yellow, pink, blue over you

we talked about having children,

but assigning colors by gender confused us, so we didn’t. (the reasons we didn’t are more complex than that and are, frankly, none of your business, but the whole “pink is for girls”, “blue is for boys”, and “yellow is for ‘we don’t care as long as the baby is healthy’” tropes — or have they slid into the cliché category? idk — continue to disturb us, at least when we think about it, which isn’t that often & in the case of this post is what first came to mind as i looked at the photographs displayed here.)

we do continue to think about having had children, having made that decision years ago when we were younger–and every-now-and-then, a little pang of regret may catch at our side–somewhere near our kidneys–and a wistful sigh may escape our lips when we see the joy they bring to our friends who have children — grown or otherwise — but we know we made the right decision for us and as a result we can look at pink, blue, and yellow without the slightest thought of gender assignment.

my mother’s boyfriends

“charlie ritter,” she’d sigh whenever a photo of him would rise to the surface of our photo box.

we’d sit side-by-side on the sofa or her bed and poke through this box of memories, the left-over images not put into an album; pulling out a black & white image of some forgotten event/relative/friend (i refuse to believe they were forgotten, instead i think it was a way to evade traveling down an uncomfortably bumpy road of memories) or a faded polaroid my grandfather had taken (back when you had to apply the chemicals to the surface of the polaroid after it was ejected from the camera and you’d stand on tiptoe next to him to watch the image magically appear–it was magic too, for who among them could explain that to you?) on one of their trips to oregon or washington or wherever it was he and my grandmother would go in their pink rambler on a fine spring/summer/fall day; grandmother sending postcards to ‘button’ and evelyn from this roadside attraction or that one, a monument to the relentless march of the white man across the great divide. you know.

this box of photographs would have never been taken out of the closet it was stored in were it not for me. it held, what i believed at the time, the secret to my mother’s mysterious past, including my forgotten past (how quickly children set aside memories as they age). the photo albums, the proper ones with their black pages and photo corners, and the special pen with white ink that my mother would use to caption each one in her perfect palmer method hand-writing, the teacher within her irrepressible, were of less interest to me. after all, what was there left to discover?

but this box of photographs held a surprise inside of it every time i managed to dislodge it from its perch on the top shelf of the linen closet, for years i had to stand on the metal kitchen stool to reach it (remind me to show you a picture of the metal stool that was in our kitchen forever, it actually still sits in my kitchen today); the thrill of teetering on tiptoe and reaching into the closet itself with its smell of fresh linens and old magazines, cardboard and antimacassars, talcum powder and beeswax candles, was only slightly mitigated by growing taller until i no longer needed the booster rocket of the metal stool, always cool to the touch with its painted surface, a decal on the seat back that was changed every few years (florals, kittens, puppies, dolls in sunbonnets and gingham, and repeat), and its rubber-tipped legs.

there were times when i would take the box into my bedroom and sort the photographs according to a code that only i was cognizant of: photos of men over here on the pillow, men with women over there at the end of the bed, landscapes somewhere in the middle or i would take all of them out of the box and spread them all over my bed like a map to a past that i had a hard time comprehending, or even remembering, for no matter how often i asked my mother about this photo of him, she’d always sigh, “that’s charlie ritter,” and i store that away for a while until i was older then she might add, “he was my boyfriend when you and i lived in highland park.”

charlie ritter, divorced like my mother (where did they meet? i never found out), had grown children–in fact, somewhere there’s a black & white photo of he and his son, the son with a blond duck-tail, rolled up shirt sleeves, and a motorcycle leaning next to a pole with a basketball hoop stuck on top at the end of a driveway with a cinder block wall–how i remember this i don’t know, but there it is–and another of charlie sitting in the stands of wrigley field, a day at a ball game taken by mother, am i there too? possibly, but not in the photo, just charlie sitting there with his ray-bans on, black hair slicked back from his forehead (a mt. rushmore head: prominent forehead, nose, chin, all poking outward like the granite spires of the black hills we were soon to call home, perhaps it was prescient, but who was psychic enough to realize that? certainly not i at 6, nor my mother in spite of her abilities.)

i have no reason to believe that he treated her with anything but respect. it may be that he even found me, if not amusing, at least not a hindrance to his infatuation with my mother, but i have no way of knowing for sure. this gray area of adult life remembered from such great distance (and forgetfulness). when i think about my mother at 43 now that i’m well past that age, it’s easier to understand accept her sexual life — the one area of their parent’s life that children refuse to acknowledge — and when, at only 6 or younger, and for that matter older even, you have no experience to even entertain the thought of a hot embrace (the only time perhaps is when you were in tears and pulled to the bosom of your mother in comfort, there is a bit of sex in that, is there not? don’t cross your eyes and wrinkle your nose at me, denying it will only confirm my suspicions.)

my mother had other boyfriends after we moved to rapid city late in 1959 (driving from highland park, illinois in a black & white plymouth sedan–it had fins which gave it a chariot quality — not that i knew from chariots  at the time — but looking back, and that is what this is all about, the looking back at the past for clues to the present, i see a stop-motion animation of that car flying across the prairie, the corn fields, the wheat, the rivers, and the plains, the badlands and the foothills, the gullies, the washes, the cottonwoods turned bright yellow running along the silvery ribbons of the missouri, the platte, the mississippi, the little creeks, and rivers that fed them, the corn palace, the feedlots, the bison, the herefords — when i first learned to identify the charolais, the aberdeen, the brahman, the heifer from the bull — the geese flying south crossing our westward motion), but none of them have a name associated with them–there was the one who gave me a pair of dress rodeo cowboy boots for christmas one year that i only wore once because i was promptly beaten up my 7th grade year in middle school for wearing such ‘queer’ boots, there was ‘floyd’, and although he has a name, it may not count as his real name as i never met him. she said he was her masseur and once a month, sometimes twice a month during my early teens, she’d come home from  “a message at floyd’s” looking like she’d just been freshly fucked, but i only think that now in retrospect, because, you know, you know that look after a while don’t you, but at the time, when you’re in your pubescence, you want to still believe your mother/father, the adult(s) in your life when they say “i had a message and i’m going to go lay down now. why don’t you be a dear and make us something for dinner. wake me when it’s ready, will you? that’s a sweetheart.”

