Ancestors and Other Fantasies

Tapestry, The Cloisters Museum

Scotland first rose in my imagination as I sat in morning sing at the School in Rose Valley belting out the lyrics to Scotland the Brave: High in the misty highlands/Out by the purple islands/Brave are the hearts that beat beneath Scottish skies...

The Skye Boat Song wooed me as well, and when my dad heard me humming it, he wove tales of our Scottish Ancestry. Our name, Randall, came from Scotland. Robert Randall was a Highland Scott. But who was he? Where in Scotland was he born? What small moments occupied the day of an Officer in the Royal Navy in the mid 1700s? Did he have the Randall nose? Could he raise one eyebrow? (Did he ever think to try?)

I developed a fascination for the Middle Ages. I devoured any Arthurian legends that came my way. I longed to see a castle.

In graduate school I discovered that the same event, the coming together of Pangaea, created the Appalachian Mountains along whose spine I have lived most of my life, and the backbone of the UK.

And then, last week, I learned that the National Animal of Scotland is the Unicorn. A symbol of purity and vitality, innocence and healing, the unicorn now stands opposite the lion in the Royal Coat of Arms in the UK, a symbol of unity and peace.

And so, into the misty Highlands and out to the purple islands we go. We go to walk where our ancestors walked; we go in search of legends, castles and unicorns; we go to walk the mountains of home. So you take the low road, and I'll take the high road...

Drought

for Beatrix

We once wrote letters in French

Ma chère grandmere

you told jokes and spun stories

of dancing in the halls

on Buckeye Lake

took me to Lute’s Casino

to watch the weathered men

play dominoes

baked bourbon balls

from your mother’s recipe.

“Beatrix Larrick,” you announce

to the woman in a pink dress

only you can see.

I sit in my garden,

on the other coast

watching the last blossoms

of daylilies

curl toward the sun

nearby phlox flaunts

her pink petals. They float

above brown leaves curling

with too many weeks of no rain.

And you, too, fade

deserting the food and drink

that keep your wet soul

anchored in its body.

Overhead a tree swallow

wheels in the blue sky.

I know better

than to wish for rain.

16 July 2012

Mountains

Iliniza Norte and Sur, Ecuador, Photo: Michael Gaige

In the landscape of grief, no two mountains are the same.

Last summer, my Grandmother Beatrix entered hospice. In September she celebrated her ninety-eighth birthday. She slept more and ate less, but still managed to tell a joke to anyone who had the time to listen.

I visited her in February, and found an old woman, owl-like in the slow turning of her head. I held her hand; she oscillated toward me, unseeing, smiling at my voice. I squeezed and her own fingers echoed my pressure. 

"Does anyone know a joke?" she asked, her own way of navigating the landscape of grief, her daughter's, my aunt's.

Later she grew serious, reserved. She asked who had been with Gail when she died. The next morning, after breakfast, she silenced us all as she announced "I have a daughter who died three days ago." Through this landscape, no two travelers follow the same path.

"I love you, ma chère grand-mère" I whispered, kissed her papery cheek. I knew I was saying goodbye.

She began to recede further, sleep longer, lose her tether on this life. On the twentieth of July, as she slept, she stopped breathing.

The landscape I explored this past week was familiar and alien. I down shift, I perform each moment in my day with the deliberateness of Tai Chi. Thoughts slide from my mind before they fully form, my brain replaced by shifting sand. But as I travel, no chasms breathe longing into my path, no sharp stones of grief catch me off guard. Instead memories surface that speak of celebration and gratitude. This path through the landscape of grief unfolds more gently before me.

And you, who embark on your own journey, Bon Courage.

Epilogue

     Outside the car, redwoods lined the asphalt. Vaulted branches filtered out stars and the moon. I shivered and wrapped my arms across my waist, but I felt brave driving down the coast highway at night with all that air pouring in.

