee in high school, 1980. I could only see the back of her head in first period gym class as we sat on the floor awaiting Coach Ferris to give us our lame instructions for the day. I noticed the thick drape of wavy brown hair cascading down her back. She was entertaining a group of girls, talking with her hands. I remember smelling the clean scent of Agree shampoo and wasn't sure if it was that or something else that made her seem so familiar. It felt like being home.

We spent the early years hanging out at the malls, going to Astroworld. We skipped school a few times to play on Galveston's East Beach, arriving at the building on time and meeting in the gym before making ourselves free of all authority. No one ever questioned our sunburns.

We shared our secrets regarding first boyfriends, first kisses, our lost virginity. I was there for her during the storms of her parents' frequent separations. She spent all night with me when my mother died and we were both too scared to sleep.

She married before me after high school. She devoted herself to being a stay-at-home-mom. I attended x-ray school then divided my time equally between work and family. As the years passed, our friendship deepened and grew to a healthier union than either of our marriages. We moved as a team through losses, family dramas, financial woes and the constant inner struggle to move forward as an individual without leaving anybody behind.

I talked to her on the phone almost every day, usually for hours. We were food for the other, a security blanket and touchstone. She was Lucy to my Ethel, Laverne to my Shirley. We joked about pulling a "Thelma & Louise" if things got too bad, neither of us afraid of the unknown as long as we were together. But because she was such a sure thing in my life, I'm afraid I sometimes took her for granted, returned her calls later than others because I always knew she'd be there for me. She - we, could wait.

We attended the Renaissance Festival every year. We took long road trips to Kentucky to see her family. One trip in particular was a frantic attempt to reach the bedside of a dying relative - Uncle Niles. We drove day and night to get to Bardstown, Kentucky in time for Deedee to say her goodbyes and fulfill her mother's unequivocal imperative, "Deirdre, if you've ever tried to do anything in your life, you better try to do this."

I joined Deedee on the trip to buffer the tension she felt around her family. It was also an opportunity to get away from life as we knew it, to be more ourselves as we traveled away from the "every day". But despite driving without rest, we were a couple of hours too late. Uncle Niles had died only moments after we checked into our hotel. When we arrived at Deedee's mother's house where the family had gathered, we were greeted with cold stares. Our tardiness and the surprise "guest" in tow would set the stage for a humiliating blow-up.

It happened one night following a long talk around the kitchen table between Deedee and her three older siblings. Somewhere in the conversation the old tensions began to melt as the siblings laughed together for the first time in years. It seemed appropriate, I thought, to sing the Barney theme song (I love you/You love me/We're a happy family...). It was about this moment that Deedee's mother, Elizabeth, walked into the kitchen. She was already seething over my presence, my lack of relationship to the deceased. Her daughter had come to fulfill a duty, not make a vacation out of it. Elizabeth directed her anger at me.

"Is that what your family does when somebody dies? Sing about a goddamn purple dinosaur?"

She stormed off to her bedroom. Deedee ran after her to explain the context of the moment. After failing to settle the matter we left Elizabeth's house, both of us crying before we'd even backed out of the driveway. The trip back to the hotel was a quiet ride along dark tree-lined roads. I watched out the window as pines spun like faceless ballerinas with too many arms. We talked all night once in the hotel room, ate a whole package of Reeses miniature peanut butter cups. As always, the problem at hand crumbled to dust when the spasmodic laughter took over. I told her when the laughing became like the snorts and sobs of a choking man, "This is adding years to our lives."

Together we were stronger, impervious, immortal.

Everything was resolved the following day. The late hour and stress of her brother's death had made Elizabeth edgy, at least that's what we chose to assume. Once Uncle Niles was resting in his earthen plot, we returned home.

In May of 1998 I realized Deedee had just turned 33, a birthday I'd somehow missed - a first. The age had been a rough patch for many. My mother left my father at 33, I was leaving a husband; my brother David, John Belushi, Chris Farley and even Jesus died at 33. It was an odd thought process that led to an equally odd warning, "Be careful being 33. Bad things happen to us." She just laughed and reminded me of all the death poetry I'd written in high school.

I took my two children for a haircut the next day. I was feeling exhausted and the black and white floor tiles seemed a good place to rest my eyes, a place to stare at nothing. Then suddenly the air was sucked from the room. The tiles moved, black squares separating from white. I told myself the hallucination was due to exhaustion and my impending divorce.

All the way home I tried to place my empty feelings, the strange compelling vacuum that felt unrelated to my marriage ending. When I entered my house I saw the answering machine blinking. It was another friend asking me to call her right back. When I returned the call I learned that Deedee and her family had been in a car accident, that Deedee was life-flighted to Herman Hospital.

I dialed the hospital number and spoke to an emergency room attendant who told me Deedee had been discharged already. I was confused. "Oh don't worry," he said, "It happens all the time - people who are life-flighted sometimes walk right out of here."