coda:

“how did you decide on robert?” i would ask repeatedly because the answer pleased me so, even as i grew older. and she’d say, “well, we considered harold frederick since lee jr. was out of the question because you were adopted, although that would have been okay with me, but your father thought otherwise and how could i argue with him. harold frederick would have been a nod to your grandfathers, but you didn’t look like a harry to me and i loathed the idea of a fred, so i said we’ll call him robert lee and your father thought that sounded right. you’d have a little bit of his name and it seemed the right name for you when you were born.”

“but why robert?” i’d beg, and she’d pause for a moment, a marlboro lit and suspended between the ashtray and her lips  and reply, “that was the name of my first boyfriend, the first one who meant something to me and i knew that whenever i would call your name that it would remind me of that first love. you’re my first love now, you know, and that’s why i named you robert.” she’d put the cigarette between her lips and inhale, her look somewhere between then and now, a smile curling up with the smoke from her exhale.

notes on the discovery of my baby shoes & a letter written by my mother

i’m one of the lucky ones. i could have said, “i guess i’m one of the lucky ones”, but guessing has nothing to do with it. when a statement is preceded by “i guess” it implies inevitability, resignation, a sense of fait accompli, fate; as if the other party, the one that changed your luck, your hand suddenly full of aces, had nothing to do with your happiness, existence, being. so, no, i was right to not write “i guess” — a qualifier — in front of “i’m one of the lucky ones.

but i am one of the lucky ones. when you read the letter my mother wrote to my father’s sister on the occasion of the birth of her third daughter (nine months my junior), you’ll begin to understand how parents, proud as they are of their accomplishment, still only consider the one outcome: their child will be just like them. there will be no variation from the script, no ad lib, no scat, no flourish, no extra color, you will be just like them. at that young age, they are already defining the roles they naturally assume you’ll play (acting not yet your thing.)

what happens then when, one day–let’s say when you’re five or six, eight or nine, twelve or thirteen–the sudden realization hits them, you are not quite fitting the mold they had prepared themselves for you to fit into? they most likely will set this discovery aside, for who could think such a thing of a young child? they’ll adopt a wait-and-see attitude, their minds racing back to the beginning of your time; what signs did they miss, what roadside attractions did they drive right by with you sitting in the seat next to them? “impossible,” they’ll tell themselves; “this is just a phase,” they’ll reason; “why, there’s just no way that this difference could be true,” they’ll whisper to themselves as they turn their steely-blue gaze in your direction as you sit at the piano practicing your scales.

you, on the other hand, will continue on your way, blithely ignoring the scrutiny suddenly directed at your every move, thought, consideration; you might even think “what’s up with them?” in the most abstract of ways, “parents” you’ll harrumph should you be of an age to harrumph, and shut your bedroom door to read by the open window this one summer, the smell of honeysuckle and the click-clacking of cicadas your balm against the abrasion of their fear (should it manifest itself in the sudden “let’s go hunting!” or “it’s time you learned how to change the oil in the car!” or “you’ll need to dig 50 post holes for the new fence we’re putting up [around your life] the backyard.”)

i was one of the lucky ones. for, in spite of every attempt to ‘make me a normal boy’ — all of which failed, btw — my difference was never a topic of discussion between my mother and i.  regardless of the drama of being a gay child in a straight world and there is a lot of drama, i knew i was loved and that made all the difference. parents are you listening? it’s such a simple idea, you’ll be surprised you hadn’t thought of it sooner. i never felt i had to ‘come out’ to my mother and i never said the words, “i’m gay” to her. and for her part in this existential little stage play (so much waiting, so little arriving), she never asked, she never pushed, well, okay, maybe once or twice she might have said, “do you have a special girl?” or “i’d like to have grandchildren one day”, but it was always done with such a light touch of amusement, that i never considered it a disappointment to her when i replied, “no, i’m lucky just to have you.”

Würzburg, 16 Nov.

Dear June & 1,2,3,4.

It’s early in the morning. & I must go to commissary so will dash this off so I can mail it. We were so glad to hear you finally had a big baby girl. Of course, we were all for a boy, but girls are so sweet & nice. Butchie is sweet, but he’s so masculine. Right now he’s feeling pretty sorry for himself–he has a terrible cold–it’s loose–thank Heaven–but his nose runs & I know he feels miserable. He has 5 teeth & is trying to get more & of course that makes him fussy. He is so big he’s a handful to care for. I’m going to call the Dr. & see if he wants to see him or if there is something I can do more for him here at home.

Got a lovely big package from Mom the other day. All the little packages are wrapped so pretty & look so Christmasy. Seems like I can’t get the spirit until her package comes, but she sends it so early it’s an awful strain to have those mysterious packages around so long & not be able to peek.