     A week ago, my dad and I had hugged at the gate as my plane began to board. My stomach lurched as I walked down the jetway, not from nerves, but from a sense of possibility. I had first flown across country, to the waiting arms of my aunt, three years earlier, in celebration of my eleventh birthday. Now fourteen, I felt only excitement. I could go anywhere, do anything, be anybody.

     We had spent the day at Fort Ross, my aunt and I; we photographed the weathered chapel and stockade fence, photographed the yellow grasses that spilled down to the ocean framed by an astonishing sky. At home, touring an old fort would have been low on my list. But Gail's attention was infectious.

     "Oh, look!" she had exclaimed so often it became a joke. "Oh, look!" she said until I began to see. That is how she was, my aunt, the woman whose name I had shared from birth. That's how she was, alive in each minute as if she had no skin, no boundary between her and the world around her.

     On previous forays to the West Coast, Gail had taken me out for sushi, ordering tuna and octopus. I had not been sure I could eat octopus, each tentacle ogling up at me. Besides who ate fish raw? At home we ate fish, always cooked.

     She took me to dim sum and chose chicken feet and red bean buns from the silver carts that passed. I remember Gail's eyes, fanned by crows feet. I remember those blue challenges teased me into nibbling chicken toes, deep fried and crunchy.

     We searched for faces in the wind-etched rocks at Cañon de Frejoles, and meandered through a literary pilgrimage of John Steinbeck's Monterey. She introduced me to the Buddhas in the Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park. And always, always, we walked on the beach, marveled at the sculptures of bull kelp and driftwood, at the waves of the Pacific thundering on the sand.

      Back in Willa, Gail's mini-van turned camper, named for her favorite author, we had headed south on Route One. Gail drove; I craned my neck for the last glimpse of sea, as the road turned inland. In the twilight, Gail's hair glowed pearl and moonbeam. She slid a cassette into the stereo, and I rolled my eyes as Merle Haggard's voice poured from the speakers.

     "I'm rolllin' down heel like a snowball hay-ded for hay-ill" I howled exaggerating his cowboy rasp, and making my aunt giggle through her protests. In her mid-fifties, Gail had already attended a Merle Haggard performance for each year of her life.

     "Mmmm" Gail had said, "Skunk. Do you smell it?" I did, and nodded. She glanced over offering a smile. "I love that smell."

     "I do too," I admitted, feeling like a conspirator. So she had rolled down her window inviting in the scent. It washed over us, sharp and pungent and wild, wrapped around us with a cloak of cold air and the sound of the living, breathing, buzzing forest that slid by outside. The smell held a sweetness, a musk that slipped through the offense of warning.

     I thought of my parents at home, they would have been in bed already, back on the East Coast, the summer scent of honeysuckle wafting in an open window. I could see the whole sleeping house, like a dream without sound. I fast-forwarded their night into morning, watched their routine unfold: showers, breakfast, preparing for work. Their dawning day felt steady, solid, like a kite flyer, two feet on the ground. And this life, out at night in the redwoods, was the kite, subject to sudden gusts of wind. Under my aunts wing, I flew.

     I breathed in, filling my lungs until the oxygen made me giddy. And I shivered. The night air laced with fog bit thorough my shirt sleeves. I held my teeth closed to steady the chatter that threatened to begin. But I couldn't bear to close the windows. I couldn't bear to close out the tumult of the night, to seal us again inside our ordinary box of air.

    She is gone now, my Ampie Gail, but she instilled in me a lust for adventure, a desire to throw the windows wide and saturate myself with the world around. She taught me to see beauty in unlikely places, in the weathered grain of a stockade fence, the curl of kelp, and in the perfume of skunk on the night air. 

This piece arose out of a Writing Workshop Institute at Columbia Teacher's College Reading and Writing Project, June 2013 

Dawn

Sunrise, Saratoga Lake. Photo Michael Gaige

I wake at dawn

and open my arms to the sun

allowing everything.

