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7 comments:
The boats kept drifting in front of the Harbour Bridge but most was on top anyway :)
WOW! Utterly Splendid, these are GREAT!
The Retelling
I read somewhere that it was important to name everyone you love—to
keep them real. I tried it. Saying the names of everyone I wanted to
keep real took up more and more of my day, so regretfully, I gave it
up. Almost. But I still sometimes find myself saying the names of
the people I want to stay real. I wake up in the night and find myself saying
their names in my dreams.
Yesterday, my mother gave me a piece of cherry pie that her friend
Helen had given her. She didn't want the pie wasted, but she couldn't
eat it. It wasn't a real piece of pie made by a person, or even a
bakery pie, but a little fake pie full of preservatives. She had been
trying to give it to me for a week. Finally, to appease her, I took
it.
"I can't eat it," she told me, for the twentieth time, plaintively.
"There's something about the cherries. They don't agree with me."
"I remember about the cherries," I tell her, "and I can tell you the
story. I don't know how old you were, but it was a long time ago.
You were eating cherries, and you bit one in half. There was a worm
inside, so you tossed it away and bit another in half. That one had a
worm, too. You cut the rest of the cherries and half and every one
had a worm inside. You felt sick, because you had already eaten a
number of those cherries. You were never able to eat cherries after
that."
"Yes," my mother said, "I remember now. There were worms in all the
cherries."
"Extra protein," I say. Sometimes, she really remembers, but today,
I'm not sure. I sit there, holding her hand, remembering another
retelling.
My father was moved from the room in the nursing home he shared with
another man. After too much pain, he was finally put on morphine. We
had all gone to see him, my mother, my daughters, and me. We held
each of his hands and each of his feet. He moaned. I said, "Remember
the time we skied at Mount Snow, swam in the heated pool and watched
the steam rise against the snow?" And I told him the story.
And my mother said, "Remember Margareto's Lodge, how I always had a
warm meal ready for you when you came home from your adventures?" And
she told that story. We went around the bed, each of us telling a
story. Then we went around again. We were retelling his life, his
life and ours. We did not know yet that at the end of the retelling
he would die. He did not live through the night.
I turn to my mother. "Remember," I say, "how you loved to roller
skate down the sidewalks to your Grandmother's house? You kept the
key to the metal skates on a ribbon around your neck."
She nods. "Is the house on Ellsworth Ave still in the family? Are my
parents still alive?"
"No, I tell her, "your parents died almost sixty years ago." I never
know if I should ell her this. She looks sad. "The house is sold.
Remember the fire you had in the house, when someone dropped a match
in the wastebasket?" I tell her the story again.
"Remember when you married Pa, and you didn't tell anyone at American
Locomotive Company, where you both worked? It was April Fool's Day.
You were so pleased to have such a wonderful secret. It was 1944, and
you had quit college to work on the war effort, remember?"
"Remember," I ask, "when you had three babies and sat and watched the
trains go by in your back yard? And rode in the old black Ford with
the rumble seat?"
She nods. "Remember," I ask, "when you chopped your fingers off in
the lawnmower, packed them in ice, and drove yourself to the hospital?
They reattached all your fingers. You can't even tell." She holds
up her hands and studies the thin gnarled fingers in amazement.
"I don't remember that," she says. I will have to tell her again and
again, how brave she was, how smart. "You were so brave, so smart."
Then we say the names: Mary and Wallace Thomas, her parents, John and
Wally Thomas, her brothers. Joseph, her husband, my father. Ann, her
friend and sister-in-law. We are deep in the retelling, saying the
names and making them real. Mary, Robert, Tom, her children. Sara,
Erin. Tanya, Jaison, Rosy. Rory, Cory. Her grandchildren.
Makenzie, Tharin, Jacob. Her great grandchildren. Graham, my new
son, Keith, my fiancé. I have taped all their pictures around the
room.
"Margaret. Mom," I say, "don't forget yourself. Remember," I add,
"when people called you Maggie?"
"Yes," she says, "and some called me Margie. My friends. Marjorie
Sheffer, Ruth Grenoble, Ruth DeVries. I remember my friends. I
remember them now."
Mary Stebbins
April 3, 2005
oops, sorry, I didn't mean to paste this here, but now that it is here, I will leave it for you to read.
Funny to think of Viennese squirrels eating mars bars--you must have eatebn them too.
I am BoiledEggInADeckchair.
Beautiful! And I loved the movie, too -- though I was hoping to see Hugh Jackman. ;)
I will keep naming you Mary Stebbins Taitt then! I gave the Mars Bars to the squirrels because didn't want to eat them :)
Hello BoiledEggInADeckchair, I am anonymous! Heehee.
There's a good chance Hugh was on the harbour Melissa :)
I remember the harbour Bridge lit like this for the bicentenary...its an awesome sight
YES I was also there Abbey, even though the fireworks have improved now it seemed bigger then, but it was a larger event ;)
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