Lee finally got home from school — he was gone 5 weeks & only home once in that time. It seemed like years. He is going back for advanced training but I’m praying today that he can’t go ’till January. ‘Today is the day he’ll find out for sure. He left me the car today so I can finish my shopping & get my packages off. I know 15th was supposed to be the deadline, but I never can quite make it. Surely hope you don’t feel you have to dash around & work yourself into a fit to send us a box–after all you’ve just had a new baby & if you just send Best Wishes we’ll understand & be perfectly happy. We’re not putting out much this year–even one baby is added expense–don’t know what we’d do with 3.

My little guy just messed his pants so had better stop & get him cleaned up & my house looks like a cyclone struck it–it always does on Mon. morn.

We have a parakeet who chirps loud & long & Robert Lee sits 10 minutes at a time & shakes his head at him. It’s funny.

                                                         Love to you all–send pictures & data–name, etc.

                                                                                                     Evelyn & family.

how to spoil an 8 year old’s christmas (but just in case i was wrong, coordinates provided)

30°  this morning, saturday, december 24, 2011, as i was facing south at 6:49 a.m. pst, the sun came up and spread a pink blanket of light across the ocean

-117°  when i turned to the east at 6:52 a.m. pst, its fiery heat lit up the sky in oranges licked with red which, for some reason, reminded me of…

…i don’t recall taking pleasure in spoiling my cousin’s christmas in 196_, at least not at first, although after his tears had subsided, no doubt assuaged by the mountain of gifts set before him by his doting parents, it may have come to me that speaking the truth may have unintended consequences — some that you can control and others that you cannot; you just need to remember to assess the risk/benefit factors before opening your mouth which is not always easy at any age (i speak from experience.)

banished by grown-ups to the rec room in the basement (or bored by the grown-ups we retreated to the rec room on our own) on christmas eve, he and i, never close to begin with, stood facing each other across the pool/ping-pong/foosball/game table and not knowing what else to say, but feeling pressure to say something, i blurted out, “you know, there is no santa claus.”

i stood there and watched as his face crumpled, his eyes welled up with tears, and a wail of disbelief left his lips, but by this time, just seconds after speaking the truth, my ears were burning and humming with blood, drowning out any sounds–watching him in pantomime then as he ran up the short flight of stairs from basement to foyer and up again to the living room (split-levels, you do remember them, don’t you?), the deep pile of sculpted carpeting like quicksand, all of this in slow motion, me following to see what would happen.

if only there were more to tell.  all i know for sure is that evening a shift in our relationship occurred and although we were cousins born the same year just two days apart, living in the same small town, we never really ever were friends.

child care (hairy chests, hot rods & reels), part 3

that one’s mine

we used to sit at the edge of their yard, a little bluff overlooking the rutted alley that split willsie avenue from lemon and faced van buren, looking east toward the hill up which we walked to general beadle elementary school.  2 years separated each of us; 11, 9, 7, 5.  occasionally another neighbor boy, dale jakeway or one of the whalen boys (were they all named john? possibly) would sit with us, but we mostly saved this activity for ourselves.

this would have been 1964, the year that chevrolet re-introduced the el camino and ford the mustang.  we’d sit in the dirt underneath the lilac bushes that formed a hedge around the paris’s backyard and pick rocks out of the ground (our homes had been built on landfill–the ground was loaded with rocks and tin cans and the detritus of building the rest of our town, you never knew what you’d find when you started digging) and would idly pitch them at the gravel parking area below (there was a duplex at the corner, bright yellow shingles and wooden screen doors with the mesh coming undone); mind you, we weren’t trying to hit a car, but just in general to see who could hit an imaginary (or real) object, who had the best arm (wayne, the older brother, did).

the paris boys were my ersatz brothers; occasionally, whenever my mother and i went anywhere for longer than a few days, i was allowed to invite one of the brothers to come with as a companion; usually i chose marty, although wayne was closer to my age, marty was smarter and we seemed to share a more complete friendship than i did with wayne (as wayne and i came into our pubescence our relationship became more complicated and involved, not intellectually, but most certainly physically.)

if i went outside there they’d be, one of them at least and we’d go off on our bikes or ‘take a hike’ or play in our pink gravel driveway with my tonka trucks — of course with the trucks there were strict rules of usage and what could be done to them or with them or i’d pack it all in and take them inside — those boys played rougher than i did, a result i assumed of actually having brothers.

when the heat of summer became too oppressive, we’d ride down to robinson park and go swimming in the community pool, the pool house’s concrete floor slick with water and heady with the smell of chlorine and wet children.  their mother, dolores, was home, but rarely interfered with our activities, unless of course, we were making too much noise too close to their house, or if someone got hurt.  i and one or more of them would walk over to haines street where there was a little ma & pa grocery and buy candy (if i had any extra money from my allowance, i’d treat, because even though my mother and i were struggling, the paris’s, just by their sheer number, were worse off than we were, the father a truck driver — and an abusive drunk — wasn’t home often and i’ll never know how they even managed to put food on the table, let alone treat the kids to a chocolate bar or a bag of red licorice whips.)

did i mention that the boys had an older sister, 2 years my senior?   she and i would play together once-in-a-while, usually more imaginary games, such as pretending to chauffeur the beatles around in our car, she and i in the front seat and using our beatles bubble gum cards as place holders for the actual beatles in the back seat.  one summer afternoon, debbie (the sister) and i raided our pantry and ate a whole can of black olives while sitting on our back stoop, it made both of us sick to our stomachs and confessing to our mothers what we had done was as embarrassing a moment as i remember from my childhood (at least one of them.  you know, it was the shame of being stupid.)   and eventually, once i was in high school, dolores got pregnant one more time and added another daughter at the tail end of her marriage–5 kids in a two bedroom, one bath cracker box of a house.)