I let the light

of our closest star

spilling over the rim

of our planet

burn through me

searing away the residue of grief

evaporating my watery sadness

leaving only this bliss body

balanced and joyful

this body bathed in light at the dawn

of a new day

Threadbare

I didn't expect this grief

to become threadbare

I didn't expect it to move in,

become something I owned,

claimed, defined myself by

I didn't expect it

to be a word easily spoken,

thin from overuse

I didn't expect it to soften

around my shoulders

the way a well worn pair

of shoes holds the shape of my foot.

But today my grief rises

three weeks after the night

I can't quite remember.

After the night

I remember vividly.

After the night

I remember the way

I look at stars

by staring to one side.

Grief rises,

mocking my attempts

to do the work before me

welling up

forming deltas of salt on my cheeks

rivulets

that collect in the hollow of my collar bones.

Here is my grief

my threadbare sadness

my frustration,

my scattered mind.

Here,

hold it up to the sky

and through it

count the stars.

Journeyman

I send you my work, raw, a dress with unfinished seams.

"Is it any good?" I ask

You spoil me, and return my poem polished and bright,

cloth that slides over my head, fits perfectly.

"How do you do it?" I ask "How do you pare away

The unnecessary and leave my voice shining through?"

You send me instructions, and humble thanks.

You, who are a master of your craft, a tailor of words,

perform alterations, sculpt your own works.

Wind Caves, Photo: Michael Gaige

But now you are gone.

And I, a student without a teacher, stand bereft.

I gape at my closet of words

"Are they any good?" I ask myself

I pull out your instructions, take the first poem from the hanger
and get out my purple pen.

I begin the work I should have learned long ago.

I check verbs, straighten the seams of time,

Cut away words that weaken

Hem and surge, measure and slice.

In your absence my tutelage begins.

I hold my new poem up to the light

Look for excess with an eye that gropes at impartiality.

Still the fabric bunches, the metaphor wears thin.

Stitches run amok, punctuation snags meaning

I long for your subtle touch.

I begin to feel my own way,

begin to gather the tools of my craft, to call them my own.

I heft a growing responsibility to set free words that arise

I begin to trust the work,

to hang it out on the line, polished and bright.

I offer it to you, dear reader,

"Is it any good?" I ask

Solitude

This evening, I return home

Lake Colden Sunrise. Photo: Michael Gaige

build up the fire

chop onions and carrots

add them to oil in the pan.

In a moment

loneliness sweeps over me

I weep,

resting my forehead on the counter.

I flavor lentils

with salt and red wine vinegar

and spoon them over rice.

I eat slowly

eschewing the company

of computer or radio

I wash dishes,

and set them to dry

In solitude,

my heart softens.

I bow at the altar,

perform tasks demanded

by home and body.

I make space for tenderness

and tiredness

And in the slow passage

of days, I begin

to heal.

Fine, Thank You

"How are you," you ask in greeting,

not really wanting an answer

I beat my chest in response

tear my hair and wail

"I am so very sad"

I respond to your surprised look.

I am not afraid to grieve

I am not afraid to weep

rocking in front of the wood stove

convulsed by tears.

I am not afraid to tell you of my loss

how two weeks ago

my love expanded beyond

the bounds of our universe

I am not afraid to chant

out loud in remembrance

words cobbled together to

Ganesha and Guan Yin

I am not afraid of inhabiting my anguish

I am not afraid to tell stories of the dead

I am not afraid to spin my weakness

into words

But you look uncomfortable.

Does my grief offend you?

Would you rather, when asked, that I respond

"Fine, thank you, and you?"

Lizard Brain

How does my lizard brain know

Photo by Mike Gaige

the day of the week,

a concept I loose so easily when I step

away from my accustomed routine?

And yet, three weeks to the day

heading home in my car

tears slide, then cascade

down my cheeks.

Sobs well from the depths.

This morning, in a fit of sanity

I had straightened and cleaned house.

I took out compost,

put away dishes, and brought in

an extra arm load of firewood.