The vacuum persisted. I called the friend back, too scared to cry, "I can't feel her."

***

On the day of Deedee's funeral I was surrounded by packed boxes. Movers had been scheduled in advance to transport these boxes to my new apartment in Seabrook, ironically in the same hour as the funeral would be scheduled in Friendswood. My compass felt erased. I needed her, her reassurance that I was doing the right thing; I needed more laughter to turn my doubts to dust. I couldn't navigate the space alone.

I sat in a back row at the funeral home while waiting for the service to begin. Elizabeth saw me crying and leaned down to ask, "You gonna be okay?"

I just shook my head.

***

I remember Deedee when I hear a Ronnie Milsap song. She's one of the pleasant ghosts rattling in the wide halls of Clear Lake High School and along the quiet streets of Quail Walk apartments where we once lived. She watches her children sleep though they're mostly grown now.

She's a constant ghost in my head.

Every Halloween I see her dressed as a "witch" with blacked-out teeth and a face painted celadon green. Sometimes one of our memories steps forward sans any triggers at all. They all want their turn. I don't argue with them.

There's a picture of us taken during a trip to Chicago. We're wearing shorts and enormous smiles, leaning in together as the wind takes up our hair in every mad direction. Deedee is pointing to the center of her forehead, a secret code indicating our inseparability: You're right here.

I am.

Apologizing To Richmond Daisies

I spent half of yesterday driving around the oldest parts of Richmond, Texas, down its narrow streets named after numbers, alphabet letters and big Texas cities like Dallas and Austin.
Richmond will be my new home in about three years when we build a house on what is now just 1.3 acres of tall oak trees, pink Buttercups and a blanket of yellow Butterfly Daisies.

I'm trying to learn the town now, imagine how I'll fit in, where I'll shop for groceries, wash my car or spend free time. Richmond has a much slower pace than the newer parts of Sugar Land, TX where I now live; no one seems in a hurry to get to work, school, or tomorrow. Richmond residents seem less concerned with how they dress or talk and more focused on just being, moving through their days without showy adornment. It's not uncommon to see a man in dirty overalls at Richmond's Newfirst Bank. At any bank in Sugar Land this would be an anomaly.

The Richmond buildings are short and many of the businesses are run out of old clapboard houses - chiropractor's offices, a few dentists and attorneys. I counted seven churches and two schools in just a few blocks.

The residential homes are heavily shaded by trees older than I am, and the worn lived-in look of these houses comforted me like a grandmother's warm hands kneading dough or digging deep in the rich soil of a healthy garden. The homes seemed to possess a wisdom newer homes lack, or maybe what I was seeing was more like a soul. Whatever it was, it urged me to keep driving down the Avenue H's, I's, J's, K's, and then down 1st, 2nd 3rd and 4th streets. I passed an old-fashioned barber shop with a red, white and blue spinning swirl. I saw two men hanging a banner for a bakery debuting next week out of a freshly painted pink house with a cupcake motif. There are businesses with names I've never heard of - Bob's Spirits, Jenny's Office Supplies, Guy Groceries - that sell what the Office Depot, Michaels, Kroger and Specs all sell back in Sugar Land. Richmond feels like a place happily stuck in time, maybe fifty or more years back, and I like that. I felt safe, in sync with their rhythms. In "faster" places I feel lost and dizzy in a disorienting wind that turns me around.

Sugar Land has streets with names such as Palm Royale, Commonwealth, Sweetwater. Along Palm Royale the lots alone are $1,000,000. The houses are magnificent, something you'd see on Lives of the Rich & Famous with tremendous lion fountains and large circular drives partially obscured by imposing iron gates. These fancier homes lack the inviting warmth I get from the Richmond community. Palm Royale makes me feel cold, shut out, detached. The residents in these multi-million dollar homes probably feel that way, too, sometimes. I doubt they'd ever borrow sugar from a neighbor or have a block party with beer kegs and fold-up lawn chairs. And maybe it's just me, but too large an enclosed space is more like a museum than a "home". Even the warmest company in an enormous enclosed space is swallowed up by the static gap and risk of getting lost beneath too-high ceilings.

The part of Sugar Land I prefer is over the railroad tracks which is more like Richmond - old and inviting, soulful. They both have the charm of the elderly, a seasoned warmth and richness not found in the more "self-conscious" versions.

My new street in Richmond will be have a name related to the measured movement of music, dance or speech. The name describes the inherent peaceful rhythm in all forms of life, a soothing heartbeat disrupted only by fear or an artificial environment. The street's musical sound is almost a song itself and inspires me to take long walks among the wise oaks and fragile sprouts of color that bend with the soft breath of a land nature intended to be left alone. I'll have to apologize to the lovely Daisies soon buried beneath a house I hope to love slowly into a home.