about this time, when i was 10 or 11, i started building model cars.  after carefully saving my allowance (or at least a part of it) and when i had 3 or 4 dollars put away, i could ride down to main street in rapid city to the hobby shop and select a new model, perhaps even buy that sparkly cherry red paint–it looked like nail polish–of course, i know you’re thinking “he’d ride downtown on his bike all by himself at such a young age,” and yes, it’s true, if i let my mother know where i was going–calling her at work to check in after school or during summer break, she might come home for lunch, and i’d ask if it was okay to ride my bike into town.  children then, at least the kids i knew, had a lot more freedom to do as they pleased than children today.  it wasn’t unusual for us to be away from home for several hours, exploring this vacant lot or that one, “oh, let’s go one more street over and see what’s there,” was a fairly constant refrain for us, smaller versions of daniel boone or the rifleman–one of us always had an airgun or bb gun or a phony bowie knife of dubious sharpness that we would take on these longer excursions.   it felt good to be armed, such as it was.  us, on the way to being men.

so the summer would go by, and sometimes the early fall, until the first snowfall, you’d often find us in that year when the el camino came back and the mustang was the hottest thing on four wheels, sitting on the bluff overlooking van buren and up the hill to the east where cars would suddenly appear and take the dive down the steep hill and roll up toward us.  you could hear the motors first, and the object of our time there was to claim the car as our own, before anyone else could, scoring points for the discerning ear that signaled the coming of a mustang or an el camino, by calling out, “that one’s mine!”   extra points would be scored if the car bore out-of-state plates, more for those from further away, california always seemed so exotic then, more so than any cars from the east.

so many children’s problems get worked out when they sit together and conspire to enjoy themselves over the least of activities, and children do have problems, ones they won’t share with anyone other than another child.  there’s the constant pressure to behave, to conform to the standards of adults, who can be so mercurial and difficult to comprehend, all those mixed signals, “i love you,” “leave me alone, i’m busy,” “what do you think you’re doing young man?”, “you are the sweetest child.”  so sitting there, a little grimy from playing, grass stains on your knees whether you have long pants on or not–just the thought of grass stains conjures up that wonderful feeling  of being lower to the ground than an adult, and how your perspective of the world is informed from that closeness to the earth and of not having to be so far away from it, it seems to center a child, even if they are daydreamers with golden clouds of  what ifs and why nots swirling around their heads, before adulthood quenches those impulses, if their education hasn’t already.  you know, while you can still call out, “that one’s mine!” and grab onto that fleeting moment as if it truly were yours.

i cling to these (a child’s memories)

“Just one way, you do get back home. You have a boy or a girl of your own and now and then you remember, and you know how they feel, and it’s almost the same as if you were your own self again, as young as you could remember.” –James Agee, “A Death in the Family”

part one

when i was told by the youngest sissie that he had died i thought that nothing had changed; he had passed from my life so long ago that any memories i think i have of our time together cannot be retrieved without the assistance of photographs.   she and i rarely speak on the phone, our adulthood separating us from the day-to-day minutiae of our ordinary lives; she said, “they found him about a week after he had actually died, sitting in his recliner,” (left unsaid:  with the tv on, an empty can of budweiser on a rickety metal tv tray next to a brown & orange plaid la-z boy; bloated with death & gas & probably putrid, no make that definitely putrid.)

this is the kind of story (the discovery of his death) that is usually found on the second page of the second section of your local newspaper, the part that covers goings-on around the towns in your area, a headline such as this: local man found dead in apartment and it would go on to describe how the discovery was made (the building super investigating a ‘suspicious’ smell), a quick quote from a neighbor, “he kept to himself, i don’t recall seeing anyone visit him,” a brief bio provided by a vietnam vet at the local vfw (a snapshot of your local vfw:  wood paneling, folding tables, the smell of bad coffee, beer & cigarettes, men unshaven, war stories–the same ones–told again and again, and the loose ends of their lives).  his family (a second wife, three children –maybe it was two, regardless, i have step-brothers & -sisters that i met only once — i can’t even remember their names it was so long ago and so briefly),  from what i was told, didn’t really care that much.   an end to a life passes by with little fanfare (except for the prurient) and there were no tears (perhaps of relief, but now i am being unnecessarily cruel.)

no rest for the wicked, würzberg, germany

my only adult memory of him is exactly what you might expect from someone not involved in your life:  he, stiff & uncomfortable, dominant (“you’ve got five minutes to shit, shower & save,” this the day of his father’s funeral & he was marshaling the troops–his 2nd family, me, and grandma.  wisely, the sissies–two sisters, my cousins, his nieces–stayed in a hotel.)  i was there for two days and left the evening after the funeral (he carried grandpa’s ashes in the trunk to the veteran’s cemetery against the wishes of the rest of us –  grandpa should have rode in the car with us, his last car trip instead of in the trunk, alone–should i say “like an afterthought?”  But he was insistent, our pleas falling tears in the parking lot of the church, a chill February wind underlining our despair.)

i was 21, he 48; in my mind i believed there would be a spark of recognition, an innate bond that time could not have diminished, some little thing that would say, “father,” “son.”   today i do not believe i yearned for that, but i do believe that i held out some hope; who doesn’t want their father to acknowledge them as their child (and to take them in their fatherly arms and comfort them, even after such a long time, this particular eternity?)  there may have been flashes of an imagined childhood with a father even.  (that particular construct is difficult for me to imagine actually happened in my head at 21.  i was, after all, an out gay man, making my way through school and with a job and living on my own.  i had not thought of him on a conscious level for, well, forever.  an introspective look at my past would have taken a back seat to the current events of my life.)