I watered plants

and opened curtains.

I was making space, I thought,

for the house guests

Focus and Possibility

Instead my lizard brain knocks

and on the doorstep, stands

Third Anniversary

bearing gifts of

longing and sorrow.

Seven sevens

Penstemon, Superstition Mountains, AZ

     I traveled in good company. Over oatmeal my aunt, the Chan Dharma Master, and my mother, the Zen Priest, discussed the Buddhist rituals and ceremonies that surround death. I listened, an invited fly, soaking in discussions that I mostly understood.

     "In the Chinese Buddhist tradition, the family of the diseased would abstain from eating meat or drinking alcohol for the forty-nine day period following the death. The merit of this action is dedicated to the deceased."

      I counted back on my fingers, remembering meals. Was the ground turkey I stirred into pasta sauce Wednesday lunch or Thursday? I am not a vegetarian, though an allergy to red meat and training in both sustainable living and yoga philosophy have lead me to eat fewer meals containing meat.

       I drifted away from the discussion. Could I do it? Forty-nine days with no meat, no beer? Should I cut out sugar too? How would it serve me, my grief? How would it serve the traveling spirit of my aunt? But why not? I thought, I'll try it. It certainly won't hurt me.

      And it did serve. It served me in ways I had not foreseen.

      After returning from California, I found myself sensitive: the news grated, and I turned it off. I made simple, nutritious meals, and made my daily walk a priority. This period of abstinence was not only for Gail's sake, though I happily diffused to her the merit of my actions.

      Instead of muting my sorrow with a glass of wine, or seeking comfort in breads and pastries, I inhabited my sorrow. I grieved, yes, but I did not wallow. My body and mind were exhausted, but nourished and clean. I was receptive to words, memories, insight. I was tuned and attuned; vibrating and vibrant.

     I lived deliberately.

     I felt the full force of my grief. 

     I began to heal.

Altars

On the seventh day after Gail's death, we moved what was left of her altar to the one table not yet carted away by the Salvation Army: a nine-inch Guan Yin, white ceramic, with a piece missing from her shoulder; a figure of Master Hua in seated meditation, glaze revealing each feature of his long, wise face; a framed picture of Swami Chinmayananda; an aqua glass vase offering bearded iris, two rose buds, narcissus, and a constellation of muscari. Deep purple, yellow, pale pink, the first of the spring harvest.

My mother, aunt, and I pulled couch cushions to the floor, and settled into meditation. My mother began to chant the first Great Memorial Service. Every seven days for seven weeks, each in our own way, we would return to the ceremony. We pray that in the realm of life and death, this one person, Gail, like the precious Dragon Jewel, will shine as the emerald sea, clear and complete, as clear as the blue sky,...

***

At home, I prepare my own altar for the second-seventh day. I drape Gail's blue scarf on the breakfast bar, letting it cascade over the edge. I set the buddha in the center; he is small, perhaps an inch and a half high, sent to me by my mother. To his right stands Guan Yin, bodhisattva of compassion, a gift of my aunt Heng Ch'ih. And on his left Gail's own Ganesh, red and yellow, palms offering. A pottery vase my grandfather scupted, brown and blue, holds daffodils. I choose a photograph taken thirty-four years ago of Gail and my mother, each with a cheek pressed to my infant face and lean it against the vase. I tuck a close-up, recent, of Gail's face into a clay frame. She smiles out at me, looking vibrant, playful and a little smug.

I remove a stick of incense, light it, and stand it in a raku pot. My own service is unkempt, bits and pieces gleaned along the way and offered without reservation. A sampler of Japanese and Sanskrit wrapped up with the service my mother had offered on the first seventh day. I float on the words only guessing at the depths they hold, trusting that showing up is service enough. ...like the precious Dragon Jewel, will shine as the emerald sea, clear and complete, as clear as the blue sky, in the Dharma everywhere, and serve as a guide for the world in ascending the path to enlightenment.