on the ride to the train station that evening, he, at the wheel, turned to me and said, “do you have any questions for me?”  (which was more of a statement than a questioin.  i, sitting uncomfortably next to him, thinking only of the escape that was just down the road for me, asked, “why did you and mom get divorced?”  his reply: “there are some things, son, that are between a man and a woman and not to be discussed with others.”

and that was it.  i think now i should have held onto that “son” as an admission of his failure as a father and perhaps his reaching for some commonality between us, but i was put out that he asked for a question then muffed it, not even any prevarication or stutter, just the implication, a brick wall enclosing him from the possibility of love, the subtext “off limits–i won’t open up my life like that.”  me sitting there staring out the window and at the reflection of my angry face in the window, a rebuke to his absence and his refusal (or inability) to be what i wanted.

tickle me, würzberg, germany

our life together.   recently when i was having my yearly eye exam, the doctor said to me, “were you hit in the eye when you were a very young child?  that might account for the mark on your retina.”  from the photographic evidence i was a happy child (except for my first hair cut at a barbershop, but really, that’s to be expected); there was never any discussion of abuse, but the terms of the divorce were severe–no contact, no mail, no telephone calls, never to be seen again.  and i spent several summers at his parent’s house and there were never any ‘unexpected’ visits; he vanished as if a magician had pulled the fringed drapery off of the empty cabinet where only moments before he had been hiding.

my mother collected mothers-in-law & this one was no different.  even my father’s sister and her daughters (and their father) all played a part in my young life.  but it was not until he had taken his mother into his house as she reached her dotage, that he was discussed among us (this after my mother had died).  there were tales of elder abuse from my aunt — his sister — (and even from my grandmother, somewhere there are the sad letters i would receive from her, detailing her decline and unhappiness and his cruel behavior.)  but, and this is true, everyone was afraid of  him and nothing ever happened to ease her suffering until she died.   it is hard to conceive that all of her love was wasted on a son like that; this loving, generous, hard-working woman and her delicate, sad husband — how could my father have been who he was coming as he did from such a home?

even when queried by me, my mother would talk about our life in germany & then the boat across the atlantic (me, just three,  in a harness with a leash so i would not dive overboard on a childish whim) and our time at fort carson outside of colorado springs and back to fort sheridan north of chicago, but she would do all of that reminiscing without once mentioning my father.  the only shared memory where he figures prominently was the day they were picking cherries from a tree in the backyard of our home in highland park and he on a ladder showing off and she, “lee get down from there before you fall and break your fool neck,”  i on the lawn watching them bicker/banter back and forth.  seems true enough today to reach out and touch them both.  that life together.  but that is one of only two shining memories of him that i have of my own, the rest are just prompted from these photographs.

mr. & mrs. lee patrick with their son, robert, würzberg, germany

there are facts of course, many a matter of public record:  his birthday, his name, his service in the army (3 tours of vietnam, a bronze star), their marriage (i have the license, she ten years his senior) and their adoption of a little boy before he was born, but the facts mean nothing, they are nothing but the wire hanger on which this empty suit hangs.   they were a striking couple, i see that in the photographs i have of them before their marriage (their courtship in the service–my mother in the army as well–and a charming photo of her sitting on the grass in the yard of her future in-laws her head in a floral aunt jemima scarf her skirt arrayed around her with an 8 x 10 framed photo of lee & written below in the photograph’s margin in my grandmother’s hand, “for the birds.”)  that seemed like love to me.  love before i arrived.

what changed?  this and other questions plague me still.  those who might know all dead now.  i grab at ideas (for one, that the ‘house-maid’, my birth mother, her occupation was listed on my german birth certificate, and this father were paramours and i am his son, but that theory vehemently denied by all concerned, except, of course, my mother who would just change the subject when i brought it up.  why the evasion, mother?)  she did kid me on occasion, “your father was a hick from appalachia with a pimple on his nose and shoes two sizes too big for his bony feet.”  which would send me (depending on my mood) either into paroxysms of laughter or an embarrassment so deep my knees would blush.

the other, should you need the prompt, is abuse.  whether vocal or physical, either to my mother or to myself, my gut tells me there were some mean times chez nous.   this is only a feeling, a gut reaction based on the rest of his life and the relationships the rest of the family had to him (the fear of crossing him the most prominent and the scariest, to me.)  but yet.  when i look at these photos of me with him, how could i think anything but love existed between the two of us? and perhaps that is enough.  but it is not nor can it be, because there is more.

horsey-back ride at the sissies' home, akron, ohio

what changed?  if this life alone had been lived with us what would have changed?  what is it like to have a father?  how does that fact change your life?  would that change your character?  i have a hard time imagining this part of my fantasy life, the presence of a male authority figure the rarest of dreams & they never are finished, & sadly there is no difference.   i think there should be a difference.  not that i would have been a different person, my essence is natural to me, although when you look at how i was raised you might be inclined to raise a glass to the concept of nurture influencing the character of a person.

and of course, i was influenced by all of the women in my life, there is no doubt that i was, but, but, but what if?  what if i had had a man around, to teach me to dribble a basketball, or catch a baseball, or for that matter to even enjoy sports?  what if there had been a man around to talk to about sex & love & relationships after i had become a stranger to my mother (puberty.)  that secret talk that a father has with his son (they do, don’t they?  in this fantasia they do.) what else do fathers give their children?  do you know?  all i can imagine i needed to be an adult i learned from my mother.  it was enough.

but from what i have gleaned over the years, like children do; listening, but not, absorbing without prejudice the rumblings of adults & years later those words bubbling up to the surface (not for everyone, i am sure, but for me they are words painted in the faintest of colors on a scrim at the back of the stage, so subtly lit that you must just let them be & that is how you discern their meaning, more a sense of their meaning, an emotional association with vowels and consonants, grammar), it would not have been a loving relationship between he and i.  no, what i see (the sense, this psychic retrieval) is a life of discord; my being who i am in contradiction to his idea of what i should be.   and that he died alone, his last family unconcerned about his well-being, his whereabouts, his life (how not to be trite here) only drives home, confirms my suspicions, that looking back, that other memory, that it would not have been good for the two of us.

which, of course, depresses me.  me, so eager to have that bond, that relationship, but only now, not then, because, and this is the truth, i never gave him room in my head as a child.  i was never teased or shunned for not having a father (or for having two mothers, one the perfect substitute for a father), and any questions as to why there wasn’t a man in our lives, the answers, however they may have been formed, accepted as fact and not as an aberration by my childhood friends (god knows what their parents thought about it all, it being the time of perfect family models (the Cleavers, etc.)

the nuclear family (white gloves version)

there is the one other memory, one that is mine alone as i have never shared it.   i’ve been reading lately about how, as we grow older, our memories of our early childhood disappear very rapidly and that usually by the ages of 10 or 12 (or younger) those memories of when you were a baby, a toddler, a young child, have vanished.  and it is then that you start your memory bank for use later on as you grow older.

so i believe this is my earliest memory:  he has taken me with him to the army base where he is stationed (fort carson? possibly because of the sensory truths that have stayed with me), i am possibly three years old (or not much older, this event just before their divorce) and he is showing me off to his buddies.   have you ever been around a bunch of young men in the army?  that part is more of a feeling.  this part is true:  he lifts me up onto a tank with its engine running (the intent to take me in it for a spin around the barrack’s yard/parking lot, wherever tanks are on an army base) and he clambers up after me and lifts me up again onto the turret.  he slips down into the tank and reaches over the edge of the turret and lifts me up and we drop down into the tank (down there it is all man sweat, motor oil and that peculiar dirt smell that i always associate with the army.)  i wail.  i struggle for breath, i squirm and scream and slobber, tears racing down my face, hot & claustrophobic in this small space with my father–a rejection.  for both of us.

he carries me back up the inside of the turret & lifts me (still in full wail) out of the tank and sets me down outside of the hatch.  his buddies staring, their looks a mixture of disbelief, amusement and embarrassment (i imagine now), because he was furious with me, his anger stiffening his back, his voice a sharp rebuke to my behavior (i don’t believe he hit me.)

part two

to understand what this memory has meant to me we must now jump ahead in our story eleven years:  i am 14 and in the full bloom of puberty (awkward–clothes refusing to fit– and horny, passionate and aloof, too eager to please, in reality, a mess) and i am spending the summer with mary (my real father) in colorado springs not too far from fort carson.   besides going to church, a southern baptist brimstone & fire church with elmer gantry’s stunt double as a preacher (was elmer gantry enough of a description or would you prefer: a floppy mop of auburn hair brylcreemed into a pompadour, ruddy complected, heavy beard (a twice a day shaver), big barrel chest and like his wife a hugger?)   and his wife all bosom and talcum powder, forever grabbing you into a hug “bless you, child”ing you until you thought you’d faint from those great ham hocks of wobbly fat arms locked tight around your middle–well, at least my middle–your breathing erratic (and ever so slightly erotic, in spite of your inclinations, for there were definitely inclinations).

preacher man, wife and a confused 14 year old

i am volunteering at the church, helping with kid’s summer camp, but the pressure is on from mary to be contributing to my savings with a job.  she decides (as she always did, dominant as she was, a foghorn voice and a laugh that always shot out of her, pellets of sharp guttural guffaws, so distinct you could identify her location even if you couldn’t see her) that i will be cleaning apartments in her complex, filled as it with military and base personnel.   i post a card on the bulletin board in the common area and a day later i get my first call (and as it turns out, my only one.)

the mother, son and father (disguised as a woman)

it’s a lieutenant stationed at fort carson;  i meet with him that evening and he tells me that he’s never home, always out on maneuvers, but could i just clean up after him.  we set a price and a schedule, he gives me a key and that’s that.  (except, of course, the that  is that i have fallen madly in love with him.)   days later and i’ve let myself into his apartment and his smell overwhelms me.  it’s in the bathroom, it’s in the living room (he doesn’t use the kitchen), and it’s definitely in the bedroom.   it is the smell i remember from my father and the tank, motor oil, male sweat and the red dirt of the plain at the base of the rocky mountains.

the dirt rings the bathtub, caked on the sides and all i can do is sit there on the edge of the tub and fantasize about him naked, me washing him after field maneuvers.  i wander from the bathroom without cleaning it (although i did rub my fingers over the ring of dirt in the bath and held them close to my nose, a strong intake of breath) into the bedroom where the bedsheets are in a knot at the bottom of the bed, pillows on the floor, which i pick up and place back on the bed and promptly lay down on my back, hands clasped behind my head, dizzy from all the blood fleeing to my crotch.

i do not fantasize about having sex with him, that would be too much of a leap of faith in my imagination at the time, but i do imagine playing house with him–whatever that would entail–perhaps a cocktail waiting for him when he comes back from the base at night, dinner in the oven, me in an apron, cleaned up and expectant, catering to his whims (only years later would those be of a sexual nature), taking his boots off, rubbing his feet and inhaling that scent–that red dirt, motor oil and man sweat.

after cleaning his apartment i would go back to mary’s and draw a bath and soak until the pads of my fingers shriveled into those little prune faces and masturbate, maybe twice while i had the apartment to myself, but still behind the closed door of the bathroom, my eyes squeezed shut and the images of the men in my life flicking by–my lieutenant, the preacher and my father from that day in the tank, when he held me in his arms while i wailed, with the smell of the earth all around us and the noise of the engine drowning out his love.

trees, the early years

Nothing about these two pictures (you can imagine how it went down, can’t you?  “you stand by the tree in your easter best & i’ll take your picture, then i will & you’ll take mine,”) seems extraordinary, a mother on the left, relaxed & happy (perhaps even content today); her son (with braces) smiling on the right, stiff & awkward in that pre-teen/early adolescence “i’m as graceful as a cantaloupe,” phase (all arms & legs & “where did those big feet come from?”, desperate for body/facial hair that sure sign of manhood, or a deeper voice, anything that would ground you, plant you firmly to the ground.)

This is what you do, when you are just two (before someone thought of holding your arm out with your phone camera turned toward you & your loved one, snapping a shot on the run,) you would take turns taking each others’ photo (a kodak brownie used in this case, circa 1965.) & if i project from this distance now you’ll forgive me; there appears to be just a touch of innocence (like a light coating of frost/frosting on the grass/cake of this life — at least for now,) tinting these two portraits & with that comes some sadness (innocence & melancholy hand-in-hand, constant companions.)

but trees.  this home came without.  the slab it was built on rested on landfill; the yard 50′ wide x 150′ long sloping down to the alley, two tire ruts delineating its path.  i liked the alley for that reason, because it was still country wild & even by the time i moved away several years later it was still just the two muddy/dusty/gravelly ruts it had always been.

during the ‘mary’ years (see the page “all about my mother–the hope chest”) we had, by ourselves, fenced the backyard (i dug all of the post holes.  have you ever used a post-hole digger?  it’s like a two handled shovel & i imagine in even the best of circumstances it is a miserable piece of torture devised by adults & foisted upon children as an excellent way to strengthen your upper body, if they even used that excuse, because truly, it is an excruciatingly difficult process, this hole digging,) but regardless, the fence went up and inside of it, following the perimeter of its alternating thick and thin boards & round rough-hewn posts, we planted 50/60 (it seemed at the time to be 100) lombardy poplars as a wind screen.

but those were planted as a form of child slavery & although as they grew to amazing heights & were a source of wonder & delight for years, they meant nothing to me.  (there were even three planted in the parkway in front of our home (just to the left & off camera in the photos above, between the newly laid sidewalk on our block & the street.)  it is the elm that we are standing by that i am writing about today.

it was an orphan, a sucker shoot that had grown on its own out of an embankment two houses to the south of us.  we (the neighborhood kids & i) used to sit on the top of this little canyon watching cars travel up & down van buren street, playing “that’s mine” — which entailed claiming the niftiest car coming down the street before someone else did, ford mustangs were the most popular among us — or just sitting there, hidden by lilac bushes & that ability most children have of disappearing into a landscape — the bane of most parents “now where did that child go?” — you could be just feet from them, but if you were good, you were camouflaged by your youth & the desire to stay outside & play longer & perhaps be just a bit disobedient, which for a child is a thrilling thing (those minor delinquencies.)

this elm, though, was slated for demolition, the homeowner realizing that it was growing at a peculiar angle overhanging his parking spaces for the duplexes that anchored our corner (willsie avenue at van buren street.)  i don’t know why i said “i’ll take it,” it may have been that i was the rescuer of the neighborhood, the one kid on the block that all the others came running to when there was an animal emergency or other calamity that required immediate attention in the absence of adults (all of whom worked, there were no stay-at-home moms on our street, well, at least none that you could trust with your childhood dramas & triumphs.)

but take it i did, digging at it’s convoluted roots (one long root, perhaps 6′ long that jutted out from its trunk at an odd angle was particularly bedeviling) & then dragging it (as you can see it is ever so slightly taller than me) over to our front yard (don’t worry, i asked permission to plant it there,) & struggled to dig a hole deep enough for its roots (& that one long scraggly root,) all of this by myself (it’s amazing how your friends will absent themselves when there’s the slightest hint of sweat involved in anything that has a purpose not of their own devising.)

for ever after, it was ‘robert’s tree’; it grew as quickly as i did & fast became the shade tree an elm is destined to be.  important photos were always taken under its branches (graduations, visits from long lost relatives & my mother’s incredibly large circle of friends (the ones from so many of her past lives that it was difficult to understand how one person could know so many people & that they all loved her, seemingly as much as i did,) birthdays (not winter ones) & any special occasion that required a photograph to be taken, the mementos of our future.

the last time i saw it was in 1985, long after i had left home to have my own life (& plant more trees.)  it was even bigger than i imagined it could ever be, & like a parent with their grown child, i brimmed over with pride at how magnificent it had become & that i had helped it when it needed it most.

labor day (& lists)

have you ever really considered labor day anything other than a mark on the calendar?  it is the end of one section of time & the beginning of another.  for children & their parents, it denotes the end of summer vacation & the beginning of the school year (mostly); for the rest of us, it’s the last long weekend of good weather (mostly) before the winter holidays drop by for their yearly visit (welcome or not.)

some cities celebrate labor day with a parade, others ignore it completely.  labor unions may mount a sit-in, a demonstration of some sort against the inequities of the rich vs. the poor.   this event may be covered by the local t.v. news organization, but half-heartedly & without the passion they reserve for the latest celebrity imbroglio.

rarely do the people who actually labor for a living have the day off (maids/day laborers/gardeners, you know, the help.  i don’t know that labor day will actually ever mean what it did when it was enacted as a federal holiday in 1894 (whatever its meaning was then, you know, though, just as it would be today, its enactment as a holiday was politically motivated.) <sigh>  we are witness to the disengagement of the populace.  it’s true, no one cares ( there are those poor white folk who are feeling a tad disenfranchised these days; their institutional bigotry pinching their narrow-mindedness like a badly made shoe.)

but it’s labor day & we should celebrate (hallmark, are you listening?  i’m waiting to see that first labor day greeting card, then it will be official.)

we’re getting close to ‘list season’, the time of year when all publications & media outlets along with their writers, critics, essayists (are there any left?) & pundits all contribute their ‘best of’ lists (like used tissue when you have a cold.)

i’ve never been very good at making lists of favorites & i’m not sure why.   it could be that i can’t remember everything that i’ve ever read, seen, or heard (the arts are notorious for their lists, aren’t they?), at least on cue.

it’s much more pleasing to me for a memory of a favorite to bubble up unbidden, such as this morning’s memory of labelle performing their hit ‘lady marmalade’ which i would consider one of my all-time favorite albums, but would’ve probably not remembered it if i had been making  a list.

how could i ever make a list of authors?  just now, at lunch, i was reading about a new book of letters between author james salter & critic robert phelps that’s just been published; salter is one of my favorite authors, but i hadn’t thought of him in ages.

oh, it’s easy to come up with a quick list: cormac mccarthy, henry james, p.d. james, nadine gordimer & lawrence durrell, lawrence, d.h., & tolstoy, rushdie & marquez (gabriel garcia-) but my god, how could i even consider that complete (don’t forget thomas hardy!)  & that’s just the novelists, what about the poets?  & how could i possibly rank them?  yes, i might be able to say that a few have given me greater pleasure (if the number of their works i’ve read were the benchmark,) but to place a #1 or #2 or a #10 next to their names would be very painful indeed.

and that’s just the written word.  forget movies & music, how could you even start?   it’s just too much work (for labor day.)

forts (hiding out)

at the top of the driveway, at one time set into the privacy hedge, sat a rickety little wooden bench, lovingly hand-crafted with flaking sage-green paint & a parallelogram of a back rest.   i used it to wait for a taxi to take me down the hill when we first moved to our hillside home & only had one car; occasionally i would see a neighbor, out for a walk, taking a rest seated on its one person seat, staring contentedly down into the valley or up at the sky, luxuriating in the cool shady bower.   a couple of years ago, it fell apart (i like to imagine) and the gardeners removed it, but its footprint (its aura) remains & the gardeners continue to trim around the space as if the bench is still there (a ghost limb.)

now, however, if you bend down & look into the undergrowth you see that it is a perfectly fine hiding spot, a fortress of solitude, and if i were 10 again, or 12 even, i would crawl back in there & read a book, or plot the overthrow of the tyranny of adults or lay back & just dream about the day…

it’s possible that i would invite a neighbor boy (never the neighbor girl, places like this are gender specific) into my secret fortress & we would compare the relative merits of our strengths, our army of young boys (the neighborhood i grew up in was rife with boys of all about the same age, and only one girl) who was trustworthy, who was not, who had started to shave (no one, damn it.)  we might even talk about the adults in our lives, but rarely, their lives too distant in time from our own to fully comprehend what could possibly occupy their imaginations (the world was still revolving around us at this point.)

from the age of about 7 until i was maybe twelve, i loved building forts in the summertime out of scraps of cardboard boxes, unused lumber, & other found objects (all covered with the obligatory bed sheet or tarp (if available, weather-proofing your fort catapulted you into the stratosphere of super-duper fort builder, the envy of all the boys in the neighborhood.)

the alley that ran behind our backyard was not much more than a couple of gravel tracks with a grassy hillock dividing them & it seemed to stretch far into the horizon no matter that you faced south or north (our house was in the middle of the block;) what it was though, each of those 4 or 5 summers was an endless supplier of lumber, cardboard boxes, half doors, window sashes, the accoutrements, the details that would make the fort of my dreams a reality.  what i strove for each summer was to have the fort that all of the neighbor boys would want to hang out in, the “mom, i’m going over to robert’s for the afternoon,” kind of fort, you know.  (of course, my mother worked so that aided and abetted my popularity–no adult supervision.)  i don’t remember ever getting into any serious trouble though, either by myself or with any of my playmates.

one winter the snow drifts in our backyard (we had a 6′ wooden fence running the perimeter with lombardy poplars lining it) were so deep that i was able to construct a snow fort, burrowing deep underneath the weight of the snow.  it was a brilliant fort, surprisingly warm & spacious, i spread hay on the snowy ground & my dog, a beagle named pepper, & i spent the better part of week playing in there until the roof caved in on top of me & i panicked, thinking i would suffocate & die, but i struggled & pushed & dug my way out, ending my fascination with snow forts with roofs (we did go on to build forts like igloos with blocks of snow, the neighbor boys & i (wayne, marty & their little brother, john.)

today, today when i saw that sacred little hiding place in the hedge and the flood of memory came tumbling down on me (the snowy fort first) i thought that we still build forts, that we never really get past that need to have a safe place to hide from whatever life is throwing at us  & more than that, a place to read, to contemplate, to dream, even if it’s saddled with a mortgage.